Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Sociology

The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. But the facts tell a different story - the US today lags behind most other developed nations in measures of inequality and economic mobility. For decades, wages have stagnated for the majority of workers while economic gains have disproportionately gone to the top one percent.

In his 18 years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times, Herbert championed the working poor and the middle class. After filing his last column in 2011, he set off on a journey across the country to report on Americans who were being left behind in an economy that has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. The portraits of those he encountered fuel his new book, Losing Our Way.

For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable - and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America's republic.

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 Americans, and much of the rest of the world. This lively, sometimes raucous book explores from the inside the American love affair with firearms.

In March 1986, while living in Brooklyn, Chris Bohjalian and his wife were cab-napped on a Saturday night and taken on a forty-five-minute joy ride in which the driver ignored all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight he deposited the young couple on a near-deserted street, where police officers were about to storm a crack house. Bohjalian and his wife were told to hit the ground for their own protection. While lying on the pavement, Bohjalian's wife suggested that perhaps it was time to move to New England.

Mark Falanga is a slick urban dweller, at the top of his game professionally, with a gorgeous corporate executive wife and a hip coterie in the coolest neighborhood in the city. But when baby makes three, Mark and his family enter the twilight zone called the suburbs, where public schools are good, many wives stay home, and children ride their tricycles in the driveway.

Bold, sharp, and amazingly relevant, Naveen Chourey's impassioned poetry - on mob lynching, Kashmir, and the plight of out soldiers among others - will force you to think afresh on nationalism, patriotism, and the state of our country. Naveen's youthful idealism, vision for an egalitarian world, and progressive thoughts make Kohra Ghana Hai one of the most courageous works of our times.

Compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is losing ground across nearly every indicator of social health. Its race problem, argues Eduardo Porter, is largely to blame. In American Poison, the New York Times veteran shows how racial animus has stunted the development of nearly every institution crucial for a healthy society, including organized labor, public education, and the social safety net. The consequences are profound and are only growing graver with time.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” This phrase, arguably Thomas Edison’s most famous quote, has been drilled into the minds of generations of Americans. A fairly straightforward iteration of the idea that innovation, discovery, and ingenuity are the result of drive and grit above all, it has also come to represent much darker myths: that hard work always leads to success and that achievement is the product of individuals and not communities.

US-born Protestant evangelicalism has gone global to an extent of which many of us might be unaware. This book tells the story of Americans’ colossal mobilization to proclaim Christianity “to the ends of the Earth,” a movement that triumphed in the Global South, challenged the Vatican, then turned east in full force after 9/11 to spread the Gospel among Muslims. When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq set off a wave of anti-American attacks and made the field too dangerous for US missionaries, thousands of disciples, particularly from Latin America, were mobilized to finish the task.

Pilotos de drones que llevan a cabo asesinatos selectivos. Inmigrantes indocumentados que trabajan en los mataderos industriales. Guardias que patrullan los pabellones de las prisiones más violentas y abusivas de Estados Unidos. En ‘Trabajo sucio’, Eyal Press ofrece una visión que cambia el paradigma del panorama moral de la América contemporánea a través de las historias de las personas que realizan los trabajos éticamente más problemáticos de la sociedad. Como muestra Press, cada vez estamos más protegidos y distanciados de una serie de actividades moralmente cuestionables.

Veena Iyer, aged sixty-six, got a degree in dance movement therapy. She is training to upgrade her skill and now runs various workshops. B.R. Janardan, aged eighty-seven, started running after sixty and has sixteen full marathons under his belt. These important stories illustrate the shifting narrative for ageing in India. They battle the ageism that is deep-rooted in Indian culture with fixed notions of 'approved' behavior. This book takes a deep dive into understanding ageing, its impact on society, and how to overcome certain 'hurdles'.