The Primal Prescription: Surviving The "Sick Care" Sinkhole


Doug McGuff - 2015
    health care system is in a state of disrepair, but the rabbit hole goes deeper than even the staunchest critics may realize. In Primal Prescription, authors Doug McGuff and Robert Murphy combine their expertise in economics and medicine to offer a shocking, disturbing, and ultimately enlightening view into America’s health care system. You’ll discover the real history of what went wrong with U.S. health care and insurance, and why current efforts to clean up the mess are only making things worse.But far from leaving you feeling helpless at the dismal—and sometimes deadly—state of affairs, Primal Prescription equips you with both the knowledge to understand the health care conundrum and the tools for navigating your way out of it. McGuff and Murphy offer an evidence-based “game plan” for taking control of your own medical care, protecting yourself and your loved ones regardless of what the future holds for the rest of the nation.Whether you’re currently tangled in America’s broken health care system or simply trying to avoid its clutches, Primal Prescription is a must-have resource for taking your health into your own hands.

The Broken Compass: How Left and Right Lost Their Meaning


Peter Hitchens - 2009
    Left-wingers keenly support the bombing of Belgrade and the invasion of Iraq. Tories warn against the threat to civil liberties. The 'progressive' BBC gives a fair hearing to the Conservative Party. Socialist journalists turn and rend Ken Livingstone. In democratic London, merely expressing your opinion can be seriously bad for your career, while in autocratic Moscow you can say pretty much what you like, provided you don't do anything about it. The tearing down of the old Iron Curtain may have allowed markets to sweep into the old Warsaw Pact lands - but it has also permitted revolutionary left-wing ideas to spread like a bacillus through the 'West'.Nobody really cares any more about the old shibboleths of state ownership. The British Labour Party - which opposed nuclear weapons, supposedly on principle, when they mattered - is quite happy to spend billions on the same weapons now that they are unnecessary.The supposed 'right' is as confused and nonsensical as the supposed 'left'. Neo-conservatives run vast budget deficits at home and engage in utopian adventures abroad. They are actively opposed to old conservative ideas such as national sovereignty, strong families and rigorous selective education, and happy to bend the knee to left-wing orthodoxies from man-made global warming to egalitarianism.The political compass is broken, its needle swinging wildly and meaninglessly. The existing political parties have converged, or perhaps simply retreated in confusion on to what looked like safe territory, the often tried and repeated failed policies of Fabian Social Democracy, now worsened by 1960s sexual and social radicalism. They are no longer adversaries, their personnel are interchangeable and they struggle to find ways to distinguish themselves from each other. They simply ignore - or deny - huge areas of human experience and concern from mass immigration to the collapse of marriage and the disappearance of order and rigour in the state education system.Yet conventional wisdom continues to insist that formal politics can and should continue as it did before - and that an exasperated and increasingly angry electorate should place its hopes in a mere change of personnel at the next election. Peter Hitchens argues for the re-establishment of proper adversary politics and the rediscovery of principle.

Tracer


Frederick Barthelme - 1985
    Martin, in the middle of a divorce, is seeking solace. But settles in for some rest and rehabilitation with his soon-to-be ex-sister-in-law.

The Return of the Great Depression


Vox Day - 2009
    According to Day, the economic theories behind those policies are flawed and account for why most economists were unable to anticipate the recession or see that their expectations of an imminent recovery are incorrect. Day applies a different theory, the one he used to predict the current crisis, to show that the world is in the early stages of a massive economic contraction. Then he turns to the six scenarios presently envisioned by the world's leading economists and assesses which is most likely to unfold. As the title suggests, Day concludes that the most probable scenario is a Great Depression 2.0 that will be larger in scale and scope than that of the 1930s.

