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Women and children compose the overwhelming majority of the people of the world in poverty across the globe. Suffer the LittleChildren: National and International Dimensions of Child Poverty and Public Policy, examines the burden of poverty on children, and the implications of that poverty upon the lives and future mobility of generations of children. One of the best aspects of this body of work is that it places the problem of child poverty in international context. In essence, the universality of child poverty is illuminated as well as the relationship between women's status and child poverty and, the greater likelihood that children of color, in particular, across the globe will live in poverty.

Living on the Boundaries: Urban Marginality in National and International Contexts is a volume long overdue. With the impact of the Great Recession of 2009 and its resultant impacts on a global scale, we are witnessing crises and institutional collapse on a major scale. Systemic problems go well beyond institutional crises brought on by collapsed economies and corporate excesses, but involve and make worse issues of inequality, racism, sexism, inadequate housing and health care, un/employment, poverty, underachievement, inadequate schooling and crime and justice. Periodically, our social science research and public policies have tended to assume that our social problems and social ills could be resolved. However with growing income inequality, there is notable tension developing between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. During periods of tight economies, contemporary thinking is reminiscent of Social Darwinism, that social ills and social problems can be traced to laziness, lack of ambition and deficiencies among the lower social classes. The shifting nature of work, global economic competition and technological advance has and will continue to have marked influence on jobs, income and social mobility in both developed and developing countries. The purpose of Living on the Boundaries: Urban Marginality in National and International Contexts is to raise questions and provide its readers with well-rounded and expansive frames of analysis to question, to view and to improve upon the societies in which they live. Our purpose will be accomplished if this volume helps its readers to begin their own process of questioning and addressing the substantive issues involved.

Power, Voice and the Public Good: Schooling and Education in Global Societies comes at a most propitious time in our tumultuous world. With the dawn of the new millennium, our global problems of poverty, hunger, disease, war, inadequate schooling, abuse and exploitation, homelessness, and natural disaster have become ever more challenging. That such issues have profound consequences on children across the globe is of no small consequence. It would appear that issues of social equity, social justice and democracy have been subverted in the quest for profit, dominance and social control. Amidst it all, we have become borderless societies where problems from one nation state encumber the resources and priorities of other nation states. Power, Voice and the Public Good: Schooling and Education in Global Societies, while focusing largely on schooling and education in global contexts, provides a lens to view the nexus between schooling and many of the aforementioned global problems which confound us all. Many years ago, the noted anthropologist Margaret Mead stated “There is no greater insight into the future than to recognize that when we save our children, we save ourselves” (Mead, 1991, p. 2).¹ Her statement is as true today as it was many years ago. The chapters in this volume present challenges, but they also present opportunities for all of us to bring our best judgments and efforts to confront the very interdependent cultural and material dilemmas whose resolutions are necessary for global survival and growth.

You get treated like an animal …. Just because I’m homeless it doesn’t mean that I was … nothing yesterday. I’m living the real deal.Quote by N. Touray, in Brown (2011, p. 16) There's sort of a Third world emerging right in our backyard. You know we talk about developing countries, but look at what's going on here (in the US).Quote by E. Bassuk (December 2011) in “America's Youngest Outcasts: New Report Card on Child Homelessness” (p. 35).