LITMIR.BIZ

Few afflictions are as frightening or as heartbreaking as mental illness. It may be a topic that many would prefer to sweep under the rug, but it is a fact of life that we as a society can and must face. We have come a long way over the past few decades in our understanding of mental illness and its potential treatments. Yet, tragically, many across the country who struggle with serious mental illness are unable to find effective, quality medical treatment. As a federal commission on mental health concluded, the system of care is in shambles. But why? And how do we fix it?Timothy A. Kelly, former Commissioner of Virginia’s Department of Mental Health, Retardation, and Substance Abuse, brings his three decades of experience as mental health commissioner, psychology professor, and clinician to bear in confronting this crisis in America’s mental health care system. In clear and accessible terms, he exposes the weaknesses in the current system, examining how and why one of the world’s richest and most advanced countries has allowed its most vulnerable citizens to be victimized by the very system designed to help them.Armed with the latest statistics, a lifetime of experience, and heartrending life stories, Kelly argues that the patchwork of care traditionally employed to treat mental illness is simply not up to the task, and that what we need is profound, fundamental, and system-wide change. He then goes on to provide an easy-to-follow road map for achieving lasting transformation, centered on five recommendations for creating a truly effective mental health system of care that enables patients to achieve a lasting recovery.Mental illness is not going to just go away, but Kelly prescribes a comprehensive plan to make treatment accessible and effective so that those who suffer can rejoin their families and their communities. He shows how a transformed system of community-based care allows those with serious mental illness to finally be able to go home.

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The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay has long been synonymous with torture, secrecy, and the abuse of executive power. It has come to epitomize lawlessness and has sparked protracted legal battles and political debate. For too long, however, Guantánamo has been viewed in isolation and has overshadowed a larger, interconnected global detention system that includes other military prisons such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, secret CIA jails, and the transfer of prisoners to other countries for torture. Guantánamo is simply—and alarmingly—the most visible example of a much larger prison system designed to operate outside the law. Habeas Corpus after 9/11 examines the rise of the U.S.-run global detention system that emerged after 9/11 and the efforts to challenge it through habeas corpus (a petition to appear in court to claim unlawful imprisonment). Habeas expert and litigator Jonathan Hafetz gives us an insider’s view of the detention of “enemy combatants” and an accessible explanation of the complex forces that keep these systems running. In the age of terrorism, some argue that habeas corpus is impractical and unwise. Hafetz advocates that it remains the single most important check against arbitrary and unlawful detention, torture, and the abuse of executive power.

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What is daily life like for an elderly person whose income barely covers basic needs? How is life constrained if that person is living within the same marginal enclave to which she first migrated decades ago? How does the implementation of national policies and programs affect the daily life of those growing old in Spanish Harlem? In Growing Old in El Barrio , Judith Freidenberg addresses these questions by examining the life-course and daily experiences of the elderly residents of El Barrio. She interweaves the economy of immigrant neighborhoods with the personal experiences of Latinos aging in Harlem–such as Doña Emiliana, who lived in Spanish Harlem from her migration in 1948 to her death in 1995. Freidenberg further links policy issues to social issues critical to the daily lives of this population. Combining extensive fieldwork interviews with historical and demographic population data, Growing Old in El Barrio paints an ethnographic picture of aging in Spanish Harlem and illustrates the emergence of New York as a city divided by ethnicity and class.

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Can democracy develop in Latin America without United States assistance? Why should the United States care? Why is Latin America relevant to U.S. economic growth in global competition? In Greater America: A New Partnership for the Americas in the 21st Century L. Ronald Scheman argues that our future lies not in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East but right here in our own backyard—the Western Hemisphere. He shows how the political and cultural legacy of colonization, immigration, assimilation and pluralism binds North, Central and South America, and how the trends in market growth and resources make the Americas a rich prize in global trade. Despite the tendency of many northerners to underestimate our ties, we are closer to our southern cousins than to any other societies. That relationship will be increasingly stronger given the growing and irrepressible influence of Latino and Caribbean populations in the U.S. For Latin America, the linkage to the U.S. is essential for attracting investment and creating the jobs necessary to overcome its oppressive heritage of poverty and to provide opportunity for a young population that will increasingly expect a better standard of living. Most important, Greater America demonstrates how closer ties with Latin America will help build a stronger U.S. economy while reducing illegal immigration and drug trafficking. He argues that only a NATO-like coalition in the Americas will defeat the drug traffickers, and that a major program to build infrastructure is essential to make trade agreements work. This book celebrates the contribution of the Americas as one of the more important factors in the spread of human freedom in the last half millennium. It makes the case for the unlimited potential of the Americas and shows how it can be unleashed through greater political and economic integration.

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Although the origin of the term “greaser” is debated, its derogatory meaning never has been. From silent movies like The Greaser’s Revenge (1914) and The Girl and the Greaser (1913) with villainous title characters, to John Steinbeck's portrayals of Latinos as lazy, drunken, and shiftless in his 1935 novel Tortilla Flat , to the image of violent, criminal, drug-using gang members of East LA, negative stereotypes of Latinos/as have been plentiful in American popular culture far before Latinos/as became the most populous minority group in the U.S.In Greasers and Gringos , Steven W. Bender examines and surveys these stereotypes and their evolution, paying close attention to the role of mass media in their perpetuation. Focusing on the intersection between stereotypes and the law, Bender reveals how these negative images have contributed significantly to the often unfair treatment of Latino/as under American law by the American legal system. He looks at the way demeaning constructions of Latinos/as influence their legal treatment by police, prosecutors, juries, teachers, voters, and vigilantes. He also shows how, by internalizing negative social images, Latinos/as and other subordinated groups view themselves and each other as inferior. Although fighting against cultural stereotypes can be a daunting task, Bender reminds us that, while hard to break, they do not have to be permanent. Greasers and Gringos begins the charge of debunking existing stereotypes and implores all Americans to re-imagine Latinos/as as legal and social equals.

