Conservative Insurgency takes the form of an oral history of a successful struggle against progressive dominance from the perspective of the year 2041. It is not a novel; instead, it is a rallying cry and a battle plan for constitutional conservatives who feel outnumbered and outgunned by a liberal establishment that wants to make them extinct and Republican moderates who are more than happy to lose if it means they keep getting invitations to all the right parties. Conservative Insurgency lays out the history of this struggle from the point of view of various participants as America inaugurates a new president and fully re-commits to the conservative vision of the Founders. The testimonies of the characters – politicians, academics, activist, soldiers and even a gender-indefinite performance artist who finds that liberalism is more constraining than conservatism ever could be – describe a multi-front, long-term political, social, and cultural war designed to seize society’s high ground in order to restore the Founders’ vision.
Post Hill Press
|
9781618689771
|
Hardcover
The Art of Loading Brush
By Berry, Wendell
"Berry's essays, continuing arguments begun in The Unsettling of America 40 years ago, will be familiar to longtime readers, blending his farm work with his interests in literature old and new . . . Vintage Berry sure to please and instruct his many admirers." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Wendell Berry's profound critique of American culture has entered its sixth decade, and in this new gathering he reaches with deep devotion toward a long view of Agrarian philosophy. Mr. Berry believes that American cultural problems are nearly always aligned with their agricultural problems, and recent events have shone a terrible spotlight on the divides between our urban and rural citizens. Our communities are as endangered as our landscapes. There is, as Berry outlines, still much work to do, and our daily lives -- in hope and affection -- must triumph over despair.Mr. Berry moves deftly between the real and the imagined. The Art of Loading Brush is an energetic mix of essays and stories, including "The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age," which explores Agrarian ideals as they present themselves historically and as they might apply to our work today. "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World" is added here as the bookend of this developing New Agrarianism. Four stories from an as-yet-unfinished novel, better described as "an essay in imagination," extend the Port William story as it follows Andy Catlett throughout his life to this present moment. Andy works alongside his grandson in "The Art of Loading Brush," one of the most moving and tender stories of the entire Port William cycle. Filled with insights and new revelations from a mind thorough in its considerations and careful in its presentations, The Art of Loading Brush is a necessary and timely collection.
Counterpoint
|
9781619020382
|
Hardcover
Real American
By Lythcott-haims, Julie
"Courageous, achingly honest." -- Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness"A compelling, incisive and thoughtful examination of race, origin and what it means to be called an American. Engaging, heartfelt and beautifully written, Lythcott-Haims explores the American spectrum of identity with refreshing courage and compassion." -- Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and RedemptionA fearless memoir in which beloved and bestselling How to Raise an Adult author Julie Lythcott-Haims pulls no punches in her recollections of growing up a black woman in America.Bringing a poetic sensibility to her prose to stunning effect, Lythcott-Haims briskly and stirringly evokes her personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. The only child of a marriage between an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows indelibly how so-called "micro" aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. Real American expresses also, through Lythcott-Haims's path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other." The author of the New York Times bestselling anti-helicopter parenting manifesto How to Raise an Adult, Lythcott-Haims has written a different sort of book this time out, but one that will nevertheless resonate with the legions of students, educators and parents to whom she is now well known, by whom she is beloved, and to whom she has always provided wise and necessary counsel about how to embrace and nurture their best selves. Real American is an affecting memoir, an unforgettable cri de coeur, and a clarion call to all of us to live more wisely, generously and fully.
Henry Holt and Co.
|
9781250137746
|
Hardcover
A Colony in a Nation
By Hayes, Chris
New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning news anchor Chris Hayes argues that there are really two Americas: a Colony and a Nation.America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure -- wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation -- reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first "law and order" president. With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestseller, Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes upends our national conversation on policing and democracy in a book of wide-ranging historical, social, and political analysis.Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights, and aggressive policing resembles occupation. A Colony in a Nation explains how a country founded on justice now looks like something uncomfortably close to a police state. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution?A Colony in a Nation examines the surge in crime that began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s, and the unprecedented decline that followed. Drawing on close-hand reporting at flashpoints of racial conflict, as well as deeply personal experiences with policing, Hayes explores cultural touchstones, from the influential "broken windows" theory to the "squeegee men" of late-1980s Manhattan, to show how fear causes us to make dangerous and unfortunate choices, both in our society and at the personal level. With great empathy, he seeks to understand the challenges of policing communities haunted by the omnipresent threat of guns. Most important, he shows that a more democratic and sympathetic justice system already exists -- in a place we least suspect.A Colony in a Nation is an essential book -- searing and insightful -- that will reframe our thinking about law and order in the years to come.
