Today, we are feeling the loss of our privacy like no other generation has. We are also being led down a path that fuels the evil intents of those who collect our secrets. Rather than being warmed by the suggested security blanket, most of us have felt a little uncovered at times. Our lives are often shamefully exposed by people with self-serving epic desires to know everything about each of us. Those involved in this prying employ little known or hidden processes. These methods have been used against us by both criminals and the government. Unendingly, we are asked to conform to intrusive measures or laws that severely alter our lives. Who is it that is restructuring our lives in all too often negative ways? While considering what has been happening here, an interesting comparison struck me. It came from an old movie called They Live. Others who have watched this movie likely had similar thoughts of comparing it to the reality we all face today. I have taken those lighthearted comparisons and have carried them further in this book. The effort here is to bring to light what most of us already know but do not want to take seriously. We live in a world that really does have evil people lurking behind the scenes. They take advantage of us with impunity. Why? – Because very few people are looking deep enough to uncover the webs of deceit that exist. This book uses the backdrop of the movie to paint a real-world comparison of those treacheries that befall most of us. The schemes used by those behind-the-curtain villains to perpetuate their corruptions on the world are addressed herein. This book might seem like a work of fiction, but sorry to say, it’s a nonfiction title.

"Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity ... An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now ... neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming"--Amazon.com.

Born out of the cultural flamboyance and anxiety of the 1980s, They Live (1988) is a hallmark of John Carpenter's singular canon, combining the aesthetics of multiple genres and leveling an attack against the politics of Reaganism and the Cold War. The decision to cast the professional wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper as his protagonist gave Carpenter the additional means to comment on the hypermasculine attitudes and codes indicative of the era. This study traces the development of They Live from its comic book roots to its legacy as a cult masterpiece while evaluating the film in light of the paranoid/postmodern theory that matured in the decidedly "Big 80s." Directed by a reluctant auteur, the film is examined as a complex work of metafiction that calls attention to the nature of cinematic production and reception as well as the dynamics of the cult landscape.

“One of the cleverest, most accessibly in-depth film books released this year . . . a smart-ass novelist exploring a cheesy-cheeky ‘80s sci-fi flick.”—Hartford Advocate Deep Focus is a series of film books with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters and let them loose on the most vital and popular corners of cinema history: midnight movies, the New Hollywood of the sixties and seventies, film noir, screwball comedies, international cult classics, and more . . . Kicking off the series is Jonathan Lethem’s take on They Live, John Carpenter’s 1988 classic amalgam of deliberate B-movie, sci-fi, horror, anti-Yuppie agitprop. Lethem exfoliates Carpenter’s paranoid satire in a series of penetrating, free-associational forays into the context of a story that peels the human masks off the ghoulish overlords of capitalism. Taking into consideration classic Hollywood cinema and science fiction—as well as popular music and contemporary art and theory—They Live provides a wholly original perspective on Carpenter’s subversive classic.

The bestselling author of The Circle delivers a tour de force of one man struggling to make sense of his country, seeking solutions the only way he knows how. A "story about someone who takes revenge against the world because he can't fathom how he fits into it.... This is a one-sitting read" (USA Today). What do you do when you’re full of questions: what happened to missions to the moon? Why spend a trillion dollars on war? Where did America go wrong? If you’re Thomas, a young man nursing migraines and a lack of direction, this calls for drastic action. To find some answers, Thomas kidnaps a NASA astronaut and brings him to an abandoned military base on the edge of the California coast. Then the questioning begins. The answers must be honest. The back and forth might even hurt. It might get uncomfortable. But eventually the truth will emerge.

The inspiration for Chloé Zhao's 2020 Golden Lion award-winning film starring Frances McDormand. "People who thought the 2008 financial collapse was over a long time ago need to meet the people Jessica Bruder got to know in this scorching, beautifully written, vivid, disturbing (and occasionally wryly funny) book." —Rebecca Solnit From the beet fields of North Dakota to the campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older adults. These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans, forming a growing community of nomads. Nomadland tells a revelatory tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one which foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, it celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, but have not given up hope.

Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied on, tracked, frisked, and searched. For those who resist, the consequences can be a one-way trip to jail, or even death. Battlefield America: The War on the American People is constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself. In exchange for safe schools and lower crime rates, we have opened the doors to militarized police, zero tolerance policies in schools, and SWAT team raids. The insidious shift was so subtle that most of us had no idea it was happening. This follow-up to Whitehead’s award-winning A Government of Wolves, is a brutal critique of an America on the verge of destroying the very freedoms that define it. Hands up!—the police state has arrived.