Best United States Local Government

• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction • Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who in this presidential election year, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America. Colin Woodard, an award-winning writer and journalist, is currently the state and national affairs writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram where he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting A longtime foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor , the San Francisco Chronicle , and The Chronicle of Higher Education , he has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents.

The #1 selling book for Texas government courses, with a new focus on the future of Texas politics. He is the author of Congressman Sam Rayburn, Sam Rayburn: A Bio-bibliography, and Judicial Politics in Texas: Partisanship, Money, and Politics in State Courts.

The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House, and then the election of America's first black President, led to the expression of white rage that has been as relentless as it has been brutal. A sobering primer on the myriad ways African American resilience and triumph over enslavement, Jim Crow and intolerance have been relentlessly defied by the very institutions entrusted to uphold our democracy." "White Rage is a riveting and disturbing history that begins with Reconstruction and lays bare the efforts of whites in the South and North alike to prevent emancipated black people from achieving economic independence, civil and political rights, personal safety, and economic opportunity." "White Rage belongs in a place of honor on the shelf next to other seminal books about the African-American experience such as James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time , Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns , and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow ." "[A] powerful survey of American history as seen in the violent white reactions to black progress, from Reconstruction to the great migration to the current political landscape." "Anderson has shown, with her well-sourced (she has several hundred detailed footnotes) and readable book, why the fights over race and access to the perquisites of American citizenship grind on . Though stretching a stand-alone essay into an extended study doesn’t work very often, White Rage operates efficiently and elegantly, offering readers new intelligence about American experience. Like a meticulous prosecutor assembling her case, Anderson lays out a profoundly upsetting vision of an America driven to waves of reactionary white anger whenever it’s confronted with black achievement." Reading through all the frightfully inventive ways in which America makes racial inequality a matter of law (and order) has a dizzying effect: like watching a quick-cut montage of social injustice spanning nearly half a millennium." "[F]or readers who want to understand the sense of grievance and pain that many African Americans feel today, White Rage offers a clearly written and well-thought-out overview of an aspect of U.S. history with which the country is still struggling to come to terms." "Anderson’s mosaic of white outrage deserves contemplation by anyone interested in understanding U.S. race relations, past and present." We are tethered to history, and with White Rage , Anderson adeptly highlights both that past and the tenacious grip race holds on the present. "White Rage is a harrowing account of our national history during the century and a half since the Civil War--even more troubling for what it exposes about our present, our deep and abiding racial divide. - Natasha Trethewey, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for NATIVE GUARD and Two-term Poet Laureate of the United States. - David Von Drehle, author of RISE TO GREATNESS: ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND AMERICA'S MOST PERILOUS YEAR.

#1 National Bestseller From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Far from merely making moral appeals, the authors posit that it is impossible for countries to climb out of poverty if only a fraction of women (9% in Pakistan, for example) participate in the labor force.

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.

• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction • Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who in this presidential election year, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America. Colin Woodard, an award-winning writer and journalist, is currently the state and national affairs writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram where he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting A longtime foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor , the San Francisco Chronicle , and The Chronicle of Higher Education , he has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents.

Further, these pages hold a detailed discussion of Trump-style solutions for national security, education, health care, economic growth, government reform, and other important topics. The very essence of Trump's mission is a willingness to enact policies and set goals that send our country in a bold new direction - one that may be "unreasonable" to Washington but is sensible to millions of Americans outside the Beltway. He is a Fox News contributor and author of 34 books, including 14 New York Times bestsellers.

Relive the extraordinary Presidency of Barack Obama through White House photographer Pete Souza's behind-the-scenes images and stories in this #1 New York Times bestseller--with a foreword from the President himself. During Barack Obama's two terms, Pete Souza was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else--and he photographed them all. "The book, which distills the 1.9 million photographs that Souza took of Obama's eight years in the White House down to about 300 images, it as once warm and nostalgic, worshipful and respectful, sad and wistful-in a sense, not so different from the framed JFK portraits that everyday Americans hung in living rooms, right through the Nixon administration. "Here are the qualities that radiate from these photos of the former President and his family, all taken by Souza during his eight years as official White House photographer: intelligence, kindness, warmth, integrity. "Souza, chief official White House photographer for Obama's two terms, was on hand for history--documenting our first black president, and a pretty photogenic one at that. Souza's book, an instant best seller, includes many iconic images we've seen before, but its most poignant moments are the least public--like one of the president and his daughters frolicking in the snow at the White House. "The 300 photographs in the book are a remarkable account of President Obama's eight years in the White House, from events of historic significance to quiet moments with his wife and daughters and the family dogs.

A tragic suicide, a likely murder, wrongful imprisonment, and gripping courtroom scenes draw readers into this compelling story giving them a frightening perspective on justice corrupted and who should be accountable when evidence is withheld. The takeaway is that both Bushies and Obamaites should be very afraid: over the last few years, a coterie of vicious and unethical prosecutors who are unfit to practice law has been harbored within and enabled by the now ironically named Department of Justice.''. ''When you ve finished reading this fast-paced thriller, you will want to stand up and applaud Powell's courage in daring to shine light into the darkest recesses of America's justice system. ''I have covered hundreds of court cases over the years and have witnessed far too often the kind of duplicity and governmental heavy-handedness Ms. Powell describes in her well-written book, Licensed to Lie.''.

The #1 selling book for Texas government courses, with a new focus on the future of Texas politics. He is the author of Congressman Sam Rayburn, Sam Rayburn: A Bio-bibliography, and Judicial Politics in Texas: Partisanship, Money, and Politics in State Courts.

It's a book about what happens when the nation's foremost progressive satirist gets a chance to serve in the United States Senate and, defying the low expectations of the pundit class, actually turns out to be good at it. In this candid personal memoir, the honorable gentleman from Minnesota takes his army of loyal fans along with him from Saturday Night Live to the campaign trail, inside the halls of Congress, and behind the scenes of some of the most dramatic and/or hilarious moments of his new career in politics. "The best political book of 2017. "[AL FRANKEN, GIANT OF THE SENATE] may...be the funniest memoir by a sitting - standing, recumbent, squatting - U.S. senator. This is a genuinely funny book, often hilarious...the Senate, and the country, would be the poorer without him. [Franken] uses self-deprecating humor to poke fun at everyone on either side of the aisle, and he gives readers insight into the daily workings of life in the Senate.