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Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone
Eric Klinenberg · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things
Barry Glassner · 279 pages
In this eye-opening examination of a pathology that has swept the country, sociologist Barry Glassner reveals why Americans are burdened with overblown fears. He exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our anxieties: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as both are declining; advocacy groups that raise mon
The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
Christopher Lasch · 302 pages
Here is a penetrating view of the narcissistic personality of our time. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, it embraces new cults, only to discover that emancipation from ancient taboos brings neither sexual nor spiritual peace. Emotionally shallow, fearful of intimacy, hypochondriacal, primed with pseudo-self-insight, indulging in sexual promiscuity, dreading old age and death, the n
Modern Romance
Aziz Ansari, Eric Klinenberg · 288 pages
From NYU Wagner: At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. Wit
Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before
Jean M. Twenge · 304 pages
Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation
Michael Zielenziger · 340 pages
The world's second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America. But its failure to recover from the economic collapse of the early 1990s was unprecedented, and today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends. Japan has the highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate of all industrialized countries, and a rising incidence of untreated cases of depression. Equally as troub
Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding
Bobby Duffy · 304 pages
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages
*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010
Charles Murray · 407 pages
A critique of the white American class structure argues that the paths of social mobility that once advanced the nation are now serving to further isolate an elite upper class while enforcing a growing and resentful white underclass.
Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
Theodore Dalrymple · 275 pages
"Life at the Bottom offers a searing account - probably the best yet published - of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does.". "Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England, has apparently seen it all. Yet in listening to and observing his patients, he is continually astonished by the latest twist of depravity that exceeds
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Barbara Ehrenreich · 235 pages
In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. Th
Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty
Zygmunt Bauman · 115 pages
True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
Farhad Manjoo · 257 pages
The American Way Of Killing
Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell examines why there are so many homicides in the United States and what stops us from fixing this issue. Read by the author. 5 hours, 18 minutes unabridged.
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
Erving Goffman · 386 pages
A total institution is defined by Goffman as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated, individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have br
Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
Peggy Orenstein · 319 pages
Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
Robert D. Putnam · 386 pages
"A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. It's the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in--a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last
The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America
Amy Chua, Jed Rubenfeld · 336 pages
"It may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others.Why do some groups rise? Drawing on groundbreaking original research and startling statistics, The Triple Package uncovers the secret to their success. A superiority complex, insecurity, impulse control--these are the elements of the Triple Package, the rare and potent cultural constellation that drives disproportionate grou
The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America
Tamara Winfrey Harris · 147 pages
"Everyone seems to have an opinion about American black women--they need to get married, change their hair, act like 'ladies,' and so on. Celebrated writer Tamara Winfrey Harris writes a searing account of being a black woman in America and explains why it's time for black women to speak for themselves"--Provided by publisher.
The End of Men: And the Rise of Women
Hanna Rosin · 310 pages
Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. And yet, as journalist Hanna Rosin discovered, that long-held truth is no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, women are no longer merely gaining on men; they have pulled decisively ahead by almost every measure. Already "the end of men" -- the phrase Rosin coined -- has entered the lexicon as indelibly as Simone de Beauvoir's
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
Mara Hvistendahl · 325 pages
"Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women. The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bl
Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
Owen Jones · 298 pages
"In this groundbreaking investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from 'salt of the earth' to 'scum of the earth'. Moving through Westminster 's lobbies and working-class communities from Dagenham to Dewsbury Moor, Jones lays bare the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, and reveals a far more complex reality: the increasing poverty and desperation o
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
Joe Bageant · 288 pages
After thirty years spent scratching together a middle-class life out of a "dirt-poor" childhood, Joe Bageant moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, where he realized that his family and neighbors were the very people who carried George W. Bush to victory. That was ironic, because Winchester, like countless American small towns, is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. T