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Profiles in ignorance : how America's politicians got dumb and dumber / by Borowitz, Andy,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Andy Borowitz, "one of the funniest people in America" (CBS Sunday Morning), brilliantly examines the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump. The winner of the first-ever National Press Club award for humor, Andy Borowitz has been called a "Swiftian satirist" (The Wall Street Journal) and "one of the country's finest satirists" (The New York Times). Millions of fans and New Yorker readers enjoy his satirical news column "The Borowitz Report." Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he offers a witty, spot-on diagnosis of our country's political troubles by showing how ignorant leaders are degrading, embarrassing, and endangering our nation. Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan's first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades. Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn't move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now.
Subjects: Politicians; Politicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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His truth is marching on : John Lewis and the power of hope / by Meacham, Jon,author.; Lewis, John,1940-2020,writer of afterword.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is a visionary and a man of faith. Using intimate interviews with Lewis and his family and deep research into the history of the civil rights movement, Meacham writes of how the activist and leader was inspired by the Bible, his mother's unbreakable spirit, his sharecropper father's tireless ambition, and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr. A believer in hope above all else, Lewis learned from a young age that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a preacher, practiced by preaching to the chickens he took care of. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it--his first act of non-violent protest. Integral to Lewis's commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God, and an unshakable belief in the power of hope. Meacham calls Lewis "as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the nation-state in the eighteenth century. He did what he did--risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful--not in spite of America, but because of America, and not in spite of religion, but because of religion"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Lewis, John, 1940-2020.; United States. Congress. House; African American civil rights workers; Civil rights workers; Legislators; Protest movements;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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American prison : a reporter's undercover journey into the business of punishment / by Bauer, Shane,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an expose about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still"--
Subjects: Prisons; Imprisonment;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The fire never goes out [graphic novel] : a memoir in pictures / by Stevenson, Noelle,author,illustrator.;
In a collection of essays and personal mini-comics that span eight years of her young adult life, author-illustrator Noelle Stevenson charts the highs and lows of being a creative human in the world. Whether it's hearing the wrong name called at her art school graduation ceremony or becoming a National Book Award finalist for her debut graphic novel, Nimona, Noelle captures the little and big moments that make up a real life, with a wit, wisdom, and vulnerability that are all her own.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographical comics.; Nonfiction comics.; Graphic novels.; Humorous comics.; Stevenson, Noelle; Cartoonists; Women cartoonists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Nomadland : surviving America in the twenty-first century / by Bruder, Jessica,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest 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 Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads: migrant laborers who call themselves "workampers." Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy - one that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, she celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these quintessential Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive.
Subjects: Older people; Casual labor;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Finding baby Holly : lost to a cult, surviving my parents' murders, and saved by prayer / by Miller, Holly Marie,author.; Lambert, Cindy,author.; Lambert, David,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Holly Marie was forty-two years old the day she found out she was missing. At ten months old, Holly Marie was brought to the door of a church by three barefoot women in white robes and head coverings. Adopted by the pastor and raised in a loving Christian home, Holly nevertheless struggled with the ache of not knowing what had happened to her biological parents. She still felt their absence even as she married and started a family of her own. When two detectives showed up at the restaurant where she worked and informed her that she had a large family in Florida who had been searching for her for over 40 years, Holly's past became the reality of her present, and she began the sometimes painful journey of discovering the truth about her origins: Her parents had been brutally murdered, their case still unsolved. With the help of law enforcement across four states, forensic genealogists, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and her newly discovered family members, the missing pieces began to come together. Except these--why had her parents been murdered? And who had murdered them? She soon found out that the truth leads not always to answers but sometimes to more questions, that it also brings healing and restoration, and that we must surrender our unknowns to God until, in His perfect timing, all truths are revealed. Finding Baby Holly is the true, inspiring story of a wife and mother who was "missing" for over forty years after her parents' murders, the persistent detectives who never stopped investigating, and the birth family who never lost hope in finding her."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Miller, Holly Marie.; Cults; Missing children; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The devil's hand [sound recording] / by Carr, Jack(Joint pseudonym),author.; Porter, Roy,narrator.; Simon & Schuster Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by Ray Porter.It's been twenty years since 9/11. Two decades since the United States was attacked on home soil and embarked on twenty years of war. The enemy has been patient, learning, and adapting. And the enemy is ready to strike again. A new president offers hope to a country weary of conflict. He’s a young, popular, self-made visionary, but he’s also a man with a secret. Halfway across the globe a regional superpower struggles with sanctions imposed by the Great Satan and her European allies, a country whose ancient religion spawned a group of ruthless assassins. Faced with internal dissent and extrajudicial targeted killings by the United States and Israel, the Supreme Leader puts a plan in motion to defeat the most powerful nation on earth.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Audiobooks.; Political fiction.; United States. Central Intelligence Agency; United States. Navy. SEALs; Biological weapons; Terrorism; Terrorism; Veterans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Total power / by Mills, Kyle,1966-author.; Flynn, Vince,1966-2013,creator.;
When an ISIS plot devastates America's power grid, Mitch Rapp and his CIA team race to find the responsible cyberterrorists to prevent the nation from succumbing to total collapse.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Political fiction.; Spy fiction.; Rapp, Mitch (Fictitious character); United States. Central Intelligence Agency; Intelligence officers; Terrorism;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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In the blood : a thriller / by Carr, Jack(Joint pseudonym),author.;
"A woman boards a plane in the African country of Burkina Faso having just completed a targeted assassination for the state of Israel. Two minutes later, her plane is blown out of the sky. Over 6,000 miles away, former Navy SEAL James Reece watches the names and pictures of the victims on cable news. One face triggers a distant memory of a Mossad operative attached to the CIA years earlier in Iraq--a woman with ties to the intelligence services of two nations ... a woman Reece thought he would never see again. Reece enlists friends new and old across the globe to track down her killer, unaware that he may be walking into a deadly trap"--Publisher's description.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; Reece, James (Fictitious character); United States. Central Intelligence Agency; United States. Navy. SEALs; Aircraft accidents; Assassins; Veterans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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My life, my love, my legacy / by King, Coretta Scott,1927-2006,author.; Reynolds, Barbara A.,author.;
"The life story of Coretta Scott King--wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and singular twentieth-century American civil rights activist--as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to one of her closest friends. Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising black parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose. One of the first black scholarship students recruited to Antioch College, a committed pacifist, and a civil rights activist, she was an avowed feminist--a graduate student determined to pursue her own career--when she met Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister insistent that his wife stay home with the children. But in love and devoted to shared Christian beliefs and racial justice goals, she married King, and events promptly thrust her into a maelstrom of history throughout which she was a strategic partner, a standard bearer, a marcher, a negotiator, and a crucial fundraiser in support of world-changing achievements. As a widow and single mother of four, while butting heads with the all-male African American leadership of the times, she championed gay rights and AIDS awareness, founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, lobbied for fifteen years to help pass a bill establishing the US national holiday in honor of her slain husband, and was a powerful international presence, serving as a UN ambassador and playing a key role in Nelson Mandela's election. Coretta's is a love story, a family saga, and the memoir of an independent-minded black woman in twentieth-century America, a brave leader who stood committed, proud, forgiving, nonviolent, and hopeful in the face of terrorism and violent hatred every single day of her life."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Biographies.; King, Coretta Scott, 1927-2006.; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968.; African American women; Baptist women; Christian women; Civil rights workers; Social reformers; Spouses of clergy; Widows;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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