Book picks similar to
Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide by Erica Etelson
politics
non-fiction
american-history
communication
The Daughterhood
Natasha Fennell - 2015
Sitting outside the hospital after visiting one day, Natasha wondered how she would cope when her mother was gone. There started a panic and self-scrutiny. Had she been a good enough daughter? Would she have enough time to do all the things she wanted to do with her mother before she died? Natasha knew that she couldn't be the only one feeling this way. She began her research and quickly learned that other daughters had similar fears and had never spoken about them before. Love for their mothers, regret for opportunities missed, resentments and emotional complexities all bubbled to the surface. Through these conversations, a friendship blossomed with Róisín Ingle, popular columnist at the Irish Times. After a call out in Róisín's column, hundreds of responses poured in and there The Daughterhood was formed. The Daughterhood is the funny, poignant, and occasionally heart-breaking story of nine daughters coming together to talk about their mothers and the joy and despair that this relationship brings. Over a period of months they commit to completing various tasks all in the hope of improving their relationship with the most important woman in their lives - before she dies.
The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House
Ben Rhodes - 2018
One is Barack Obama. The other is Ben Rhodes.The World As It Is tells the full story of what it means to work alongside a radical leader; of how idealism can confront reality and survive; of how the White House really functions; and of what it is to have a partnership, and ultimately a friendship, with a historic president.A young writer and Washington outsider, Ben Rhodes was plucked from obscurity aged 29. Chosen for his original perspective and gift with language, his role was to help shape the nation’s hopes and sense of itself. For nearly ten years, Rhodes was at the centre of the Obama Administration – first as a speechwriter, then a policymaker, and finally a multi-purpose aide and close collaborator.Rhodes puts us in the room at the most tense and poignant moments in recent history: starting every morning with Obama in the Daily Briefing; waiting out the bin Laden raid in the Situation Room; reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran; leading secret negotiations with the Cuban government; confronting the resurgence of nationalism that led to the election of Donald Trump.This is the most vivid portrayal yet of Obama’s presidency. It is an essential record of the last decade. But it also shows us what it means to hold the pen, and to write the words that change our world.
All It Takes Is Guts
Walter E. Williams - 1988
Williams destroys a number of prevailing social myths and explains why the nature of congressmen is not to act in the national interest.
The Names of My Mothers
Dianne Sanders Riordan - 2013
In 1942 Elizabeth Bynam Sanders was a young woman who left home under false pretenses and travelled to Our Lady of Victory, a home for unwed mothers in upstate New York. Shortly after surrendering her daughter for adoption, she returned to her life in Johnston County, North Carolina. She never married and never had another child of her own. This powerful and moving memoir speaks of the profound need for connection. It is a story about identity, the hunger we feel for a sense of belonging and the ineffable significance of blood.
SASQUATCH! Reports From the Field: Encounters Across North America
Gary Swanson - 2019
Reclusive as these animals are, they do resemble humans in several ways; their appearance is “humanoid” and there is evidence they have family units and a hierarchy of command not unlike humans. They ask nothing from us, and they infrequently take anything from man! This volume of Sasquatch sightings and encounters span North America; from British Columbia, to our Eastern and Southern states; Pennsylvania, Maine and North Carolina, and then to the western part of the United States; including Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Northern California and Washington state. Our friends at The Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, Colorado are featured in this book because not only have they brought us contributors of Colorado Bigfoot sightings, they have been dedicated to researching the Sasquatch and preserving evidence of Bigfoot. Their museum, “The Sasquatch Encounter Discovery Museum” provides a great learning tool for those who have never had a Sasquatch experience or would just like to learn more. Our many thanks to Jim and Daphne Myers at The Sasquatch Outpost for their support and their dedication to protecting North America’s endangered indigenous species of Bigfoot! Since these mysterious beings have convinced vast numbers of us of their existence, and also of their desire to live peaceably, we have the same goal. Thank you for your courtesy in observing and enjoying the realization that there are some things that man has not yet destroyed! We have taken great care to guarantee the privacy of every submitter, and due to having proven our confidentiality, more stories have arrived and are in this fifth volume; “SASQUATCH! Reports from the Field.” We try to do verification of the stories we accept, and although we cannot guarantee the validity of any submissions, we use due diligence to interview those whose story seems to be outside what the majority have established as the “norm;” if there could be one. Although our personal experiences with Bigfoot are limited to only a few instances, as we are always accompanied by two curious and noisy dogs; we have interviewed enough people from all walks of life, many with highly respected credentials that we must believe that Sasquatch lives!