The Tea Party Goes to Washington


Rand Paul - 2011
    Voters fearful of growing government and debt have found voice in the Tea Party phenomenon and the movement continues to deliver a message that Washington, D.C. has found impossible to ignore.In THE TEA PARTY GOES TO WASHINGTON, the newly elected senator and self-described "constitutional conservative" explains why his party has to stand by its limited government rhetoric and why the federal government must be stuffed back into its constitutional box. Given the problems our nation faces, these are not mere suggestions, but moral imperatives.Rand Paul and those who voted for him want to stop borrowing, end the bailouts, and entitlements and the spending. In THE TEA PARTY GOES TO WASHINGTON you'll learn:The history of the Tea Party and why it isn't "extreme"How both parties operate outside the ConstitutionRand's plan for a balanced budgetWhy the Tea Party will endureNow is the time to get America back on track-- this is the moment of the new revolution that will take us back to our grass roots, to the country of our founding fathers.It's a new day in Washington-- as the Tea Party graduates from populist outrage to political influence, Rand Paul stands poised to become one of its greatest champions.

Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise


Richard Beck - 2017
    His own faith was flagging, but Beck still believed the promise of Matthew 25, that when we visit the prisoner, we visit Jesus. And sure enough, God met him in prison.

Opportunity Knocks: The Story of How Hope and Opportunity Can Change Everything


Tim Scott - 2020
    As the son of a single mother from North Charleston, South Carolina, he struggled to get through school and had his dreams of a college football career shattered by a car wreck. But thanks to his mother and a few mentors along the way, he learned that "failure isn't failure unless you quit." He also learned that it's hard work and perseverance, not a government handout, that will get you ahead in life.Today, Senator Scott is the only black Republican in the Senate, and he believes that investment and commerce are the best ways to rebuild our most impoverished communities. This is the idea behind his signature piece of legislation, the "opportunity zones" program, which President Trump has strongly endorsed. The program provides tax incentives for businesses that invest in low-income urban areas, seeking to replace things like welfare and government assistance. In Opportunity Knocks, Senator Scott will tell his life story with a focus on adversity and opportunity. He will teach readers about the principles of hard work and hope while addressing the dangers of veering too far toward socialist policies. The book will also not shy away from discussions of racism and racial inequality in the United States, and will recount some of Senator Scott's own brushes with racism as well as the many discussions he's had with people who want to help, including President Trump.

The Funnies


J. Robert Lennon - 1999
    Opportunity knocks when Mix's father dies and Mix is offered to take over the father's successful, syndicated cartoon. Question is will the son match his father's sense of humor, part of the cartoon's popularity being that it pokes fun at the oddball Mix family. By the author of The Light of Falling Stars.

Goldwater


Barry M. Goldwater - 1988
    Great reading!--New York Times.

William Faulkner's Light in August


Leslie A. Juhasz - 1988
    

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World


Anand Giridharadas - 2018
    We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward "thought leaders" who redefine "change" in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm. We hear the limousine confessions of a celebrated foundation boss; witness an American president hem and haw about his plutocratic benefactors; and attend a cruise-ship conference where entrepreneurs celebrate their own self-interested magnanimity.Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? He also points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world. A call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.

