Title: Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir.
Author: Brianna Craft.
Publication info: Chicago : Lawrence Hill Books. 2023. eBook.
Location: Academic eBook Collection.
Description: One of Ms. Magazine's 'Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2023.' Authentic and inspiring, Everything That Rises personalizes the realities of climate change by paralleling our relationship to the planet with the way we interact within our own homes. Nineteen-year-old Brianna Craft is having a panic attack. A professor's matter-of-fact explanation of the phenomenon known as 'climate change' has her white-knuckling the table in her first environmental studies lecture. Out of her father's house, she was supposed to be safe. This moment changed everything for Brianna. For her first internship, she jumped at the chance to assist the Least Developed Countries Group at the United Nations' negotiations meant to produce a new climate treaty. While working for those most ignored yet most impacted by the climate crisis, she grappled with the negligent indifference of those who hold the most power. This dynamic painfully reminded her of growing up in a house where the loudest voice always won and violence silenced those in need. Four years later, Brianna witnessed the adoption of the first universal climate treaty, the Paris Agreement. In this memoir that blends the political with the personal, Brianna dives into what it means to advocate for the future, and for the people and places you love, all while ensuring your own voice doesn't get lost in the process. It will take all of us to protect our home.
Author: Kim E. Nielsen
Publication: Beacon Press, 2013, 240 pages.
Available: Rancho Cordova campus, on the library shelves.
Description: This is the first book to cover the entirety of disability history, from pre-1492 to the present. Disability is not only the story of someone we love or the story of whom we may become; rather it is undoubtedly the story of our nation. Covering the entirety of US history from pre-1492 to the present, A Disability History of the United States is the first book to place the experiences of disabled people at the center of the American narrative. In many ways, it’s a familiar telling. In other ways, it is a radical repositioning of US history. By doing so, the book casts new light on familiar stories, such as slavery and immigration, while breaking ground about the ties between nativism and oralism in the late nineteenth century and the role of ableism in the development of democracy. A Disability History of the United States pulls from primary-source documents and social histories to retell US history through the eyes, words, and impressions of the people who lived it. As historian and disability scholar Nielsen argues, to understand disability history isn’t to narrowly focus on a series of individual triumphs but rather to examine mass movements and pivotal daily events through the lens of varied experiences. Throughout the book, Nielsen deftly illustrates how concepts of disability have deeply shaped the American experience—from deciding who was allowed to immigrate to establishing labor laws and justifying slavery and gender discrimination. Included are absorbing—at times horrific—narratives of blinded slaves being thrown overboard and women being involuntarily sterilized, as well as triumphant accounts of disabled miners organizing strikes and disability rights activists picketing Washington. Engrossing and profound, A Disability History of the United States fundamentally reinterprets how we view our nation’s past: from a stifling master narrative to a shared history that encompasses us all.
Title: Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms US Health Care.
Author: Laura Katz Olson.
Publication info: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2022.
Location: Academic eBook Collection.
Description: Revealing the dark truth about the impact of predatory private equity firms on American health care.Won Gold from the Axiom Book Award in the Category of Business Ethics, the Benjamin Franklin Awards by the Independent Book Publishers Association and the North American Book Award in the Catergory of Business Finance, Finalist of the American Book Fest Best Book Social Change and Current Events by the American Book FestPrivate equity (PE) firms pervade all aspects of our modern lives. Unlike other corporations, which generally manufacture products or provide services, they leverage considerable debt and other people's money to buy and sell businesses with the sole aim of earning supersized profits in the shortest time possible. With a voracious appetite and trillions of dollars at its disposal, the private equity industry is now buying everything from your opioid treatment center to that helicopter that helps swoop you up from a car crash site. It may even control how and when you can get your kidney dialysis. In Ethically Challenged, Laura Katz Olson describes how PE firms are gobbling up physician and dental practices; home care and hospice agencies; substance abuse, eating disorder, and autism services; urgent care facilities; and emergency medical transportation. With a sharp eye on cost and quality of care, Olson investigates the PE industry's impact on these essential services. She explains how PE firms pile up massive debt on their investment targets and how they bleed these enterprises with assorted fees and dividends for themselves. Throughout, she argues that public pension funds, which provide the preponderance of equity for PE buyouts, tend to ignore the pesky fact that their money may be undermining the very health care system their workers and retirees rely on.Weaving together insights from interviews with business owners and experts, newspaper articles, purchased data sets, and industry publications, Olson offers a unique perspective and appreciation of the significance of PE investments in health care. The first book to comprehensively address private equity and health care, Ethically Challenged raises the curtain on an industry notorious for its secrecy, exposing the nefarious side of its maneuvers.
On this day in 2004, National Medal of Science winner Philip Abelson passed away.
Abelson is remembered for many things, including co-discovering the chemical element Neptunium. He also contributed his work on liquid thermal diffusion to the Manhattan project, made radioactive isotopes usable in medicine and other industries, found fatty acids in billion-year-old rocks, and, from 1962-1984, was the editor of Science, the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In 1976, Abelson wrote an opinion piece in Science called "Enough with Pessimism." Interestingly, among all of his discoveries, he became well-known for writing this article. "Enough with Pessimism" is a commentary on the relationship between politics and the pursuit of scientific discoveries in the mid-20th century. Abelson went on to write a book of essays under the same title. You can read Abelson's "Enough with Pessimism" online through Science Magazine below, along with another article he wrote, "Bigotry in Science."
Left: Philip Abelson. Right: Ross Gunn (left, physicist), Capt. William Parsons (middle, weaponeer), Philip Abelson (end) working on the Manhattan Project.
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Article-linking websites online can help you find relevant articles from one article's DOI. Scroll through these slides to learn more about LitMaps, Citation Gecko, and Connected Papers.
Academic research is an ongoing conversation between authors. by Sadie Davenport
Left: Mary Amdor. Middle: The deadly fog in Donora, Pennsylvania. Right: Woman walking through the fog in Donora.
In late October of 1948, a combination of temperature fluctuations and deadly emissions from two U.S. Steel plants created a dense, yellow fog that hung over the city of Donora, Pennsylvania, killing 70 people and injuring 6,000 others. The fog, which contained sulfuric acid, nitrogen dioxide, fluorine, and other poisonous gases, remained in the city for several days until it rained on October 31st. Doctors and firefighters shared bottled oxygen with Donora residents and urged those with pre-existing lung and breathing issues to leave, but the density of the fog made driving and transportation nearly impossible.
Dr. Mary Amdur, a biochemist with a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, was recruited soon after to research the role that American Smelting and Refining Company (AS&R) emissions played in the casualties observed in Donora. AS&R wanted to prove that their emissions had a minimal effect on the deaths and injuries incurred, and they even requested that Dr. Amdur not study one of the gases released into the atmosphere. Dr. Amdur's research instead indicated that citizens of Donora were injured and killed as a direct result of the gases released: "She had demonstrated the irritancy potential of sulfur dioxide and its ability to interact with water-soluble metal salts to further oxidize the sulfur in the particle, which travels to the deep lung, where its potential for irritation would be magnified" (Mary O. Amdur, Oxford Academic). Dr. Amdur gained and lost funding multiple times because her research interfered with the interests of AS&R, which she didn't accommodate into her research. Additionally, she wasn't able to rise above the title of "associate professor" at the different universities where she worked.
For her work and her strength to stick to her own ethical principles, Dr. Mary Amdur became known as the "mother of air pollution toxicology." And in 1961, the United States adopted the Clean Air Act, which "regulates air emissions from stationary and mobile sources," in order to prevent dangerous air pollution events like Donora's. (Summary of the Clean Air Act).
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