Demography Books

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (P.S.)

Lucette Lagnado

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> Jewish
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> General AAS

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Total reviews: 51 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, is a successful Egyptian businessman and boulevardier who, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit, makes deals and trades at Shepherd's Hotel and at the dark bar of the Nile Hilton. After the fall of King Farouk and the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, Leon loses everything and his family is forced to flee, abandoning a life once marked by beauty and luxury to plunge into hardship and poverty, as they take flight for any country that would have them.

A vivid, heartbreaking, and powerful inversion of the American dream, Lucette Lagnado's unforgettable memoir is a sweeping story of family, faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph set against the stunning backdrop of Cairo, Paris, and New York.

Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.

Angelas Ashes: A Memoir

Frank McCourt

List Price: $14.00 By: Scribner Amazon Marketplace: 297 new & used starting at $0.01

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> Irish
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Total reviews: 1832 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now a major motion picture from Paramount and Universal Pictures International.

The #1 national bestseller. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the ABBY Award.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling -- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Norton Critical Editions)

Harriet Jacobs

Amazon Price: $12.37 List Price: $17.05 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton & Company Amazon Marketplace: 72 new & used starting at $2.98

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 65 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Dover Edition 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Concerning this edition (the book is a must read)... Dover's thrift editions are just that--thrifty. The text is close together and the overall readability of the edition is fair. It works, but I'd like to see Oxford or Penguin make a "classic" edition with a scholary introduction, footnoting and contextual information like 19th century reviews, etc... A good edition, needs improvement, but then it wouldn't have a "thrifty" price!

Editorial Review:

This biography was the first full-length narrative written by a former woman slave in America. Born in 1813, Harriet Jacobs was unaware of her status as a slave until the deaths of her mother and a benevolent mistress exposed her to a sexually predatory master, "Dr Flint", whilst she was in her teens. She escaped "Dr Flint" at the age of 22, leaving behind her two children, and hid in a tiny garret for seven years, before escaping North where her children joined her. Finally, at the age of 40, Jacobs was purchased and then emancipated by Mrs. Bruce, a staunch abolitionist who was Jacobs' employer and friend. The text here is that of the 1861 edition. "Context" includes contemporary responses to the book, selections from Jacob's other published writings and extracts from her correspondence. Also included are eleven important assessments of the narrative, a chronology and a selected bibliography

Come on, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors

Bill Cosby, Alvin F. Poussaint

Amazon Price: $14.23 List Price: $25.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Thomas Nelson Amazon Marketplace: 141 new & used starting at $1.80

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Motivational
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Success
Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Social History

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 83 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

He's preaching. Who's listening? 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Bill Cosby's latest novel makes everyone uncomfortable about the realities of what slavery and institutional racism have done to America.
Cosby's take is that there comes a time when black people have to take some responsibility for making their lives and communities better. It is no wonder that he has been ostracized by the media minorities who make their livelihoods on blaming others for black America's problems. The book gets a little preachy and simplistic about solutions toward the end of the book. The beginning is better. It is worth a read.

Editorial Review:

Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint have a powerful message for families and communities as they lay out their visions for strengthening America, or for that matter the world. They address the crises of people who are stuck because of feelings of low self-esteem, abandonment, anger, fearfulness, sadness, and feelings of being used, undefended and unprotected. These feelings often impede their ability to move forward. The authors aim to help empower people make the daunting transition from victims to victors. Come On, People! is always engaging, and loaded with heart-piercing stories of the problems facing many communities.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Clayborne Carson

List Price: $25.00 By: Grand Central Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 37 new & used starting at $4.98

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Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Using Stanford University's voluminous collection of archival material, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s previously unpublished writings, public and private interviews, audio and video recordings, and personal correspondence, King scholar Clayborne Carson has constructed a remarkable first-person account of Dr. King's extraordinary life. Beginning with his boyhood as the son of a preacher, the book portrays King's education as a minister, his ascendancy as a leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, his pivotal role in the civil rights demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and his complex relationships with the Kennedy brothers, LBJ, Malcolm X, and numerous other leading political and social figures of the day.This unique autobiography will appeal to those interested in American and civil rights history, as well as to the readers of spiritually-oriented books. It is also reminiscent of Alex Haley's classic The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It is a Selection of The Book-of-the-Month Club.Also available as a Time Warner AudioBook

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General
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Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Social History

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Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

W.E.B. Du Bois was the foremost black intellectual of his time. The Souls of Black Folk (1903), his most influential work, is a collection of fourteen beautifully written essays, by turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical. Here, Du Bois records the cruelties of racism, celebrates the strength and pride of black America, and explores the paradoxical "double-consciousness" of African-American life. "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line," he writes, prophesying the struggle for freedom that became his life's work.

