First published in 1999, Worlds Apart examined the nature of poverty through the stories of real people in three remote rural areas of the United States: New England, Appalachia, and the Mississippi Delta. In this new edition, Duncan returns to her original research, interviewing some of the same people as well as some new key informants. Duncan provides powerful new insights into the dynamics of poverty, politics, and community change. "Duncan, through in-depth investigation and interviews, concludes that only a strong civic culture, a sense among citizens of community and the need to serve that community, can truly address poverty. . . . Moving and troubling. Duncan has created a remarkable study of the persistent patterns of poverty and power."—Kirkus Reviews "The descriptions of rural poverty in Worlds Apart are interesting and read almost like a novel."—Choice
When Kate's mother, Marcie, dies mysteriously she is forever tormented by the many questions surrounding her mother's death. In Marcie's absence Kate clings to her mother's husbands, searching for solace. As family secrets are revealed Kate works to build her own life and family, but the mystery of her mother's death sidetracks her until she finally gets the answer she's always hoped for.
The nature of the threats facing America today has drastically reduced the margin for error in senior political appointments. In Only the Most Able, Stephen M. Duncan draws on a lifetime of military, public service, executive, and legal experience to critique the political appointment process, focusing on departments that deal with national security—the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. He looks at how the current methods for making appointments put people in positions for which they are not qualified and not prepared. Rather, he argues, appointments should be made on the basis of one's qualifications and merits—those who lead our military should be people with military experience, and those who must make executive decisions should be people who have served and excelled in an executive capacity. Identifying the successful traits of leaders such as Winston Churchill, General George Marshall, nationally-known business executives, and others, Duncan argues with unusual insight and candor why the quality and performance of senior political appointees who are charged even in part with the nation's security, must be improved, and offers specific recommendations on how this can be accomplished. This timely book will appeal to Americans of all political persuasions, as well as those with particular interests in political and military history.
In How Free Will Works, Steven M. Duncan provides not merely discussions of, but potential answers to two of the most vexed questions discussed by philosophers concerning free choice. First, supposing that the mind and the body are separate substances of opposed natures, how is it possible for them to interact such that an entirely non-physical immanent mental act can give rise to changes in the external world? Second, supposing that there is free will, how is it possible for our acts of volition/free choice to be neither causally determined nor merely chance/random events?This book spells out a new way of envisaging the mind/body relation and the nature of mind/body causal interaction that avoids the traditional "interaction problem." It also explains how it is possible for free choice neither to require an efficient cause nor to act as an efficient cause while nevertheless affecting the processes in the physical world through which intentional action is realized in human behavior. In the second half of the book, the theory developed in the first part of the book is applied to the difficult issues arising from the Christian doctrine of salvation: sin, grace, and redemption.
Food safety has fast become one of the nation’s top issues. Three thousand people die each year in the U.S. from foodborne illnesses. Another 48 million are sickened annually and our government fails to protect us. Many foods and additives that we eat every day have been banned for years in other countries. Our government food safety agencies move in reverse--cutting back on inspections, allowing food producers to inspect themselves, and permitting the vast majority of potentially adulterated foods to enter this country without benefit of any testing or inspection. How, in a country so advanced in most areas, could we have descended to this alarming state of food safety? One answer: Budget cuts and bureaucrats. Eat, Drink, and Be Wary examines the multitude of dangers in food production, transportation, storing, and preparation that result in this shocking number of preventable illnesses and deaths. It takes a broad and detailed look, in all food groups, at the problems and potential solutions in food safety practices, inspections, and enforcements. This book answers the questions and concerns of millions of Americans who have reached new levels of serious doubts about the safety of our food. Charles Duncan points readers to the dangers to look for in deli foods, raw milk, seafood, poultry, eggs, beef, and others. For consumers who care about the food they eat, this book details the dangers, offers direction for choosing safe foods, and provides a critique of our current system that suggests ways it can be fixed, or at least improved.
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