A glimpse into the horror of one piece of the genocide that took place in Turkey in the early 1900's, The Great Fire, by Lou Ureneck, conveys the dark side and a few strands of silver lining amidst the disaster. With issues like American interests in oil & tobacco, folks interested in self-promotion, pay-back and deeply engrained religious prejudice, there are many lessons for today, including the role of little-known and unexpected people making compassionate, valiant, and even successful efforts to care for those in suffering.

Most activists recognize the strength to social action groups of drawing power from across the racial and sex/gender landscape, but too few recognize the key effects of class. In Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures, Betsy Leondar-Wright shines a focused light on the opportunities for pulling together as never before, by seeing the many ways in which social class impacts our thoughts, actions, and organizing.

A visit with a student participant of, the UW-EC staff founder of, and a Selma, AL, presenter of the Civil Rights Pilgrimage.

Joel Westheimer asks the deep questions and provides the important facts in What Kind of Citizen?: Educating Our Children for the Common Good. How should education in a democracy differ from that in other systems? What are the wider effects of standardized education? What kind of citizen do we want our schools to promote?

In Incident at the Bruce Mine Shaft, Stephen Ivancic uses historical fiction to highlight the real life issues around workers, unions, and opportunistic capitalists. Set in the iron mines of Northern Minnesota in the 1920s and focusing on the Finnish workers, some communist, some not, Stephen helps us to understand the dynamics of individualism, community, and power.