Book Description
This text provides an introduction to key concepts, current research findings, and theories in social inequality. While focusing on social class and theories, it also deals broadly with other forms of social inequality, including racial/ethnic, gender, and political. In dealing with the various dimensions of inequality, the book explains how they overlap and interrelate.
Book Description
National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Kozol presents his shocking account of the American educational system in this stunning New York Times bestseller, which has sold more than 250,000 hardcover copies.
Customer Reviews:
Relevant but Misleading.......2007-06-07
As an "inner city" teacher, I found this book relevant yet misleading. Author Jonathan Kozol visited schools in impoverished U.S. communities, and shows the shameful way we fund public education via local property taxes. Readers see how this unfair system short-changes our poor schools, leaving students in leaky classrooms short of books, computers, and lab materials. Kozol correctly calls for equal funding of public schools, and even integration as needed.
But like too many reformers, Kozol avoids the vital behavioral/cultural issues disproportionate to impoverished minority schools - poor student discipline and motivation, gangs, fights, broken homes, truancy, pregnancies - perplexing challenges we teachers face daily. By avoiding these realities, Kozol misleads readers into seeing the problem (and solution) as basically one of funding. Not so. After all, my home suburb of Evanston (Illinois) integrated its well-funded classrooms back in 1967, yet glaring gaps between white and (usually poorer) black students persist, narrowing only modestly. In short, culture trumps funding, and Kozol barely mentions enhanced early childhood learning and pregnancy prevention - programs that help.
SAVAGE INEQUALITIES promotes equal school funding an overdue (but modest) reform backed by most of us teachers from poor schools. But Kozol misleads readers - and earns scoffs from many experienced teachers - with his naïve, unrealistic approach.
A Life of Equality.......2007-01-29
Before I began reading Savage Inequalities,by Jonathan Kozol, I was expecting a interesting, moving story of the truths behind poverty and equality and that it was i read. This story was a compelling read with significant insight into the dream and life of equality. However, Savage Inequalities,at times was very boring and dull. Throughout many parts of the novel I felt as if the author were repeating himself or stating the same points numerous times. Through vivid details, and the shocking truths behind the American education system, the reader gains a tremendous understanding into public schooling during the mid 1900's. Overall this novel successfully portrayed the tragedy of American school life for the millions of unfortunate children in the United States.
The biggest strength of this novel was the tremendous detail and imagery. The author witnessing life first hand gives the reader a greater, more insightful understanding of an childs actual life. As a school teacher in the novel, the author observed the children everyday and noticed the numerous struggles they had. The biggest weakness of this novel in my opinion was that at times the story became boring and almost difficult to read. Many times the author had excessive facts and , that the book became more like a list or documentary then a real story. Also, the author seemed to refute the same points and ideas various times throughout the book. For the first time reading a novel by Kozol I believe he is an insightful writer with a variety of great ideas. Savage Inequalities gave me as the reader an in depth understanding of Kozol's writing style. He seems a very honest straightforward writer, who speaks the truth. Reading this book I was able to learn of the life of American schooling during the mid 1900's from a first hand witness. I learned of the horrors and unjust ways many less fortunate children had to endure. Savage Inequalities demonstrated the harsh life for poor children and the shocking truths to American school life.
A sobering view of the American educational system.......2007-01-07
This book was a real eye-opener, exposing the wretched conditions of inner-city schools in America. I think it should be required reading for every person in this country, because it is an issue that receives little if any attention. I would never have known how bad the system is for some cities without reading this book.
Kozol is an appropriate author, detailing specific trips he has taken to inner city schools to directly observe the state of their schools in comparison to the affluent suburbs.
My only critique is that after awhile, the stories all seem to sound the same, but it just emphasizes how widespread this problem is and that something must be done about it.
Don't read this at night ~ This book will turn you into an activist.......2006-12-10
You could use this book to beat bureaucrats over their collective heads.
The failure to educate the poorest and the youngest in this country is an abomination and Kozol shines a bright light on some of the corners of it (not all) so the bureaucrats are like filthy little cockroaches scrambling into new corners.
Read this book. You might have a few nightmares if it's at night. Pass it along to a friend and discuss it.
We are all obligated to all our children and enlightenment is a very good first step.
You also might rethink what drugs you buy when given the option. I personally have decided that those who have ruined St. Louis will not get my money.
Nothing Changes.......2006-07-17
If George W. Bush could read - this is a book he should be made to read. As old as it may be - nothing has truly changed...so many children being 'left behind'. A devastating book. While we piss away billions abroad, TRUE Home Security (health education and proper employment) is ignored.
Book Description
A critical and interdisciplinary examination of women and health, which challenges traditional viewpoints and highlights the importance of ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and ablebodiedness, as well as gender. Addresses issues of social justice, ethics and public policy. For anyone interested in women's health.
