Jerry Carrier is a nationally-recognized educator in class, poverty, affordable housing and economic development. He has taught and developed curriculum for universities, state and local governments, schools, and non profits.  

Carrier grew up in poverty and as a child lived in a public housing project, an abandoned Navy hospital, ‘en el barrio,’ a rented farmhouse, and a rural wood-heated cabin. In twelve years he attended six elementary schools, a middle school, and two high schools before graduating.  He went to work at the age of twelve as a busboy and dishwasher in a railroad depot. He worked various full time jobs through junior high, high school and college supporting his family. He is the first in his family to graduate from high school and college. 

Mr. Carrier is a faculty member at the National Graduate School for Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University and for the National Neighborworks Training Institutes. He has worked for over thirty years in community economic development and public administration as an executive director of several nonprofits, a community action agency, a housing authority, and in local governments as an economic development director and planner, and has also been a city manager of several cities.  He has also been on the Boards of Director of five nonprofits and a school.

Mr. Carrier’s columns on class, economics, poverty, and politics have been published in over a dozen newspapers and he has been a contributing writer to many nonprofit and government texts on these subjects. He and his family live in Lakeville, Minnesota.

Written for a general audience, 'Tapestry' explores the myths of American culture and reveals surprising cultural roots including the fact that American democracy and representative government were inspired more by Native American ways than by the...

Written for a general audience, 'Tapestry' explores the myths of American culture and reveals surprising cultural roots including the fact that American democracy and representative government were inspired more by Native American ways than by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Capitalism has become an unchallenged idea, a cultural universal, and so dogmatic that coupled with Christianity it has become America's dominant religion. However, capitalism is a 19th-century concept created for the bygone industrial era. Now the system is showing decay. Unfortunately, America is an ethnocentric country whose jingoistic belief in its own exceptionalism may prevent needed change. American culture has been both inclusive and intolerant. Today it stands at a crossroad and must decide what road to take. Are we to enter a renaissance or a dark age?

Table of Contents Introduction to American Culture Chapter 1. American Ethnocentrism & the Myth of American Exceptionalism Chapter 2. Native Roots Chapter 3. Latinos, Hispanics, Chicanos, Tejanos, and

Table of Contents Introduction to American Culture Chapter 1. American Ethnocentrism & the Myth of American Exceptionalism Chapter 2. Native Roots Chapter 3. Latinos, Hispanics, Chicanos, Tejanos, and Nuyoricans Chapter 4. African-American Culture Chapter 5. Asian-Americans Chapter 6. The European-Americans Chapter 7. Canadian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Polynesians and Mixed Races Chapter 8. The American Language Chapter 9. American Religion and Belief Systems Chapter 10. Regional Cultures Chapter 11. The 1950s Chapter 12. Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies, and the 1960s Counter�­Culture Chapter 13. Radio & Television Chapter 14. The Theatre & Movies Chapter 15. Literacy, Education and Literature Chapter 16. Blues and Jazz Chapter 17. American Gun Culture Chapter 18. American Military Culture Chapter 19. American Oil Culture Chapter 20. Class & Culture Chapter 21. Immigration, Migration and Mobility Chapter 22. American Cyber Culture Chapter 23. The American Cult of Personality Chapter 24. American Economics and the Religion of Capitalism Chapter 25. Anti-Communism'The Ultimate In American Xenophobia Chapter 26. Conclusions From American Culture Bibliography Acknowledgements Index