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Framed by the oil shale bust and the real estate boom, by protests against Reagan and against the Gulf War, The Optimistic Decade takes us into the lives of five unforgettable characters, and is a sweeping novel about idealism, love, class, and a piece of land that changes everyone who lives on it. There is Caleb Silver, the beloved founder of the back-to-the-land camp Llamalo, who is determined to teach others to live simply. There are the ranchers,...
2) The east end
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English
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"Corey Halpern, a local high schooler with a troubled home life, is desperate to leave the Hamptons and start anew somewhere else. His last summer before college, he settles for the escapism he finds in sneaking into neighboring mansions. One night just before Memorial Day weekend, he breaks in to the wrong home at the wrong time: the Sheffield estate, where he and his mother, Gina, work. Under the cover of darkness, Leo Sheffield - a billionaire...
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In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose summer house on Winthrop overlooks the famous lighthouse, Miranda's catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda's new stepsister--all...
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"A history of the class system in America from the colonial era to the present illuminates the crucial legacy of the underprivileged white demographic, citing the pivotal contributions of lower-class white workers in wartime, social policy, and the rise of the Republican Party"--NoveList.
5) The means
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English
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Shelly Means, a wealthy stay-at-home mom and disgraced former PTA president, is poised to get the one thing in life she really wants: a beach house in the Hamptons. Who would have guessed that Shelly, the product of frugal Midwesterners, or her husband George, an unrepentant thrift shopper, would ever be living among such swells? But Shelly believes it's possible. It might be a very small house, and it might be in the least-fancy part of the Hamptons....
7) Alice Adams
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English
Description
In the wake of World War I, Alice Adams finds herself being pursued by a gentleman of higher social class. She and her family try various schemes to keep their inferior status a secret.
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Protests in Ferguson, Missouri and across the United States following the death of Michael Brown revealed something far deeper than a passionate display of age-old racial frustrations. They unveiled a public chasm that has been growing for years, as America has consistently and intentionally denied significant segments of its population access to full freedom and prosperity. In Nobody, scholar and journalist Marc Lamont Hill presents an analysis of...
9) Dread nation
Author
Series
Dread nation volume 1
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English
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Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania--derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.But there are also opportunities--and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained...
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"The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"--
"What has happened to the Land of Opportunity? The promise of the American Dream is that anyone, regardless of his or her origins, can have a fair start in life. If we work hard, we can get a good education and achieve...
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English
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Examines the trend of Americans away from the traditionally mobile, risk-accepting, and adaptable tendencies that defined them for much of recent history, and toward stagnation and comfort, and how this development has the potential to make future changes more disruptive. --Publisher's description.
"Since Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a key American trait. Our willingness to move, take risks, and adapt to change has produced...
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"[The author] draws on rare in-depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers--including hedge fund financiers and corporate lawyers, professors and artists, and stay-at-home mothers--to examine their lifestyle choices and their understanding of privilege. [The author] upends images of wealthy people as invested only in accruing and displaying social advantages for themselves and their children. Instead, these liberal elites,...
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When they both start working for billionaire Cecil Stone and his wife in Palm Beach, New York transplants Rebecca and Mickey become fixtures in the Forbes-list family until Rebecca uncovers a shocking secret that forces her to make a difficult decision.
"Living in a tiny Queens apartment, Rebecca and her husband, Mickey, are struggling thirty-something New Yorkers -- he's an actor who makes his living catering, and she's a freelance journalist. What...
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"I've been waiting for this book for a long time. Well, not this book, because I never imagined that the book I was waiting for would be so devastatingly smart and funny, so consistently entertaining and unflinchingly on target. In fact, I would like to have written it myself--if, that is, I had lived Linda Tirado's life and extracted all the hard lessons she has learned. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt,...
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Two essays scathingly comment on the new racial and ethnic games being played by America's Beautiful People.
In this devastatingly funny book, Tom Wolfe shows again why he is regarded as his era's most brilliant observer of the American social scene. The book consists of two long essays, closely related in theme and substance, both dealing with political stances and social styles in the status-minded world of the 1960s. In Radical Chic, Wolfe describes...
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When families go missing in Baltimore County, Jane McKeene, who is studying to become an Attendant, finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy that has her fighting for her life against powerful enemies.
Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania-- derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever. Now laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children...
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"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not." In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched...
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"It may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others. Why do some groups rise? Drawing on groundbreaking original research and startling statistics, The Triple Package uncovers the secret to their success. A superiority complex, insecurity, impulse control--these are the elements of the Triple Package, the rare and potent cultural constellation that drives disproportionate group success.Americans are taught that everyone is equal,...
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"Henry Louis Gates, Jr., examines the surprising social and economic journey African Americans have made. Using the interviews he conducted for his PBS series, Professor Gates portrays a community united by shared memory and a strong, vibrant culture, yet divided by wealth and lack of opportunity - a people still struggling to ensure true equality for all." "Professor Gates traveled across the country interviewing forty-four famous and not-so-famous...
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