Money Changes Everything by Lawrence Weinstein - First Edition, 2014 from Macmillan Student Store

Money Changes Everything

A Bedford Spotlight ReaderFirst Edition ©2014 Lawrence Weinstein

Money Changes Everything explores central questions around the concept and institution of money: How does money affect our lives, our relationships, our happiness? What does inequality mean for our society? Does money corrupt our morals and values, and if so, how can we prevent this corruptio...
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Money Changes Everything by Lawrence Weinstein - First Edition, 2014 from Macmillan Student Store

A brief and inexpensive reader about money

Money Changes Everything explores central questions around the concept and institution of money: How does money affect our lives, our relationships, our happiness? What does inequality mean for our society? Does money corrupt our morals and values, and if so, how can we prevent this corruption? Readings by a range of economists, philosophers, reporters, artists, and ordinary citizens take up these questions and more. The Web site for the Spotlight Series offers comprehensive instructor support with sample syllabi and additional teaching resources.

The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series is an exciting new line of single-theme readers, each featuring Bedford’s trademark care and quality. The readers in the series collect carefully chosen readings sufficient for an entire writing course—about 30 selections—to allow instructors to provide carefully developed, high-quality instruction at an affordable price. Bedford Spotlight Readers are designed to help students make inquiries from multiple perspectives, opening up topics such as money, food, sustainability, and gender to critical analysis. The readers are flexibly arranged in thematic chapters, each focusing in depth on a different facet of the central topic. An Editorial Board of more than dozen compositionists at schools focusing on specific themes have assisted in the development of the series.

Features

Bedford care and quality in every volume. Each volume in the Bedford Spotlight series is developed with attention to design, pedagogy, and compelling readings that work in the classroom.

Affordable, and an ideal package option. Each volume in the Spotlight series offers plenty of material for a composition course while keeping the price low. Combine one of the Spotlight readers with a handbook or rhetoric and save 20% off the combined price. Or package your Spotlight Reader with Critical Reading and Writing: A Bedford Spotlight Rhetoric for free (a $10 value).

Multiple perspectives on money and its effects on individuals and society. In order to foster student engagement, five chapters, built around central questions on the subject of money, offer numerous entry points for inquiry and discussion. A variety of genres, including academic pieces, popular essays, and visuals, as well as a mix of accessible and challenging selections allows instructors to tailor their approach to each classroom. For example

  • Barbara Ehrenreich, in "Serving in Florida," describes the difficulty—both economic and emotional—of working for the minimum wage.

  • David Amsden, in "What’s a Little Money Between Friends?" explores the social stresses that money and inequality can create.

  • Michael Powell, in "Wealth, Race and the Great Recession," analyzes our socioeconomic structure and history through the lens of race.

Thoughtful support for writers and instructors. A general introduction, chapter introductions, and headnotes provide context, and prompts and assignments offer suggestions for discussion, informal writing, research; ways to connect selections; and assignments for writing. A Web site for the series offers support for teaching the themes in each volume.

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Table of Contents

1. Can We Buy Happiness?

David G. Myers, The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People

The Roper Center, The Good Life

Charles Murray, What’s So Bad About Being Poor?

Barbara Ehrenreich, Serving in Florida

Rebecca Curtis, Twenty Grand

Juliet Schor, Spending Becomes You

MasterCard, Priceless

Elizabeth Warren, The Vanishing Middle Class

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Thomas A. Pyszczynski, Lethal Consumption: Death-Denying Materialism

2. How Does Money Shape Relationships?

Melanie Scheller, On the Meaning of Plumbing and Poverty

Norman Rockwell, New Kids in the Neighborhood

David Amsden, What’s a Little Money Between Friends?

Mary Loftus, Till Debt Do Us Part

Carey Goldberg, Shaken Baby Cases on the Increase

Mary Kay Foundation , Survey of Shelters for Women

Meera Nair, My Inheritance

3. Is Money To Blame for Unethical Conduct?

Horatio Alger, Excerpt from Ragged Dick

David Callahan, Cheating in a Bottom-line Economy

Mark Dowie, Pinto Madness

Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits

Occupy Wall Street, You Can’t Evict an Idea Whose Time Has Come

Arianna Huffington, CSI USA: Who Killed the American Dream?

Bradley Smith, Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform

4. Can Huge Differences in Wealth Be Justified?

Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson

Michael Powell, Wealth, Race and the Great Recession

Briallen Hopper and Johanna Hopper, Should Working-Class People Get B.A.’s and Ph.D.’s?

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Income Gains at the Top

Arthur C. Brooks, Inequality and (Un)happiness in America

Georges de la Tour, The Fortune Teller

Diego Rivera, The Night of the Rich and The First Tractor

Warren Buffett, Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Maimonides, Mishneh Torah

Peter Singer, Rich and Poor

5. Has Money Blinded Us to Higher Values?

Parade Magazine, What People Earn

Ann Crittenden, from The Price of Motherhood

Slate Magazine, Gender Income Inequality by State and County

Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: Military Service

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dollar Sign

Murray Sperber, College Sports, Inc.

Mark Slouka, Quitting the Paint Factory

David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, Does God Want You to Be Rich?

Quentin Massys, The Banker and His Wife

E.F. Schumacher, Buddhist Economics

Sundry Authors, Has the Pursuit of Money Become a Religion?

 

 

 

Lawrence Weinstein

Lawrence Weinstein taught the first-year writing course at Harvard University and cofounded Harvard’s Writing Center. For nearly thirty years, he was a member of the English Department at Bentley University, where he directed the Writing Center and the Expository Writing Program. His book on the teaching of writing, Writing at the Threshold, was a longtime bestseller of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Other books by Weinstein include Grammar for the Soul, Grammar Moves (with his colleague Thomas Finn), and Writing Doesn’t Have to Be Lonely. Plays by Weinstein have been performed in Boston, Dallas, and New York.

(Photo credit: Jonathan Kannair)