The Measure of Our Success: Letter to My Children and Yours
Author: Marian Wright Edelman
The #1 New York Times bestseller is a thinking person's Life's Little Instruction Book, with simple yet inspirational messages about living.
Publishers Weekly
To help parents chart a course for their children based on traditional values--self-reliance, family, hard work, justice, the pursuit of knowledge and of brotherhood--Edelman, founder and president of the Childrens Defense Fund, effectively recounts her experience and vision in essays variously addressed to her own children, to all children and to parents. Edelman, who grew up in the segregated South and was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar, recalls the community of her childhood where one child's accomplishments gave joy to all, where neighbors took care of each other and where parents instilled a sense of responsibility in their offspring. In the introduction the author's son Jonah examines the value and pressure of being raised by an African American mother and a Jewish father. 40,000 first printing; $40,000 ad/promo; author tour. (May)
Library Journal
``And so the children--my own and other people's--became the passion of my personal and professional life. For it is they who are God's presence, promise, and hope for humankind.'' These compelling words come from a woman who has been a civil rights attorney, who is a wife and mother of three sons, and who is the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund. In this provocative, slim volume, Edelman shares with us her strong beliefs on child rearing and moral values, which grew out of her rural South Carolina childhood and her years of public service. She includes a personal letter to her three sons, who were born into a family with a shared African American and Jewish heritage, and offers 25 lessons, or ``road maps,'' for life. Citing statistics on the tragic state of this nation's poor and neglected children, Edelman admonishes all of us to become aware of the mounting crisis facing our children, families, and nation. So what is the measure of our success? According to Edelman, it is ``hard work, initiative, and persistence'' and being ``decent and fair.'' This is a profound and moving book. Highly recommended for all collections.--Angela Washington-Blair, Brookhaven Coll. Learning Resource Ctr., Farmers Branch, Tex.
School Library Journal
YA-- Edelman passes on the values of hard work, service, responsibility, and faith that her parents not only preached, but also lived. Her 25 lessons for life eloquently distill the essence of her rich heritage. Intended for her sons as they approach adulthood, the book is uniquely applicable to all races and creeds. The author's style is warm, personal, uplifting, and easy to read. The book has several uses: for personal searching for answers, guidance, or reassurance; for a curriculum unit on child-care; for a book discussion group. It should be required reading by anyone in a position to influence or change the future of America's most valuable resource, its children.-- Judy Sokoll, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
What People Are Saying
Jonathan Kozol
"A celebration of the family, a benediction to the young, and an invocation to the nation's conscience."
Hillary Clinton
"This book is from the heart of a woman who practices each lesson she preaches. It struck a deep chord in me as a mother trying to raise a daughter in difficult times."
T. Berry Brazleton
"Every parent and every child should read this book to each other."
Book about: Clasicos vegetarianos or The Stability and Shelf Life of Food
A Conservative History of the American Left
Author: Daniel J Flynn
From Communes to the Clintons
Why does Hillary Clinton crusade for government-provided health care for every American, for the redistribution of wealth, and for child rearing to become a collective obligation? Why does Al Gore say that it’s okay to “over-represent” the dangers of global warming in order to sell Americans on his draconian solutions? Why does Michael Moore call religion a device to manipulate “gullible” Americans?
Where did these radical ideas come from? And how did they enter the mainstream discourse?
In this groundbreaking and compelling new book, Daniel J. Flynn uncovers the surprising origins of today’s Left. The first work of its kind, A Conservative History of the American Left tells the story of this remarkably resilient extreme movement–one that came to America’s shores with the earliest settlers.
Flynn reveals a history that leftists themselves ignore, whitewash, or obscure. Partly the Left’s amnesia is convenient: Who wouldn’t want to forget an ugly history that includes eugenics, racism, violence, and sheer quackery? Partly it is self-aggrandizing: Bold schemes sound much more innovative when you refuse to acknowledge that they have been tried–and have failed–many times before. And partly it is unavoidable: The Left is so preoccupied with its triumphal future that it doesn’t pause to learn from its past mistakes. So it goes that would-be revolutionaries have repeatedly failed to recognize the one troubling obstacle to their grandiose visions: reality.
In unfolding this history, Flynn presents a page-turning narrative filled with colorful,fascinating characters–progressives and populists, radicals and reformers, socialists and SDSers, and leftists of every other stripe. There is the rags-to-riches Welsh industrialist who brought his utopian vision to America–one in which private property, religion, and marriage represented “the most monstrous evils”–and gained audiences with the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison. There is the wife-swapping Bible thumper who nominated Jesus Christ for president. There is the playboy adventurer whose worshipful accounts of Soviet Russia lured many American liberals to Communism. There is the daughter of privilege turned violent antiwar activist who lost her life to a bomb she had intended to use against American soldiers. There are fanatics and free spirits, perverts and puritans, entrepreneurs and altruists, and many more beyond.
A Conservative History of the American Left is a gripping chronicle of the radical visionaries who have relentlessly pursued their lofty ambitions to remake society. Ultimately, Flynn shows the destructiveness that comes from this undying pursuit of dreams that are utterly unattainable.
Publishers Weekly
A dedicated conservative, Flynn (Why the Left Hates America) nevertheless traces the history of the American Left-from the earliest days of the colonies-with measured and far-sighted consideration, making a mesmerizing, if selective, chronicle. From Shakers to Socialists, Communists to SDS, Roosevelt's New Deal to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, Flynn acerbically recounts social movements from initial spark to disillusioned embers, each a cautionary tale for anyone swept up by current presidential campaign promises. Flynn points to the American Left's catastrophic misjudgments, such as defending the Khmer Rouge's genocide in Cambodia, embracing Huey Newton and Timothy Leary, assuming that the Russian Revolution would result in a just "People's Society," and supporting yesteryear's equivalent of "Just Say No," the Temperance Movement. The flaw in Flynn's perspective is his assertion that the Left has never had a success; real achievements of progressive social forces-labor unions, women's suffrage, civil rights, Social Security, the Federal Reserve-are unacknowledged. History buffs and sympathetic voters will be absorbed by this detailed, opinionated history of American radicalism's failures, but this account is not the whole story.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1
Bk. 1 Backwoods Millennialists
1 The Religious Left 11
2 New Harmony 19
3 Yankee Utopians 34
4 Bible Communists 52
5 Antebellum Reformers 63
Bk. 2 Reformers and Radicals
6 The Amerikan International 77
7 Knights of Labor, Immigrant Anarchists, and White-Collar Reds 85
8 Single-Taxers 99
9 Nationalists 104
10 The Paternalist Dynasty I: Prairie Populists 112
11 Preachers of the Social Gospel 121
12 The Paternalist Dynasty II: Patriotic Progressives 131
13 Star-Spangled Socialists 154
Bk. 3 The Old Left
14 Red-White-And-Blue Reds 177
15 The Paternalist Dynasty III: New Dealers 192
16 Artists in Uniform 210
17 Communism Is Twentieth-Century Americanism 226
Bk. 4 The New Left
18 Apogee 245
19 The Student Left 261
20 The Paternalist Dynasty IV: Great Society Visionaries 274
21 Meet the New Left, Same as the Old Left 287
22 The Personal Is the Political 318
23 The Long March 337
Bk. 5 The 9/12 Left
24 The 9/12 Left 359
Conclusion 371
Notes 375
Acnowledgments 437
Index 439
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