W W Norton
|
9780393254228
|
Hardcover
Directorate S
By Coll, Steve
Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, bestselling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan.Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.
Penguin Press
|
9781594204586
|
Hardcover
American Dreams
By Rubio, Marco
Dear Friends, My parents came to the United States in 1956. The country they found was truly a land of opportunity, where hardworking people with grade school educations could afford a home, a car, and college for their kids. A country where maids and bartenders could raise doctors, lawyers, small-business owners, and maybe even a U.S. senator. That was the American Dream - our country's central promise to its people: If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll find tremendous opportunities and an even better life for your children.Yet today, I look around and see the American Dream on life support. Seven years of government-centered, tax-and-spend liberalism have failed to lift the poor or sustain the middle class. Fewer Americans are working than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president.
Sentinel
|
9781595231130
|
Hardcover
Blood in the Fields
By Reynolds, Julia
The city of Salinas California is the birthplace of John Steinbeck and the setting for his epic masterpiece East of Eden but it is also the home of Nuestra Familia one of the most violent gangs in the United States Born in the prisons of California in the late s Nuestra Familia expanded to control drug trafficking and extortion operations throughout the northern half of the state and left a trail of bodies in its wake Award-winning journalist Julia Reynolds tells the gangs story from the inside out following young men and women as they search for a new kind of family quests that usually lead to murder and betrayal Blood in the Fields also documents the history of Operation Black Widow the FBIs questionable decade-long effort to dismantle the Nuestra Familia along with its compromised informants and the turf wars it created with local law enforcement agenciesReynolds uses her unprecedented access to gang members both in and out of prison as well as undercover wire taps depositions and court documents to weave a gripping comprehensive history of this brutal criminal organization and the lives it destroyed.
Chicago Review Press
|
9781613749692
|
Hardcover
Everybody Matters
By Robinson, Mary
One of the most inspiring women of our age, Mary Robinson has spent her life in pursuit of a fairer world, becoming a powerful and influential voice for human rights around the globe. Displaying a gift for storytelling and remembrance, Robinson reveals, in Everybody Matters, what lies behind the vision, strength, and determination that made her path to prominence as compelling as any of her achievements. Born in 1944 into a deeply Catholic family-the only girl among five childrenshe was poised to become a nun before finding her own true voice.Ever since, she has challenged convention in pursuit of fairness-whether in the Church, in government and politics, or in her own family. As an activist lawyer, she won landmark cases advancing the causes of women and marginalized people against the prejudices of the day, and in her twenty years in the Irish Senate she promoted progressive legislation, including the legalizing of contraception.
Walker & Company; Reprint edition
|
9780802779649
|
Hardcover
A Moonless, Starless Sky
By Okeowo, Alexis
"Absolutely essential reading, period."---Alexandra Fuller, bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight In the tradition of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, this is a masterful, humane work of literary journalism by New Yorker staff writer Alexis Okeowo--a vivid narrative of Africans who are courageously resisting their continent's wave of fundamentalism.In A Moonless, Starless Sky Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram. This debut book by one of America's most acclaimed young journalists illuminates the inner lives of ordinary people doing the extraordinary--lives that are too often hidden, underreported, or ignored by the rest of the world.
Hachette Books
|
9780316382939
|
Hardcover
Democracy
By Rice, Condoleezza
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial} From the former secretary of state and bestselling author -- a sweeping look at the global struggle for democracy and why America must continue to support the cause of human freedom.From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans.In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy. At a time when people around the world are wondering whether democracy is in decline, Rice shares insights from her experiences as a policymaker, scholar, and citizen, in order to put democracy's challenges into perspective.When the United States was founded, it was the only attempt at self-government in the world. Today more than half of all countries qualify as democracies, and in the long run that number will continue to grow. Yet nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. Using America's long struggle as a template, Rice draws lessons for democracy around the world -- from Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, to Kenya, Colombia, and the Middle East. She finds that no transitions to democracy are the same because every country starts in a different place. Pathways diverge and sometimes circle backward. Time frames for success vary dramatically, and countries often suffer false starts before getting it right. But, Rice argues, that does not mean they should not try. While the ideal conditions for democracy are well known in academia, they never exist in the real world. The question is not how to create perfect circumstances but how to move forward under difficult ones.These same insights apply in overcoming the challenges faced by governments today. The pursuit of democracy is a continuing struggle shared by people around the world, whether they are opposing authoritarian regimes, establishing new democratic institutions, or reforming mature democracies to better live up to their ideals. The work of securing it is never finished.
Twelve
|
9781455540181
|
Hardcover
Are Libraries Obsolete? An Argument for Relevance in the Digital Age
By Herring, Mark Y
The digital age has transformed information access in ways that few ever dreamed. But the afterclap of our digital wonders has left libraries reeling as they are no longer the chief contender in information delivery. The author gives both sides--the web aficionados, some of them unhinged, and the traditional librarians, some blinkered--a fair hearing but misconceptions abound. Internet be-all and end-all enthusiasts are no more useful than librarians who urge fellow professionals to be all things to all people. The American Library Association, wildly democratic at its best and worst, appears schizophrenic on the issue, unhelpfully. "My effort here," says the author, "is to talk about the elephant in the room." Are libraries obsolete? No! concludes the author (also).
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
|
9780786473564
|
Paperback
The Most Dangerous Man in America
By Minutaglio, Bill
From Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis, authors of the PEN Center USA award-winning Dallas 1963,comes a madcap narrative about Timothy Leary's daring prison escape and run from the law.On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, an ex-Harvard professor with a genius I.Q. studies a twelve-foot high fence topped with barbed wire. A few months earlier, Dr. Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, had been running a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan. Now, Leary is six months into a ten-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes.Aided by the radical Weather Underground, Leary's escape from prison is the counterculture's union of "dope and dynamite," aimed at sparking a revolution and overthrowing the government. Inside the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon drinks his way through sleepless nights as he expands the war in Vietnam and plots to unleash the United States government against his ever-expanding list of domestic enemies. Antiwar demonstrators are massing by the tens of thousands; homemade bombs are exploding everywhere; Black Panther leaders are threatening to burn down the White House; and all the while Nixon obsesses over tracking down Timothy Leary, whom he has branded "the most dangerous man in America."Based on freshly uncovered primary sources and new firsthand interviews, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA is an American thriller that takes readers along for the gonzo ride of a lifetime. Spanning twenty-eight months, President Nixon's careening, global manhunt for Dr. Timothy Leary winds its way among homegrown radicals, European aristocrats, a Black Panther outpost in Algeria, an international arms dealer, hash-smuggling hippies from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and secret agents on four continents, culminating in one of the trippiest journeys through the American counterculture.
Twelve
|
9781455563586
|
Hardcover
Old School
By Anonymous.,
Old School is in session....You have probably heard the term Old School, but what you might not know is that there is a concentrated effort to tear that school down.It's a values thing. The anti-Old School forces believe the traditional way of looking at life is oppressive. Not inclusive. The Old School way may harbor microaggressions. Therefore, Old School philosophy must be diminished.Those crusading against Old School now have a name: Snowflakes. You may have seen them on cable TV whining about social injustice and income inequality. You may have heard them cheering Bernie Sanders as he suggested the government pay for almost everything. The Snowflake movement is proud and loud, and they don't like Old School grads.So where are you in all this?Did you get up this morning knowing there are mountains to climb -- and deciding how you are going to climb them? Do you show up on time? Do you still bend over to pick up a penny? If so, you're Old School.Or did you wake up whining about safe spaces and trigger warnings? Do you feel marginalized by your college's mascot? Do you look for something to get outraged about, every single day, so you can fire off a tweet defending your exquisitely precious sensibilities? Then you're a Snowflake.So again, are you drifting frozen precipitation? Or do you matriculate at the Old School fountain of wisdom?This book will explain the looming confrontation so even the ladies on The View can understand it. Time to take a stand. Old School or Snowflake. Which will it be?
HENRY HOLT
|
9781250135797
|
Print book
The Brotherhood
By Stakelbeck, Erick
The Muslim Brotherhood, or Ikhwan, has engaged in terrorism, assassinations, and anti-Western, anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence for almost a century - yet few Americans realize how powerful they really are. While we focus on al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, it's actually the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest, most influential, and most anti-American Islamist group, that has become the preeminent voice and power in the Muslim world.Hiding behind a cloak of respectability and expensive Western suits, the Muslim Brotherhood is installing vehemently anti-American governments and power structures throughout the Middle East and the world, as we sit back and cheer for the "democracy" of the Arab Spring.In his new book, The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy, Erick Stakelbeck teaches us the frightening truth about this dangerous group, from his first-hand experiences investigating the Brotherhood for eleven years, interviewing its members and visiting its mosques and enclaves.
