The underappreciated but surprisingly successful implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) helped rescue the economy during the Great Recession and represented one of the most important achievements of the Obama presidency. It tested all levels of government with urgent time frames and extensive accountability requirements. While ARRA passed most tests with comparatively little mismanagement or fraud, negative public and media perceptions of the initiative deprive...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, AND KIRKUS REVIEWSA scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis**Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer...

In 1977 R W Johnson's best-selling How Long Will South Africa Survive? provided a controversial analysis of the survival prospects of the apartheid regime. Now, after more than twenty years of ANC rule, he believes the situation has become so critical that the question must be posed again. He moves from an analysis of Jacob Zuma's rule to the increasingly dire state of the South African economy, concluding that the country is heading towards a likely International Monetary Fund bail-out, w...

A historian debunks four-dozen PC myths about our nation's past.Over the last forty years, history textbooks have become more and more politically correct and distorted about our country's past, argues professor Larry Schweikart. The result, he says, is that students graduate from high school and even college with twisted beliefs about economics, foreign policy, war, religion, race relations, and many other subjects.As he did in his popular A Patriot's ...

The Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter, columnist, and bestselling author of In Fed We Trust, dissects the federal budget in this New York Times bestseller.In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget--a topic that is fiercely debated today in the halls of Congress and the media, and yet is often misunderstood by the American public--Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the mo...

An explosive examination of the coalition of forces that threatens the nation, from the bestselling author of American DynastyIn his two most recent bestselling books, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips established himself as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that rule-and imperil-the United States, tracing the ever more alarming path of the emerging Republican majoritys rise to power. Now Phil...

The study of two great demagogues in American history--Huey P. Long, a first-term United States Senator from the red-clay, piney-woods country of nothern Louisiana; and Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest from an industrial suburb near Detroit. Award-winning historian Alan Brinkely describes their modest origins and their parallel rise together in the early years of the Great Depression to become the two most successful leaders of national political dissidence of their era.

What's wrong with the US food system? Why is half the world starving while the other half battles obesity? Who decides our food issues, and why can't we do better with labeling, safety, or school food? These are complex questions that are hard to answer in an engaging way for a broad audience. But everybody eats, and food politics affects us all.Marion Nestle, whom Michael Pollan ranked as the #2 most powerful foodie in America (after Michelle Obama) in Forbes, has always ...

Saving Congress from Itself proposes a single reform: eliminate all federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments. This action would reduce federal spending by over $600 billion a year and have a profound effect on how we govern ourselves. The proliferation of federal grants-in-aid programs is of recent vintage: only about 100 such grants existed before Lyndon Johnson took office, and now they number more than 1,100. Eliminating grants to the states will result in enormous ...

"Truthful and direct! . . . The field guide to having it all and creating the life of your dreams. If you value success and freedom, this book is for you" (Joel Comm, New York Times–bestselling author).In this groundbreaking work, Vickie Helm and Mia Bolte mine their more than thirty years of consulting experience to share with you the tools and secrets to unlocking a life of passion, purpose and prosperity.You will discover the tools you need now,...

The explosive secret e-mails Hillary Clinton doesn’t want you to read(Or maybe she does…She’s crafty like that.)Remember that time Hillary Clinton admitted that she deleted thousands of e-mails from her ultra-secret personal e-mail address while Secretary of State? Thousands of e-mails, she claimed, about her daughter’s wedding? Well, people aren’t buying it: “Hiding the truth” says The New York Post. “Conspiracy o...

Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima Daiichi is a timely and groundbreaking account of the disturbing landscape of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown amidst an earthquake and tsunami on Japan’s northeast coastline on March 11, 2011. It provides riveting insights into the social and political landscape of nuclear power development in Japan, which significantly contributed to the disaster; the flawed disaster management options taken; and the political, technical, and social reactions ...