Many political observers, struck by low turnout rates among young voters, are pessimistic about the future of democracy in Canada and other Western nations. Citizens in general are disengaged from politics, and young people in particular are said to be adrift in a sea of apathy. Building on these observations, Paul Howe examines patterns of participation and engagement from both the past and present, concluding that young Canadians are, in fact, increasingly detached from the political and civic life of the country. Two key trends underlie this development: waning political knowledge and attentiveness and generational changes in the norms and values that sustain social integration. As Citizens Adrift shows, putting young people back on the path towards engaged citizenship requires a holistic approach, one which acknowledges that democratic engagement extends beyond the realm of formal politics.

Hurricane Katrina was a stunning example of complete civic breakdown. Beginning on August 29, 2005, the world watched in horror as—despite all the warnings and studies—every system that might have protected New Orleans failed. Levees and canals buckled, pouring more than 100 billion gallons of floodwater into the city. Botched communications crippled rescue operations. Buses that might have evacuated thousands never came. Hospitals lost power, and patients lay suffering in darkness and stifling heat. At least 1,400 Louisianans died in Hurricane Katrina, more than half of them from New Orleans, and hundreds of thousands more were displaced, many still wondering if they will ever be able to return. How could all of this have happened in twenty-first-century America? And could it all happen again? To answer these questions, the Center for Public Integrity commissioned seven seasoned journalists to travel to New Orleans and investigate the storm’s aftermath. In City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Katrina, they present their findings. The stellar roster of contributors includes Pulitzer Prize-winner John McQuaid, whose earlier work predicted the failure of the levees and the impending disaster; longtime Boston Globe newsman Curtis Wilkie, a French Quarter resident for nearly fifteen years; and Katy Reckdahl, an award-winning freelance journalist who gave birth to her son in a New Orleans hospital the day before Katrina hit. They and the rest of the investigative team interviewed homeowners and health officials, first responders and politicians, and evacuees and other ordinary citizens to explore the storm from numerous angles, including health care, social services, housing and insurance, and emergency preparedness. They also identify the political, social, geographical, and technological factors that compounded the tragedy. Comprehensive and balanced, City Adrift provides not only an assessment of what went wrong in the Big Easy during and following Hurricane Katrina, but also, more importantly, a road map of what must be done to ensure that such a devastating tragedy is never repeated.

"By nearly every measure, Americans are less engaged in their communities and political activity than generations past.” So write the editors of this volume, who survey the current practices and history of citizenship education in the United States. They argue that the current period of “creative destruction”—when schools are closing and opening in response to reform mandates—is an ideal time to take an in-depth look at how successful strategies and programs promote civic education and good citizenship. Making Civics Count offers research-based insights into what diverse students and teachers know and do as civic actors, and proposes a blueprint for civic education for a new generation that is both practical and visionary.

A lively, incisive view of what citizenship means today.

Cultural competence in education promotes civic engagement among students. Providing students with educational opportunities to understand various cultural and political perspectives allows for higher cultural competence and a greater understanding of civic engagement for those students. The Handbook of Research on Citizenship and Heritage Education is a critical scholarly book that provides relevant and current research on citizenship and heritage education aimed at promoting active participation and the transformation of society. Readers will come to understand the role of heritage as a symbolic identity source that facilitates the understanding of the present and the past, highlighting the value of teaching. Additionally, it offers a source for the design of didactic proposals that promote active participation and the critical conservation of heritage. Featuring a range of topics such as educational policy, curriculum design, and political science, this book is ideal for educators, academicians, administrators, political scientists, policymakers, researchers, and students.

Cut Adrift makes an important and original contribution to the national conversation about inequality and risk in American society. Set against the backdrop of rising economic insecurity and rolled-up safety nets, Marianne Cooper’s probing analysis explores what keeps Americans up at night. Through poignant case studies, she reveals what families are concerned about, how they manage their anxiety, whose job it is to worry, and how social class shapes all of these dynamics, including what is even worth worrying about in the first place. This powerful study is packed with intriguing discoveries ranging from the surprising anxieties of the rich to the critical role of women in keeping struggling families afloat. Through tales of stalwart stoicism, heart-wrenching worry, marital angst, and religious conviction, Cut Adrift deepens our understanding of how families are coping in a go-it-alone age—and how the different strategies on which affluent, middle-class, and poor families rely upon not only reflect inequality, but fuel it.

