Soul of a People is about a handful of people who were on the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s and a glimpse of America at a turning point. This particular handful of characters went from poverty to great things later, and included John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Studs Terkel. In the 1930s they were all caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of WPA guides. Through striking images and firsthand...

FUNNY. OUTRAGEOUS. TRUE. Have you ever wondered why some of the biggest problems we face, from illegal immigration to global warming to poverty, never seem to get fixed? The reason is simple: the solutions just aren't very convenient. Fortunately, radio and television host Glenn Beck doesn't care much about convenience; he cares about common sense. Take the issue of poverty, for example. Over the last forty years, America's ten poorest...

A writer at The New Yorker examines the fractures at the center of contemporary culture. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine's journey from brave to blank to bitter; and the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until...

"Pulitzer Prize-winning historians, diplomats, music legends and sports giants explore the grand American experiment in democracy, culture, innovation and ideas, revealing the setbacks, suffering, invention, ingenuity, and social movements that continue to shape our vision of what America is-and what it can be."--Publisher's description.

"From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, a collection of thoughts--always adroit, often acerbic--on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation"--Publisher.

Drawing on sophisticated predictive models and nearly two hundred interviews with experts, a journalist plainly breaks down the looming threats to the United States, in this must-read for anyone concerned about the future of its people, its land, and its government.

In the scorching summer of 1878, with the Gilded Age in its infancy, three tenacious and brilliant scientists raced to Wyoming and Colorado to observe a rare total solar eclipse. One sought to discover a new planet. Another-an adventuresome female astronomer-fought to prove that science was not anathema to femininity. And a young, megalomaniacal inventor, with the tabloid press fast on his heels, sought to test his scientific bona fides and light...