Are you a “Success Seeker” or a “Success Builder” or both? The overall purpose of this book is to take the mystery out of success so that more persons can seek it and find it. It is not only designed for the general life success of anyone but also for use in school achievement. Current classroom educators call the work in Reconstructing Lives “a dynamic package deal” for implementing rigorous and relevant curriculum. The project offers proof of the effectiveness of an organic, time-tested project that can meet the national demand for preparing college and career ready students through Common Core State Standards (CCSS). From Reconstructing Lives, a student workbook was created titled Re-Make an Icon So You Can Become One. If you are already or want to become a Success Builder then this book will provide focus and strategies in six specific areas: Did you identify, cultivate or enhance a talent or skill in someone’s life today? Did you help someone see new possibilities or set and strive to reach goals today? Did you make someone feel important, special or loved today? Did you teach someone to perform at a level of excellence today? Did you help someone gain deeper intellectual, spiritual, or emotional understanding today? Did you provide an opportunity for or destroy an obstacle to someone’s progress today?

This book attempts to establish a more holistic approach to the rehabilitation of war-injured civilians, one that adjusts to the patients’ long-term needs. Kovacic not only offers an insight into the daily realities of patients during and after rehabilitation, but seeks to develop a new way to perceive, respect and involve them in health care. Based on comprehensive interviews with patients and MSF staff, as well as extended field observations, Reconstructing lives follows Syrian and Iraqi war-injured civilians in their journey to recovery. From their improvised medical treatment in their home countries, to the MSF-run hospital in Amman Jordan, to their return home, Kovacic explores how individuals attempt to pick up the pieces of their previous lives, add new elements from their treatment and travel experiences, and finally establish a new reconstructed reality. The book explores how the interaction between MSF staff and their patients contributes to the immense task of healing that awaits victims of war. The reader visits the intimate medical and domestic spaces that usually remain closed to the outside observer, spaces rich with human contact, perceptions, emotions, conflicts and reconciliations.

Take Care of the Living assesses the short- and long-term impact of the war on Confederate veteran families of all classes in Pittsylvania County and Danville, Virginia. Using letters, diaries, church minutes, and military and state records, as well as close analysis of the entire 1860 and 1870 Pittsylvania County manuscript population census, McClurken explores the consequences of the war for over three thousand Confederate soldiers and their families. The author reveals an array of strategies employed by those families to come to terms with their postwar reality, including reorganizing and reconstructing the household, turning to local churches for emotional and economic support, pleading with local elites for financial assistance or positions, sending psychologically damaged family members to a state-run asylum, and looking to the state for direct assistance in the form of replacement limbs for amputees, pensions, and even state-supported homes for old soldiers and widows. Although these strategies or institutions for reconstructing the family had their roots in existing practices, the extreme need brought on by the scope and impact of the Civil War required an expansion beyond anything previously seen. McClurken argues that this change serves as a starting point for the study of the evolution of southern welfare.

Rather than emphasising boundaries and territories by examining the ‘integration’ and ‘acculturation’ of the immigrant or the refugee, this book offers insights into the ideas and practices of individuals settling into new societies and cultures. It analyses their ideas of connecting and belonging; their accounts of the past, the present and the future; the interaction and networks of relations; practical strategies; and the different meanings of ‘home’ and belonging that are constructed in new sociocultural settings. The author uses empirical research to explore the experiences of refugees from the successor states of Yugoslavia, who are struggling to make a home for themselves in Amsterdam and Rome. By explaining how real people navigate through the difficulties of their displacement as well as the numerous scenarios and barriers to their emplacement, the author sheds new light on our understanding of what it is like to be a refugee.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Reconstructing Lives, Recapturing Meaning presents the first systematic investigation of refugees' loss of their old identities and their efforts to construct new ones. Edited by the Chair and Vice Chair of the Committee on Refugee Issues (CORI) of the American Anthropological Association, it critically examines the interplay between cultural, ethnic, and gender constructions among resettled refugee populations. Each chapter is grounded in anthropological theory and method, and the book's framework demonstrates the relationship between the dynamics of forced migration and the ways in which ethnic and gender identities are reinvented in new socio-cultural settings. Unanimous in their perception of boundary maintenance as central to identity formation, these essays allow readers to view refugee resettlement as a creative, experimental process.