Washoe County Library System

A cautionary assessment of the demise of history's liberal democracies identifies such factors as the steady weakening of critical institutions, from the judiciary to the press, while sharing optimistic recommendations for how America's democratic systemcan be saved.

Presents nine original essays examining the fractures at the center of culture today, offering insights into the conflicts, contradictions, incentives, and changes related to the rise of toxic social networking.

Overview: When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it. In the irreverent Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson's long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising...

The U.S. senator and former presidential candidate offers a progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, and presents a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like. "A progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, and a blueprint for what...

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father, a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man, has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey, first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of...

Looks at the state of race relations in America and the thread of racism running through American society, and offers guidance on how Christians can work to overcome its pernicious influence.

In the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump, Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world, and the threat this posed to the United States. But as he led the probe into Donald Trump’s Russia and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power, Schiff came to the terrible conclusion that the principal threat to American democracy now came from within. In Midnight in Washington,...

Drawing from the great folklorists of the past while expanding African American lore with dozens of tales rarely seen before, The Annotated African American Folktales revolutionizes the canon like no other volume. Following in the tradition of such classics as Arthur Huff Fausets Negro Folk Tales from the South.

With wit, heartwarming stories and a keen insight into new and exciting ways to see both the past and the future of the country, the actor, writer and woodworker takes a literary journey to America's frontier to celebrate the people and landscape that have made it great.

"[P]hysician and [...] author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is a [...] look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease,...