Ship of fools: how a selfish ruling class is bringing America to the brink of revolution

By Carlson, Tucker

Publishing Date: 2018

Classification: 300

Call Number: 305.52 CAR

"The popular FOX News star of Tucker Carlson Tonight offers his signature fearless and funny political commentary on how America's ruling class has failed everyday Americans. "You look on in horror, helpless and desperate. You have nowhere to go. You're trapped on a ship of fools." --From the Introduction In Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution, Tucker Carlson tells the truth about the new American elites, a group whose power and wealth has grown beyond imagination even as the rest of the country has withered. The people who run America now barely interact with it. They fly on their own planes, ski on their own mountains, watch sporting events far from the stands in sky boxes. They have total contempt for you. "They view America the way a private equity firm sizes up an aging conglomerate," Carlson writes, "as something outdated they can profit from. When it fails, they're gone." In Ship of Fools, Tucker Carlson offers a blistering critique of our new overlords. Traditional liberals are gone, he writes. The patchouli-scented hand-wringers who worried about whales and defended free speech have been replaced by globalists who hide their hard-edged economic agenda behind the smokescreen of identity politics. They'll outsource your job while lecturing you about transgender bathrooms. Left and right, Carlson says, are no longer meaningful categories in America. "The rift is between those who benefit from the status quo, and those who don't." Our leaders are fools, Carlson concludes, "unaware that they are captains of a sinking ship." But in the signature and witty style that viewers of Tucker Carlson Tonight have come to enjoy, his book answers the all-important question: How do we put the country back on course?"--

Heavy: an American memoir

By Laymon, Kiese

Publishing Date: 2018

Classification: 300

Call Number: 305.896 LAY

"Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about the physical manifestations of violence, grief, trauma, and abuse on his own body. He writes of his own eating disorder and gambling addiction as well as similar issues that run throughout his family. Through self-exploration, storytelling, and honest conversation with family and friends, Heavy seeks to bring what has been hidden into the light and to reckon with all of its myriad sources, from the most intimate--a mother-child relationship--to the most universal--a society that has undervalued and abused black bodies for centuries"--

It's better than it looks: reasons for optimism in an age of fear

By Easterbrook, Gregg

Publishing Date: 2018

Classification: 300

Call Number: 306.09 EAS

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 than it ever has been. In the United States, disease, crime, discrimination, and most forms of pollution are in long-term decline, while longevity and education keep rising and economic indicators are better than in any past generation. Worldwide, malnutrition and extreme poverty are at historic lows, and the risk of dying by war or violence is the lowest in human history.

Barracoon: the story of the last "black cargo"

By Hurston, Zora Neale

Publishing Date: [2018]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 306.362 HUR

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo's unique vernacular, and written from Hurston's perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

American contempt for liberty

By Williams, Walter E.

Publishing Date: [2015]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 320.011 WIL

A collection of essays on a range of controversial issues surrounding race, education, the environment, the United States Constitution, and more.

Identity: the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment

By Fukuyama, Francis

Publishing Date: 2018

Classification: 300

Call Number: 320.019 FUK

"A provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for our democracy and international affairs of state. In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American and global institutions were in a state of decay as the United States was captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to 'the people,' who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. The demands of identity fuel much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is founded has been increasingly challenged by restrictive forms of recognition and resentment based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious environment of many college campuses, and the hideous emergence of white nationalism. The struggle for recognition cannot be transcended--but we must begin to direct it in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. [This] is an urgent and necessary book: a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continual conflict."--Dust jacket.

The fifth risk

By Lewis, Michael

Publishing Date: [2018]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 320.973 LEW

"The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. At Agriculture, the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it's not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do. Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand those problems. But if there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes -- unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system: those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.

Ranger confidential: living, working, and dying in the national parks

By Lankford, Andrea

Publishing Date: [2010]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 333.78 LAN

Recounts the experiences of the author while she was a national park ranger in locations across the United States.

Karl Marx: a nineteenth-century life

By Sperber, Jonathan

Publishing Date: c2013

Classification: 300

Call Number: 335.4092 SPE

A biography of the philosopher and political revolutionary describes his childhood and family life along with his public life as an agitator and dissident and compares him to his contemporaries.

Come on: capitalism, short-termism, population and the destruction of the planet

By Weizsäcker, Ernst U. von

Publishing Date: 2018

Classification: 300

Call Number: 338.9 WEI

Current worldwide trends are not sustainable. The Club of Rome’s warnings published in the book Limits to Growth are still valid. Remedies that are acceptable for the great majority tend to make things worse. We seem to be in a philosophical crisis. Pope Francis says it clearly: our common home is in deadly danger. Analyzing the philosophical crisis, the book comes to the conclusion that the world may need a “new enlightenment”; one that is not based solely on doctrine, but instead addresses a balance between humans and nature, as well as a balance between markets and the state, and the short versus long term. To do this we need to leave behind working in ”silos” in favor of a more systemic approach that will require us to rethink the organization of science and education.

