The author offers observations on the absurdities of modern political culture, discussing how liberals have lost perspective while criticizing conservatives for lacking the nerve to stick to their principles.

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

"What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.

Hadde of Landomere is a huntress who has sworn to protect and provide for her people. But when the Wasting brings famine and destruction, she must leave the forest of Landomere to seek aid in the distant Kingdom of Salador.Hadde "s mission is fraught with peril. Silver-eyed warriors assail her, brigands wait in ambush, and even the Saladorans pose their own dangers.The return of the Orb of Creation and an unlikely alliance with a Saladoran prince transform Hadde "s mission from one to save her village to one to save the world.

In the beginning, he was one of nine-the Wu-Tang Clan's first swordsman. But much more than just 11.11% of a greater entity, Ghostface Killah established himself as a seminal rapper in hip-hop history and one of the greatest artists to skulk the planet. In a series of essays that blend music criticism, cultural examination, and personal appreciation, Dean Van Nguyen examines every side of Ghost's bionic make-up. This essential collection is for students of East Coast rap, comic book culture, grindhouse cinema, and New York history. Most of all, it's for fans of the almighty Ghostface Killah, one of the most thrilling, fascinating rappers of our time.

From the author of House of Outrageous Fortune For seventy-five years, it’s been Manhattan’s richest apartment building, and one of the most lusted-after addresses in the world. One apartment had 37 rooms, 14 bathrooms, 43 closets, 11 working fireplaces, a private elevator, and his-and-hers saunas; another at one time had a live-in service staff of 16. To this day, it is steeped in the purest luxury, the kind most of us could only imagine, until now. The last great building to go up along New York’s Gold Coast, construction on 740 Park finished in 1930. Since then, 740 has been home to an ever-evolving cadre of our wealthiest and most powerful families, some of America’s (and the world’s) oldest money—the kind attached to names like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Bouvier, Chrysler, Niarchos, Houghton, and Harkness—and some whose names evoke the excesses of today’s monied elite: Kravis, Koch, Bronfman, Perelman, Steinberg, and Schwarzman. All along, the building has housed titans of industry, political power brokers, international royalty, fabulous scam-artists, and even the lowest scoundrels. The book begins with the tumultuous story of the building’s construction. Conceived in the bubbling financial, artistic, and social cauldron of 1920’s Manhattan, 740 Park rose to its dizzying heights as the stock market plunged in 1929—the building was in dire financial straits before the first apartments were sold. The builders include the architectural genius Rosario Candela, the scheming businessman James T. Lee (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s grandfather), and a raft of financiers, many of whom were little more than white-collar crooks and grand-scale hustlers. Once finished, 740 became a magnet for the richest, oldest families in the country: the Brewsters, descendents of the leader of the Plymouth Colony; the socially-registered Bordens, Hoppins, Scovilles, Thornes, and Schermerhorns; and top executives of the Chase Bank, American Express, and U.S. Rubber. Outside the walls of 740 Park, these were the people shaping America culturally and economically. Within those walls, they were indulging in all of the Seven Deadly Sins. As the social climate evolved throughout the last century, so did 740 Park: after World War II, the building’s rulers eased their more restrictive policies and began allowing Jews (though not to this day African Americans) to reside within their hallowed walls. Nowadays, it is full to bursting with new money, people whose fortunes, though freshly-made, are large enough to buy their way in. At its core this book is a social history of the American rich, and how the locus of power and influence has shifted haltingly from old bloodlines to new money. But it’s also much more than that: filled with meaty, startling, often tragic stories of the people who lived behind 740’s walls, the book gives us an unprecedented access to worlds of wealth, privilege, and extraordinary folly that are usually hidden behind a scrim of money and influence. This is, truly, how the other half—or at least the other one hundredth of one percent—lives.

Fear Street -- Where Your Worst Nightmares Live... Emily wants to like her stepsister, but it hasn't been easy. As soon as Jessie moves in, she takes over Emily's room, steals Emily's clothes, and lies to everyone. Then Emily picks up Jessie's diary and learns a horrifying secret. Is Jessie really capable of murder? Emily tries to tell her parents, but no one believes her. So it's up to Emily to expose the "real" Jessie -- if she can stay alive.