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Dictionary of the Undoing
By John Freeman. 2019
For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)—it is the…
rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and the sense of community and collective conviction felt right. But the assaults continued—on citizens’ rights and long-held compacts, on the core principles of our culture and civilization, and on our language itself. Words seemed to be losing the meanings they once had and Freeman was compelled to return to their defense. The result is his Dictionary of the Undoing.From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen.With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.From the author of the landmark bestseller What's the Matter with Kansas?, a jaw-dropping investigation of the decades of deliberate—and…
lucrative—conservative misruleIn his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and corrupt Washington those politicians have given us. Casting his eyes from the Bush administration's final months of plunder to the earliest days of the Republican revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war. Washington itself has been remade into a golden landscape of super-wealthy suburbs and gleaming lobbyist headquarters—the wages of government-by-entrepreneurship practiced so outrageously by figures such as Jack Abramoff.It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as the permanent creed of state.Stamped with Thomas Frank's audacity, analytic brilliance, and wit, The Wrecking Crew is his most revelatory work yet—and his most important.Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests That Divide America
By Larry Elder. 2003
The Ten Things You Can't Say in America struck a chord with eager readers across the country, exposing truths others…
have been too afraid to address. In his new book, Elder is out to slay entrenched and enmeshed special interest groups, government agencies with the capacity to meddle in Americans' lives and businesses, lawmakers who continue a pattern of outrageous overtaxation, and those who would hamstring this country with good intentions.Showdown demonstrates how the nation would be better, stronger and safer with less gvernment intervention and how individuals would not only cope but thrive without the so-called safety net. Showdown is a call to arms for a truly free society. Elder discusses:- What a Republican-led government means for progress- Where a responsible government would put its citizens' tax dollars- Why racial and sex discrimination are non-issues in the 21st century.Larry Elders straight talk and common-sense solutions spare no one and will inspire his passionate and growing audience.Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing That Changed the Course of Civil Rights
By Doug Jones, Greg Truman. 2019
The story of the decades-long fight to bring justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, culminating…
in Sen. Doug Jones' prosecution of the last living bombers. On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed. The blast killed four young girls and injured twenty-two others. The FBI suspected four particularly radical Ku Klux Klan members. Yet due to reluctant witnesses, a lack of physical evidence, and pervasive racial prejudice the case was closed without any indictments.But as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously expressed it, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Years later, Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994, and US Attorney Doug Jones tried and convicted the final two in 2001 and 2002, representing the correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice nearly forty years in the making. Jones himself went on to win election as Alabama’s first Democratic Senator since 1992 in a dramatic race against Republican challenger Roy Moore.Bending Toward Justice is a dramatic and compulsively readable account of a key moment in our long national struggle for equality, related by an author who played a major role in these events. A distinguished work of legal and personal history, the book is destined to take its place as a canonical civil rights history.Betsy Ross and the Making of America
By Marla R. Miller. 2010
A richly woven biography of the beloved patriot Betsy Ross, and an enthralling portrait of everyday life in Revolutionary War-era…
PhiladelphiaBetsy Ross and the Making of America is the first comprehensively researched and elegantly written biography of one of America's most captivating figures of the Revolutionary War. Drawing on new sources and bringing a fresh, keen eye to the fabled creation of "the first flag," Marla R. Miller thoroughly reconstructs the life behind the legend. This authoritative work provides a close look at the famous seamstress while shedding new light on the lives of the artisan families who peopled the young nation and crafted its tools, ships, and homes.Betsy Ross occupies a sacred place in the American consciousness, and Miller's winning narrative finally does her justice. This history of the ordinary craftspeople of the Revolutionary War and their most famous representative will be the definitive volume for years to come.Terrorism and Political Contention: New Perspectives on North Africa and the Sahel Region (Perspectives on Development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region)
By János Besenyő, Leonid Issaev, Andrey Korotayev. 2024
Against the backdrop of terrorist activity and the emergence of new conflicts in the MENA region, this book identifies factors…
of political contestation and analyzes organizational forms and dynamics of terrorism and conflict in North Africa and the Sahel. Written by an international selection of authors from different fields, the book covers topics such as the radicalization of terrorist organizations operating in the region, the financing of terrorism, the role of migration, the radicalization of women, the influence and motives of great powers and external factors such as France in the region, and the impact of the war in Ukraine. The book appeals to scholars and students of politics and international relations as well as African and Middle Eastern studies.Migrants’: Global Pandemic and Beyond (Europe in a Global Context)
By Marco Caselli, Jörg Dürrschmidt, John Eade. 2024
This book analyses the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on three ethnic minorities in three European cities: Bangladeshi in London, Turks in Stuttgart and…
Peruvians in Milan. Considerable debate has emerged during the pandemic concerning its impact on minorities, and although considerable quantitative data has been generated by epidemiologists, qualitative studies also have great relevance, socially and culturally as well as institutionally. While in normal circumstances the position of migrant communities is associated with unequal access to scarce resources such as wealth, power and social prestige, the coronavirus pandemic shifted the focus to more specific variables: living in segmented or overcrowded conditions, working in jobs with higher risk exposure, difficulties with online schooling, and lack of access to health care and information.The book will therefore be of interest to researchers and students of sociology, anthropology, global studies, migration and urban studies.Reskilling America: Learning to Labor in the Twenty-First Century
By Katherine S. Newman, Hella Winston. 2016
From Katherine Newman, award-winning author of No Shame in My Game, and sociologist Hella Winston, a sharp and irrefutable call…
to reenergize this nation's long-neglected system of vocational trainingAfter decades of off-shoring and downsizing that have left blue collar workers obsolete and stranded, the United States is now on the verge of an industrial renaissance. Companies like Apple, BMW, Bosch, and Volkswagen are all opening plants and committing millions of dollars to build products right here on American soil. The only problem: we don't have a skilled enough labor pool to fill these positions, which are in many cases technically demanding and require specialized skills. A decades-long series of idealistic educational policies with the expressed goal of getting every student to go to college has left a generation of potential workers out of the system. Touted as a progressive, egalitarian institution providing opportunity even to those with the greatest need, the American secondary school system has in fact deepened existing inequalities, leaving behind millions of youth, especially those who live in the de-industrialized Northeast and Midwest, without much of a future at all. We can do better, argue acclaimed sociologists Katherine Newman and Hella Winston. Taking a page from the successful experience of countries like Germany and Austria, where youth unemployment is a mere 7%, they call for a radical reevaluation of the idea of vocational training, long discredited as an instrument of tracking. The United States can prepare a new, high-performance labor force if we revamp our school system to value industry apprenticeship and rigorous technical education. By doing so, we will not only be able to meet the growing demand for skilled employees in dozens of sectors where employers decry the absence of well trained workers -- we will make the American Dream accessible to all.The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia
By Andrew Harding. 2016
"This is a triumph of a book: surprising, informative, and humane." —Alexander McCall Smith"Stunning." —Foreign Affairs"Pieces together Nur's astonishing biography…
and follows him when he became mayor in 2010 and tried to restore confidence and bring back investment to the battered Somali capital." —NPR“Part on-the-ground war reporting, part investigative biography, Harding’s book captures both the fragile hopes and the appalling violence of Somalia . . . .” —The New York Times**A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2017****One of Book Concierge's Best Books of 2016**In The Mayor of Mogadishu, one of the BBC’s most experienced foreign correspondents, Andrew Harding, reveals the tumultuous life of Mohamoud “Tarzan” Nur - an impoverished nomad who was abandoned in a state orphanage in newly independent Somalia, and became a street brawler and activist. When the country collapsed into civil war and anarchy, Tarzan and his young family became part of an exodus, eventually spending twenty years in north London.But in 2010 Tarzan returned, as Mayor, to the unrecognizable ruins of a city now almost entirely controlled by the Islamist militants of Al Shabab. For many in Mogadishu, and in the diaspora, Tarzan became a galvanizing symbol of courage and hope for Somalia. But for others, he was a divisive thug, who sank beneath the corruption and clan rivalries that continue, today, to threaten the country’s revival.The Mayor of Mogadishu is a rare an insider’s account of Somalia’s unraveling, and an intimate portrayal of one family’s extraordinary journey.The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment
By Geoffrey Kabaservice. 2004
How liberalism and one of the most dramatic eras in American history were shaped by an influential university president and…
his powerful circle of friendsYale's Kingman Brewster was the first and only university president to appear on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and the last of the great campus leaders to become an esteemed national figure. He was also the center of the liberal establishment—a circle of influential men who fought to keep the United States true to ideals and extend the full range of American opportunities to all citizens of every class and color. Using Brewster as his focal point, Geoffrey Kabaservice shows how he and his lifelong friends—Kennedy adviser McGeorge Bundy, Attorney General and statesman Elliot Richardson, New York mayor John Lindsay, Bishop Paul Moore, and Cyrus Vance, pillar of Washington and Wall Street—helped usher this country through the turbulence of the 1960s, creating a legacy that still survives. In a narrative that is as engaging and lively as it is meticulously researched, The Guardians judiciously and convincingly reclaims the importance of Brewster and his generation, illuminating their vital place in American history as the bridge between the old establishment and modern liberalism.A snappy book of simple conversational swaps that reveals how to talk so everyone will listen Words matter. They can…
inform, soothe, sting, reverberate, and leave scars. And the wrong words can turn off—literally—the listener, transforming what should be an exchange of information, feelings, and ideas into dead air time. So many of our dialogues with others are like scripts—we say the same things, ask the same questions, react in the same ways, and get the same (predictably bad) responses. Our verbal interactions with others often illustrate that famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different response. With quick-take visuals and a smart sense of how human beings really talk to each other, What to Say to Get Your Way can turn dead air time into something productive. It's a simple, effective toolbox that will train anyone to say what they mean effectively and powerfully.Mother Tongue: An American Life in Italy
By Wallis Wilde-Menozzi. 1997
A probing and poetic examination of language, food, faith, and family attachment in Italian life through the eyes of an…
American who moved to Parma with her husband and family. In the 1980s, the American writer Wallis Wilde-Menozzi moved permanently with her Italian husband and her daughter to Parma, a sophisticated city in northern Italy, where he became a professor of biology. Her search for rootedness in the city that was to be her home introduced her to complexities in her identity as she migrated into another language and looked for links beyond the joys of Verdi, Correggio, and Parmesan cheese, which visitors have rightly extolled for centuries. The local resistance to change perceived as individualistic led Wilde-Menozzi to explore the pull and challenge of difference and discover the backbone she needed for artistic freedom. In Mother Tongue, Wilde-Menozzi offers stories of far-sighted lives, remarkable Parma men and remarkable women, including the Renaissance abbess Giovanna Piacenza, the fighting Donella Rossi Sanvitale, and her own indefatigable mother-in-law. Framed with a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Patricia Hampl, this classic on diversity and tolerance, family, faith, and food in Italy and the United States is at once timeless and timely, a “large, beautiful window into the intelligent, literate, reflective life of Italy” (Shirley Hazzard).The Hunting of Hillary: The Forty-Year Campaign to Destroy Hillary Clinton
By Michael D'Antonio. 2020
"I'm biased! But I think Michael D'Antonio's book, cataloging decades of right-wing misogyny and mythmaking, is a stunner." - Hillary…
ClintonThe Hunting of Hillary traces how an entire industry of hate, lies, and fear was created to persecute Hillary Clinton for decades and profit from it.In TheHunting of Hillary, Pulitzer prize winning political reporter Michael D’Antonio details the years of lies and insults heaped upon Hillary Clinton as she pursued a life devoted to politics and policy. The worst took the form of sexism and misogyny, much of it barely disguised. A pioneer for women, Clinton was burdened in ways no man ever was. Defined by a right-wing conspiracy, she couldn’t declare what was happening lest she be cast as weak and whiny. Nevertheless, she persisted and wouldn't let them define her. As The Hunting of Hillary makes clear, her achievements have been all the more remarkable for the unique opposition she encountered. The 2016 presidential election can only be understood in the context of the primal and primitive response of those who just couldn’t imagine that a woman might lead. For those who seek to understand the experience of the most accomplished woman in American politics, TheHunting of Hillary offers insight. For those who recognized what happened to her, it offers affirmation. And for those who hope to carry Clinton’s work into the future, it offers inspiration and instruction.After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent
By Walter Laqueur. 2011
A master historian takes us deep into the heart of Europe's current political and financial crisisWalter Laqueur was one of…
the few experts who predicted Europe's current financial and political crisis when he wrote The Last Days of Europe six years ago. Now this master historian takes readers inside the European crisis that he foresaw. Ravaged by the world economic meltdown, increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas, and lacking a common foreign policy, Europe is in dire straits. With the authority that comes from thirty years of experience as an expert on political affairs, the author predicts the future prospects of this troubled continent. Europe is the United States' closest ally, and its prosperity is vital to American's success and security. This is a must-read for anyone invested in our country's future.In This Together: My Story
By Ann Romney. 2015
When Mitt and Ann Romney met in their late teens, a great American love story began. And their life together…
would be blessed: five healthy sons, financial security, and a home filled with joy. Despite the typical ups and downs, they had a storybook life.Then, in 1998, Ann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She couldn't believe it was real; there were no therapies or treatments to help her. Mitt told her that day that they would tackle the diagnosis as a team: They were in it together. "As long as it isn't fatal, we're fine. If you have to be in a wheelchair, I'll be right there to push it," he told her. And Ann thought, "But I'll be the one in the wheelchair." A caregiver and helper her whole life, she'd crossed a terrible invisible line. She wouldn't be able to care for her family anymore. She was the patient. Ann and Mitt would face the most frightening and humbling experience of their lives.From reflections on her early life, her marriage, and her diagnosis and recovery, the sources of her faith, and the stories of others who overcame adversity and inspired her to keep going, In This Together is a brave and deeply honest portrait of a family facing an unexpected blow, often in the most public of circumstances."A lot of people talk about a transformation that happens when life throws you a curve ball, and the big one in my life was my MS diagnosis. With all the blessings I've had, MS has been my greatest teacher: It has taught me about faith, compassion, and serving others. I've met many people along the way who've shared advice and demonstrated enormous resilience in the face of challenges; their stories gave me strength. In sharing my story, I want to give others hope as I've been given hope on this journey."Ultimate Memory Magic: The Transformative Program for Sharper Memory, Mental Clarity, and Greater Focus . . . at Any Age!
By Jim Karol, Michael Ross. 2019
Improve your memory, sharpen your mind, and change your life—at any age! As we age, our memories become unreliable; we…
misplace things and forget details. In Ultimate Memory Magic, memory expert Jim Karol shows that these side effects of aging are not inevitable. His memory-boosting system, called “Cogmental Intelligence,” goes beyond preserving mental acuity and actually enhances memory and mental function through lifestyle changes and mental exercises. Concentration, alertness, and focus can all be strengthened—by anyone, at any age. Karol’s cutting-edge program will show readers how to: - Sharpen their thinking and regain their mental edge - Live healthier, mentally and physically - Clear away negativity and stress - Become more creative and innovative A former steel worker who suffered from ill health, Karol used this method to transform his own life. Now he is physically healthy and renowned for his unparalleled memory. His incredible feats of memory and mentalism have been featured on The Tonight Show, The Ellen Show, Today, and more. Karol has used his Cogmental Intelligence method with clients from professional athletes to business leaders and speaks at venues around the world, from MIT to the Pentagon. With a foreword from bestselling author and physician Daniel G. Amen, Ultimate Memory Magic will allow readers of any age to hone their minds, strengthen their memories, and transform their lives.A leading Harvard psychiatrist reveals how our emotional lives are profoundly shaped by the seasons, and how to recognize our…
