Other books that might interest you

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  Mad in USA The Ravages of the...

  Michel Desmurget

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  In America, liberalism brings prosperity to the majority? False. - In America, "anything is possible" for those who work hard? False. - In America, the unemployment rate is minimal? False.
  In America, poverty is relative and the poor live "like modest Europeans?"
  False. - In America, those excluded from the health care system receive free care when they really need it? False—really false. 
  
  In an excellent investigation, with clear and relevant examples, Michel Desmurget shatters the myth of a beautiful and prosperous America where everyone can succeed as long as they are hardworking and courageous. Taking the opposite view of the current dominant discourse on the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon liberal model, the author writes a disconcerting antithesis, based on American researchers, sociologists and journalists who have studied the failures of the American model and who, for the most part, recommend surprisingly European solutions (universal social security, introduction of a minimum wage indexed to inflation, federalized education, etc.).

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  Bye Bye I Love You - The Story...

  Michael Erard

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  With our earliest utterances, we announce ourselves—and are recognized—as persons ready for social life. With our final ones, we mark where others must release us to death's embrace. In Bye Bye I Love You, linguist and author Michael Erard explores these phenomena, commonly called "first words" and "last words," uncovering their cultural, historical, and biological entanglements and honoring their deep private significance. Erard draws from personal, historical, and anthropological sources to provide a sense of the breadth of beliefs and practices about these phenomena across eras, religions, and cultures around the world. 
   
   
   
  What do babies' first words have in common? How do people really communicate at the end of life? In the first half of the book, Erard tells the story of first words in human development and evolution, and how the attention to children's early language—a modern phenomenon—arose. In the second half, he provides a groundbreaking overview of language at the end of life and the cultural conventions that surround it. Throughout he reveals the many parallels and asymmetries between first and last words and asks whether we might be able to use a linguistic understanding of end of life to discover what we truly want.

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  Indefinite - Doing Time in Jail

  Michael L. Walker

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  Jails are the principal people-processing machines of the criminal justice system. Mostly they hold persons awaiting trial who cannot afford or have been denied bail. Although jail sentences max out at a year, some spend years awaiting trial in jail—especially in counties where courts are jammed with cases. City and county jails, detention centers, police lockups, and other temporary holding facilities are regularly overcrowded, poorly funded, and the buildings are often in disrepair. American jails admit over ten million people every year, but very little is known about what happens to 
  them while they're locked away. 
   
   
   
  Indefinite is an ethnographic study of a California county jail that reflects on what it means to do jail time and what it does to men. Michael L. Walker spent several extended spells in jail, having been arrested while trying to pay parking tickets in graduate school. This book is an intimate account of his experience and in it he shares the routines, rhythms, and subtle meanings that come with being incarcerated. Walker shows how punishment in jail is much more than the deprivation of liberties. It is, he argues, purposefully degrading. Jail creates a racial politics that organizes daily life, moves men from clock time to event time, normalizes trauma, and imbues residents with substantial measures of vulnerability.

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  The Lost Cause and the Great War...

  Robert E. Hunt

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  The Lost Cause and the Great War tells the stories of central Tennessee Progressive-era reformers to illustrate the fascinating broader issue of how Southerners steeped in Lost Cause Civil War mythologies simultaneously developed patriotic American fervor. Focusing on Luke Lea, a prominent politician and American army officer who attempted to capture Kaiser Wilhelm II during World War I, the book reveals the intricate interplay between three competing ideas: attachment to the memory of the Confederacy, intense American nationalism, and advocacy for progressive reforms. 
   
   
   
  Hunt shows that Lea and his contemporaries sought either to harmonize these competing loyalties or to compartmentalize them to use when needed. Through insightful accounts of Tennessee's 1928 presidential campaign, the American Legion's response to cuts to veteran benefits in 1933, and the redefinition of America's global role post–World War II, Hunt shows how these reformers achieved a balance that held until the Civil Rights movement disrupted this delicate consensus. 
   
   
   
  Hunt's rich account reveals how Lea and others like him wove national patriotism and Southern collective memory into a cohesive narrative that supported their broader Progressive goals. The book provides vivid examples of how collective memory and narratives shape social and political movements.

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  History Speaks - Volume 3

  Alfred Lord Tennyson, Frederick...

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  Along with historical narrative, hear rare recordings of some of the most people in history, including Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Edward Gladstone, Guiglielmo Marconi, William McKinley, Leo Tolstoy, William Booth, Pope Leo Xlll, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, Dr. Frederick Cook, and Robert E. Peary. Recording obtained and published by Rick Sheridan.

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  The Divine Comedy Paradise

  Dante Alighieri

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  Paradiso (Italian: [paraˈdiːzo]; Italian for "Paradise" or "Heaven") is the third and final part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno and the Purgatorio. It is an allegory telling of Dante's journey through Heaven, guided by Beatrice, who symbolises theology. In the poem, Paradise is depicted as a series of concentric spheres surrounding the Earth, consisting of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile and finally, the Empyrean. It was written in the early 14th century. Allegorically, the poem represents the soul's ascent to God.While the structures of the Inferno and Purgatorio were based around different classifications of sin, the structure of the Paradiso is based on the four cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude) and the three theological virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity).

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