Articles by Steven Gilchrist

The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (2012) by John McKnight and Peter Block is a book that addresses economic and social problems that exist in modern-day American society.   The authors address topics such as: materialism, health care costs, employment, over-consumption, affordable child care, management practices, and living a “system life.”   McKnight and Block suggest that Americans have been led to believe that they can buy their way to happiness and the “good life.”   The authors suggest this belief is fraudulent.   On pages 16-17, they write: “This belief that the good life depends on consumption is a unique worldview that is less than a century old.   It gained momentum in the 1920s and became ‘the gospel of consumption’ – the notion that people could be convinced that however much they had, it wasn’t enough.” The authors contend that our current socioeconomic system is devised to make people into comp...

Published in 2014 Effective Supervision for the Helping Professions (second edition) by Michael Carroll is an informative book that provides suggestions for managers to improve their ability to understand the concerns of their employees.   Throughout the book, Carroll references inventor Leonardo da Vinci and the philosopher Socrates.   In Chapter 8 – “Learning from Supervision,” Carroll uses Leonardo da Vinci as an example to follow for effective supervision.   “Leonardo constantly questioned his own conclusions, theories, beliefs and assumptions and suggested others do the same.” Here are some key points from Carroll’s book: P. 102. “We make that mistake constantly – thinking we are on our own, making our own decisions, having total free will and control over our lives and can change, if we choose, what we want to change.   We often believe we are independent individuals reliant on no one else for the important challenges of life.   Not so....

Published in 1997, The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics written by Michael Goldfield is a political science/labor-studies book about class, economics, political, and racial issues within American society.   The book is divided into three parts: Critical Turning Points in Early U.S. History; Twentieth Century Politics; and Part III – Conclusion. In part 1 of the book, Goldfield explores the contradictory nature of early American leaders.   For example, 5 of the first 7 presidents and the majority of the presidential cabinet members & Supreme Court justices were slave owners.   Although he hated slavery, President Abraham Lincoln still held racist beliefs, Goldfield writes.   In Part 2, Goldfield argues that present-day racial segregation can be attributed to policies that existed decades ago.   On page 205, Goldfield writes: “The high degree of segregation in many U.S. cities in the present period can, at least...

A re you looking for a book to read that is informative, historic, and reflective? If the answer is yes, then I would recommend reading Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 To the Present, by Dr. Deborah Willis. A s Willis explains in her book, photography has advanced a long way since 1839 when Louis J.M. Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, a machine that made an image on ionized copper. R eflections in Black is the first book to chronicle the history of black photographers in the United States. The front cover of the book is a picture taken by Arthur P. Bedou . The picture shows a crowd with a photographer in the center. T he book is divided into five chronological sections. Each era has a distinct photographic theme. From 1840 to 1900 the theme is portraiture. Part two, which depicts the era from 1900 to 1930, is titled “The New Negro Image.” Part three is photography from the 1930s & 1940s and Part four continues with photography from 1950 to 1979, “Soci...