Broke, USA is a Fast Food Nation for the “poverty industry” that will also appeal to readers of Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and David Shipler (The Working Poor).

    But no matter how enormous the crisis -- the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate, Monica Lewinsky's thong -- America's always come out looking like, well, America.This time, however, something's different. Things aren't just screwed up; they're f!$d up beyond all recognition. Welcome to F.U.B.A.R., a hilarious and scathing satire of the American Right's bad behavior, by the creators of Air America's Majority Report.If you're a liberal who's somehow not panicked over the state of our Union, or if you're a Republican who's just having voter's remorse, or if you think what's happening to the country is just politics as usual, F.U.B.A.R. will open your eyes to our current national nightmare. With completely unfair and unbalanced analysis, authors Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill take readers on a whirlwind tour of what's left of the United States, exposing the truth about the Right's blueprint for total domination -- over your money, your mind, your sex life, and even your place in the afterlife (yes, they have a plan for that, too).Along the way, they'll answer your most pressing questions, like:I'm gay. Can I still be a Republican?Do I need to own my own congressman, or is a time share okay?Is New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman's mustache, in fact, the sign of the Beast?I thought we ran the media. What happened?Finally, Seder and Sherrill offer a helpful and hopeful vision for a future that remarkably doesn't look like a cross between the Matrix and Mayberry. F.U.B.A.R. is the wake-up call America has been waiting to receive -- and it will probably be wiretapped.

    As with all Emily Hayes books, you can guarantee some hot scenes and a Happy Ever After.Dr Nicole Graham is a hardworking Pediatrician at Forest Vale hospital. She meets a beautiful newcomer to Forest Vale at a Christmas party and is immediately drawn to her.But, the newcomer has her own complex story and Nicole doesn't do relationships, so it would never work, right?What will it take for Nicole to finally give her heart to another?Join Nicole and Suzie for Christmas parties, carols and festivities. Will Nicole get all she wants for Christmas?

    For an entire year, otherwise clear-thinking members of the most affluent, over-educated, information-drenched generation in American history fell prey to the most expensive, hi-tech, laser-focused marketing assault in presidential campaign history. Twitter messages were machine-gunned to cell phones at mach speed. Facebook and MySpace groups spread across the Internet like digital fire. YouTube videos featuring celebrities ricocheted across the globe and into college students’ in-boxes with devastating regularity. All the while, the mega-money-raising engine whirred like a slot machine stuck on jackpot. The result: an unthinking mass of young voters marched forward to elect the most radical and untested president in U.S. history. Recognized as one of the country’s top young conservative activists by Human Events, Jason Mattera created an internet sensation with ambush video interviews that exposed clueless young liberals and cunning Democratic officials. Now he reveals the jaw-dropping lengths Barack Obama and his allies in Hollywood, Washington, and Academia went to in order to transform a legion of iPod-listening, MTV-watching followers into a winning coalition that threatens to become a long-lasting political realignment. Obama Zombies uncovers the true, behind-the-scenes story of the methods and tactics the Obama campaign unleashed on youth culture. Through personal interviews and meticulous original research, Mattera explains why conservatism’s future rests upon jolting the young masses from their slumber, yanking out their earphones, and sparking a countercultural conservative battle against the rise of the ignorant Left. The lesson from 2008 is crystal clear: When true conservatives run away, Obama zombies come out to play.

