Month: January 2013

Author: Neil A. Grauer Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Book Review by: Nano Khilnani The Johns Hopkins Hospital, part of the vast Johns Hopkins Health System Corporation (read below) with its headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, has been named the best hospital in the United States for an incredible 21 consecutive years by U.S. News and World Report. Its faculty has been garnering various kinds of awards and recognition for a long number of years, such as Nobel Prizes, National Medals of Science, Presidential Medals of Freedom and the Mac Arthur Foundation ‘genius’ awards. The Johns Hopkins Health System includes:...

Editor: Gilbert Herdt Publisher: New York University Press Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar Moral panics are the ‘natural disasters of human history’ and they not only “present a crisis  for  a stable social order but also threaten the well being of individuals and communities.” points out the editor Gilbert Herdt in this collection of essays by seven contributors who are specialists in their respective fields. A moral panic could take the form of a condition, episode, person or group of persons, that poses or could pose as a threat to the values and interests of a given community within...

Author: Jessica M Vasquez Publisher: New York University Press Book Review by: Nano Khilnani Jessica M. Vasquez, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, best describes the scope and purpose of this book. Let me quote her from her Preface: “This book is an academic research endeavor that seeks to discover the social influences that shape the way Mexican Americans, over family generations, experience and explain their social identities.” She authored this book based on interviews of people from three generations of Mexican-American families living in California: those who immigrated here, their children born here, and...

Editor: Charlie B. Tyer Publisher: University of South Carolina Press Book Review by: Artha Hemrajani To first give you an economic overview of South Carolina, the Palmetto State, its state gross domestic product (GDP) for 2009, the latest year for which data is available on Wikipedia, was about $164 million. It ranked 27th among the states, contributing 1.13 percent to the national GDP of $14.65 trillion. With a state population of about 4.6 million, each resident’s income averaged $35,717 for that year. The per capita ranking of South Carolina was 48 among a list of 51 states in that...