books tagged “social commentary” (Social commentary)

books tagged “social commentary”

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Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
by Thomas H. Naylor, David Wann, John De Graaf, Vicki Robin, David Horsey

ISBN 1576753573 (1-57675-357-3)
Softcover, Ingram Pub Services

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Book summary:
Affluenza is an eye-opening, soul-prodding look at the wretched excess of today's American society. John De Graaf, David Wann and Thomas Naylor define it as something akin to "a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more". Having begun life as two US TV programmes co-produced by De Graaf, this book takes a hard look at the symptoms of affluenza, the history of its development into an epidemic, and the options for treatment. In making its readers aware of this pervasive disease in an age when "the urge to splurge continues to surge", the first section is the book's most provocative. According to figures the authors quote and expound upon, Americans each spend more than $21,000 per year on consumer goods, average rates of saving have fallen from about 10 per cent of income in 1980 to zero in 2000, credit card indebtedness tripled in the 1990s and more people file for bankruptcy each year than graduate from college. "To live, we buy," explain the authors. They present many of the historical, political and socio-economic reasons that affluenza has taken such strong root in American society and, in the final section, offer practical ideas for change. These use the intriguing stories of those who have already opted for simpler living and are creatively combating the disease, through simple habit alterations to more in-depth environmental considerations and from living lightly to managing wealth responsibly.
Many books make you think the author has crammed everything they know into a one-hit wonder attempt at knowledge transfer. The feeling you get reading Affluenza is quite different; the authors appear well-read, well-rounded and intelligent, knowledgable beyond the content of their book but smart enough to realise that we need a short, sharp jolt to recognise our current ailment. It's obviously a cliché that money can't buy happiness, but this book will strike a resounding chord with anyone who realises that time is more valuable than toys. Affluenza is a clarion call for those interested in being part of the healing solution. --S Ketchum [via]
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Back on the Street
by Stuart Moore, Darick Robertson, Rodney Ramos, Warren Ellis

ISBN 1563894459 (1-56389-445-9)
Softcover, DC Comics

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Book summary:
Warren Ellis (whose recent work includes the excellent The Authority) is a fine comics writer. Spider Jerusalem, his tortured journalist protagonist, is a wonderful creation. Back on the Street is the first in the Transmetropolitan series and essential as an introduction to Spider and his world. Preacher's Garth Ennis introduces the book, rightly praising "the finest, blackest humour, and the purest hate, and a sense of justice hissed through gritted teeth". If the message is sometimes a little heavily, a little clumsily overbearing, this does not detract too much from a great story. Ellis has produced a fine comic series in Transmetropolitan. This is a future classic.
The scenario goes something like this. Spider Jerusalem left the City ages ago and grew an awful lot of hair up on a mountain. The City was just too corrupt, too sinful, too unbearable a place for a journalist with a heightened, if awry, sense of what's right, what's wrong. Then his editor calls. Spider still owes him two books. A contract from way back when. And if he doesn't come up with the goods there will be consequences. Trouble is, Spider can only write when he's in the City, hasn't written a thing since he left. He doesn't want to go back but he has to write, has to go back. So he returns to the trouble and the turmoil, back to the mess that feeds him as a writer and gets himself a story. A punk he used to know, Fred Christ, is causing trouble. Fred is the leader of the Transients (humans knowingly infused with alien genes) and he wants them to have their own land and is ready to lead a rebellion to achieve that end. The authorities, obviously, see things differently. And Spider sees through both group's hypocrisies... --Mark Thwaite [via]
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- Back on the Street: ISBN 1563894459 (1-56389-445-9)
  Softcover, DC Comics
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Bait And Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
by Barbara Ehrenreich

