Why Nations Fail
The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Written by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Format: Hardcover, 544 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
On Sale: March 20, 2012
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-71921-8 (0-307-71921-9)

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?

Simply... Read more >

Beyond a House Divided
The Moral Consensus Ignored by Washington, Wall Street, and the Media
Written by Carl Anderson

Format: Trade Paperback, 160 pages
Publisher: Image
On Sale: November 2, 2010
Price: $12.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-88774-0 (0-307-88774-X)

If you follow politics or the news, America is a country of culture wars and great divides, a partisan place of red states and blue states, of us against them. From pundits to politicians it seems that anyone with an audience sees a polarized country - a country at war with... Read more >

Reagan's Secret War
The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster
Written by Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: July 13, 2010
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-23863-4 (0-307-23863-6)

On February 6, 1981, at his first National Security Council meeting, Ronald Reagan told his advisers: “I will make the decisions.” As Reagan’s Secret War reveals, these words provide the touchstone for understanding the extraordinary accomplishments of the Reagan administration, including the decisive events that led to the end of the... Read more >

The Truth About the Drug Companies
How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
Written by Marcia Angell

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: August 9, 2005
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-76094-5 (0-375-76094-6)

NOW IN PAPERBACK

Currently, Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. In The Truth About Drug Companies, Dr Marcia Angell argues that this is both unnecessary and unethical.

A former editor in chief of The New England Journal Of Medicine, a current member of Harvard's Medical School's Department of... Read more >

No god but God (Updated Edition)
The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
Written by Reza Aslan

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: August 30, 2011
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8244-2 (0-8129-8244-4)

In No god but God, internationally acclaimed scholar Reza Aslan explains Islam—the origins and evolution of the faith—in all its beauty and complexity. This updated edition addresses the events of the past decade, analyzing how they have influenced Islam’s position in modern culture. Aslan explores what the popular demonstrations pushing for... Read more >

U.S. Constitution For Beginners

Written by Steve Bachmann
Illustrated by Jorge Diaz

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: For Beginners
On Sale: April 17, 2012
Price: $16.99
ISBN: 978-1-934389-62-1 (1-934389-62-5)

In a combination of witty text and crisp illustrations, U.S. Constitution For Beginners takes a tongue-in-cheek look at America’s most critical legal document. Author and lawyer Steve Bachmann has written a text that touches on the document’s history beginning all the way in 1215 AD with the Magna Carta. He then... Read more >

Cancer in the Community
Class and Medical Authority
Written by Martha Balshem

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: August 17, 1993
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-56098-251-7 (1-56098-251-9)

Focusing on deep conflicts between the medical establishment and the working class, Martha Balshem chronicles a health education project in “Tannerstown,” a pseudonym for a blue-collar neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia.

“Balshem conducted anthropological research as a means of exploring the limitations and possibilities of community-based approaches to cancer prevention. . . ... Read more >

Jihad vs. McWorld
Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy
Written by Benjamin Barber

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: July 30, 1996
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-38304-4 (0-345-38304-4)

With an introduction that addresses the terrorist attacks of September 11th. This is a timely, compelling, and illuminating analysis of the central conflict of our times: consumerist capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism. On the one hand, consumer capitalism on the global level is rapidly dissolving the social and economic barriers... Read more >

Plain, Honest Men
The Making of the American Constitution
Written by Richard Beeman

Format: Trade Paperback, 544 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: February 9, 2010
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7684-7 (0-8129-7684-3)

Winner, George Washington Book Prize
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

“While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men.”
–Robert Morris, delegate from Pennsylvania to the Constitutional... Read more >

Good Society

Written by Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, Steve Tipton, William Sullivan and Ann Swidler

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 18, 1992
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-73359-1 (0-679-73359-0)

In 1985, the authors’ bestselling Habits of the Heart redefined the terms of America’s debate about individualism and social commitment. With The Good Society, Bellah and his co-authors propose a new response to the country's growing social ills as America moves its domestic, economic, and social crises to the top of... Read more >

God of the Rodeo
The Quest for Redemption in Louisiana's Angola Prison
Written by Daniel Bergner

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: October 5, 1999
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-43553-8 (0-345-43553-2)

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

God of the Rodeo, by journalist Daniel Bergner, takes readers inside a world where no writer before has ventured so deeply–the life of a maximum-security state penitentiary. Bergner first traveled to Angola State Prison in Louisiana to cover the prison’s inmate rodeo, a... Read more >

Menace in Europe
Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too
Written by Claire Berlinski

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: January 23, 2007
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-9770-8 (1-4000-9770-3)

Claire Berlinski contends that Europe has lately become a landmass of endless strikes and demonstrations, of bombs on trains and subways, of radical Islamic cells in every city, and of violent ghettos so hopeless even the police will not enter them. She finds a Europe still in the grip of the... Read more >

Election 2012: The Battle Begins (The RealClearPolitics Political Download)

Written by Tom Bevan and Carl M. Cannon

Format: eBook, 150 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: November 11, 2011
Price: $2.99
ISBN: 978-0-307-98662-7 (0-307-98662-4)

Real Clear Politics’ first in a series of in-depth looks at the 2012 campaign.