     Maybe, you’ve only recently started to struggle with social anxiety or shyness, or have lived with it for a very long time. This maybe the first time you’ve looked for help, or you may have tried different methods to manage your social anxiety or shyness before and remained stuck, or after some initial improvement you found yourself bogged down with same anxious thoughts and feelings. Books and methods that promise instant and magical transformations to overcoming social anxiety and shyness lose their impact when we have to leave our comfort zone and the fairy dust blows away. Whatever the case, you’re probably looking for something that really works, something that is effective, practical, real, and evidence based. There are four main steps in this revolutionary approach and I’ve seen it change people’s lives time and time again. You’re going to learn how to: Understand how social anxiety and shyness develops Build a solid foundation for behaviour change Effectively manage anxious thoughts and feelings Be confident in social situations In Overcome Social Anxiety and Shyness: A Step-by-Step Self Help Action Plan to Overcome Social Anxiety, Defeat Shyness and Create Confidence, university academic and mental health teacher Dr Matt Lewis will take you through a step-by-step programme, in a workbook format, using simple but powerful exercises that will take just a few minutes each day, allowing you to start overcoming social anxiety and shyness, and being back in control and able to enjoy life. Social anxiety can make us feel paralysed and sometimes the smallest and quickest of tasks can seem insurmountable, so the information has been reduced into small chunks, using brief chapters that can be digested easily and quickly. The book contains practical exercises in a workbook format, access to audio exercises and online resources, and an end of book project to help put all the learned skills into real life practice. The principles and practices you will learn in the book go beyond managing social anxiety and shyness. They will also help you to become unstuck, build confidence and really live. Using referenced scientific and academic research, the book teaches you how to: Understand how and why social anxiety and shyness develops. Learn how living in ‘safety mode’ can diminish your life. Create a mindset that will allow you to believe change is possible. Build the foundations for a calm and peaceful mind. Avoid mental exhaustion and increase energy. Effectively handle anxious thoughts and feelings as they arise. Tame the voice in your head and reduce anxiety in social situations. Become unstuck and able to take action in situations you would normally avoid, withdraw, or distract yourself from. Build your confidence step-by-step in both small and large social situations. Take steps to create a fulfilling and meaningful life. This book will be helpful for those who struggle with: Social Anxiety Shyness Low confidence Anxiety Disorder Panic Attacks Panic Disorder Agoraphobia If you f

    American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

     “What happened to the America I thought I knew?” Brokaw writes. “Have we simply wandered off course, but only temporarily? Or have we allowed ourselves to be so divided that we’re easy prey for hijackers who could steer us onto a path to a crash landing? . . . I do have some thoughts, original and inspired by others, for our journey into the heart of a new century.” Rooted in the values, lessons, and verities of generations past and of his South Dakota upbringing, Brokaw weaves together inspiring stories of Americans who are making a difference and personal stories from his own family history, to engage us in a conversation about our country and to offer ideas for how we can revitalize the promise of the American Dream. Inviting us to foster a rebirth of family, community, and civic engagement as profound as the one that won World War II, built our postwar prosperity, and ushered in the Civil Rights era, Brokaw traces the exciting, unnerving changes in modern life—in values, education, public service, housing, the Internet, and more—that have transformed our society in the decades since the age of thrift in which he was raised. Offering ideas from Americans who are change agents in their communities, in The Time of Our Lives, Brokaw gives us, a wise, honest, and wide-ranging book, a nourishing vision of hopefulness in an age of diminished expectations.From the Hardcover edition.

    It sprawls across a stirring accidental sea, across the deserts, date groves and labor camps of Southeastern California, right across the border into Mexico. In this eye-opening book, William T. Vollmann takes us deep into the heart of this haunted region, exploring polluted rivers and guarded factories and talking with everyone from Mexican migrant workers to border patrolmen. Teeming with patterns, facts, stories, people and hope, this is an epic study of an emblematic region.

    Provincetown, eccentric, physically remote, and heartbreakingly beautiful, has been amenable and intriguing to outsiders for as long as it has existed. "It is the only small town I know of where those who live unconventionally seem to outnumber those who live within the prescribed bounds of home and licensed marriage, respectable job, and biological children," says Cunningham. "It is one of the places in the world you can disappear into. It is the Morocco of North America, the New Orleans of the north."He first came to the place more than twenty years ago, falling in love with the haunted beauty of its seascape and the rambunctious charm of its denizens. Although Provincetown is primarily known as a summer mecca of stunning beaches, quirky shops, and wild nightlife, as well as a popular destination for gay men and lesbians, it is also a place of deep and enduring history, artistic and otherwise. Few towns have attracted such an impressive array of artists and writers—from Tennessee Williams to Eugene O'Neill, Mark Rothko to Robert Motherwell—who, like Cunningham, were attracted to this finger of land because it was . . . different, nonjudgmental, the perfect place to escape to; to be rescued, healed, reborn, or simply to live in peace. As we follow Cunningham on his various excursions through Provincetown and its surrounding landscape, we are drawn into its history, its mysteries, its peculiarities—places you won't read about in any conventional travel guide.

