Change for America


Book Description

"Mark Green and Michele Jolin look to 2009 as the beginning of an era of renewal and progressive governance in America. Change for America presciently and insightfully offers specific ideas for what our next President can do to revitalize our nation and restore our standing abroad." -- President Bill Clinton It was an election about change, but how will that change actually happen? The result of a collaboration between the Center for American Progress Action Fund (the advocacy arm of Washington's leading-edge progressive think-tank led) and the New Democracy Project's Mark Green, this comprehensive volume is written by over sixty leading policymakers, scholars and advocates. Based on four core values -- of democracy, security through diplomacy, opportunity and a greener world -- Change for America offers scores of solutions how to repair our broken government and create an enduring progressive era. "The Center for American Progress Action Fund and Mark Green have assembled some of our nation's best minds, and their best ideas, into a book is packed with innovative, practical, and progressive solutions that will help take America in a New Direction." -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi "These thoughtful essays offer a progressive way forward for the vast majority of Americans who hope their government works for the many, not just the few." -- Senator Ted Kennedy "We don't just need a transition -- we need a transformation. Mark Green and Michele Jolin's encyclopedia of change offers a brilliant roadmap for the 44th President." -- Senator John Kerry "This is one of the most important books to be published this year. It's a handbook for restoring the New Deal's social compact with our citizens over the first '100 Days' and the next 1360." -- James Roosevelt, Jr. "Change for America is brilliant, timely and practical and teems with hard earned wisdom and common sense." -- Michael Eric Dyson




The Plot to Change America


Book Description

The Plot to Change America exposes the myths that help identity politics perpetuate itself. This book reveals what has really happened, explains why it is urgent to change course, and offers a strategy to do so. Though we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it will be easy to eliminate identity politics, we should not overthink it, either. Identity politics relies on the creation of groups and then on giving people incentives to adhere to them. If we eliminate group making and the enticements, we can get rid of identity politics. The first myth that this book exposes is that identity politics is a grassroots movement, when from the beginning it has been, and continues to be, an elite project. For too long, we have lived with the fairy tale that America has organically grown into a nation gripped by victimhood and identitarian division; that it is all the result of legitimate demands by minorities for recognition or restitutions for past wrongs. The second myth is that identity politics is a response to the demographic change this country has undergone since immigration laws were radically changed in 1965. Another myth we are told is that to fight these changes is as depraved as it is futile, since by 2040, America will be a minority-majority country, anyway. This book helps to explain that none of these things are necessarily true.




10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America


Book Description

Recounts the events of ten pivotal days that changed the course of American history.




Changing America


Book Description




Prophetic City


Book Description

Houston, Texas, long thought of as a traditionally blue-collar black/white southern city, has transformed into one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse metro areas in the nation, surpassing even New York by some measures. With a diversifying economy and large numbers of both highly-skilled technical jobs in engineering and medicine and low-skilled minimum-wage jobs in construction, restaurant work, and personal services, Houston has become a magnet for the new divergent streams of immigration that are transforming America in the 21st century. And thanks to an annual systematic survey conducted over the past thirty-eight years, the ongoing changes in attitudes, beliefs, and life experiences have been measured and studied, creating a compelling data-driven map of the challenges and opportunities that are facing Houston and the rest of the country. In Prophetic City, we'll meet some of the new Americans, including a family who moved to Houston from Mexico in the early 1980s and is still trying to find work that pays more than poverty wages. There's a young man born to highly-educated Indian parents in an affluent Houston suburb who grows up to become a doctor in the world's largest medical complex, as well as a white man who struggles with being prematurely pushed out of the workforce when his company downsizes. This timely and groundbreaking book tracks the progress of an American city like never before. Houston is at the center of the rapid changes that have redefined the nature of American society itself in the new century. Houston is where, for better or worse, we can see the American future emerging.




The Age of Dignity


Book Description

One of Time’s 100 most influential people “shines a new light on the need for a holistic approach to caregiving in America . . . Timely and hopeful” (Maria Shriver). In The Age of Dignity, thought leader and activist Ai-jen Poo offers a wake-up call about the statistical reality that will affect us all: Fourteen percent of our population is now over sixty-five; by 2030 that ratio will be one in five. In fact, our fastest-growing demographic is the eighty-five-plus age group—over five million people now, a number that is expected to more than double in the next twenty years. This change presents us with a new challenge: how we care for and support quality of life for the unprecedented numbers of older Americans who will need it. Despite these daunting numbers, Poo has written a profoundly hopeful book, giving us a glimpse into the stories and often hidden experiences of the people—family caregivers, older people, and home care workers—whose lives will be directly shaped and reshaped in this moment of demographic change. The Age of Dignity outlines a road map for how we can become a more caring nation, providing solutions for fixing our fraying safety net while also increasing opportunities for women, immigrants, and the unemployed in our workforce. As Poo has said, “Care is the strategy and the solution toward a better future for all of us.” “Every American should read this slender book. With luck, it will be the future for all of us.” —Gloria Steinem “Positive and inclusive.” —The New York Times “A big-hearted book [that] seeks to transform our dismal view of aging and caregiving.” —Ms. magazine




The National Road


Book Description

This collection of "eloquent essays that examine the relationship between the American landscape and the national character" serves to remind us that despite our differences we all belong to the same land (Publishers Weekly). “How was it possible, I wondered, that all of this American land––in every direction––could be fastened together into a whole?” What does it mean when a nation accustomed to moving begins to settle down, when political discord threatens unity, and when technology disrupts traditional ways of building communities? Is a shared soil enough to reinvigorate a national spirit? From the embaattled newsrooms of small town newspapers to the pornography film sets of the Los Angeles basin, from the check–out lanes of Dollar General to the holy sites of Mormonism, from the nation’s highest peaks to the razed remains of a cherished home, like a latter–day Woody Guthrie, Tom Zoellner takes to the highways and byways of a vast land in search of the soul of its people. By turns nostalgic and probing, incisive and enraged, Zoellner’s reflections reveal a nation divided by faith, politics, and shifting economies, but––more importantly––one united by a shared sense of ownership in the common land.







Saudi America


Book Description

"Argues that obtaining energy through the hydraulic fracturing of shale rock is based on unstable economic foundations, and is having much more destructive effects on the economy and the government of the United States than its advocates claim"--




1919 The Year That Changed America


Book Description

WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 1919 was a world-shaking year. America was recovering from World War I and black soldiers returned to racism so violent that that summer would become known as the Red Summer. The suffrage movement had a long-fought win when women gained the right to vote. Laborers took to the streets to protest working conditions; nationalistic fervor led to a communism scare; and temperance gained such traction that prohibition went into effect. Each of these movements reached a tipping point that year. Now, one hundred years later, these same social issues are more relevant than ever. Sandler traces the momentum and setbacks of these movements through this last century, showing that progress isn't always a straight line and offering a unique lens through which we can understand history and the change many still seek.