Anxious Days And Tearful Nights

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Anxious Days and Tearful Nights

Author : Martha Hanna
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228004608
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Anxious Days and Tearful Nights by : Martha Hanna

Download or read book Anxious Days and Tearful Nights written by Martha Hanna and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was it like to be a soldier's wife in Canada during the First World War? More than 80,000 Canadian women were married to men who left home to fight in the war, and its effects on their lives were transformative and often traumatic. Yet the everyday struggles of Canadian war wives, lived far from the battlefields of France, have remained in the shadows of historical memory. Anxious Days and Tearful Nights highlights how Canadian women's experiences of wartime marital separation resembled and differed from those of their European counterparts. Drawing on the letters of married couples separated by wartime service and the military service records of hundreds of Canadian soldiers, Martha Hanna reveals how couples used correspondence to maintain the routine and the affection of domestic life. She explores how women managed households and budgets, how those with children coped with the challenges of what we today would call single parenthood, and when and why some war wives chose to relocate to Britain to be nearer to their husbands. More than anything else, the life of a war wife - especially a war wife separated from her husband for years on end - was marked and marred by unrelieved psychological stress. Through this close personal lens Hanna reveals a broader picture of how war's effects persist across time and space.

Anxious Days and Tearful Nights

Author : Martha Hanna
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780228003663
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Anxious Days and Tearful Nights by : Martha Hanna

Download or read book Anxious Days and Tearful Nights written by Martha Hanna and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the challenges faced by Canadian war wives that deepens our understanding of the First World War.

Anxious Days and Tearful Nights

Author : Martha Hanna
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228004594
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Anxious Days and Tearful Nights by : Martha Hanna

Download or read book Anxious Days and Tearful Nights written by Martha Hanna and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was it like to be a soldier's wife in Canada during the First World War? More than 80,000 Canadian women were married to men who left home to fight in the war, and its effects on their lives were transformative and often traumatic. Yet the everyday struggles of Canadian war wives, lived far from the battlefields of France, have remained in the shadows of historical memory. Anxious Days and Tearful Nights highlights how Canadian women's experiences of wartime marital separation resembled and differed from those of their European counterparts. Drawing on the letters of married couples separated by wartime service and the military service records of hundreds of Canadian soldiers, Martha Hanna reveals how couples used correspondence to maintain the routine and the affection of domestic life. She explores how women managed households and budgets, how those with children coped with the challenges of what we today would call single parenthood, and when and why some war wives chose to relocate to Britain to be nearer to their husbands. More than anything else, the life of a war wife - especially a war wife separated from her husband for years on end - was marked and marred by unrelieved psychological stress. Through this close personal lens Hanna reveals a broader picture of how war's effects persist across time and space.

Lost in the Crowd

Author : Gregory M.W. Kennedy
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228020158
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Lost in the Crowd by : Gregory M.W. Kennedy

Download or read book Lost in the Crowd written by Gregory M.W. Kennedy and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 1915, as the First World War wore on, Acadian leaders meeting in New Brunswick deplored how soldiers from their communities were “lost in the crowd” of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. They successfully lobbied the federal government for the creation of an Acadian national unit that would be French-speaking, Catholic, and led by their own. More than a thousand Acadians from across the Maritime provinces, Quebec, and the American northeast answered the call. In Lost in the Crowd Gregory Kennedy draws on military archives, census records, newspapers, and soldiers’ letters to present a new kind of military history focusing on the experiences of Acadian soldiers and their families before, during, and after the war. He shows that Acadians were just as likely to enlist as their English-speaking counterparts across the Maritimes, though the backgrounds of the volunteers were quite different. Kennedy tackles controversial topics often missing from the previous historiography, such as underage recruits, desertion, and army discipline. With the help of the 1921 Canadian Census, he explores the factors that influenced post-war outcomes, both positive and negative, for soldiers, families, and communities. Lost in the Crowd offers a completely new and replicable approach to the traditional regimental history, reconstituting the lives of soldiers and their families. The focus on the Acadians, a francophone minority group in the Maritime provinces, significantly shifts our understanding of French Canada and the First World War.

