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 >

The One-Week Job Project
One Man, One Year, 52 Jobs
Written by Sean Aiken

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Villard
On Sale: May 4, 2010
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-50803-4 (0-345-50803-3)

Selected for Common Reading at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford

A year and a half after he graduated from college, Sean Aiken found himself struggling to answer the question “What should I do with my life?” His mother suggested teaching. His older sister told him to apply for an entry-level corporate... Read more >

Tuesdays with Morrie
An Old Man, A Young Man and Life's Greatest Lesson
Written by Mitch Albom

Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
On Sale: August 18, 1997
Price: $23.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-48451-0 (0-385-48451-8)

After seeing his former professor Morrie Schwartz being interviewed on television, and there learning of his terminal illness, Mitch Albom flew to Brandeis University and returned every Tuesday to visit his mentor after a long silence. Tuesdays with Morrie is Albom's chronicle of these visits, and of conversations in which he... Read more >

Angry Men, Passive Men
Understanding the Roots of Men's Anger and How to Move Beyond It
Written by Marvin Allen

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: May 10, 1994
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-449-90811-2 (0-449-90811-9)

Nationally known therapist Marvin Allen explores the root causes of men’s emotional problems and offers a comprehensive solution to restore their sense of joy and well-being: men working together in therapy groups.

Drawing on the life stories of scores of men, as well as the author’s own personal experience, this landmark... Read more >

American Chica
Two Worlds, One Childhood
Written by Marie Arana

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
On Sale: May 28, 2002
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-31963-8 (0-385-31963-0)

***2001 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE - NON-FICTION***

***LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOKS OF 2001 - NON-FICTION***

Now in Paperback.

Written in the tradition of Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez, this is an informative and resonant portrait of a child coming to terms with her bicultural identity. American Chica explores the issues and difficulties that... Read more >

Centuries of Childhood
A Social History of Family Life
Written by Philippe Aries

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: July 12, 1965
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-394-70286-5 (0-394-70286-7)

The theme of this extraordinary book is the evolution of the modern conception of family life and the modern image  of the nature of children. Aries traces the evolution of the concept of childhood from the end of the Middle Ages, when the child was regarded as a small adult, to the... Read more >

Children of the World
How We Live, Learn, and Play in Poems, Drawings, and Photographs
Written by Anthony Asael and Stephanie Rabemiafara
Foreword by Ann M. Veneman

Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Publisher: Universe
On Sale: September 13, 2011
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-0-7893-2267-8 (0-7893-2267-6)

Children from 192 countries around the world tell us about their homelands in words and pictures. Children of the World celebrates and teaches through photographs, fun facts, maps, artwork, and poems created by children around the world. With this book, families learn a little of the geography, traditions, and peoples 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 >

Spirit and Flesh
Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church
Written by James M. Ault, Jr.

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 13, 2005
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70238-9 (0-375-70238-5)

In an attempt to understand the growing influence of the Christian Right, sociologist and documentary filmmaker James Ault spent three years inside the world of a Massachusetts fundamentalist church he encountered while studying a variety of new-right groups. He observed—and where possible participated in—the daily lives of the members of a... Read more >

Women Don't Ask
The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation--and Positive Strategies for Change
Written by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Bantam
On Sale: February 27, 2007
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-38387-4 (0-553-38387-6)

By neglecting to negotiate her starting salary for her first job, a woman may sacrifice over half a million dollars in earnings by the end of her career. Yet, as research reveals, men are four times more likely to ask for higher pay than are women with the same qualifications. From... Read more >

Unnatural Death
Confessions of a Medical Examiner
Written by Michael M. Baden

Format: Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: March 28, 1990
Price: $7.99
ISBN: 978-0-8041-0599-6 (0-8041-0599-5)

In determining the causes of tens of thousands of deaths, from those of presidents and rock stars to victims of serial killings, exotic sex rituals, mass disasters, child abuse and drug abuse, Baden has come to the unavoidable conclusion that the search for scientific truth is often sullied by the pressures... Read more >

Calling the Circle
The First and Future Culture
Written by Christina Baldwin

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Bantam
On Sale: March 2, 1998
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-37900-6 (0-553-37900-3)

A key resource for the rapidly growing "circle movement," this guidebook--extensively revised since its 1994 small-press edition--provides social workers with a powerful tool based on the ancient ritual of communication while sitting around a circle. Baldwin gives comprehensive instructions on using circles for mutual support, teamwork, and social change, as well... Read more >

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

Written by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press
On Sale: February 12, 2013
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-80464-5 (0-553-80464-2)

I know my own mind.
I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way.

