The American Future traces the history of a country whose most enduring trait is its capacity for self-renewal especially at times of disaster. Examining issues of power race & immigration religious fervour & prosperity this masterful portrait of the worlds most controversial superpower looks backwards & forwards to understand why now more than ever the fate of America & by extension the rest of the world is hanging in the balance. ...

Through her very personal telling of the story behind the White House Kitchen Gardens First Lady Michelle Obama examines how increased access to wholesome affordable food can promote better eating habits & enhanced health. Mrs Obama describes how her daughters Sasha & Malia were the catalysts for change in her own familys eating behaviour & inspired her to plant a vegetable garden on the South Lawn
- the first of its kind since Eleanor Roosevelts Victory Garden. Illustrated throughout with more than 200 photographs many never seen before the book reveals a year in the life of the garden. It

Includes:: practical advice from the White House Kitchen Garden Team for growing a whole range of produce from herbs & salads to squashes aubergines & berries whatever sized space you have. There are also delicious seasonal recipes like Spring Pea Salad Sweet Potato Quick Bread & Braised Pork Shoulder with Butternut Squash & Greens. With inspirational top tips for developing community & school gardens advice on how to get involved in your local farmers market & ideas for planting your own Michelle Obama shares the pleasures & endless benefits of home-grown food.


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This brief history of America will span the earliest migrations to the present reflecting Paul S. Boyer's interests in social intellectual & cultural history including popular culture & religion. It will reflect his personal view of American history in which a sense of paradox & irony loom large. While noting positive achievements-political economic social & cultural-he will also discuss the United States's failures to live up to its oft-stated ideals; although America has figured in the world's imagination (and its own self-image) as a land of opportunity" offering "liberty & justice for all " the reality has often fallen short. For example the establishment of the North American colonies had very different meanings for colonists from the British Isles & Europe for Native peoples & for enslaved Africans brought against their will. The late nineteenth century saw not only impressive industrial expansion & the creation of vast fortunes but also appalling conditions in urban-immigrant slums & a degraded exploited labor force. The twentieth-century emergence of a suburban society of consumer abundance meant a better life for many & laid the groundwork for impressive cultural creativity yet left behind crime-ridden inner cities & spawned a stultifying mass culture. The immigrants who have renewed & revitalized the nation have also stirred hostility & resentment. While American popular culture has demonstrated global appeal the projection of U.S. military power abroad from the Philippines early in the twentieth century to Iraq early in the twenty-first has sometimes failed in its purpose & damaged the nation's international standing. Although this book will not be a muckraking expose or anachronistic moral tract neither will it be a celebratory panegyric or a bland recital of facts. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts analysis perspective new ideas & enthusiasm to make interesting & challenging topics highly readable." ...

For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the US Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North & South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed as historian David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book the European & white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness & diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico & Central & South America then north to Florida Virginia & New England & finally out across the Great Plains & Southwest to California & the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went the native people were caught between imported plagues & barbarous atrocities typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people he asks do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European & Christian attitudes toward sex race & war he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans & their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today he adds & one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia & the Middle East. At once sweeping in scope & meticulously detailed American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical & moral debate. ...

