Washoe County Library System

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon---the addiction to infotainment, from television to the Internet, which has resulted in a lazy and credulous public.

The firebrand New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Shrill--soon to be a Hulu series starring Aidy Bryant--provides a brilliant and incisive look at how patriarchy, intolerance, and misogyny have conquered not just politics but American culture itself. What do Adam Sandler, Donald Trump, and South Park have in common? Why are myths like "reverse sexism" and "political correctness" so seductive? And why do movie classics of yore, from...

"A groundbreaking investigation of how and why, from the 18th century to the present day, American resistance to our ruling elites has vanished. From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting...

An exploration of race relations in American popular culture, focusing particularly on blackface--strange, often scandalous, and now taboo entertainment. Although blackface performance came to be denounced as purely racist mockery, and shamefacedly erased from most modern accounts of American cultural history, Strausbaugh shows that, nevertheless, its impact has been deep and longlasting. Strausbaugh illuminates truths about race rarely discussed...

At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel walked out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen." He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided he'd walk. And listen. It would be a cross-country quest for guidance, and everyone he met would be his guide. Walking toward...

In this powerful examination of "the greatest propaganda campaign of all time"--the masterful marketing of Black inferiority, aka the BI Complex--Burrell poses ten disturbing questions that will make Black people look in the mirror and ask why, nearly 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, so many Blacks still think and act like slaves.

"Something is going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and afraid to speak honestly. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven...

"In this honest and welcoming book, diversity and inclusion expert, professor, and award-winning speaker Dr. Omekongo Dibinga argues that we must embark on a massive undertaking to re-educate ourselves on the stereotypes that have proven harmful, and toooften deadly, to the Black community"-- "From the Black Lives Matter movement to the health and economic disparities exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans have been forced to reckon...

"In this book, the author offers a new model that identifies social and cultural identity-who we are and who we want to be-as the most important factor driving the American phenomena of being wrong"-- "In this book, the author offers a new model that identifies social and cultural identity-who we are and who we want to be-as the most important factor driving the American pAn engaging look at how American politics and media reinforce partisan identity...