Disconnect: Why Americans Don't Understand the World and How We Can Learn

About the Book

About a billion people around the world suffer from extreme poverty, scraping by on a dollar or two a day. They go to bed hungry, catch diseases that are easily eradicable, and don’t have a school where they can learn to read. Millions of Americans care about global poverty, but not enough of us.

Our problem is that we are too ignorant about the wider world. Most of us can’t find Bangla Desh or Mali on the map. We can’t identify countries by religion, language, or population size. Too many politicians  share the ignorance of the public. Some of them encourage it. That’s how we blundered into Iraq and abandoned Africa to malaria and warlords.

 Disconnect argues that we can learn about the world by actively addressing global problems through our own communities. For example, Chicago links one school with students  in Morocco, and Fargo, North Dakota has a "sister" in China. San Diego volunteers have a sister cities program in Afghanistan, and tiny Amesbury, Ma. built a school library in Esabulu, Kenya. Women’s groups are working in Sudan and Rwanda. Many Americans are using their passion for sport, justice, or health care to partner with people in Pakistan, Guatemala and Haiti who have something to teach us all about courage and wisdom.

This book tells the stories of Americans who are blazing the way, pioneers of the new century.

About the Author

Mark Robert Schneider teaches World History at Suffolk University and Bridgewater State College in the Boston area. He is the author of “We Return Fighting”: The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age, which was a finalist for three prestigious prizes in history.