San Antonio College Library

The author identifies nine fundamental problems he believes America is facing at the end of the twentieth century, including deteriorating race relations, inadequate health care, and decline of education, and offers his recommendations for solving them.

What does it mean to be an American today? What does it mean to be middle class? Public opinion polls tell us that the nation is deeply divided between the Right, which is religious, traditional, as well as distressed by the belief that the nation has gone seriously downhill, and the Left, which is pro-choice, pro-welfare, as well as sympathetic to multiculturalism and gay rights. After spending two years speaking with middle-class Americans of many...

Taking the position that some of the lesser-known or unknown U.S. senators deserve renown more than some of the better-known ones, each chronological chapter contrasts the lives of two senators. Included are: Rufus King, James Monroe, Thomas Hart Benton, John C. Calhoun, William Pitt Fessenden, Charles Sumner, George Frisbie Hoar, John Sherman, Henry Cabot Lodge, Thomas J. Walsh, William E. Borah, George W. Norris, Robert A. Taft, Arthur H. Vandenberg,...

Kolbenschlag believes that modern social and economic conditions have changed every aspects of the American dream except the dream itself. She delves into the The Wizard of Oz to help describe America as "a nation of spiritual orphans." Dorothy, who is lost in Oz, becomes the symbol of alienation and of expectations and deprivation. She shows how most people in the United States discover that they are orphaned in many ways: by family of origin, by...

Based on years of scholarly research, the Catholic Ethic in American Society reveals a Catholic ethic that parallels the more well-known Protestant ethic. Tropman presents an innovative analysis of the deeply ingrained attitudes Americans have about money and work and their view of people who have neither. In this book, Tropman offers a fresh perspective on the Protestant "achievement" ethic by contrasting it with the newly identified Catholic "sharing"...

"In The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser offers a scientific explanation of how our contemporary culture of consumerism and materialism affects our everyday happiness and psychological health. Other writers have shown that once we have sufficient food, shelter, and clothing, further materialistic gains do little to improve our well-being. But Kasser goes beyond these findings to investigate how people's materialistic desires relate to their well-being....

As we move toward the end of the century, Southern values have become American values. Southern politicians lead both political parties, and the South has powered the rightward shift in American politics over the course of the past three decades. The South is far and away the leading area of population and economic growth in America. People in Michigan are listening to country music and parishioners in California are worshiping at Southern Baptist...

The American Dream is in serious danger, according to Robert Wuthnow - not because of economic conditions, but because its moral underpinnings have been forgotten. In the past this vision was not simply a formula for success, but a moral perspective that framed our thinking about work and money in terms of broader commitments to family, community, and humanitarian values. Nowadays, we are working harder than ever, and yet many of us feel that we are...

President Carter has written importantly about his spiritual life and faith. In this book, he offers a personal consideration of "moral values" as they relate to the important issues of the day. He puts forward a passionate defense of separation of church and state, and a strong warning of where the country is heading as the lines between politics and rigid religious fundamentalism are blurred. He reacts to some trends involving both the religious...