Contracts

Many things that we think are beyond our reach are actually within our grasp. Many things that we think we can’t control—such as our health, or that nagging ache in our lower back, or our general outlook on life—are actually controllable. Many of the limitations in our lives exist only in our heads.

The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health considers what happens when we learn how to take control of our health and wellbeing. Psychologist Ellen Langer, who has written widely on the illusion of control, mindful aging, stress, decision-making, and health. explores the new psychology of possibility, highlighting new research that shows how the mind can help treat a long list of illnesses and ailments that were previously assumed to be entirely physical. It builds on her groundbreaking work on mindfulness, and shows how simple thinking techniques can become a potent medical tool, reducing our symptoms, increasing our resilience and extending our lives.

The tragic truth is that too many people are depressed, stressed, and living in pain. They accept sickness as the inevitable status quo. They believe that psychological and physical discomfort are simply a part of life. Others are convinced that “this is as good as it gets,” and that they don’t deserve better. They will always be exhausted. Their eyes will always need glasses. They will keep getting weaker.

Ellen Langer’s essential work suggests that much more is possible. If we free ourselves from certain pervasive and constricting mindsets, such as the belief that stress is inescapable, or that being older means being sick, or that there can be no relief from chronic pain, then all sorts of possibilities may present themselves. If we learn to apply these new techniques, the mind can literally heal the body.

Legal aid, the program through which legal assistance is made available to people who cannot otherwise afford it, has had a controversial history.  Support for providing legal services has waxed and waned.  But while it has not always received widespread acclaim, legal aid has been a legal lifeline for people who would not otherwise have access to some measure of justice.

In The People’s Champ: Legal Aid from Slavery to Mass Incarceration, legal scholar Shaun Ossei-Owusu provides a broad history of legal aid in America.  He locates its origins much earlier than has typically been assumed, looking back to the antebellum period when abolitionists actively sought legal rights for fugitive slaves and the white citizens who gave them assistance.

This sweeping narrative of America’s legal aid efforts also reveals how central race was, and continues to be, to the delivery of legal services.  While the conventional assumption is that legal aid was focused on the poor, irrespective of race, Ossei-Owusu shows how race has always been central to the way in which legal aid programs operated.  This perspective illuminates another angle on the history of discrimination, incarceration, and the delivery of social justice in this country.

The United States has a prison problem. Many of the statistics are, by now, well known: the country’s prison population has grown by more than 500 percent since 1973. Today, more than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in over 6,000 jails, prisons, and detention centers nationwide. Another five million live under some form of correctional supervision or control. Almost everyone who is incarcerated, and millions who once were, cannot vote or access other public services. Most of them are poor, and an overwhelming number of them are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and/or suffering from a physical or mental disability. The United States stands alone among industrialized nations in retaining the death penalty, the widespread use of long-term solitary confinement, and the incarceration of juveniles in adult prisons. From preventable deaths to popular disenfranchisement, this carceral archipelago shapes the whole country.

Prison: An American History tells the story of the country through its enduring use of incarceration. Forced confinement enabled European settlers and their descendants to take Indigenous land, and it was a fundamental component of slavery—both the transatlantic slave trade and its domestic equivalent made widespread use of chains and cages. In the century after the Civil War, incarcerated people industrialized much of the country while prison development strengthened both federal and state local government. Since World War II, successive wars on communism, crime, drugs, gangs, and terror have made the country through prison. Nearly every moment in the country’s history can be understood through its reliance on captivity. From matters of labor discipline to political activism and beyond, prison helps explain the rise of the United States.