Whilst working as Chairperson in a university department of Economics, celebrated feminist Nancy Folbre saw first-hand how cut backs severely affected the quality of education and services available to students. In an incisive study, she explains how public education fits into the economy at large. As America faces a transition in administration, and a change in policies on public spending, this well-informed call to action provides a much needed perspective on public education.

Once upon a time, students who were willing and able to work hard could obtain an affordable, high-quality education at a public university. Those times are gone. Intensified admissions competition coupled with opposition to public spending has scorched every campus. Budget cuts, tuition hikes, and debt burdens are undermining the best path to upward mobility that this country ever built.But despite all of this, Americans still embrace ideals of equal opportunity and know that higher education represents a public good. Students, faculty, staff, and advocates are beginning to build political coalitions and develop new strategies to improve access, enhance quality, and simplify financial aid. This book celebrates and will fortify their efforts.In Saving State U, economist Nancy Folbre brings the national debates of education experts down to the level of trying to teach-and trying to learn-at major state universities whose budgets have repeatedly been slashed, restored, and then slashed again. Here is a brilliant firsthand account of the stakes involved, the politics, and the key debates raging through public campuses today. In a passionate, accessible voice, Folbre also offers a sobering vision of the many possible futures of public higher education and their links to the fate of our democracy while looking at the practical ways in which change is now possible.

A fascinating and unprecedented ethnography of animal sanctuaries in the United States In the past three decades, animal rights advocates have established everything from elephant sanctuaries in Africa to shelters that rehabilitate animals used in medical testing, to homes for farmed animals, abandoned pets, and entertainment animals that have outlived their “usefulness.” Saving Animals is the first major ethnography to focus on the ethical issues animating the establishment of such places, where animals who have been mistreated or destined for slaughter are allowed to live out their lives simply being animals. Based on fieldwork at animal rescue facilities across the United States, Elan Abrell asks what “saving,” “caring for,” and “sanctuary” actually mean. He considers sanctuaries as laboratories where caregivers conceive and implement new models of caring for and relating to animals. He explores the ethical decision making around sanctuary efforts to unmake property-based human–animal relations by creating spaces in which humans interact with animals as autonomous subjects. Saving Animals illustrates how caregivers and animals respond by cocreating new human–animal ecologies adapted to the material and social conditions of the Anthropocene. Bridging anthropology with animal studies and political philosophy, Saving Animals asks us to imagine less harmful modes of existence in a troubled world where both animals and humans seek sanctuary.

"Much has been written about Ezra Meeker, most of it by Meeker himself. Despite the paper trail he left behind, no one has yet written his comprehensive biography. In this, the last of three volumes on Meeker, Larsen examines the pioneer's most enduring legacy-his grand and much publicized promotion of the Oregon Trail"--

Wonderpedia offers the books reviews, while NeoPopRealism Journal publishes news, views and other information additionally to the books reviews. These publications were founded by Nadia RUSS in 2007 and 2008, in new York City.

"In this trenchant work of critical studies, the author retells the celebrated stories of US higher education history against the grain in order to identify their colonial past"--