Suchergebnisse

Harlem brings to mind a kaleidoscope of images--the jazz clubs and cultural ferment of the 1920s and 1930s, the urban decay of the 1960s and 1970s, and the revitalization of the past twenty years. Integral to the ongoing transformation of Harlem has been the return of the African-American middle class to what had become an overwhelmingly poor area. In this lively book, Monique M. Taylor explores the stresses created by this influx, the surprising ways class differences manifest themselves and are managed, and what we can learn from examining a community in which race and class are so closely in

What kind of life best ensures human welfare? Since the ancient Greeks, this question has been as central to ethical philosophy as to ordinary reflection. But what exactly is welfare? This question has suffered from relative neglect. And, as Stephen Darwall shows, it has done so at a price. Presenting a new "rational care theory of welfare," Darwall proves that a proper understanding of welfare fundamentally changes how we think about what is best for people. Most philosophers have assumed that a person's welfare is what is good from her point of view, namely, what she has a distinctive reason to pursue. In the now standard terminology, welfare is assumed to have an "agent-relative normativity." Darwall by contrast argues that someone's good is what one should want for that person insofar as one cares for her. Welfare, in other words, is normative, but not peculiarly for the person whose welfare is at stake. In addition, Darwall makes the proposal that something's contributing to someone's welfare is the same thing as its being something one ought to want for her own sake, insofar as one cares. --From publisher's description

The American health care industry has undergone such dizzying transformations since the 1960s that many patients have lost confidence in a system they find too impersonal and ineffectual. Is their distrust justified and can confidence be restored? David Dranove, a leading health care economist, tackles these and other key questions in the first major economic and historical investigation of the field. Focusing on the doctor-patient relationship, he begins with the era of the independently practicing physician--epitomized by Marcus Welby, the beloved father figure/doctor in the 1960s television

In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and with it a profusion of norms, processes, and institutions to define, promote, and protect human rights. Today virtually every cause seeks to cloak itself in the righteous language of rights. But even so, this universal reliance on the rights idiom has not succeeded in creating common ground and deep agreement as to the scope, content, and philosophical bases for human rights. Makau Mutua argues that the human rights enterprise inappropriately presents itself as a guarantor of eternal truths without which human civilization is impossible. Mutua contends that in fact the human rights corpus, though well meaning, is a Eurocentric construct for the reconstitution of non-Western societies and peoples with a set of culturally biased norms and practices. Mutua maintains that if the human rights movement is to succeed, it must move away from Eurocentrism as a civilizing crusade and attack on non-European peoples. Only a genuine multicultural approach to human rights can make it truly universal. Indigenous, non-European traditions of Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas must be deployed to deconstruct--and to reconstruct--a universal bundle of rights that all human societies can claim as theirs

"Walt Dudley waited on the roof of the Naniloa Hotel overlooking Hilo Bay. Eyes glued to the water, ears listening for the ring of his cellular phone, he was watching for a monster. It was a monster speeding across the Pacific Ocean at more than 500 miles per hour. It was a monster with the potential for consuming lives and pulverizing buildings. It was a monster of enormous strength, incredible power, and unbelievable destructiveness." Tsunamis--the stuff of legends in both ancient and modern times--are some of the world's most destructive natural disasters. But for Dr. Walter Dudley tsunamis are "not just about devastation and destruction, they are about men, women, and children." Dr. Dudley's work (see Tsunami!, 1998) has expanded our knowledge of these waves and has helped us to better understand and prepare for these unpredictable, yet ever present, dangers. In Tsunami Man young readers are given an inside look at the life of a working scientist who uses his knowledge for the common good and serves as an exciting role model for future scientists. Filled with dramatic photographs and accounts of tsunami survivors, the book also addresses the "how" and "why" of tsunamis, their impact on human lives, and the ways in which information about these "killer waves" is shared throughout the world