Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
by Barbara Ehrenreich




Powells.com Staff Pick
Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich's remarkable follow-up to Nickel and Dimed, examines life in the ever-increasing population of the white-collar unemployed. Veering from the absurd (Wizard of Oz dolls) to the unsettling (Christian prayer breakfasts... (read more)

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Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture
by Juliet B. Schor


Publisher Comments
Ads aimed at kids are virtually everywhere — in classrooms and textbooks, on the Internet, even at slumber parties and the playground. Product placement and other innovations have introduced more subtle advertising to movies and television... (read more)

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Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069
by William Strauss


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Hailed by national leaders as politically diverse as former Vice President Al Gore and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Generationshas been heralded by reviewers as a brilliant, if somewhat unsettling, reassessment of where America is heading. William... (read more)

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The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker
by Mike Rose


Publisher Comments
As did the national bestseller Nickel and Dimed, Mike Roses revelatory book demolishes the long-held notion that people who work with their hands make up a less intelligent class. He shows us waitresses making lightning-fast calculations, carpenters... (read more)

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Stealing Buddha's Dinner
by Bich Minh Nguyen


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A vivid, funny, and viscerally powerful memoir about childhood, assimilation, food, and growing up in the 1980s As a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Bich Nguyen is filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity. In the pre... (read more)

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Shopping for God: How Christianity Went from in Your Heart to in Your Face
by James B Twitchell


Publisher Comments
Not so long ago religion was a personal matter that was seldom discussed in public. No longer. Today religion is everywhere, from books to movies to television to the internet-to say nothing about politics. Now religion is marketed and advertised like... (read more)

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Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon
by Anthony Harkins


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In this pioneering work of cultural history, historian Anthony Harkins argues that the hillbilly-in his various guises of "briar hopper," "brush ape," "ridge runner," and "white trash"-has been viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent... (read more)

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Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy
by Lewis Lapham


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Award-winning columnist Lewis Lapham issues an urgent new polemic about the strangling of meaningful dissent — the lifeblood of democracy — at the hands of a government and media increasingly beholden to the wealthy few. Never before, Lapham... (read more)

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A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior
by Charles Bowden


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Joey O'Shay is not the real name of the narcotics agent in an unnamed city in the center of the country. But Joey O'Shay exists. The nearly three hundred drug busts he has orchestrated over more than two decades are real, too; if the drug war were a... (read more)

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Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping
by Judith Levine


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Many of us have tried to call a halt to our spending at one time or another. But what if we decided not to buy anything for a whole year? Obviously, we would need necessities like food and soap, but how would be manage without new clothes, treats... (read more)

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One Nation Under Guns: An Essay on an American Epidemic (Speaker's Corner)
by Arnold Grossman


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The United States holds the dubious distinction of experiencing more civilian gun deaths than any industrialized nation on earth?nearly 30,000 per year. While a majority of Americans favor far more restrictive gun laws than currently exist, efforts to... (read more)

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Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape
by Owen D Gutfreund


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Owen Gutfreund's Twentieth-Century Sprawl explains important--and largely unexamined--changes in the American landscape. He offers an illuminating look at how highways have dramatically transformed American communities, aiding growth and development in... (read more)

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Radio on: A Listener's Diary
by Sarah Vowell




Publisher Comments
There are approximately 502 million radios in America. For this savvy, far-reaching diary, celebrated journalist and author Vowell turned hers on and listened—closely, critically, creatively—for an entire year. As a series of impressions and... (read more)

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That Might Be Useful: Exploring America's Secondhand Culture
by Naton Leslie


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Several years ago, author Naton Leslie decided to opt out of America's dizzying array of retail goods and buy used necessities whenever possible. What he discovered in his meanderings was a characteristically American secondhand culture, replete with a... (read more)

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The Complete Illustrated Guide to Cannabis
by Nick Brownlee


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Wonder drug or social menace? The perennial question may never be answered, as factions on both sides hold fast to their beliefs. Doctors and scientists hail its medicinal merits while politicians and others insist that cannabis, in any form, is the... (read more)

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God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America
by Hanna Rosin


Publisher Comments
Since 2000, America's most ambitious young evangelicals have been making their way to Patrick Henry College, a small Christian school just outside the nation's capital. Most of them are home-schoolers whose idealism and discipline put the average... (read more)

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The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers
by Eric Clark


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A profile of the darker side of America's toy industry traces the way toys are developed, manufactured, and marketed, drawing on inside interviews to contend that the industry is compromising consumer and worker well-being for the sake of high profits... (read more)

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Among the Mansions of Eden: Tales of Love, Lust, and Land in Beverly Hills
by David Weddle


Publisher Comments
Includes bibliographical references (p. [311]-330) and index.... (read more)

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