Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag always swore that he would never return to Oakmont, Connecticut, the small mill town where his family lived for generations. He certainly has no desire to interrupt his high life as the newest great American novelist to revisit the town that hates his family and will only bring back memories of his unhappy childhood. But when his childhood sweetheart phones to say that her mother, Mary McKenna, the librarian who inspired Hoagy's dream to be a writer, has died, Hoagy kn...

Throughout the world, politicians are dismantling state enterprises and heaping praise on private markets, while in the United States a new rhetoric of "citizen empowerment" links a widespread distrust of government to decentralization and privatization. Here Joel Handler asks whether this restructuring of authority really allows ordinary citizens to take more control of the things that matter in their roles as parents and children, teachers and students, tenants and owners, producers and ...

This book compares workfare policies in the United States and 'active labor policies' in Western Europe that are aimed primarily at the long-term unemployed, unemployed youth, lone parents, immigrants and other vulnerable groups often referred to collectively as the 'socially excluded'. The Europeans maintain that workfare is the best method of bringing the socially excluded back into mainstream society. Although there are differences in terms of ideology and practice, Joel F. Handler argu...

This enduring study of law and organizations that change the community--the core relations of citizen and state--takes aim at real problems that resonate today and the limits of bureaucracy: health care, medical consent, pollution, special ed, care for the elderly and poor. A recognized sociolegal classic by a UCLA law prof, first published by Penn Press, now in digital edition with 2010 Foreword.

An in-depth view of the world of low-wage women workers, this expert presentation by authors actively involved in the field provides a realistic picture of the women and the issues as well as suggested strategies and innovations. The book covers a wide range of topics, including getting and keeping a job, struggling to balance the demands of work and family, health care, child care, and unemployment. It is set in the context of both welfare reform and the low-wage labor market and incorpor...

January 1983: Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag is getting married to the love of his life Merilee at New York City Hall. Hoagy's college chum, Ezra Spooner, stands up for him. Merilee's lovely cousin, Phoebe, stands up for her. After they say "I do" and pop open the Dom Perignon, Phoebe somberly announces that she and her husband, the legendary adventurer and old money multi-millionaire Junior Singleton, are now officially divorced.Phoebe isn't asking for much of Junior's fortune in the divorc...

Affordability, access, and accountability have long been among the central challenges facing higher education—and they remain so today. Here, Donald E. Heller and other higher education scholars and practitioners explore the current debates surrounding these key issues.As students and their families struggle to meet rising tuition prices, and as state funding for higher education dwindles, policymakers confront issues of affordability within state and institutional budgets. Changin...

The global financial crisis and recession have placed great strains on the free market ideology that has emphasized economic objectives and unregulated markets. The balance of economic and noneconomic goals is under the microscope in every sector of the economy. It is time to re-think the objectives of the employment relationship and the underlying assumptions of how that relationship operates.Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives develops a fresh, holistic framework to fu...

This book is about governing well for the future. It investigates the nature of, and the conditions for, prudent long-term democratic governance in a dynamic, complex, and uncertain world, the reasons why such governance is politically challenging, and how such challenges can best be tackled. In particular, it addresses the problem of ‘short-termism’ – or a ‘presentist bias’ – in policy-making; that is, the risk of governments placing undue weight on near-term considerations at the expense...

The concept of community development is often misunderstood, holding different meanings across different academic disciplines. Moreover, the concept of community development has been historically abstracted, not only in the way the concept has been conceptualized in academic studies, but also by the way in which practitioners use the term in the vernacular. Departing from traditional definitions of community development, this volume applies the New Public Service (NPS) perspective of Publi...

International assistance programmes for developing countries are in urgent need of revision. Continuous testing and verification is required if development activity is to cope effectively with the uncertainty and complexity of the development process. This examines the alternatives and offers an approach which focuses on strategic planning, administrative procedures that facilitate innovation, responsiveness and experimentation, and on decision-making processes that join learning with acti...

How government can implement more successful policies, more oftenFrom healthcare to workplace and campus conduct, the federal government is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive, incompetent, wasteful giant. Ineffective policies are caused by deep structural factors regardless of which party is in charge, bringing our government into ever-wors...