Book Description
A brilliant assault on our obsession with every difference except the one that really matters—the difference between rich and poor
If there’s one thing Americans agree on, it’s the value of diversity. Our corporations vie for slots in the Diversity Top 50, our universities brag about minority recruiting, and every month is Somebody’s History Month. But in this provocative new book, Walter Benn Michaels argues that our enthusiastic celebration of “difference” masks our neglect of America’s vast and growing economic divide. Affirmative action in schools has not made them more open, it’s just guaranteed that the rich kids come in the appropriate colors. Diversity training in the workplace has not raised anybody’s salary (except maybe the diversity trainers’) but it has guaranteed that when your job is outsourced, your culture will be treated with respect.
With lacerating prose and exhilarating wit, Michaels takes on the many manifestations of our devotion to diversity, from companies apologizing for slavery, to a college president explaining why there aren’t more women math professors, to the codes of conduct in the new “humane corporations.” Looking at the books we read, the TV shows we watch, and the lawsuits we bring, Michaels shows that diversity has become everyone’s sacred cow precisely because it offers a false vision of social justice, one that conveniently costs us nothing. The Trouble with Diversity urges us to start thinking about real justice, about equality instead of diversity. Attacking both the right and the left, it will be the most controversial political book of the year.
Customer Reviews:
Part I to The Trouble with Injustice.......2007-09-22
I think this is an excellent and highly original, even brilliant, analysis of how special interest or identity groups result in, or at least result in acceptance and the ignoring of, economic injustice. The book analyzes, with astute insight, this problem or "trouble." On that score, the author is very persuasive. The problem is the absence of any cogenly presented solution to the problem. This may have been intentional, and I could even respect the author's decision to limit his contribution. In fact, I think the author may be quite right that he is not qualified to present a proposed solution. It seemst to me that there are two paths to addressing the problem, economic and religious. Either one by itself will not work. An economic calculation on how to obtain utopia and end human injustice is not only hopelessly unrealistic, but in the end tends to result in inhumanity, as in the Marxist attempted solution to the problem. Spritual charity in needed as an internal part of justice. Neither liberal individualism, as is increasingly common today and obviously a failure in terms of addressing injustice, nor collectivism, the failure of the past, will work and combining the two will only lead to further failure, IMHO. Living Christian social justice is probably our best bet at this point. If only governmental authorities and the people they supposedly lead also sought justice, together more could be done.
Literature professor tackles Big Problem.......2007-08-24
This is one of the dumbest books I've not finished reading. A professor of American Literature with a family income of $250,000 tackles the Big Problem: Economic Inequality is the Basic Social Problem facing this country--but he's not giving any of his money away. In fact, he says he wrote the book so he could make more money. He advocates closing all private schools and other nonsense as solutions to the problem. He claims that the only meaningful equality is equality of outcome. Sure, we all have the right to be doctors and lawyers and so forth if we want to be.
What he has to say about race is not worth summarizing.
It's a silly book. Don't waste your money..
Resource distribution, not income distribution.......2007-05-23
This book has been analyzed extensively. So I'll be brief:
WBM's suggestion to ameliorate income disparity is NOT income redistribution. It is RESOURCE (healthcare and education) redistribution.
Real estate taxes fund schools - so wealthy suburbs have better public schools than low income neighborhoods. How does an individual parent solve this? Move to the better neighborhood!
Healthcare is ones own responsibility. The actual cost of this for a mediam income family of 4 is 10-20% of income (depending on who you listen to). How does a family deal with this? Suck it up and pay!
In both cases policies for the provision of what are normally considered to be public goods have been outsourced to the marketplace in the US.
If you believe that education and health are the ticket to a better life, then you have no choice but to agree w/ WBM that this is effectively not avaialble to those in the lowest quintile in the US.
US society papers over this by harping on diversity.
The studies showing that social mobility in the US is the LOWEST among OECD nations confirms this.
Runs out of Steam.......2007-05-17
The main idea is that too much focus on diversity has allowed the schools/press/government to take their focus off the more critical issue of levelling the ECONOMIC playing field, rather than the absurd and meaningless "diversity" playing filed, which plays into the elite/rich right's (and left's) hands.
I agree with the author that too much focus is put on race (the author makes the point that race really "shouldn't matter", and may not even really exist); indeed there are some interesting views made on Plessy vs. Ferguson. However, towards the end of the book, when the author branches out to say that the USA's language, and culture (and, by extrapolation, borders) "don't matter" either and shouldn't be the subject of any argument, it became clear that the author had already run out of useful subject matter in this relatively small book.
