Catalog Search Results
61) Poor people
Author
Description
"Because I was bad in my last life." "Because Allah has willed it." "Because the rich do nothing for the poor." "Because the poor do nothing for themselves." "Because it is my destiny." These are just some of the answers to the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asks in cities and villages around the globe: "Why are you poor?" In the tradition of James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, writer Vollmann struggles to confront poverty...
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"In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals...
Author
Pub. Date
1994
Description
Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold wrote the essays that constitute Culture and Anarchy between 1867 and 1869, a time of rapid social change and uncertainty. Defining culture as "the best that has been thought and said," Arnold offers concrete suggestions for its role as a corrective to the chaos of materialism, industrialism, and self-interest. Acclaimed by Commentary as "the classic defense of high culture against the depredations of modernity,"...
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Description
"An unprecedented look at that most commonplace act of everyday life -- throwing things out -- and how it has transformed American society. Susan Strasser's pathbreaking histories of housework and the rise of the mass market have become classics in the literature of consumer culture. Here she turns to an essential but neglected part of that culture -- the trash it produces -- and finds in it an unexpected wealth of meaning. Before the twentieth century,...
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Pub. Date
[2015]
Description
"Nellie Dowell was a match-factory girl in Victorian London who spent her early years consigned to orphanages and hospitals. Muriel Lester, the daughter of a wealthy shipbuilder, longed to be free of the burden of money and possessions. Together, these unlikely soul mates sought to remake the world according to their own utopian vision of Christ's teachings. The Match Girl and the Heiress paints an unforgettable portrait of their late-nineteenth-century...
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Pub. Date
2023.
Description
"There's no such thing as rural America. Or, rather, as Steven Conn argues, "rural America" is a phrase that has been made to mean so many things that it doesn't mean anything. In fact, he maintains, rural America--so often characterized as in crisis or in danger of being left behind--has been shaped by the same major forces as the rest of the country since at least the end of the Civil War: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and...
Author
Description
"In the spirit of 'A short history of nearly everything, ' an energetic and wide-ranging book of discovery and discoverers, of exploitation and celebration, and of superstition and science, all in search of the ways the chemical elements are woven into our culture, history, and language"--Provided by publisher.
Author
Pub. Date
2014.
Description
The living history of the American people is a history of ongoing struggle. It is told here, in speeches, letters, poems, and songs, by the people who make history happen but are often left out of the history books. These texts were chosen and arranged by Howard Zinn.
69) Medieval people
Author
Pub. Date
2000
Description
This book contains a series of sketches that aim to illustrate various aspects of social life in the Middle Ages. This volume is highly recommended for those with an interest in European history. Contents include: "The Precursors", "Bodo, A Frankish Peasant In The Time Of Charlemagne", "Marco Polo, A Venetian Traveller Of The Thirteenth Century", "Madame Eglentyne, Chaucer's Prioress In Real Life", "The Ménagier's Wife, A Paris Housewife In The Fourteenth...
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Pub. Date
2015.
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Description
"In Mike Huckabee's new book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, he asks the question, "Have I been taken to a different planet than the one on which I grew up?" The New York Times bestselling author explores today's American culture, drawing from his travels as a presidential candidate to present average, small-town people and families, and their optimistic resilience in the face of hard times; their stories, says Huckabee, "will inspire readers to think...
Author
Pub. Date
2018
Description
Is civilization teetering on the edge of a cliff? Or are we just climbing higher than ever? Most people who read the news would tell you that 2017 is one of the worst years in recent memory. We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems: fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality, and more. Yet this narrative misses something important: by almost every meaningful measure, the modern world is better...
72) Inside U.S.A
Author
Pub. Date
1997
Description
The seventy-fifth anniversary edition of Gunther's classic portrait of America
John Gunther's Inside series were among the most popular books of reportage of the 1930s and 1940s. For Inside U.S.A., his magnum opus, Gunther set out from California and visited every state in the country, offering frank, lucid, and humorous observations along the way in what legendary publisher Robert Gottlieb, writing in the New York Times, calls Gunther's "fluent,...
Pub. Date
[2015]
Description
As Season Five begins in 1924, the radio is the latest miracle, a new Labour government heralds changes through the land, and Downton's traditional ways are besieged on all fronts. Robert, Mary, and Branson must navigate these shifting sands together to ensure the future of the estate for generations to come. As Branson finds himself playing a more crucial role at Downton than ever before, he can't help but question his place in the world. Mary is...
Author
Pub. Date
[2016]
Description
"Twenty-five-hundred years ago, civilizations around the world entered a revolutionary new era that overturned old order and laid the foundation for our world today. In the face of massive social changes across three continents, radical new forms of government emerged; mighty wars were fought over trade, religion, and ideology; and new faiths were ruthlessly employed to unify vast empires. The histories of Rome and China, Greece and India--the stories...
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Pub. Date
2011
Description
Journalist "explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken, and how this attitude toward error corrodes relationships." She claims that "error is both a given and a gift -- one that can transform our worldviews, our relationships, and, most profoundly, ourselves."
Author
Pub. Date
[2017]
Description
"What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine--yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison--was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable,...
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Formats
Description
The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong.
Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech--not evolution--is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements.
From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman...
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