>With regard to women and welfare, Linda Gordon, Mimi Abramovitz
>(_Regulating the Lives of Women, Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times
>to the Present_), Teresa Funiciello (_Tyranny of Kindness: Dismantling the
>Welfare System to End Poverty in America_), etc. are useful.
These are both excellent books and highly recommended. I also would recommend Sanford E. Schram's *Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty*. Schram's book occasionally lapses into overlong discussions of discourse for my taste but his basic message--that poverty/welfare research result in the wrong public policies because they never get at what poverty is--is dead on. The little 5 page foreward by Frances Fox Piven is well the 50 cents it would take to photocopy it as well.
Jim
When you're too old for the swings you tend to choose the slide
It'll take you much lower than you ever would have asked 'Cause as soon as you sit down the slide has got your ass
A pile of broken souls at the bottom it denied Don't take the slide, don't take the slide
--Paul Heaton from "The Slide"