These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity... Read more >

Glock
The Rise of America's Gun
Written by Paul M. Barrett

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: January 15, 2013
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-71995-9 (0-307-71995-2)

The Glock, known as “America’s gun,” is used by most U.S. police departments, glamorized in films, and valued by gun enthusiasts and criminals alike for its durability and ability to fire seventeen bullets without reloading. Based on fifteen years of research, including interviews with numerous former Glock executives, police officials, and... Read more >

Composing a Further Life
The Age of Active Wisdom
Written by Mary Catherine Bateson

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 4, 2011
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27963-7 (0-307-27963-4)

Mary Catherine Bateson—author of the landmark bestseller Composing a Life—gives us an inspiring exploration of a new life stage that she calls Adulthood II, a result of the longer life spans and greater resources we now enjoy. In Composing a Further Life, Bateson redefines old age as an opportunity to reinvent... Read more >

Gun Guys
A Road Trip
Written by Dan Baum

Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: March 5, 2013
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-59541-6 (0-307-59541-2)

Here is armed America—a land of machine-gun gatherings in the desert, lederhosened German shooting societies, feral-hog hunts in Texas, and Hollywood gun armories. Whether they’re collecting antique weapons, practicing concealed carry, or firing an AR-15 or a Glock at their local range, many Americans love guns—which horrifies and fascinates many other... Read more >

Sticks and Stones
Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy
Written by Emily Bazelon

Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: February 19, 2013
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9280-9 (0-8129-9280-6)

To read the author’s essay to educators, go to: http://tiny.cc/rpzzrw


Being a teenager has never been easy, but in recent years, with the rise of the Internet and social media, it has become exponentially more challenging. Bullying, once thought of as the province of queen bees and goons, has taken on... Read more >

Design in Nature
How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization
Written by Adrian Bejan and J. Peder Zane

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
On Sale: January 24, 2012
Price: $27.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-53461-1 (0-385-53461-2)

In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single principle of physics, the Constructal Law, accounts for the evolution of these and all other designs in our world.

Everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure... 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 >

The Sacred Canopy
Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion
Written by Peter L. Berger

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: September 1, 1990
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-07305-9 (0-385-07305-4)

This absorbing examination of the sociological roots of religious belief expands on Berger's theories of knowledge. With illustrations drawn from a variety of primitive, ancient, and contemporary religions, Berger argues that religion is a "sacred canopy" that every society builds to give its world meaning. Read more >

The Social Construction of Reality
A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge
Written by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: July 11, 1967
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-05898-8 (0-385-05898-5)

The Social Construction of Reality is Berger and Luckmann's classic systematic, theoretical treatise that reformulated the task of the entire subdiscipline of the sociology of knowledge for the first time since its founding by Max Scheler. In it, the authors argue that "reality" is socially constructed and that the purpose 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 >

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community
Eight Essays
Written by Wendell Berry

Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: September 13, 1994
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75651-4 (0-679-75651-5)

Berry continues with the intellectual themes that have occupied his thought over the past decades: the importance of community, and the diversity and sustainability of local economy; the damage wrought by industrialized economy and "global" thinking; and the inherent complexity of personal morality and its necessary placement within political and cultural... Read more >

I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works
Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted
Written by Nick Bilton

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
On Sale: September 14, 2010
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-59111-1 (0-307-59111-5)

In I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works, New York Times technology reporter Nick Bilton breaks down how the radically changed media world is influencing human behavior, and how successful companies are changing alongside it. He illustrates his point using case studies—how the porn industry is adapting to... Read more >

The Sibling Society

Written by Robert Bly

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 27, 1997
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-78128-8 (0-679-78128-5)

Where have all the grown-ups gone?

At the close of the twentieth century, adults have regressed toward adolescence while adolescents refuse to become adults. Respect for elders has given way to the furious competition of peers or siblings who strive not to be good or great but to be famous. Community has... Read more >