Best Sociology of Class
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful 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. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. “[A] compassionate, discerning sociological analysis…Combining thoughtful inquiry with firsthand experience, Mr. Vance has inadvertently provided a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election, and he’s done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans. [Vance] offers a compelling explanation for why it’s so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it…a riveting book.” ( Wall Street Journal ). “[ Hillbilly Elegy ] couldn’t have been better timed...a harrowing portrait of much that has gone wrong in America over the past two generations...an honest look at the dysfunction that afflicts too many working-class Americans.” ( National Review ). Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy”, offers a starkly honest look at what that shattering of faith feels like for a family who lived through it.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Drugs, crime, jail time, abusive interactions without any knowledge of other forms of interaction, children growing up in a wild mix of stoned mother care, foster care, and care by temporary "boyfriends," and in general, an image of life on the edge of survival where even the heroes are distinctly flawed for lack of knowledge and experience of any other way of living. Second, the author's growing realization, fully present by the end of the work, that while individuals do not have total control over the shapes of their lives, their choices do in fact matter—that even if one can't direct one's life like a film, one does always have the at least the input into life that comes from being free to make choices, every day, and in every situation. I hate to fall into self-analysis and virtue-signaling behavior in a public review, but in this case I feel compelled to say that the author really did leave with me a renewed motivation to make more of my life every day, to respect and consider the choices that confront me much more carefully, and to seize moments of opportunity with aplomb when they present themselves."
"I never heard of the author until I saw him on Morning Joe a few days ago but I looked him up and read several articles he wrote for various publications so I bought his book. He suggests that tribalism, mistrust of outsiders and "elites," violence and irresponsibility among family members, parents without ethics and a sense of responsibility, terrible work ethics, and an us-against-them mentality is dooming the people who live that way to becoming poorer, more addicted, and more marginalized."
"I grew up without running water in Boone County, WV, and wound up with a degree from Harvard Law School."
"I escaped inner city Baltimore (see The Wire) due to luck, the ability to do well in school and a few good teachers.Instead of trying to describe my early life to my family and friends, I will give them this book."
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful 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. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. ''[A] compassionate, discerning sociological analysis...Combining thoughtful inquiry with firsthand experience, Mr. Vance has inadvertently provided a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election, and he's done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans. ( Jennifer Senior, New York Times ). ''[ Hillbilly Elegy ] is a beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America....[Vance] offers a compelling explanation for why it's so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it...a riveting book.''. ''[An] understated, engaging debut...An unusually timely and deeply affecting view of a social class whose health and economic problems are making headlines in this election year.''. ''Vance compellingly describes the terrible toll that alcoholism, drug abuse, and an unrelenting code of honor took on his family, neither excusing the behavior nor condemning it...The portrait that emerges is a complex one...Unerringly forthright, remarkably insightful, and refreshingly focused, Hillbilly Elegy is the cry of a community in crisis.''. ''A beautifully and powerfully written memoir about the author's journey from a troubled, addiction-torn Appalachian family to Yale Law School, Hillbilly Elegy is shocking, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and hysterically funny. It's also a profoundly important book, one that opens a window on a part of America usually hidden from view and offers genuine hope in the form of hard-hitting honesty. From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class through the author’s own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. 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, sister, 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. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Drugs, crime, jail time, abusive interactions without any knowledge of other forms of interaction, children growing up in a wild mix of stoned mother care, foster care, and care by temporary "boyfriends," and in general, an image of life on the edge of survival where even the heroes are distinctly flawed for lack of knowledge and experience of any other way of living. Second, the author's growing realization, fully present by the end of the work, that while individuals do not have total control over the shapes of their lives, their choices do in fact matter—that even if one can't direct one's life like a film, one does always have the at least the input into life that comes from being free to make choices, every day, and in every situation. I hate to fall into self-analysis and virtue-signaling behavior in a public review, but in this case I feel compelled to say that the author really did leave with me a renewed motivation to make more of my life every day, to respect and consider the choices that confront me much more carefully, and to seize moments of opportunity with aplomb when they present themselves."
"I never heard of the author until I saw him on Morning Joe a few days ago but I looked him up and read several articles he wrote for various publications so I bought his book. He suggests that tribalism, mistrust of outsiders and "elites," violence and irresponsibility among family members, parents without ethics and a sense of responsibility, terrible work ethics, and an us-against-them mentality is dooming the people who live that way to becoming poorer, more addicted, and more marginalized."