Lafayette in the somewhat United States

By Vowell, Sarah

Publishing Date: 2015

Classification: 300

Call Number: 355.0092 VOW

"Chronicling General Lafayette's years in Washington's army, Vowell reflects on the ideals of the American Revolution versus the reality of the Revolutionary War. Riding shotgun with Lafayette, Vowell swerves from the high-minded debates of Independence Hall to the frozen wasteland of Valley Forge, from bloody2015 battlefields to the Palace of Versailles, bumping into John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Lord Cornwallis, Benjamin Franklin, Marie Antoinette and various kings, Quakers and redcoats along the way. Drawn to the patriots' war out of a lust for glory, Enlightenment ideas and the traditional French hatred for the British, young Lafayette crossed the Atlantic expecting to join forces with an undivided people, encountering instead fault lines between the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, rebel and loyalist inhabitants, and a conspiracy to fire George Washington, the one man holding together the rickety, seemingly doomed patriot cause. While Vowell's yarn is full of the bickering and infighting that marks the American past--and present--her telling of the Revolution is just as much a story of friendship: between Washington and Lafayette, between the Americans and their French allies and, most of all between Lafayette and the American people" --

The book of war

Publishing Date: 1999

Classification: 300

Call Number: 355.02

More than eighty accounts, drawn largely from protagonists or eyewitnesses, of events in wars from the Greek Heroic Era to the Gulf War in Kuwait chronicle the evolution of western warfare.

Lords of the sky: fighter pilots and air combat, from the Red Baron to the F-16

By Hampton, Dan

Publishing Date: [2014]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 358.4 HAM

"By the New York Times bestselling author of Viper Pilot, former USAF F-16 legend Dan Hampton tells the thrilling story of how fighter pilots have ruled the skies for 100 years, from the Red Baron to today's supersonic jets"--

Do the right thing: the people's economist speaks

By Williams, Walter E.

Publishing Date: c1995

Classification: 300

Call Number: 361.61 WIL

Nationally syndicated columnist Walter E. Williams is chairmain of the economic department at George Mason University. This thought-provoking book contains nearly one hundred of William's most popular essays on race and sex, government, education, environment and health, law and society, international politics, and other controversial topics. - (Chicago Distribution Center)

Mindhunter: inside the FBI's elite serial crime unit

By Douglas, John E.

Publishing Date: [1995]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 362.2 DOU

Includes material on "the Trailside Killer in San Francisco, the Atlanta child murderer, the Tylenol poisoner, the man who hunted prostitutes for sport in the woods of Alaska, and Seattle's Green River killer ..."

The burn journals

By Runyon, Brent

Publishing Date: 2005

Classification: 300

Call Number: 362.28 RUN

Eighth-grader Brent Runyon splashes gasoline over his bathrobe setting himself on fire in an attempt to kill himself, and he shares the difficult rehabilitation of his mind and body as he grows up.

Forces of habit: drugs and the making of the modern world

By Courtwright, David T.

Publishing Date: 2001

Classification: 300

Call Number: 362.29 COU

Offering a social and biological account of why psychoactive goods proved so seductive, David Courtwright tracks the intersecting paths by which popular drugs entered the stream of global commerce. He shows how the efforts of merchants and colonial planters expanded world supply, drove down prices, and drew millions of less affluent purchasers into the market, effectively democratizing drug consumption. He also shows how Europeans used alcohol as an inducement for native peoples to trade their furs, sell captives into slavery, and negotiate away their lands, and how monarchs taxed drugs to finance their wars and expanding empires. Forces of habit explains why such profitable exploitation has increasingly given way, over the last hundred years, to policies of restriction and prohibition--and how economic and cultural considerations have shaped those policies to determine which drugs are readily accessible, which strictly medicinal, and which forbidden altogether.

The chemical muse: drug use and the roots of Western civilization

By Hillman, D. C. A.

Publishing Date: 2008

Classification: 300

Call Number: 362.29 HIL

Discusses the use of drugs in ancient Greece and Rome, including the historical social attitudes behind drug use and how they may have led to artistic and cultural advances in these civilizations.

The wolf at the door: undue influence and elder financial abuse

By Hackard, Michael

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 362.66 HAC

"In THE WOLF AT THE DOOR, veteran California attorney and elder financial abuse writer Michael Hackard draws from forty years of legal experience to advise families, caregivers, and professionals who work with seniors what elder financial abuse is, how to identify it, and--most importantly--what to do if abuse is suspected. As the baby boomer generation rapidly ages into retirement, elder financial abuse threatens to become a national epidemic. If not addressed early and aggressively, this unique form of exploitation can tear families apart, leaving shattered relationships and depleted bank accounts in its wake. You may not be able to prevent elder financial abuse from happening, but THE WOLF AT THE DOOR will empower you to fight back before it's too late. Concise and chock-full of practical information, THE WOLF AT THE DOOR is a must-have reference for anyone interested in learning about elder financial abuse and what can be done to combat it. The book is written for a general audience, and it offers case studies, research, and hard-won observations gleaned from a long career representing abuse victims and their loved ones. An index and compact sections make navigation easy, and dozens of endnotes direct readers to additional information about elder abuse, undue influence, estate planning and trusts, and more. The net profits from the sale of each copy of THE WOLF AT THE DOOR will be donated to the Alzheimer's Foundation of America."--Publisher's description.

The Pinks: the first women detectives, operatives, and spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency

By Enss, Chris

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 363.289 ENS

Most students of the Old West and American law enforcement history know the story of the notorious and ruthless Pinkerton Detective Agency and the legends behind their role in establishing the Secret Service and tangling with Old West Outlaws. But the true story of Kate Warne, an operative of the Pinkerton Agency and the first woman detective in America--and the stories of the other women who served their country as part of the storied crew of crime fighters--are not well known. For the first time, the stories of these intrepid women are collected here and richly illustrated throughout with numerous historical photographs. From Kate Warne's probable affair with Allan Pinkerton, and her part in saving the life of Abraham Lincoln in 1861 to the lives and careers of the other women who broke out of the Cult of True Womanhood in pursuit of justice, these true stories add another dimension to our understanding of American history.