Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 02/07/2012
ISBN-13: 9781400067558
ISBN-10: 1400067553

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo's "exquisitely accomplished first book" (The New York Times) puts a human face on life in India's Annawadi slum, where she lived for over three years. Concrete walls hide the slum from visitors to the luxury hotel district just outside; inside, 3,000 inhabitants subsist by trading in trash and more lurid goods. Boo explores the unique and deeply entrenched religious, economic, and political systems that oppress the unforgettable individuals she profiles -- from a poor mother planning her "most-everything" daughter's escape to college, to those for whom the only escape is death -- in what one critic raves is "the best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition" (Kirkus Reviews).

Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 01/03/2012
ISBN-13: 9780805093698
ISBN-10: 0805093699

Left-wing political pundit and author Thomas Frank (The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule) tears into the Republican Party's capable (albeit, self-serving) spin-doctoring of economic issues since the election of Barack Obama. Frank breaks down why conservative rhetoric has been so successful at transforming members of America's wealthiest 1% -- whom, he argues, directly caused the country's recent recession -- into populist mascots enthusiastically supported by the very same 99-percenters who have been most economically devastated by their actions. Stephen Colbert's fans will love Frank's "spirited, acerbic, stylish exploration of the Republican resurrection" (Boston Globe).

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Publisher: Penguin Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 02/02/2012
ISBN-13: 9781594203237
ISBN-10: 1594203237

Thinking the Twentieth Century is the final work of a premier intellectual historian, the iconoclastic Tony Judt, who died in 2010. Interviewed by colleague Timothy Snyder, Judt examines the most recent century (from Stalinist Russia to the modern Middle East) via sociopolitical ideologies -- Marxist political theory, Keynesian economics, and much more -- that profoundly shaped events. Going beyond "who, what, where, and when," Judt focuses on why certain ideas "took," and why their consequences matter to the future; his analyses will fascinate, challenge, and delight philosophically-inclined history buffs. Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order similarly blends history and high-octane intellectual theory; fans of one may enjoy the other.

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 02/07/2012
ISBN-13: 9780802119711
ISBN-10: 0802119719

Novelist and Ojibwe tribesman David Treuer makes an outstanding nonfiction debut with Rez Life, "a movingly plainspoken" (Kirkus Reviews) mix of personal memoir, impeccably researched history, and investigative journalism that chronicles life on America's Indian reservations -- past and present. Gleaming prose illuminates both Treuer's anecdotes of his boyhood growing up on the Lake Leech Ojibwe reservation, and his stellar reportage of systematic abuses inflicted upon Native Americans by federal and state agencies. Rez Life will charm readers with even a casual interest in Native American cultural history, and is certainly a must-read for all serious students of modern Native American history.

Publisher: William Morrow
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/01/2003
ISBN-13: 9780060185107
ISBN-10: 0060185104

Author Gail Collins delivers a witty landmark survey of the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters who shaped not only what it means to be a woman in America, but what it means to be an American. From the lost female settlers of the Roanoke colony in 1584 to the modern feminists of the1960s and up to the present day, Collins describes how women have struggled to navigate two major, persistent impulses: to make a home, and to get out of it. Snappy writing makes America's Women a fun introduction to the topic of historical women's studies, and its superlative research will please hardcore history buffs, too.

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Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperbacks
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/29/2008
ISBN-13: 9780385335560
ISBN-10: 0385335563

This feminist-focused epistolary history begins with a 1775 letter from a woman to her husband, accusing him of cowardice in the now-famous battle of Bunker Hill; it ends with an email from Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi in 2005, from war-torn Iraq. In between, Women's Letters collects 400+ letters (accompanied by 100 beautiful period photos and illustrations) written by women to their private correspondents; with notable exceptions, most of the women lived at a time when there were simply no public outlets for their opinions or experiences. With great candor and individuality, their letters now provide us with an entirely unique glimpse into America's domestic and national history.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Vintage Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/14/2008
ISBN-13: 9781400078578
ISBN-10: 1400078571

Author Jon Kukla offers readers a metaphorical peek into the little black book of famous founding father Thomas Jefferson -- and his dealings with the fairer sex weren't pretty, to say the least. Kukla details how Jefferson's relationships with women -- a string of youthful rejections, Jefferson's own predatory tendencies, the death of his wife Martha, and the power inherent in his role as a slave-owner -- reflect "a personal aversion to and fear of women," which indelibly marked his "definition of America as a white male polity." Publishers Weekly raves: "This is one of the most discerning and provocative studies of Jefferson in years."

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Publisher: Hyperion
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/01/2004
ISBN-13: 9781401300463
ISBN-10: 1401300464

Readers may not be surprised to learn that sorority culture is rife with conformist, superficial attitudes -- but that's just the tip of the vodka-soaked, rufie-laden iceberg that author Alexandra Robbins discovered when she went undercover to investigate sorority life in 2002-2003. Her first-hand account reveals that genuinely shocking levels of racial, sexual, and psychological violence are pervasive. Pledged does more than simply lambast sororities, however; it is a valuable, thought-provoking analysis of why young women -- otherwise intelligent, sensitive, and driven individuals -- continue to seek out destructive and victimizing relationships in American culture.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Anchor Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 03/08/2011
ISBN-13: 9781400095605
ISBN-10: 1400095603

The Pentagon's 2012 revised regulations will allow women new and unprecedented proximity to combat service; American women's roles in combat, however, are not new. Many histories discuss the valued contributions of American women as volunteers supporting their country's war efforts at home, or perhaps as field nurses. A Few Good Women instead profiles American women at the front lines of battle, breaking gender stereotypes, and struggling for full equality. Co-authors Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee draw upon a wealth of personal interviews, private correspondence, diaries and archival research to deliver a riveting history of women in the U.S. military.

First Chapter  Table of Contents