"I grew up without running water in Boone County, WV, and wound up with a degree from Harvard Law School."
"I escaped inner city Baltimore (see The Wire) due to luck, the ability to do well in school and a few good teachers.Instead of trying to describe my early life to my family and friends, I will give them this book."
Edward Wolff, one of the world’s great experts on the economics of wealth, offers an authoritative account of patterns in the accumulation and distribution of wealth since 1900. A Century of Wealth in America demonstrates that the most remarkable change has been the growth of per capita household wealth, which climbed almost eightfold prior to the 2007 recession. Wolff’s magnum opus is a highly timely book, for it contains a trove of interesting material that is highly germane to a political moment when the issue of wealth inequality is on everyone’s lips…His evidence suggests that the United States now has the greatest wealth inequality among developed economies and that the recovery from the recession of 2008 is manifesting itself, in part, in a renewed growth in the wealth of the richest. What this book really delivers, and why it is important, is a damning indictment of just where late-stage capitalism has gone wrong, and how the soar-away wealth of the 1 per cent (or the 0.1 per cent) is so corrosive of the political and social consensus in contemporary America. The book is comprehensive and engaging.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Professor Ed Wolff has been studying wealth in America far longer than most living economists."
"Briefly, Mr Picketty the French economist [i.e., the anti-American socialist] wrote in his "CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY" that inheritance is the major source of wealth."
"Thorough study of wealth and income inequality through the past 150 years in US."
Best Microeconomics
PRINCIPLES OF MICROECONOMICS, Seventh Edition, continues to be the most popular and widely-used text in the economics classroom.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I needed this for my Microeconomics class, the font was a good size and it was easy to read."
"Great prep for the Aplia test questions."
"It was a great experience and the delivery was right on time."
"It's the best Microeconomics book I've ever (been forced to) read."
"The book was written by Gregory Mankiw who has an incredible résumé being a Harvord University professor and an economic adviser to George W. Bush (political bias aside that is impressive)."
"Super easy to read and understand!"
"This is a good book that has understandable explanations and is a fine textbook."
"I think the math behind these curves is important and unfortunately the book stays high level and doesn't provide more in-depth examples or tutorials on how to calculate curves, deadweight loss and other important concepts."
Best Civil Rights Law
A work of riveting literary journalism that explores the roots and repercussions of the infamous killing of Eric Garner by the New York City police—from the bestselling author of The Divide NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST. Featuring vivid vignettes of life on the street and inside our Kafkaesque court system, Taibbi’s kaleidoscopic account illuminates issues around policing, mass incarceration, the underground economy, and racial disparity in law enforcement. A masterly narrative of urban America and a scathing indictment of the perverse incentives built into our penal system, I Can’t Breathe drills down into the particulars of one case to confront us with the human cost of our broken approach to dispensing criminal justice. [Matt] Taibbi is unsparing is his excoriation of the system, police, and courts that led to the fatal choke hold and worked to blur the abuse afterward. After deeply exploring Garner’s life from a variety of perspectives, Taibbi offers detailed reporting about the out-of-control Staten Island police officers present at the death scene . What emerges from the author’s superb reporting and vivid writing is a tragically revealing look at a broken criminal justice system geared to serve white citizens while often overlooking or ignoring the rights of others.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Matt Taibbi’s I Can’t Breathe marries the best instincts of explanatory narrative journalism with uncompromising moral clarity. The result is a riveting walk through decades of policing policy and big city politics that culminated, seemingly inevitably, in Eric Garner’s killing by the New York Police Department.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Taibbi takes us through the evolution of stop and frisk, the Broken Windows theory of policing, the use of statistical modeling for fighting crime, the use of statistics for measuring "success", and how all of these factors have become bent and twisted resulting in the victimization of minority communities who are regularly terrorized by law enforcement officers. Despite its comprehensive coverage of the history of modern policing tactics, this is no academic treatment, but rather a caring, feeling recap of what happened to Garner and the factors that led to the fatal convergence of Garner and the NYPD that fateful day."
"a more serious matt for a more serious subject."
"Just so we all get it Not Justice for All should b ingraved in every court house."
"Great writer ...great book..."
