This book analyzes the issues surrounding civilian national service policy from a fresh and original perspective. The author connects national service programs to the political theories of civic republicanism and communitarianism, assesses the practical consequences of these theories, and examines past youth service programs such as the CCC and Peace Corps to see if they are appropriate models or ideals for a national program. Gorham engages the issue of compulsory versus voluntary service and questions whether service tasks can instill a sense of "citizenship" in young people, as defenders of the program claim. Using the work of Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, Carole Pateman, and others, he suggests that national service, as presently planned, will not create the "citizen" so much as a post-industrial and gendered subject. In the concluding chapters, he presents an argument for a democratic national service and offers an alternative program for policymakers to consider.

This reference work provides sources on national service and AmeriCorps from a wide range of perspectives and disciplines, including education, public policy, political science, and public administration. Part 1 deals with background information on national service from the 1960s to 1992, including the 1992 presidential campaign. The crucial year 1993, when national service legislation was proposed and passed and AmeriCorps was named, is covered in Part 2. The implementation of the National Community Service Trust Act in 1994 is covered in Part 3. Part 4, covering 1995, reflects a reassessment of the program by the new Republican majority in Congress. Each section of the work includes books, dissertations, government documents, and, primarily, serial literature. A brief appendix accessing resources on the Internet is also included.

Environmental history has traditionally told the story of Man and Nature. Scholars have too frequently overlooked the ways in which their predominantly male subjects have themselves been shaped by gender. Seeing Nature through Gender here reintroduces gender as a meaningful category of analysis for environmental history, showing how women's actions, desires, and choices have shaped the world and seeing men as gendered actors as well. In thirteen essays that show how gendered ideas have shaped the ways in which people have represented, experienced, and consumed their world, Virginia Scharff and her coauthors explore interactions between gender and environment in history. Ranging from colonial borderlands to transnational boundaries, from mountaintop to marketplace, they focus on historical representations of humans and nature, on questions about consumption, on environmental politics, and on the complex reciprocal relations among human bodies and changing landscapes. They also challenge the "ecofeminist" position by challenging the notion that men and women are essentially different creatures with biologically different destinies. Each article shows how a person or group of people in history have understood nature in gendered terms and acted accordingly—often with dire consequences for other people and organisms. Here are considerations of the ways we study sexuality among birds, of William Byrd's masking sexual encounters in his account of an eighteenth-century expedition, of how the ecology of fire in a changing built environment has reshaped firefighters' own gendered identities. Some are playful, as in a piece on the evolution of "snow bunnies" to "shred betties." Others are dead serious, as in a chilling portrait of how endocrine disrupters are reinventing humans, animals, and water systems from the cellular level out. Aiding and adding significantly to the enterprise of environmental history, Seeing Nature through Gender bridges gender history and environmental history in unexpected ways to show us how the natural world can remake the gendered patterns we've engraved on ourselves and on the planet.

Prolific munitions production keyed America's triumph in World War II but so did the complex economic controls needed to sustain that production. Artillery, tanks, planes, ships, trucks, and weaponry of every kind were constantly demanded by the military and readily supplied by American business. While that relationship was remarkably successful in helping the U.S. win the war, it also raised troubling issues about wartime economies that have never been fully resolved. Paul Koistinen's fourth installment of a monumental five-volume series on the political economy of American warfare focuses on the mobilization of national resources for a truly global war. Koistinen comprehensively analyzes all relevant aspects of the World War II economy from 1940 through 1945, describing the nation's struggle to establish effective control over industrial supply and military demand—and revealing the growing partnership between the corporate community and the armed services. Koistinen traces the evolution of federal agencies mobilizing for war—including the National Defense Advisory Commission, the Office of Production Management, and the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board-and then focuses on the work of the War Production Board from 1942-1945. As the war progressed, the WPB and related agencies oversaw the military's supply and procurement systems; stabilized the economy while financing the war; closely monitored labor relations; and controlled the shipping and rationing of fuel and food. In chronicling American mobilization, Koistinen reveals how representatives of industry and the armed services expanded upon their growing prewar ties to shape policies for harnessing the economy, and how federal agencies were subsequently riven with dissension as New Deal reformers and anti-New Deal corporate elements battled for control over mobilization itself. As the armed services emerged as the principal customers of a command economy, the military-industrial nexus consolidated its power and ultimately succeeded in bending the reformers to its will. The product of exhaustive archival research, Arsenal of World War II shows that mobilization meant more than simply harnessing the economy for war-it also involved struggles for power and position among a great many interest groups and ideologies. Nearly two decades in the making, it provides an ambitious and enormously insightful overview of the emergence of the military-industrial economy, one that still resonates today as America continues to wage wars around the globe.

Not an essay in normative political philosophy, but a discussion of the present-day developments in American political thought as they focus on community. Fowler (political science, U. of Wisconsin) tells the story of the coming of age of community in the thought of American political intellectuals and provides measured analysis and reflection on some of the directions in which thinking about community has proceeded. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This debate-style reader is designed to introduce students to controversies in education. The issues reflect viewpoints on fundamental issues such as: should school attendance be compelled; can charter schools revitalize public education, and do school uniforms promote safety and improve discipline. For additional support on this title, visit our student website Dushkin Online (www.dushkin.com/online/).

Twenty-one debates on education, federal initiatives in school reform, reducing class size, and alternative teacher training.

This brief rhetoric focuses on the key academic writing strategies of summary, synthesis, analysis, and critique. Responding to the growing interest in academic writing, this popular guide focuses on the critical reading and writing strategies necessary to help students interpret and incorporate source material into their own papers. The text employs high-interest readings from a range of disciplines to allow students to practice their summary and synthesis skills, while numerous student papers model the kinds of academic texts students are expected to produce, no matter what their area of study. Individuals who want help with writing up researched or documented papers.