Irving Louis Horowitz

Eli Ginzberg

The world of Eli Ginzberg can readily be thought of as a triptych-a career in three parts. In his early years, Ginzberg's work was dedicated to understanding the history of economics, from Adam Smith to C. Wesley Mitchell, and placing that understanding in what might well be considered economic ethnography. His studies took him on travels from Wales in the United Kingdom to California in the United States. For example, the poignant account of Welsh miners in an era of economic depression and technological change remains a landmark work. His report of a cross country trip taken in the first year of the New Deal provides insight and evaluation that can scarcely be captured in present-day writings. The second period of his career corresponds to Ginzberg's increasing involvement in the practice of economics. He deals with issues related to manpower allocation, employment shifts, and gender and racial changes in the workforce. His writing reflects a growing concern for child welfare and education. In this period, his work increasingly focuses on federal, state and city governments, and how the public sector impacts all basic social issues. His work was sufficiently transcendent of political ideology that seven presidents sought and received his advice and participation. After receiving all due encomiums and congratulations for intellectual work and policy research well done, Ginzberg then went on to spend the next thirty years of his life carving out a place as a preeminent economist of health, welfare services, and hospital administration. It is this portion of his life that is the subject of Eli Ginzberg: The Economist as a Public Intellectual. What is apparent in Ginzberg's work of this period is his sense of the growing interaction of all the social sciences-pure and applied-to develop a sense of the whole. The contributors to this festschrift, join together to provide a portrait of a figure whose life and work have spanned the twentieth century, and yet pointed the way to changes in the twenty-first century. Eli Ginzberg from the start possessed a strong sense of social justice and economic equality grounded in a Judaic-Christian tradition. All of these aspects come together in the writings of a person who transcends all parochialism and gives substantive content to the often-cloudy phrase, public intellectual. Irving Louis Horowitz is Hanna Arendt Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where he has taught for over thirty years. He also serves as Chairman of the Board at Transaction Publishers. His writings include Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason; Behemoth: Main Currents in the History and Theory of Political Sociology; and Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power.

The Economist As a Public Intellectual

This book summarizes the key findings from Philadelphia Private Industry Council's 1985 customer survey. It helps young people to take a critical look at their living practices and define their personal agenda and action plan for pursuing constructive choices in the future.

The Clients Speak Out

Does Job Training Work?

Douglas Weston Bray

Conservation of Human Resources Project (Columbia University)

The Uneducated

This is a deeply personal memoir by the doyen of applied economics in the United States. His name is indelibly linked to the creation, expansion, and refinement of employment policy and human resource needs from 1935 to the present. Eli Ginzberg has been a longtime consultant to the federal government, including nine presidents. In this volume, the focus is on American Jewry in the present century from the perspective of an active participant observer and a critical social science based analyst. My Brother's Keeper deals with the changing position of American Jewry in the twentieth century. Ginzberg makes extensive use of his own experiences to review the changes that have taken place in urban life, university involvement, and government agencies. The work covers Jewish life from pre-Hitler Germany to the present, and discusses with intimate candor synagogue life. Drawing upon his unique vantage point, Ginzberg presents new material about many leaders and events that helped transform the role of American Jews in their relationship with other Americans and Israel. At a more conceptual level the author explores major new influences that have reshaped American Jewry, such as the rise of neo-orthodoxy, the substantial increase in Jewish day schools, the blossoming of Judaica studies in American universities, and the rise of women in leadership roles. This memoir makes use of the best social science evidence, and draws on the special experiences of the author in the world of a deeply religious family and tradition. It ranks as a major contribution to the small shelf of self-reflections by social scientists.

My Brother's Keeper

United States. National Commission for Employment Policy

A Report

National Commission for Manpower Policy, the First Five Years, 1974-1979

John J. Sweeney

Karen Nussbaum

Policies for a New Social Contract

Solutions for the New Work Force

Written just before the beginning of World War II, this is an early example of field research into human resources by one of the pioneers in the area. Ginzberg investigates why so many long-term unemployed coal miners in South Wales remained in their villages rather than relocating to other areas of the United Kingdom where jobs were more plentiful. The results of his work, originally published in 1942, remain of value both as a record of an era, an example of communities in distress, and a model of failed social policy.

Story of the Welsh Miners

A World Without Work

Eli Ginzberg

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