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Your complete guide to Social Security retirement and medical benefits
Determining whether to file early for retirement benefits or wait until age 70 can be complicated. Claiming retirement benefits early can lower your benefits, but it affects dependents and survivors benefits differently. Learn this and more with Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions--completely updated for 2025.
Social Security benefits. Figure out how to get retirement, disability, dependents, and survivors benefits, or Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Decide whether it's best to claim benefits early, at full retirement age, or not until you turn 70--and how to time your claims so you and your spouse get the best benefits.
Medicare & Medicaid. Learn how to qualify for and enroll in both programs, including Medicare Part D drug coverage.
Medigap insurance & Medicare Advantage plans. Compare Medigap and Medicare Advantage plans, and choose what's best for you.
Government pensions & veterans benefits. Discover when and how to claim the benefits you have earned.
What's New in 2025?
Whether you're looking for yourself or helping a parent, you'll find valuable information here to help get the benefits you've earned.
After an injury: Settle your claim the right way
When you've been hurt in an accident, dealing with insurance companies and their lawyers can feel daunting. But with the right guide, you can handle a claim yourself--and save thousands of dollars.
How to Win Your Personal Injury Claim leads you through the insurance claim process, step by step. After almost any kind of accident, from a car crash to a slip and fall, you'll learn how to:
This completely updated edition of How to Win Your Personal Injury Claim includes the latest state-by-state lawsuit filing deadlines and small claims court limits.
Set in 1973 Greece during the military dictatorship, Shades of Resistance follows thirty-year-old American Jonas Korda as he stumbles blindly into the islands of the Aegean.
Attempting to physically escape from a life--a disillusioned engagement with 1960s politics and an ill-fated sort-of-marriage--that he has long since emotionally fled, Jonas is instead faced with the question of his capacity for true human connections.
Unwittingly he becomes involved with two expatriate Greek musicians who had self-exiled from their homeland six years before, when the military junta took power, but are now returning to create oppositional energy through the form they know best: traditional Greek poetry set to the music of a composer who's been banned by the brutal and surreal junta. Through the force of their commitment and sacrifice, Jonas is reacquainted with the relation between the heart and the larger world.
Jonas is also confronted, sequentially, by two women who in very different ways bring his emotional struggles into focus. One--a Greek-Canadian searching for her father lost somewhere to the depredations of the dictatorship--who seeks to draw him in. The other--an alienated Belgian painter turning her back on a life of artistic and gender frustrations--who holds him away.
The novel's lyrically evoked Greek islands are counterpoint to political terror captured with both shuddering intensity and mordant black humor. Shades of Resistance is that rare work of fiction that explores the relationship between the personal and the political, the heightened responses of a man trapped in a moment of history.
Set in 1973 Greece during the military dictatorship, Shades of Resistance follows thirty-year-old American Jonas Korda as he stumbles blindly into the islands of the Aegean.
Attempting to physically escape from a life--a disillusioned engagement with 1960s politics and an ill-fated sort-of-marriage--that he has long since emotionally fled, Jonas is instead faced with the question of his capacity for true human connections.Unwittingly he becomes involved with two expatriate Greek musicians who had self-exiled from their homeland six years before, when the military junta took power, but are now returning to create oppositional energy through the form they know best: traditional Greek poetry set to the music of a composer who's been banned by the brutal and surreal junta. Through the force of their commitment and sacrifice, Jonas is reacquainted with the relation between the heart and the larger world.
Jonas is also confronted, sequentially, by two women who in very different ways bring his emotional struggles into focus. One--a Greek-Canadian searching for her father lost somewhere to the depredations of the dictatorship--who seeks to draw him in. The other--an alienated Belgian painter turning her back on a life of artistic and gender frustrations--who holds him away.
The novel's lyrically evoked Greek islands are counterpoint to political terror captured with both shuddering intensity and mordant black humor. Shades of Resistance is that rare work of fiction that explores the relationship between the personal and the political, the heightened responses of a man trapped in a moment of history.
This book explains the concept of adding value and shows staff at libraries and other organizations why they need to take steps now to ensure they are adding new value to their communities--whether it be a local town or neighborhood, a faculty and student body, or a school.
Value is at the core of every organization's purpose. Without value, organizations die. Libraries--as well as museums, archives, and galleries--have traditionally added value to their communities through their collections and services, but yesterday's collections and services are no longer enough. In order to remain sustainable, today's libraries, archives, museums, and galleries must explore new ways to add value that resonate in the lives of their customers. This unique book explains how addressing the 5 C's of adding value--content, context, connection, collaboration, and community--enables organizations to find new ways to invigorate their services, better serve their communities, and thrive today and tomorrow. It addresses adding value in the context of other key topics, such as crowdsourcing, embedded librarianship, makerspaces, self publishing, and repurposing spaces. Filled with charts, tables, screenshots, and other visual representation, this is a useful and provocative guide that anyone interested in vesting in the successful future of libraries, archives, and museums needs to read.
