The Longest Decade


Book Description

This title is based on exclusive interviews with Paul Keating and John Howard, presenting a brilliant analysis of the turbulent forces which continue to shape Australia today, from the rise of working women to the triumph of McMansions.




Fall of Giants


Book Description

Ken Follett’s magnificent historical epic begins as five interrelated families move through the momentous dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage. A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits. . . . An American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House. . . . A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy. . . . And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution. From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again. . . .




The Long Twentieth Century


Book Description

Winner of the American Sociological Association PEWS Award (1995) for Distinguished Scholarship The Long Twentieth Century traces the epochal shifts in the relationship between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year period. Giovanni Arrighi masterfully synthesizes social theory, comparative history and historical narrative in this account of the structures and agencies which have shaped the course of world history over the millennium. Borrowing from Braudel, Arrighi argues that the history of capitalism has unfolded as a succession of "long centuries"—ages during which a hegemonic power deploying a novel combination of economic and political networks secured control over an expanding world-economic space. The modest beginnings, rise and violent unravel-ing of the links forged between capital, state power, and geopolitics by hegemonic classes and states are explored with dramatic intensity. From this perspective, Arrighi explains the changing fortunes of Florentine, Venetian, Genoese, Dutch, English, and finally American capitalism. The book concludes with an examination of the forces which have shaped and are now poised to undermine America's world power.




The Defining Decade


Book Description

The Defining Decade has changed the way millions of twentysomethings think about their twenties—and themselves. Revised and reissued for a new generation, let it change how you think about you and yours. Our "thirty-is-the-new-twenty" culture tells us the twentysomething years don't matter. Some say they are an extended adolescence. Others call them an emerging adulthood. In The Defining Decade, Meg Jay argues that twentysomethings have been caught in a swirl of hype and misinformation, much of which has trivialized the most transformative time of our lives. Drawing from more than two decades of work with thousands of clients and students, Jay weaves the latest science of the twentysomething years with behind-closed-doors stories from twentysomethings themselves. The result is a provocative read that provides the tools necessary to take the most of your twenties, and shows us how work, relationships, personality, identity and even the brain can change more during this decade than at any other time in adulthood—if we use the time well. Also included in this updated edition: Up-to-date research on work, love, the brain, friendship, technology, and fertility What a decade of device use has taught us about looking at friends—and looking for love—online 29 conversations to have with your partner—or to keep in mind as you search for one A social experiment in which "digital natives" go without their phones A Reader's Guide for book clubs, classrooms, or further self-reflection




The Longest War


Book Description

At a critical moment in world history The Longest War provides the definitive account of the ongoing battle against terror. --Book Jacket.




The Longest Year


Book Description

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” meets Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in Daniel Grenier’s epic novel, which tells the story of a boy who ages only one out of every four years. There’s something extraordinary about Thomas Langlois. Thomas is a young boy growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with a French-Canadian father, Albert, and an American mother, Laura. But beyond the fact that he lives between two cultures and languages, there’s something else about Thomas that sets him apart: he was born on February 29. Before Albert goes on a strange quest to find out more about their mysterious relative, Aimé Bolduc, he explains to Thomas that he will only age one year out of every four and he will outlive all of his loved ones. Thomas’s loneliness grows and the years pass until a terrible accident involving a young girl sets in motion a series of events that link the young girl and Thomas to Aimé Bolduc — a Civil War–era soldier and perhaps their contemporary. Spanning three centuries and set against the backdrop of the Appalachians from Quebec to Tennessee, The Longest Year is a magical and poignant story about family history, fateful dates, fragile destinies, and lives brutally ended and mysteriously extended.




Pivotal Decade


Book Description

In this fascinating new history, Judith Stein argues that in order to understand our current economic crisis we need to look back to the 1970s and the end of the age of the factory--the era of postwar liberalism, created by the New Deal, whose practices, high wages, and regulated capital produced both robust economic growth and greater income equality. When high oil prices and economic competition from Japan and Germany battered the American economy, new policies--both international and domestic--became necessary. But war was waged against inflation, rather than against unemployment, and the government promoted a balanced budget instead of growth. This, says Stein, marked the beginning of the age of finance and subsequent deregulation, free trade, low taxation, and weak unions that has fostered inequality and now the worst recession in eighty years. Drawing on extensive archival research and covering the economic, intellectual, political, and labor history of the decade, Stein provides a wealth of information on the 1970s. She also shows that to restore prosperity today, America needs a new model: more factories and fewer financial houses. --Publisher's description.




The Longest Road


Book Description

Traces the author's 2011 road trip from the southernmost to the northernmost points of the United States to experience firsthand the country's diversity and political tensions in the face of a historic economic recession.




The Longest Line on the Map


Book Description

From the award-winning author of American Canopy, a dazzling account of the world’s longest road, the Pan-American Highway, and the epic quest to link North and South America, a dramatic story of commerce, technology, politics, and the divergent fates of the Americas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Pan-American Highway, monument to a century’s worth of diplomacy and investment, education and engineering, scandal and sweat, is the longest road in the world, passable everywhere save the mythic Darien Gap that straddles Panama and Colombia. The highway’s history, however, has long remained a mystery, a story scattered among government archives, private papers, and fading memories. In contrast to the Panama Canal and its vast literature, the Pan-American Highway—the United States’ other great twentieth-century hemispheric infrastructure project—has become an orphan of the past, effectively erased from the story of the “American Century.” The Longest Line on the Map uncovers this incredible tale for the first time and weaves it into a tapestry that fascinates, informs, and delights. Rutkow’s narrative forces the reader to take seriously the question: Why couldn’t the Americas have become a single region that “is” and not two near irreconcilable halves that “are”? Whether you’re fascinated by the history of the Americas, or you’ve dreamed of driving around the globe, or you simply love world records and the stories behind them, The Longest Line on the Map is a riveting narrative, a lost epic of hemispheric scale.




Ten Years in the Tub


Book Description

"How often do you begin reading a book that makes you—immediately, urgently, desperately—want to read more books?” (Booklist). Nick Hornby has managed to write just such a book in this hilarious, insightful, and infectious volume. Ten Years in the Tub chronicles Hornby's journey through a decade’s worth of books, as related in his wildly popular Believer column “Stuff I’ve Been Reading.” Ten Years in the Tub is a one-way ticket into the mind of one of the most beloved contemporary writers on his favorite pastime, but it's also a meditation on what Celine Dion can teach us about ourselves, a warning about how John Updike can ruin our sex lives, and a recommendation for the way Body Shop Vanilla Shower Gel can add excitement to our days. This "decade-long addiction for many... makes standing in line at the bank a blessed interval for snorting another page.” (the New York Times Book Review)




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