Readable, sometimes Brilliant, but Glib.......2007-02-05
This is an engaging, sometimes brilliant, book that is also deeply flawed. It is wonderfully well written. The author can turn a phrase and produce the occasional memorable maxim. For example, he says "Diversity, like gout, is a rich person's disease" (p108) and he says regarding the diversity obsession in elite American institutions that "the supposed left has turned into something like the human resource department of the right, concerned to make sure that women of the upper middle class have the same privileges as the men"( p114). The early chapters on the biology of race and "Our Favorite Victims" (which argues that our obsessions with race and gender have obscured our vision of economic inequality) are especially subtle and illuminating.
Still the book suffers two flaws: whenever it treats hard sociological facts the interpretation is typically glib, and the author offers few if any concrete proposals to address the problem of economic inequality. Regarding the first problem, three examples will suffice.
1 On page 98, the author provides the average SAT scores for students in 10 income categories, ranging from less than $10,000 dollars (872) to more than $100,000 dollars (1115). The average SAT goes up with each step up the income ladder. The problem he fails to note, however, is that race or ethnicity is even more important than income in accounting for variation in SAT. In 2006 Blacks averaged 863 and Asians scored 1088 on the SAT, and Asians from families earning $20,000-$30,000 outscored blacks from homes earning over $100,000 by over 60 points. Income is important but ethnicity is more important. In terms of school achievement, "it is more important to be born Asian than born rich," as Lawrence Steinberg once put it.
2 Michaels assumes that white suburban schools are better funded than black/urban schools (p87, passim), and that this accounts for differences in student performance but the evidence is quite clear that more money is spent on urban schools per student than any other type of school. Schools with 50% or more minority students spend 9% more than those with 5% or fewer minority students. My area would be typical. Atlanta City schools spend 50% more per student than suburban counties such as Cobb and Gwinnett but the latter greatly outperform Atlanta on standardized tests. The school district that spends the most in the country is Washington DC and it is arguably the worst school district in the country. There is no relationship between expenditures and student performance, something we have known since the Coleman Report of 1966. Family variables, especially family composition, explain most of the variation in student achievement.
3 The author observes that the academic left has claimed that domestic abuse occurs in every social class but that in fact poor women are 7 times more likely to be abused than wealthy women (pp.117-119). This is true but it hides what is the real variable of importance--marital status. According to the Justice Department and the National Crime Victimization Survey, single women are 4 times more likely to be abused than married women, and divorced and separated women are 10 times more likely to be abused than married women. The income findings are largely a function of the fact that married couples have much higher incomes than single/separated/divorced households.
Regarding the paucity of concrete policy prescriptions, one has to assume that Michaels wants to increase taxes on the rich and distribute the money to the poor but that is no guidance at all. He does seem to prefer that affirmative action shift from race/ethnicity/gender to social class, but as many have observed, such a shift would benefit whites and Asians disproportionately. The single concrete proposal he makes is reparations for slavery. Of course, this is rather ironic, given that the main point of the book is that obsessions with race and gender have blinded us to issues of income inequality, but the larger problem with such a proposal is contained in statements like "reparations are a technology for trying to create a world that comes as close as possible to the world we would have had if neither slavery nor Jim Crow had happened" (p128-129). You have to work very hard to be that facile. Had slavery never happened the descendents of those who in fact were enslaved would be living in West Africa and yet the 37 million people currently living in the US of African descent have a combined income much larger than the combined income of the 650 million sub-Saharan Africans. The typical person living in Western Africa lives on less than 2 dollars a day. By the author's logic, the descendents of slaves are the ones who should be paying reparations. Did I say "glib?" That is absurd.
Brad Lowell Stone
Book Description
This anthology examines the social construction of race, class, gender, and sexuality and the institutional bases for these relations. The editor’s goal is to help students see race, class, gender, and sexuality as both sources of identity and systems of social stratification.
Customer Reviews:
College book, messages for everyone.......2004-12-10
I was required to read this book for one of my graduate classes and enjoyed the format and topics. The variety of authors and perspectives is interesting, and even though it talks down to the read in some of the section introductions, the overrall message becomes clear: the systems in place that support racism and bigotry are large and well supported, but you can still do something starting with your most important asset- you.
Book Description
A groundbreaking work that exposes the twisted origins of affirmative action.
In this "penetrating new analysis" (New York Times Book Review) Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by Southern Democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity. In the words of noted historian Eric Foner, "Katznelson's incisive book should change the terms of debate about affirmative action, and about the last seventy years of American history."
Customer Reviews:
Good research, presentist thesis.......2007-07-08
An excellent synthesis of research on the bigoted application of New Deal era programs, marred by a presentist, polemical determination to characterize this as "affirmative action" for whites. This was not affirmative action for whites, this was unfair exclusion of blacks from programs that were supposed to be open to all. At the end, we are still left with the philosphically dubious assertion that discrimination against whites is needed to make up for past discrimination against blacks. I can see the appeal of this argument, but I think perpetuating government racism, even for compensatory purposes, is a mistake that creates more social problems. In this respect I think the title is unfortunate, but no doubt it got the author much more attention and increased book sales. And there is much worthwhile information in the book, especially for conservatives still in denial about the extent of the racism from which blacks suffered in the twentieth century.
