Hope for America's Last Generation

Hope for America's Last Generation PDF Author: Galyn Wiemers
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780979438202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description

Hope for America's Last Generation

Hope for America's Last Generation PDF Author: Galyn Wiemers
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780979438202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book Here

Book Description


Hope Dies Last

Hope Dies Last PDF Author: Studs Terkel
Publisher: New Press/ORIM
ISBN: 1595585761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
America’s most inspirational voices, in their own words: “If you’re looking for a reason to act and dream again, you’ll find it in the pages of this book” (Chicago Tribune). Published when Studs Terkel was ninety-one years old, this astonishing oral history tackles one of the famed journalist’s most elusive subjects: Hope. Where does it come from? What are its essential qualities? How do we sustain it in the darkest of times? An alternative, more personal chronicle of the “American century,” Hope Dies Last is a testament to the indefatigable spirit that Studs has always embodied, and an inheritance for those who, by taking a stand, are making concrete the dreams of today. A former death row inmate who served nearly twenty years for a crime he did not commit discusses his never-ending fight for justice. Tom Hayden, author of The Port Huron Statement, contemplates the legacy of 1960s student activism. Liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith reflects on the enduring problem of corporate malfeasance. From a doctor who teaches his young students compassion to the retired brigadier general who flew the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, these interviews tell us much about the power of the American dream and the force of individuals who advocate for a better world. With grace and warmth, Terkel’s subjects express their secret hopes and dreams. Taken together, this collection of interviews tells an inspiring story of optimism and persistence, told in voices that resonate with the eloquence of conviction. “The value of Hope Dies Last lies not in what it teaches readers about its narrow subject, but in the fascinating stories it reveals, and the insight it allows into the vast range of human experience.” —The A.V. Club “Very Terkelesque—by now the man requires an adjective of his own.” —Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Review of Books “An American treasure.” —Cornel West

Land of Hope

Land of Hope PDF Author: Wilfred M. McClay
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594039380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
For too long we’ve lacked a compact, inexpensive, authoritative, and compulsively readable book that offers American readers a clear, informative, and inspiring narrative account of their country. Such a fresh retelling of the American story is especially needed today, to shape and deepen young Americans’ sense of the land they inhabit, help them to understand its roots and share in its memories, all the while equipping them for the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship in American society The existing texts simply fail to tell that story with energy and conviction. Too often they reflect a fragmented outlook that fails to convey to American readers the grand trajectory of their own history. This state of affairs cannot continue for long without producing serious consequences. A great nation needs and deserves a great and coherent narrative, as an expression of its own self-understanding and its aspirations; and it needs to be able to convey that narrative to its young effectively. Of course, it goes without saying that such a narrative cannot be a fairy tale of the past. It will not be convincing if it is not truthful. But as Land of Hope brilliantly shows, there is no contradiction between a truthful account of the American past and an inspiring one. Readers of Land of Hope will find both in its pages.

The Last Generation

The Last Generation PDF Author: Peter S. Carmichael
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146962589X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Challenging the popular conception of Southern youth on the eve of the Civil War as intellectually lazy, violent, and dissipated, Peter S. Carmichael looks closely at the lives of more than one hundred young white men from Virginia's last generation to grow up with the institution of slavery. He finds them deeply engaged in the political, economic, and cultural forces of their time. Age, he concludes, created special concerns for young men who spent their formative years in the 1850s. Before the Civil War, these young men thought long and hard about Virginia's place as a progressive slave society. They vigorously lobbied for disunion despite opposition from their elders, then served as officers in the Army of Northern Virginia as frontline negotiators with the nonslaveholding rank and file. After the war, however, they quickly shed their Confederate radicalism to pursue the political goals of home rule and New South economic development and reconciliation. Not until the turn of the century, when these men were nearing the ends of their lives, did the mythmaking and storytelling begin, and members of the last generation recast themselves once more as unreconstructed Rebels. By examining the lives of members of this generation on personal as well as generational and cultural levels, Carmichael sheds new light on the formation and reformation of Southern identity during the turbulent last half of the nineteenth century.

