Killing The American Dream

As the US deports record numbers of illegal immigrants and local and state governments scramble to pass laws resembling dystopian police states where anyone can be questioned and neighbors are encouraged to report on one another, violent anti-immigration rhetoric is growing across the nation. Against this tide of hysteria, Pilar Marrero reveals how damaging this rise in malice toward immigrants is not only to the individuals, but to our country as a whole. Marrero explores the rise in hate groups and violence targeting the foreign-born from the 1986 Immigration Act to the increasing legislative madness of laws like Arizona's SB1070 which allows law officers to demand documentation from any individual with "reasonable suspicion" of citizenship, essentially encouraging states and municipalities to form their own self-contained nation-states devoid of immigrants. Assessing the current status quo of immigration, Marrero reveals the economic drain these ardent anti-immigration policies have as they deplete the nation of an educated work force, undermine efforts to stabilize tax bases and social security, and turn the American Dream from a time honored hallmark of the nation into an unattainable fantasy for all immigrants of the present and future.

An award-winning sociologist reveals the unexpected link between overwork and inequality. Most Americans work too long and too hard, while others lack consistency in their hours and schedules. Work hours declined for a century through hard-fought labor-movement victories, but they've increased significantly since the seventies. Worked Over traces the varied reasons why our lives became tethered to a new rhythm of work, and describes how we might gain a greater say over our labor time -- and build a more just society in the process. Popular discussions typically focus on overworked professionals. But as Jamie K. McCallum demonstrates, from Amazon warehouses to Rust Belt factories to California's gig economy, it's the hours of low-wage workers that are the most volatile and precarious -- and the most subject to crises. What's needed is not individual solutions but collective struggle, and throughout Worked Over McCallum recounts the inspiring stories of those battling today's capitalism to win back control of their time.

An Amazon Best History Book of 2019 "A splendid and beautifully written illustration of the tremendous importance public policy has for the daily lives of ordinary people." —Ryan Cooper, Washington Monthly Over the last generation, the United States has undergone seismic changes. Stable institutions have given way to frictionless transactions, which are celebrated no matter what collateral damage they generate. The concentration of great wealth has coincided with the fraying of social ties and the rise of inequality. How did all this come about? In Transaction Man, Nicholas Lemann explains the United States’—and the world’s—great transformation by examining three remarkable individuals who epitomized and helped create their eras. Adolf Berle, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief theorist of the economy, imagined a society dominated by large corporations, which a newly powerful federal government had forced to become benign and stable institutions, contributing to the public good by offering stable employment and generous pensions. By the 1970s, the corporations’ large stockholders grew restive under this regime, and their chief theoretician, Harvard Business School’s Michael Jensen, insisted that firms should maximize shareholder value, whatever the consequences. Today, Silicon Valley titans such as the LinkedIn cofounder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman hope “networks” can reknit our social fabric. Lemann interweaves these fresh and vivid profiles with a history of the Morgan Stanley investment bank from the 1930s through the financial crisis of 2008, while also tracking the rise and fall of a working-class Chicago neighborhood and the family-run car dealerships at its heart. Incisive and sweeping, Transaction Man is the definitive account of the reengineering of America and the enormous impact it has had on us all.

It's true... we are killing the American Dream. Out of the top 30 countries in the world, the U.S. ranks 16th in literacy, 21st in mathematics, and 14th in problem solving. National unfunded obligations are more than $100 trillion while U.S. household debt is at an all-time high of $13.2 trillion. We have one the most litigious societies in the world, our incarceration rate is among the highest globally, and our state and federal legislatures are convinced that they are our cradle-to-grave caretakers. The American Dream embraced by countless immigrants during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, is not what their American descendants have lived during the 2oth and 21st centuries. Our progenitors enjoyed a level of freedom and liberty that we can only imagine. How can we claim that America is the greatest nation in to world when 60% of our population can't even pass the U.S. Citizenship test? What have we done with the legacy of liberty that the founders so carefully crafted for us? And what are we creating to pass down to our own grandchildren? In American: Killing the American Dream, Shanon Brooks presents hands-on solutions for restoring an America that is quickly disappearing. Forged on a unique college campus, these remedies for re-energizing the forgotten principles of liberty will inspire those who are wondering if it's too late to restore our great American Legacy.

In Outraged, an auto insider provides an inspiring account of what it means to lose your rights, property, and, in essence, the American dream. It begins with roughly two thousand men and women whose companies were destroyed by two automakers, General Motors and Chrysler, during their government-led corporate restructurings in 2009. Authors Tamara Darvish, vice president of DARCARS Automotive in Maryland, and Lillie Guyer, a Detroit area automotive journalist, show the collapse of the American dream from the perspective of an entrepreneur who was affected by the automotive industry bailout. In this featurized business story, Outraged details the founding of the activist group Committee to Restore Dealer Rights and its efforts to regain the economic rights of auto dealerships throughout the United States. It tells how they took their fight to Congress and to the steps of the White House. Outraged candidly examines the battles between dealers and the entities that engineered their demise. It also details the pain and the high points in government as its temporary power brokers ignore the significant role of Congress in lawmaking and the rights of ordinary citizens. This personal, controversial account shows what can happen when people unite in a common cause and stand up for what they believe is right.

A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018 The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases--the "American dream" and "America First"--that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been.

As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.