Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects - from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses - have been wrung out by a system that doesn?t support them, and enriches only a tiny elite. Interlacing her own experience...

"Indispensable introduction to Brazil for students and general readers includes short scholarly articles, interviews, documents, photographs, and many autobiographical pieces. Begins with precontact indigenous peoples, but about half deals with Brazil since 1945. Topics include indigenous peoples, slavery, Vargas and labor, political protest, women, race relations, marginal groups, and popular culture. Overarching themes are mobility and repression"--Handbook...

Draws on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers to offer a complete history of Venice's centuries-long reign as a naval power and maritime trading empire.

"With hundreds of thousands of copies sold, a Ron Howard movie in the works, and the rise of its author as a media personality, J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis has defined Appalachia for much of the nation. What about Hillbilly Elegy accounts for this explosion of interest during this period of political turmoil? Why have its ideas raised so much controversy? And how can debates about the book catalyze new,...

Texas is arguably the most controversial state in America. It is a red state in the heart of Trumpland that hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in more than twenty years, but it is also a state in which minorities already form a majority, including the largest Muslim population in the country. The cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. The Texas...

A look at the stresses and strains faced by American workers as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled. Workplace journalist Greenhouse explores why, in the world's most affluent nation, so many corporations are intent on squeezing their workers dry. The book explains how economic, business, political, and social trends--among them globalization, the influx of immigrants, and the Wal-Mart...

As floodwaters drained in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans residents came to a difficult realization. Their city was about to undertake the largest disaster recovery in American history, yet they faced a profound leadership vacuum: members of every tier of government, from the municipal to the federal level, had fallen down on the job. We Shall Not Be Moved tells the absorbing story of the community leaders who stepped into this...