Resources By Department: New Books: Social Work

Travelers to Unimaginable Lands by Dasha Kiper
After getting her master's in clinical psychology, Dasha Kiper took a leave of absence from school and began to look after a Holocaust survivor with middle-stage Alzheimer's. For a year, she lived with the emotional strain of caregiving, learning at firsthand how disorienting and painful it can be to look after a person whose condition blatantly disregards the rules of time, order, and continuity. Based on the subsequent decade she has spent counseling caregivers of dementia patients, Kiper offers an entirely new approach to understanding the relationship between patients and those tending to them, as well as dispelling the myth of the perfect caregiver.
American Eldercide by Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Of the Americans who have died of COVID-19, 20% have been elderly people residing in nursing facilities--even though they make up less than a percent of the overall US population. As Margaret Morganroth Gullette shows, nothing about this tragedy was inevitable. Gullette, an activist and scholar, argues that it was our collective indifference, fueled by ageism, that killed our elderly population. Walking us through the decisions that lead to such discrimination, revealing how governments and media reinforced ageist biases, and collecting the ignored voices of the elderly, she helps us understand the makings of what she calls an "eldercide."
Undue Burden by Shefali Luthra
Before Dobbs, it was a common misconception that abortion restrictions affected only people in certain states but left one's own life untouched. Since the fall of Roe, a domino effect has cascaded across the entire country. As the landscape of abortion rights continues to shift, the experiences of the patients Luthra follows in Undue Burden -- who crossed state lines to seek life-saving care, who risked everything in pursuit of their own bodily autonomy, and who were unable to plan their reproductive future in the way they deserved -- illustrate how fragile the system is and how devastating the consequences can be.
Essentials of Health Justice by Joel B. Teitelbaum; Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler
Essentials of Health Justice will serve to enhance discussion of the many structural, legal, and policy issues underlying health disparities; the various public health and health care interventions geared toward improving health care access and more just health outcomes for vulnerable populations; and the ways in which the nation can better achieve health equity and justice.
Social Work and the Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism by Martell L. Teasley; Michael S. Spencer; Melissa Bartholomew
Racism is imbued within the structures of our society. The 13th Grand Challenge is boldly calling social workers to extract this systemic stronghold from its profession and breathe new life into a field that has the capacity to transform our society. To facilitate this necessary disruption, social workers must be willing to critically engage in an exploration of the meaning of racism and its impact on social work in order to work towards its elimination from society and the profession.

Wards of the State by Claudia Rowe
Each year, hundreds of thousands of children grow up in America's $30 billion foster care system, only to leave and enter its prisons, where a quarter of all inmates are former foster youth. Wards of the State is an exploration of the broken American foster care system, told through the stories of six former foster youth. This book delves into the systemic failures that lead many foster children into the criminal justice system, highlighting the need for reform. Through interviews with psychologists, advocates, judges, and the former foster children themselves, Rowe paints a heartbreaking picture of the lives shaped by this broken system.
Broken by Jessica Pryce
In this book, former social worker Jessica Pryce walks alongside her close friends and even her family as they navigate the child welfare system, while sharing her own reckoning with the requirements of her job and her role in the systemic harm. Through poignant narratives and introspection, readers witness the harrowing effects of a well-intentioned workforce that has lost its way, demonstrating how separations are often not in a child's best interests. With a renewed commitment to strengthening families in her role as activist, Pryce invites the child welfare workforce to embark on a journey of self-reflection and radical growth.
We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian
On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside 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 the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved across the country.
Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson
Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable. Rooted in a long-term study, Relinquished is an analysis of hundreds of in-depth interviews with American mothers who placed their children for domestic adoption; stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level.
Homelessness and Mental Health by João Mauricio Castaldelli-Maia; Antonio Ventriglio; Dinesh Bhugra
The link between homelessness and mental health disorders is undeniable. Both are strongly affected by social and economic determinants such as poverty, migration, unemployment, access to healthcare, and urbanization and, as a result, providing optimal care in the community requires understanding of the cultural context. Written and edited by experts drawn from different cultural and geographical perspectives, this unique resource covers key topics such as COVID-19, dental issues, chronic pain, the experiences of specific vulnerable groups, as well as case studies.

New Books: Social Work

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