To Move the World: JFK's Quest for Peace


Jeffrey D. Sachs - 2013
    Kennedy’s presidency—the crusade for world peace that consumed his final year in office—by the New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Civilization, Common Wealth, and The End of Poverty  The last great campaign of John F. Kennedy’s life was not the battle for reelection he did not live to wage, but the struggle for a sustainable peace with the Soviet Union. To Move the World recalls the extraordinary days from October 1962 to September 1963, when JFK marshaled the power of oratory and his remarkable political skills to establish more peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and a dramatic slowdown in the proliferation of nuclear arms.   Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, led their nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two superpowers came eyeball to eyeball at the nuclear abyss. This near-death experience shook both leaders deeply. Jeffrey D. Sachs shows how Kennedy emerged from the Missile crisis with the determination and prodigious skills to forge a new and less threatening direction for the world. Together, he and Khrushchev would pull the world away from the nuclear precipice, charting a path for future peacemakers to follow.   During his final year in office, Kennedy gave a series of speeches in which he pushed back against the momentum of the Cold War to persuade the world that peace with the Soviets was possible. The oratorical high point came on June 10, 1963, when Kennedy delivered the most important foreign policy speech of the modern presidency.  He argued against the prevailing pessimism that viewed humanity as doomed by forces beyond its control. Mankind, argued Kennedy, could bring a new peace into reality through a bold vision combined with concrete and practical measures.   Achieving the first of those measures in the summer of 1963, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, required more than just speechmaking, however. Kennedy had to use his great gifts of persuasion on multiple fronts—with fractious allies, hawkish Republican congressmen, dubious members of his own administration, and the American and world public—to persuade a skeptical world that cooperation between the superpowers was realistic and necessary. Sachs shows how Kennedy campaigned for his vision and opened the eyes of the American people and the world to the possibilities of peace.    Featuring the full text of JFK’s speeches from this period, as well as striking photographs, To Move the World gives us a startlingly fresh perspective on Kennedy’s presidency and a model for strong leadership and problem solving in our time.Praise for To Move the World   “Rife with lessons for the current administration . . . We cannot know how many more steps might have been taken under Kennedy’s leadership, but To Move the World urges us to continue on the journey.”—Chicago Tribune  “The messages in these four speeches seem all too pertinent today.”—Publishers WeeklyFrom the Hardcover edition.

The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America


Joshua Holland - 2010
    Labor unions hurt their members. Government regulation destroys jobs. These are just a few of the biggest lies in the web of misinformation spun by conservatives and the Chamber of Commerce. Holland's book dissects each malicious fiction to show how the Right is just plain wrong on the economy—wrong on jobs, wrong on the deficit, wrong on taxes, wrong on trade.Takes down old and new conservative myths about the economy, including healthcare, stimulus, progressive taxes, Wall Street regulation, and moreFilled with recent quotes from conservative politicians and pundits, from the misleading to the laughable to the totally outrageousTackles specific aspects of the Republicans' economic agenda, including their 2010 alternatives to Obama's budgetDeftly written and rigorously documented by Alternet senior writer/editor Joshua HollandWith the economy set to be the driving issue before and after the 2010 midterm elections, The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy sets the record straight on every part of the conservatives' economic agenda.

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression


Amity Shlaes - 2007
    She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs.

Hard America, Soft America: Competition Vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future


Michael Barone - 2004
    Indeed, American students lag behind their peers in other nations, but America remains on the leading edge economically, scientifically, technologically, and militarily. The reason for this paradox, explains Barone in this brilliant essay, is that “from ages six to eighteen Americans live mostly in what I call Soft America—the parts of our country where there is little competition and accountability. But from ages eighteen to thirty Americans live mostly in Hard America—the parts of American life subject to competition and accountability.” While Soft America coddles, Hard America plays for keeps. Educators, for example, protect children from the rigors of testing, ban dodgeball, and promote just about any student who shows up. But most adults quickly figure out that how they do depends on what they produce. Barone sweeps readers along, showing how we came to the current divide—for things weren’t always this way. In fact, no part of our society is all Hard or all Soft, and the boundary between Hard America and Soft America often moves back and forth. Barone also shows where America is headed—or should be headed. We don’t want to subject kindergartners to the rigors of the Marine Corps or leave old people uncared for. But Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America, and we have the luxury of keeping part of our society Soft only if we keep most of it Hard.Hard America, Soft America reveals: • How the American situation is unique: In Europe, schooling is competitive and demanding, but adult life is Soft, with generous welfare benefits, short work hours, long vacations, and state pensions• How the American military has reclaimed the Hard goals and programs it abandoned in the Vietnam era• How Hardness drives America’s economy—an economy that businesses and economists nearly destroyed in the 1970s by spurning competition • How America’s schools have failed because they are bastions of Softness—but how they are finally showing signs of Hardening• The benefits of Softness: How government programs like Social Security were necessary in what was a harsh and unforgiving America• Hard America, Soft America is a stunningly original and provocative work of social commentary from one of this country’s most respected political analysts.From the Hardcover edition.