The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2017

This year’s top news stories sometimes made it tough to remain optimistic, given the mass shootings, hurricanes and wildfires, controversial legislation and the threat of nuclear war. In times like these, when the daily headlines can feel so oppressively grim, we often turn to longer works to put our historical moment in context — to show us that there’s a better way forward in organizing healthcare, dealing with crime, addressing climate change and stabilizing government. That’s where this list comes in. Spanning both fiction and non-, essays and memoirs, these are the books that gave us hope in an otherwise tumultuous year.

Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women” By Susan Burton and Cari Lynn

After her 5-year-old son was accidentally killed by a cop, Susan Burton descended into a crack addiction that landed her in prison — over and over again. As detailed in this heartfelt memoir, Burton eventually got the help she needed and now runs A New Way of Life, a scrappy nonprofit that offers sober housing and treatment for formerly incarcerated women at five safe houses in South Los Angeles.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” By Dan Egan

The Great Lakes used to be a cesspool of industrial chemicals and municipal sewage, until Congress intervened in 1972. A massive cleanup followed, but that ongoing recovery is being threatened today by invasive species inadvertently dumped into the lakes. Dan Egan, a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, lays out a natural history of how foreign fish and filter-feeders arrived (then spread through the nation’s waterways) and how government regulators can adapt.

Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission” By Barry Friedman

Ever since the unrest in Ferguson in 2014, policing’s become a hot-button topic. Rather than blaming cops, Barry Friedman, a law professor at New York University, tries to move the conversation forward, arguing that judges and ordinary citizens alike need to do more to restore the Fourth Amendment’s protections against “unreasonable search and seizure” in a time of heightened surveillance and militarization among law enforcement.

Janesville: An American Story” By Amy Goldstein

On a frozen morning in December 2008, the nation’s largest automaker, General Motors, closed down its oldest assembly plant, laying off thousands of workers and hollowing out Janesville, Wisc., the hometown of Rep. Paul Ryan. Amy Goldstein, a reporter at the Washington Post, picks up the story there, poignantly describing the efforts to shore up a vanishing middle class.

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions” By Valeria Luiselli

Why did you come to the United States? What countries did you pass through? Did anything happen on your trip that scared or hurt you? Depending on how they answer those questions, unaccompanied children fleeing violence in Central America are either granted a pass or sent back. Writer Valeria Luiselli, a volunteer who administered the questionnaire, details her first-hand experiences with the immigration system in this 120-page essay.

Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America” By Mary Otto

One in three low-income adults avoids smiling. That’s a consequence of treating dentistry as optional, allowing tooth decay and gum disease that afflict the poor to be written off as failures of personal responsibility. Mary Otto, a veteran health journalist, makes a stirring plea to close an unacknowledged gap in our medical system.

Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption” By Benjamin Rachlin

In 1988, after a neighbor came forward to claim a $1,000 reward, Willie Grimes was convicted of breaking into a 69-year-old widow’s house and raping her twice. Two decades into Grimes’s life sentence, DNA evidence exonerated him. In this meticulously researched book, Benjamin Rachlin explores North Carolina’s Innocence Inquiry Commission, the first body of its kind to hear wrongful conviction pleas and restore integrity to a system that’s locked up thousands of innocent people.

The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic” By Ganesh Sitaraman

The Founding Fathers curiously left any reference to wealth out of the Constitution, believing that America was a country where citizens were born equal, rather than becoming so, as Alexis de Tocqueville later put it. In a treatise packed with historical anecdotes and political theory, Ganesh Sitaraman, a Vanderbilt law professor, makes the case that America’s “middle-class constitution” is straining under an economic divide and offers corrective reforms.

