Civic Science

From the best-selling author and former Starbucks CEO, here is a story that is part dramatic memoir, part blueprint of the new responsibilities that leaders and citizens share in America today. The book weaves two parallel narratives to show how experiences from Howard Schultz’s troubled childhood - some of which he has never before disclosed - propelled him out of the housing projects and fueled his efforts to build a global brand and redefine the role of a company in society. Ultimately, Schultz reveals the potential we all have to transform communities and uplift lives.

From the email marketing director of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the co-founder of Run for Something comes an essential and inspiring guide that encourages and educates young progressives to run for local office, complete with contributions from elected officials and political operatives.

Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy details of government into tedious discourse that would put even the president to sleep. American Government 101 cuts out the boring explanations, and instead provides a hands-on lesson that keeps you engaged as you learn. From the backstory of the Constitution to the institution of the Electoral College, this primer is packed with hundreds of entertaining tidbits and concepts to help you learn about how the government of the United States actually works.

In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half-century, America's core values - meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even democracy itself - have somehow managed to power its decline into dysfunction.

You've heard of the "Great Books"? These are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto to Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, these "influential" books have led to war, genocide, totalitarian oppression, family breakdown, and disastrous social experiments. And yet these authors' bad ideas are still popular and pervasive. Here with the antidote is Professor Benjamin Wiker.

Tammy Duckworth takes listeners through the amazing - and amazingly true - stories from her incomparable life. In November of 2004, an Iraqi RPG blew through the cockpit of Tammy Duckworth's US Army Black Hawk helicopter. The explosion, which destroyed her legs and mangled her right arm, was a turning point in her life. But as Duckworth shows in Every Day Is a Gift, that moment was just one in a lifetime of extraordinary turns.

The Founders' Speech to a Nation in Crisis is a tapestry of the Founders' own words, written in 10 chapters and woven into a single, powerful speech and call to action for every American. The continuing relevance of our Founders' words - as revealed in this unique, meticulously crafted work - is a clarion call to defend our natural rights that will stun listeners and leave them celebrating America's founding ethos and principles.

Donald Trump is the exact threat our Founding Fathers feared. Joe Walsh is as rock-ribbed a conservative as they come. But he believes that no right-wing policy victory is worth the loss of our very democracy. In this clear-eyed and unsparing audiobook, Walsh makes the case that Trump has more in common with the foreign dictators he praises publicly than a predecessor like Ronald Reagan. Trump is an existential threat to conservatism, the presidency, and national unity.

When he left Congress in 2017, Jason Chaffetz still thought elections could save us. For generations, conservatives have hoped that freedom-loving congressional majorities could turn back the tide and restore America’s liberties and prosperity. But now, he says, winning elections will not be enough.

From his youth, Kingston has always carried a vision for a free and united America. With an approachable and conversational style, as well as a dash of humor, John Kingston draws on a diverse and compelling collection of wisdom—the parables of the Bible and the philosophy of Aristotle, the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, the songs of Bruce Springsteen and current studies from the best neuro and social scientists today—to remind us that there is no "them", there is only us, and we're in this together.

The United States is an exceptional place to call home thanks to the character of the American people. With conviction and urgency, Ed Feulner and Brian Tracy affirm our core tenets - from patriotism and optimism to faith and generosity - and challenge all of us to live out the timeless principles of citizenship. Packed with engaging stories, insightful profiles, and eye-opening statistics, The American Spirit serves as an indispensable primer on the bedrock belief that an indomitable spirit does exist.

Is this the America you want? If not, here's how to claim the power to change your country. We are in an age of epic political turbulence in America. Old hierarchies and institutions are collapsing. From the election of Donald Trump to the upending of the major political parties to the spread of grassroots movements like Black Lives Matter and $15 Now, people across the country and across the political spectrum are reclaiming power. Are you ready for this age of bottom-up citizen power?

What hidden skill links successful people in all walks of life? What helps them make smart decisions? The answer is surprisingly simple: They know how to ask the right questions at the right time. Questions help us break down barriers, discover secrets, solve puzzles, and imagine new ways of doing things. But few of us know how to question in a methodical way. Emmy-award-winning journalist and media expert Frank Sesno aims to change that with Ask More.

In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?

An urgent collection of essays by first- and second-generation immigrants, exploring what it's like to be othered in an increasingly divided America.

What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize­­-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to US citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of American rights, liberties, and protections.

For the past two years, Joyce Vance has signed off posts on her chart-topping Substack, Civil Discourse, with these four words. In that time, she’s guided readers through a continued erosion of democratic norms, the unprecedented felony conviction of an ex-president, and the approaching specter of a second Trump administration. Now that it’s upon us, Vance helps us understand how to avoid burnout and despair and exercise the democratic muscles we need to save the Republic.

What is America becoming? Or, more importantly, what can she be if we reclaim a vision for the things that made her great in the first place? In America the Beautiful, Dr. Ben Carson helps us learn from our past in order to chart a better course for our future. From his personal ascent from inner-city poverty to international medical and humanitarian acclaim, Carson shares experiential insights that help us understand: What is good about America, where we have gone astray, and which fundamental beliefs have guided America from her founding into preeminence among nations.

Richard Dreyfuss is a forceful advocate for civic education. His latest work, One Thought Scares Me…, explains how the lack of civics education in American education for the last fifty years has led to the deterioration of all aspects of the lives of us, the people. And it shows us the path to reclaiming our American ideals.

The current school system churns out millions of illiterates and mental zombies—but here's how we're going to fix it, starting today. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, parents across the nation grapple with a new and horrifying understanding of just how bad our educational system has become. It all adds up to a system that seems hopelessly, terribly, and irrevocably broken.