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Johann Christoph Arnold

There's hope for childhood. Despite a perfect storm of hostile forces that are robbing children of a healthy childhood, courageous parents and teachers who know what's best for children are turning the tide. Johann Christoph Arnold, whose books on education, parenting, and relationships have helped more than a million readers through life's challenges, draws on the stories and voices of parents and educators on the ground, and a wealth of personal experience. He surveys the drastic changes in the lives of children, but also the groundswell of grassroots advocacy and action that he believes will lead to the triumph of common sense and time-tested wisdom. Arnold takes on technology, standardized testing, overstimulation, academic pressure, marketing to children, over-diagnosis and much more, calling on everyone who loves children to combat these threats to childhood and find creative ways to help children flourish. Every parent, teacher, and childcare provider has the power to make a difference, by giving children time to play, access to nature, and personal attention, and most of all, by defending their right to remain children.

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Jeffrey S. Adler

"Based on an analysis of nearly six thousand homicide cases, First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt examines the ways in which industrialization, immigration, poverty, ethnic and racial conflict, and powerful cultural forces reshaped city life and generated soaring levels of lethal violence. Drawing on suicide notes, deathbed declarations, courtroom testimony, and commutation petitions, Jeffrey Adler reveals the pressures fueling murders in turn-of-the-century Chicago. During this era Chicagoans confronted social and cultural pressures powerful enough to trigger surging levels of spouse killing and fatal robberies. Homicide shifted from the swaggering rituals of plebian masculinity into family life and then into street life." "From rage killers to the "Baby Bandit Quartet," Adler offers a portrait of Chicago during a period in which the characteristic elements of modern homicide in America emerged."--Jacket.

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Thomas H. Murray

In this graceful and humane book, Thomas Murray illuminates one of the most morally complex areas of everyday life: the relationship between parents and children. What do children mean to their parents? How far do parental obligations go? What social arrangements and technologies used in conceiving, gestating, and rearing children are ethical? What, from the beginning of life to its end, is the worth of a child? Murray leaves the rarefied air of abstract moral philosophy to reflect on the perplexities of ordinary life and ordinary people. He maintains that ethical theory needs a richer description than it now has of the moral life of parents and children, one that captures the complexity of motives for having and rearing children, and the significance of children in the lives of adults. These issues lead Murray into explorations of some of the most contentious moral and technical problems of our time, among them fertility technologies, prenatal testing, adoption, and abortion.

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Daniel Woodrell

"Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident? Alma thinks she knows the answer--and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair. Her dogged pursuit of justice makes her an outcast and causes a long-standing rift with her own son. By telling her story to her grandson, she finally gains some solace--and peace for her sister. He is advised to "Tell it. Go on and tell it"--tell the story of his family's struggles, suspicions, secrets, and triumphs."-- Dust jacket flap.