Money Changes Everything A Bedford Spotlight Reader

Readings by a range of economists, philosophers, reporters, artists, and ordinary citizens explore questions around the concept and institution of money to prepare you to write about related topics in Money Changes Everything.

Lawrence Weinstein taught the first-year writing course at Harvard University and cofounded Harvard’s Writing Center. For nearly thirty years, he was a member of the English Department at Bentley University, where he directed the Writing Center and the Expository Writing Program. His book on the teaching of writing, Writing at the Threshold, was a longtime bestseller of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Other books by Weinstein include Grammar for the Soul, Grammar Moves (with his colleague Thomas Finn), and Writing Doesn’t Have to Be Lonely. Plays by Weinstein have been performed in Boston, Dallas, and New York.

1. Can We Buy Happiness?

David G. Myers, The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People

The Roper Center, The Good Life

Charles Murray, What’s So Bad About Being Poor?

Barbara Ehrenreich, Serving in Florida

Rebecca Curtis, Twenty Grand

Juliet Schor, Spending Becomes You

MasterCard, Priceless

Elizabeth Warren, The Vanishing Middle Class

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Thomas A. Pyszczynski, Lethal Consumption: Death-Denying Materialism

2. How Does Money Shape Relationships?

Melanie Scheller, On the Meaning of Plumbing and Poverty

Norman Rockwell, New Kids in the Neighborhood

David Amsden, What’s a Little Money Between Friends?

Mary Loftus, Till Debt Do Us Part

Carey Goldberg, Shaken Baby Cases on the Increase

Mary Kay Foundation , Survey of Shelters for Women

Meera Nair, My Inheritance

3. Is Money To Blame for Unethical Conduct?

Horatio Alger, Excerpt from Ragged Dick

David Callahan, Cheating in a Bottom-line Economy

Mark Dowie, Pinto Madness

Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits

Occupy Wall Street, You Can’t Evict an Idea Whose Time Has Come

Arianna Huffington, CSI USA: Who Killed the American Dream?

Bradley Smith, Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform

4. Can Huge Differences in Wealth Be Justified?

Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson

Michael Powell, Wealth, Race and the Great Recession

Briallen Hopper and Johanna Hopper, Should Working-Class People Get B.A.’s and Ph.D.’s?

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Income Gains at the Top

Arthur C. Brooks, Inequality and (Un)happiness in America

Georges de la Tour, The Fortune Teller

Diego Rivera, The Night of the Rich and The First Tractor

Warren Buffett, Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Maimonides, Mishneh Torah

Peter Singer, Rich and Poor

5. Has Money Blinded Us to Higher Values?

Parade Magazine, What People Earn

Ann Crittenden, from The Price of Motherhood

Slate Magazine, Gender Income Inequality by State and County

Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: Military Service

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dollar Sign

Murray Sperber, College Sports, Inc.

Mark Slouka, Quitting the Paint Factory

David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, Does God Want You to Be Rich?

Quentin Massys, The Banker and His Wife

E.F. Schumacher, Buddhist Economics

Sundry Authors, Has the Pursuit of Money Become a Religion?