The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of the acclaimed, best-selling Half the Sky now issue a plea--deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans--to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. With stark poignancy and political dispassion, Tightrope draws us deep into an "other America." The authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the...

Lexi, a young Mennonite woman from Saskatchewan, comes to work as housekeeper and nanny for a doctor's family in Waterloo, Ontario, during the Depression. Dr. Gerald Oliver is a handsome philanderer who lives with his neurotic and alcoholic wife, Cammy, and their two children. Lexi soon adapts to modern conveniences, happily wears Cammy's expensive cast off clothes, and is transformed from an innocent into a chic urban beauty. When Lexi is called...

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery -- or at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely...

The book is a history of Boston's emergence as a world-class city. Once upon a time, Boston Town was an insulated New England township. But the community was destined for greatness. Between 1850 and 1900, Boston underwent a stunning metamorphosis to emerge as one of the world's great metropolises, one that achieved national and international prominence in politics, medicine, education, science, social activism, literature, commerce, and transportation....

Did You Know? This book is available as a Wiley E-Text. The Wiley E-Text is a complete digital version of the text that makes time spent studying more efficient. Course materials can be accessed on a desktop, laptop, or mobile device-so that learning can take place anytime, anywhere. A more affordable alternative to traditional print, the Wiley E-Text creates a flexible user experience: • Access on-the-go • Search across content...

The experiences and attitudes of a man who lived under Chinese Communism, rising to a position of importance before his decision to flee to the West, whose story describes much of life and society under Maoism.

A journey of discovery though two millennia of Scandinavia's history, culture and society, "told with deep knowledge and an intoxicating passion" (BBC). -- Scandinavians is also a personal investigation, with award-winning author Robert Ferguson as the ideal companion as he explores wide-ranging topics such as the power and mystique of Scandinavian women, from the Valkyries to the Vikings; from Nora and Hedda to Garbo and Bergman. This digressive...

A collection of stories that follows a bewildered bartender, a grieving beautician, a jilted urban planner and others as their lives unravel in unexpected ways, revealing primal urges and raw emotions against the backdrop of a fractured, overwhelmed America.

Tourists know Amsterdam as a picturesque city of low-slung brick houses lining tidy canals; student travelers know it for its legal brothels and hash bars; art lovers know it for Rembrandt's glorious portraits. But the deeper history of Amsterdam, what makes it one of the most fascinating places on earth, is bound up in its unique geography--the constant battle of its citizens to keep the sea at bay--and the democratic philosophy that this enduring...