For the first time, the authoritative editions of works by major American novelists, poets, scholars, and essayists collected in the hardcover volumes of The Library of America are being published singly in a series of handsome and durable paperback books. A distinguished author has contributed an introduction for each volume, which also includes a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice of the text, and notes.

Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before

Jean M. Twenge

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Free Press Amazon Marketplace: 70 new & used starting at $6.70

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Demography
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Research
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Sociology -> Adults

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Total reviews: 73 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Called "The Entitlement Generation" or Gen Y, they are storming into schools, colleges, and businesses all over the country. In this provocative new book, headline-making psychologist and social commentator Dr. Jean Twenge explores why the young people she calls "Generation Me" -- those born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s -- are tolerant, confident, open-minded, and ambitious but also cynical, depressed, lonely, and anxious.

Herself a member of Generation Me, Dr. Twenge uses findings from the largest intergenerational research study ever conducted -- with data from 1.3 million respondents spanning six decades -- to reveal how profoundly different today's young adults are. Here are the often shocking truths about this generation, including dramatic differences in sexual behavior, as well as controversial predictions about what the future holds for them and society as a whole. Her often humorous, eyebrow-raising stories about real people vividly bring to life the hopes and dreams, disappointments and challenges of Generation Me.

GenMe has created a profound shift in the American character, changing what it means to be an individual in today's society. The collision of this generation's entitled self-focus and today's competitive marketplace will create one of the most daunting challenges of the new century. Engaging, controversial, prescriptive, funny, Generation Me will give Boomers new insight into their offspring, and help those in their teens, 20s, and 30s finally make sense of themselves and their goals and find their road to happiness.

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart

Bill Bishop

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Government -> Elections
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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Practical Politics

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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided

America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote as we do. This social transformation didn't happed by accident. We've built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood -- and religion and news show -- most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work.

In 2004, the journalist Bill Bishop, armed with original and startling demographic data, made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by red state or blue state, but by city and even neighborhood. In The Big Sort, Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.

The Big Sort will draw comparisons to Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class and will redefine the way Americans think about themselves for decades to come.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Oxford World's Classics)

Frederick Douglass

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Total reviews: 82 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"I was born in Tuckahoe. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant."
So begins the now-classic personal account of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who was born into slavery in Maryland and after his escape to Massachusetts in 1838 became an ardent abolitionist and campaigner for women's rights. His Narrative, which was an instant bestseller upon publication in 1845, relates his experience as a slave, the cruelty he suffered at the hands of his masters, his struggle to educate himself, and his fight for freedom.
Written with much passion, and with no small degree of striking biblical imagery, the Narrative came to assume epic proportions as a fundamental anti-slavery text, an accessible record in which the author had carefully crafted both his life story and his persona. The introduction and notes for this new edition fully examine Douglass--the man and the myth--while also considering both his complex relationship with women and the enduring power of his autobiography. Other highlights include extracts from Douglass's primary sources and examples of his writing on women's rights.

Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation

Neil Howe, William Strauss

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Anthropology -> Cultural

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Total reviews: 71 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

By the authors of the bestselling 13th Gen, the first in-depth examination of the Millennials--the generation born after 1982.

"Over the next decade, the Millennial Generation will entirely recast the image of youth from downbeat and alientated to upbeat and engaged--with potentially seismic consequences for America." --from Millennials Rising

In this remarkable account, certain to stir the interest of educators, counselors, parents, and people in all types of business as well as young people themselves, Neil Howe and William Strauss introduce the nation to a powerful new generation: the Millennials. They will also explain:

Why today's teens are smart, well-behaved, and optimisitc, and why you won't hear older people say that.

Why they get along so well with their Boomer and Xer parents.

Why Millennial collegians will bring a new youth revolution to America's campuses.

Why names like "Generation Y" and "Echo Boom" just don't work for today's kids.

Having looked at oceans of data, taken their own polls, and talked to hundreds of kids, parents, and teachers, Howe and Strauss explain how Millennials are turning out to be so dramatically different from Xers and boomers and how, in time, they will become the next great generation.