"On July 17, 2014, plainclothes NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo applied a banned chokehold to a fat, middle-aged, diabetic street hustler named Eric Garner. Bystander Ramsey Orta’s cellphone video caught garner wheezing out “I can’t breathe!” eleven times before losing consciousness. Garner’s unconscious body lay untended, possibly already dead, for eight minutes, while paramedics parked over a block away, and cameras kept rolling. While more police killed more African-American men and youths, often with flimsier pretexts, like Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, Garner’s death had the distinction of being caught on camera with sound, from beginning to end to badly bungled aftermath. He established a remarkably sophisticated network of buyers nabbing cigarettes by the trunkful in Virginia, with America’s lowest tobacco tax. Garner got caught in a campaign to disproportionately target black and brown communities, assuming that darker-hued neighborhoods innately caused crime. This isn’t hypothetical, either; internal NYPD whistleblowers caught commanders, on tape, ordering racially targeted sweeps. Massive, leaderless demonstrations gained national support, then lost it overnight when one march turned into an attack on police. Though his sympathy, measured in column inches, clearly lies with community members, the police he interviews appear dedicated, misunderstood, and yoked to an administration that treats them badly."
"A phenomenal book about race and policing in America."
Best Reference eBooks
Now a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts. MORE THAN SEVEN YEARS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST The perennially bestselling, extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, “nothing short of spectacular” ( Entertainment Weekly ) memoir from one of the world’s most gifted storytellers. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor. But I have a very vivid memory of this tough, leathery woman; she sang, she danced, she shot guns, she’d play honky tonk piano. Half Broke Horses is a compilation of family stories, stitched together with gaps filled in. A: Several years ago, the abandoned building on New York’s Lower East Side where Mom had been squatting for more than a decade caught fire and she was back on the streets again at age 72. She doesn’t live in the house with us-- I have not reached that level of understanding and compassion-- but in an outbuilding about a hundred yards away. Mom is great with the animals, loves to sing and dance and ride horses, and is still painting like a fiend. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents—walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star—was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I felt that I could relate to this book because I grew up in poverty and had to adjust to society when I left home."
"Read it!"
"Amazing story."
"Well written, but I wanted to strangle her parents."
"Great book."
"Beautifully written but hard to imagine."
"Very dysfunctional story."
"I give thus book as a gift to my friends who have never read it."
Best Education & Reference
As Greg says in his diary, “Just don’t expect me to be all ‘Dear Diary’ this and ‘Dear Diary’ that.” Luckily for us, what Greg Heffley says he won’t do and what he actually does are two very different things. Since its launch in May 2004 on Funbrain.com, the Web version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has been viewed by 20 million unique online readers. Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Jeff Kinney Question: Given all the jobs that you have--game designer, fatherhood, Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie work, etc.,--do you have a certain time that you set aside to write? Kinney: I never any real desire to appear in the Wimpy Kid films, but one day my wife encouraged me to be an extra in one of the crowd scenes. I eventually reached a voicemail of a reporter who said they worked for Time , and at that point I thought it was just a well-planned practical joke. Q: Would you ever consider making Wimpy Kid into a newspaper comic strip or creating another one? Kinney's popular Web comic, which began in 2004, makes its way to print as a laugh-out-loud "novel in cartoons," adapted from the series. Middle school student Greg Heffley takes readers through an academic year's worth of drama. Greg's mother forces him to keep a diary ("I know what it says on the cover, but when Mom went out to buy this thing I specifically told her to get one that didn't say 'diary' on it"), and in it he loosely recounts each day's events, interspersed with his comic illustrations. Greg's journal entry reads, "I do feel a little bad, because it looked like it was gonna take a long time to clean up. Kinney ably skewers familiar aspects of junior high life, from dealing with the mysteries of what makes someone popular to the trauma of a "wrestling unit" in gym class.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"granddaughter loved this book."
"Great book for the students."
"With this book there's not a lot of actual "reading," but he had his nose in a book for awhile!"
"It is very funny how the cheese touch became something to scare you about in Greg's middle school."
"Another addition to my collection."
"I bought these for my 9 year old granddaughter and she loves them!"
"This book seemed too young for me but my little nephews loved it."