A Kind of Freedom” By Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

The lone work of fiction on our list, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s epic debut novel follows three generations of a black New Orleans family, from World War II to the War on Drugs of the 1980s to Hurricane Katrina at the dawn of a new century. Even as they struggle to get by, in a country where racial progress has always been fitful, the family members display remarkable endurance.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” By Timothy Snyder

Another book about how to save our democracy, this slim volume dispels the notion that a republic can persevere without an engaged citizenry. “History does not repeat, but it does instruct,” Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor, begins, as he shares how totalitarianism gobbled up Eastern Europe a century ago and what can be done to prevent its creeping approach today.

Where Mentoring, Not Donations, Makes a Difference for Immigrant Families

In diverse Stamford, Conn., 40 percent of the residents were born in another country — and as is typical of first-generation immigrants, many work in the service industry or manual labor jobs. But in this area with a very high cost-of-living index — 141.3 compared to the U.S. average of 100, according to City-Data.com — money earned from a low-paying job doesn’t go very far.
But several Latino families that have managed to climb to the top are helping out newcomers any way they can.
Maria Isabel and Oscar Sandoval moved to Stamford 20 years ago and started a restaurant and a landscaping business. After years of hard work, they now employ 60 people. More importantly, they mentor immigrants seeking to start their own businesses. “It wasn’t easy,” Sandoval tells Alexandra Campbell Howe of NBC News. “I started at the bottom and worked my way up. I mentor others who are starting out, and let them know about my experience and help as many people as I can.”
Oscar Sandoval advised Ecuadorian immigrant Alex Pipantasi when he was starting his automotive repair shop. “He gave me valuable advice on how to treat clients and employees,” Pipantasi says.
The Sandovals also donate money to Neighbors Link, a center that helps immigrants adjust to life in America, learn English, educate their children and themselves, find jobs and connect to others.
Catalina Semper Horak, a Colombian immigrant who co-founded the center and serves as its executive director, says that the stark income differences visible in Stamford inspired the organization’s creation. “It’s an issue where there is a very direct connection between the haves and the have nots,” she says. “So supporting this segment of the population, making sure they have a place where they feel comfortable….was an idea that resonated with a lot of people.”
Sarita Hanley, a co-founder of Neighbors Link, emphasizes that while donations help immigrants settle in, the kind of mentoring that the Sandovals provide is invaluable. “Money is always necessary, but rolling up your sleeves is as important, sometimes even more.”
MORE: Neighborhood Centers Provide Immigrants an Instant Community

Big Bets: 8 Game-Changers Shake Things Up to Solve Our Country’s Challenges

We know about the challenges.

We know that too many young people are struggling to find employment and a ladder up; that too many children fail to receive the sort of education they need to flourish in the 21st century world; that more young people should be given the opportunity to partake in some form of national service — and that too few actually do.
At NationSwell, we are deeply concerned about these problems, and we are always grateful to find a smart report or analysis of the challenges. Developing a true and deep understanding of a problem is the first step in solving it.
But it’s what comes next that truly excites us — and defines our mission.
It’s the innovators, the pioneers, the change-makers who not only understand these national challenges and all of their complexity, but who also dare to solve them. At NationSwell, we are ever-focused on finding them, telling their powerful stories and driving action in support of their efforts.
Who are these leaders, what are their visions for change, what motivates them — and what, exactly, are the big bets they are making to advance our country?
NationSwell sat down with eight innovators at the Gathering of Leaders, an annual event held this past year in Napa, Calif., hosted by leading venture philanthropy organization New Profit, for a series of extraordinary conversations in which we posed some of those very questions.
The answers we got were as varied as they were illuminating — and, to us, heartening. If the odds are anything like Vegas, some of these risk-takers will fail and some will succeed. But, in thinking creatively and acting boldly, what these men and women are doing to tackle our biggest national challenges demands our consideration — and participation.
We invite you to watch and be part of the conversation as we present the NationSwell series: “Big Bets”.
All the best,
Greg Behrman
Editor-in-Chief
NationSwell
 
MORE:Big Bets: How to Bridge the Gap Between Practitioners and Policy Makers

Ask the Experts: Why Should Americans Care About Income Inequality?

