I find myself telling students all the time that my graduate work at Berkeley gave me the tools for learning. I never took courses in what later became my fields of specialization, but my academic roots are clearly reflected in my approach to each of them. After my dissertation was published in 1984 as The State and Working Women: A Comparative Study of Britain and Sweden, I turned to a newly evolving interest in health care. It took me several years to learn the field and to place myself in it. My second book, Realignments in the Welfare State: Health Policy in the United, States, Britain and Canada was published in 1996. The book I have just finished came more quickly, even though I once again became immersed in totally new areas of social thought. From Quackery to Legitimacy: Mainstreaming Alternative Medicine (or something like this'the title is still tentative) should see the light of print in 2003.
I have moved from coast to coast a few times (Barnard College, UCSD, Columbia University, and now the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University), teaching courses on social theory, gender, comparative welfare states, health care and health policy. I'm still married to John, my high school sweetheart, and our son Andreas has been a joy to us both.