The Economic Research Service offers state profiles that include income and poverty rates for rural and urban dwellers.

Read a report called “Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences,” posted on the website of the Social Science Research Council. It examines issues of race and racism revealed by Katrina, and contains the links to writings on the hurricane by more than 35 academics.

Read a June 2, 2006, National Public Radio article about a surge in immigrant day workers helping with the demolition and rebuilding work in New Orleans. These immigrants – undocumented or contract workers – often lack decent housing and food.

Rachel Baum is deputy director of the Sam & Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also teaches courses on the Holocaust, contemporary American Jewish identity and Jewish feminism. Additionally, she co-directs the Stephen Weinstein Holocaust Symposium, an international gathering of Holocaust scholars.

Jack Kugelmass is an anthropology professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he is also director of its Jewish studies center. He specializes in American and European Jewry, Israel and Jews in New York.

Nov 13, 2012, The Atlantic article about the weakening strength of Evangelicals in presidential elections, demonstrated in the 2012 election, and the increasing influence of minority voters in the U.S.

Read a June 21, 2012 Christianity Today article about Barack Obama and what Christians think they know about his faith.

Riv-Ellen Prell is a history professor and chair of the American studies program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She is an expert on women in Judaism and is the editor of Women Remaking American Judaism. She says Jews should be concerned with effectively understanding the meaning of change in Jewish life, including intermarriage, falling birth […]

Hasia Diner is a professor of American Jewish history, Hebrew and Judaic studies and director of the Center for American Jewish History at New York University in New York City. She is co-author of Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America From Colonial Times to the Present. She says a major problem facing […]