We Live in a Small Town


Book Description

Life in a small town is similar to life in a city, but it’s also different in important ways. Readers discover these differences and similarities as they explore what it’s like to call a small town home. Colorful photographs of small-town life introduce readers to places such as the town library and town hall. These photographs are accompanied by accessible text designed to reflect early social studies curriculum topics. A helpful picture glossary allows readers to enhance their vocabulary skills as they take a fun tour of a small town.




Vivimos en un pueblo / We Live in a Small Town


Book Description

Life in a small town is similar to life in a city, but it’s also different in important ways. Readers discover these differences and similarities as they explore what it’s like to call a small town home. Colorful photographs of small-town life introduce readers to places such as the town library and town hall. These photographs are accompanied by accessible text designed to reflect early social studies curriculum topics. A helpful picture glossary allows readers to enhance their vocabulary skills as they take a fun tour of a small town.




Small-Town America


Book Description

A revealing examination of small-town life More than thirty million Americans live in small, out-of-the-way places. Many of them could have joined the vast majority of Americans who live in cities and suburbs. They could live closer to more lucrative careers and convenient shopping, a wider range of educational opportunities, and more robust health care. But they have opted to live differently. In Small-Town America, we meet factory workers, shop owners, retirees, teachers, clergy, and mayors—residents who show neighborliness in small ways, but who also worry about everything from school closings and their children's futures to the ups and downs of the local economy. Drawing on more than seven hundred in-depth interviews in hundreds of towns across America and three decades of census data, Robert Wuthnow shows the fragility of community in small towns. He covers a host of topics, including the symbols and rituals of small-town life, the roles of formal and informal leaders, the social role of religious congregations, the perception of moral and economic decline, and the myriad ways residents in small towns make sense of their own lives. Wuthnow also tackles difficult issues such as class and race, abortion, homosexuality, and substance abuse. Small-Town America paints a rich panorama of individuals who reside in small communities, finding that, for many people, living in a small town is an important part of self-identity.




Small Town Hearts


Book Description

Fresh out of high school, Babe Vogel should be thrilled to have the whole summer at her fingertips. She loves living in her lighthouse home in the sleepy Maine beach town of Oar’s Rest and being a barista at the Busy Bean, but she’s totally freaking out about how her life will change when her two best friends go to college in the fall. And when a reckless kiss causes all three of them to break up, she may lose them a lot sooner. On top of that, her ex-girlfriend is back in town, bringing with her a slew of memories, both good and bad. And then there’s Levi Keller, the cute artist who’s spending all his free time at the coffee shop where she works. Levi’s from out of town, and even though Babe knows better than to fall for a tourist who will leave when summer ends, she can’t stop herself from wanting to know him. Can Babe keep her distance, or will she break the one rule she’s always had - to never fall for a summer boy?




Wallet Activism


Book Description

2022 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARDS FINALIST — SOCIAL/POLITICAL CHANGE • 2022 ASJA ANNUAL WRITING AWARD WINNER — SERVICE • 2022 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS GOLD MEDALIST — SOCIAL CHANGE & SOCIAL JUSTICE • 2022 AXIOM BUSINESS BOOK AWARD GOLD MEDALIST — PHILANTHROPY/NONPROFIT/SUSTAINABILITY How do we vote with our dollars, not just to make ourselves feel good, but to make a real difference? Wallet Activism challenges you to rethink your financial power so can feel confident spending, earning, and saving money in ways that align with your values. While we call the American system a democracy, capitalism is the far more powerful force in our lives. The greatest power we have—especially when political leaders won’t move quickly enough—is how we use our money: where we shop, what we buy, where we live, what institutions we entrust with our money, who we work for, and where we donate determines the trajectory of our society and our planet. While our votes and voices are essential, too, Wallet Activism helps you use your money for real impact. It can feel overwhelming to determine “the right way” to spend: a choice that might seem beneficial to the environment may have unintended consequences that hurt people. And marketers are constantly lying to you, making it hard to know what choice is best. Wallet Activism empowers us to vote with our wallets by making sense of all the information coming at us, and teaching us to cultivate a more holistic mindset that considers the complex, interrelated ecosystems of people and the planet together, not as opposing forces. From Tanja Hester, Our Next Life blogger and author of Work Optional, comes the mindset-shifting guide to help you put your money where your values are. Wallet Activism is not a list of dos and don’ts that will soon become outdated, nor does it call for anti-consumerist perfection. Instead, it goes beyond simple purchasing decisions to explore: The impacts a financial decision can have across society and the environment How to create a personal spending philosophy based on your values Practical questions to quickly assess the “goodness” of a product or an entity you may buy from The ethics of earning money, choosing what foods to eat, employing others, investing responsibly, choosing where to live, and giving money away For anyone interested in leaving the world better than you found it, Wallet Activism helps you build habits that will make your money matter.




Small Town Talk


Book Description

Think "Woodstock" and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But the town of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name, Woodstock-the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his infamous 1966 motorcycle accident-was already a key location in the '60s rock landscape. In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren-and the Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences and associations of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title). Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene-and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s-Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This is a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.




Famous in a Small Town


Book Description

For Sophie, small town life has never felt small. With her four best friends—loving, infuriating, and all she could ever ask for—she can weather any storm. But when Sophie’s beloved Acadia High School marching band is selected to march in the upcoming Rose Parade, it’s her job to get them all the way to LA. Her plan? To persuade country singer Megan Pleasant, their Midwestern town’s only claim to fame, to come back to Acadia to headline a fundraising festival. The only problem is that Megan has very publicly sworn never to return. What ensues is a journey filled with long-kept secrets, hidden heartbreaks, and revelations that could change everything—along with a possible fifth best friend: a new guy with a magnetic smile and secrets of his own.




Anything Is Possible


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this “compulsively readable” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from #1 bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout “This book, this writer, are magnificent.”—Ann Patchett Winner of The Story Prize • A Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book • One of USA Today’s top 10 books of the year Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author’s celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence. Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout’s place as one of America’s most respected and cherished authors.




The Small-Town Midwest


Book Description

Julianne Couch sets out to illuminate the lives and hopes of small-town residents from nine small communities in five states in the Midwest and Great Plains: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Residents are betting that the tide of rural population loss can't go out forever, and they're backing those bets with creatively repurposed schools, entrepreneurial innovation, and community commitment. From Bellevue, Iowa, to Centennial, Wyoming, the region's small-town residents remain both hopeful and resilient.




Small Town Pennsylvania


Book Description

A photographic journey of small towns in Pennsylvania, organized by county.