Frank Carlson Library

"Squeezed" weaves together intimate reporting with sharp and lively critique to show how the high cost of parenthood and our increasingly unstable job market have imploded the middle-class American Dream for many families, and offers surprising solutionsfor how we might change things. Families today are squeezed on every side--from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular...

[The author] takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the 20 dollars a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched...

"The author discusses how we should think about conspiracy theories, who believes them and why, which conspiracy theories are likely to be true or false and what criteria we can use to assess them, and what we should do to combat dangerous conspiracism and reestablish trust in our democratic institutions, in the media, and in one another"--

"Born Extraordinary helps parents of children with differences and disabilities to relinquish their instinctive anxieties, embrace their new normal, and ultimately find joy in watching their children thrive. Often the subjects of unwanted attention-ranging from pitying stares to bullying-Zucker and her sons have learned to ignore what others think and live fearlessly. Also incorporating the stories of other families with visible and invisible differences...

"A premier historian penetrates the fog of corruption and cover-up still surrounding the murder of a Stanford University founder to establish who did it, how, and why. In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband's death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy...

"A scathing, deeply-researched foray into the invisible, uncompensated work women perform every day 'Emotional labor.' The term might sound familiar. . .but what does it mean exactly? Initially used to describe the unnamed yet crucial labor flight attendants did to make guests feel welcomed and safe, the phrase has burst into the national lexicon in recent years. The examples, whispered among friends and posted online, are endless. A woman is tasked...

"The story of the National Organization for Women-its structures, trials, and revolutionary mission-told through the work of three extraordinary, little-known members"-- In the summer of 1966, crammed into a D.C. hotel suite, twenty-eight women devised a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the well-known author of The Feminine Mystique, and Pauli Murray, a lawyer at the front lines of the civil rights movement, had called this renegade meeting from...

"The hilarious, charming, and candid story of Ingraham's decision to uproot his life and move his family to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, population 1,400 - the community he made famous as "the worst place to live in America" in a story he wrote for the Washington Post." -- Book jacket.

"When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher 'KC' Clarke, had disappeared...

Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa--the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times,...