Affirmative action for White people, at least alot of white people .......2007-05-05
This book, written in a formal manner, in the style of a political policy paper, touches on that most sensitive of American subjects, race, specifically the responsibility of American society to provide compensation to African Americans for the centuries of slavery and severe publicly and privately enforced economic and psychological misery.
The main focus of the book is on the increases in the disparities in terms of wealth, health and other indicators between black and white Americans that began during the New Deal period. It was this disparity that President Johnson noted in his speech to the Howard University graduating class in June 1965. LBJ noted that since 1947 white poverty had decreased by 27 percent while non-white poverty had decreased by only three percent. He declared that etween 1952 to 1963 the average percentage of the income of white men that black men earned, fell from 57 to 52 percent. The infant mortality of non-whites in the U.S. was 70 percent greater than whites in 1940. By 1962, it was 90 percent greater. LBJ stated that white and black unemployment rates were about equal in 1940 but by 1965 black unemployment was twice as high.
LBJ's speech is the foil for the exposition of the learned professor in this book........
For Katnzelson, as others have pointed out before him of course, the shaping of such New Deal policies of Social Security, public works jobs, housing mortgage subsidies, the Wagner act empowering workers to organize, minimum wage laws, and so on were dependent on the votes of Southern Democrats. They worked to insure that agriculture and domestic work were excluded from the minimum wage law of 1938 and the Wagner Act and the Social Security Acts of 1935. Agriculture and domestic workers, of course, were very disproportionately in the South represented in their work force by African Americans. The majority of African Americans lived in the South, the poorest people in the poorest region in the country. They worked to ensure that benefits and subsidies of these Federal programs would be distributed by local officials--thus in the South officials worked with a great deal of success to exclude blacks from the programs that whites had access to. Southern politicians wanted to keep Blacks in semi-slave conditions and so succeeded to a very large extent in excluding blacks from income accumulating opportunities that were available to Whites, such as the government guarantee of organizing for higher wages, benefits and conditions guaranteed by the Wagner Act and the programs of subsidies to the poor. When Blacks did receive subsidies from these programs in the South, they were considerably less than the same benefits accorded to Whites.
Blacks had considerably less access to the training programs offered to white service men during World War II. They were often placed in menial jobs. The Republican Secretary of War Henry Stimson believed that blacks should be kept from the battlefield as much as possible because of their alleged inherent incompetence at those tasks. Some black servicemen did have access to literacy training, combat experience and vocational training. Unionized black workers in the North benefited and blacks in the South were pulled along in the new prosperity but at very small distances compared to the benefits won by white veterans. In an endnote, he quotes Eisehnower that rural working class Britian lacked the strong race consciousness of Americans--thus white GIs stationed in England during the War were horrified by the sight of white British girls dating Black GIs and often responded violently. According to Ike, they were also upset that the British press seemed not at all perturbed by this dating.
Funding for college education, housing mortgages on easy terms, superior vocational training and so on were provided in massive amounts by the GI bill. The latter has been declared by Freddie Mac advertisements and Democratic politicians, quite plausibly as significantly contributing to the creation of the post-War middle class in this country. Once again, the programs of the GI bill were run by local VA officials and others in the South, the home of the majority of black veterans. The house mortgage and educational loans were distributed by private lenders in the north and south who at best loaned the money to black veterans infrequently but of course did so regularly for whites. Blacks eligible for higher education were either not allowed access to education or directed towards Southern Black universities and vocational schools that received much less funding than comparable white schools and were otherwise bad jokes as educational institutions. Northern white colleges, of course, engaged in extensive unofficial racial discrimination in admissions and student housing.
The subsidies and education which the families of white veterans and their descendants have benefited from show up in contemporary statistics, Katznelson shows. Many whites who took advantage of the GI bill were able to subsequently accumulate fairly comfortable assets in terms of stock ownership, retirement funds, savings and so on. Home ownership, providing by easy GI bill mortgage loans, was a major key. Such benefits, of course, have passed down through the generations. According to Katznelson, by the end of the 20th century, the median household net worth was $81,000 for whites but $8,000 for blacks.
Katznelson turns to the interesting question as to how a real affirmative action program should be implemented, even one that can be technically color neutral, getting away from the feeble arguments of Jesse Jackson & co. The affirmative action programs that have been implemented, Katznelson argues, have reduced significantly the inequalities between Black and White middle class incomes, if not net worth. But the large majority of African Americans have had their fortunes decline....
