Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

By Peter Diamandis
"Diamandis, a tech-entrepreneur turned philanthropist, and journalist Kolter (The Angle Quickest for Flight) contend that widespread pessimism about the future is due in part to our cognitive biases and the effects of mass media. Bad news sells newspapers, while good news escapes our attention or remains hidden in statistics. This engaging book is a needed corrective, a whirlwind tour of the latest developments in health care, agriculture, energy, and other fields as well as an introduction to thinkers and innovators such as Daniel Kahneman, Ray Kurzweil, and Craig Ventor. Augmented by the power of exponentially growing technologies, small groups of motivated individuals are accomplishing what used to require the resources of government or large corporations. Other forces driving innovation are infusions of money from techno-billionaires turned philanthropists and the integration of the poorest third of humanity into the global economy. Not every development will be appreciated; steak lovers may not take readily to in-vitro beef. New technologies contain novel risks, including the disquieting fact that robots will soon make up the majority of the blue-collar workforce. Nonetheless, the authors make a compelling case for optimism over dread as we face the exhilarating unknown."  (Publishers Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

We're with Nobody: Two Insiders Reveal the Dark Side of American Politics

By Alan Huffman
"In this timely book, journalists Huffman (Ten Point) and Rejebian lift the curtain on political research to find dirt on opponents. While Americans are accustomed to hearing scandalous facts, lies, distortions, and gossip during campaigns, few people understand how legal political intelligence gathering has grown in scope since the Watergate break-in of 1972. Based on close to 20 years on the road, these two veteran practitioners, who worked for both parties, but mostly for Democratic clients, recount both minor legal infractions and major transgressions that theyve uncovered on the part of individuals running for public office."  (Publishers Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

By Charles Murray
"Despite the subtitle, Murray's book is actually about class in America, not race. By zeroing in on troubling trends in white America, he keeps the focus on the country's increasing polarization along class lines, onthe growing isolation of the well-off from the poor, with each group developing radically different cultures, perspectives, and expectations from the other's. Murray provides historical context, showing that, before the 1960s, Americans of all races and classes had similar perspectives and expectations. Using census data for 1960 and 2000, Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994), shows increasing segregation of a college-educated elite living in SuperZips from those with little education, eking out a living in poor neighborhoods. Murray also shows strong divergence in education, employment, marriage, crime, and other indicators. Beyond statistics, Murray offers sketches of life lived in the upper class and the lower class and argues for the need to focus on what has made the U.S. exceptional beyond its wealth and military power, the ideals that have held a highly diverse nation together: religion, marriage, industriousness, and morality. Writing from a libertarian perspective, Murray offers a hopeful long view of elites, who have enormous influence on economic and social policy, coming to understand the peril of their disconnection from the rest of America."  (Booklist) Check Our Catalog

A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us about the Grand Canyon State and Life in America

By Tom Zoellner
"Writer and fifth-generation Arizonan Zoellner (Uranium) seeks to make sense of a fundamentally baffling event in this rambling examination of the January 8, 2011, shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Jared Lee Loughner22 years old, unemployed, and obviously derangedkilled six people and wounded 13, including Giffords, when he opened fire at a political meet and greet at a Tucson Safeway. Concluding that events never happen in a vacuum, the author searches for clues to the tragedy in the context in which the shooting took place. He finds his answers in the dysfunctional social and political culture of Arizonaits isolation, misplaced paranoia about immigration, gun laws, the withering of its mental health care system, absent leadership, and the partisan nastiness of politics and talk radio. Even while conceding that there is only one responsible party for the tragedy and that he is gravely mentally ill, Zoellner concludes that Loughners feelings of existential helplessness were a distorted amplification of what surrounded him that year in Arizona. Zoellner, a personal friend of Giffords, admits that this is not a work of objective journalism, and his subjective rendering of Arizona proves problematic, as is his effort to connect the dots between cause and effect."  (Publisher Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

A Nation of Moochers: America's Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing

By Charles J. Sykes
"Sykes (A Nation of Victims) argues that hardworking, tax-paying Americans are being turned into the nations piggy bank by freeloading moochers, both individual and corporate, who have given in to a culture of dependence and free lunch. He lays all this squarely at the feet of elite liberals, whose Assumption of Incompetencethe default position of assuming that most Americans are incapable and thus must be cared forhas cultivated an atmosphere where people are no longer required to fend for themselves. He points to Katrina victims misusing benefits, homeowners who walk away from underwater mortgages, unemployment benefits fraudsters, adult children living with their parents, big businesses accepting bailouts, and, somewhat less persuasively, food stamps and free school lunches. Though he doesnt make an especially strong case that Obamacare is to blame, his argument is sobering: weve set up a system in which dependency begins at birth and extends through peoples entire lives, which has brought us to a tipping point in which more Americans are relying on the efforts of others rather than their own. Interestingly, his cure is less systemic than social: he suggests dismantling Moocher Nation by restoring some of the stigma of accepting a handout. Though at times verging on the purely mean-spirited (recall the school lunches), his call for a return to personal responsibility is on point and persuasive."  (Publishers Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

By Jacob S. Hacker
"How did the widening gap between haves and have-notseven worse, the haves and have-morescome about? In the past 30 years, the top 1 percent have enjoyed 36 percent of all the income growth generated in the U.S. economy. Treating the growing socioeconomic gap like a whodunit, Hacker and Pierson painstakingly detail the gap between the superrich and everyone else. They paint a portrait of a nation that has fallen behind other developed nations in the widening income gap among its citizens. Worse, the wealth gap cannot be explained away by a lack of education or skills. Even among the well educated, a chasm has developed between the middle class and the wealthy. Whodunit? The U.S. government, which details changes in taxation and public policy, particularly regarding the financial markets, which have favored the wealthy at the expense of others over the last 30 years. Finally, they consider the long-term implications of this troubling trend and offer some encouraging signshealth care and financial reform, however anemicand a growing discontent with the status quo."  (Booklist)  Check Our Catalog