Examines the decreasing likelihood of achieving the American dream, as shifting social and economic conditions force a middle-class loss of earnings and self-respect

Falling from Grace

Business & Money

Katherine S. Newman

Economics

Free Press

A distinguished sociologist reveals the warning signs of a school shooter--and why we so often miss them Parkland. Sandy Hook. Columbine. The list of school shootings gets longer by the day, and it often seems like no school is safe. Over the last decades, school shootings have decimated communities and terrified parents, teachers, and children in even the most family friendly American towns and suburbs. We talk about these tragedies as the spontaneous acts of disconnected teens, but this important book argues that the roots of violence are deeply entwined in the communities themselves. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with town residents, sociologist Katherine Newman and her co-authors take the reader inside two of the most notorious school shootings of the 1990s, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Paducah, Kentucky. In a powerful and original analysis, she demonstrates that the organizational structure of schools encourage administrators to "lose" information about troubled kids, and the very closeness of these small rural towns restrained neighbors and friends from communicating what they knew about their problems.Rampage challenges the "loner theory" of school violence and shows why so many adults and students miss the warning signs that could prevent it.

Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings

History

Cybelle Fox

Wendy Roth

Jal Mehta

David Harding

World

Basic Books

Fifty-seven million Americans-including 21 percent of the nation's children-live a notch above the poverty line, and yet the challenges they face are largely ignored. While government programs assist the poor, and politicians woo the more fortunate, the "Missing Class" is largely invisible and left to fend for itself. Missing Class parents often work at a breakneck pace to preserve the progress they have made and are but one divorce or unexpected hospitalization away from sliding into poverty. Children face an even more perilous and uncertain future because their parents have so little time to help them with their schoolwork or guide them during their adolescent years. With little supervision, the younger generation often flounders in school, sometimes falling prey to the same problems that are prevalent in the much poorer communities that border Missing Class neighborhoods. Paradoxically, the very efforts that enabled parents to get ahead financially often inhibit their children from advancing; they are in real danger of losing what little ground their parents have gained. The Missing Class is an urgent and timely exploration that describes-through the experiences of nine families-the unique problems faced by this growing class of people who are neither working poor nor middle class. Katherine Newman and Victor Tan Chen trace where these families came from, how they've struggled to make a decent living, and why they're stuck without a safety net. An eloquent argument for the need to think about inequality in a broader way, The Missing Class has much to tell us about whether the American dream still exists for those who are sacrificing daily to achieve it.

The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America

Victor Tan Chen

Beacon Press

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (Chinese Edition)

China workers Press

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Books by Katherine S. Newman