Ruth Horowitz

Two brothers get two giant hissing cockroaches as pets and then must figure out a way to deal with the resulting population explosion.

One June night, a young boy watches as many, many horseshoe crabs come ashore to lay their eggs.

When a giant cockroach named Max escapes from their mother's bug laboratory, Leo and his brother receive help from a mysterious stranger who advises them to think like a bug in order to recapture the runaway roach.

In a book that speaks clearly and forcefully to the heart of the welfare debates, Ruth Horowitz examines one of the most critical questions of welfare policy: How can a government program help one of sodety's neediest groups move from welfare dependency to employment, independence, and responsible citizenship? The setting is Project GED, a year-long government-sponsored program designed to help teen mothers earn high school equivalency diplomas and to provide job-readiness training. As a participant-observer, Horowitz followed the women through each stage of the program, recording their successes and failures, fears and dreams. In a vivid and sensitive portrait, she brings to life the human dramas at the center of their everyday lives. Teen Mothers is more than a superbly written chronicle of hard work, friendship, conflict, and learning; Horowitz identifies the reasons for the success or failure of programs such as Project GED. She found that the organization of the program itself, as well as the social workers' relationship to participants, was a crucial factor in fostering all of the skills needed to live and work as independent citizens. Successful programs, Horowitz notes, encourage the mothers to connect their identities as mothers and girlfriends with their new roles as students and workers; and a strong emphasis on decision making, cooperation, and inclusion helps young women develop the self-esteem they need to become self-reliant and civic-minded. This inside look at a social service program in action is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand, and ultimately correct, our country's failing welfare system.

Before she goes to bed, Leila shares a special moment with her father, watching bats enjoying an insect feast in the backyard.

To Sophie's distress, her quiet times on Mommy's lap are disrupted by the new baby growing inside Mommy, but once the baby arrives there is room for Sophie on Mommy's lap again.

Beatrice raises bees and her neighbor Abel raises apples, and the two live in harmony, until a misunderstanding causes them to get into a fight--and it takes an accident for them to realize how much they need each other.

"How do we know when physicians practice medicine safely? Can we trust doctors to discipline their own? What is a proper role of experts in a democracy? In the Public Interest raises these provocative questions, using medical licensing and discipline to advocate for a needed overhaul of how we decide public good in a society dominated by private interest groups. Throughout the twentieth century, American physicians built a powerful profession, but their drive toward professional autonomy has made outside observers increasingly concerned about physicians' ability to separate their own interests from those of the general public. Ruth Horowitz traces the history of medical licensure and the mechanisms that democratic societies have developed to certify doctors to deliver critical services. Combining her skills as a public member of medical licensing boards and as an ethnographer, Horowitz illuminates the workings of the crucial public institutions charged with maintaining public safety. She demonstrates the complex agendas different actors bring to board deliberations, the variations in the board authority across the country, the unevenly distributed institutional resources available to board members, and the difficulties non-physician members face as they struggle to balance interests of the parties involved. In the Public Interest suggests new procedures, resource allocation, and educational initiatives to increase physician oversight. Horowitz makes the case for regulations modeled after deliberative democracy that promise to open debates to the general public and allow public members to take a more active part in the decision-making process that affects vital community interests"--Provided by publisher.