Haunted Britain

Author : Kyle Falcon
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526164965
Total Pages : 199 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Haunted Britain by : Kyle Falcon

Download or read book Haunted Britain written by Kyle Falcon and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great War haunted the British Empire. Shell shocked soldiers relived the war’s trauma through waking nightmares consisting of mutilated and grotesque figures. Modernist writers released memoirs condemning the war as a profane and disenchanting experience. Yet British and Dominion soldiers and their families also read prophecies about the coming new millennium, experimented with séances, and claimed to see the ghosts of their loved ones in dreams and in photographs. On the battlefields, they had premonitions and attributed their survival to angelic, psychic, or spiritual forces. For many, the war was an enchanting experience that offered proof of another world and the transcendental properties of the mind. Between 1914 and 1939, an array of ghosts lived in the minds of British subjects as they navigated the shocking toll that death in modern war exerted in their communities.

Small Stories of War

Author : Barbara Lorenzkowski
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228018366
Total Pages : 393 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Small Stories of War by : Barbara Lorenzkowski

Download or read book Small Stories of War written by Barbara Lorenzkowski and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many believed the twentieth century would be the century of the child: an era in which modern societies would value and protect children, sheltering them from violence and poverty. Yet this hopeful vision was marred by the harsh realities of migration, displacement, and armed conflict. Small Stories of War grapples with the meanings and memories of childhood and wartime by asking new questions about lived experience. Spanning the First World War to the early twenty-first century and featuring chapters about Canada, Australia, Germany, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and northern Uganda, this volume asks how young people encountered and responded to armed conflict. How did children, youth, and their families make sense of war in the violent twentieth century? How have they shared their stories and experiences of violence and trauma? Analyzing a broad range of sources including family letters, oral history, and children’s artwork, contributors offer important insights into the production of historical knowledge with and about young people. Engaging with cutting-edge debates about emotions, temporality, space, and young people as political actors, Small Stories of War offers compelling new research and an interpretive toolkit that will benefit scholars from across the social sciences and humanities.

Introduction to Global Military History

Author : Jeremy Black
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040113818
Total Pages : 453 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis Introduction to Global Military History by : Jeremy Black

Download or read book Introduction to Global Military History written by Jeremy Black and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-19 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its fourth edition, Introduction to Global Military History is an accessible, up-to-date account of modern warfare from the eighteenth century to the present. The book engages with the social, cultural, political and economic contexts of war, examining the causes and consequences of conflict beyond national and chronological boundaries. It challenges the dominant Western-centric, technologically focused view of military history and instead emphasises the ranges of circumstances faced by both Western and non-Western powers and the absence of any one direction of development. The chapters present integrated discussions of land, naval and air conflicts, addressing continuities and the ways in which common experiences affected different spheres. This edition revises the text throughout, has increased focus on the developments of the 2000s and 2010s, and adds a new chapter on the 2020s. Supported by a variety of illustrations, maps and case studies, this study is a valuable resource for students of military history and general readers alike.

Material Traces of War

Author : Stacey Barker
Publisher : University of Ottawa Press
ISBN 13 : 0776629212
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Material Traces of War by : Stacey Barker

Download or read book Material Traces of War written by Stacey Barker and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume looks at Canadian women’s experiences of, and contributions to, the world wars through objects, images, and archival documents. The book tells the stories of women who worked as civilians, served in the military, volunteered their time, and grieved lost loved ones, through thematically organized vignettes. The authors place these personal narratives of individual woman, and their related material culture, in the wider context of the world wars while demonstrating that the experience of living through global conflict was as individual as a woman’s particular circumstances. Drawing from the collections of the Canadian War Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and other public and private collections in Canada, Material Traces of War brings largely unknown material culture collections to public view and draws attention to the untold stories of women and war.

