Here are 100 books that Ain't No Makin' It fans have personally recommended if you like
Ain't No Makin' It.
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I have spent an entire career, via reading, research, and teaching, helping people realize their dreams. For me, it represents “paying it forward,” thanking those who helped a girl from an ethnic, working-class background become an internationally recognized scholar. Studying optimism and goal-seeking has taught me that dreaming and optimism are important—but they are simply not enough to move someone forward. Dreams must become projects motivated by mentoring, planning, and hard work. Not everyone has those resources available to them. The curse of social inequality can indeed destroy hopes and dreams in the very early lives of the socially disadvantaged—with devastating consequences for society as a whole.
For me, this book shows how those in underprivileged positions both learn to dream of beauty and accomplishment and, at the same time, painfully experience the futility of dreaming.
We watch the characters defend optimism while being buried by reality. It is a touching, heartbreaking tale of the realities of social inequality.
A special 75th anniversary edition of the beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century.
From the moment she entered the world, Francie Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, New York demanded fortitude, precocity, and strength of spirit. Often scorned by neighbors for her family’s erratic and eccentric behavior―such as her father Johnny’s taste for alcohol and Aunt Sissy’s habit of marrying serially without the formality of divorce―no one, least of all Francie, could…
My areas of expertise are museum management and arts administration. More specifically, I study structures of arts organizations and how they are connected or disconnected to their communities and larger societies using the systems theory and concept of mutual causality. In the process, I point out where the systems (i.e., museums) become stagnant and find a leverage point to address that stagnation by bringing in new input and different ways of thinking about the culture and structure of the organization. In most of my research, I try to find blindspots of following or doing “what was just there (i.e., status quo)” instead of evaluating what it did and how it can be improved.
This book spoke to me as a scholar of systems theory and due to my upbringing in Buddhist culture. Macy discusses how core teachings of interdependence in Buddhism and the mutual causation concept of general systems theory are similar. This book emphasizes the interdependent relationships among different people, things, societies, and ecosystems as mutually affecting and not unidirectional, leading to and encouraging collective action toward mutual benefits. I also love this book because it can introduce readers to philosophical thoughts that are other than Western, which we tend to be bombarded with in academic publications and education in the US.
This book brings important new dimensions to the interface between contemporary Western science and ancient Eastern wisdom. Here for the first time the concepts and insights of general systems theory are presented in tandem with those of the Buddha. Remarkable convergences appear between core Buddhist teachings and the systems view of reality, arising in our century from biology and extending into the social and cognitive sciences. Giving a cogent introduction to both bodies of thought, and a fresh interpretation of the Buddha’s core teaching of dependent co-arising, this book shows how their common perspective on causality can inform our lives.…
My areas of expertise are museum management and arts administration. More specifically, I study structures of arts organizations and how they are connected or disconnected to their communities and larger societies using the systems theory and concept of mutual causality. In the process, I point out where the systems (i.e., museums) become stagnant and find a leverage point to address that stagnation by bringing in new input and different ways of thinking about the culture and structure of the organization. In most of my research, I try to find blindspots of following or doing “what was just there (i.e., status quo)” instead of evaluating what it did and how it can be improved.
This book introduces a problem of cultural overtourism, too many people visiting museums and historical sites to the point they are extremely overcrowded and often damaging to the sites. Frey suggests, instead of limiting people coming to these sites, expand the demand side by providing more sites that are exact replicas of them through “Revised Originals.” This book helps readers rethink the status quo of cultural heritage tourism and how it can be reimagined to preserve important historical sites all over the world and generate user experiences that are not crowded but transformative. It’s a completely different way to think about what is authentic and what it means to experience it.
Cultural Overtourism is a comparatively new term, and refers to historical sites, museums and places that are extremely crowded by tourists; hence, a type of tourism that has negative effects on both the cultural sites and the people who live there. This problem has sparked more and more protests. Accordingly, many cultural institutions and cities are now taking measures to limit the flow of tourists.
In this book, Bruno S. Frey - a renowned and frequently cited economist - suggests, on the contrary, an extension of the supply of cultural sites in the form of "Revived Originals". By this he…
My areas of expertise are museum management and arts administration. More specifically, I study structures of arts organizations and how they are connected or disconnected to their communities and larger societies using the systems theory and concept of mutual causality. In the process, I point out where the systems (i.e., museums) become stagnant and find a leverage point to address that stagnation by bringing in new input and different ways of thinking about the culture and structure of the organization. In most of my research, I try to find blindspots of following or doing “what was just there (i.e., status quo)” instead of evaluating what it did and how it can be improved.
