Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Description
"A masterful tale of social climbing and entrenched class distinctions, as seen through the eyes of an outsider who desperately wants in. Tense, hilarious, and bursting with gorgeous language. Stephanie Clifford is a 21st-century Edith Wharton." -J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Engagements. It's 2006 in the Manhattan of the young and glamorous. Money and class are colliding in a city that is about to go over a financial...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
This eye-opening UK bestseller shows how one single factor--the gap between its richest and poorest members--can determine the health and well-being of a society. The authors also outline a new political outlook in which a shift from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society is paramount.
Author
Language
English
Description
Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an 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 decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like...
Author
Publisher
Harcourt, Brace & World
Pub. Date
[1964]
Language
English
Description
The pioneering political scientist presents his "fragment theory" of class, culture and ideology in post-colonial societies around the world.
In his groundbreaking work, The Liberal Tradition in America, Louis Hartz demonstrated that beneath America's history of political conflict was an enduring consensus around Lockean liberal principles. In The Founding of New Societies, Hartz continues his examination of ideology and national identity with a...
Author
Publisher
Skyhorse Publishing
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Description
Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? In The Aristocracy of Talent, esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the...
Author
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"--
"What has happened to the Land of Opportunity? The promise of the American Dream is that anyone, regardless of his or her origins, can have a fair start in life. If we work hard, we can get a good education and achieve...
Author
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Formats
Description
Growing up in middle-class Lagos, Nigeria during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ihechi forms a band of close friends discovering Lagos together as teenagers with differing opinions of everything from film to football, Fela Kuti to spirituality, sex to politics. They remain close-knit until tragedy unfolds during an anti-government riot. Exiled from Lagos by his concerned mother, Ihechi moves in with his uncle's family, where he struggles to find...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
"Why are people more relaxed and at ease with each other in some countries than others? Why do we worry so much about what others think of us and often feel social life is a stressful performance? Why is mental illness three times as common in the USA as in Germany? Why is the American dream more of a reality in Denmark than the USA? What makes child well-being so much worse in some countries than others? As The Inner Level demonstrates, the answer...
Author
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal--that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding--reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream. But what if, both up and down the social...
Author
Publisher
St. Martin's Press
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
Examines the trend of Americans away from the traditionally mobile, risk-accepting, and adaptable tendencies that defined them for much of recent history, and toward stagnation and comfort, and how this development has the potential to make future changes more disruptive. --Publisher's description.
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A brilliant, funny, generation-defining memoir about the double bind of crafting perfect adversity narratives for highly selective institutions, while fumbling through the far murkier reality of actual life in foster care and inpatient mental health treatment. As a child, Emi Nietfeld was caught between a hoarder mother who got her put on antipsychotic medication, but was also the only person to believe she was exceptional, and a state system exemplified...
Author
Language
English
Description
"When U.S. troops occupy Germany, friends Jakob and Emmanuelle are saved from the terrible fate of so many in the camps. With the help of sponsors, they make their way to New York. In order not to be separated, they allow their friendship to blossom into love and marriage, and start a new life on the Lower East Side, working at grueling, poorly paid jobs. Decades later, through talent, faith, fortune, and relentless hard work, Jakob has achieved success...