Canada to Ireland

Author : Michele Holmgren
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228009588
Total Pages : 427 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Canada to Ireland by : Michele Holmgren

Download or read book Canada to Ireland written by Michele Holmgren and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Irish writers played a key role in transatlantic cultural conversations – among Canada, Britain, France, America, and Indigenous nations – that shaped Canadian nationalism. Nationalism in Ireland was likewise influenced by the literary works of Irish migrants and visitors to Canada. Canada to Ireland explores the poetry and prose of twelve Irish writers and nationalists in Canada between 1788 and 1900, including Thomas Moore, Adam Kidd, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, James McCarroll, Nicholas Flood Davin, and Isabella Valancy Crawford. Many of these writers were involved in Irish political causes, including those of the Patriots, the United Irish, Emancipation, Repeal, and Young Ireland, and their work explores the similar ways in which nationalists in Ireland and Indigenous and settler communities in Canada retained their cultural identities and sought autonomy from Britain. Initially writing for an audience in Ireland, they highlighted features of the landscape and culture that they regarded as distinctively Canadian and that were later invoked as powerful unifying symbols by Canadian nationalists. Michele Holmgren shows how these Irish writers and movements are essential to understanding the tenor of early Canadian literary nationalism and political debates concerning Confederation, imperial unity, and western expansion. Canada to Ireland convincingly demonstrates that Canadian cultural nationalism left its mark on both countries. Contemporary decolonization movements in Canada and current cultural exchanges between Ireland and Indigenous peoples make this a timely and relevant study.

Harriet’s Legacies

Author : Ronald Cummings
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228012201
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Harriet’s Legacies by : Ronald Cummings

Download or read book Harriet’s Legacies written by Ronald Cummings and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-05-15 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historic freedom fighter and conductor of the Underground Railroad Harriet Tubman risked her life to ferry enslaved people from America to freedom in Canada. Her legacy instigates and orients this exploration of the history of Black lives and the future of collective struggle in Canada. Harriet’s Legacies recuperates the significance of Tubman’s time in Canada as more than just an interlude in her American narrative: it is a new point from which to think about Black diasporic mobilities, possibilities, and histories. Through essays and creative works this collection articulates new territory for Tubman in relation to the Black Atlantic archive, connecting her legacies of survival, freedom, and cultural expression within a transnational framework. Contributors take up the question of legacy in ways that remap discourses of genealogy and belonging, positioning Tubman as an important part of today’s freedom struggles. Integrating scholarship with creative and curatorial practices, the volume expands conversations about culture and expression in African Canadian life across art, literature, performance, politics, and public pedagogy. Considering questions of culture, community, and futures, Harriet’s Legacies explores what happened in the wake of Tubman’s legacy and situates Canada as a key part of that dialogue.

A Church at War

Author : Alan Bowker
Publisher : University of Ottawa Press
ISBN 13 : 0776642162
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis A Church at War by : Alan Bowker

Download or read book A Church at War written by Alan Bowker and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One hundred and forty-one people from MacKay Presbyterian Church, in Ottawa, served in the First World War. This is an astonishing record, but one that was by no means uncommon in Canada. Why did these men, their families, and their church enlist in this great war for “justice, truth, and righteousness, and for the Glory of God”? What was the impact of war on the surviving soldiers as they and their families adjusted to a changed world, to permanent injuries and to painful memories? This study of the experience of one church at war weaves together the stories of soldiers on the battlefields of Europe with those of the families who waited and prayed, enduring privation, fear, loneliness, and grief. It centres on the 19 men who fell in the war — some as heroes in desperate battles, others with tragic randomness or from illness, several with no known graves — and the widows they left to cope as best they could, the children who grew up without fathers, and the families who mourned their loss even as they took pride in their sacrifice. Using new methods including online research and the tools of genealogical study to bring to life people who did not leave a rich legacy of information on their lives and families, this study of a church at war deepens our understanding of the social history of Canada’s participation in the First World War, and provides a model for research on churches, communities, and institutions.