THE INSIDE STORY OF THE EPIC TURNAROUND OF FORD MOTOR COMPANY UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF CEO ALAN MULALLY. At the end of 2008 Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors & Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations transform its lackluster product lineup & overcome a dys-functional culture of infighting backstabbing & excuses. It was an extraordinary risk but it was the only way the Ford family--America's last great industrial dynasty--could hold on to their company. Mulally & his team pulled off one of the great-est comebacks in business history. As the rest of Detroit collapsed Ford went from the brink of bankruptcy to being the most profitable automaker in the world. American Icon" is the compelling behind-the-scenes account of that epic turnaround. On the verge of collapse Ford went outside the auto industry & recruited Mulally--the man who had already saved Boeing from the deathblow of 9/11--to lead a sweeping restructuring of a company that had been unable to overcome decades of mismanage-ment & denial. Mulally applied the principles he developed at Boeing to streamline Ford's inefficient operations force its fractious executives to work together as a team & spark a product renaissance in Dearborn. He also convinced the United Auto Workers to join his fight for the soul of American manufacturing. Bryce Hoffman reveals the untold story of the covert meetings with UAW leaders that led to a game-changing contract Bill Ford's battle to hold the Ford family together when many were ready to cash in their stock & write off the company & the secret alliance with Toyota & Honda that helped prop up the Amer-ican automotive supply base. In one of the great management narratives of our time Hoffman puts the reader inside the boardroom as Mulally uses his celebrated Business Plan Review meet-ings to drive change & force Ford to deal with the painful realities of the American auto industry. Hoffman was granted unprecedented access to Ford's top executives & top-secret company documents. He spent countless hours with Alan Mulally Bill Ford the Ford family former executives labor leaders & company directors. In the bestselling tradition of Too Big to Fail & The Big Short American Icon is narrative nonfiction at its vivid & colorful best." ...

This focuses on the history costume & material culture of the native peoples of North America. It was in the Southwest
- modern
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In American on Purpose" Craig Ferguson delivers a moving & achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow Scotland to the entertainment capital of the world. Along the way he stumbled through several attempts to make his mark
- as a punk rock musician a modern dancer a bouncer a construction worker & a st&-up comedian. To numb the pain of failure Ferguson found comfort in drugs & alcohol addictions that eventually led to an aborted suicide attempt. (He forgot to do it when someone offered him a beer.) But his story has a happy ending: in 1993 the washed up Ferguson washed up in the United States
- which from the age of seven he had always seen as a beacon of goodness & possibility. Finally sober Ferguson landed a breakthrough role on the hit sitcom " The Drew Carey Show" a success that eventually led to his current starring role as the host of CBS " The Late Late Show". By far Fergusons greatest triumph was his decision to become a U.S. citizen a milestone he achieved in early 2008 just before his command performance."

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In American Pastoral Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth centurys promises of prosperity civic order & domestic bliss. Roths protagonist is Seymour Swede Levov
- a legendary high school athlete a devoted family man a hard worker the prosperous inheritor of his fathers Newark glove factory
- comes of age in thriving triumphant post-war America. & then one day in 1968 Swedes beautiful American luck deserts him. For Swedes adored daughter Merry has grown from a loving quick-witted girl into a sullen fanatical teenager
- a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. & overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral & into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable propelled by sorrow rage & a deep compassion for its characters this is Roths masterpiece.


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He has appeared in over a hundred films. Elvis copied his looks. The Beatles put him on the cover of Sgt. Pepper. Tony Curtis is without question a Hollywood legend & part of its Golden Age. In American Prince" he tells the whole story from his hard-knock childhood growing up in the Bronx to his wild days as a Hollywood playboy his destructive drug addiction & his life now as an artist in his eighties. He talks frankly about the people he has known during his long & illustrious career from the studio owners & directors to his famous friends such as Jack Lemmon Cary Grant & James Dean & the women in his life including Janet Leigh & Natalie Wood. Forthright & enthralling & sparing no detail & no ego " American Prince" is the true record of a life lived to the full." ...

Patrick Bateman is twenty-six & works on Wall Street; he is handsome sophisticated charming & intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to a head-on collision with America's greatest dream -- & its worst nightmare -- American Psycho is a bleak bitter black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront. ' American Psycho is a beautifully controlled careful important novel.. . The novelist's function is to keep a running tag on the progress of the culture; & he's done it brilliantly.. .A seminal book' Fay Weldon Washington Post ' The first novel to come along in years that takes on deep & Dostoyevskian themes.. . Ellis is showing older authors where the hands have come to on the clock' Norman Mailer Vanity Fair ' Serious clever & shatteringly effective.. . For its savagely coherent picture of a society lethally addicted to blandness it should be judged by the highest standards' Sunday Times ...