What Happens in America!

What Happens in America!
Author: Arjun Panchal
Publisher: Notion Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2017-05-19
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1947202049

With each word the Visa officer wrote, my heart pounded harder and grew heavier with each beat. He looked up at me blankly. And my breath went shallow as I waited for him to say something… With that, I am referring to the thousands of aspired youngsters, who go to America, seeking a quality education and expanded opportunities. That is the story of Kartik, a small-town lad dreams to escape a stifling educational system and home life! He is drawn to the lifestyle he could never imagine. But nothing prepares him for what he is about to experience. From varying weather to the ‘variety’ of food, to astounding technology to the whirlpool of relationships, it’s time to find out What ‘actually’ Happens in America!

After the Fall

After the Fall
Author: Ben Rhodes
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1984856065

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Vital reading for Americans and people anywhere who seek to understand what is happening ‘after the fall’ of the global system created by the United States” (New York Journal of Books), from the former White House aide, close confidant to President Barack Obama, and author of The World as It Is At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned; he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping; and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance. The characters and issues that Rhodes illuminates paint a picture that shows us where we are today—from Barack Obama to a rising generation of international leaders; from the authoritarian playbook endangering democracy to the flood of disinformation enabling authoritarianism. Ultimately, Rhodes writes personally and powerfully about finding hope in the belief that looking squarely at where America has gone wrong can make clear how essential it is to fight for what America is supposed to be, for our own country and the entire world.

Forgotten Americans

Forgotten Americans
Author: Isabel Sawhill
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0300241062

A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

2 A.M. in Little America

2 A.M. in Little America
Author: Ken Kalfus
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2022-05-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1571317732

As Americans flee widespread civil conflict, one young refugee ekes out a living in a suspenseful, darkly comic novel: “An important writer in every sense.” —David Foster Wallace An Esquire “Best Book of Spring 2022” A Literary Hub “Most Anticipated Book of 2022” A San Francisco Chronicle “Most Anticipated Novel of 2022” In the future, sweeping civil disorder has forced America’s young people to flee its borders into an unwelcoming world. One such American is Ron Patterson, who finds himself on distant shores, working as a repairman and sharing a room with other refugees. In an unnamed city wedged between ocean and lush mountainous forest, Ron can almost imagine a stable life for himself. Especially when he makes the first friend he’s had in years—a mysterious migrant named Marlise, who bears a striking resemblance to a onetime classmate. Nearly a decade later—after anti-migrant sentiment has put their whirlwind intimacy and asylum to an end—Ron is living in “Little America,” an enclave of migrants in one of the few countries still willing to accept them. Here, among reminders of his past life, he again begins to feel that he may have found a home. He adopts a stray dog, observes his neighbors, and lands a new repairman job that allows him to move through the city quietly. But this newfound security, too, is quickly jeopardized, as resurgent political divisions threaten the fabric of Little America. Tapped as an informant against the rise of militant gangs and contending with the appearance of a strangely familiar woman, Ron is suddenly on dangerous and uncertain ground. Brimming with mystery, suspense, and Ken Kalfus’s distinctive comic irony, 2 A.M. in Little America poses questions vital to the current moment: What happens when privilege is reversed? Who is watching and why? How do tribalized politics disrupt our ability to distinguish what is true and what is not? This is a story for our time—gripping, unsettling, prescient—by an acclaimed National Book Award finalist. “My favorite book by one of America’s great living writers.” —Jonathan Safran Foer “A provocative dystopian story . . . takes hold of the reader.” —Publishers Weekly “A highly readable, taut novel.” —The New York Times Book Review “One of contemporary literature’s best-kept secrets.” —Esquire

It Could Happen Here

It Could Happen Here
Author: Jonathan Greenblatt
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2022-01-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0358623375

