Middle America

As night fell on 15 August 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. After a 20-year conflict with the United States, its Western allies and a proxy Afghan government, the Islamic militant group once aligned with al Qaeda was about to bury yet another foreign foe in the graveyard of empires. And for the US, the superpower, this was yet another foreign disaster. As cities and towns fell to the Taliban in rapid succession, Western troops and embassy staff scrambled to flee a country of which its government had lost control.

Over the past decade, Mary Pipher has been a great source of wisdom, helping us to better understand our family members. Now she connects us with the newest members of the American family - refugees. In cities all over the country, refugees arrive daily. Lost Boys from Sudan, survivors from Kosovo, families fleeing Afghanistan and Vietnam: they come with nothing but the desire to experience the American dream. Their endurance in the face of tragedy and their ability to hold on to the virtues of family, love, and joy are a lesson for America. Their stories will make you laugh and weep.

Drawing on years of archival research both in the US and Iran - including access to Iranian government archives rarely available to western scholars - the Iranian-born, Oxford-educated historian leads us through the four seasons of US-Iran relations: the 'spring' of mutual fascination, the 'summer' of early interactions, the 'autumn' of close strategic ties and the long, dark 'winter' of mutual hatred.

This second volume discusses the move toward independence, the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the battle for Canada, the struggle for the middle states, the battle for the South, the Constitutional Convention, the making of the Constitution, and the fruits of independence.

Trailer Dogs is the profoundly profane, hysterically funny, yet often poignant, story of survival in today's near-extinct middle class. After losing their small business and life savings to the government's unfathomable shutdown, the author and her husband are forced to sell their home and move into a travel trailer.

As a National Public Radio reporter covering the last stand of the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern borderland, Sarah Chayes became deeply immersed in the attempt to rebuild a broken nation. With her NPR assignment finished in early 2002, she left reporting to help turn around the country's fortunes, accepting a job running a nonprofit founded by President Hamid Karzai's brother. With remarkable access to leading players in the postwar government, Chayes witnessed a tragic, perverse turn of events.

The best-selling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for America's ailing middle class what she did for the working poor. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the world of the white-collar unemployed.

Stunned by the silence of Antarctica, the lively streets of Rio de Janeiro, the grandeur of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and the beauty of the metro stations in Moscow, inveterate traveller Vilas Kale explored the far corners of the world with enthusiasm and great interest. In his younger days he hitchhiked with his cousins across the Middle East and Europe, a trip that fuelled his need to see more, do more, experience more. And even as he found success as an entrepreneur, that spirit of adventure prevailed, taking him on more exciting trips to Africa, Australia, the United States, ...

The mainstream media and ultra-liberal Democrats can't understand why white voters, especially white men, are so angry. Wayne Allyn Root is an angry white male, and he knows why. This is his story, his testimony, and a look at what's happening to an entire group of good people: law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working, middle-class people. They're being targeted, silenced, intimidated, persecuted - virtually wiped off the planet.

Before September 11, 2001, one terrorist group had killed more Americans than any other: Hezbollah, the “Party of God.” Today it remains potentially more dangerous than even al Qaeda. Yet little has been known about its inner workings, past successes, and future plans–until now.

“Quotist” means quote artist or writer. These are quotes about my random thoughts, analyses, practical knowledge, useful info you probably didn’t know, or interesting facts I have run into, occasionally. These are the first 15 quotes. 1. Most people falsely assume that “Rocky (1976)” is the first film Sylvester Stallone starred in – wrong! In Wikipedia, I actually counted that it’s the 18th movie he has ever appeared or taken a role in. Not giving up may be the key to success. 2. Along with our fundamental eating and sleeping desires, humans have a strange unrecognized desire ...

On October 23, 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the US Marines barracks in Beirut. Two hundred and forty-one Americans were killed in the worst terrorist attack our nation would suffer until 9/11. We're still feeling the repercussions today. When Reagan Sent In the Marines tells why the Marines were there, how their mission became confused and compromised, and how President Ronald Reagan used another misguided military venture to distract America from the attack and his many mistakes leading up to it.

New York City - the Big Apple - transformed to a ghost town, where peaceful citizens dare not tread. Macy’s - symbol of American free enterprise - shut down. Rioting, looting, murder, attacks on police, destruction of monuments to American heroes in numerous American cities, all in the guise of “protests” against racism.

America's political and economic elite spent so long making such terrible decisions that they caused the collapse of 2008. So how can they continue down the same road? No one in charge wants to publicly acknowledge is that things are still pretty great for the people who run America. It was an accident of history, Jeff Faux explains, that after World War II the US could afford a prosperous middle class, a dominant military, and a booming economic elite at the same time. For the past three decades, all three have been competing, with the middle class always losing. Next the military.

The Muslim Brotherhood, or Ikhwan, has engaged in terrorism, assassinations, and anti-Western, anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence for almost a century - yet few Americans realize how powerful they really are. While we focus on al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, it's actually the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest, most influential, and most anti-American Islamist group, that has become the preeminent voice and power in the Muslim world.

In Moving Up, Moving Out, Will Cooley discusses the damage racism and discrimination have exacted on black Chicagoans in the 20th century, while accentuating the resilience of upwardly mobile African Americans. Cooley examines how class differences created fissures in the black community and produced quandaries for black Chicagoans interested in racial welfare. While black Chicagoans engaged in collective struggles, they also used individualistic means to secure the American Dream.

In January 2005 Kirk Johnson, then twenty-four, arrived in Baghdad as USAID's only American employee who spoke Arabic. Despite his opposition to the war, Johnson felt called to civic duty and wanted to help rebuild Iraq. Appointed as USAID's first reconstruction coordinator in Fallujah, he traversed the city's IED-strewn streets, working alongside idealistic Iraqi translators - young men and women sick of Saddam, filled with Hollywood slang, and enchanted by the idea of a peaceful, democratic Iraq. It was not to be.

Like no book before it, Preachers of Hate uncovered an ancient hatred that threatens the life and livelihood of every American. The “new” anti-Semitism targets not only Jews, but Americans specifically and the West in general. It targets our values, our lifestyle, and our freedoms. It is the single most important issue we face when trying to make sense of the Arab world.

Flight of the Trailer Dogs is the the 3rd (and final?) installment in the Trailer Dog Chronicles. Subtitled Life In America's New Middle Class, this book documents the author and her old man's evacuation from "hell" for more a northerly (and more liberal) realm. Have they made the right decision? Will they find true happiness in the Pacific Northwest? Find out the answers to these questions and much more by picking up a copy of Flight of the Trailer Dogs. Warning, this book is as filled with profanity as the first two, which should also be on your reading list!

The Midwest has always been the heart of America - both its economic bellwether and the repository of its national identity. Now, in a newly globalized age, the Midwest is challenged as never before. In Caught in the Middle, longtime Chicago Tribune reporter Richard Longworth explores the new reality of life in today's heartland and reveals what these changes mean for the region and the country.