Alan Wolfe

"In this new collection of essays spanning seven years of contributions to The New Republic, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and other prominent publications, Wolfe displays the courage necessary to write honestly - yet free of ideology, cant, and piety - about the things Americans take very seriously." "Wolfe thinks big; indeed, the essays in An Intellectual in Public confront many of the most controversial issues of our time: country, God, race, sex, material consumption, and left and right. Beginning and ending the book are original essays describing the public intellectual's role, and how Wolfe believes that role ought to be filled."--BOOK JACKET.

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 religious and ethnic backgrounds in eight different communities around the country, leading sociologist Alan Wolfe comes to the surprising conclusion that we are in fact one nation, after all. In this work, Wolfe presents a new picture of who the typical middle-class American is, and what he or she thinks about the most important issues of our day, including religion, family, work, immigration, welfare, racism, and our ability to trust one another. What One Nation, After All shows is that Americans really are in the center. Wolfe also shows us that we have become the nation our founding fathers said we ought to be, that the greatest political experiment in the world has not only succeeded, but succeeded brilliantly. And yet our politicians have no idea what Americans think, and the media polls and social critics are consistently off the mark, raising disturbing questions about the future of our country.

Explores twenty-one careers in the field of biology, in terms of the nature of the work, educational or training requirements, ways to get started, advancement possibilities, salary figures, employment outlook, and sources of more information.

"The Holocaust followed by Israel's creation constituted a kind of civil religion for Jews, reminding them of their eternal vulnerability while offering salvation in the form of statehood. Memories inevitably change, however, and as the impact of these two titanic events fade, an increasingly number of Judiasm's next generation is starting to reject the particularism associated with both events in favor of a rebirth of the universalism that once characterized life in the diaspora. In this book I argue that this is a positive moment, both for Jews and the non-Jews with whom they live"--

School choice has lately risen to the top of the list of potential solutions to America's educational problems, particularly for the poor and the most disadvantaged members of society. Indeed, in the last few years several states have held referendums on the use of vouchers in private and parochial schools, and more recently, the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of a scholarship program that uses vouchers issued to parents. While there has been much debate over the empirical and methodological aspects of school choice policies, discussions related to the effects such policies may h.