Conservative Insurgency
By Schlichter, Kurt
Conservative Insurgency takes the form of an oral history of a successful struggle against progressive dominance from the perspective of the year 2041. It is not a novel; instead, it is a rallying cry and a battle plan for constitutional conservatives who feel outnumbered and outgunned by a liberal establishment that wants to make them extinct and Republican moderates who are more than happy to lose if it means they keep getting invitations to all the right parties. Conservative Insurgency lays out the history of this struggle from the point of view of various participants as America inaugurates a new president and fully re-commits to the conservative vision of the Founders. The testimonies of the characters – politicians, academics, activist, soldiers and even a gender-indefinite performance artist who finds that liberalism is more constraining than conservatism ever could be – describe a multi-front, long-term political, social, and cultural war designed to seize society’s high ground in order to restore the Founders’ vision.
The Art of Loading Brush
By Berry, Wendell
"Berry's essays, continuing arguments begun in The Unsettling of America 40 years ago, will be familiar to longtime readers, blending his farm work with his interests in literature old and new . . . Vintage Berry sure to please and instruct his many admirers." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Wendell Berry's profound critique of American culture has entered its sixth decade, and in this new gathering he reaches with deep devotion toward a long view of Agrarian philosophy. Mr. Berry believes that American cultural problems are nearly always aligned with their agricultural problems, and recent events have shone a terrible spotlight on the divides between our urban and rural citizens. Our communities are as endangered as our landscapes. There is, as Berry outlines, still much work to do, and our daily lives -- in hope and affection -- must triumph over despair.Mr. Berry moves deftly between the real and the imagined. The Art of Loading Brush is an energetic mix of essays and stories, including "The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age," which explores Agrarian ideals as they present themselves historically and as they might apply to our work today. "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World" is added here as the bookend of this developing New Agrarianism. Four stories from an as-yet-unfinished novel, better described as "an essay in imagination," extend the Port William story as it follows Andy Catlett throughout his life to this present moment. Andy works alongside his grandson in "The Art of Loading Brush," one of the most moving and tender stories of the entire Port William cycle. Filled with insights and new revelations from a mind thorough in its considerations and careful in its presentations, The Art of Loading Brush is a necessary and timely collection.
Real American
By Lythcott-haims, Julie
"Courageous, achingly honest." -- Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness"A compelling, incisive and thoughtful examination of race, origin and what it means to be called an American. Engaging, heartfelt and beautifully written, Lythcott-Haims explores the American spectrum of identity with refreshing courage and compassion." -- Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and RedemptionA fearless memoir in which beloved and bestselling How to Raise an Adult author Julie Lythcott-Haims pulls no punches in her recollections of growing up a black woman in America.Bringing a poetic sensibility to her prose to stunning effect, Lythcott-Haims briskly and stirringly evokes her personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. The only child of a marriage between an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows indelibly how so-called "micro" aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. Real American expresses also, through Lythcott-Haims's path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other." The author of the New York Times bestselling anti-helicopter parenting manifesto How to Raise an Adult, Lythcott-Haims has written a different sort of book this time out, but one that will nevertheless resonate with the legions of students, educators and parents to whom she is now well known, by whom she is beloved, and to whom she has always provided wise and necessary counsel about how to embrace and nurture their best selves. Real American is an affecting memoir, an unforgettable cri de coeur, and a clarion call to all of us to live more wisely, generously and fully.
A Colony in a Nation
By Hayes, Chris
New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning news anchor Chris Hayes argues that there are really two Americas: a Colony and a Nation.America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure -- wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation -- reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first "law and order" president. With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestseller, Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes upends our national conversation on policing and democracy in a book of wide-ranging historical, social, and political analysis.Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights, and aggressive policing resembles occupation. A Colony in a Nation explains how a country founded on justice now looks like something uncomfortably close to a police state. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution?A Colony in a Nation examines the surge in crime that began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s, and the unprecedented decline that followed. Drawing on close-hand reporting at flashpoints of racial conflict, as well as deeply personal experiences with policing, Hayes explores cultural touchstones, from the influential "broken windows" theory to the "squeegee men" of late-1980s Manhattan, to show how fear causes us to make dangerous and unfortunate choices, both in our society and at the personal level. With great empathy, he seeks to understand the challenges of policing communities haunted by the omnipresent threat of guns. Most important, he shows that a more democratic and sympathetic justice system already exists -- in a place we least suspect.A Colony in a Nation is an essential book -- searing and insightful -- that will reframe our thinking about law and order in the years to come.
