Product Description: We love the local. From the cherries we buy, to the grocer who sells them, to the school where our child unpacks them for lunch, we express resurgent faith in decentralizing the institutions and businesses that arrange our daily lives...read more

Product Description: The modern state – First and Third Worlds alike – pushes tirelessly to expand mass education and to deepen the schools’ effect upon children. First published in 1991, Growing-Up Modern explores why, how, and with what actual effects state actors so vehemently pursue this dual political agenda...read more

Product Description: Civic leaders around the globe now press educators to raise the performance of students and schools. Backed by a colorful array of odd bedfellows - from corporate interests to advocates for the poor - politicians seek to narrow the aims of learning, advance routine curricular packages, and tightly align standardized tests...read more

Product Description: A array of childcare and preschool options blossomed in the 1970s as the feminist movement spurred mothers into careers and community organizations nurtured new programs. Now a small circle of activists aims to bring more order to childhood, seeking to create a more standard, state-run preschool system...read more

Product Description: Most societies place great faith in the modern school's power to offer children a more prosperous future, from better jobs to wider social opportunities. In turn, political leaders around the world push to expand western forms of schooling, creating more slots for children, from preschool through university levels...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: One of the most seductive topics in recent years is the field of social capital - the webs of trust, mutual obligation, and cultural knowledge that flow through local information - that yield resources in human-scale associations of individuals...read more

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Product Description: Shirl is a single mother who urges her son's baby-sitter to swat him when he misbehaves. Helena went back to work to get off welfare, then quit to be with her small daughter. Kathy was making good money but got into cocaine and had to give up her two-year-old son during her rehabilitation...read more

Assists consumers in making the right decisions when buying a car, with tips on obtaining credit, buying from a dealer, and selling your own car

Product Description: This high-energy book tells you everything you need to know to hit sales targets and grind out more sales right now! Written in two parts, this handy guide is a how-to manual and ideas source For sales mangers who are looking for innovative ways to turn on their team and create sales using proven techniques...read more

Product Description: Political actors within the modern state--in both the West and the Third World--argue that more schooling can provide remedies for a variety of economic and social ills. But what is the state's actual efficacy in sparking demands for, and constructing effective forms of, mass schooling? Is the state really an effective agent relative to educational demands originating from other institutions: competing economic interests, the family, and the school institution itself? Under what institutional conditions does school expansion spur economic growth and change?Since the 1960s, institutional and economic theorists have advanced responses to these important issues from three theoretical perspectives: functionalist human capital, class conflict, and world institution frameworks...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)