Margolin, Leslie 1945-

PERSONAL:

Born 1945.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Counselor Education, College of Education, University of Iowa, N346 Lindquist Center, Iowa City, IA 52242.

CAREER:

University of Iowa, Iowa City, professor of psychology.

WRITINGS:

Goodness Personified: The Emergence of Gifted Children, Aldine de Gruyter (New York, NY), 1994.

Under the Cover of Kindness: The Invention of Social Work, foreword by Eileen Gambrill, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1997.

Murderess! The Chilling True Story of the Most Infamous Woman Ever Electocuted, Pinnacle Books (New York, NY), 1999.

MYSTERY NOVELS

Damaged, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2004.

The Adulteress, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Leslie Margolin, a professor of psychology at the University of Iowa, has written a number of books on a range of subjects. Under the Cover of Kindness: The Invention of Social Work looks at the historical role of the social worker and suggests that social work as a practice may not necessarily be a helpful institution. Margolin looks both at individuals and broad practices throughout the past decades, examining ways in which social workers abused their trust or failed to aid those in their charge. Jerry Floersch, in a review posted at the Case Western Reserve Web site, remarked: "I find the book's strength in its exemplary reversal of the idea of a benevolent helper. I find its central weakness in its overreliance on a Foucauldian analysis." He went on to note: "Margolin's central error is, then, the epistemic fallacy: reducing what we know to how we know it." W. Andrew Achenbaum, in a review for the Journal of Social History, wrote: "This work critically examines the language of professional discourse in an effort to reveal implicit assumptions and inconsistencies. Margolin is provocative, and his book worth reading, but I am more impressed by his rhetoric than persuaded by his evidence."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, March 1, 1995, Spencer E. Cahill, review of Goodness Personified: The Emergence of Gifted Children, p. 1356; January 1, 1999, Jerry Floersch, review of Under the Cover of Kindness: The Invention of Social Work, p. 1216.

Contemporary Sociology, September 1, 1997, Donna Lee King, review of Goodness Personified, p. 614.

Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, January 1, 1999, Edward J. Gumz, review of Under the Cover of Kindness, p. 94.

International Social Work, October 1, 1998, Bob Mullaly, review of Under the Cover of Kindness, p. 535.

Journal of Adolescence, June 1, 1995, Hedy Cleaver, review of Goodness Personified, p. 373.

Journal of American History, September 1, 1998, Michael Reisch, review of Under the Cover of Kindness, p. 699.

Journal of Social History, June 22, 1999, W. Andrew Achenbaum, review of Under the Cover of Kindness, p. 957.

New York Law Journal, February 29, 2000, Lawrence Fleischer, review of Murderess! The Chilling True Story of the Most Infamous Woman Ever Electrocuted, p. 2.

Reference & Research Book News, November 1, 1997, review of Under the Cover of Kindness, p. 97.

Social Service Review, December 1, 1998, Jerome C. Wakefield, "Foucauldian Fallacies: An Essay Review of Leslie Margolin's Under the Cover of Kindness," p. 545.

Sociological Inquiry, March 22, 1995, Roger Martin, review of Goodness Personified, p. 239.

ONLINE

Case Western Reserve University, Mandel School of Applied Sciences Web site,http://msass.case.edu/ (June 20, 2007), Jerry Floersch, review of Under the Cover of Kindness.

University of Iowa College of Education Web site,http://www.education.uiowa.edu/ (June 20, 2007), faculty biography.