Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Sociology

Years after his tragic death, Trayvon Martin’s name is still evoked every day. He has become a symbol of social justice activism, as has his hauntingly familiar image: the photo of a child still in the process of becoming a young man, wearing a hoodie and gazing silently at the camera. But who was Trayvon Martin, before he became, in death, an icon? And how did one Black child’s death on a dark, rainy street in a small Florida town become the match that lit a civil rights crusade?

National Book Award finalist Patrick Phillips tells Forsyth's tragic story in vivid detail and traces its long history of racial violence all the way back to antebellum Georgia. Recalling his own childhood in the 1970s and '80s, Phillips sheds light on the communal crimes of his hometown and the violent means by which locals kept Forsyth all white well into the 1990s.

Michele Norris, host of NPR's All Things Considered, set out to write a book about “the hidden conversation on race” that is going on in this country. But along the way, she unearthed painful family secrets. In what became an intensely personal and bracing journey, Norris traveled from her childhood home in Minneapolis to her ancestral roots in the Deep South to explore “things left unsaid” by her family when she was growing up.

A woman of contradictions, "a gun-toting, lesbian, feminist, voted-for-Reagan activist", Tammy Bruce is standing in line to become the next Ann Coulter. The "left wing" is engaged in an enormous conspiracy to make moral values relative, to undercut pride and patriotism in our country, to destroy Christian ideology at any cost, to pollute the minds of our youth by means of leftist professors who rewrite history, and to hijack the justice system through morally bankrupt trial lawyers.

When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World". But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city’s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place.

The fearless Tina Rosenberg has spent her career tackling some of the world's hardest problems. The Haunted Land, her searing work on how Eastern Europe faced the crimes of Communism, garnered both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In Join the Club, she identifies a brewing social revolution that is changing the way people live, based on harnessing the positive force of peer pressure.

Deborah Santana is best known for her marriage to music icon Carlos Santana, a 30-year bond that endures to this day. But as a girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, daughter of a White mother and a Black father, the legendary blues guitarist Saunders King, her life was charged with its own drama long before she married.

In March 1986, while living in Brooklyn, Chris Bohjalian and his wife were cab-napped on a Saturday night and taken on a forty-five-minute joy ride in which the driver ignored all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight he deposited the young couple on a near-deserted street, where police officers were about to storm a crack house. Bohjalian and his wife were told to hit the ground for their own protection. While lying on the pavement, Bohjalian's wife suggested that perhaps it was time to move to New England.

Now in The Broken Hearth, William Bennett, America's foremost conservative spokesperson on matters of family values, presents a strong, well-reasoned, and informed defense of the traditional family.

From Wall Street to the West Coast, from blue-collar billionaires to blue-blood fortunes, from the Google guys to hedge fund honchos, All the Money in the World gives us the lowdown on, among other things: the all-time richest Americans, who made and lost the most money in the past 25 years, the fields and industries that have produced the greatest wealth, the biggest risk takers, the most competitive players, the most wasteful family feuds, the trophy wives.

In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century—and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations. Why this is so and what we should do about it is the subject of this book.

Deborah Santana is best known for her marriage to music icon Carlos Santana - a 30-year bond that endures to this day. But as a girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, daughter of a White mother and a Black father - the legendary blues guitarist Saunders King - her life was charged with its own drama long before she married.

Was haben eine deutsche Hausfrau, die dänische Kronprinzessin und eine indonesische Fabrikarbeiterin gemeinsam? Sie menstruieren. Zumindest potenziell, denn sie gehören zu jenem Teil der Weltbevölkerung, der einen Zyklus hat. Die sagenumwobene Menstruation, Periode oder Erdbeerwoche machen weder Halt vor Herkunft noch vor Religion oder Klasse. Die Menstruation ist eine faszinierende Körperfunktion, dennoch gilt sie häufig als Tabu, was weitreichende Konsequenzen für die Umwelt, Wirtschaft und Geschlechtergleichstellung hat. Also ab in die Tonne mit dem Tabu!

In this dual memoir, Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano take turns telling how they went from tentative business partners to dear friends while turning a dilapidated formerly segregated Greyhound bus station into The Grey, now one of the most celebrated restaurants in the country. Recounting the trying process of building their restaurant business, they examine their most painful and joyous times, revealing how they came to understand their differences, recognize their biases, and continuously challenge themselves and each other to be better.

In this compelling collection of essays, Ashlee Eiland shares her story of being a Black woman living on two sides of the fence: as the token Black girl in majority-White spaces and as the “whitewashed” Black girl in majority-Black spaces. As she discovers her own unique worth through these recollections, Ashlee learns that extending radical kindness toward every person - regardless of social status, political views, or religious beliefs - gives us hope and rekindles our common humanity.

Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on New York City’s map. He excavates the roots of many names, from Brooklyn to Harlem, that have gained iconic meaning worldwide. He interviews the last living speakers of Lenape, visits the harbor’s forgotten islands, lingers on street corners named for ballplayers and saints, and meets linguists who study the estimated 800 languages now spoken in New York.

This crystal-ball look into the future of American politics shows how the brewing generational shift to the left is only the beginning of transformations to come.

Over the course of six decades, an unprecedented wave of black Americans left the South and spread across the nation in search of a better life - a migration that sparked stunning demographic and cultural changes in 20th-century America. Through gripping and accessible historical narrative, author and activist Blair Imani examines the largely overlooked impact of the Great Migration and how it affected - and continues to affect - black identity and America as a whole.

Fascinated by the success of immigrant friends, Claudia Kolker embarked on a journey to uncover how their customs are being carried on and adapted by the second and third generations, and how they can enrich all of our lives. The Immigrant Advantage is an adventurous exploration of little-known traditional wisdom, and how in this nation of immigrants our lives can be enriched by the gifts of our newest arrivals.

Compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is losing ground across nearly every indicator of social health. Its race problem, argues Eduardo Porter, is largely to blame. In American Poison, the New York Times veteran shows how racial animus has stunted the development of nearly every institution crucial for a healthy society, including organized labor, public education, and the social safety net. The consequences are profound and are only growing graver with time.