This guide provides library directors, managers, and administrators in all types of libraries with complete and up-to-date instructions on how to evaluate library services in order to improve them.
It's a fact: today's libraries must evaluate their services in order to find ways to better serve patrons and prove their value to their communities. In this greatly updated and expanded edition of Matthews' seminal text, you'll discover a breadth of tools that can be used to evaluate any library service, including newer tools designed to measure customer and patron outcomes. The book offers practical advice backed by solid research on virtually every aspect of evaluation, including quantitative and qualitative tools, data analysis, and specific recommendations for measuring individual services, such as technical services and reference and interlibrary loan. New chapters give readers effective ways to evaluate critical aspects of their libraries such as automated systems, physical space, staff, performance management frameworks, eBooks, social media, and information literacy. The author explains how broader and more robust adoption of evaluation techniques will help library managers combine traditional internal measurements, such as circulation and reference transactions, with more customer-centric metrics that reflect how well patrons feel they are served and how satisfied they are with the library. By applying this comprehensive strategy, readers will gain the ability to form a truer picture of their library's value to its stakeholders and patrons.
San Francisco, 1916. The streets
roiling: pitched battles between radical workers and the henchmen of industrial
barons, and between a vibrant, largely Italian immigrant anarchist milieu and
the forces of state and church. All in the looming shadow of Europe's raging
war, and of a fierce struggle over whether the U.S. should commit its might,
and human fodder, to the slaughter in the trenches.
Into this maelstrom arrives Kate
Jameson, a novice envoy from Washington tasked to secretly investigate the
tenor of support for war entry among San Francisco's business elite. She's also
hoping to glimpse her wayward daughter, Maggie, whose last message to Kate had
come from there. And, too, she's seeking the ghost of her husband Jamey, who
fifteen years earlier had landed there upon his return, shattered, from his
part in the U.S. occupation of the Philippines.
Arriving back in the city at the
same moment is Baldo Cavanaugh, a Sicilian-Irish son of San Francisco whose militant
beliefs and special skills have led him time and again to the violent extremes of
the city's turbulent history. And who now must confront the doubts and demons of
his own character, which he'd sought to escape by fleeing the city three years
before.
This stunning tale
explores how these two seemingly disparate characters become engaged with the city's
and nation's turmoil, and with the complexities of their related pasts in
Boston, Dublin, London, Cuba, and the Philippines. A vivid picture of a city
and a moment, the novel brilliantly reveals the explosive admixture of the
deeply personal and the deeply political.
San Francisco, 1916. The streets
roiling: pitched battles between radical workers and the henchmen of industrial
barons, and between a vibrant, largely Italian immigrant anarchist milieu and
the forces of state and church. All in the looming shadow of Europe's raging
war, and of a fierce struggle over whether the U.S. should commit its might,
and human fodder, to the slaughter in the trenches.
Into this maelstrom arrives Kate
Jameson, a novice envoy from Washington tasked to secretly investigate the
tenor of support for war entry among San Francisco's business elite. She's also
hoping to glimpse her wayward daughter, Maggie, whose last message to Kate had
come from there. And, too, she's seeking the ghost of her husband Jamey, who
fifteen years earlier had landed there upon his return, shattered, from his
part in the U.S. occupation of the Philippines.
Arriving back in the city at the
same moment is Baldo Cavanaugh, a Sicilian-Irish son of San Francisco whose militant
beliefs and special skills have led him time and again to the violent extremes of
the city's turbulent history. And who now must confront the doubts and demons of
his own character, which he'd sought to escape by fleeing the city three years
before.
This stunning tale
explores how these two seemingly disparate characters become engaged with the city's
and nation's turmoil, and with the complexities of their related pasts in
Boston, Dublin, London, Cuba, and the Philippines. A vivid picture of a city
and a moment, the novel brilliantly reveals the explosive admixture of the
deeply personal and the deeply political.
Your complete guide to Social Security retirement, Medicare or Medicaid benefits, and other federal benefits
If you want to get the highest possible retirement or pension income-not to mention the best medical coverage-turn to Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions to discover the benefits you're entitled to and how to claim them as easily as possible.
