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Shattered Bonds
- The Color of Child Welfare
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson, Dorothy Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
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Shattered Bonds
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Publisher's summary
The story of foster care in the United States is the story of the failure of the social safety net to aid poor, largely Black, parents in their attempt to make a home for their children.
Shattered Bonds tells this story as no other book has before - from the perspective of a prominent Black, female legal theoretician. The current state of the child-welfare system in America is a well-known tragedy. Thousands of children every year are removed from their parents' homes, often for little reason other than the endemic poverty that afflicts women and children more than any other group in the United States.
Dorothy Roberts, an acclaimed legal scholar and social critic, reveals the racial politics of child welfare in America through extensive legal research and original interviews with Chicago families in the foster care system. She describes the racial imbalance in foster care, the concentration of state intervention in certain neighborhoods, the alarming percentages of children in substitute care, the difficulty that poor and Black families have in meeting state's standards for regaining custody of children placed in foster care, and the relationship between state supervision of families and continuing racial inequality.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 270
Beginning in the 1950s, America entered a period of unprecedented social reform. This remarkable book demonstrates how the social programs of the 1960s and ’70s had the unintended and perverse effect of slowing and even reversing earlier progress in reducing poverty, crime, ignorance, and discrimination. Using widely understood and accepted data, it conclusively demonstrates that the amalgam of reforms from 1965 to 1970 actually made matters worse.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A great book ruined by a terrible recording
- By Michael on 04-05-13
By: Charles Murray
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Automating Inequality
- How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
- By: Virginia Eubanks
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, politics, health, and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding, Through, Well Researched Book!
- By LISA on 07-11-24
By: Virginia Eubanks
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Please Stop Helping Us
- How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed
- By: Jason L. Riley
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,128
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 980
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Story5 out of 5 stars 974
Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the Black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding Black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of Blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer Black college graduates than would otherwise exist.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Required reading
- By Ken Larsen on 02-15-15
By: Jason L. Riley
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Forget "Having It All"
- How America Messed Up Motherhood - and How to Fix It
- By: Amy Westervelt
- Narrated by: Amy Westervelt
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
In Forget "Having It All", Westervelt traces the roots of our modern expectations of mothers and motherhood back to extremist ideas held by the first Puritans who attempted to colonize America and examines how those ideals shifted - or didn't - through every generation since.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Thorough and Well-Researched Book on The "Mom Predicament"
- By Merle B on 04-10-19
By: Amy Westervelt
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Policing the Black Man
- Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment
- By: Angela J. Davis - editor
- Narrated by: Robin Miles, Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 79
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Story5 out of 5 stars 79
Policing the Black Man explores and critiques the many ways the criminal justice system impacts the lives of African American boys and men at every stage of the criminal process, from arrest through sentencing. Essays range from an explication of the historical roots of racism in the criminal justice system to an examination of modern-day police killings of unarmed black men.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Book Every Young White Male Should Read
- By danielwead on 08-04-17
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Ghetto
- The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea
- By: Mitchell Duneier
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 149
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
On March 29, 1516, the city council of Venice issued a decree forcing Jews to live in il geto - a closed quarter named for the copper foundry that once occupied the area. The term stuck. In this sweeping and original interpretation, Mitchell Duneier traces the idea of the ghetto from its beginnings in the 16th century and its revival by the Nazis to the present. As Duneier shows, we cannot understand the entanglements of race, poverty, and place in America today without recalling the history of the ghetto in Europe, as well as later efforts to understand the problems of the American city.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Impressive
- By Jean on 12-10-16
By: Mitchell Duneier
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How Rights Went Wrong
- Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart
- By: Jamal Greene
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
Rights are a sacred part of American identity. Yet they were an afterthought for the Framers. Only as a result of the racial strife that exploded during the Civil War—and a series of resulting missteps by the Supreme Court—did rights gain such outsized power. Over and again, courts have treated rights conflicts as zero-sum games in which awarding rights to one side means denying rights to others. As eminent legal scholar Jamal Greene shows in How Rights Went Wrong, we need to recouple rights with justice—before they tear society apart.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A different way to look at rights.
- By Nicolas Pabon on 07-11-23
By: Jamal Greene
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American Psychosis
- How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System
- By: E. Fuller Torrey
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 127
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 127
E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Devastating analysis on US mental health policy!