“Refreshingly candid . . . Get off Instagram and read this book.” —Sacha Baron Cohen From the dynamic head of ADL, an impassioned argument about the terrifying path that America finds itself on today—and how we can save ourselves. It’s almost impossible to imagine that unbridled hate and systematic violence could come for us or our families. But it has happened in our lifetimes in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. And it could happen here. Today, as CEO of the storied ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), Jonathan Greenblatt has made it his personal mission to demonstrate how antisemitism, racism, and other insidious forms of intolerance can destroy a society, taking root as quiet prejudices but mutating over time into horrific acts of brutality. In this urgent book, Greenblatt sounds an alarm, warning that this age-old trend is gathering momentum in the United States—and that violence on an even larger, more catastrophic scale could be just around the corner. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Drawing on ADL’s decades of experience in fighting hate through investigative research, education programs, and legislative victories as well as his own personal story and his background in business and government, Greenblatt offers a bracing primer on how we—as individuals, as organizations, and as a society—can strike back against hate. Just because it could happen here, he shows, does not mean that the unthinkable is inevitable.

Our Towns

Our Towns
Author: James Fallows
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1101871857

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "James and Deborah Fallows have always moved to where history is being made.... They have an excellent sense of where world-shaping events are taking place at any moment" —The New York Times • The basis for the HBO documentary streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.

1919 The Year That Changed America

1919 The Year That Changed America
Author: Martin W. Sandler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2019-11-07
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1547605766

WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 1919 was a world-shaking year. America was recovering from World War I and black soldiers returned to racism so violent that that summer would become known as the Red Summer. The suffrage movement had a long-fought win when women gained the right to vote. Laborers took to the streets to protest working conditions; nationalistic fervor led to a communism scare; and temperance gained such traction that prohibition went into effect. Each of these movements reached a tipping point that year. Now, one hundred years later, these same social issues are more relevant than ever. Sandler traces the momentum and setbacks of these movements through this last century, showing that progress isn't always a straight line and offering a unique lens through which we can understand history and the change many still seek.

The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America
Author: Philip Roth
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2004-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547345313

Philip Roth's bestselling alternate history—the chilling story of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president—is soon to be an HBO limited series. In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother. "A terrific political novel . . . Sinister, vivid, dreamlike . . . creepily plausible. . . You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” — The New York Times Book Review

Another Day in the Death of America

Another Day in the Death of America
Author: Gary Younge
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 156858976X

Winner of the 2017 J. Anthony Lukas PrizeShortlisted for the 2017 Hurston/Wright Foundation AwardFinalist for the 2017 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in JournalismLonglisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction On an average day in America, seven children and teens will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, award-winning journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost during one such day. It could have been any day, but he chose November 23, 2013. Black, white, and Latino, aged nine to nineteen, they fell at sleepovers, on street corners, in stairwells, and on their own doorsteps. From the rural Midwest to the barrios of Texas, the narrative crisscrosses the country over a period of twenty-four hours to reveal the full human stories behind the gun-violence statistics and the brief mentions in local papers of lives lost. This powerful and moving work puts a human face-a child's face-on the "collateral damage" of gun deaths across the country. This is not a book about gun control, but about what happens in a country where it does not exist. What emerges in these pages is a searing and urgent portrait of youth, family, and firearms in America today.

Last Best Hope

Last Best Hope
Author: George Packer
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0374603677

One of The New York Times's 100 notable books of 2021 "[George Packer's] account of America’s decline into destructive tribalism is always illuminating and often dazzling." —William Galston, The Washington Post Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America’s descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem. A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. With pitiless precision, the year exposed the nation’s underlying conditions—discredited elites, weakened institutions, blatant inequalities—and how difficult they are to remedy. In Last Best Hope, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. He explores the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression. In lively and biting prose, Packer shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy. To point a more hopeful way forward, he looks for a common American identity and finds it in the passion for equality—the “hidden code”—that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. Today, we are challenged again to fight for equality and renew what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the art” of self-government. In its strong voice and trenchant analysis, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national renewal.