This is a book that got me thinking about how biodiversity is so important in the ecosystem and that includes people and societies we created. We try to separate ourselves from “nature” but this very thinking creates wicked issues. Capra argues that in order to solve the most pressing issues of our society, our way of life must reflect that of nature, leading to an ecologically sustainable future. It helps people think about their positioning and relationships to nature and how interconnected we all are. The value system and hierarchical thinking of humans above nature can be rethought, especially helpful in the times of climate change and subsequent social issues.
A fierce attack on globalism - and a manifesto for change - by one of the world's leading scientific writers.
Recent scientific discoveries indicate that all life - from the most primitive cells, up to human societies, corporations and nation-states, even the global economy - is organised along the same basic patterns and principles: those of the network.
However, the new global economy differs in important aspects from the networks of life: whereas everything in a living network has a function, globalism ignores all that cannot give it an immediate profit, creating great armies of the excluded. The global financial…
I was initially drawn to economics as a way to understand and address global problems of poverty and hunger, like those I saw in Africa with the Peace Corps and later as a researcher. As my interests broadened toward environmental and other social problems, again I found that economics provides valuable insights about their causes and possible solutions. Economics is unfortunately often misunderstood and defined too narrowly: but as a social science, it encompasses a broad framework to comprehend individuals, families, cities, nations. It encompasses philosophical thought, normative questions, and intangibles like humans’ desire for respect. After decades as an economics professor I still find its insights fascinating and powerful.
Private property or the commons? Free enterprise or public ownership?
Arguably the most substantive contribution to such debates in the past 50 years has come from Elinor Ostrom for her decades of study of common-pool resource management.
From case studies around the world and from centuries past, she proves that collective ownership need not end in a “tragedy of the commons,” but can succeed.
In work that won her the Nobel Prize in Economics (she is a political scientist) studying community-managed fisheries, forests, grazing lands, and watersheds, Ostrom describes and evaluates successes and failures in great detail and with attention to the role of rules, monitoring, and enforcement, and leadership, in determining the kinds of governance that are most likely to succeed.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of…
I have spent an entire career, via reading, research, and teaching, helping people realize their dreams. For me, it represents “paying it forward,” thanking those who helped a girl from an ethnic, working-class background become an internationally recognized scholar. Studying optimism and goal-seeking has taught me that dreaming and optimism are important—but they are simply not enough to move someone forward. Dreams must become projects motivated by mentoring, planning, and hard work. Not everyone has those resources available to them. The curse of social inequality can indeed destroy hopes and dreams in the very early lives of the socially disadvantaged—with devastating consequences for society as a whole.
Bright-sided shows the chokehold that positive thinking has on Americans. I admired the way the author “bucks” this central tenet of our society. The author demonstrates how positive thinking permeates all facets of American lives. Most importantly, she convinced me of the false promises and perils that emanate from our culture of positive thinking.
Barbara Ehrenreich's New York Times bestselling Bright-sided is a sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism
Americans are a "positive" people -- cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: This is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive is the key to getting success and prosperity. Or so we are told.
In this utterly original debunking, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the false promises of positive thinking and shows its reach into every corner of American life, from Evangelical megachurches to the medical establishment, and, worst…
I have spent an entire career, via reading, research, and teaching, helping people realize their dreams. For me, it represents “paying it forward,” thanking those who helped a girl from an ethnic, working-class background become an internationally recognized scholar. Studying optimism and goal-seeking has taught me that dreaming and optimism are important—but they are simply not enough to move someone forward. Dreams must become projects motivated by mentoring, planning, and hard work. Not everyone has those resources available to them. The curse of social inequality can indeed destroy hopes and dreams in the very early lives of the socially disadvantaged—with devastating consequences for society as a whole.
This book shows how powerful are the tenets of the American Dream. It also shows how our society has failed to live up to those tenets.
My most important take-away is that the growing racial divide in achieving dreams will lead to deeper and deeper fractures in the fabric of American Society.