ISBN 0805081240 (0-8050-8124-0)
Softcover, Henry Holt & Co

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Book summary:
Questions for Barbara Ehrenreich
Through over three decades of journalism and activism and over a dozen books, Barbara Ehrenreich has been one of the most consistent and imaginative chroniclers of class in America, but it was her bestselling 2001 book, Nickel and Dimed, a undercover expose of the day-to-day struggles of the working poor, that has been the most influential work of her career. Now, with Bait and Switch, she has gone undercover again, this time as a middle-aged professional trying to get a white-collar job in corporate America. We asked her a few questions about what she found:
Amazon.com: Your previous book, Nickel and Dimed, became a blockbuster bestseller with a classic "there but for the grace of God go I" liberal message just when the general political mood of the country seemed to be going in a very different direction. Why do you think it struck such a chord? What sorts of reactions have you gotten to it over the past four years?
Barbara Ehrenreich: A lot of Nickel and Dimed readers are people who regularly inhabit the low-wage work world, and many of them write to tell me that the book affirmed their experience and made them feel less alone and ignored. Other readers though, are affluent people who write to say I opened their eyes to a world they'd been unaware of. For those people, I think one appealing feature of Nickel and Dimed is that it's a personal narrative that gives them a look at lives lived at the margins of their own. The most gratifying response has been from people who tell me the book inspired them to become activists for things like a living wage or affordable housing.
Amazon.com: At what point did you realize that your new book, Bait and Switch, in which you went undercover again, this time to tell a story of working in corporate America, was instead becoming one of not working in corporate America? Is that the story you expected to tell?
Ehrenreich: My initial aim was not "to tell a story of working in corporate America" but to try to understand the human underside of corporate America--the job insecurity, the constant layoffs and downsizings that now occur even in the best of times. I expected to get a job and hence an inside view, but I always knew that that would be very difficult. After about 4-5 months of job searching, I began to get seriously discouraged, but I also came to understand that a fruitless search is in fact a very common experience. After all, today 44 percent of the long-term unemployed are white collar folks--an unusually high percentage. It's their world I entered, and their story that I tell in Bait and Switch.
Amazon.com: For someone with a white-collar career, you didn't have much experience in corporate culture before you attempted to join it for this book. What surprised you the most about what you found?
Ehrenreich: What surprised me most, right from day one of my job search, was the surreal nature of the job searching business. For example, everyone, from corporations to career coaches, relies heavily on "personality tests" which have no scientific credibility or predictive value. One test revealed that I have a melancholy and envious nature and, for some reason, was unsuited to be a writer! And what does "personality" have to do with getting the job done, anyway? There's far less emphasis on skills and experience than on whether you have the prescribed upbeat and likeable persona. I kept wondering: Is this any way to run a business? I was also surprised--and disgusted--by the constant victim-blaming you encounter among coaches, at networking events for the unemployed, and in the business advice books. You're constantly told that whatever happens to you is the result of your attitude or even your "thought forms"--not a word about the corporate policies that lead to so much turmoil and misery.
Amazon.com: You seemed to make much closer ties with your fellow workers in Nickel and Dimed than you did on the white-collar job hunt. What was different this time?
Ehrenreich: You're right--there is a difference. But it's not so much a matter of personalities as it is about two different worlds. There's a lot of camaraderie in the blue-collar world I entered in Nickel and Dimed. People help each other and look out for each other; they laugh together--often at the managers. The white-collar world doesn't encourage camaraderie, far from it. There it's all about competition and fear--of losing one's job, for one thing. Other people are seen as sources of contacts or tips, at best; as competitors or rivals, at worst. And among the unemployed add shame and a sense of personal failure, the constant message that it's all your own fault. All this discourages any solidarity with others or real openness.
Amazon.com: God forbid anyone would come to your book as a guide for finding a white-collar job, but what advice would you give to someone in the shoes you put yourself in: a middle-aged professional woman, in fear of falling irrevocably out of touch with the world of the regularly employed?
Ehrenreich: You don't think I'd make a good career coach? OK, but I have three pieces of advice for the middle-aged, middle-class job seeker anyway:
One, be very careful how you spend your money and time. Since the mid-90s, a whole industry has sprung up to help--or, depending on your point of view, prey upon--white-collar job seekers. The "professionals" in this business are usually entirely unlicensed and unregulated. Also, watch out for events billed as "networking" opportunities that really have another agenda--like recruiting you into expensive coaching or proselytizing you into a particular religion.
Two, don't count on the internet job sites to find you a job or even an interview. On any of these sites, your resume will be competing with hundreds of thousands of others, and most large companies today don't even bother reading online resumes; they have computer programs scan them for keywords (and you won't know what those keywords are.)
Three, and most important: stop believing that it's your own fault. That's the first step to recognizing the common problems facing white-collar workers and responding to them. I'd be thrilled if this book, like Nickel and Dimed, also inspires readers to get involved and become active in efforts to make life a little easier for the growing numbers of people who are unemployed, underemployed, or anxiously employed. What could they do? Lobby for universal health insurance that's not tied to a job, for example. Fight for extended unemployment benefits. Raise their voices to complain about corporate tax breaks and subsidies that are justified in terms of "job creation" but often go to companies that are busy laying people off. One major reason job loss is so catastrophic is that we just don't have much of a safety net in this country. That has to change, and who's going to make it change, if not people like those I met in Bait and Switch? I've got a new website, barbaraehrenreich.com, and I'd like to hear from readers--both their stories and their ideas for how to take action.
Classic Ehrenreich

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War

[via]
More editions of Bait And Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream:
- Bait And Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream: ISBN 0805076069 (0-8050-7606-9)
  Hardcover, Henry Holt & Co
- Bait And Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream: ISBN 0805081240 (0-8050-8124-0)
  Softcover, Henry Holt & Co
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The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
by Naomi Wolf

ISBN 0060512180 (0-06-051218-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
In a country where the average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, movies, advertisements, and MTV saturate our lives with unrealistic images of beauty. The tall, nearly emaciated mannequins that push the latest miracle cosmetic make even the most confident woman question her appearance. Feminist Naomi Wolf argues that women's insecurities are heightened by these images, then exploited by the diet, cosmetic, and plastic surgery industries. Every day new products are introduced to "correct" inherently female "flaws," drawing women into an obsessive and hopeless cycle built around the attempt to reach an impossible standard of beauty. Wolf rejects the standard and embraces the naturally distinct beauty of all women. [via]
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- The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women: ISBN 0060512180 (0-06-051218-0)
  Softcover, Harpercollins
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Brain Droppings
by George Carlin

ISBN 0786883219 (0-7868-8321-9)
Softcover, Hyperion Books

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Book summary:
George Carlin's been working the crowd since "the counterculture" became "the over-the-counter culture" around 1967 or so; his new book, Brain Droppings, surfs on three decades of touring-in-support. It's the purest version of book-as-candy that one could imagine, serving up humor in convenient, bite-sized packages. Snack on chewy one-liners like "A meltdown sounds like fun. Like some kind of cheese sandwich." Or: "If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten." Brain Droppings also contains highlights from Carlin's concert repertoire, and that more than makes up for the occasional spray of pointless nihilism. Tell us, George, what exactly were you going for with "Kill your pet" and "Satan is cool"? Quick--hide the paper before Daddy sees it! Still, if you're a fan of this sarcastic semanticist who's given Bad Attitude not necessarily a good name, but at least a comfy bank account, by all means rush out and snag Brain Droppings. Carlin's book melts in your mind, not in your hand. [via]
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Charles Dickens' Hard Times
by Charles Dickens

ISBN 0877547378 (0-87754-737-8)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:
A collection of eight critical essays on the Dickens novel, arranged in chronological order of original publication. [via]
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- Charles Dickens' Hard Times: ISBN 0877547378 (0-87754-737-8)
  Hardcover, Facts on File
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Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed
by Jared Diamond

ISBN 0670033375 (0-670-03337-5)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.
Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it's exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling. --Jennifer Buckendorff [via]
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- Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed: ISBN 0670033375 (0-670-03337-5)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Dirge
by Warren Ellis, Ramos Robertson, Darick Robertson

ISBN 1563899531 (1-56389-953-1)
Softcover, DC Comics

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Book summary:
Investigative reporter Spider Jerusalem attacks the injustices of the 21st Century surroundings while working for the newspaper The Word in this critically-acclaimed graphic novel series written by comics superstar Warren Ellis, the co-creator of PLANETARY and THE AUTHORITY. In this eighth volume collecting issues #43-48 of the groundbreaking VERTIGO title, all hell breaks loose as a nameless sniper terrorizes the Print District and a raging superstorm clears the streets of The City. [via]
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- Dirge: ISBN 1563899531 (1-56389-953-1)
  Softcover, DC Comics
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Emma
by Jane Austen

ISBN 0060956933 (0-06-095693-3)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

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Book summary:
Of all Jane Austen's heroines, Emma Woodhouse is the most flawed, the most infuriating, and, in the end, the most endearing. Pride and Prejudice's Lizzie Bennet has more wit and sparkle; Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey more imagination; and Sense and Sensibility's Elinor Dashwood certainly more sense--but Emma is lovable precisely because she is so imperfect. Austen only completed six novels in her lifetime, of which five feature young women whose chances for making a good marriage depend greatly on financial issues, and whose prospects if they fail are rather grim. Emma is the exception: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." One may be tempted to wonder what Austen could possibly find to say about so fortunate a character. The answer is, quite a lot.
For Emma, raised to think well of herself, has such a high opinion of her own worth that it blinds her to the opinions of others. The story revolves around a comedy of errors: Emma befriends Harriet Smith, a young woman of unknown parentage, and attempts to remake her in her own image. Ignoring the gaping difference in their respective fortunes and stations in life, Emma convinces herself and her friend that Harriet should look as high as Emma herself might for a husband--and she zeroes in on an ambitious vicar as the perfect match. At the same time, she reads too much into a flirtation with Frank Churchill, the newly arrived son of family friends, and thoughtlessly starts a rumor about poor but beautiful Jane Fairfax, the beloved niece of two genteelly impoverished elderly ladies in the village. As Emma's fantastically misguided schemes threaten to surge out of control, the voice of reason is provided by Mr. Knightly, the Woodhouse's longtime friend and neighbor. Though Austen herself described Emma as "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like," she endowed her creation with enough charm to see her through her most egregious behavior, and the saving grace of being able to learn from her mistakes. By the end of the novel Harriet, Frank, and Jane are all properly accounted for, Emma is wiser (though certainly not sadder), and the reader has had the satisfaction of enjoying Jane Austen at the height of her powers. --Alix Wilber [via]
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- Emma: ISBN 0060956933 (0-06-095693-3)
  Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
by James Howard Kunstler

ISBN 0671888250 (0-671-88825-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Book summary:
An analysis of America's national landscape argues that much of what surrounds Americans is depressing, ugly, and unhealthy and traces America's evolution from a land of village commons to a man-made landscape that ignores nature and human needs. [via]
More editions of The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape:
- The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape: ISBN 0671707744 (0-671-70774-4)
  Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
- The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape: ISBN 0671888250 (0-671-88825-0)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
Gouge Away Bk. 6
by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson, R. Ramos

ISBN 1563897962 (1-56389-796-2)
Softcover, DC Comics

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- Gouge Away Bk. 6: ISBN 1563897962 (1-56389-796-2)
  Softcover, DC Comics
Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings
by Jonathan Swift

ISBN 080851959X (0-8085-1959-X)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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- Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings: ISBN 080851959X (0-8085-1959-X)
  Hardcover, Bt Bound
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Hard Times
by Charles Dickens

ISBN 1419122819 (1-4191-2281-9)
Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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Book summary:
Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society here is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love, of Sissy the circus girl with love to spare who is deserted and adopted into their family, and of the honest mill worker Stephen Blackpool and the bombastic mill owner Josiah Bounderby. The key contrasts created are finally less those between wealth and poverty, or capitalists and workers, than those between the head and the heart, between "Fact"the cold, rationalistic approach to life that Dickens associates with utilitarianismand "Fancy"a warmth of the imagination and of the feelings, which values individuals above ideas. Concentrated and compressed in its narrative form, Hard Times is at once a fable, a novel of ideas, and a social novel that seeks to engage directly and analytically with political issues. The central conflicts raised in the text, between government's duty not to intervene to guarantee the liberty of the subject, and between quantitative and qualitative assessments of progress, remain unresolved today in the late or post industrial stages of liberal democracies. [via]
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Hard Times
by Philip Collins, Charles Dickens

ISBN 0460874500 (0-460-87450-0)
Softcover, Dent & Sons (Canada), Limited, J. M.

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Book summary:
Part of the "Everyman" series, which includes a themed introduction, a chronology of the life and times of the author, notes, a selection of criticism, an annotated reading list and text summary. This edition has a new setting with wide margins. [via]
More editions of Hard Times:
- Hard Times: ISBN 0460874500 (0-460-87450-0)
  Softcover, Dent & Sons (Canada), Limited, J. M.
Hard Times: A Longman Cultural Edition
by Jeff Nunokawa, Gage McWeeny

ISBN 0321107217 (0-321-10721-7)
Softcover, Longman Pub Group

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- Hard Times: A Longman Cultural Edition: ISBN 0321107217 (0-321-10721-7)
  Softcover, Longman Pub Group
Hard Times (Dickens)
by Graham Handley

ISBN 0631979700 (0-631-97970-0)
Hardcover, Blackwell

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- Hard Times (Dickens): ISBN 0631979700 (0-631-97970-0)
  Hardcover, Blackwell
Hard Times. for These Times
by Charles Dickens

ISBN 0192545159 (0-19-254515-9)
Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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- Hard Times. for These Times: ISBN 0192545159 (0-19-254515-9)
  Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr
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How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered The World
by Francis Wheen

ISBN 158648348X (1-58648-348-X)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group

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Book summary:
In 1979 two events occurred that would shape the next twenty-five years. In America and Britain, an era of weary consensus was displaced by the arrival of a political marriage of fiery idealists: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher transformed politics with a combination of breezy charm and assertive "Victorian values." In Iran, the fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set out to restore a regime that had last existed almost 1,300 years ago. Between them they succeeded in bringing the twentieth century to a premature close. By 1989, Francis Fukuyama was declaring that we had now reached the End of History.

What colonized the space recently vacated by notions of history, progress and reason? Cults, quackery, gurus, irrational panics, moral confusion and an epidemic of idiocy, the proof of which was to be found in every state, every work-place, and every library. In Idiot Proof, columnist Francis Wheen brilliantly evokes the key personalities of the post-political eraincluding Princess Diana and Deepak Chopra, Osama bin Laden and Nancy Reagan's astrologerwhile lamenting the extraordinary rise in superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria over the past quarter of a century.

In turn comic, indignant, outraged and just plain baffled by the idiocy of it all, Idiot Proof is a masterful depiction of the daftness of our times and a plea that we might just think a little more and believe a little less.
[via]
More editions of How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered The World:
- How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered The World: ISBN 158648348X (1-58648-348-X)
  Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions
by Francis Wheen

ISBN 0007140967 (0-00-714096-7)
Hardcover, Fourth Estate

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- How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions: ISBN 0007140967 (0-00-714096-7)
  Hardcover, Fourth Estate
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I Am Charlotte Simmons
by Tom Wolfe

ISBN 0312424442 (0-312-42444-2)
Softcover, Picador USA

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Book summary:
Dupont University--the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the uppercrust coeds of Dupont, sex, Cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.As Charlotte encounters Dupont's privileged elite--her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus--she gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence, but little does she realize that she will act as a catalyst in all of their lives.With his signature eye for detail, Tom Wolfe draws on extensive observation of campuses across the country to immortalize college life in the '00s. I Am Charlotte Simmons is the much-anticipated triumph of America's master chronicler. [via]
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Idiot Proof: Deluded Celebrities, Irrational Power Brokers, Media Morons, and the Erosion of Common Sense
by Francis Wheen

ISBN 1586482475 (1-58648-247-5)
Hardcover, Perseus Books Group

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Book summary:
In 1979 two events occurred that would shape the next twenty-five years. In America and Britain, an era of weary consensus was displaced by the arrival of a political marriage of fiery idealists: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher transformed politics with a combination of breezy charm and assertive "Victorian values." In Iran, the fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set out to restore a regime that had last existed almost 1,300 years ago. Between them they succeeded in bringing the twentieth century to a premature close. By 1989, Francis Fukuyama was declaring that we had now reached the End of History.

What colonized the space recently vacated by notions of history, progress and reason? Cults, quackery, gurus, irrational panics, moral confusion and an epidemic of idiocy, the proof of which was to be found in every state, every work-place, and every library. In Idiot Proof, columnist Francis Wheen brilliantly evokes the key personalities of the post-political eraincluding Princess Diana and Deepak Chopra, Osama bin Laden and Nancy Reagan's astrologerwhile lamenting the extraordinary rise in superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria over the past quarter of a century.

In turn comic, indignant, outraged and just plain baffled by the idiocy of it all, Idiot Proof is a masterful depiction of the daftness of our times and a plea that we might just think a little more and believe a little less.
[via]
More editions of Idiot Proof: Deluded Celebrities, Irrational Power Brokers, Media Morons, and the Erosion of Common Sense:
- Idiot Proof: Deluded Celebrities, Irrational Power Brokers, Media Morons, and the Erosion of Common Sense: ISBN 1586482475 (1-58648-247-5)
  Hardcover, Perseus Books Group
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In the Shadow of No Towers
by Art Spiegelman

ISBN 0375423079 (0-375-42307-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day. Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda. He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks , he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that convey-with his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and wit-the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy. [via]
More editions of In the Shadow of No Towers:
- In the Shadow of No Towers: ISBN 0375423079 (0-375-42307-9)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Peter Fish, Ken Kesey

ISBN 0812034333 (0-8120-3433-3)
Softcover, Barrons Educational Series Inc

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A guide to reading "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list. [via]
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- Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: ISBN 0812034333 (0-8120-3433-3)
  Softcover, Barrons Educational Series Inc
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Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
by Al Franken

ISBN 1594130388 (1-59413-038-8)
Softcover, Large Print Pr

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Having previously dissected the factual inaccuracies of a single bellicose talk show host in Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, Al Franken takes his fight to a larger foe: President George W. Bush, the Bush Administration, Ann Coulter, Bill OReilly, and scores of other conservatives whom, he says, are playing loose with the facts. It's a lot of ground to cover, as evidenced by the 43 chapters in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, but the results are often entertaining and insightful. Franken occupies a unique place in the modern political dialogue as perhaps the media's only comedy writer and performer who is also a Harvard fellow as well as a liberal political commentator. This unique and vaguely lonely position lends a charming quixotic quality to adventures such as a tense encounter with the Fox News staff at the National Press Club, a challenge to fisticuffs with National Review Editor Rich Lowry, and an oddly sweet admissions visit to ultra-conservative Bob Jones University (with a young research assistant posing as his son when Franken's real-life son refuses to participate in the charade). Less useful are comic book dramatizations of "Supply Side Jesus" and a fictitious Vietnam War story featuring the numerous righties who, Franken intimates, improperly avoided service. And Franken's criticisms of conservative talk show hosts Sean Hannity, OReilly, and columnist Coulter, while admirable in their attention to detail, fail to shed much new light on people who have built careers on broad arguments and relentless self-aggrandizement. But Franken is at his best, and most compellingly readable, when he backs off the wackiness and the personal grudges and writes about more personal matters such as the political circus surrounding the memorial service of the late Senator Paul Wellstone. But even on these more serious topics, Franken's wit is still present and, in fact, grows sharper. In a time when much political discourse is composed of rage and shouting, it's refreshing that Al Franken is able to shout in a witty manner. --John Moe [via]
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Lottery and Other Stories
by Shirley Jackson

