The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most beautiful and most photographed structures in the world. It’s also the most deadly. Since it opened in 1937, more than 1,500 people have died jumping off the bridge, making it the top suicide site on earth. It’s also the only international landmark without a suicide barrier. Weaving drama, tragedy, and politics against the backdrop of a world-famous city, <i>The Final Leap</i> is the first bo ...
Pink ribbons, red dresses, and greenwashing—American corporations are scrambling to tug at consumer heartstrings through cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility, and ethical branding, tactics that can increase sales by as much as 74%. Harmless? Marketing insider Mara Einstein demonstrates in this penetrating analysis why the answer is a resounding «No!» In Compassion, Inc. she outlines how cause-related marketing desensitizes th ...
Unimaginable until the twentieth century, the clinical practice of transferring eggs and sperm from body to body is now the basis of a bustling market. In <i>Sex Cells</i>, Rene Almeling provides an inside look at how egg agencies and sperm banks do business. Although both men and women are usually drawn to donation for financial reasons, Almeling finds that clinics encourage sperm donors to think of the payments as remuneration for ...
In this expose Sydney L. Iaukea ties personal memories to newly procured political information about Hawai`i’s crucial Territorial era. Spurred by questions surrounding intergenerational property disputes in her immediate family, she delves into Hawai`i’s historical archives. There she discovers the central role played by her great-great-grandfather in the politics of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Hawai`i—in particular, Curtis P. ...
What is it like to become an adult in twenty-first-century America? This book takes us to four very different places—New York City, San Diego, rural Iowa, and Saint Paul, Minnesota—to explore the dramatic shifts in coming-of-age experiences across the country. Drawing from in-depth interviews with people in their twenties and early thirties, it probes experiences and decisions surrounding education, work, marriage, parenthood, and housing. The f ...
Bringing nuance, complexity, and clarity to a subject often seen in black and white, <i>Writing Immigration</i> presents a unique interplay of leading scholars and journalists working on the contentious topic of immigration. In a series of powerful essays, the contributors reflect on how they struggle to write about one of the defining issues of our time—one that is at once local and global, familiar and uncanny, concrete and abstrac ...
Rebecca M. Blank offers the first comprehensive analysis of an economic trend that has been reshaping the United States over the past three decades: rapidly rising income inequality. In clear language, she provides an overview of how and why the level and distribution of income and wealth has changed since 1979, sets this situation within its historical context, and investigates the forces that are driving it. Among other factors, Blank looks cl ...
This riveting book chronicles the lives of a group of fishermen from Ghana who took the long and dangerous journey to Southern Italy in search of work in a cutthroat underground economy. A story that illuminates the nature of high-risk migration around the world, <i>Darkness before Daybreak </i>reveals the challenges and experiences of these international migrants who, like countless others, are often in the news but are rarely under ...
Mignon R. Moore brings to light the family life of a group that has been largely invisible—gay women of color—in a book that challenges long-standing ideas about racial identity, family formation, and motherhood. Drawing from interviews and surveys of one hundred black gay women in New York City, <i>Invisible Families </i>explores the ways that race and class have influenced how these women understand their sexual orientation, find p ...
