Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain


James Bloodworth - 2018
    But what if our job was demeaning, poorly paid, and tedious? Cracking open Britain's divisions - immigrant/British, North/South, urban/rural, working class/middle class, leave/remain - journalist James Bloodworth spends six months living and working across Britain, taking on the country's worst jobs. He lives on the meagre proceeds and discovers the anxieties and hopes of those he encounters, including working-class British, young students striving to make ends meet, and Eastern European immigrants.Reminiscent of Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier, this is a fascinating window onto a world that Britain's London-centric media rarely visits. From the Staffordshire Amazon warehouse to the taxi-cabs of Uber, Bloodworth uncovers horrifying employment practices and shows how traditional working-class communities have been decimated by the move to soulless service jobs with no security, advancement or satisfaction. But this is more than an exposé of unscrupulous employers; this is a gripping examination of post-Brexit Britain, a divided nation which needs to understand the true reality of how other people live and work, before it can heal.

ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine: A Food Lover's Road Map to Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Getting Really Healthy


John La Puma - 2008
    Andrew Weil is to herbal medicine and Dr. Phil is to TV psychology, Dr. John La Puma is to culinary medicine. At thirty-five, after eating too much of the Standard American Diet (SAD, isn't it?), Dr. La Puma had become SADly paunchy. So he decided to research the science of nutrition while also going to culinary school to learn to cook. He created the revolutionary new concept of "culinary medicine"-recipes, foods, and meals that prevent or control common health conditions without sacrificing restaurant-quality taste. Now you can use culinary medicine too. In "ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine," you'll learn to stock the medicine chest in your kitchen, use the doctor inside of you, and create dishes that give you lifesaving benefits and truly dazzling flavor. Dr. La Puma serves up a step-by-step eight-week plan to motivate you and help you change your life. Try Saffron Scallop, Shrimp, and Chickpea Paella. Or Sicilian Pasta with Swiss Chard, Goat Cheese, and Basil. Or Spicy and Rich Sausage and Kidney Bean Chili. Anyone who loves food, wants to have more energy, wants to reverse his or her family health history, or wants to know what to eat to get and stay healthy should read this book. Its recipes, meals, and menus can work within minutes of eating them. Experience food you can't wait to make, and grab the energy and good health to reclaim your life. Doctor, What Do I Eat for That? Your kitchen needs a ChefMD. Renowned physician and professionally trained chef Dr. John La Puma has just the person for the job-you! By following the ChefMD Eight-Week Plan, you'll find your inner doctor and learn to eat for optimal health and maximum satisfaction. Use "ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine" to: - Discover what and how to eat for forty health conditions-starting with Acne, ADD, Alzheimer's, Arthritis, and Asthma - Build a "culinary medicine chest" with fifty amazing foods that prevent or control common health conditions without sacrificing restaurant-quality taste- Conquer fatigue, supercharge your immune system, and look and feel younger- Get the most nutrition from the foods you eat - Find the ChefMD Essentials-thirty-six healthful and flavorful brand-name foods in boxes, bags, and cans- Fall in love with food again with fifty easy ChefMD recipes-and no guilt! Eat and cook the ChefMD way and discover just how delicious life can be!

Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent


Harvey A. Silverglate - 2009
    Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few


Robert B. Reich - 2004
    Reich, and now he reveals the cycles of power and influence that have perpetuated a new American oligarchy, a shrinking middle class, and the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in eighty years. He makes clear how centrally problematic our veneration of the "free market" is, and how it has masked the power of the moneyed interests to tilt the market to their benefit. He exposes the falsehoods that have been bolstered by the corruption of our democracy by big corporations and the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street-- that all workers are paid what they're "worth," a higher minimum wage equals fewer jobs, corporations must serve shareholders before employees. Ever the pragmatist, Reich sees hope for reversing our slide toward inequality and diminished opportunity by shoring up the countervailing power of everyone else. Here is a revelatory indictment of our economic status quo and an empowering call to civic action.

Inside


Sam West - 2019
    A locked front door is to an adult what a duvet it is to a child. Once the key is turned in the lock, and once the child is safely snuggled under the duvet, the monsters are kept at bay.Except they’re not. A closed door won’t keep out the boogeymen… And a blanket won’t keep away the monsters. The safety of our cosy homes is a lie. There are bad people out there, who want to do bad things to you in the dead of night, and a locked door isn’t going to stop them. There are bad things already lurking IN our homes; monsters that live in the shadows and in closets, just waiting for you to close your eyes at night.From the real to the supernatural, this collection of stories, held together with a wraparound story, explores all manners of evil that can invade our homes at night.Lock your doors, bolt your windows and sleep with the light on, because THEY are coming to get you….

How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today's Economy


Steve Forbes - 2009
    It's the optimal way to provide for the needs of people & foster the democratic & moral values of a free society. Yet the worst recession in decades has widely & understandably shaken faith in our system. Even before the current crisis, capitalism received a bad rap from a culture ambivalent about free markets & wealth creation. This crisis of confidence is preventing a full recognition of how we got into the mess we're in today—& why capitalism continues to be the best route to prosperity. How Capitalism Will Save Us transcends labels by showing how economies really work. When free people in free markets have energy to solve problems & meet others' needs, they turn scarcity into abundance & innovate. The freedom of democratic capitalism is what enabled Ford to take a plaything of the rich & to make it affordable to workers. In the capitalist system, economic growth doesn't mean more of the same. It's about change increasing overall wealth, giving people better lives.

