"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 working hours"--Book jacket. Attaining the standard of living our parents managed has become impossible. Quart examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children, and shows how our country has failed its families. She offers real solutions...

"PAPERBACK ORIGINAL From the bestselling cartoonist of The Cartoon History of the Universe comes an explosive graphic takedown of capitalism Bestselling "overeducated cartoonist" Larry Gonick has delighted readers for years with sharp, digestible, and hilarious accounts of everything from the history of the universe to the story of calculus. Now Gonick teams up with psychologist and scholar Tim Kasser, an expert on how happiness and values relate...

Traces the history of the Marshall Plan and the efforts to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism during a two-year period that saw the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations and the beginning of the Cold War. "Reveals the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan--told with verve, insight, and resonance for today. In the wake of World War II, with Britain's empire collapsing and Stalin's on the rise, U.S. officials...

"When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating the shaping and execution of the US government's economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised and dismayed when serious people in Washington worried out loud to him that the Obama focus on health care was a distraction because it was "not focused on the economy." How, he asked, was millions of Americans' fear that they were a single pink slip or a loved one's serious illness...

"From childhood, we're taught one central, non-controversial idea about morality: self-sacrifice is a virtue. It is universally accepted that serving the needs of others, rather than our own, is the essence of morality. To be ethical--it is believed--is to be altruistic. Questioning this belief is regarded as tantamount to questioning the self-evident. Here, Peter Schwartz questions it. In Defense of Selfishness refutes widespread misconceptions about...

"Keeping the economy strong will require addressing two distinct but related problems. Steadily rising federal debt makes it harder to grow our economy, boost our living standards, respond to wars or recessions, address social needs, and maintain our role as a global leader. At the same time, we have let critical investments lag and left many people behind even as overall prosperity has grown. In Fiscal Therapy, William Gale, a leading authority on...