Of course, we need a popular movement to force our neoliberal politicians like Edwards, Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the rest to even begin to seriously address the issue.
LBJ was the one who really freed the slaves.......2006-07-30
Just finished an outstanding book by Ira Katznelson on the untold history of racial inequality in America. Those who oppose affirmative action should get it and see who has really benefitted from The New Deal, the Fair Deal, Social Security and the GI Bill after WWII. I cannot see how anyone can read this book and not agree with me that Lincoln did not free the slaves. The slaves were not freed until 1964 and LBJ should be credited with that action.
Of course, this information cannot be taught in Florida schools. The education bill has a provision that History must be taught as inerrant gospel. No revisionist thought allowed in Florida schools. They plan to keep the children ignorant of what Southern politicians did from 1864 to 1964.
Rooseveltian politics and patricianism, Southern (and Midwestern) white racism, collude; OH, IGNORE THE TROLLS.......2006-06-16
For those who are either accidentally ignorant of -- or, more likely, willfully in denial about -- the dark side of the New Deal, many of these things have been documented before. James Loewen touches on a few of them in his well-written "Sundown Towns."
Signing off on Southern Democrats' demands in this and many other things, especially involving the Fair Labor Standards Act before the war, was part of the price FDR was willing to pay to keep his job for four terms. (Several goverment-created towns set up during the Roosevelt years, including Hanford, Wash., one of the cruxes of developing our nuclear weapons power, were deliberately founded by the government as sundown towns.)
Using control of the GI Bill, and of federal housing funds, was an easier, smoother, quieter way of keeping many of these sundown towns all-white (other than the occasional live-in maid) than the cross-burnings, white race riots, etc.
Speaking of those sundown towns, how many were there?
"I believe at least 3,000 and perhaps as many as 15,000 independent towns went sundown in the United States, mostly between 1890 and about 1930," Lowen says. Again, very few of these were in the South. The vast majority were in the West and Midwest.
Unfortunately, many people from these towns -- and even entire sundown counties, in some cases -- are in denial about this part of the racism that was common in America's past and still exists today. That's both how and why their denial may extend to their own racism.
Tell the Truth!.......2006-05-11
Without trying to engage in a polemic, it does need to be pointed out in reference to Mr. Matlock's review that the cause of truth would be better served if one avoids popular and media accounts and made the effort instead to access real historical data. The fact is that during the debate on the Declaration of Independence there was indeed a conflict over one of Jefferson's accusations against King George III that took His Majesty's government to task for its support of the slave trade. The issue of slavery itself was NOT seriously debated. Indeed in 1776, all thirteen states had slavery, while the New England and to a lesser extent the Middle States (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) based their economies in part upon the slave trade. It was on this basis that this particular point in the Declaration by Jefferson was omited. The Declaration, like the Constitution, was, therefore, in effect a pro-slavery document, which is not nearly as shocking as some would have it as the entire world at that time(with the small exception of a very few Western intellectuals and religious
extremists) was pro-slavery. Slavery, which predated written history (and was found in all preindustrial cultures until the West forcibly ended it), only became "wrong" when Western Civiliation so decreed, and in 1776 that had as yet to happen. All of which is to remind us that those who seek to promote a political agenda inevitably do so by distorting history, a practice amply exemplified by this very weak and ultimately silly book.
Book Description
Michael Steele describes the fundamental topics in mathematical inequalities and their uses. Using the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality as a guide, Steele presents a fascinating collection of problems related to inequalities and coaches readers through solutions, in a style reminiscent of George Polya, by teaching basic concepts and sharpening problem solving skills at the same time. Undergraduate and beginning graduate students in mathematics, theoretical computer science, statistics, engineering, and economics will find the book appropriate for self-study.
Customer Reviews:
A delicious smorgasbord of inequalities.......2006-06-25
Professor Steele has done a wonderful job in developing the theory behind the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. He starts off with the basic theory and then through the course of the book he teases out the limitless ways the inequality can be used. There is a breathtaking sweep of applications. What is interesting and valuable about his approach is that as he develops the building blocks he explains why or why not a particular approach might not work. I think there is quite a bit of Polya's inspiration in his approach. For instance, he gives Polya's proof of the Carleman inequality which, on it face, is almost outrageously unbelievable ( where does the "e" come from?) but by that stage you worked through the challenge problems and the other material and it is possible to see why the "e" makes sense.
The challenge problems are excellent and his solutions sometimes skip over some important steps which a teacher could get students to fill in so that they can demonstrate that they understand the material.
There is a lot to learn from this book and it should be read by everyone who is seriously interested in mathematics. The classic Hardy-Littlewood-Polya book on inequalities is a quite different beast but the two together provide the serious reader with a depth of understanding that is hard to surpass.
at the core of mathematics.......2006-03-20
this book deals in a friendly fashion with inequalities (and therefore) with the elementary use of convexity and integrals.
