Recently Published Books

Fall 2008 , Volume 30, Number 2

Mission and Money: Understanding the University
By Burton Weisbrod, Jeffrey Ballou, and Evelyn Asch
Cambridge University Press, 2008, 356 pages

Moving beyond the traditional focus on elite schools, this book examines sources of revenue for the entire higher education industry from nondegree-granting career academies to major research universities. Many of these institutions pursue activities related to their mission that are often unprofitable, yet they also engage in profitable revenue-related activities to finance them. Sometimes the pursuit of finances can conflict with the central mission of higher learning, however. The authors address the rapid growth of for-profit schools and consider the role of advertising, branding, and reputation, as well as competitive factors, such as distance education, intercollegiate athletics, and lobbying. Economist Burton Weisbrod, an IPR faculty fellow, and his co-authors, Jeff Ballou and Evelyn Asch, also discuss the general policy implications of their analyses.

The American Women’s Movement, 1945–2000: A Brief History With Documents
By Nancy MacLean
Bedford/St. Martins, 2009, 224 pages

The American women’s movement was one of the most influential social movements of the 20th century. MacLean’s textbook engages students with the most up-to-date scholarship in U.S. women’s history. Her introduction traces the deep roots of the women’s movement and illustrates the continuity from women’s activism in the labor movement and New Deal networks, black civil rights movement, and peace movement to the height of Second Wave feminism and into the Third Wave. Including primary sources that reflect the movement’s social breadth and depth, MacLean, a historian and IPR faculty associate, addresses a range of topics, including wage discrimination, peace activism, housework and childcare, sexuality, reproductive rights, welfare, education, socialism, and violence against women.

Code Red: An Economist Explains How to Revive the Healthcare System Without Destroying It
By David Dranove
Princeton University Press, 2008, 281 pages

With $2 trillion at stake, the U.S. healthcare system remains in critical condition. Still, most of the proposed solutions to date have had little chance of becoming law, and even less of succeeding afterward. In his recent book, Dranove, a healthcare economist and IPR faculty associate, addresses the failures of previous reforms and proposals and offers a fresh set of feasible healthcare policies that address access, quality, and efficiency. Setting his story against the backdrop of healthcare in the United States since the early 20th century, he identifies the root causes of rising costs and diminishing access to quality care, such as inadequate information, perverse incentives, and malfunctioning insurance markets. Evaluating the various movements to reform the U.S. healthcare system—including the rise of consumerism, the quality movement, and initiatives to expand access—he ultimately argues for the necessity of more systemic, market-based reforms.

Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future
By Newton L. Minow and Craig LaMay
University of Chicago Press, 2008, 240 pages

The U.S. presidential debates were once unique in the democratic world, providing the public the only real chance to hear candidates respond directly to each other in a discussion of social, economic, and foreign policy issues. Minow contributes an inside look at the origins of the debates as a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and assistant counsel to former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson when Stevenson first proposed the debates in 1960. Written with longtime collaborator Craig LaMay, associate professor of journalism and an IPR faculty fellow, this book offers a history of the legal and personal battles that determined which candidates were allowed to debate and under what circumstances. The authors make recommendations for the future, calling for the debates to become less formal and more interactive, and they also explore the myriad ways in which the Internet might serve to broaden the debates’ appeal and informative power.

Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience
By Carolyn Chen
Princeton University Press, 2008, 248 pages

Like many other immigrants, Taiwanese Americans often become more religious after coming to the United States. But how does religion interact with the process of becoming “American”? In this book, Chen argues that many Taiwanese Americans turn to religion as a way to deal with the great challenges they face in their new home. Even though Buddhism is a dominant religion in Taiwan, she found that a number of Taiwanese Americans actually converted to Buddhism after immigrating, and many others convert to Christianity. As she examines the dual processes of cultural and religious transformation, Chen, a sociologist and IPR faculty associate, also compares how these two different religions shape the immigration experiences of one ethnic group.

New Landscapes of Inequality: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of Democracy in America
Edited by Jane Collins, Micaela di Leonardo,
and Brett Williams
SAR Press, 2008, 304 pages

Behind the growing global problems of the 21st century—endemic warfare, natural disasters, global epidemics, climate change—lies a series of closely connected, long-term political-economic processes, often glossed over as the rise of neoliberal capitalism. Despite the presumption that capitalist-style “liberalization” will lead inevitably to market growth and optimal social ends, often the results have not been positive. Focusing on the United States, the contributors to this volume—including IPR faculty members Micaela di Leonardo, who co-edited the book, Nancy MacLean, and Dorothy Roberts—examine such controversial topics as how this policy agenda has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities and how recurrent moral panics misrepresent class, race, gendered, and sexual realities on the ground.

For more information about IPR faculty publications, see www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications.