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Politics and Society

Sort: Author  Bestselling  Date  Format  Price  Title


Exam Copy
A Country for All
An Immigrant Manifesto

Jorge Ramos


Format: Trade Paperback, 176 pages
On Sale: 06/29/2010
Price: $14.00
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-307-47554-1

For decades, fixing the United States’ broken immigration system has been one of the most urgent challenges facing our country, and time and time again, politicians have passed the buck. With anti-immigrant sentiment rising around the country, as evidenced by the passage of a controversial new law in Arizona, it is... Read more >

Exam Copy
A Saint on Death Row
How a Forgotten Child Became a Man and Changed a World

Thomas Cahill


Format: Trade Paperback, 160 pages
On Sale: 03/09/2010
Price: $14.00
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 978-0-7679-2646-1

Bestselling author Thomas Cahill tells the absorbing, heartbreaking tale of the hard life and tragic death of Dominique Green—wrongly accused, then executed in Huntsville, Texas—and shines a light on our racist and deeply flawed criminal justice system.
Green, an extraordinary young man from the urban ghettos of Houston, was utterly failed by... Read more >

Exam Copy
Dreams from My Father
A Story of Race and Inheritance

Barack Obama


Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
On Sale: 08/10/2004
Price: $14.95
Publisher: Broadway
ISBN: 978-1-4000-8277-3

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than... Read more >

Exam Copy
Enrique's Journey

Sonia Nazario


Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
On Sale: 01/02/2007
Price: $16.00
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7178-1

Common Reading Programs that have selected Enrique’s Journey:

Colleges and Universities:
Adams State College (Alamosa, CO)
Allegheny College (Meadville, PA)
Arcadia University (Glenside, PA)
Baldwin-Wallace College (Berea, OH)
Bunker Hill Community College (Boston, MA)
Bluffton University (Bluffton, OH)
California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA)
Central College (Pella, IA)
Chandler-Gilbert Community College (Chandler, AZ)
Cuesta College (San Luis Obispo, CA)
Cumberland County College... Read more >

Exam Copy
Forty Million Dollar Slaves
The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete

William C. Rhoden


Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
On Sale: 07/24/2007
Price: $14.99
Publisher: Broadway
ISBN: 978-0-307-35314-6

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the... Read more >

Exam Copy
Half the Sky
Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn


Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
On Sale: 06/01/2010
Price: $15.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-307-38709-7

Winner of the Stowe Award for Excellence in Writing to Advance Social Justice

From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl... Read more >

Exam Copy
Idiot America
How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

Charles P. Pierce


Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
On Sale: 05/04/2010
Price: $15.95
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 978-0-7679-2615-7

With his trademark wit and insight, veteran journalist Charles Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States.
Pierce asks how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a... Read more >

Exam Copy
In the Place of Justice
A Story of Punishment and Redemption

Wilbert Rideau


Format: Trade Paperback, 416 pages
On Sale: 05/03/2011
Price: $16.00
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-307-27730-5

Wilbert Rideau, an award-winning journalist who spent forty-four years in prison, delivers a remarkable memoir of crime, punishment, and ultimate triumph.
After killing a bank teller in a moment of panic during a botched robbery, Wilbert Rideau was sentenced to death at the age of nineteen. He spent several years on... Read more >

Exam Copy
Made to Stick
Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Chip Heath & Dan Heath


Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
On Sale: 01/02/2007
Price: $26.00
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6428-1

Updated, with a New Chapter
Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas–business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others–struggle to... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Audacity of Hope
Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Barack Obama


Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
On Sale: 11/06/2007
Price: $14.95
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
ISBN: 978-0-307-23770-5

Echoing themes he sounded in his extraordinary keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Senator Barack Obama speaks in this book to Americans of all stripes who are weary of U.S. politics today, and who long for something rooted in the faith and decency of the American Dream.
In The... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Open Road
The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Pico Iyer


Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
On Sale: 03/10/2009
Price: $15.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-307-38755-4

One of the most acclaimed and perceptive observers of globalism and Buddhism now gives us the first serious consideration—for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike—of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher.
Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father’s)... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Routes of Man
Travels in the Paved World

Ted Conover


Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
On Sale: 02/08/2011
Price: $15.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7702-1

Roads bind our world—metaphorically and literally—transforming landscapes and the lives of the people who inhabit them. Roads have unparalleled power to impact communities, unite worlds and sunder them, and reveal the hopes and fears of those who travel them.
With his marvelous eye for detail and his contagious enthusiasm, Ted Conover explores... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Shame of the Nation
The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

Jonathan Kozol


Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
On Sale: 08/01/2006
Price: $16.00
Publisher: Broadway
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5245-5

"The Shame of the Nation is a national wake-up call.... It should be required reading."--Marian Wright Edelman, CEO and Founder, Children's Defense Fund
Over the last 15 years, the state of inner-city public schools has been in a steep and continuing decline. Since the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Working Poor
Invisible in America

David K Shipler


Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
On Sale: 01/04/2005
Price: $16.00
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-375-70821-3

Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. The term by which they are... Read more >

Exam Copy
Zeitoun

Dave Eggers


Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
On Sale: 06/15/2010
Price: $15.95
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-0-307-38794-3

A New York Times Notable Book
An O, The Oprah Magazine Terrific Read of the Year
A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year
A New Yorker Favorite Book of the Year
A Chicago Tribune Favorite Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year
A San... Read more >