Cranston Public Library

"Charley would do anything to keep her wages coming in and support her impoverished sisters and nephews--even if that meant working in Italy for the demanding and commanding Duke Raphael Della Striozzi. Raphael couldn't understand why a woman like Charley dressed in dime-store clothes. It was going to be straight off to a designer boutique for her! But it was in Raphael's bedroom that Charlotte's complete transformation took place--from shy, dowdy...

Includes "My brother Paul."

In the robust economy of the 1990s, it is easy to forget the 37 million people, mostly women and children, living below the federal poverty level. [The author], a policy fellow at the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute, brings this issue to the forefront of the national debate. After all, she points out, poor women are raising a large part of the nation. [She] bases her research on years of observation and working relationships with poor women in community...

Already a frequent contributor of well-crafted stories to The New Yorker when he turned to the larger canvas of the novel, John O'Hara wrote with unusual acuity about the power of status and class in American life. His reputation as a novelist rests largely on four extraordinary books published from 1934 to 1940. These early novels, like those of his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, dramatize the longings and dashed hopes of...

This text explores the impact of recent welfare reform on motherhood, marriage, and work in women's lives. It also focuses on what welfare reform reveals about work and family life, and its impact on us all.