One morning, Kim Brooks made a split-second decision to leave her four-year old son in the car while she ran into a store. What happened would consume the next several years of her life and spur her to investigate the broader role America's culture of fear plays in parenthood. In Small Animals , Brooks asks, Of all the emotions inherent in parenting, is there any more universal or profound than fear? Why have our notions of what it means to be a good...

"A brilliant, funny, generation-defining memoir about the double bind of crafting perfect adversity narratives for highly selective institutions, while fumbling through the far murkier reality of actual life in foster care and inpatient mental health treatment As a child, Emi Nietfeld was caught between a hoarder mother who got her put on antipsychotic medication, but was also the only person to believe she was exceptional, and a state system exemplified...

"At the dawn of the twentieth century, a bright new age for children appeared on the horizon, with progress on ending child labor, providing public education, ensuring food and drug safety, combating abuse and neglect, and creating a juvenile justice system. But a hundred years on, the promised light has not arrived. Today, more than eleven million American children live in poverty and more than four million lack health insurance. Each year, we prosecute...