Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines the iconic presence of second chances in everyday life. David Newman explores its various iterations in popular culture, commercial marketplaces, religion, intimate relationships, education, criminal justice, and human bodies. He analyzes how this conceptas a cultural aspiration, driver of policy, and lived personal experiencehas become part and parcel of our individual sense of self and our collective national identity. While the rhetoric of second chances is familiar and ubiquitous, Newman uncovers their costs and constraints, paying particular attention to the importance of judgments of deservedness. Informed by an array of data sources including personal interviews, mission statements of nonprofit recovery agencies, images in popular culture, stories from the news, plot summaries of novels, and scriptural texts, Newman frames the second chance experience as the quintessential cultural paradox: a concept that simultaneously represents the pinnacle of our shared ho
Table of ContentsChapter 1: The Ubiquitous Second Chance Chapter 2: A Theory of Second Chances Chapter 3: The Spiritual Second Chance Chapter 4: The Post-Criminal Second Chance Chapter 5: The Intimate Second Chance Chapter 6: The Bodily Second Chance Chapter 7: The Educational Second Chance Chapter 8: The Cultural and Commercial Second Chance Chapter 9: No Second Chance Chapter 10: The Elusive Second Chance: A Right or a Privilege?
