Robert Kennedy's role in American politics during the 1960s was pivotal yet has defied attempts to define it. He was a junior senator from New York, but he was also much more. The public perceived him as possessing the intangible qualities of his brother, the slain president. From 1965 to 1968 Kennedy struggled to find his own voice in national affairs. In His Own Right examines this crucial period of Robert Kennedy's political career, combining the best of political biography with a gripping social history of the social movements of the 1960s. How did Kennedy make the transformation from cold warrior to grassroots activist, from being a political operator known for ruthlessness toward his opponents to becoming, by 1968, a "tribune of the underclass"? Based on never before seen documents, this intimate portrait of one of the most respected politicians never elected president describes Robert Kennedy's relationship with such well-known activists and political players as Benjamin Spock, Eugene McCarthy, Allard Lowenstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez, as well as the ordinary men and women who influenced Kennedy's views as he came to stand in the public arena and in the national consciousness as a man and a leader in his own right.

Based on never-before-seen documents, this book chronicles RFK's extraordinary transformation from Cold Warrior to grass roots activist. Palermo focuses on the crucial nexus between '60s social activism and Kennedy's role as national leader, demonstrating how civic groups and individual activists educated him about the conflict in Southeast Asia and racial and class injustice at home.

Historically, canonic studies of ritual have discussed and explained ritual organization, action, and transformation primarily as representations of broader cultural and social orders. In the present, as in the past, less attention is given to the power of ritual to organize and effect transformation through its own dynamics. Breaking with convention, the contributors to this volume were asked to discuss ritual first and foremost in relation to itself, in its own right, and only then in relation to its socio-cultural context. The results attest to the variable capacities of rites to effect transformation through themselves, and to the study of phenomena in their own right as a fertile approach to comprehending ritual dynamics.

What,precisely, is the relationship between legality and morality? Does legal validity rest upon moral validity? Are legal obligations moral obligations? For some years now schools of jurisprudential Naturalism and Positivism have become increasingly ambiguous in their responses to these questions. Olsen and Toddington argue that equivocation on the central issue here - that of obligation - has brought legal theory to the point where leading legal positivists and natural lawyers no longer retain significant differences. Instead, they allege, we are left with the remnants of what has always been, philosophically, a phoney war. The authors of this lucid and refreshing analysis of the concept of law, arguing from the perspectives of social science and political philosophy, show that jurisprudence must acknowledge that the political, the moral, and the legal are located within a continuum of practical reason, and that law's 'autonomy' from morality can not entail its 'separation' from it.

Right to life. Right to choice. Masectomy, lumpectomy. Vitamin therapy, hormone therapy, aromatherapy. Tabloids, op-eds, Phil, Sally, Oprah. Yesterday, women confided in their doctors about health problems and received private, albeit sometimes paternalistic, attention. Today, women's health issues are headline material. Topics that once raised a blush now raise a blare of conflicting medical news and political advocacy. Women welcome the new recognition of their health concerns. Now women are less often treated, as the old saw goes, as "a uterus with a person attached." At the same time, they need help in sorting through the flood of reports on scientific studies, claims of success for new treatments, and just plain myths. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has responded to this need with In Her Own Right. Throughout its 25-year history, the IOM has provided authoritative views on fast-moving developments in medicineâ€"bringing accuracy, objectivity, and balance to the hottest controversies. Talented science writer Beryl Lieff Benderly synthesizes this expertise into a readable overview of women's health. Why do women live longer than men? Why do more women than men suffer vertebral fractures? Benderly highlights what we know about the health differences between men and women and the mysteries that remain to be solved. With a frank, conversational approach, Benderly examines women's health across the life span: Issues of female childhood, adolescence, and sexual maturity, including smoking, eating behavior, teen pregnancy, and more. The host of issues surrounding the reproductive years; contraception, infertility, abortion, pregnancy and birth, AIDS, and mental health. Postmenopausal life and issues of aging, as health choices made decades earlier come home to roost. Benderly addresses women's experience with the nation's health care establishment and the controversy over the lack of female representation in the world of scientific research. Much more than a how-to guide, In Her Own Right translates the finest scholarship on topics of women's health into terms that will help any woman ask the right questions and make the right choices. Covering the spectrum from traditional beliefs to cutting-edge research, this book presents the personal insights of leading investigators, along with clear explanations of breakthrough studies written in plain English.

The first comprehensive, fully documented biography of the most important woman suffragist and feminist reformer in nineteenth-century America, In Her Own Right restores Elizabeth Cady Stanton to her true place in history. Griffith emphasizes the significance of role models and female friendships in Stanton's progress toward personal and political independence. In Her Own Right is, in the author's words, an "unabashedly 'great woman' biography."