It was a focus of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in January. It’s consistently been a hot topic on political talk shows, in news magazines and at your dinner table. It’s a politically polarizing and passion-invoking topic of discussion. And it’s almost impossible to nail down.

It’s income inequality.

A commonly accepted view is that the United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality among the world’s industrialized nations. But is this true? Well, it depends on whom you ask or, more specifically, how you measure it. Judging from the Gini coefficient — a statistical measure of a country’s distribution of income — you might agree that, yes, the U.S. has seen a rise in income inequality over the past few decades.

However, economists like Richard Burkhauser of Cornell University have written extensively that the way we measure inequality is flat-out wrong. In a 2011 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Burkhauser and co-authors Jeff Larrimore and Kosali Simon argued that income should be measured post-tax, size-adjusted for households, and after accounting for benefits such as health care. When those items are factored in, Burkhauser and his co-authors claimed, income inequality isn’t as big an issue in the U.S. after all.

MORE: Could a National Sales Tax Ease American Inequality?

In this first installment of a new series for NationSwell in which we ask experts to weigh in on the major issues facing America, we asked our panel to contemplate this highly controversial topic. The main question we asked is: Why should (or shouldn’t) Americans care about income inequality? And, of course, what are the solutions to the problem?

The answers we got were surprisingly wide-ranging. Read on for the panel’s thought-provoking perspectives, and then join the conversation by leaving your own ideas in the comments box.

Dan Crawford

Spokesman for the Economic Policy Institute

NationSwell: Why should Americans care about income inequality?

Dan Crawford: Income inequality is far from an abstract issue. Since the 1970s, the productivity of the American economy has soared, but workers’ wages have stagnated. Inequality doesn’t just mean the rich are getting richer — it means the middle class isn’t sharing in the country’s overall prosperity. Americans should care about inequality because, since so much economic power is concentrated in the hands of the top 1 percent, the middle class keeps falling further behind. We’re not seeing the increases in living standards that should be emblematic of a healthy economy. For most Americans, inequality means they won’t see their incomes or living standards grow in any meaningful way.

NS: How do we fix it?

DC: There’s no easy fix to slowing or reversing the growth of inequality, but there are a number of steps that policymakers can take, such as making full employment a priority, raising the minimum wage, strengthening labor standards and protecting workers’ rights to bargain collectively.

ALSO: This State May Have Discovered the Secret to Saving Tax Dollars While Doing Good

William McBride

Chief Economist at the Tax Foundation

NS: Why should Americans care about income inequality?

William McBride: First of all, I’m not sure they should. Income inequality is, in a general sense, a negative thing. You look around the world, there are certain places and times where it manifests itself as very problematic. For example, Brazil has such economic extremes, where the wealth and income is highly concentrated, and you have a real problem in terms of opportunity. You have a permanent “underclass” type of situation. Does that state of affairs exist in the U.S.? Well, it’s hard to get a handle on it.

I think a lot of researchers have tried to draw connections from income inequality to taxes. If we take from the rich and give to the poor through taxation, we can make our cultural problems better. That’s a very tenuous argument, and I think those who put it forth have yet to provide any evidence of it. [In fact,] the standard approach to economics tells a different story. It says that the economy works by different income groups cooperating, and employers hiring employees to produce wealth and income. Disrupting that process by redistribution from owners of assets to workers — or to retirees and nonworkers — that is a severe disruption to a basic economic process. We have very strong evidence that that destroys wealth — not just for the rich, but for the workers and future workers, as well.
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Additionally, the measurement of income inequality has been very flawed and politicized. To what degree do we have inequality? There are different ways to measure it. There’s IRS tax return-based measures and census survey data, and they come to totally different conclusions. The census-based data — which the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] uses that — that measure is more comprehensive, but it’s not the full story, either. When you add in what’s missing from that, you get a more complete picture of compensation, including fringe benefits. Then, you’ll find there’s been no change in inequality in 30 years, since the 1980s.
NS: Does it need to be fixed?

