"Mark Green and Michele Jolin look to 2009 as the beginning of an era of renewal and progressive governance in America. Change for America presciently and insightfully offers specific ideas for what our next President can do to revitalize our nation and restore our standing abroad." -- President Bill Clinton It was an election about change, but how will that change actually happen? The result of a collaboration between the Center for American Progress Action Fund (the advocacy arm of Washington's leading-edge progressive think-tank led) and the New Democracy Project's Mark Green, this comprehensive volume is written by over sixty leading policymakers, scholars and advocates. Based on four core values -- of democracy, security through diplomacy, opportunity and a greener world -- Change for America offers scores of solutions how to repair our broken government and create an enduring progressive era. "The Center for American Progress Action Fund and Mark Green have assembled some of our nation's best minds, and their best ideas, into a book is packed with innovative, practical, and progressive solutions that will help take America in a New Direction." -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi "These thoughtful essays offer a progressive way forward for the vast majority of Americans who hope their government works for the many, not just the few." -- Senator Ted Kennedy "We don't just need a transition -- we need a transformation. Mark Green and Michele Jolin's encyclopedia of change offers a brilliant roadmap for the 44th President." -- Senator John Kerry "This is one of the most important books to be published this year. It's a handbook for restoring the New Deal's social compact with our citizens over the first '100 Days' and the next 1360." -- James Roosevelt, Jr. "Change for America is brilliant, timely and practical and teems with hard earned wisdom and common sense." -- Michael Eric Dyson

Houston, Texas, long thought of as a traditionally blue-collar black/white southern city, has transformed into one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse metro areas in the nation, surpassing even New York by some measures. With a diversifying economy and large numbers of both highly-skilled technical jobs in engineering and medicine and low-skilled minimum-wage jobs in construction, restaurant work, and personal services, Houston has become a magnet for the new divergent streams of immigration that are transforming America in the 21st century. And thanks to an annual systematic survey conducted over the past thirty-eight years, the ongoing changes in attitudes, beliefs, and life experiences have been measured and studied, creating a compelling data-driven map of the challenges and opportunities that are facing Houston and the rest of the country. In Prophetic City, we'll meet some of the new Americans, including a family who moved to Houston from Mexico in the early 1980s and is still trying to find work that pays more than poverty wages. There's a young man born to highly-educated Indian parents in an affluent Houston suburb who grows up to become a doctor in the world's largest medical complex, as well as a white man who struggles with being prematurely pushed out of the workforce when his company downsizes. This timely and groundbreaking book tracks the progress of an American city like never before. Houston is at the center of the rapid changes that have redefined the nature of American society itself in the new century. Houston is where, for better or worse, we can see the American future emerging.

Using personal narratives and revealing photographs from a traveling photographic exhibition, this unique book celebrates the contributions of ordinary Americans who are working to improve their communities. 35,000 first printing.

Author note: Ronald C. White, Jr. is Chaplain and Assistant Professor of Religion at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. >P>C. Howard Hopkins is Professor of History Emeritus at Rider College and Director of the John R. Mott Biography Project. He is the author of The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism.

One of Time’s 100 most influential people “shines a new light on the need for a holistic approach to caregiving in America . . . Timely and hopeful” (Maria Shriver). In The Age of Dignity, thought leader and activist Ai-jen Poo offers a wake-up call about the statistical reality that will affect us all: Fourteen percent of our population is now over sixty-five; by 2030 that ratio will be one in five. In fact, our fastest-growing demographic is the eighty-five-plus age group—over five million people now, a number that is expected to more than double in the next twenty years. This change presents us with a new challenge: how we care for and support quality of life for the unprecedented numbers of older Americans who will need it. Despite these daunting numbers, Poo has written a profoundly hopeful book, giving us a glimpse into the stories and often hidden experiences of the people—family caregivers, older people, and home care workers—whose lives will be directly shaped and reshaped in this moment of demographic change. The Age of Dignity outlines a road map for how we can become a more caring nation, providing solutions for fixing our fraying safety net while also increasing opportunities for women, immigrants, and the unemployed in our workforce. As Poo has said, “Care is the strategy and the solution toward a better future for all of us.” “Every American should read this slender book. With luck, it will be the future for all of us.” —Gloria Steinem “Positive and inclusive.” —The New York Times “A big-hearted book [that] seeks to transform our dismal view of aging and caregiving.” —Ms. magazine

Recounts the events of ten pivotal days that changed the course of American history.

Family Law in a Changing America is a new casebook that highlights law and family patterns as they are now, not as they were decades ago. By focusing on key changes in family life, the casebook attends to rising equality and inequality within and among families. The law, formally at least, accords more equality and autonomy than ever before, having repudiated hierarchies based on race, gender, and sexuality. Yet, as our society has grown more economically unequal, so too have family patterns diverged—with marriage and marital child-rearing becoming a mark of privilege. A number of developments—mass incarceration, the privatization of care, and reproductive technologies—have also contributed to disparities based on race, class, and gender. The casebook reflects the law’s continuing emphasis on marriage, but also treats nonmarital families as central. Rather than privilege the marital heterosexual family, the casebook organizes the presentation of the law around 1) adult relationships and 2) parent-child relationships. Professors and students will benefit from: Text that includes dramatic changes in family patterns in contemporary society, including: declining marriage rates, with differential rates based on race and class; increasing rates of nonmarital cohabitation and nonmarital parenting; the use of assisted reproduction and its challenge to biological understandings of parentage; tensions between women’s increasing education and employment and the perseverance of the gendered division of labor in families; the inclusion of same-sex couples in marriage and parenthood An approach that decenters the marital heterosexual family and instead is structured around the general topics of adult relationships and parent-child relationships Focus on the scope of family law, including extensive coverage of crucial sites of family regulation, such as the child welfare system, that are traditionally neglected Emphasis on multiple modes of legal interpretation (common law, constitutional, statutory) and multiple actors in the legal system (judges, legislators, lawyers, experts, social workers) Practical problems and exercises, often based on actual cases or events, that illuminate the gaps, tensions, and implications of existing doctrine; some of the problems include postscripts explaining how the issue was resolved by a court or legislature An approach that draws on more recent cases and cutting-edge issues and that includes extensive coverage of assisted reproduction (including IVF, surrogacy, and gamete donation), parentage (including intentional parenthood, functional parenthood, and multi-parent arrangements), adoption, child welfare, and family support