American Dream or Messages to the World

American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare

Author: Jason DeParl

In this definitive work, two-time Pulitzer finalist Jason DeParle cuts between the mean streets of Milwaukee and the corridors of Washington to produce a masterpiece of literary journalism. At the heart of the story are three cousins whose different lives follow similar trajectories. Leaving welfare, Angie puts her heart in her work. Jewell bets on an imprisoned man. Opal guards a tragic secret that threatens her kids and her life. DeParle traces their family history back six generations to slavery and weaves poor people, politicians, reformers, and rogues into a spellbinding epic.

With a vivid sense of humanity, DeParle demonstrates that although we live in a country where anyone can make it, generation after generation some families don't. To read American Dream is to understand why.

The New York Times - Anthony Walton

Resolving to clean his ''mental slate,'' DeParle set out to explore the effects of the landmark law. The courageous and deeply disturbing result, American Dream, confounds the clichйs of the left as well as the right about race, poverty, class and opportunity in the early 21st century … Through his scrupulous attention, DeParle challenges the nation to contemplate the dreams, or lack thereof, within the American dream.

The New Yorker

In the years after 1996, when President Clinton signed welfare-reform legislation, nine million women and children left the country’s welfare rolls. Though the exodus was applauded in Washington, the story of exactly how these families were faring remained, in DeParle’s words, a “national mystery.” DeParle spent these years in Milwaukee, welfare reform’s unofficial capital, studying the lives of three former welfare mothers: Jewell, Opal, and Angie. The narrative pans across generations of poverty—the women’s grandparents sharecropped cotton—while, in the present, results vary. Opal tumbles into crack addiction, but the others struggle ahead, ultimately earning nine and ten dollars an hour as nursing assistants; Angie even joins a 401(k) plan. They are welfare-reform “successes,” but their lives remain precarious. When there isn’t enough money, lights are turned off and children go hungry. “Just treading water,” Angie says, surveying her progress. “Just making it, that’s all.”

Publishers Weekly

While campaigning for president in 1992, Bill Clinton vowed to "end welfare as we know it"; four years later, the much publicized slogan evolved into a law that sent nine million women and children off the rolls. New York Times reporter DeParle takes an eye-opening look at the controversial law through the lives of three black women affected by it, all part of the same extended family, and at the shapers of the policy. He moves back and forth between the women's tough Milwaukee neighborhoods and the strategy sessions and speeches of Clinton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and others. But the best parts of the book are its slices of life: DeParle accompanies the women on trips to the dentist, on visits to loved ones in jail, to job-training workshops and on travels to Mississippi. He offers few solutions for breaking the cycle of poverty and dependency in America, but DeParle's large-scale conclusion is that moving poor women into the workforce contributed to declines in crime, teen pregnancy and crack use. (Sept. 9) Forecast: This long-focus book will appeal to readers of David Shipler's bestselling The Working Poor and the highly praised Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, and may receive a small boost from renewed Clinton mania. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

New York Times journalist DeParle tracks three women on-and then off-welfare. "An important book," insists the publicist. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

Contents
part i. welfare
1 | The Pledge: Washington and Milwaukee, 1991 3
2 | The Plantation: Mississippi, 1840-1960 20
3 | The Crossroads: Chicago, 1966-1991 38
4 | The Survivors: Milwaukee, 1991-1995 58
part ii. ending welfare
5 | The Accidental Program: Washington, 1935-1991 85
6 | The Establishment Fails: Washington, 1992-1994 101
7 | Redefining Compassion: Washington, 1994-1995 123
8 | The Elusive President: Washington, 1995-1996 138
9 | The Radical Cuts the Rolls: Milwaukee, 1995-1996 155
part iii. after welfare
10 | Angie and Jewell Go to Work: Milwaukee, 1996-1998 175
11 | Opal's Hidden Addiction: Milwaukee, 1996-1998 196
12 | Half a Safety Net: The United States, 1997-2003 208
13 | W-2 Buys the Crack: Milwaukee, 1998 222
14 | Golf Balls and Corporate Dreams: Milwaukee, 1997-1999 230
15 | Caseworker XMI28W Milwaukee, 1998-2000 251
16 | Boyfriends: Milwaukee, Spring 1999 264
17 | Money: Milwaukee, Summer 1999 282
18 | A Shot at the American Dream: Milwaukee, Fall 1999 303
Epilogue | Washington and Milwaukee, 1999-2004 323
Timeline 339
Notes 343
Acknowledgments 000
Index 000

Go to: Politics and Society in the Developing World or Fundamentals of Labor Economics

Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden

Author: Osama bin Laden

Despite the saturation of global media coverage, Osama bin Laden's own writings have been curiously absent from analysis of the "war on terror." Over the last ten years, bin Laden has issued a series of carefully tailored public statements, from interviews with Western and Arabic journalists to faxes and video recordings. These texts supply evidence crucial to an understanding of the bizarre mix of Quranic scholarship, CIA training, punctual interventions in Gulf politics and messianic anti-imperialism that has formed the programmatic core of Al Qaeda.

In bringing together the various statements issued under bin Laden's name since 1994, this volume forms part of a growing discourse that seeks to demythologize the terrorist network. Newly translated from the Arabic, annotated with a critical introduction by Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, this collection places the statements in their religious, historical and political context. It shows how bin Laden's views draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought; it also demonstrates how his arguments vary in degrees of consistency, and how his evasions concerning the true nature and extent of his own group, and over his own role in terrorist attacks, have contributed to the perpetuation of his personal mythology.

THe New York Times - Noah Feldman

Putting bin Laden's words on paper helps show him for what he is — a Muslim out of the mainstream, distorting the faith to justify murder. In the end, the most constructive thing one can do with a book like this one is to use it against itself, as a tool in the fight against terrorism.

Foreign Affairs

Following Lawrence's succinct introduction, this short book presents translations of 24 different statements by Osama bin Laden (mainly speeches, but also one long interview), arranged chronologically from December 1994 to December 2004. Some are hardly more than a page, others longer. The provenance and context of each statement are given in a short introductory statement, and copious footnotes identify Koranic and hadith citations, persons past or present mentioned, and other subjects that might need identification. The translations provide an idiomatically smooth English text even while preserving the distinctive tenor of the Arabic (for four of the statements the Arabic original could not be recovered). This is a fine and faithful rendition of the mind of bin Laden as set out in his own words.