Politics & Government

The Woman’s Hour (2018) is a nonfiction chronicle of the final battle for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which gave American women the right to vote. The book explores the blood, sweat, and tears required to gain women’s suffrage in this country. Contrary to popular opinion, the process was neither quick nor easy. The events chronicled in the book take place during July and August of 1920 in Nashville, Tennessee. The author’s uses... Read The Woman's Hour Summary

Essayist and commentator Sarah Vowell published her historical and social commentary The Wordy Shipmates in 2008. A humorous but seriously critical examination of the Puritan emigrants that traveled with the flagship Arbella from England to Massachusetts in 1630, the book revisits leading Puritan figures and the colonial events and ideologies they created while trying to establish the “city upon a hill” that defined their Christian mission in, what was to them, a New World.Though colonial... Read The Wordy Shipmates Summary

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is a nonfiction book by Thomas L. Friedman. It was first published in 2005 and was updated with two new editions in 2006 and 2007. The book is a wide-ranging examination of globalization at the turn of the 21st century and its impact on the United States. The book is divided into sections that explain the origin, impact, and meaning of a “flat world.”... Read The World Is Flat Summary

The Worldly Philosophers, first published in 1953, is a nonfiction work on the history of economics, written by American economist and historian Robert L. Heilbroner, the Norman Thomas Professor of Economics, Emeritus at the New School for Social Research, New York. Currently in its seventh edition, published in an updated and revised form in 1999, the book is regularly assigned to economics undergraduates, providing them with an overview of western economic thought. The Worldly Philosophers... Read The Worldly Philosophers Summary

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The Wretched of the Earth (1961) is a nonfiction book by Frantz Fanon, a French West Indian psychiatrist and philosopher. Together with such texts as Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), and Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994), The Wretched of the Earth is a founding text of modern postcolonial studies. It is also Frantz Fanon’s most internationally acclaimed book, translated into more than 25 languages, though he is... Read The Wretched of the Earth Summary

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Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick: And Other Essays (2019) is a collection of personal essays that explore race, gender, and class in the US. McMillan Cottom is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an influential public intellectual whose writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Thick situates McMillan Cottom’s personal experiences within sociological and structural analysis to link her experiences to... Read Thick: And Other Essays Summary

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Thirteen Days is Robert Kennedy’s personal account of the Cuban missile crisis.As the Attorney General of the United States and President’s Kennedy’s brother and most trusted confidant, Robert Kennedy played a significant role in that critical period. The first-person narrative is organized into titled sections, rather than chapters, and proceeds chronologically, describing the meetings, conversations, developments, and decisions that shaped the American response to the crisis.The chronicle begins on the morning of Tuesday, October 16... Read Thirteen Days Summary

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This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is Naomi Klein's fourth book. Published in 2014, it explores the issue of climate change from an anticapitalistic political perspective and considers whether contemporary market-driven policies are adequate for responding to the global crisis. The book won the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and was adapted into a documentary by Avi Lewis.Klein is a Canadian author, filmmaker, and activist whose work centers on anticapitalist critique... Read This Changes Everything Summary

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Three Guineas is a book-length essay structured as a letter from Virginia Woolf to an unnamed correspondent who has asked her for help with his efforts to “prevent war” (3). Three years after receiving the letter, and amidst the rise of fascism across Europe, Woolf has finally decided to respond. As a pacifist, she feels compelled to find a way to prevent another World War, though she is perturbed by the correspondent’s ideas, which ignore... Read Three Guineas Summary

Throne of Glass is the first novel in the eight-book young adult (YA) fantasy series of the same name by author Sarah J. Maas. First published in 2012, the novel is loosely based on the Cinderella story. Throne of Glass was critically well-received. In 2016, Disney purchased the rights to a television adaptation. In addition to the Throne of Glass series, Sarah J. Maas is the author of a second High Fantasy series, A Court... Read Throne of Glass Summary

Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020) is a nonfiction book written by the journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, who are also married. The book chronicles the individual impact of the American approach to poverty and offers prescriptions for how the United States can adopt a more human approach to those who are struggling with deprivation, addiction, and despair. Upon its release, the book was a New York Times best seller.Plot SummaryThe... Read Tightrope Summary

Book DetailsTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) is a thriller written by John Le Carré. It is the first entry in a series of books called the Karla trilogy, followed by The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) and Smiley's People (1979). The trilogy features an aging spy named George Smiley and has been adapted into television and radio shows as well as a feature film. Author DetailsJohn Le Carré is the pen name of David John Moore Cornwell, a... Read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Summary

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves, written by American journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, is a nonfiction work published in 2009. The subtitle accurately describes what the work accomplishes, and the book is the product of “more than five hundred hours of interviews with more than two hundred individuals who participated directly in the events surrounding the financial crisis” (vii). Sorkin, a... Read Too Big To Fail Summary