Lower Deck: Life Aboard a British Destroyer in World War II
John Davies - 1945
Sikh (due to wartime restrictions, the ship's name in the book is the H.M.S. Skye); the ship is stationed in the eastern Mediterranean in the defense of Malta. Centering on the lives of the crewmen who are part of a gun crew, the book portrays the ship's almost daily encounters with German and Italian ships and planes (as the author states: “...Daylight each morning brings with it almost complete certainty of attack...the comparatively confined waters, the proximity and strategic excellence of Axis air bases, means that to avoid discovery and attack is virtually impossible.”) Eventually, the Skye's luck runs out and on September 14, 1942, she is sunk by German artillery with the loss of 115 men, with more men taken prisoner, and others rescued by nearby friendly ships. Includes a Glossary of naval terms used in the book.
The Tragic Secret Life of Jayne Mansfield
Raymond Strait - 2016
Sitting through hundreds of hours of interviews and private conversations -- not only with Jayne but also with her husbands, her lovers, and her children -- gave Ray the opportunity to present a revealing portrait of the woman. He records her drive for fame and success and her overpowering need to be loved and to love, needs that led her into numerous affairs with rich and powerful men -- including President John F Kennedy -- and with younger men from all walks of life. And he discusses frankly Jayne's ultimately successful plan to become pregnant by Nelson Sardelli because she wanted to have an Italian child.Know to millions as the consummate sex symbol who rivaled Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield received more press coverage than anyone else in Hollywood. The headlines were often sensational, causing society matrons and Baptist ministers to shake their heads and point their fingers. But under those sensational headlines there was a woman of greater complexity that any reporter could hope to understand. Strait goes below the surface to examine Jayne's emotions and motivations, revealing the truth about her many lovers, her three unsuccessful marriages, her love affair with Mickey Hargitay that lasted to the end and her battle against and her surrender to alcohol and drugs.
Assassination Vacation
Sarah Vowell - 2005
With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other—a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue—it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and—the author's favorite— historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult.
Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom
Ron Paul - 2011
The term "Liberty" is so commonly used in our country that it has become a mere cliche. But do we know what it means? What it promises? How it factors into our daily lives? And most importantly, can we recognize tyranny when it is sold to us disguised as a form of liberty? Dr. Paul writes that to believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust in the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human volition and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions. It is the seed of America. This is a comprehensive guide to Dr. Paul's position on fifty of the most important issues of our times, from Abortion to Zionism. Accessible, easy to digest, and fearless in its discussion of controversial topics, Liberty Defined sheds new light on a word that is losing its shape.
The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream (Kindle Single)
Will Bunch - 2015
How did Bernie Sanders make it out of the backwoods of Vermont – where he lived for a time in a ramshackle off-road “sugar shack” with no electricity, and where he never got more than 6 percent of the vote in a string of doomed, fringe far-left campaigns in the 1970s – to become a leading contender in the 2016 race for the White House? And perhaps more importantly for author Will Bunch, how did this gruff and sometimes didactic gray-haired political survivor make it out of the 1960s and ‘70s to become the last torch-bearer of the youthful idealism of that nearly lost “Age of Aquarius” – The One who didn’t drop out, sell out…or simply give up? In the fall of 2015, Bunch – with the voices of the late Hunter S. Thompson and the other iconic “New Journalists” of that lost era ringing in his ears – set out on a road trip that took him from the battlefields of northern Virginia to the salty air of backwater Boston to the neon sky of the Las Vegas Strip, all to get to the bottom of “The Bern Identity.” He follows the long strange trip of Bernie Sanders – a kid from a cramped Brooklyn flat who couldn’t tell a lie in school, who mourned the migration of his beloved Dodgers and was shaken up by “Death of a Salesman,” who became a campus radical, a dreamer of revolutions, and then almost disappeared before his improbable election of mayor of Burlington in 1981. Sanders’ remarkable bio is interspersed with the tale of the true believers who packed hockey rinks and concrete convention floors in crowds of 20,000 or more, who tweeted incessantly and posted memes of Sanders flying in coach class, and who exploded with excitement at their hero’s call for a “political revolution” to raise the beleaguered middle class. In a time of rampant cynicism about American politics, “The Bern Identity” turns into something most unlikely – a love story, between the long-distance runner who never gave up his fantasy of real social change, and the dreamers and the radicals and the formerly hopeless who were waiting for him at the finish line.THE AUTHOR Will Bunch is senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News – where he writes the popular political blog Attytood – and also shared the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting in 1992 when he was at New York Newsday. He is the author of two other Kindle Singles: October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge, about the Occupy Wall Street movement, and Give It To Steve!, about the 1948 Philadelphia Eagles winning the NFL title during a raging blizzard. His full-length books include The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, and Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy. His articles have also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Los Angeles Times, American Prospect, American Journalism Review, and elsewhere. He lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with his family.