- By Kevin on 07-13-14
By: E. Fuller Torrey
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The Spirit Level
- Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
- By: Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 105
Renowned researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett offer groundbreaking analysis showing that greater economic equality-not greater wealth-is the mark of the most successful societies, and offer new ways to achieve it.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An Important Book
- By Stephen Schoenberg on 12-19-11
By: Richard Wilkinson, and others
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An African American and Latinx History of the United States
- By: Paul Ortiz
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 453
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 398
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Story5 out of 5 stars 393
Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I had to return
- By Andrew Alvarez on 05-19-20
By: Paul Ortiz
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Prey
- Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights
- By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Narrated by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 234
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 204
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Story5 out of 5 stars 202
In Prey, Ayaan Hirsi Ali presents startling statistics, criminal cases and personal testimony. Among these facts: In 2014, sexual violence in Western Europe surged following a period of stability. This violence isn’t a figment of alt-right propaganda, Hirsi Ali insists, even if neo-Nazis exaggerate it. It’s a real problem that Europe—and the world—cannot continue to ignore. She explains why so many young Muslim men who arrive in Europe engage in sexual harassment and violence, tracing the roots of sexual violence in the Muslim world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Feminist Must-Read
- By Annie Raks on 02-26-21
By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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Golden Gulag
- Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California
- By: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
- Narrated by: Machelle Williams
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
Since 1980, the number of people in US prisons has increased more than 450 percent. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world". Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces conjoined to produce the prison boom.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Started off great but devolved into case study
- By normal person on 10-16-21
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Fatal Invention
- How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Dorothy Roberts
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 95
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
An incisive, groundbreaking book that examines how a biological concept of race is a myth that promotes inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era. Though the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category written in our genes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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everyone should read this book to understand
- By Kathleen Dickinson on 07-29-21
By: Dorothy Roberts
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This Noble Land
- My Vision For America
- By: James A. Michener
- Narrated by: Arthur Addison
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4 out of 5 stars 39
This Noble Land is Michener's most personal statement about America, an examination of the issues that threaten to fragment and undermine the nation - racial conflict, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the decline of education, the inadequacies of our health care system - as well as a thought-provoking prescription for sustaining our "outstanding success". First published shortly before Michener's death, This Noble Land stands as a wake-up call for a troubled era, infused with the wisdom and passion of a lifetime.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A startling realization
- By Amazon Customer on 08-15-15
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Con Job
- How Democrats Gave Us Crime, Sanctuary Cities, Abortion Profiteering, and Racial Division
- By: Crystal Wright
- Narrated by: Crystal Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 94
Black voters have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party for the last fifty years - and for their loyalty, black Americans have been rewarded with worsening schools, collapsed families, skyrocketed incarceration rates, disappearing jobs, and rising crime. Crystal Wright, editor of the blog Conservative Black Chick, exposes how the Democratic Party has systematically betrayed black voters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Awesome!
- By Tracy on 05-11-16
By: Crystal Wright
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Black Women, Black Love
- America's War on African American Marriage
- By: Dianne M. Stewart
- Narrated by: Tracey Leigh
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
According to the 2010 US census, more than 70 percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis. Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Cherry picked feminism
- By Keith Swanson on 11-26-20
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Know Your Price
- Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities
- By: Andre M. Perry
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
The deliberate devaluation of Blacks and their communities has had very real, far-reaching, and negative economic and social effects. An enduring white supremacist myth claims brutal conditions in Black communities are mainly the result of Black people's collective choices and moral failings. But there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can't solve. Noted educator, journalist, and scholar Andre Perry takes listeners on a tour of six Black-majority cities whose assets and strengths are undervalued.
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5 out of 5 stars
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More about Black lives than property
- By J. Craig on 04-13-22
By: Andre M. Perry
What listeners say about Shattered Bonds
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Taaliyah
- 12-03-22
Highly recommend
Overall great book with great insight on some of the things that black families face in America.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- “Florence Nightingale”
- 04-24-22
Superb. Should be required reading.
Yet another book that should be part of the required reading list in required coursework for everyone. all high school & college students, citizens/residents, business persons, everyone in local, state, federal Govt judicial/executive/legislative branches (whether nominated or elected, including their staff
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Mel
- 07-03-23
Important, worthwhile read
It wasn't the easiest book to get through for me - it read a bit like a thesis. Plus, I felt so-so about the narrator. But overall, important book, worth reading.
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