"The Call to Social Work" is a great supplement to courses such as introduction to social work and social welfare, and social work practice. It can also be used in practicum/field courses to give students a better understanding of what various types of social workers do in daily practice. The text provides stories of real social workers with many different backgrounds, and is designed to help students to better understand the profession.

A window into the life of a social worker The Call to Social Work, Second Edition is a presentation of narrative descriptions about the work and life of a wide variety of contemporary social workers. The book provides an in-depth understanding of why people choose social work, how they garner meaning from their work, and what they struggle with as they provide needed services. Additionally, it presents more information about the everyday practice of social work, both the challenges and the joys. Instructors who use this book in their courses will be able to contrast their ideals of practice with the realities captured in each life story, while students who read the book will be able to think about whether each story represents good practice, or what principles they would adhere to based on their understanding of social work.

The Call to Social Work is based on a simple question: What can we learn by listening to the stories about the work of the social worker? The result is a collection of passionate stories told in vivid detail about social workers' efforts to contribute to compassion and justice in the world, to pursue social transformations, and to provide a vision for a better way of living.

Cohen offers a new framework for analyzing social projects and local social activism. Rather than look at how single projects are designed and managed to evaluate their impact, the approach calls for analyzing fields of social action: policy and politics, institutional behavior, social networks among policymakers and practitioners, and availability of funding and other resources. Combined, they affect the conceptualization of a social problem and the design and practice of social intervention. More broadly, through circumscribing the range of thinking about social problems, they delimit possibilities to generate social change. Analyzing fields also allows for linking macro-level trends in areas like policy to decision-making within individual organizations and the effectiveness of projects at instigating the desired transformation in individual and collective behavior. Working together, policymakers, individual activists, nonprofit organizations, and staff in public institutions like schools and hospitals can critique and alter fields to challenge more effectively social problems. This collaboration, in turn, affects how social policies are designed and, ultimately, the politics of social change.