Gosnell's Babies: Inside the Mind of America's Most Notorious Abortion Doctor
Steve Volk - 2013
That distinction belongs to Gosnell's Babies." — Alexander Nazaryan, The Atlantic Wire"Very well written ... A must-read for anybody who followed this case." — Jake Tapper, CNNIn this chilling tale set against the backdrop of one of the most controversial issues of our times, award-winning journalist Steve Volk tells the decades-long saga of Kermit Gosnell — the abortion doctor whose clinic in a poor section of Philadelphia was revealed to be a house of horrors.Volk — the only journalist to speak to Gosnell since his conviction and imprisonment — brings the eccentric doctor to life, detailing his past in the early days of the abortion-rights movement and getting him to reveal, for the first time ever, why he did what he did. Was Gosnell a monster, or something else?Volk's powerful storytelling gives us a definitive understanding of a complex character, a horrific case, and a divisive issue.
10 Lessons from Hindu History in 10 Episodes: Tales of Grit, Heroism and Valour
Sandeep Balakrishna - 2020
This among others is a fundamental reason why a thorough and truthful study and retelling of this history is needed. The study of Hindu history is also a study of values and inspiration and a profound spiritual yearning that subconsciously continues to guide Hindus. It is also what makes India a unique and distinctive country which is not primarily defined by its politics but by its philosophy and spirituality. The essays in this work both tangentially and explicitly bring out these aspects. "10 Lessons from Hindu History in 10 Episodes" is envisaged as a popular narrative without overlooking or taking liberties with historical accuracy.
The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado
Emerson Hough - 2001
You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
The Day the American Revolution Began: 19 April 1775
William H. Hallahan - 2000
A shot rang out, and the Redcoats replied with a devastating volley.But the day that started so well for the king's troops would end in catastrophe: seventy-three British soldiers dead, two hundred wounded, and the survivors chased back into Boston by the angry colonists. Drawing on diaries, letters, official documents, and memoirs, William H. Hallahan vividly captures the drama of those tense twenty-four hours and shows how they decided the fate of two nations.
You're Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump
Paul Begala - 2020
In November, tens of millions of Americans want to yell it right back at him. Yet Trump has seemed to almost defy the laws of political physics. Paul Begala, one of America’s greatest political talents, lays out the strategy that will defeat him and send him and his industrial-strength spray-on tan machine back to Mar-a-Lago.In You’re Fired, Paul Begala tells us how Trump uses division to distract from the actual reality of his record. Distraction, he argues, is Trump’s superpower. And this book is Kryptonite. In it, the man who helped elect Bill Clinton and reelect Barack Obama, details: -The special weapons and tactics needed in the unconventional war against this most unconventional politician -How to drive a wedge—or, rather, a pickup truck—between Trump and many of his supporters, especially blue-collar workers and farmers -Where the votes to defeat Trump will come from, and how the Rising American Electorate can catch Trump flat-footed -How Democrats can run on issues ranging from Coronavirus and healthcare to the economy, as well as climate change and Trump’s long-term plan to dominate the federal judiciary -There is one chapter called simply, “This Chapter Will Beat Trump.” Find out why Begala is so confident and what issue he says will sink the Trumptanic Full of memorable advice and Begala’s trademark wit, You’re Fired focuses on the lessons we can learn from the party’s successes and failures—and the crucial tools Democrats need to beat Trump.