    Using journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, news accounts, novels, medical literature, and numerous interviews, she relates an often surprising narrative of lesbian life. "A key work...the point of reference from which all subsequent studies of 20th-century lesbian life in the United States will begin."—San Francisco Examiner.

    L. King exposes a closeted culture of sex between black men who lead "straight" lives. King explores his own past as a DL man, and the path that led him to let go of the lies and bring forth a message that can promote emotional healing and open discussions about relationships, sex, sexuality, and health in the black community. Providing a long-overdue wake-up call, J. L. King bravely puts the spotlight on a topic that has until now remained dangerously taboo. Drawn from hundreds of interviews, statistics, and the author's firsthand knowledge of DL behavior, "On the Down Low "reveals the warning signs African American women need to know. King also discusses the potential health consequences of having unprotected sex, as African American women represent an alarming 64 percent of new HIV infections. Volatile yet vital," On the Down Low "is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

    A political decision to be announced this weekend in California will signal far-reaching ramifications for America's lesbian and gay community.At a cabin in a Southern California mountain resort, three lesbians and a gay man wait in mutual antagonism for Donnelly, the woman who has summoned them here, the woman with whom they have all shared a part of their lives.Publisher Bradley Jones was once married to her. Cabin owner Pat Decker, a teacher nearing retirement, took her away from Bradley.Averill Calder Harmon, in the topmost rank of professional golfers on the LPGA tour, lured Donnelly away from Pat. Querida Quemada, a successful young Chicana professional, is Donnelly's current partner.Donnelly, an activist connected at the highest levels of the national scene, knows about the forthcoming political decision. In the certainty of her connection to these four people, she is convinced that the time is now for each of them to take vital and profoundly personal action.But even Donnelly cannot dream of the extent to which this weekend will be a watershed, with consequences reaching far beyond any of them.Published on the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising and the birth of the modern gay rights movement, FLASHPOINT is the novel for our times.

    And what he is due is the right to speak his mind. He must have this for your own safety's sake because his freedom is inextricably tied to your own. If he can be censored, why shouldn't you be censored? If we put barriers up to silence 'unpleasant' ideas, what's to stop the silencing of any discussion? This book is a full-throated defense of free speech and open inquiry in politics, science, and culture by the New York Times bestselling author and skeptic Michael Shermer. The new collection of essays and articles takes the Devil by the horns by tackling five key themes: free thought and free speech, politics and society, scientific humanism, religion, and the ideas of controversial intellectuals. For our own sake, we must give the Devil his due.

    97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement

    This visual narrative of astonishing sensitivity brings to light an until-now-unpublished collection of hundreds of snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied of contexts, both private and public.Taken when male partnerships were often illegal, the photos here were found at flea markets, in shoe boxes, family archives, old suitcases, and later online and at auctions. The collection now includes photos from all over the world: Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Greece, Latvia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Serbia. The subjects were identified as couples by that unmistakable look in the eyes of two people in love - impossible to manufacture or hide. They were also recognized by body language - evidence as subtle as one hand barely grazing another - and by inscriptions, often coded.Included here are ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, photo strips, photomatics, and snapshots - over 100 years of social history and the development of photography.In these delight-filled pages, couples in love tell their own story for the first time at a time when joy and hope - indeed human connectivity - are crucial lifelines to our better selves. Universal in reach and overwhelming in impact, Loving speaks to our spirit and resilience, our capacity for bliss, and our longing for the shared truths of love.