Navigate the complex and often daunting Social Security and Medicare systems using the resources and information in this complete guide. Learn about Medicare coverage, including Part D prescription drug coverage, and understand how Medicare Advantage and Medigap insurance plans work and which makes the most sense for you. Also learn how to claim disability benefits, veterans benefits, and federal retirement benefits.
Bonus: If you're denied any medical treatment or benefits, this book teaches you how to file an appeal with Medicare, Social Security, or your state's Medicaid agency.
This new edition has the latest benefit numbers for Social Security, Medicare, SSI, and veterans benefits and includes recent changes to Medicare and Medicaid coverage.
On November 7, 1938, a small, slight seventeen-year-old Polish-German Jew named Herschel Grynszpan entered the German embassy in Paris and shot dead a consular official. Three days later, in supposed response, Jews across Germany were beaten, imprisoned, and killed, their homes, shops, and synagogues smashed and burned--Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.
Based on the historical record and told through his letters from German prisons, the novel begins in 1936, when fifteen-year-old Herschel flees Germany. Penniless and alone, he makes it to Paris where he lives hand-to-mouth, his shadow existence mixing him with the starving and the wealthy, with hustlers, radicals, and seamy sides of Paris nightlife.
In 1938, the French state rejects refugee status for Herschel and orders him out of the country. With nowhere to go, and now sought by the police, he slips underground in immigrant east Paris.
Soon after, the Nazis round up all Polish Jews in Germany--including Herschel's family--and dump them on the Poland border. Herschel's response is to shoot the German official, then wait calmly for the French police.
June 1940, Herschel is still in prison awaiting trial when the Nazi army nears Paris. He is evacuated south to another jail but escapes into the countryside amid the chaos of millions of French fleeing the invasion. After an incredible month alone on the road, Herschel seeks protection at a prison in the far south of France. Two weeks later the French state hands him to the Gestapo.
The Nazis plan a big show trial, inviting the world press to Berlin for the spectacle, to demonstrate through Herschel that Jews had provoked the war. Except that Herschel throws a last-minute wrench in the plans, bringing the Nazi propaganda machine to a grinding halt. Hitler himself postpones the trial and orders that no decision be made about Herschel's fate until the Führer personally gives an order--one way or another.
Written specifically to address the library's role in education, this book provides guidance on performing assessment at academic institutions that will serve to improve teaching effectiveness and prove your library's impact on student learning outcomes--and thereby demonstrate your library's value.
Academic libraries are increasingly being asked to demonstrate their value as one of many units on campus, but determining the outcomes of an academic library within the context of its collegiate setting is challenging. This book explains and clarifies the practice of assessment in academic institutions, enabling library managers to better understand and explain the impact of the library on student learning outcomes, teaching effectiveness, and research productivity. Providing essential information for all college and university librarians, this volume discusses and summarizes the outcomes of research that has been conducted to investigate assessment within the context of higher education. This updated second edition incorporates additional research, examines new trends, and covers groundbreaking advances in digital assessment tools as well as the changes in the amount and forms of data utilized in the assessment process. The chapters address assessment from a campus setting and present data that demonstrate the value of the library within that setting in terms of learning, research, and overall impact. In sum, the book presents librarians with up-to-date, practical guidelines for planning and conducting assessment.
Baseball fans have long appreciated the value of keeping a scorecard, both as a record of the game and a predictor of future outcomes. What if we told you the same principle works for libraries?
The Balanced Scorecard is a performance measurement tool first popularized by Robert Kaplan and David Norton (who also penned the foreword to this book) in a 1993 Harvard Business Review article. It involves matching a variety of measures with one or more expected values--from each of four perspectives (financial, customer, internal process, and organizational readiness)--tracking results, and analyzing any variance between them. As in baseball, organizations come away with both a snapshot of the present and a sense of where they are headed.
Evaluation expert Joe Matthews has taken this basic model and, in six carefully illustrated steps, shows how any public library, regardless of size, can more effectively focus its resources, assess strategic impact, and in so doing better serve its community.
Librarians have historically relied on the perceived value or goodness of the public library as a means to garner financial support. Yet it is now becoming apparent that public libraries must demonstrate, using an acceptable methodology, the economic value of the library and its services. A compendium of valuable information about the research and literature surrounding this issue of demonstration, this book reviews the various approaches that have been used in assessing the public library's value.
Matthews suggests methods for a library to develop better means of communicating with their funding decision-makers and other stakeholders. By analyzing input, process, and output measures, and combining these with measures of the economic and social benefits produced by the library, he offers a portfolio of approaches that enable today's librarian to both measure effectiveness and to communicate its value to its stakeholders--the communities it serves.