own seasonal patterns and milestonesIn two decades of psychiatry practice, John R. Sharp has worked with many people who experienced the same emotional distresses at specific times of the year—a young woman who became depressed before Thanksgiving, a middle-aged man who felt anxious about making his summer travel plans, people who made uncharacteristically extreme decisions as spring approached.In The Emotional Calendar, Sharp reveals how environmental, psychological, and cultural forces profoundly affect the way we feel, and how the enduring effects of personal anniversaries can influence our moods and behavior year after year. Sharp also illustrates a wide range of individual responses to cultural phenomena: some people feel anxious at the start of a new school year or are undone by the prospect of tax season while others are buoyed by the start of a sports season.Sharp shows us how to recognize the milestones on our own emotional calendars, providing guidance for how to break stifling patterns and remedy destructive moods. This empathetic and deeply resonant book will help readers reach an emotional balance for the years ahead.Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy
By Julia Preston, Samuel Dillon. 2003
The Story of Mexico's political rebirth, by two pulitzer prize-winning reportersOpening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens' movement…
which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation, the book gives new and gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico's recent politics.Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, led by presidents who ruled like Mesoamerican monarchs, came to be called "the perfect dictatorship." But a 1968 massacre of student protesters by government snipers ignited the desire for democratic change in a generation of Mexicans. Opening Mexico recounts the democratic revolution that unfolded over the following three decades. It portrays clean-vote crusaders, labor organizers, human rights monitors, investigative journalists, Indian guerrillas, and dissident political leaders, such as President Ernesto Zedillo-Mexico's Gorbachev. It traces the rise of Vicente Fox, who toppled the authoritarian system in a peaceful election in July 2000.Opening Mexico dramatizes how Mexican politics works in smoke-filled rooms, and profiles many leaders of the country's elite. It is the best book to date about the modern history of the United States' southern neighbor-and is a tale rich in implications for the spread of democracy worldwide.Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare
By Ryan Dezember. 2020
Winner of the Bruss Real Estate Book AwardHis assignment was to write about a real-estate frenzy lighting up the Redneck…
Riviera. So Ryan Dezember settled in and bought a home nearby himself. Then the market crashed, and he became one of the millions of Americans who suddenly owed more on their homes than they were worth. A flood of foreclosures made it impossible to sell. It didn't help that his quaint neighborhood fell into disrepair and drug-induced despair. He had no choice but to become a reluctant and wildly unprofitable landlord to move on. Meanwhile, his reporting showed how the speculative mania that caused the crash opened the U.S. housing market to a much larger breed of investors. In this deeply personal story, Dezember shows how decisions on Wall Street and in Washington played out on his street in a corner of the Sunbelt that was convulsed by the foreclosure crisis. Readers will witness the housing market collapse from Dezember’s perch as a newspaper reporter. First he’s in the boom-to-bust South where a hot-air balloonist named Bob Shallow becomes one of the world’s top selling real-estate agents arranging condo flips, developers flop in spectacular fashion and the law catches up with a beach-town mayor on the take. Later he’s in New York, among financiers like Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman who are building rental empires out of foreclosures, staking claim to the bastion of middle-class wealth: the single-family home. Through it all, Dezember is an underwater homeowner caught up in the mess.A cautionary tale of Wall Street's push to turn homes into assets, Underwater is a powerful, incisive story that chronicles the crash and its aftermath from a fresh perspective—the forgotten, middle-class homeowner.Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays
By Chelsea Hodson. 2018
"I had a real romance with this book." —Miranda JulyA highly anticipated collection, from the writer Maggie Nelson has called,…
“bracingly good…refreshing and welcome,” that explores the myriad ways in which desire and commodification intersect.From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.Starting with Hodson’s own work experience, which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre—including modeling and working on a NASA Mars mission— Hodson expands outward, looking at the ways in which the human will submits, whether in the marketplace or in a relationship. Both tender and jarring, this collection is relevant to anyone who’s ever searched for what the self is worth.Hodson’s accumulation within each piece is purposeful, and her prose vivid, clear, and sometimes even shocking, as she explores the wonderful and strange forms of desire. Tonight I'm Someone Else is a fresh, poetic debut from an exciting emerging voice, in which Hodson asks, “How much can a body endure?” And the resounding answer: "Almost everything."