Famous inequalities bear the name of famous mathematicians, e.g: Tchebychev, Hilbert, Cauchy, Hardy, Rademacher...This is one way to understand their significance in maths. This book is about those ones and others such as 3/2
< a/(b+c) + b/(c+a) + c/(a+b) and the many ways to tackle with the fact of proving and using them. Study of this book should be seen as a good and rewarding path towards improving one's mathematical skills .
Erudite and stimulating problem book in inequalities.......2005-09-11
The classic work in this field is Hardy, Littlewood, and Polya's "Inequalities", but as much as I admire these authors for their other works, I have never gotten much out of their inequality book. Steele's book is different: extremely clear, erudite, and thorough, it almost makes everything obvious. The subject of inequalities is something of a hodge-podge, and Steele isn't able to change that, but he helps tie it together with lots of forward and backward references and with returns to problems after we have learned new methods. A good example is Carleman's inequality (easily the most startling result in the book); Steele provides three different proofs spread out through the book, plus a continuous analog.
Despite the title, the book is not primarily about the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, although it (and the Arithmetic-Geometric Mean inequality and Jensen's inequality) do recur throughout the book.
The book is structured as a problem book. The body consists of a number of "challenges", each followed by an exploration of how to solve it. Each chapter ends with a copious selection of exercises; they are not as hard as the challenges, but they are hard enough and they will build your mastery of the material. All exercises are worked out in full in the back of the book.
Wonderful Book.......2004-08-20
I rate this book with FIVE STARS *****
Somehow, the review rating software keeps changing the rating to two stars which is incorrect -- again I must emphasize it is FIVE STARS ****.
Get it now -- don't wait!
As might be expected from the title, Steele's book includes an in depth exploration of the Cauchy Schwarz. It, however, includes so much more -- for example, many, many useful inequalities are set forth in its pages. But even its richness in range and number of inequalities (and equalities) is secondary to Prof. Steele's method of explication. For the real fruit of this book is the techniques and confidence built by the exercises and exposure to the examples. The exercises feed and bolster confidence in approching or deriving familiar and more importantly, never-before-seen inequalities, a confidence which grows with each page and exercise. Techniques that might normally only accrete after years of experience in the course of undergraduate and graduate mathematics courses are set forth one after another. On top of that, this is one of that handful of mathematics books that you can read almost like a novel. It's so readable and rewarding/interesting and engaging that when people have asked me what I have been reading lately, I can answer with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: "a book on the Cauchy Schwarz inequality" -- which I never said about Royden, etc. These techniques are vital for many types of research -- applied mathematics, CS, economics, statistics, (and competitions) to name a few -- in all of these areas finding bounds can play a central role in research. Well worth every penny.
Book Description
Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought.
Punishment and Inequality in America dispels many of the myths about the relationships among crime, imprisonment, and inequality. While many people support the increase in incarceration because of recent reductions in crime, Western shows that the decrease in crime rates in the 1990s was mostly fueled by growth in city police forces and the pacification of the drug trade. Getting "tough on crime" with longer sentences only explains about 10 percent of the fall in crime, but has come at a significant cost. Punishment and Inequality in America reveals a strong relationship between incarceration and severely dampened economic prospects for former inmates. Western finds that because of their involvement in the penal system, young black men hardly benefited from the economic boom of the 1990s. Those who spent time in prison had much lower wages and employment rates than did similar men without criminal records. The losses from mass incarceration spread to the social sphere as well, leaving one out of ten young black children with a father behind bars by the end of the 1990s, thereby helping perpetuate the damaging cycle of broken families, poverty, and crime.
The recent explosion of imprisonment is exacting heavy costs on American society and exacerbating inequality. Whereas college or the military were once the formative institutions in young men's lives, prison has increasingly usurped that role in many communities. Punishment and Inequality in America profiles how the growth in incarceration came about and the toll it is taking on the social and economic fabric of many American communities.
Customer Reviews:
Thorough Statistics, Excellent Readability, and an Indictment of 1980's Correction Policy.......2007-04-24
Bruce Western has stepped into the realm of public sociology, I feel, with this excellent book. This is a well-written, thoroughly researched, book that is accessible to scholars and others alike. Even though the book teems with tables, figures, and analysis, Western presents them without relying on the reader to interpret regression coefficients for meaningfulness, yet also appends many of the chapters with methodological clarifications just for those kinds of people.
Western presents what is essentially a political book without a political tone. The data speak for themselves, and it is very difficult to think that, after all the work put into this, that he incorrectly attributes so little of the decrease in crime trends to the prison boom (and the absurdity of the cost/benefit for its effect on the decrease). It does seem, however, that he echoes the racial claims of Loic Wacquant in the final chapter, but that's only for a brief moment.