Directorate S
By Coll, Steve
Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, bestselling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan.Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.
American Dreams
By Rubio, Marco
Dear Friends, My parents came to the United States in 1956. The country they found was truly a land of opportunity, where hardworking people with grade school educations could afford a home, a car, and college for their kids. A country where maids and bartenders could raise doctors, lawyers, small-business owners, and maybe even a U.S. senator. That was the American Dream - our country's central promise to its people: If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll find tremendous opportunities and an even better life for your children.Yet today, I look around and see the American Dream on life support. Seven years of government-centered, tax-and-spend liberalism have failed to lift the poor or sustain the middle class. Fewer Americans are working than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president.
Blood in the Fields
By Reynolds, Julia
The city of Salinas California is the birthplace of John Steinbeck and the setting for his epic masterpiece East of Eden but it is also the home of Nuestra Familia one of the most violent gangs in the United States Born in the prisons of California in the late s Nuestra Familia expanded to control drug trafficking and extortion operations throughout the northern half of the state and left a trail of bodies in its wake Award-winning journalist Julia Reynolds tells the gangs story from the inside out following young men and women as they search for a new kind of family quests that usually lead to murder and betrayal Blood in the Fields also documents the history of Operation Black Widow the FBIs questionable decade-long effort to dismantle the Nuestra Familia along with its compromised informants and the turf wars it created with local law enforcement agenciesReynolds uses her unprecedented access to gang members both in and out of prison as well as undercover wire taps depositions and court documents to weave a gripping comprehensive history of this brutal criminal organization and the lives it destroyed.
Everybody Matters
By Robinson, Mary
One of the most inspiring women of our age, Mary Robinson has spent her life in pursuit of a fairer world, becoming a powerful and influential voice for human rights around the globe. Displaying a gift for storytelling and remembrance, Robinson reveals, in Everybody Matters, what lies behind the vision, strength, and determination that made her path to prominence as compelling as any of her achievements. Born in 1944 into a deeply Catholic family-the only girl among five childrenshe was poised to become a nun before finding her own true voice.Ever since, she has challenged convention in pursuit of fairness-whether in the Church, in government and politics, or in her own family. As an activist lawyer, she won landmark cases advancing the causes of women and marginalized people against the prejudices of the day, and in her twenty years in the Irish Senate she promoted progressive legislation, including the legalizing of contraception.
A Moonless, Starless Sky
By Okeowo, Alexis
"Absolutely essential reading, period."---Alexandra Fuller, bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight In the tradition of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, this is a masterful, humane work of literary journalism by New Yorker staff writer Alexis Okeowo--a vivid narrative of Africans who are courageously resisting their continent's wave of fundamentalism.In A Moonless, Starless Sky Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram. This debut book by one of America's most acclaimed young journalists illuminates the inner lives of ordinary people doing the extraordinary--lives that are too often hidden, underreported, or ignored by the rest of the world.
Democracy
By Rice, Condoleezza
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial} From the former secretary of state and bestselling author -- a sweeping look at the global struggle for democracy and why America must continue to support the cause of human freedom.From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans.In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy. At a time when people around the world are wondering whether democracy is in decline, Rice shares insights from her experiences as a policymaker, scholar, and citizen, in order to put democracy's challenges into perspective.When the United States was founded, it was the only attempt at self-government in the world. Today more than half of all countries qualify as democracies, and in the long run that number will continue to grow. Yet nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. Using America's long struggle as a template, Rice draws lessons for democracy around the world -- from Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, to Kenya, Colombia, and the Middle East. She finds that no transitions to democracy are the same because every country starts in a different place. Pathways diverge and sometimes circle backward. Time frames for success vary dramatically, and countries often suffer false starts before getting it right. But, Rice argues, that does not mean they should not try. While the ideal conditions for democracy are well known in academia, they never exist in the real world. The question is not how to create perfect circumstances but how to move forward under difficult ones.These same insights apply in overcoming the challenges faced by governments today. The pursuit of democracy is a continuing struggle shared by people around the world, whether they are opposing authoritarian regimes, establishing new democratic institutions, or reforming mature democracies to better live up to their ideals. The work of securing it is never finished.