The Dumbest Generation

The Dumbest Generation PDF Author: Mark Bauerlein
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440636893
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today's underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings. The Dumbest Generation is a dire report on the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American democracy and culture. For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. But at the dawn of the digital age, many thought they saw an answer: the internet, email, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era. That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more aware, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports from the National Endowment for the Arts, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American culture and democracy. Over the last few decades, how we view adolescence itself has changed, growing from a pitstop on the road to adulthood to its own space in society, wholly separate from adult life. This change in adolescent culture has gone hand in hand with an insidious infantilization of our culture at large; as adolescents continue to disengage from the adult world, they have built their own, acquiring more spending money, steering classrooms and culture towards their own needs and interests, and now using the technology once promoted as the greatest hope for their futures to indulge in diversions, from MySpace to multiplayer video games, 24/7. Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up? Drawing upon exhaustive research, personal anecdotes, and historical and social analysis, The Dumbest Generation presents a portrait of the young American mind at this critical juncture, and lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies. The Dumbest Generation pulls no punches as it reveals the true cost of the digital age—and our last chance to fix it.

Fight

Fight PDF Author: John Della Volpe
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250260477
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
From John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Fight is an exploration of Gen Z, the issues that matter most to them, and how they will shape the future. 9/11. The war on terror. Hurricane Katrina. The 2008 financial crisis. The housing crisis. The opioid epidemic. Mass school shootings. Global warming. The Trump presidency. COVID-19. Since they were born, Generation Z (also known as "zoomers")—those born from the late 1990s to early 2000s—have been faced with an onslaught of turmoil, destruction and instability unprecedented in modern history. And it shows: they are more stressed, anxious, and depressed than previous generations, a phenomenon John Della Volpe has documented heavily through decades of meeting with groups of young Americans across the country. But Gen Z has not buckled under this tremendous weight. On the contrary, they have organized around issues from gun control to racial and environmental justice to economic equity, becoming more politically engaged than their elders, and showing a unique willingness to disrupt the status quo. In Fight: How Gen Z Is Channeling Their Passion and Fear to Save America, Della Volpe draws on his vast experience to show the largest forces shaping zoomers' lives, the issues they care most about, and how they are—despite older Americans' efforts to label Gen Z as overly sensitive, lazy, and entitled—rising to the unprecedented challenges of their time to take control of their country and our future.

Hollowed Out

Hollowed Out PDF Author: Jeremy S. Adams
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684511984
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Do teachers have a front row seat to America’s decline? Jeremy S. Adams, a teacher at both the high school and college levels, thinks so. Adams has spent decades trying to instill wisdom, ambition, and a love of learning in his students. And yet, as he notes, when teachers get together, they often share an arresting conclusion: Something has gone terribly wrong. Something essential is missing in our young people. Their curiosity seems stunted, their reason undeveloped, their values uninformed, their knowledge lacking, and most worrying of all, their humanity diminished. Digital hermits of a sort unfamiliar to an older generation, they have little interest in marriage and family. They largely dismiss—and are shockingly ignorant of—religion. They sneer at patriotism, sympathize with riots and vandalism, and regard American society and civilization as so radically flawed that it must be dismantled. Often friendless and depressed, they eat alone, study alone, and even “socialize” alone. Educators like Adams see a generation slipping away. The problems that have hollowed out our young people have been festering for years. A year of COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing have magnified them. The result could be a generation—and our nation’s future—lost in a miasma of alienation and stupefaction. In his stunning new book, Hollowed Out, Jeremy S. Adams reveals why students have rejected the wisdom, culture, and institutions of Western civilization—and what we can do to win them back. Poignant, frightening, and yet inspiring, this is a book for every parent, teacher, and patriot concerned for our young people and our country