Western also excellently argues and shows off the immense disconnect between crime rates and corrections policy; although only a portion of one chapter, this is a significant point to make. If our policies do not reflect what criminals are actually doing, well, why are we doing it?
My only concern with this book involves Western's "all or nothing" approach to showing the economic/social cost of the prison boom. His analyses show the wage gap, parental gap, and other penalties suffered during and after release by prisoners. He astutely points out the selection bias in unemployment and wage estimates in minority populations due to leaving out the far-more-likely-to-be-incarcerated blacks. However, his analysis in later sections, where he shows the change if none of these people were in prison (to prove the selection bias argument), is one based outside of reality. First, there will never be nobody in prison; second, his own data show that prisoners are of a different background than nonprisoners (such as the "dropping out" of the bottom that artificially raises the mean wage for blacks), so it's hard to estimate where they would fit in among family and work if they were released. Many of them would remain unemployed as well. I understand that this is some of his point, but the difficulty lies in the picture painted, where we exist in a world where the prison boom did happen, Western argues what we would look like if none of the prison boom happened, and the real effect of that is somewhere in between. He is unfoundedly optimistic about the work and family choices (and chances) in these sections of the book. It doesn't change his argument about the problems of the prison boom, however. It merely muddles the otherwise fantastic clarity of his book.
This is a book that can appeal to all sorts of scholars, researchers, policy analysts, and even those who merely wonder what direction out prison policies have taken us. An excellent, excellent work.
Book Description
Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor. This "peculiarly modern inequality" that permeates AIDS, TB, malaria, and typhoid in the modern world, and that feeds emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases such as Ebola and cholera, is laid bare in Farmer's harrowing stories of sickness and suffering.
Challenging the accepted methodologies of epidemiology and international health, he points out that most current explanatory strategies, from "cost-effectiveness" to patient "noncompliance," inevitably lead to blaming the victims. In reality, larger forces, global as well as local, determine why some people are sick and others are shielded from risk. Yet this moving account is far from a hopeless inventory of insoluble problems. Farmer writes of what can be done in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, by physicians determined to treat those in need. Infections and Inequalities weds meticulous scholarship with a passion for solutions--remedies for the plagues of the poor and the social maladies that have sustained them.
Customer Reviews:
careless errors, mediocre conclusion.......2006-06-15
By claiming "social reform," Farmer contradicts his stance as an American citizen: Haiti has no money to support its own citizens, that's why the US and others are doing Haiti's job. But, the US has to care for its own citizens as well therefore has to first work on its own AIDS patients within its boundary. If the US does that as its social reform, Haiti instantly dries up.
Irritating mistakes somehow got through inspection: PAligre Dam? PEligre? (P. 174) PuertO Plata? PueltA? (P. 119)
Medical-anthropological approach to HIV & TB illuminates roles of inequality and poverty in spread of disease.......2005-07-11
Farmer, a physician-anthropologist and activist, examines both the way that poverty and inequality result in the spread of HIV and TB today and the flawed justifications for inequitable access to treatment. His ethnographic analysis provides a powerful complement to standard epidemiological work, and this treatise on the danger as well as the immorality of inequity in medical care is largely convincing.
Farmer illustrates several broad themes effectively with case studies from Haiti and Peru. One is the idea that most studies overemphasize individual agency, failing to recognize serious "structural" factors, such as the pressure that extreme poverty exerts on people to engage in unhealthy behaviors and the problems introduced by economic inequality. (One example of the latter is that in unequal countries like Peru, second-line TB drugs are available because of demand by the rich, so doctors also prescribe them to the poor who can only afford them intermittently, which generates drug-resistant strains of the disease.) Another theme is that people in rich nations tend to place heavy weight on "strange" cultural beliefs and customs in explaining high disease prevalence, whereas actual epidemiological research tends to show that these factors carry little weight relative to poverty-related factors. While he uses AIDS in Haiti to illustrate this tendency, it applies perfectly to popular Western conceptions of AIDS in Africa: the popular media tend to emphasize cultural practices such as wife inheritance and a strong sex drive, whereas epidemiological research fails to support a major role for these.
A third theme, which Farmer often trumpets but not as convincingly, is that many of the trade-offs voiced by policymakers are ultimately false. One example is the question of whether to treat tuberculosis with drugs or prevent it (e.g., by investing in economic development). He then uses the success of his clinic in Haiti as an example of both treating and preventing TB. The ultimate argument is that the wealthy have no right to withhold their wealth from the poor. However, he gives us no clear sense of how the resources to generalize this to the world at large should be marshaled. While the trade-off may be philosophically false, the practical application is unclear.
But even without a plan of action, Farmer illuminates key problems in the analysis of infectious disease spread and makes a convincing plea to share the wealth (and the technology).