Are Libraries Obsolete? An Argument for Relevance in the Digital Age
By Herring, Mark Y
The digital age has transformed information access in ways that few ever dreamed. But the afterclap of our digital wonders has left libraries reeling as they are no longer the chief contender in information delivery. The author gives both sides--the web aficionados, some of them unhinged, and the traditional librarians, some blinkered--a fair hearing but misconceptions abound. Internet be-all and end-all enthusiasts are no more useful than librarians who urge fellow professionals to be all things to all people. The American Library Association, wildly democratic at its best and worst, appears schizophrenic on the issue, unhelpfully. "My effort here," says the author, "is to talk about the elephant in the room." Are libraries obsolete? No! concludes the author (also).
The Most Dangerous Man in America
By Minutaglio, Bill
From Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis, authors of the PEN Center USA award-winning Dallas 1963, comes a madcap narrative about Timothy Leary's daring prison escape and run from the law.On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, an ex-Harvard professor with a genius I.Q. studies a twelve-foot high fence topped with barbed wire. A few months earlier, Dr. Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, had been running a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan. Now, Leary is six months into a ten-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes.Aided by the radical Weather Underground, Leary's escape from prison is the counterculture's union of "dope and dynamite," aimed at sparking a revolution and overthrowing the government. Inside the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon drinks his way through sleepless nights as he expands the war in Vietnam and plots to unleash the United States government against his ever-expanding list of domestic enemies. Antiwar demonstrators are massing by the tens of thousands; homemade bombs are exploding everywhere; Black Panther leaders are threatening to burn down the White House; and all the while Nixon obsesses over tracking down Timothy Leary, whom he has branded "the most dangerous man in America."Based on freshly uncovered primary sources and new firsthand interviews, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA is an American thriller that takes readers along for the gonzo ride of a lifetime. Spanning twenty-eight months, President Nixon's careening, global manhunt for Dr. Timothy Leary winds its way among homegrown radicals, European aristocrats, a Black Panther outpost in Algeria, an international arms dealer, hash-smuggling hippies from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and secret agents on four continents, culminating in one of the trippiest journeys through the American counterculture.
Old School
By Anonymous.,
Old School is in session....You have probably heard the term Old School, but what you might not know is that there is a concentrated effort to tear that school down.It's a values thing. The anti-Old School forces believe the traditional way of looking at life is oppressive. Not inclusive. The Old School way may harbor microaggressions. Therefore, Old School philosophy must be diminished.Those crusading against Old School now have a name: Snowflakes. You may have seen them on cable TV whining about social injustice and income inequality. You may have heard them cheering Bernie Sanders as he suggested the government pay for almost everything. The Snowflake movement is proud and loud, and they don't like Old School grads.So where are you in all this?Did you get up this morning knowing there are mountains to climb -- and deciding how you are going to climb them? Do you show up on time? Do you still bend over to pick up a penny? If so, you're Old School.Or did you wake up whining about safe spaces and trigger warnings? Do you feel marginalized by your college's mascot? Do you look for something to get outraged about, every single day, so you can fire off a tweet defending your exquisitely precious sensibilities? Then you're a Snowflake.So again, are you drifting frozen precipitation? Or do you matriculate at the Old School fountain of wisdom?This book will explain the looming confrontation so even the ladies on The View can understand it. Time to take a stand. Old School or Snowflake. Which will it be?
The Brotherhood
By Stakelbeck, Erick
The Muslim Brotherhood, or Ikhwan, has engaged in terrorism, assassinations, and anti-Western, anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence for almost a century - yet few Americans realize how powerful they really are. While we focus on al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, it's actually the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest, most influential, and most anti-American Islamist group, that has become the preeminent voice and power in the Muslim world.Hiding behind a cloak of respectability and expensive Western suits, the Muslim Brotherhood is installing vehemently anti-American governments and power structures throughout the Middle East and the world, as we sit back and cheer for the "democracy" of the Arab Spring.In his new book, The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy, Erick Stakelbeck teaches us the frightening truth about this dangerous group, from his first-hand experiences investigating the Brotherhood for eleven years, interviewing its members and visiting its mosques and enclaves.