Last Best Hope

Last Best Hope PDF Author: George Packer
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374603677
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
One of The New York Times's 100 notable books of 2021 "[George Packer's] account of America’s decline into destructive tribalism is always illuminating and often dazzling." —William Galston, The Washington Post Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America’s descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem. A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. With pitiless precision, the year exposed the nation’s underlying conditions—discredited elites, weakened institutions, blatant inequalities—and how difficult they are to remedy. In Last Best Hope, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. He explores the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression. In lively and biting prose, Packer shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy. To point a more hopeful way forward, he looks for a common American identity and finds it in the passion for equality—the “hidden code”—that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. Today, we are challenged again to fight for equality and renew what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the art” of self-government. In its strong voice and trenchant analysis, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national renewal.

How I Resist

How I Resist PDF Author: Maureen Johnson
Publisher: Wednesday Books
ISBN: 1250168376
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"The Ultimate Resistance Guidebook." — Bustle "This book will be a light in the darkness for some, and help guide them from despair."— Booklist An all-star collection of essays about activism and hope, edited by bestselling YA author Maureen Johnson. Now, more than ever, young people are motivated to make a difference in a world they're bound to inherit. They're ready to stand up and be heard - but with much to shout about, where they do they begin? What can I do? How can I help? How I Resist is the response, and a way to start the conversation. To show readers that they are not helpless, and that anyone can be the change. A collection of essays, songs, illustrations, and interviews about activism and hope, How I Resist features an all-star group of contributors, including, John Paul Brammer, Libba Bray, Lauren Duca, Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson and his husband Justin Mikita, Alex Gino, Hebh Jamal, Malinda Lo, Dylan Marron, Hamilton star Javier Muñoz, Rosie O'Donnell, Junauda Petrus, Jodi Picoult, Jason Reynolds, Karuna Riazi, Maya Rupert, Dana Schwartz, Dan Sinker, Ali Stroker, Jonny Sun (aka @jonnysun), Sabaa Tahir, Shaina Taub, Daniel Watts, Jennifer Weiner, Jacqueline Woodson, and more, all edited and compiled by New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson. In How I Resist, readers will find hope and support through voices that are at turns personal, funny, irreverent, and instructive. Not just for a young adult audience, this incredibly impactful collection will appeal to readers of all ages who are feeling adrift and looking for guidance. How I Resist is the kind of book people will be discussing for years to come and a staple on bookshelves for generations.

A Commonwealth of Hope

A Commonwealth of Hope PDF Author: Alan Lawson
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 0801888727
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
Was the New Deal an aberration in American history? This look at its origins and legacy is “truly refreshing . . . the author makes a good case for his ideas” (Journal of Economic History). Did the New Deal represent the true American way or was it an aberration that would last only until the old order could reassert itself? This original and thoughtful study tells the story of the New Deal, explains its origins, and assesses its legacy. Alan Lawson explores how the circumstances of the Great Depression and the distinctive leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt combined to bring about unprecedented economic and policy reform. Challenging conventional wisdom, he argues that the New Deal was not an improvised response to an unexpected crisis, but the realization of a unique opportunity to put into practice Roosevelt’s long-developed progressive thought. Lawson focuses on where the impetus and plans for the New Deal originated, how Roosevelt and those closest to him sought to fashion a cooperative commonwealth, and what happened when the impulse for collective unity was thwarted. He describes the impact of the Great Depression on the prevailing system and traces the fortunes of several major social sectors as the drive to create a cohesive plan for reconstruction unfolded. He continues the story of these main sectors through the last half of the 1930s and traces their legacy down to the present as crucial challenges to the New Deal have arisen. Drawing from a wide variety of scholarly texts, records of the Roosevelt administration, Depression-era newspapers and periodicals, and biographies and reflections of the New Dealers, Lawson offers a comprehensive conceptual base for a crucial aspect of American history.