Explore the vast range of titles available.

The public debate on abortion stretches back much further than Roe v. Wade, to long before the terms \"pro-choice\" and \"pro-life\" were ever invented. Yet the ways Americans discussed abortion in the early decades of the twentieth century had little in common with our now-entrenched debates about personal responsibility and individual autonomy.Abortion in the American Imaginationreturns to the moment when American writers first dared to broach the controversial subject of abortion. What was once a topic avoided by polite society, only discussed in vague euphemisms behind closed doors, suddenly became open to vigorous public debate as it was represented everywhere from sensationalistic melodramas to treatises on social reform. Literary scholar and cultural historian Karen Weingarten shows how these discussions were remarkably fluid and far-ranging, touching upon issues of eugenics, economics, race, and gender roles.Weingarten traces the discourses on abortion across a wide array of media, putting fiction by canonical writers like William Faulkner, Edith Wharton, and Langston Hughes into conversation with the era's films, newspaper articles, and activist rhetoric. By doing so, she exposes not only the ways that public perceptions of abortion changed over the course of the twentieth century, but also the ways in which these abortion debates shaped our very sense of what it means to be an American.

Caron reviews Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880-1940 by Karen Weingarten.

This absorbing, well-argued book presents a compelling survey of late-19th- and early-20th-century literary and cultural documents that reflected and shaped attitudes toward abortion.

Karen Couch will be at the helm of the Moriarty Municipal Schools for another year. Couch has been superintendent of the Moriarty school district since 2001. Couch scored so well on her 2004-05 evaluation that the board members extended her contract to a fifth year and gave her a raise of about $10,000 as well -- bumping her salary to $105,000.

The committee, made up of representatives from Torrance County, the town of Edgewood, the city of Moriarty and the Moriarty Municipal Schools Board of Education, has decided to work on improving communications infrastructure throughout the valley. [Alan Weingarten] explained that three high-volume fiber-optic lines run through the valley. Fiber optics provide high-speed Internet access as well as improved telephone communications. The committee's approach will be to have the local governments act as one to work with a company, such as Qwest Communications, to build a switching station on school property near Mountainview Elementary School on old Route 66 in Torrance County between Moriarty and Edgewood.

[Moriarty] is essentially a victim of its own success, Moriarty Board of Education President Alan Weingarten said at the board's July 26 meeting. As a result of the loss of expected funding, the district must be especially cautious about spending. For example, the district had budgeted for 31 custodians to clean the district's eight schools for the coming school year, an increase of four staffers from last year. But [Karen Couch] said because less money is available, the district will wait to hire the four additional custodians. Joel Shirley, the district's director of operations, said the schools wouldn't have enough custodians even with the additional four, but that recent changes should make it easier for current custodians. The district recently entered into a contract with a firm that will stock custodial supply closets and provide training for the custodians, Shirley said.

Employees of Early Headstart Baker Center mingle after having a barbecue lunch along with nearly 2,400 Charlotte County School District employees...

\"It's really quite a program,\" the rabbi said in a recent telephone interview. \"I'm really very proud of [the congregation] for supporting this.\" \"I've been using the word 'guests,'\" [Howard Spodek] noted. \"'Guests' is a very important concept in the network. While we're dealing with homelessness, we're dealing with a very human face. It is a network of hospitality.\" \"There's a very strong Jewish basis -- not just in tradition, but in text -- for feeding the hungry and clothing the naked,\" she said in a telephone interview. \"We hope [the program] will be a great benefit to our guests, as well as a great benefit to us as hosts.\"