Best Business Economics
The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. "Kate Moore's new book will move, shock and anger you" -- The Big Issue Kate Moore is a Sunday Times bestselling writer with more than a decade's experience in writing across varying genres, including memoir and biography and history.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"In The Radium Girls Kate Moore tells the story of these young women, seemingly so fortunate, who were poisoned by the jobs they felt so lucky to have. After some of the women died and more became ill the companies making large profits on radium rushed to dismiss any hint that the work was unsafe. Eventually publicity stemming from lawsuits filed by some of the victims (using their own scanty resources) focused enough attention on the problem that governments felt compelled to set safety standards and regulations. The safety regulations and restrictions which were finally put into place hardly seem adequate, and the Epilogue and Postscript giving details of the women's later lives, as well as an account of another industry that made careless use of radium as late as the 1970s, are especially harrowing."
"This is one these books that will stay with you long after you finished reading it."
"One of the best books I have read in a long time!"
"I learned so much from this book."
"This was such a heartfelt story bringing to life the stories of such brave women and their suffering."
"This a book that should be read by people of all ages and occupation."
"Awesome book could not stop thinking about it for weeks such a long fight these woman had n some did not make it sadly."
"I have not read many of these types of books about real life stories about history and I found this fascinating."
Best Finance
While preserving the integrity of Graham's original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today's market, draws parallels between Graham's examples and today's financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham's principles. Among the library of investment books promising no-fail strategies for riches, Benjamin Graham's classic, The Intelligent Investor , offers no guarantees or gimmicks but overflows with the wisdom at the core of all good portfolio management. Graham's sage advice, analytical guides, and cautionary tales are still valid for the contemporary investor, and Zweig's commentaries demonstrate the relevance of Graham's principles in light of 1990s and early twenty-first century market trends.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"If you are not a professional - you'll appreciate the commentaries and epilogue - read it first? Several rules of thumbs I noted into my keep: - Investor buys the business [based on its price/value], speculator buys the stock [based on an absurd believe that he can foresee where the stock price will go]. Thus, invest in such old economy companies while bubble grows, as soon as the bubble burst - undervalued companies would rise back. Dividends - money firm pays you for providing capital, they belong to you."
"Not only will you get superb financial advice, but also an outstanding piece of literature written by a brilliant mind. In an illustrative contrast between the two men, while Graham might show what he thinks about a certain Wall Street practice with a sardonic quote from classical literature, Zweig disparages IPOs by showing us how many silly phrases he can think up to stand for the acronym."
"It is not a 101 guide to the basics of the stock market, but even if you go into this book with little to no knowledge of the stock market, it is informative enough that if you are intuitive, you can learn (by deduction) about investing."
"Very good that one book all information available for investor."
"New and seal in plastic wrap."
"Difficult for me to follow."
"The original text was updated in 1972 by Graham and then Jason Zweig adds his commentary in 2003 to relate to the changes at that time."
"No complaints of the book itself, but the Kindle edition of it is bad."
Best Natural Resource Extraction Industry
The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels , is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. Drawing on original insights and cutting-edge research, Epstein argues that most of what we hear about fossil fuels is a myth. Truth : Fossil fuels are the key to improving the quality of life for billions of people in the developing world. If we withhold them, access to clean water plummets, critical medical machines like incubators become impossible to operate, and life expectancy drops significantly. Taking everything into account, including the facts about climate change, Epstein argues that “fossil fuels are easy to misunderstand and demonize, but they are absolutely good to use. Alex Epstein’s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels may make your blood boil, but his cool reason and cold, hard facts will lead us beyond hysterics to a much better future.”. — PETER THIEL , technology entrepreneur and investor. As Alex shows, those fuels are allowing billions of people to live fuller, freer, healthier lives.”. — ROBERT BRYCE , author of Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"If we are to judge whether fossil fuels are good or bad by what they have done to the human standard of living, then fossil fuels are good."
"Epstein suggests that the standard we should employ is human life and that we should consider all energy questions in terms of whether human life will be improved or harmed."
"The book defines the standard, human life, as the reference as it discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using fossil fuels."
"An amazing must read book!"
"Having read the "Population Bomb" when Paul Earhart first published it in the early 70's, Epstein's "Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" allows you to finally understand the rationale for the case by environmentalists' to oppose fossil fuels."
"After a week reading the book and thinking what more I may do to help get the word out I contributed $1000 to the author who will send books free to qualified students....If you need another good reason to buy this book please read all the one-star reviews, they make the point..."
"In the available energy rich United States, we are ignorant of suffering that results from inadequate access to energy."
"His thesis, I believe, is sound and needs to be taken seriously by the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for pushing the replacement of fossil fuel with unsustainable alternatives."