WM: There are policies that can and need to change to improve opportunity, not necessarily to improve inequality. Inequality is an outcome. But what we need to do is to change the inputs. In regards to education, it’s widely known we have a very poor K-12 system relative to other countries, and it’s only gotten worse over time. We have public schools in rich neighborhoods that are excellent, while low-income neighborhoods get very bad public schools. It’s very much tied to income. We know this is a very big driver of the low mobility problems we’re talking about here. So we need to fundamentally revolutionize K-12 public schooling, and to do so we can look around the world to see what’s worked and try some bold experiments.

MORE: Why the U.S. Should Adopt the “Finnish Way” of Education

Branko Milanovic

Senior Scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the City University of New York

NS: Why should Americans care about income inequality?

Branko Milanovic: There are several reasons people should care. Studies show if we have high-income inequality — called inequality of outcome — then over time that can be transformed into inequality of opportunity. What happens is that if you have a very high income, you pass your money, privileges, connections and so on to your sons and daughters, and they start their lives with much greater advantages than others. Gradually, these advantages become cemented from generation to generation, which means that at the very beginning of one’s life, there’s already a disparity in opportunity. In other words, one can say that such a society would undermine the long-held American dream of equality of opportunity and upward mobility.

Secondly, there are arguments that inequality might actually slow the rate of economic growth.  We can argue that very rich people are saving and investing and so on, but if middle-class income doesn’t grow fast enough, then there’s no healthy demand provided by the bulk of the population. Again, we have seen this in the hollowing out of the middle class over the last 30 years, and possibly even in the run-up to the crisis, where the middle class basically compensated for the lack of growth by borrowing to unsustainable levels.

Lastly, in the long run, inequality has the tendency to undermine democracy. We have seen this, as well. Rich people try to buy legislation that is good for them. The political system gives them an unfair advantage over the others, which in turn makes them even richer. That’s how crony capitalism is born.

NS: How do we fix this problem?

BM: First, we can increase spending for education. Educated people are more productive. They participate in globalization, which is good for growth. And having more educated people in the country reduces the premium on university educations and reduces wage disparities, simply because the supply of highly educated people increases. Education is one of few instruments that we have which is a win-win strategy: It increases growth and reduces inequality. On top of that, basically everybody agrees that education is good in itself and for the entire nation.

Secondly, we can increase minimum wage to be in line with inflation. This would increase income for people at the bottom. But then of course, economists raise the issue of whether this could reduce demand for labor. So, one has to factor in this possibility too. Lastly, we can expand social spending and make it more generous — food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, earned income tax credit. They will decrease inequality, even if it means increased taxation. But all these ideas have as their objective not only to reduce inequality but more importantly poverty, which has been extremely stubborn in the U.S. for about 40 years.

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If our experts’ responses are any indication, the issue of income inequality has no simple explanation or answer. But notice that everyone did agree on one thing: To increase equality, we need to invest in education. Hear that, Congress?
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This Former Presidential Advisor Is Using a Proven Way to Lift Americans Out of Poverty

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The Mid South has long been burdened with some of the highest poverty rates in the U.S., in part because its residents lack access to financial services. William Bynum — former community development advisor to Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama — set out to change that by creating HOPE Enterprise Corporation, a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that provides financial services to individuals living in these so-called “bank deserts.” At Hope Credit Unions, the success of each branch rests firmly on the backs of the communities it helps. There are no shareholders, which allows the business to focus on its goal of connecting low-and moderate-income individuals to affordable, responsible financial services. As the recipient of the 2013 John P. McNulty Prize, HOPE has seen its business expand from 791 members to 27,000 in less than two decades of operation, generating $1.7 billion in financing, and directly benefiting more than 400,000 people. Now that’s a lot of hope.
 
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