The ideology of the American dream - the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort - is the very soul of the American nation. This book argues that Americans have failed to face up to what that dream requires of their society, and yet they possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. This text attributes America's national distress to the ways in which white and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites and especially of blacks…
I studied French language and literature from the time I was 13 until I graduated from college. Alongside that work, I also became more interested in African American literary and artistic histories, so I studied that as well. I realized there was a lot of overlap as many Black American artists would flee to Europe to “escape” American racism. Learning more about these historical writers throughout my graduate school journey made me very interested in researching further and writing my own take on the subject for young people.
I love this book because Beneatha Younger’s insatiable curiosity about the world beyond the South Side of Chicago propels her to make important decisions about her life. It drives her right into the arms of a man (Asagai) willing to be alongside her as she explores. Beneatha’s audaciousness inspires me.
"Come to A Raisin in the Sun as you would to any classic. It speaks to us today as it did almost half a century ago." Bonnie Greer
In south side Chicago, Walter Lee, a Black chauffeur, dreams of a better life, and hopes to use his father's life insurance money to open a liquor store. His mother, who rejects the liquor business, uses some of the money to secure a proper house for the family. Mr Lindner, a representative of the all-white neighbourhood, tries to buy them out. Walter sinks the rest of the money into his business scheme,…
I grew up in the 1950s next door to Long Island’s iconic Levittown. All my aunts and uncles lived in similar modest suburbs, and I assumed everyone else did, too. Maybe that explains why America’s sharp economic U-turn in the 1970s so rubbed me the wrong way. We had become, in the mid-20th century, the first major nation where most people—after paying their monthly bills—had money left over. Today we rate as the world’s most unequal major nation. Our richest 0.1 percent hold as much wealth as our bottom 90 percent. I’ve been working with the Institute for Public Studies, as co-editor of Inequality.org, to change all that.
The British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have an American doctor friend who has a fascinating exercise for his first-year medical school students.
This doctor asks his students to write a speech detailing why the USA has the world’s best health. The students eagerly set about collecting all the relevant data and quickly find themselves absolutely shocked. Among major developed nations, the USA turns out to have the worsthealth.
Americans also turn out to be up to ten times more likely than people in other developed nations to get murdered or become drug addicts. What’s going on here? Inequality!
The more wealth concentrates at a society’s summit, Wilkinson and Pickett vividly show in this 2009 classic, the worse that society performs on the yardsticks that define basic health and decency.
Groundbreaking analysis showing that greater economic equality-not greater wealth-is the mark of the most successful societies, and offering new ways to achieve it.
"Get your hands on this book."-Bill Moyers
This groundbreaking book, based on thirty years' research, demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them-the well-off and the poor. The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures it uses are like a spirit level which we can hold up to compare different societies. The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are striking. Almost every modern social and environmental problem-ill health, lack of…
I became an economist because I realized that economics was a powerful tool that would help society solve vexing problems. While economics has limits, it has so much to offer in terms of better policy design for tackling everything from climate change to economic inequality. My life’s work has been devoted to both economic research and helping others understand the insights of economics. I spent many years in academia teaching economics and writing papers, and I authored Open in an attempt to make the complexities of international economics more transparent. I’ve also had the chance to work firsthand on some of these issues in the early part of the Biden Administration at the US Treasury.
Ed Kleinbard was a treasured colleague, a brilliant commentator, and a giant in the field of tax policy. In his final year of life, perhaps fittingly, Kleinbard devoted himself to a book on the roleof luck in economic outcomes, which opens with a quote from Stendhal. “Waiting for God toreveal himself, I believe that his prime minister, Chance, governs this sad world just as well.”The book argues that luck, and particularly existential luck (to whom and in what circumstancesyou are born), are paramount in determining economic outcomes. Within that context, Kleinbardmakes a strong case for the role of public insurance in areas like health care, education, andchildcare; he also emphasizes the importance of a progressive income tax system.
The American dream of equal opportunity is in peril. America's economic inequality is shocking, poverty threatens to become a heritable condition, and our healthcare system is crumbling despite ever increasing costs.
In this thought-provoking book, Edward D. Kleinbard demonstrates how the failure to acknowledge the force of brute luck in our material lives exacerbates these crises - leading to warped policy choices that impede genuine equality of opportunity for many Americans. What's Luck Got to Do with It? combines insights from economics, philosophy, and social psychology to argue for government's proper role in addressing the inequity of brute luck. Kleinbard…
