My American Unhappiness by Dean Bakopoulos from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is $2.99 (US Kindle)
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Book Description
“Why are you so unhappy?” That’s the question that Zeke Pappas, a thirty-three-year-old scholar, asks almost everybody he meets as part of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” The answers he receives—a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint—create a collage of woe. Zeke, meanwhile, remains delightfully oblivious to the increasingly harsh realities that threaten his daily routine, opting instead to focus his energy on finding the perfect mate so that he can gain custody of his orphaned nieces. Following steps outlined in a women’s magazine, the ever-optimistic Zeke identifies some “prospects”: a newly divorced neighbor, a coffeehouse barista, his administrative assistant, and Sofia Coppola (“Why not aim high?”).
A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.
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The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz from W. W. Norton & Company is $3.99 (US Kindle)
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Book Description
A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.
The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”
Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequality is not inevitable: moneyed interests compound their wealth by stifling true, dynamic capitalism. They have made America the most unequal advanced industrial country while crippling growth, trampling on the rule of law, and undermining democracy. The result: a divided society that cannot tackle its most pressing problems. With characteristic insight, Stiglitz examines our current state, then teases out its implications for democracy, for monetary and budgetary policy, and for globalization. He closes with a plan for a more just and prosperous future.
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The Declaration by Gemma Malley from Bloomsbury USA Childrens is $1.99 (US Kindle)
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Age Level: 12 and up | Grade Level: 7 and up
Amazon Significant Seven, October 2007
It's the year 2140 and Anna shouldn't be alive. Nor should any of the children she lives with at Grange Hall. The facility is full of kids like her, kids whose parents chose to recklessly abuse Mother Nature and have children despite a law forbidding them from doing so as long as they took longevity drugs. To pay back her parents' debt to Mother Nature, Anna will have to work for the rest of her life. But then Peter appears at the hall, and he tells a very different story about the world outside of the Grange. Peter begs Anna to escape Grange Hall, and to claim a life for herself outside its bleak walls. But even if they get out, they still have to make their way to London, to Anna's parents, and to an underground movement that's determined to bring back children and rid the world of longevity drugs.
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The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp Adventures) by Rick Yancey from Bloomsbury USA Childrens is $1.99 (US Kindle)
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Book Description
Age Level: 12 and up | Grade Level: 7 and up
Alfred Kropp is just trying to survive high school when his guardian uncle ropes him into a suspicious get-rich-quick scheme that changes his life forever: stealing Excalibur-the legendary sword of King Arthur.
But when Alfred unwittingly delivers the sword into the wrong hands, he undertakes an unlikely quest to right his wrong and save the world from imminent destruction.
This gripping, fast-paced, often hilarious novel is both a thrilling adventure story and an engaging account of one boy's coming of age.
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