Mrs Dalgairns's Kitchen

Author : Mary F. Williamson
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228007887
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Mrs Dalgairns's Kitchen by : Mary F. Williamson

Download or read book Mrs Dalgairns's Kitchen written by Mary F. Williamson and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When The Practice of Cookery first appeared in Edinburgh and London editions in 1829, reviewers hailed it as one of the best cookbooks available. The book was unique not only in being wholly original, but also for its broad culinary influences, incorporating recipes from British North America, the United States, England, Scotland, France, and India. Catherine Emily Callbeck Dalgairns was born in 1788. Though her contemporaries understood her to be a Scottish author, she lived her first twenty-two years in Prince Edward Island. Charlottetown was home for much longer than the twelve years she spent in London or her mere six years' residency in Dundee, Scotland, by the time of the cookbook’s first appearance. In Mrs Dalgairns's Kitchen, Mary Williamson reclaims Dalgairns and her book's Canadian roots. During her youth, the popular cookbook author would have had experience of Acadian, Mi'kmaq, and Scottish Highlands foods and ways of cooking. Her mother had come from Boston, inspiring the cookbook's several American recipes; Dalgairns's brothers-in-law lived in India, reflected in the chapter devoted to curry recipes. Williamson consults the publisher's surviving archives to offer insights into the world of early nineteenth-century publishing, while Elizabeth Baird updates Dalgairns's recipes for the modern kitchen. Both an enticing history of the seminal cookbook and a practical guide for readers and cooks today, Mrs Dalgairns's Kitchen offers an intimate look at the tastes and smells of an early nineteenth-century kitchen.

University Women

Author : Sara Z. MacDonald
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 022800991X
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis University Women by : Sara Z. MacDonald

Download or read book University Women written by Sara Z. MacDonald and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bessie Scott, nearing the end of her first year at university in the spring of 1890, recorded in her diary: “Wore my gown for first time! It didn’t seem at all strange to do so.” Often deemed a cumbersome tradition by men, the cap and gown were dearly prized by women as an outward sign of their hard-won admission to the rank of undergraduates. For the first generations of university women, higher education was an exhilarating and transformative experience, but these opportunities would narrow in the decades that followed. In University Women Sara MacDonald explores the processes of integration and separation that marked women’s contested entrance into higher education. Examining the period between 1870 and 1930, this book is the first to provide a comparative study of women at universities across Canada. MacDonald concludes that women’s higher education cannot be seen as a progressive narrative, a triumphant story of trailblazers and firsts, of doors being thrown open and staying open. The early promise of equal education was not fulfilled in the longer term, as a backlash against the growing presence of women on campuses resulted in separate academic programs, closer moral regulation, and barriers that restricted their admission into the burgeoning fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The modernization of higher education ultimately marginalized women students, researchers, and faculty within the diversified universities of the twentieth century. University Women uncovers the systemic inequalities based on gender, race, and class that have shaped Canadian higher education. It is indispensable reading for those concerned with the underrepresentation of girls and women in STEM and current initiatives to address issues of access and equity within our academic institutions.

Canadian Literary Fare

Author : Nathalie Cooke
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228018021
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Canadian Literary Fare by : Nathalie Cooke

Download or read book Canadian Literary Fare written by Nathalie Cooke and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2023-05-15 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When writers place food in front of their characters – who after all do not need sustenance – they are asking readers to be alert to the meaning and implication of food choices. As readers begin to listen closely to these cues, they become attuned to increasingly layered stories about why it matters what foods are selected, prepared, served, or shared, and with whom, where, and when. In Canadian Literary Fare Nathalie Cooke and Shelley Boyd explore food voices in a wide range of Canadian fiction, drama, and poetry, drawing from their formational blog series with Alexia Moyer. Thirteen short vignettes delve into metaphorical taste sensations, telling of how single ingredients such as garlic or ginger, or food items such as butter tarts or bannock, can pack a hefty symbolic punch in literary contexts. A chapter on Canada’s public markets finds literary food voices sounding a largely positive note, just as Canadian journalists trumpet Canada’s bountiful and diverse foodways. But in chapters on literary representations of bison and Kraft Dinner, Cooke and Boyd bear witness to narratives of hunger, food scarcity, and social inequality with poignancy and insistence. Canadian Literary Fare pays heed to food voices in the works of Tomson Highway, Rabindranath Maharaj, Alice Munro, M. NourbeSe Philip, Eden Robinson, Fred Wah, and more, inviting readers to listen for stories of foodways in the literatures of Canada and beyond.

