American life expectancy is declining; birth rates are dropping. Nearly half of us think the other political party isn't just wrong; they're evil. What's causing the despair? Sasse argues that our crisis isn't about politics: We're lonely. Traditional tribes of place are evaporating, and we rally against common enemies so we can feel part of a team. And the digital revolution is throwing gas on the fire. We must rediscover real places and human-to-human...

For more than a century, the term "Main Street" has conjured up nostalgic images of American small-town life. Representations exist all around us, from fiction and film to the architecture of shopping malls and Disneyland. All the while, the nation has become increasingly diverse, exposing tensions within this ideal. In The Death and Life of Main Street, Miles Orvell wrestles with the mythic allure of the small town in all its forms, illustrating...

"On February 6, 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordan's Brooklyn apartment. Naming itself "The Sisterhood," the group would meet over the next two years to discuss the future of Black literary feminism, how to promote and publicize their work, and the everyday pressures and challenges of being a Black woman writer. This network of individuals, which would also come to include Audre...

"An uproarious memoir/tongue-in-cheek guide to leaving the cool city in which you "found" yourself and moving somewhere far more ordinary. So you escaped whatever humdrum little town you grew up in and moved to The Big City. Maybe it was New York. Maybe it was Seattle or Kansas City. Wherever it was, there was amazing stuff everywhere you turned: Ethiopian food! A movie theater that played documentaries! A hairstylist who knew what to do with frizz!...

Introduces citizenship through examples of everyday situations where this character trait can be used.

While reporting on citizens fighting natural gas pipelines and transmission towers planned to cut right across their homes, Howard Mansfield saw the emotional toll of these projects. “They got under the skin,” writes Mansfield. “This was about more than kilowatts, powerlines, and pipelines. Something in this upheaval felt familiar. I began to realize that I was witnessing an essential American experience: the world turned upside down. And it...