A Consumers' Republic

A Consumers' Republic PDF

Author: Lizabeth Cohen

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2008-12-24

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 0307555364

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In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book.

Follow the Money

Follow the Money PDF

Author: Sarah Reckhow

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-01-17

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0199937737

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Some of the nation's wealthiest philanthropies, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in education reform. With vast wealth and a political agenda, these foundations have helped to reshape the reform landscape in urban education. In Follow the Money, Sarah Reckhow shows where and how foundation investment in education is occurring and presents in-depth analysis of the effects of these investments within the two largest urban districts in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. In New York City, centralized political control and the use of private resources have enabled rapid implementation of reform proposals. Yet this potent combination of top-down authority and outside funding also poses serious questions about transparency, responsiveness, and democratic accountability in New York. Furthermore, the sustainability of reform policies is closely linked to the political fortunes of the current mayor and his chosen school leader. While the media has highlighted the efforts of drastic reformers and dominating leaders such as Joel Klein in New York City and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., a slower, but possibly more transformative, set of reforms have been taking place in Los Angeles. These reforms were also funded and shaped by major foundations, but they work from the bottom up, through charter school operators managing networks of schools. This strategy has built grassroots political momentum and demand for reform in Los Angeles that is unmatched in New York City and other districts with mayoral control. Reckhow's study of Los Angeles's education system shows how democratically responsive urban school reform could occur-pairing foundation investment with broad grassroots involvement. Bringing a sharp analytical eye and a wealth of evidence to one of the most politicized issues of our day, Follow the Money will reshape our thinking about educational reform in America.

Artists of the Possible

Artists of the Possible PDF

Author: Matthew Grossmann

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0199967849

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Policy change is not predictable from election results or public opinion. The amount, issue content, and ideological direction of policy depend on the joint actions of policy entrepreneurs, especially presidents, legislators, and interest groups. This makes policymaking in each issue area and time period distinct and undermines unchanging models of policymaking.

Postwar America

Postwar America PDF

Author: James Ciment

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-26

Total Pages: 3552

ISBN-13: 1317462343

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From the outbreak of the Cold War to the rise of the United States as the last remaining superpower, the years following World War II were filled with momentous events and rapid change. Diplomatically, economically, politically, and culturally, the United States became a major influence around the globe. On the domestic front, this period witnessed some of the most turbulent and prosperous years in American history. "Postwar America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History" provides detailed coverage of all the remarkable developments within the United States during this period, as well as their dramatic impact on the rest of the world. A-Z entries address specific persons, groups, concepts, events, geographical locations, organizations, and cultural and technological phenomena. Sidebars highlight primary source materials, items of special interest, statistical data, and other information; and Cultural Landmark entries chronologically detail the music, literature, arts, and cultural history of the era. Bibliographies covering literature from the postwar era and about the era are also included, as are illustrations and specialized indexes.

The Experts' War on Poverty

The Experts' War on Poverty PDF

Author: Romain D. Huret

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1501712179

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In the critically acclaimed La Fin de la Pauverté?, Romain D. Huret identifies a network of experts who were dedicated to the post-World War II battle against poverty in the United States. John Angell's translation of Huret's work brings to light for an English-speaking audience this critical set of intellectuals working in federal government, academic institutions, and think tanks. Their efforts to create a policy bureaucracy to support federal socio-economic action spanned from the last days of the New Deal to the late 1960s when President Richard M. Nixon implemented the Family Assistance Plan. Often toiling in obscurity, this cadre of experts waged their own war not only on poverty but on the American political establishment. Their policy recommendations, as Huret clearly shows, often militated against the unscientific prejudices and electoral calculations that ruled Washington D.C. politics. The Experts' War on Poverty highlights the metrics, research, and economic and social facts these social scientists employed in their work, and thereby reveals the unstable institutional foundation of successive executive efforts to grapple with gross social and economic disparities in the United States. Huret argues that this internal war, coming at a time of great disruption due to the Cold War, undermined and fractured the institutional system officially directed at ending poverty. The official War on Poverty, which arguably reached its peak under President Lyndon B. Johnson, was thus fomented and maintained by a group of experts determined to fight poverty in radical ways that outstripped both the operational capacity of the federal government and the political will of a succession of presidents.

Artists of the Possible

Artists of the Possible PDF

Author: Matthew Grossmann

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0199967830

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"Policy change is not predictable from election results or public opinion. The amount, issue content, and ideological direction of policy depend on the joint actions of policy entrepreneurs, especially presidents, legislators, and interest groups. This makes policymaking in each issue area and time period distinct and undermines unchanging models of policymaking"--

Postwar America

Postwar America PDF

Author: James Ciment

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 1574

ISBN-13: 9780765680679

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Alphabetically arranged entries provide coverage of the diplomatic, economic, political, and cultural events in the United States from the outbreak of the Cold War to the rise of the United States as the last remaining superpower.

When Bad Policy Makes Good Politics

When Bad Policy Makes Good Politics PDF

Author: Robert P. Saldin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0190255439

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"Good government reforms instituted in the 1970s to thwart economically unsound legislation now cause chaos in America's policymaking process by incentivizing the development of flawed, even blatantly unworkable, policies. The CLASS Act and its role in passing President Obama's landmark health reform law illustrate the pathologies of the current system" (ed.).