Having quit his job, Toru Okada is enjoying a pleasant stint as a "house husband", listening to music and arranging the dry cleaning and doing the cooking--until his cat goes missing, his wife becomes distant and begins acting strangely, and he starts meeting enigmatic people with fantastic life stories. They involve him in a world of psychics, shared dreams, out-of-body experiences, and shaman-like powers, and tell him stories from Japan's war in...

"In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both hispolitical education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency--a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil"--

Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. In many parts of the world, the group identities that matter mostthe ones that people will kill and die forare ethnic, religious, sectarian, or clan-based. But because America tends to see the world in terms of nation-states engaged in great ideological battlesCapitalism vs. Communism, Democracy vs. Authoritarianism, the "Free World" vs. the "Axis of Evil"we are often spectacularly blind to the power...

"Over 175 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, an astute political scientist, came to the United States to evaluate the meaning and actual functioning of democracy. Here, Tocqueville discusses the advantages and dangers of majority rule?which he thought could be as tyrannical as the rule of a monarchy. He analyzes the influence of political parties and the press on the government and the effect of equality on the social, political, and economic life...

"In We've Got To Try, O'Rourke shines a spotlight on the heroic life and work of Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon and the west Texas town where he made his stand. The son of an enslaved man, Nixon grew up in the Confederate stronghold of Marshall, Texas before moving to El Paso, becoming a civil rights leader, and helping to win one of the most significant civil and voting rights victories in American history: the defeat of the all-white primary. His fight...

In his own concise, powerful, and highly personal review of the state of the nation, Bradley argues that government is not the problem. He criticizes the role of money and politics, explains how continuing on our existing foreign policy, electoral, and economic paths will mean a diminished future, and lays out exactly what needs to be done to reverse course. Breaking from the intransigent long-held viewpoints of both political parties, and with careful...

Working as an interpreter for British Intelligence, Bruno Salvador, the abandoned son of an Irish father and Congolese mother, is sent to a mysterious island to interpret a secret conference among Central African warlords.

"According to commentator and lawyer Elie Mystal, Republicans are wrong when they tell you the First Amendment allows religious fundamentalists to discriminate against gay people who like cake. They're wrong when they tell you the Second Amendment protects the right to own a private arsenal. They're wrong when they say the death penalty isn't cruel or unusual punishment, and they're wrong when they tell you we have no legal remedies for the scourge...

Tired of the unfairness of life, young Luke Pennybaker decides to run for president, with his dog Lily as his running mate.

Doggie, a dedicated advisor who has spent more than half her life supporting a remarkable Democratic candidate's path to the White House, is shattered when the president-elect's wife is assassinated on election night by Doggie's Republican father.