$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Seventeen dollars per person, per day. That’s the United States government’s official definition of poverty, if...
T he unthinkable has occurred in our city: three mothers throwing their infant children out of windows in the space of three months. We can and must do better if we hope to prevent future horrors. Maternal mental illness is...
What's it like to be; The admitting person in the psychiatric war d of a metro hospital turning away violently troubled childre n because there is no space? HCMC in Minneapolis averages about 900 emergency psych visits a month, many...
Does welfare corrupt the poor? Few ideas are so deeply ingrained in the American popular imagination as the belief that government aid for poor people will just encourage bad behavior. The proposition is particularly cherished on the...
The Rev. Donté L. Hickman Sr., pastor of one of this city’s largest African-American churches, wrapped up a fiery, foot-stomping sermon one recent Sunday with a somber request. “Pray for the city and the mayor,” he...
One hundred twenty of the nation's top police chiefs and prosecutors are joining forces today to launch a new effort to cut the number of people in prison. The new coalition of heavyweights, called Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime & Incarceration, is based on one big idea: putting too many people behind bars doesn't keep the public safe. "Our experience has been, and in some ways it's counter-intuitive, that you really can reduce crime and incarceration at the same time,"...
More and more schools are trying to serve meals with food that was grown nearby. The U.S. Department of Agriculture just released some statistics documenting the trend. According to this "census" of farm-to-school programs, at least...
This is the first book FOR and BY survivors of childhood abuse geared specifically towards the experiences of parenting. THE FIRST! THE ONLY! It includes essays from over twenty men and women survivor parents with...
My heart is heavy far too often when local headlines include yet another loss of a young life to heroin overdose. My heart sinks even lower when I read through the unfiltered reader comments at the bottom of those articles. Many people...
Virgil started feeling unsafe sometime around 4th grade. That's when he remembers his mother telling him and his twin brother, Philip, to stay inside after school. The family had recently moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles, and remaining...
The main reason for running clinical trials is to gain approval to sell a new drug or treatment. But clinical trials also present a chance for researchers to understand who will and who won't benefit from a new drug, and—maybe...
Can you shoot someone, claim self-defense, and get away with the murder? Maybe, maybe not—but your odds are a lot better if the person you attack is black. That's the chilling implication of a newly published study , which examines...
The city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, used to ticket people for panhandling. Now they're trying something new — something that's got a lot of locals excited. Participants in Albuquerque's "There's a Better Way" initiative working on a city...
I’m not a doctor, but I do sit near one in The Atlantic’s New York office. So you can trust me to know that MD-in-residence James Hamblin is on to something when he writes in the magazine’s October issue about the ...
It can feel like a mantra among private developers: Requirements by municipal governments to include affordable units in market-rate housing developments make those developments unprofitable, even unfeasible. It may be one of the most...