Wonderful etiological analysis, but unfounded conclusions. .......2004-07-24
Anyone in the public health arena has heard (or even read) of Paul Farmer. The Harvard MD/PhD (Anthropolgy) is indeed a passionate and competant professional who has fresh drive and leads a commendable life in service to humanity. This book seems to be his most popular work (at least on campus of major public health colleges) and it deserves attention and analysis.
Farmer gives systematic treatment of HIV and TB etiology and prevalence in the US and Haiti. More importantly, how those diseases affect the poor in inequitable ways. Peppered with intimate anecdotes and cutting analysis, the book brings hard ideas with the immediacy of the individual plight. He debunks myth of AIDS early history and establishes perspetive for the disease to be viewed/studied in light of the poor and the strucutral violence that (he deems) causes the propensity of the disease in the lower levels of society. He offers solutions and pleas for attention to these 'new plagues' so that the effects can be mitigated for the sake of all humanity.
There are some issues with that perspective. Of course every author brings inherent bias to the writing (either intentional or not), but Farmer makes no apology for his worldview and dismisses opinions of others who are even within the sientific community as he. John Stuart Mill (in "On Liberty") would say that such an attitude is likened to assuming infallibility (which Farmer more or less accuses the attitude of the 'rich' toward the modern plagues). His neo-Marxist tendency completely undermines the state of the world and he therefore addresses his problems from a "the way it should be" approach. That is his prerogative, but taking such an attitude means that his ideas will remain just that: ideas. His lack of pragmatism borders a silent taint of militarism and that approach rarely attracts policy makers, even those on the left.
Farmer assumes that a preponderence of evidence precludes a serious analysis of personal aganecy. No one would argue the conflict of structural violence and the inherent effects on personal agency. Yet, the fact remains that it does exist and it at least needs to be addressed in a thorough matter in order to be a fair treatment of the subject matter.
Furthermore, he needed to address the distal factors (i.e etiology and biology of the diseases) with the proximate (i.e. socio-econimics, etc...) for the book to be of more interest to the lay person. Despite my reservations, it is still a great book to get the reader "out of the box" and see AIDS and TB with the urgency it deserves. Yet, this type of book needs to be in the hands of the lay, and this recommendation would help.
Lastly, Farmer claims on several occasions a foundation of political economy in the analysis of his subject. He is a physician and anthropologist, and without the concurrent opinions of a political-economist to back up his claims, the ideas therein are weak at best. His political-economic opinions may be in line with greats like Marx and Henry George, but he cannot assume the validity of his assumptions just by telling the readership he his resting on such evidence. Several other leading political-economic ideas stand in direct opposition to his conclusions of goverment fixing all health problems to his liking.
All in all, it is hard not to be moved by Farmer's compelling treatment of such horrendous plagues on humanikind. Yet, passion does not always equal pragmatic and working solutions. Therefore, his work will hopefully inspire those who can take his passion to offer clear and viable solutions in the war on these plagues.
Michael Jewell, MPH
Shining a Light.......2004-01-02
Dr. Farmer sums up what you can hear in his lectures (he is an amazing speaker), read in journals, and hear in his interviews: The "modern day plagues" result directly from Structural Violence. I read this book for my culture and health class and could not put it down. He writes with an eloquence unheard of in most anthropologists while at the same time with the passion of a deeply concerned physician. Although in some points the book can get repetitive (as case studies overlap) it is a spectacular, enlightening read that I would recommend to anyone, particularly potential (and current) medical anthropologists.
Complex causality: why people are really at risk for disease.......2000-06-08
Finally Dr. Farmer couples his lucid historical, political and economic analyses of the conditions that put the poor at risk for bad health outcomes, with a plainly indignant calling out of healthcare professionals and healthcare organizations to make honest efforts to understand and remedy conditions which would never be tolerated among the well off in Western nations. In his goundbreaking, earlier books, "AIDS and Accusations," and "The Uses of Haiti," Dr. Farmer matter of factly discusses the global and local structural conditions and misrepresentations which led to the spread of disease and persistent, dismal health conditions in Haiti. In "Infections and Inequality," Dr. Farmer adds moral overtones to incisive, sociopolitical analysis and his characteristic accounts of individuals suffering from disease. The book consequently provides a powerful reflection from a man who has worked in some of the world's poorest regions on what the benefits of medical technology mean for people who have not traditionally had access to them. A powerful, informative read that clearly reflects the years of experience of a physician who has wrestled with the global responsibility of caring for the those who are worst off. An obligatory read for anyone even thinking of working for the impoverished of the world.
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General
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Great Divides: Readings in Social Inequality in the United States
The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality
A Guide to Writing Sociology Papers
The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality
Inequality: Classic Readings in Race, Class, And Gender
