Keith Ellison: The Democratic National Committee has become the Democratic Presidential Committee, and that needs to end
Jan. 17, 2017•Episode #53
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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Author: Isabel Wilkerson
ISBN 13: 978-0679763888
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. One of The New York Times ’s 5 Best Books of the 21st Century “Profound, necessary and an absolute delight to read.” —Toni Morrison From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

Authors: Alex Haley , Malcolm X , M. S. Handler , Ossie Davis , Attallah Shabazz
ISBN 13: 978-0345350688
ONE OF TIME ’S TEN MOST IMPORTANT NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream, and the inherent racism in a society that denies its nonwhite citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time. The Autobiography of Malcolm X stands as the definitive statement of a movement and a man whose work was never completed but whose message is timeless. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America. Praise for The Autobiography of Malcolm X “Extraordinary . . . a brilliant, painful, important book.” — The New York Times “This book will have a permanent place in the literature of the Afro-American struggle.” —I. F. Stone
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Author: Matthew Desmond
ISBN 13: 978-0553447453
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • ONE OF TIME ’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY One of the most acclaimed books of our time, this modern classic “has set a new standard for reporting on poverty” (Barbara Ehrenreich, The New York Times Book Review ). In Evicted , Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” ( The Nation ), “vivid and unsettling” ( New York Review of Books ), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: President Barack Obama, The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Esquire, BuzzFeed, Fortune, San Francisco Chronicle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Politico, The Week, Chicago Public Library, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Shelf Awareness WINNER OF: The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism • The PEN/New England Award • The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE AND THE KIRKUS PRIZE “ Evicted stands among the very best of the social justice books.” —Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and Commonwealth “Gripping and moving—tragic, too.” —Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones “ Evicted is that rare work that has something genuinely new to say about poverty.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto

Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto

Authors: Dick Armey , Matt Kibbe
ISBN 13: 978-0062015877
Former Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and leading organizer of the Tea Party movement, Dick Armey offers a Tea Party Manifesto: Give Us Liberty . Written with Matt Kibbee, President and CEO of FreedomWorks, Give Us Liberty defines the issues and agenda of the wildfire grassroots movement that is electrifying the nation, as it calls on fiscal conservatives to take back America.
What A Party!: My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals

What A Party!: My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals

Authors: Terry McAuliffe , Steve Kettmann
ISBN 13: 978-0312357870
"I thought I knew Terry McAuliffe as well as anyone, but this time he surprised even me. Who knew Terry could sit still long enough to give us a book this good? What a Party! is a must-read for all of us who love politics, believe in public service, and know that laughter is often the best survival strategy." --President Bill Clinton "No one knows more about American politics than Terry McAuliffe. He gives us some remarkable insights and knows how to make his accounts both humorous and informative." --President Jimmy Carter "I've often said Terry's energy could light up a city, and readers of this book will know why. Terry's excitement for politics--and life--is evident on every page." --Senator Hillary Clinton For more than twenty-five years, Terry McAuliffe has been at the epicenter of American politics. Just out of Catholic University in Washington, Terry took a position with the Carter-Mondale campaign and quickly became one of the campaign's chief fund-raisers--and hasn't looked back since. The list of Terry´s former mentors, friends, and close associates in the nation's capital reads like a who's who of legendary Democrats: Tip O'Neill. Jimmy Carter. Dick Gephardt. Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton. Al Gore. The list goes on and on. Terry has fought hard for the Democratic Party his entire life and, as Bill Clinton reveals here for the first time, he was the first one in the party to see opportunity in the Republican gains in the 1994 Congressional elections. Without question the most successful fund-raiser in political history, Terry established himself as a heavyweight Democratic strategist and leader who was George W. Bush´s most vocal and persistent critic during the first four years of the Bush 43 presidency. He earned rave reviews even from former critics for his groundbreaking work as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005, pulling the DNC out of debt for the first time in its history. Terry has served as a confidant and adviser to President Clinton and countless presidential candidates, a mediator among party leaders, the chairman of a national convention and presidential inaugural, and a forceful spokesman for the party--all without losing his reputation as a colorful, fun-loving character liked and respected even by his Republican adversaries. What a Party! is a fascinating, hilarious, and provocative look at the life of one of Washington's legendary figures. From wrestling an alligator to running the Democratic National Committee to his friendship with President Clinton, Terry McAuliffe's wonderful memoir covers it all and is, without doubt, the political book of the year.
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Author: Arlie Russell Hochschild
ISBN 13: 978-1620973493
2016 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR NONFICTION A 2016 NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEWSDAY TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF 2016 One of "6 Books to Understand Trump's Win" according to the New York Times the day after the election The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic , “Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochchild’s ‘strangers in their own land’ and a new elite.” Already a favorite common read book in communities and on campuses across the country and called “humble and important” by David Brooks, Hochschild’s book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others. The paperback edition will feature a new introduction by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, and will also include a readers’ group guide in the back of the book.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Author: J. D. Vance
ISBN 13: 978-0062300553
Hillbilly Elegy recounts J.D. Vance's powerful origin story... From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as a U.S. Senator from Ohio and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for the 2024 election, an incisive account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "You will not read a more important book about America this year." — The Economist "A riveting book." — The Wall Street Journal "Essential reading." — David Brooks, New York Times Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
Manchild in the Promised Land

