We Were Once A Family

Winner of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A Washington Post best nonfiction book of 2023 | Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction “A riveting indictment of the child welfare system . . . [A] bracing gut punch of a book.” —Robert Kolker, The Washington Post “[A] moving and superbly reported book.” —Jessica Winter, The New Yorker “A harrowing account . . . [and] a powerful critique of [the] foster care system . . . We Were Once a Family is a wrenching book.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | One of Publishers Weekly's best nonfiction books of 2023 The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children—and a searing indictment of the American foster care system. On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family’s loving facade was an alleged pattern of abuse and neglect that had been ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved west. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew all too little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children. Immersive journalism of the highest order, Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family is a revelation of precarious lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian sought out the children’s birth families and put them at the center of the story. We follow the lives of the Harts’ adopted children and their birth parents, and the machinations of the state agency that sent the children far away. Asgarian’s reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as young people of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America’s most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.

We Were Warriors Once is a military-political suspense novel. It chronicles the careers of four officers from the 1960s to the 1990s. Military promotions are based on an up-or-out systemyou either progress within specified time frames or you get left behind. Many officers who retire from their military careers at the Pentagon go through the revolving door and return in short order either as defense contract employees or civil servants. Not infrequently, they return to the same office where they worked before retiring. The same holds true for many political appointees. Men who once worked in Washington go off for a period to high-level assignments with defense contractors and return to influential positions in government. These revolving doors can sometimes have unintended negative consequences. President, and former five-star general, Dwight D. Eisenhowers warning against the power of the military-industrial complex is well known. However, that complex is actually tri-foldmilitary, industrial, and political. We Were Warriors Once incorporates revised editions of two previously published novels, Duty and Character and Wrong Enemy, Wrong War, with entirely new material that plumbs deeper into the defense contractors influence on national defense policies. The officers who wear the uniforms of the United States armed forces are by in large extraordinarily dedicated men and women. But in the profession of war, sometimes even the best are tempted at times to stray from the straight and narrow.

A landmark publication in its first edition, this was one of the first books to explore the full range of legal questions relating to children. This casebook presents an outstanding selection of cases and materials that reflect social and historical perspectives, law, and policy. Features:“/p> Life without Possibility of Parole for Persons Who Commit Crimes as Juveniles Graham v. Florida, 130 S. Ct. 2011 (2010) Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012) Juveniles' Fourth Amendment Rights Safford Unified School District v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364 (2009) Juveniles Miranda Rights J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 131 S. Ct. 2394 (2011) Juveniles First Amendment Rights Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn.,131 S. Ct. 2729 (2011) The purchase of this Kindle edition does not entitle you to receive 1-year FREE digital access to the corresponding Examples & Explanations in your course area. In order to receive access to the hypothetical questions complemented by detailed explanations found in the Examples & Explanations, you will need to purchase a new print casebook.

A heartrending and unforgettable memoir of an unlikely journey to parenthood through America’s broken foster care system. What does it take to keep a child safe? As a long-time strategist and activist fighting for better outcomes for foster children, Mark Daley thought he had the answer. But when Ethan and Logan, an adorable infant and a precocious toddler, entered into their lives, Mark and his husband Jason quickly realized they were not remotely prepared for the uncertainty and complication of foster parenting. Every day seven hundred children enter the foster care system in the United States, and thousands more live on the brink. Safe offers a deeply personal window into what happens when the universal longing for family crashes up against the unique madness and bureaucracy of a child protection system that often fails to consider the needs of the most vulnerable parties of all—the children themselves. Daley takes us on a roller coaster ride as he and Jason grapple with Ethan and Logan’s potential reunification with their biological family, learn brutal lessons about sacrifice, acceptance, and healing, and face the honest, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious challenges of becoming a parent at the intersection of intergenerational trauma, inadequate social support, and systemic issues of prejudice. For fans of Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know, Stephanie Land’s Maid, and Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family, this touching and suspenseful memoir highlights the impossible choices all parents, in the foster system and beyond, face in raising children today. Safe shines a much-needed spotlight on how this country treats the most vulnerable among us, sounding a vital call to overhaul a thoroughly broken system.

This autoethnography highlights the experiences of school leaders, teachers, university staff and students, and globally minded citizens working alongside local communities to enhance the quality of education for children in rural and remote schools in eight developing countries.

Reproduction of the original: Ornithological Biography by John James Audubon

Light in Bandaged Places shows us the harm done when an older man in a position of power convinces a child that sex with him is alright because he loves her. This poignant story takes us through the long-term wounding of such abuse—and the multifaceted path of healing. As a lonely girl coming of age in the 1970s, Liz has every reason to believe her 8th-grade teacher is in love with her. Because the sex isn’t physically violent and is wrapped in a message of love, she learns to exchange sex for attention. It feels like love, after all. But years later, as an adult, emotional closeness eludes Liz. Even after marrying a sensitive, caring man, she is walled off. Struggling through confusing years, she believes something is deeply wrong with her. Healing begins when an unexpected event takes Liz back to those formative years, and she sees for the first time that what happened to her was not love but trauma. As she begins to understand how her relationship with her former teacher destroyed her innocence and self-worth, she begins a spiritual and psychological journey that sets her free. Now a meditation teacher and Buddhist practitioner, Liz offers her story in hope of helping others along their own paths of discovery and healing.