Reading

Last year for Christmas my mother got me a signed copy of Jason Deparle's book on how the "ending welfare as we know it" Clinton policies impacted three young women and their kids during the 90s (my mother gets me a signed book or two every year -- my favorite last year being the one from UPI legend Helen Thomas...).

Anyway, I started reading it a while back and didn't finish, but last night I picked it up again and read it in the bathttub 'til like 3am, almost finishing it.

The book is as readable as any narrative non-fiction without social policy implications. Deparle does a good job of drawing a parallel between northeastern/midwestern inner city welfare mothers of the 90s and the southern sharecropper culture their parents and grandparents left in the 60s and 70s. I also like the way he cuts back and forth between scenes of the policy wonks in DC talking about how welfare reform will play with certain voting blocs and the way those reforms play out in real households full of women and little kids.

Anyway, well worth a read...