Manchild in the Promised Land

Authors: Claude Brown , Nathan McCall
ISBN 13: 978-1451631579
With more than two million copies in print, Manchild in the Promised Land is one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time—the definitive account of African-American youth in Harlem of the 1940s and 1950s, and a seminal work of modern literature. Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s. When the book was first published in 1965, it was praised for its realistic portrayal of Harlem—the children, young people, hardworking parents; the hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and numbers runners; the police; the violence, sex, and humor. The book continues to resonate generations later, not only because of its fierce and dignified anger, not only because the struggles of urban youth are as deeply felt today as they were in Brown’s time, but also because of its inspiring message. Now with an introduction by Nathan McCall, here is the story about the one who “made it,” the boy who kept landing on his feet and grew up to become a man.
Who Stole the American Dream?

Who Stole the American Dream?

Author: Hedrick Smith
ISBN 13: 978-1400069668
Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith’s new book is an extraordinary achievement, an eye-opening account of how, over the past four decades, the American Dream has been dismantled and we became two Americas. In his bestselling The Russians, Smith took millions of readers inside the Soviet Union. In The Power Game, he took us inside Washington’s corridors of power. Now Smith takes us across America to show how seismic changes, sparked by a sequence of landmark political and economic decisions, have transformed America. As only a veteran reporter can, Smith fits the puzzle together, starting with Lewis Powell’s provocative memo that triggered a political rebellion that dramatically altered the landscape of power from then until today. This is a book full of surprises and revelations—the accidental beginnings of the 401(k) plan, with disastrous economic consequences for many; the major policy changes that began under Jimmy Carter; how the New Economy disrupted America’s engine of shared prosperity, the “virtuous circle” of growth, and how America lost the title of “Land of Opportunity.” Smith documents the transfer of $6 trillion in middle-class wealth from homeowners to banks even before the housing boom went bust, and how the U.S. policy tilt favoring the rich is stunting America’s economic growth. This book is essential reading for all of us who want to understand America today, or why average Americans are struggling to keep afloat. Smith reveals how pivotal laws and policies were altered while the public wasn’t looking, how Congress often ignores public opinion, why moderate politicians got shoved to the sidelines, and how Wall Street often wins politically by hiring over 1,400 former government officials as lobbyists. Smith talks to a wide range of people, telling the stories of Americans high and low. From political leaders such as Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Martin Luther King, Jr., to CEOs such as Al Dunlap, Bob Galvin, and Andy Grove, to heartland Middle Americans such as airline mechanic Pat O’Neill, software systems manager Kristine Serrano, small businessman John Terboss, and subcontractor Eliseo Guardado, Smith puts a human face on how middle-class America and the American Dream have been undermined. This magnificent work of history and reportage is filled with the penetrating insights, provocative discoveries, and the great empathy of a master journalist. Finally, Smith offers ideas for restoring America’s great promise and reclaiming the American Dream. Praise for Who Stole the American Dream? “[A] sweeping, authoritative examination of the last four decades of the American economic experience.” —The Huffington Post “Some fine work has been done in explaining the mess we’re in. . . . But no book goes to the headwaters with the precision, detail and accessibility of Smith.” —The Seattle Times “Sweeping in scope . . . [Smith] posits some steps that could alleviate the problems of the United States.” —USA Today “Brilliant . . . [a] remarkably comprehensive and coherent analysis of and prescriptions for America’s contemporary economic malaise.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Smith enlivens his narrative with portraits of the people caught up in events, humanizing complex subjects often rendered sterile in economic analysis. . . . The human face of the story is inseparable from the history.” —Reuters
Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

Author: Ari Berman
ISBN 13: 978-1250094728
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Nonfiction Named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Boston Globe, and Kirkus Reviews (Best Nonfiction) Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit it from the moment the act was signed into law. The VRA is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement, and yet―more than fifty years later―the battles over race, representation, and political power continue, as lawmakers devise new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth, while the Supreme Court has declared a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Through meticulous research, in-depth interviews, and incisive on-the-ground reporting, Give Us the Ballot offers the first comprehensive history of its kind, and provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.
by @zachbellay