{"title":"America","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"frederick-douglass-narrative-of-the-life-of-an-american-slave-2005-paperback","title":"Narrative of the Life of an American Slave","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFormer slave, impassioned abolitionist, brilliant writer, newspaper editor and eloquent orator whose speeches fired the abolitionist cause, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) led an astounding life. Physical abuse, deprivation and tragedy plagued his early years, yet through sheer force of character he was able to overcome these obstacles to become a leading spokesman for his people. In this, the first and most frequently read of his three autobiographies, Douglass provides graphic descriptions of his childhood and horrifying experiences as a slave as well as a harrowing record of his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom. Published in 1845 to quell doubts about his origins — since few slaves of that period could write — the Narrative is admired today for its extraordinary passion, sensitive and vivid descriptions and storytelling power. It belongs in the library of anyone interested in African-American history and the life of one of the country's most courageous and influential champions of civil rights. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Frederick Douglass","offers":[{"title":"Used Paperback","offer_id":44460573065537,"sku":"","price":4.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0506\/8970\/4134\/products\/51NQA4DbdPL.jpg?v=1659508046"},{"product_id":"louisa-may-alcott-civil-war-hospital-sketches-2006-paperback","title":"Civil War Hospital Sketches","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBefore her wider fame as the author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLittle Women,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Louisa May Alcott achieved recognition for her accounts of her work as a volunteer nurse in an army hospital. Written during the winter of 1862–63, her lively dispatches appeared in the newspaper \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCommonwealth,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e where they were eagerly read by soldiers' friends and families. Then, as now, these chronicles revealed the desperate realities of battlefield medicine as well as the tentative first steps of women in military service.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWriting under a pseudonym, Alcott recounted the vicissitudes of her two-day journey from her home in Concord, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C. A fiery baptism in the practice of nursing awaited her at Washington Hospital, were she arrived immediately after the slaughter of the Army of the Potomac at the battle of Fredericksburg. Alcott's rapidly paced prose graphically depicts the facts of hospital life, deftly balancing pathos with gentle humor. A vivid and truthful portrait of an often overlooked aspect of the Civil War, this book remains among the most illuminating reports of the era's medical practices as well as a moving testimonial to the war's human cost.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Louisa May Alcott","offers":[{"title":"New Paperback","offer_id":42305846673606,"sku":"142","price":6.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0506\/8970\/4134\/products\/51OK0GrMQtL.jpg?v=1659508305"},{"product_id":"race-and-reunion","title":"Race and Reunion","description":"\u003cp class=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNo historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war. Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBlight's sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"David W. Blight","offers":[{"title":"New Paperback","offer_id":44527778824513,"sku":"","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0506\/8970\/4134\/products\/516X4kQg1OL.jpg?v=1676373776"},{"product_id":"these-truths","title":"These Truths","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jill Lepore","offers":[{"title":"New Paperback","offer_id":44532479951169,"sku":"","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0506\/8970\/4134\/products\/71ji4PPPLVL.jpg?v=1676441494"},{"product_id":"o-pioneers","title":"O Pioneers!","description":"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eO Pioneers!, Willa Cather's first great novel, is the classic American story of pioneer life as embodied by one remarkable woman and her singular devotion to the land. Alexandra Bergson arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Nebraska as a young girl and grows up to turn it into a prosperous farm. In this unforgettable story,Cather conveys both the physical realities of the landscape, as well as the mythic sweep of the transformation of the frontier, more faithfully and perhaps more fully than any other work of fiction.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Willa Cather","offers":[{"title":"Used Paperback","offer_id":47440636576065,"sku":"","price":6.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0506\/8970\/4134\/files\/71hDG5j-FjL._SL1500.jpg?v=1702173531"},{"product_id":"the-great-gatsby","title":"The Great Gatsby","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Great Gatsby\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e, Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","offers":[{"title":"Used Paperback","offer_id":47440662331713,"sku":"","price":9.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0506\/8970\/4134\/files\/61Hc2hsbeHL._SL1500.jpg?v=1702174818"},{"product_id":"king-a-life","title":"King: A Life","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKing: A Life\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKing \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ereveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Jonathan Eig","offers":[{"title":"New Hardcover","offer_id":47647499714881,"sku":"","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0506\/8970\/4134\/files\/71mMJ3bjYYL._SL1500.jpg?v=1705792992"},{"product_id":"front-street-resistance-and-rebirth-in-the-tent-cities-of-techlandia","title":"Front Street","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this wide-reaching portrait of the constellation of people living in tents, shacks, and cars in the shadow of tech campuses and skyscrapers, award-winning journalist Brian Barth introduces us to the misfits, activists, and iconoclasts of Silicon Valley’s homeless encampments. Blending memoir, investigative reporting, history, and cultural criticism to paint a portrait of a community searching for dignity and connection in the midst of a national crisis, Front Street is a conversation-changing story about the struggle for housing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis immersive work follows residents of three distinct camps—Crash Zone in San Jose, Wood Street in Oakland, and Wolfe Camp in Cupertino. Regularly harassed by police and local government, and frequently at risk of often violent and always destabilizing sweeps, these camps may seem chaotic to some but more often than not, to their residents they are sites of refuge and rebirth. In research on 19th- and 20th-century homelessness and philosophical contemplations of communal anarchy, and through honest conversations with residents, Barth shows how the solution to homelessness isn’t as straightforward as one might think.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFront Street\u0026amp;nbsp;considers the root causes and possible solutions to chronic homelessness, contemplating political, economic, social and spiritual approaches alike. With empathy and poise, Barth follows this cast of characters, describing their personal stories, quotidian experiences, private philosophies and political activism. In doing so,\u0026amp;nbsp;Front Street\u0026amp;nbsp;explains why the country’s current approach to homelessness has become at once cruel and ineffective and makes the radical argument that encampments, when treated generously and fairly, have something important to teach the rest of us about autonomy, dignity, connection and care.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Brian Barth","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51016500838721,"sku":null,"price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0506\/8970\/4134\/files\/9781662601613.jpg?v=1763603330"}],"url":"https:\/\/auditoriumbooks.myshopify.com\/collections\/america.oembed","provider":"Auditorium Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}