BiblioVault - Books about Divergent Paths

Divergent Paths

Economic Mobility in the New American Labor Market

Annette Bernhardt

Russell Sage Foundation, 2001

The promise of upward mobility—the notion that everyone has the chance to get ahead—is one of this country's most cherished ideals, a hallmark of the American Dream. But in today's volatile labor market, the tradition of upward mobility for all may be a thing of the past. In a competitive world of deregulated markets and demanding shareholders, many firms that once offered the opportunity for advancement to workers have remade themselves as leaner enterprises with more flexible work forces. Divergent Paths examines the prospects for upward mobility of workers in this changed economic landscape. Based on an innovative comparison of the fortunes of two generations of young, white men over the course of their careers, Divergent Paths documents the divide between the upwardly mobile and the growing numbers of workers caught in the low-wage trap. The first generation entered the labor market in the late 1960s, a time of prosperity and stability in the U.S. labor market, while the second generation started work in the early 1980s, just as the new labor market was being born amid recession, deregulation, and the weakening of organized labor. Tracking both sets of workers over time, the authors show that the new labor market is more volatile and less forgiving than the labor market of the 1960s and 1970s. Jobs are less stable, and the penalties for failing to find a steady employer are more severe for most workers. At the top of the job pyramid, the new nomads—highly credentialed, well-connected workers—regard each short-term project as a springboard to a better-paying position, while at the bottom, a growing number of retail workers, data entry clerks, and telemarketers, are consigned to a succession of low-paying, dead-end jobs. While many commentators dismiss public anxieties about job insecurity as overblown, Divergent Paths carefully documents hidden trends in today's job market which confirm many of the public's fears. Despite the celebrated job market of recent years, the authors show that the old labor market of the 1960s and 1970s propelled more workers up the earnings ladder than does today's labor market. Divergent Paths concludes with a discussion of policy strategies, such as regional partnerships linking corporate, union, government, and community resources, which may help repair the career paths that once made upward mobility a realistic ambition for all American workers.

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Divergent Paths of the Restoration

An Encyclopedia of the Smith–Rigdon Movement, Volume 1: Sections 1–4

Steven L. Shields

Signature Books, 2022

When Joseph Smith founded the Church of Christ in 1830, he declared it to be God’s restoration of true Christianity, the Kingdom of God on earth. Although he foresaw opposition to such bold claims, he could not fathom that time and unforeseen circumstances would help to spawn hundreds of off-shoots and competing denominations—all claiming their origins in a movement born and sustained originally by Smith and Sidney Rigdon. Many of these groups have endured and boast multiple congregations of believers in many countries; others came and went quickly and have long since been forgotten. Some have survived but have only appealed to a handful of believers. Steven L Shields has for decades chronicled the various origins and paths of all known Restoration movements. This fifth edition of his encyclopedic study, offered as an ebook, includes recent groups born as internet communities. That so many groups and individuals have been unsatisfied with the more mainstream Mormon churches, yet cling to tenets of the Smith–Rigdon movement, speaks to the strengths of the restoration concept and the naïve view that one denomination can successfully meet all the needs of believers.

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Divergent Paths of the Restoration

An Encyclopedia of the Smith–Rigdon Movement, Volume 2: Sections 5–12 & Appendices

Steven L. Shields

Signature Books, 2022

When Joseph Smith founded the Church of Christ in 1830, he declared it to be God’s restoration of true Christianity, the Kingdom of God on earth. Although he foresaw opposition to such bold claims, he could not fathom that time and unforeseen circumstances would help to spawn hundreds of off-shoots and competing denominations—all claiming their origins in a movement born and sustained originally by Smith and Sidney Rigdon. Many of these groups have endured and boast multiple congregations of believers in many countries; others came and went quickly and have long since been forgotten. Some have survived but have only appealed to a handful of believers. Steven L Shields has for decades chronicled the various origins and paths of all known Restoration movements. This fifth edition of his encyclopedic study, offered as an ebook, includes recent groups born as internet communities. That so many groups and individuals have been unsatisfied with the more mainstream Mormon churches, yet cling to tenets of the Smith–Rigdon movement, speaks to the strengths of the restoration concept and the naïve view that one denomination can successfully meet all the needs of believers.

[more]

Divergent Paths of the Restoration

An Encyclopedia of the Smith–Rigdon Movement

Steven L. Shields

Signature Books, 2021

When Joseph Smith founded the Church of Christ in 1830, he declared it to be God’s restoration of true Christianity, the Kingdom of God on earth. Although he foresaw opposition to such bold claims, he could not fathom that time and unforeseen circumstances would help to spawn hundreds of off-shoots and competing denominations—all claiming their origins in a movement born and sustained originally by Smith and Sidney Rigdon. Many of these groups have endured and boast multiple congregations of believers in many countries; others came and went quickly and have long since been forgotten. Some have survived but have only appealed to a handful of believers. Steven L Shields has for decades chronicled the various origins and paths of all known Restoration movements. This fifth edition of his encyclopedic study, offered as an ebook, includes recent groups born as internet communities. That so many groups and individuals have been unsatisfied with the more mainstream Mormon churches, yet cling to tenets of the Smith–Rigdon movement, speaks to the strengths of the restoration concept and the naïve view that one denomination can successfully meet all the needs of believers.

[more]

Divergent Paths

The Academy and the Judiciary

Richard A. Posner

Harvard University Press, 2016

Judges and legal scholars talk past one another, if they have any conversation at all. Academics couch their criticisms of judicial decisions in theoretical terms, which leads many judges—at the risk of intellectual stagnation—to dismiss most academic discourse as opaque and divorced from reality. In Divergent Paths, Richard Posner turns his attention to this widening gap within the legal profession, reflecting on its causes and consequences and asking what can be done to close or at least narrow it.

The shortcomings of academic legal analysis are real, but they cannot disguise the fact that the modern judiciary has several serious deficiencies that academic research and teaching could help to solve or alleviate. In U.S. federal courts, which is the focus of Posner’s analysis of the judicial path, judges confront ever more difficult cases, many involving complex and arcane scientific and technological distinctions, yet continue to be wedded to legal traditions sometimes centuries old. Posner asks how legal education can be made less theory-driven and more compatible with the present and future demands of judging and lawyering.

Law schools, he points out, have great potential to promote much-needed improvements in the judiciary, but doing so will require significant changes in curriculum, hiring policy, and methods of educating future judges. If law schools start to focus more on practical problems facing the American legal system rather than on debating its theoretical failures, the gulf separating the academy and the judiciary will narrow.

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Divergent Paths to College

Race, Class, and Inequality in High Schools

Holland, Megan M

Rutgers University Press, 2019

In Divergent Paths to College, Megan M. Holland examines how high schools structure different pathways that lead students to very different college destinations based on race and class. She finds that racial and class inequalities are reproduced through unequal access to key sources of information, even among students in the same school and even in schools with well-established college-going cultures. As the college application process becomes increasingly complex and high-stakes, social capital, or relationships with people who can provide information as well as support and guidance, becomes much more critical. Although much has been written about the college-bound experience, we know less about the role that social capital plays, and specifically how high schools can serve as organizational brokers of social ties. The relationships that high schools cultivate between students and higher education institutions by inviting college admissions officers into their schools to market to students, is a particularly critical, yet unexplored source of college information.

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