Teen Spirit offers a novel and provocative perspective on how we came to be living in an age of political immaturity and social turmoil. Award-winning author Paul Howe argues it's because a teenage mentality has slowly gripped the adult world. Howe contends that many features of how we live today—some regrettable, others beneficial—can be traced to the emergence of a more defined adolescent stage of life in the early twentieth century, when young people started spending their formative, developmental years with peers, particularly in formal school settings. He shows how adolescent qualities have slowly seeped upward, where they have gradually reshaped the norms and habits of adulthood. The effects over the long haul, Howe contends, have been profound, in both the private realm and in the public arena of political, economic, and social interaction. Our teenage traits remain part of us as we move into adulthood, so much so that some now need instruction manuals for adulting. Teen Spirit challenges our assumptions about the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood. Yet despite a cultural system that seems to be built on the ethos of Generation Me, it's not all bad. In fact, there has been an equally impressive rise in creativity, diversity, and tolerance within society: all traits stemming from core components of the adolescent character. Howe's bold and suggestive approach to analyzing the teen in all of us helps make sense of the impulsivity driving society and encourages us to think anew about civic reengagement.

Fiction. Preface by Samuel R. Delany. "Deeply romantic (in the best sense) and darkly evocative, Czyz's lush style explores regions well beyond simple narrative, probing the constantly shifting, oblique connections between failure, memory and the forever-incomplete nature of human desire. A moody, gorgeous and formally innovative collection, ADRIFT IN A VANISHING CITY deserves a wide audience among readers who understand that fiction is about more than getting a character from one room to the next." Greg Burkman, The Seattle Times "Written in hauntingly lyrical prose, Czyz's short stories unfold like a vivid tapestry that is held together by the] thread of human experience." Michelle Howe, Newark Star Ledger "Certain books require a patient reader, one with the ability to concentrate closely and intently. Sentences are not straightforward or transparent, but long and labyrinthine, like intriguing yet shadowy dreams. The writing, more like poetry than prose, calls attention to language, to the fullness of a word, a sentence, with the purpose of expressing inexpressible emotions and experiences. Think of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury or, more recently, William Vollmann's Fathers and Crows. ...] Vincent Czyz's ADRIFT IN A VANISHING CITY is just this sort of work: lyrical and pensive, an odd and often beautiful portrait of longing." Capper Nichols, Minnesota Daily"

Rhetorical theory, the core of Roman education, taught rules of public speaking that are still influential today. But Roman rhetoric has long been regarded as having little important to say about political ideas. The State of Speech presents a forceful challenge to this view. The first book to read Roman rhetorical writing as a mode of political thought, it focuses on Rome's greatest practitioner and theorist of public speech, Cicero. Through new readings of his dialogues and treatises, Joy Connolly shows how Cicero's treatment of the Greek rhetorical tradition's central questions is shaped by his ideal of the republic and the citizen. Rhetoric, Connolly argues, sheds new light on Cicero's deepest political preoccupations: the formation of individual and communal identity, the communicative role of the body, and the "unmanly" aspects of politics, especially civility and compromise. Transcending traditional lines between rhetorical and political theory, The State of Speech is a major contribution to the current debate over the role of public speech in Roman politics. Instead of a conventional, top-down model of power, it sketches a dynamic model of authority and consent enacted through oratorical performance and examines how oratory modeled an ethics of citizenship for the masses as well as the elite. It explains how imperial Roman rhetoricians reshaped Cicero's ideal republican citizen to meet the new political conditions of autocracy, and defends Ciceronian thought as a resource for contemporary democracy.

In this national bestseller, the most influential layman in the United States reports that the Roman Catholic Church in America must either profoundly reform or lapse into permanent irrelevance.