Angry, unappeasable, and funny as hell, Ted Rall is a mind to pay attention to, a one-on-one freelance revolutionary who sees through the hyperbole and hypocrisies of our society with a clear and unflinching eye. Syndicated as both a cartoonist and columnist through Universal Press Syndicate, he reaches more than 100 papers and magazines, and his most recent graphic novel, The Worst Thing I've Ever Done, won a Firecracker Alternative Book Award. Formerly titled Kill Your Parents Before They Kill You, Revenge of the Latchkey Kids is an illustrated manifesto for surviving the 90s and beyond, with 24 chapters of edgy insight, personal histories, advice, and cartoons. It is, in the words of Jules Feiffer, "a spicy stew of high-handed judgments-part drawing, part essay, part memoir-confession, part tantrum. The text is the thing. Funny, fractious here and there, nasty now and then, brilliant." Among topics on Ted's mind are "College Is for Suckers," "Gen Xploitation," "Making the Most of Your Dead-End Job," "Relationship Tips for the Sexless," and, in a rallying cry only a true subversive could love, "Bring On the Stock Market Crash." Bring on Ted Rall. Introduction by Jules Fieffer.

Growing up on a Manchester council estate was tough in the '70s. But when your mother is a cold woman with little time or care for you, beats you regularly, forgets to feed you and your sister, orders you out of the house each day and leaves you home alone at night, it's little wonder you find yourself on the wrong path in life. The Latch Key Kid is the author's moving and powerful memoir which delves deep into his early childhood and adolescent struggles. But unlike other tales of unfortunate circumstance, this frank and at times heart-breaking story also depicts the author's journey of living with a relatively unknown mental health condition called 'anhedonia'. This condition suspends its sufferers at a zero level on the emotional scale - so they never feel pleasure, happiness, joy, excitement, or even sadness in the same way everyone else does. All that's left is an overwhelming sense of injustice: how can everyone else listen to a song and feel the urge to dance? How can people eat a meal and then smile with satisfaction? Why do people see a goal on a football pitch and get all fired up? When all Mike feels is nothing? But, whilst this disorder has made the author's life unimaginably different from yours or mine, it is anhedonia that has prevented him from going under - even when pushed to extremes. Now happily married, with five children and a successful business, Mike tells the hard-hitting story of how his double-edged sword - anhedonia - has shaped his life. This is not based on a True Story it is a True Story.

During the summer of 1987, then sixteen-year-old Grace Bradshaw, her younger brother Max, and neighborhood friends befriend Randy Spence, a twenty-one-year-old mentally disabled man with the IQ of a child. Mocked by many in the corrupt small town, Randy is taken under wing and protected by his younger friends while learning hard lessons about the way most people treat those who are different. Along the way, Grace, her brother and younger neighborhood friends also learn shocking lessons about good and evil." A first-person narrative told by a now middle-aged and widowed Grace Bradshaw McGuire to her adult children, "Kids Under the Latch Key" is a heart-touching story of the summer which prompted her to question God and challenged her initial belief that all humans are inherently good.

A guide offering parents and their children solutions for reducing problems and anxieties.

Based on research about after-school experiences and dilemmas conducted over a four-year period with employed parents and their children, this book draws on the stories these parents and children told--often using their actual words--to emphasize the wide variety of children's after-school arrangements, children's movement over time in and out of different arrangements, and the importance to children of multiple facets of their after-school arrangements, not simply the presence or absence of an adult caretaker. The book also emphasizes that children are not randomly assigned to after-school arrangements. Rather, parents and children struggle to reach optimal solutions to what are often difficult child care dilemmas. To understand these dilemmas, and the diverse strategies that families adopt, one must attend to the individual situations of children as family members understand them. This book was written to contribute to the development of new family and work policies and practices by illuminating the difficulties families face and their consequences for children. Written for psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists who study families, maternal employment, child care, or child development, it will also be useful for parents, educators, community leaders, and public policymakers concerned about the well being of children whose parents are employed.