Two sociologists reveal how small towns in Middle America are exporting their most precious resource—young people—and share what can be done to save these dwindling communitiesIn 2001, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas moved to Iowa to understand the rural brain drain and the exodus of young people from America’s countryside. They met and followed working-class “stayers”; ambitious and college-bound “achie...

With the close proximity of gangs and the easy access to drugs, keeping urban neighborhoods safe from crime has long been a central concern for residents. In Clean Streets, Patrick Carr draws on five years of research in a white, working-class community on Chicago’s South side to see how they tried to keep their streets safe. Carr details the singular event for this community and the resulting rise of community activism: the shootings of two local teenage girls outside of an elementary sch...

It was the trial that captivated observers on both sides of the Atlantic. Media titan Conrad Black, by turns respected and reviled for decades in Canada and around the world, faced off with U.S. prosecutors on charges of criminal fraud stemming from his activities with Hollinger International.As the only Canadian writer to attend the trials of Conrad Black, lawyer Steven Skurka delivers a thorough, in-depth account of the controversial businessman's legal difficulties. Skurka offer...

Years before Hillbilly Elegy and White Trash, a raucous, truth-telling look at the white working poor -- and why they have learned to hate liberalism. What it adds up to, he asserts, is an unacknowledged class war.By turns tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, this book is a call to arms for fellow progressives with little real understanding of "the great beery, NASCAR-loving, church-going, gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbu...

A psychiatrist and an internationally recognized expert on violence, Dorothy Otnow Lewis has spent the last quarter century studying the minds of killers. Among the notorious murderers she has examined are Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, and Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon. Now she shares her groundbreaking discoveries--and the chilling encounters that led to them.From a juvenile court in Connecticut to the psychiatric wards of New York City's Bellevue Hospital, from ...

Former bank manager Ronald Dalton never got to watch his three young children grow up. In 1989 he was convicted for a crime that never happened. His wife, Brenda, was later ruled to have choked to death on breakfast cereal not strangled as a pathologist had initially claimed. Dalton's daughter, Alison, was in kindergarten when he was charged with second-degree murder in 1988. He attended her high school graduation on June 26, 2000, two days after his conviction was finally overturned....

The Theory of the Leisure Class is a book on economics and sociology by Thorstein Veblen, giving a detailed critique of conspicuous consumption (the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display the economic power of the income). First published in 1899, Veblen argues that the upper classes and the elite partake in conspicuous consumption and do nothing to contribute to the economy or to the production of the useful goods and services required for ...

When we think of the Italian Mafia, we think of Marlon Brando, Tony Soprano, and the Corleones-iconic actors and characters who give shady dealings a mythical pop presence. Yet these sensational depictions take us only so far. The true story of the Mafia reveals both an organization and mindset dedicated to the preservation of tradition. It is no accident that the rise of the Mafia coincided with the unification of Italy and the influx of immigrants into America. The Mafia means more than ...

Semi-finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book AwardIn 1996, a terrible epidemic began killing young American women. Some died quickly, literally dropping in their steps. Others took more time, from a few months to a few years. Those who weren't killed suffered damage to their lungs and hearts, much of it permanent and reparable only with major surgery. Doctors suspected what the killer was. So did the Food and Drug Administration. The culprits were the two m...

* Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year * Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize? * A New York Times Notable Book * A Washington Post Notable Book * An NPR Best Book * A Wall Street Journal Best Book * An Economist Best Book * A Business Insider Best Book *“A gripping story of psychological defeat and resilience” (Bob Woodward, Th...

In 1934, fifty-three-year-old beer tycoon John Sackville Labatt was kidnapped from his Lake Huron summer home and held ransom for three days. His captors, a group of ex-rumrunners, desperate in the days following prohibition and the Great Depression, were hoping for a big payday. This bizarre true crime story traces the abduction through to the trials of the abductors. From a heavily populated hideout to a case of mistaken identity, follow the story of Labatt, the first person in Canada to...

Essentially, it comes down to the fact that a very large portion of Americans are crazier than shithouse rats and are being led by a gang of pathological misfits, most of whom are preachers and politicians.In 2004, at the age of 58, writer Joe Bageant sensed that the internet could give him editorial freedom. Without having to deal with gatekeepers, he began writing about what he was really thinking, and started submitting his essays to left-of-centre websites.Joes essays soon gained a wid...