With unsurpassed access to the White House, Republican candidates, and their respective staffs, Election 2012: The Battle Begins will give readers a riveting behind the scenes, real time look at the 2012 campaign, providing in-depth reporting and analysis... Read more >

Warriors of God
Inside Hezbollah's Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel
Written by Nicholas Blanford

Format: Hardcover, 544 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: October 25, 2011
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6836-4 (1-4000-6836-3)

Hezbollah is the most powerful Islamist group operating in the Middle East today, and no other Western journalist has penetrated as deeply inside this secretive organization as Nicholas Blanford. With Warriors and God, Blanford has written the first comprehensive inside account of Hezbollah and its enduring struggle against Israel.

Based on... Read more >

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
Written by Katherine Boo

Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: February 7, 2012
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6755-8 (1-4000-6755-3)

Winner of the National Book Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and American Academy of Arts and Letters Award

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award


Selected for Common Reading at Michigan State University, Northeastern University, Skidmore College and University of Delaware


From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a... Read more >

Boom!
Talking About the Sixties: What Happened, How It Shaped Today, Lessons for Tomorrow
Written by Tom Brokaw

Format: Trade Paperback, 688 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: October 14, 2008
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7511-6 (0-8129-7511-1)

In Boom!, Tom Brokaw, one of America’s premier journalists and the acclaimed author of The Greatest Generation, gives us an epic portrait of another defining era in America: the tumultuous Sixties. The voices and stories of both famous people and ordinary citizens come together in this “virtual reunion” as Brokaw takes... Read more >

A Queer History of the United States

Written by Michael Bronski

Format: Trade Paperback, 312 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: May 15, 2012
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4465-0 (0-8070-4465-2)

*2011 ALA Stonewall Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award

The first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.

In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early... Read more >

Dude, Where's My Black Studies Department?
The Disappearance of Black Americans from Our Universities
Written by Cecil Brown

Format: Trade Paperback, 160 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: May 15, 2007
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-55643-573-7 (1-55643-573-8)

Blacks have been vanishing from college campuses in the United States and reappearing in prisons, videos, and movies. Cecil Brown tackles this unwitting "disappearing act" head-on, paying special attention to the situation at UC Berkeley and the University of California system generally. Brown contends that educators have ignored the importance of... Read more >

Madison and Jefferson

Written by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg

Format: Trade Paperback, 848 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: January 29, 2013
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7900-8 (0-8129-7900-1)

The third and fourth presidents have long been considered proper gentlemen, with Thomas Jefferson’s genius overshadowing James Madison’s judgment and common sense. But in this revelatory book about their crucial partnership, both are seen as men of their times, hardboiled operatives in a gritty world of primal politics where they struggled... Read more >

Madison and Jefferson

Written by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg

Format: Hardcover, 848 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: September 28, 2010
Price: $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6728-2 (1-4000-6728-6)

In Madison and Jefferson, esteemed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg join forces to reveal the crucial partnership of two extraordinary founders, creating a superb dual biography that is a thrilling and unprecedented account of early America.

The third and fourth presidents have long been considered proper and noble gentlemen, with Thomas... Read more >

Fast Future
How the Millennial Generation Is Shaping Our World
Written by David D. Burstein

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: February 12, 2013
Price: $25.95
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4469-8 (0-8070-4469-5)

They’ve been called trophy kids, entitled, narcissistic, the worst employees in history, and even the dumbest generation. But, argues David Burstein, the millennial generation’s unique blend of civic idealism and savvy pragmatism will enable us to overcome a deeply divided nation facing economic and environmental calamities.

With eighty-million millennials (people who are... Read more >

Decision Points

Written by George W. Bush

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: October 18, 2011
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-59063-3 (0-307-59063-1)

The presidency of George W. Bush continues to be debated by historians, political scientists, scholars, and students alike. Two scholars at Princeton University, Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer, recently conducted a course on Teaching ‘W’, and discovered that academics should reconsider updating their approach to teaching history by incorporating more... Read more >

Decision Points

Written by George W. Bush

Format: Hardcover, 512 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: November 9, 2010
Price: $35.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-59061-9 (0-307-59061-5)

The presidency of George W. Bush continues to be debated by historians, political scientists, scholars, and students alike. Two scholars at Princeton University, Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer, recently conducted a course on Teaching ‘W’, and discovered that academics should reconsider updating their approach to teaching history by incorporating more... Read more >

The Turning Point
Science, Society, and the Rising Culture
Written by Fritjof Capra

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Bantam
On Sale: August 1, 1984
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-34572-8 (0-553-34572-9)

The dynamics underlying the major problems of our time-cancer, crime, pollution, nuclear power, inflation, the energy shortage-are all the same. We have reached a time of dramatic and potentially dangerous change, a turning point for the planet as a whole. We need a new vision of reality, one that allows the... Read more >

The Unfair Trade
How Our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class
Written by Michael J. Casey

Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
On Sale: May 29, 2012
Price: $28.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-88530-2 (0-307-88530-5)

A wake-up call for middle class Americans who feel trapped in a post-crisis economic slump, The Unfair Trade is a riveting exposé of the vast global financial system whose flaws are the source of our economic malaise. Our livelihoods are now, more than ever, beholden to the workings of its imbalances... Read more >