ISBN 0848803698 (0-8488-0369-8)
Hardcover, Amereon Ltd

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Book summary:
A haunting and powerful collection of stories from one of America's finest writers, with a new Introduction by Patrick McGrath.
Eerie, unforgettable, and by turns terrifying and hilarious, Shirley Jackson's collection of stories plunges us into a unique, brilliantly etched world where the uncanny lurks in the everyday and where nothing is quite what it seems. In "The Lottery," Jackson's most famous work and one of the greatest--and scariest--stories of the twentieth century, a small town gathers for an annual ritual that culminates in a terrible event. In "The Daemon Lover," a woman waits, then searches, for the man she is to marry that day, only to find that he has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed. In "Trial by Combat," a shy woman confronts her kleptomaniac neighbor, and in "Pillar of Salt," a tourist in New York is gradually paralyzed by a city grown nightmarish. Throughout these twenty-five tales, we move through a variety of emotional landscapes full of loneliness and humor, oddity and cruelty, banality and terror, and searing psychological insight. No reader will come away unaffected.
The only collection to appear during Jackson's lifetime, The Lottery and Other Stories reveals the full breadth and power of this truly original writer. [via]
More editions of Lottery and Other Stories:
- The Lottery : And Other Stories: ISBN 0679640398 (0-679-64039-8)
  Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
- Lottery and Other Stories: ISBN 0848803698 (0-8488-0369-8)
  Hardcover, Amereon Ltd
Monarch Notes on Dickens' Hard Times
by Paul M. Ochojski

ISBN 0671008234 (0-671-00823-4)
Hardcover, Pearson Education, Limited

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- Monarch Notes on Dickens' Hard Times: ISBN 0671008234 (0-671-00823-4)
  Hardcover, Pearson Education, Limited
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Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens, Peter Fairclough

ISBN 0140430172 (0-14-043017-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
This fiercely comic tale stands in marked contrast to its genial predecessor, "The Pickwick Papers." Set against London's seedy back street slums, "Oliver Twist" is the saga of a workhouse orphan captured and thrust into a thieves' den, where some of Dickens's most depraved villains preside: the incorrigible Artful Dodger, the murderous bully Sikes, and the terrible Fagin, that treacherous ringleader whose grinning knavery threatens to send them all to the "ghostly gallows." Yet at the heart of this drama is the orphan Oliver, whose unsullied goodness leads him at last to salvation. In 1838 the publication of "Oliver Twist" firmly established the literary eminence of young Dickens. It was, according to Edgar Johnson, "a clarion peal announcing to the world that in Charles Dickens the rejected and forgotten and misused of the world had a champion." [via]
More editions of Oliver Twist:
- Oliver Twist: ISBN 0140430172 (0-14-043017-2)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey

ISBN 0774033444 (0-7740-3344-4)
Softcover, Coles Pub Group Ltd

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Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned. [via]
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A Scanner Darkly
by Philip K. Dick

ISBN 1400096901 (1-4000-9690-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Mind- and reality-bending drugs factor again and again in Philip K. Dick's hugely influential SF stories. A Scanner Darkly cuts closest to the bone, drawing on Dick's own experience with illicit chemicals and on his many friends who died from drug abuse. Nevertheless, it's blackly farcical, full of comic-surreal conversations between people whose synapses are partly fried, sudden flights of paranoid logic, and bad trips like the one whose victim spends a subjective eternity having all his sins read to him, in shifts, by compound-eyed aliens. (It takes 11,000 years of this to reach the time when as a boy he discovered masturbation.) The antihero Bob Arctor is forced by his double life into warring double personalities: as futuristic narcotics agent "Fred," face blurred by a high-tech scrambler, he must spy on and entrap suspected drug dealer Bob Arctor. His disintegration under the influence of the insidious Substance D is genuine tragicomedy. For Arctor there's no way off the addict's downward escalator, but what awaits at the bottom is a kind of redemption--there are more wheels within wheels than we suspected, and his life is not entirely wasted. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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Spider's Thrash
by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson

ISBN 1563898942 (1-56389-894-2)
Softcover, DC Comics

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Written by Warren Ellis; Art by Darick Robertson and Rodney Ramos; Cover by Robertson The hammer has come down on him, but outlaw journalist Spider Jerusalem has managed to stay one step ahead of his detractors - i.e., the President of the United States and his authoritarian lackeys in publishing and law enforcement. After losing his byline, bank account, and apartment, Jerusalem and his filthy assistants have legged it underground, the better to implement his plan. What plan, you say? Why, the plan to bring down the President, of course! Reprints TRANSMETROPOLITAN #37-42. [via]
More editions of Spider's Thrash:
- Spider's Thrash: ISBN 1563898942 (1-56389-894-2)
  Softcover, DC Comics
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell

ISBN 0316346624 (0-316-34662-4)
Softcover, Back Bay Books

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Book summary:
"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.
For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you.
Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan [via]
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Transmetropolitan
by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson

ISBN 1401202179 (1-4012-0217-9)
Softcover, Vertigo

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Book summary:
From the acclaimed writer of "The Authority", Warren Ellis, the return of the smash-hit series that managed to shock, move and thought-provoke in one foul swoop! Spider Jerusalem is back in the City, writing again: his subjects this time include the transformation of man into cloud; the grim fate awaiting the 'revivals' brought back from 20th century cryogenic suspension; and the 'reservations', where entire cultures are preserved for eternity. But Spider's past is catching up with him - in the form of a vengeful, frozen ex-wife, a crazed police dog, and the son he never knew he had! Acclaimed writer Warren Ellis ("X-Men") and artist Darick Robertson ("The Boys") invite you back to visit their dysfunctional dystopia! [via]
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The Trouble with Islam Today: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change
by Irshad Manji

ISBN 0679313613 (0-679-31361-3)
Hardcover, Vintage Canada

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  Hardcover, Vintage Canada
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The Vintage Mencken
by Alistair Cooke, H. L. Mencken

ISBN 0679728953 (0-679-72895-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
The anthology that spans an entire lifetime of writing by America's greatest curmudgeon, with a "flick of mischief on nearly every page." [via]
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- The Vintage Mencken: ISBN 0679728953 (0-679-72895-3)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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Watership Down
by Richard George Adams

ISBN 0743277708 (0-7432-7770-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Watership Down has been a staple of high-school English classes for years. Despite the fact that it's often a hard sell at first (what teenager wouldn't cringe at the thought of 400-plus pages of talking rabbits?), Richard Adams's bunny-centric epic rarely fails to win the love and respect of anyone who reads it, regardless of age. Like most great novels, Watership Down is a rich story that can be read (and reread) on many different levels. The book is often praised as an allegory, with its analogs between human and rabbit culture (a fact sometimes used to goad skeptical teens, who resent the challenge that they won't "get" it, into reading it), but it's equally praiseworthy as just a corking good adventure.
The story follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos. Adams has crafted a touching, involving world in the dirt and scrub of the English countryside, complete with its own folk history and language (the book comes with a "lapine" glossary, a guide to rabbitese). As much about freedom, ethics, and human nature as it is about a bunch of bunnies looking for a warm hidey-hole and some mates, Watership Down will continue to make the transition from classroom desk to bedside table for many generations to come. --Paul Hughes [via]
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Sin La Sombra De Las Torres / In the Shadow of No Towers
by Art Spiegelman

ISBN 1594970882 (1-59497-088-2)
Hardcover, Public Square Books

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Book summary:
In his first new book of comics since the Pulitzer-Prize winning Maus, Art Spiegelman gives us a deeply personal, politically charged, graphically and emotionally stunning account of the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001. In a large, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics, Spiegelman conveys--through his singular artistry, his outrage and wit--the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy. [via]
More editions of Sin La Sombra De Las Torres / In the Shadow of No Towers:
- Sin La Sombra De Las Torres / In the Shadow of No Towers: ISBN 1594970882 (1-59497-088-2)
  Hardcover, Public Square Books
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Soy Charlotte Simmons / I Am Charlotte Simmons
by Tom Wolfe

ISBN 8466619577 (84-666-1957-7)
Softcover, Ediciones Urano

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Book summary:
With his signature eye for detail, Tom Wolfe draws on extensive firsthand observation of campuses across the country to immortalize college life in the '00s in this story of Charlotte Simmonsa sheltered freshman from North Carolina. Upon first arriving at Dupont University and witnessing its Gothic spires, manicured lawns, and elite tradition, Charlotte sees her new life as an academic dream made real. But she soon learns that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, social status, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.
[via]
More editions of Soy Charlotte Simmons / I Am Charlotte Simmons:
- Soy Charlotte Simmons / I Am Charlotte Simmons: ISBN 8466619577 (84-666-1957-7)
  Softcover, Ediciones Urano

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