Hall-Dennis and the Road to Utopia

Author : Josh Cole
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228007186
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Hall-Dennis and the Road to Utopia by : Josh Cole

Download or read book Hall-Dennis and the Road to Utopia written by Josh Cole and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The quarter century that followed the end of the Second World War was marked by intense social and economic transformation: the changing face of postwar capitalism, a revolution in communications technology, the rise of youth culture, and the pronounced ascent of individual freedom all contributed to a dramatic push to remake, and thus improve, society. This push was especially felt within education, the primary vehicle for modernizing the postwar world from the ground up. Hall-Dennis and the Road to Utopia explores this moment of renewal through a powerful and influential education reform project: 1968's Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario. The Hall-Dennis report, as it became known, urged Ontarians to accept a new vision of education in which students were no longer organized in classes, their progress no longer measured by grades, and their experience no longer characterized by the painful acquisition of subjects, but rather by a joyous and open-ended process of learning. This new, democratic system of education was associated with the highest ideals of postwar progress, liberalism, and humanism, yet its recommendations were paradoxically both profoundly radical and fundamentally conservative. Its avant-garde research strategies and controversial "post-literate" curricular reforms were balanced by a pedagogical approach designed to mould students into obedient citizens and productive economic actors. As Canadians once again find themselves asking fundamental questions about the aims and objectives of education under radically changing circumstances, Josh Cole revisits Hall-Dennis to show how the committee and its report represent a significant moment in Canadian cultural and political history, a prescient document in the history of education, and a revealing expression of the fragmentary circumstances of global modernity in the second half of the twentieth century.

Blacks in Canada

Author : Robin W. Winks
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228007909
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Blacks in Canada by : Robin W. Winks

Download or read book Blacks in Canada written by Robin W. Winks and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blacks in Canada journeys from the introduction of slavery in 1628 to the first wave of Caribbean immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. Heralded in the Literary Review of Canada as one of the one hundred most important Canadian books, this enduring work by Yale University's Robin W. Winks offers a wealth of information for fresh interpretation. Now, fifty years from its original printing, this third edition includes a foreword by George Elliott Clarke, E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. Clarke's contribution adds a necessary critical lens through which twenty-first-century readers should view Winks's research. The longevity of Blacks in Canada is due to an impressive array of primary and secondary materials that illuminate the experiences of Black immigrants to Canada. These experiences include the forced migration of enslaved Black people brought to Nova Scotia and the Canadas by Loyalists at the end of the American Revolution, Black refugees who fled to Nova Scotia following the War of 1812, Jamaican Maroons, and fugitive slaves who fled to British North America. The book also highlights Black West Coast businessmen who helped found British Columbia, particularly Victoria, and Black settlement in the prairie provinces. Crucially, Blacks in Canada investigates the French and English periods of slavery, the abolitionist movement in Canada, and the role played by Canadians in the broader continental antislavery crusade, as well as Canadian adaptations to nineteenth- and twentieth-century racial mores.

Take a Number

Author : Elisabeth Gidengil
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 022800456X
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Take a Number by : Elisabeth Gidengil

Download or read book Take a Number written by Elisabeth Gidengil and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by American studies of the impact of government programs on clients' political activity, Take a Number breaks new ground by investigating the lessons that people draw from their experiences with government bureaucracies, reaching very different conclusions about the effects of program participation in Canada. People's experiences with service providers matter. Far from being de-politicizing, negative experiences can be empowering, stimulating greater political interest and more political activity. In contrast to the findings of some American studies, there is no evidence that these encounters leave claimants in Canada with the sense that they are neither legitimate nor effective actors in the public sphere. Rather than discouraging participation in politics, being a recipient of means-tested benefits likewise seems to be politically mobilizing. Based on extensive survey data, Take a Number casts new light on the problem of non-take-up of social benefits. Elisabeth Gidengil reveals that those who are most likely to benefit are often unaware of government programs. The more demanding and intrusive the claiming process, the more likely claimants are to find it difficult to access the program. These experiences with government programs prove to have larger implications for users' confidence in institutions and their satisfaction with democracy. A wide-ranging study of the politicizing effects of social program participation, Take a Number introduces a compelling new dimension to our understanding of why some citizens are politically active while others remain quiescent.