American Badass


Dale Comstock - 2013
    Dale Comstock is a Delta Force Operator - a member of America's secret army; the most enigmatic and combat tested elite counter-terrorism unit in the world. In his action packed story we journey with him from boyhood to manhood into a world of extreme violence where he learns the values of hard work, sacrifice, and love of family. As he succeeds and fails as a Delta Force Operator, Green Beret, husband and father, he elevates the meaning of being an American to being an American Badass.

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America


Alissa Quart - 2018
    Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible.Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects—from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses—have been wrung out by a system that doesn’t support them, and enriches only a tiny elite.Interlacing her own experience with close-up reporting on families that are just getting by, Quart reveals parenthood itself to be financially overwhelming, except for the wealthiest. She offers real solutions to these problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood and caregiving.Written in the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich and Jennifer Senior, Squeezed is an eye-opening page-turner. Powerfully argued, deeply reported, and ultimately hopeful, it casts a bright, clarifying light on families struggling to thrive in an economy that holds too few options. It will make readers think differently about their lives and those of their neighbors.

No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: The Surprising Deceptions of Individual Choice


Tom Slee - 2006
    But, in an age of corporate dominance, our freedom to choose has taken on new meaning. Upset with your local big box store? Object to unfair hiring practices at your neighbourhood fast food restaurant? Want to protest the opening of that new multinational coffeeshop? Vote with your feet! What if it's not that simple? In "No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart," Tom Slee unpacks the implications of our fervent belief in the power of choice. Pointing out that individual choice has become the lynchpin of a neoconservative corporate ideology he calls MarketThink, he urges us to re-examine our assumptions . Slee makes use of game theory to argue that individual choice is not inherently bad. Nor is it the societal fix-all that our corporations and governments claim it is. A spirited treatise, this book will make you think about choice in a whole new way.

The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry


Rita Dove - 2011
    Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U .S. Poet Laureate, introduces readers to the most significant and compelling poems of the past hundred years. Selecting from the canon of American poetry throughout the twentieth century, Dove has created an anthology that represents the full spectrum of aesthetic sensibilities-from styles and voices to themes and cultures-while balancing important poems with significant periods of each poet. Featuring poems both classic and contemporary, this collection reflects both a dynamic and cohesive portrait of modern American poetry and outlines its trajectory over the past century.

On Politics: A History of Political Thought From Herodotus to the Present


Alan Ryan - 2012
    Whether examining Lord Acton’s dictum that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” or explicating John Stuart Mill’s contention that it is “better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied,” Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes reading about them a transcendent experience. Whether writing about Plato or Augustine, de Toqueville or Thomas Jefferson, Ryan brings a wisdom to his text that illuminates John Dewey’s belief that the role of philosophy is less to see truth than to enhance experience. With this unparalleled tour de force, Ryan emerges in his own right as one of the most influential political philosophers of our time.

Songs of Silence


Curdella Forbes - 2003
    Held together by the sure and simple voice of a child, this powerful collection is interspersed with the whisper of adult reflection, rendering the accounts at once sensuous and disarmingly honest.Inhabiting an elusive space between what is said and what is felt, what is conveyed and what is perceived, silence becomes a metaphor of rage and fear, of loneliness and contentment, confusion and clarification in these songs that explore social change and individual growth.Oscillating between Creole and Standard English, Songs of Silence is an accomplished piece of writing distinguished by an extraordinary sophistication of language and stylistic confidence. Relayed with a rare intimacy and detail, recollections are translated into a series of tales in which the narrator becomes a mouthpiece for a multiplicity of voices, each with their own story to tell.This novel comprises a series of eight linked episodes, all of which focus on different members of a rural community in Jamaica, seen through the eyes of a young girl growing up and remembered by the adult she became.

"They're Bankrupting Us!": And 20 Other Myths about Unions


Bill Fletcher Jr. - 2012
    The only way to save the American economy, pundits claim, is to weaken the labor movement, strip workers of collective bargaining rights, and champion private industry. In "They're Bankrupting Us!": And 20 Other Myths about Unions, labor leader Bill Fletcher Jr. makes sense of this debate as he unpacks the twenty-one myths most often cited by anti-union propagandists. Drawing on his experiences as a longtime labor activist and organizer, Fletcher traces the historical roots of these myths and provides an honest assessment of the missteps of the labor movement. He reveals many of labor's significant contributions, such as establishing the forty-hour work week and minimum wage, guaranteeing safe workplaces, and fighting for equity within the workforce. This timely, accessible, "warts and all" book argues, ultimately, that unions are necessary for democracy and ensure economic and social justice for all people.

From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States


Priscilla Murolo - 2000
    . . that gracefully handles a broad range of subject matter, This is the first comprehensive look at American history through the prism of working people. of illustrations.

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory


David Graeber - 2018
    After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.There are millions of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation.