English Class

Listeners will be fascinated by this young adult adaptation of the New York Times bestselling nonfiction work as they follow masterful narratives about real people that reveal an insidious phenomenon in the United States: a hidden caste system. Caste is not only about race or class; it is about power—which groups have it and which do not. Isabel Wilkerson explores historical social hierarchies, including those in India and Nazi Germany, and explains how perpetuating these rankings dehumanizes vast sections of society.

It's as big as the Empire State Building, a massive floating fortress at the throbbing heart of a US Navy carrier battle group. Its supersonic aircraft can level entire cities at a stroke. Its surveillance gear can track every target within thousands of square miles - in the air, on the surface, and under the sea. Its crew of 6,000 works night and day to keep this awesome military machine at peak performance. It's a Nimitz-class nuclear carrier, the most powerful weapons system on the planet. Nothing can touch it.

From Colonial America's founding settlements through the Gilded Age to the present day, Gross traces the complex legacy of American WASPs through the lives of fifteen influential individuals and their very privileged, sometimes intermarried families. As the clans progress, prosper, and periodically stumble, defining aspects in the four-century sweep of American history emerge.

In this perceptive and often hilarious essay, Lech Blaine dissects some top blokes, with particular focus on Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese, but stretching back to Bob Hawke and Kerry Packer. This is a riveting narrative of how image conquered politics, just as globalisation engulfed the Australian economy. While many got rich and entertained, look where we ended up.

From bad weather to business travel, to traffic safety, there are dozens of reasons why cyclists and triathletes take their rides inside. Although indoor cycling workouts offer the ultimate control over workout conditions, most inside riders don’t get the most out of their trainers or spin bikes. Ride Inside offers cyclists and triathletes a smart guide to getting more fitness from every indoor cycling workout. From the world’s most experienced personal cycling coach, Joe Friel, Ride Inside reveals all the unique aspects of indoor riding.

From the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace comes “an eye-opening, fully humanizing, deeply affecting look at the often-misunderstood juvenile justice system and its inhabitants—young people of earnestness, disappointment, hope, and resilience” (Booklist, starred review).

Harry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when “the rest of the country was just beginning to feel the real hurt of the Great Depression but it had been living in Bacon County for years.” Yet what he conveys in this moving, brutal autobiography of his first six years of life is an elegiac sense of community and roots from a rural South that had rarely been represented in this way.

One of Barbara Ehrenreich's most classic and prophetic works, Fear of Falling closely examines the insecurities of the American middle class in an attempt to explain its turn to the right during the last two decades of the 20th century. Weaving finely-tuned expert analysis with her trademark voice, Ehrenreich traces the myths about the middle class to their roots, determines what led to the shrinking of what was once a healthy percentage of the population, and how, in its ambition and anxiety, that population has retreated from responsible leadership.

Ever since the 2016 election, pundits have been saying our country has never been more divided - that if progressives want to reclaim power, we need to be "pragmatic", reach across the aisle, and look past identity politics. But what if we're getting the story all wrong? In The Marginalized Majority, Onnesha Roychoudhuri makes the galvanizing case that our voices are already the majority - and that our plurality of identities is not only our greatest strength, but is also at the indisputable core of successful progressive change throughout history.

In May 1968, first-year English teacher Carolyn Wood takes a day off from school to campaign for Robert F. Kennedy. Invigorated by the senator's hopeful message, Wood develops big dreams to effect change beyond just her classroom. So when she's invited to be the family's governess, the appeal is undeniable. Class Notes follows her journey from the classroom into the famous family, still reeling from Robert Kennedy's assassination. From inside the Kennedy Compound, stories emerge, the glimmer of fame fades, and the young teacher discovers instead the value of enough.

Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America’s descent into a failed state and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides.

In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions were embedded in tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members and their families and neighbors. Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol provide timely insight into the relationship between the decline of unions and the shift of working-class voters away from Democrats.

England, 1930. An antiques dealer is found robbed and murdered in a third class train compartment on a remote Suffolk branch line. The police believe they know who the killer is, and an arrest is soon made. A passenger on the same train, the Reverend Lucian Shaw, country parson and former army chaplain, is concerned that the police have the wrong man and begins an investigation of his own. Before long, Shaw is drawn into a web of intrigue, deceit, and murder which lurks beneath the surface of a seemingly peaceful country parish.

This completely revised second edition pulls from years of research, practice, and results to reanalyze and reevaluate the nine instructional strategies that have the most positive effects on teaching and learning. A new framework organizes the nine instructional strategies that have the most positive effects on teaching and learning in preparation for instructional planning, and it highlights the point that all of the strategies are effective and should be used to complement one another.

The never-before-told story of NASA’s 1978 astronaut class, which included the first American women, the first African Americans, the first Asian American, and the first gay person to fly to space. With the exclusive participation of the astronauts who were there, this is the thrilling, behind-the-scenes saga of a new generation that transformed space exploration.

Along the path to any goal - completing a marathon or a thesis paper, winning a medal or a contract - familiar mental hurdles arise: We may fixate on the odds of failure or find our interest flags two-thirds of the way through. That’s when elite endurance athletes - top performers in running, cycling, and swimming - turn to their rich arsenal of cognitive strategies to overcome self-doubt and unlock peak performance.

Acclaimed Oxford scholar David Priestland proposes a radical new approach to understanding today’s balance of power and analyzes the societal and economic historical conditions required for one of these three value systems to dominate. Priestland asserts that, in the wake of the Great Recession, the weakened and discredited merchant still clings to power - but the world is again in the midst of a period of upheaval.

Inequality is up. Decent work is down. Free market fundamentalism has been exposed as a tragic failure. In a job market upended by COVID-19—with Canadians caught in the grip of precarious labour, stagnant wages, a climate crisis, and the steady creep of automation—an ever-louder chorus of voices calls for a liveable and obligation-free basic income.

Bicycle/Race paints an unforgettable picture of Los Angeles—and the United States—from the perspective of two wheels. This is a book of borderlands and intersections, a cautionary tale about the dangers of putting infrastructure before culture, and a coming-of-age story about power and identity.

Deer Hunting with Jesus is Joe Bageant's report on what he learned when he moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia. Like countless American small towns, it is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. Two in five of the people in his old neighborhood do not have high school diplomas or health care. Alcohol, overeating, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape.