GFP Alum Books

Small Cities USA: Growth, Diversity, and Inequality

norma
2013

JON R. NORMAN-While journalists document the decline of small-town America and scholars describe the ascent of such global cities as New York and Los Angeles, the fates of little cities remain a mystery. What about places like Providence, Rhode Island; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Laredo, Texas; and Salinas, California-the smaller cities that constitute much of America's urban landscape? InSmall Cities USA, Jon R. Norman examines how such places have fared in the wake of the large-scale economic, demographic, and social changes that occurred in the latter part of the...

Reflections from the Field: How Coaching Made Us Better Teachers

Colette Cann
2013

Eric J. DeMeulenaere and Colette N. Cann- The coaching metaphor first entered the educational literature over twenty-five year ago when Ted Sizer urged classroom teachers to model the pedagogical relationship between coaches and athletes. Yet, since then, educators have rarely drawn direct lessons from the athletic arena for their practice... until now. DeMeulenaere, Cann, Malone and McDermott, in this groundbreaking analysis, explore the implications of athletic coaching for improved pedagogy. They offer concrete lessons and...

A World You Do Not Know: Settler Societies, Indigenous Peoples and the Attack on Cultural Diversity

Samson
2013

Colin Samson- A World You Do Not Know explores the wilful ignorance demonstrated by North America’s settlers in establishing their societies on lands already occupied by indigenous nations. Using the Innu of Labrador-Quebec as one powerful contemporary example, Colin Samson shows how the processes of displacement and assimilation today resemble those of the 19th century as the state and corporations scramble for Innu lands. While nation building, capitalism and industrialisation are shown to have undermined indigenous peoples’ wellbeing, the values that guide...

Sorry I Don't Dance: Why Men Refuse to Move

2013

Maxine Leeds Craig- If you want to learn about masculinity, ask a man if he likes to dance. One man in this study answered, "Music is something that goes on inside my head, and is sort of divorced from, to a large extent, the rest of my body." How did this man's head become divorced from his body? To answer this question, Maxine Craig sought out men who love music but hate to dance. Combining interviews, participant observation and archival research, Sorry I Don't Dance uncovers the recent origins of...

Schooling For Resilience: Improving the Life Trajectory of Black and Latino Boys

Pedro Noguera
2014

Edward Fergus, Pedro Noguera, and Margary Martin- As a group, Black and Latino boys face persistent and devastating disparities in achievement when compared to their White counterparts: they are more likely to obtain low test scores and grades, be categorized as learning disabled, be absent from honors and gifted programs, and be overrepresented among students who are suspended and expelled from school. They are also less likely to enroll in college and more likely to drop out. Put simply, they are among the most vulnerable...

Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women's Lives

2014

Elisa Facio, Irene Lara- Fleshing the Spirit brings together established and new writers exploring the relationships between the physical body, the spirit and spirituality, and social justice activism. Examining the complex and dynamic connections among these concepts, the writers emphasize the value of “flesh and blood experience” as a site of knowledge. They argue that spirituality—something quite different from institutional religious practice—can heal the mind/body split and set the stage for social change. Spirituality,...

The Remmittance Landscape: Spaces of Migration In Rural Mexico and Urban USA

Sarah Lopez
2015

Sarah Lopez- Immigrants in the United States send more than $20 billion every year back to Mexico—one of the largest flows of such remittances in the world. With The Remittance Landscape, Sarah Lynn Lopez offers the first extended look at what is done with that money, and in particular how the building boom that it has generated has changed Mexican towns and villages.

Lopez not only identifies a clear correspondence between the flow of remittances and the recent building boom in rural Mexico but also proposes that this...

The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity

Allison Pugh
2015

Allison Pugh- In The Tumbleweed Society, Allison Pugh offers a moving exploration of sacrifice, betrayal, defiance, and resignation, as people cope in a society where relationships and jobs seem to change constantly. Based on eighty in-depth interviews with parents who have varied experiences of job insecurity and socio-economic status, Pugh finds most seem to accept job insecurity as inevitable but still try to bar that insecurity from infiltrating their home lives. Rigid expectations for enduring connections and uncompromising...

The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty

Erica Kohl-Arenas
2015

Erica Kohl-Arenas- Through the lens of a provocative set of case studies, The Self-Help Myth reveals how philanthropy maintains systems of inequality by attracting attention to the behavior of poor people while shifting the focus away from structural inequities and relationships of power that produce poverty. In Fresno County, for example, which has a $5.6 billion-plus agricultural industry, migrant farm workers depend heavily on food banks, religious organizations, and family networks to feed and clothe their families. Foundation professionals espouse well-...

Making the Mission Planning and Ethnicity in San Francisco

Ocean Howell
2015

Ocean Howell- In Making the Mission, Ocean Howell tells the story of how residents of the Mission District organized to claim the right to plan their own neighborhood and how they mobilized a politics of place and ethnicity to create a strong, often racialized identity—a pattern that would repeat itself again and again throughout the twentieth century. Surveying the perspectives of formal and informal groups, city officials and district residents, local and federal agencies, Howell articulates how these actors worked with and against one another to...