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Winner, 2014 Distinguished Contribution to Research Award presented by the Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American gang problem. Rituals and customs from Los Angeles’ eastside gangs, including hand signals, graffiti, and clothing styles, have spread to small towns and big cities alike. Many see the problem with gangs as related to urban marginality—for a Latino immigrant population struggling with poverty and social integration, gangs offer a close-knit community. Yet, as Edward Orozco Flores argues in God’s Gangs, gang members can be successfully redirected out of gangs through efforts that change the context in which they find themselves, as well as their notions of what it means to be a man. Flores here illuminates how Latino men recover from gang life through involvement in urban, faith-based organizations. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Homeboy Industries, a Jesuit-founded non-profit that is one of the largest gang intervention programs in the country, and with Victory Outreach, a Pentecostal ministry with over 600 chapters, Flores demonstrates that organizations such as these facilitate recovery from gang life by enabling gang members to reinvent themselves as family men and as members of their community. The book offers a window into the process of redefining masculinity. As Flores convincingly shows, gang members are not trapped in a cycle of poverty and marginality. With the help of urban ministries, such men construct a reformed barrio masculinity to distance themselves from gang life.

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From Billy Graham and Ronald Regan to Newt Gingrich and William Bennett, God is a Conservative provides an important look at the role of religion in conservative politics in modern America. Kenneth J. Heineman reveals the profoundly religious nature of contemporary conservatism, offering an intriguing look at the social history of moral politics over the last three decades, and the still tremulous aftershocks of the New Deal. With a new Preface that examines the Bush presidency, including a provocative analysis of his re-election, and the rising influence of the Conservative Right, God is a Conservative is essential reading for understanding today's American political landscape.

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God in Chinatown is a path breaking study of the largest contemporary wave of new immigrants to Chinatown. Since the 1980s, tens of thousands of mostly rural Chinese have migrated from Fuzhou, on China’s southeastern coast, to New York’s Chinatown. Like the Cantonese who comprised the previous wave of migrants, the Fuzhou have brought with them their religious beliefs, practices, and local deities. In recent years these immigrants have established numerous specifically Fuzhounese religious communities, ranging from Buddhist, Daoist, and Chinese popular religion to Protestant and Catholic Christianity.This ethnographic study examines the central role of these religious communities in the immigrant incorporation process in Chinatown’s highly stratified ethnic enclave, as well as the transnational networks established between religious communities in New York and China. The author’s knowledge of Chinese coupled with his extensive fieldwork in both China and New York enable him to illuminate how these networks transmit religious and social dynamics to the United States, as well as how these new American institutions influence religious and social relations in the religious revival sweeping southeastern China. God in Chinatown is the first study to bring to light religion's significant role in the Fuzhounese immigrants’ dramatic transformation of the face of New York’s Chinatown.

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Patterns of migration and the forces of globalization have brought the issues of mixed race to the public in far more visible, far more dramatic ways than ever before. Global Mixed Race examines the contemporary experiences of people of mixed descent in nations around the world, moving beyond US borders to explore the dynamics of racial mixing and multiple descent in Zambia, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Okinawa, Australia, and New Zealand. In particular, the volume’s editors ask: how have new global flows of ideas, goods, and people affected the lives and social placements of people of mixed descent? Thirteen original chapters address the ways mixed-race individuals defy, bolster, speak, and live racial categorization, paying attention to the ways that these experiences help us think through how we see and engage with social differences. The contributors also highlight how mixed-race people can sometimes be used as emblems of multiculturalism, and how these identities are commodified within global capitalism while still considered by some as not pure or inauthentic. A strikingly original study, Global Mixed Race carefully and comprehensively considers the many different meanings of racial mixedness.

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Global Justice Reform critiques and rethinks two neglected subjects: the nature of comparison in the field of comparative law and the struggles of national judicial systems to meet global rule of law objectives. Hiram Chodosh offers a candid look at the surprisingly underdeveloped methodology of comparative legal studies, and provides a creative conceptual framework for defining and understanding the whys, whats, and hows of comparison. Additionally, Chodosh demonstrates how theories of comparative law translate into practice, using contemporary global justice reform initiatives as a case study, with a particular focus on Indonesia and India. Chodosh highlights the gap between the critical role of judicial institutions and their poor performance (for example, political interference, corruption, backlog, and delay), discussing why reform is so elusive, and demonstrating the unavoidable and essential role of comparison in reform proposals.Throughout the book, Chodosh identifies several sources of comparative misunderstanding that impede successful reforms and identifies the many predicaments reformers face, detailing a wide variety of designs, methods, and social dilemmas. In response to these seemingly insurmountable challenges, Chodosh advances some novel conceptual strategies, first by drawing on a body of non-legal scholarship on self-regulating, emergent systems, and then by identifying a series of anti-dilemma strategies that draw upon insights about the nature of comparison.

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