David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to...

"Nationally bestselling author Julissa Arce interweaves her own story with cultural commentary in a powerful polemic against the myth that assimilation leads to happiness and belonging for immigrants in America. Instead, she calls for a celebration of our uniqueness, our origins, our heritage, and the beauty of the differences that make us Americans. "You sound like a white girl." These were the words spoken to Julissa by a high school crush as she...

"John Taylor Gatto's radical treatise on public education, a New Society Publishers bestseller for 25 years, continues to advocate for the unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in an ever-more-rapidly changing world with an explosion of alternative routes to learning, it's poised to continue to shake the world of institutional education for many more years."--

"Omar Saif Ghobash was born in 1971 in the United Arab Emirates--the same year the country was founded--to an Arab father and a Russian mother. After a traumatizing experience losing his father to a violent attack in 1977, when he was only six years old, Ghobash began to realize the severe violence that surrounded him in his home country. As he grew older, eventually being appointed as the UAE Ambassador to Russia in 2008, he began to reflect on what...

"One of the central facts of human existence is that every known society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions--a faith, an ideology, a religion--that goes far beyond the life of the individual. These beliefs are an essential part of a shared identity. They have a unique power to define--and to divide--us and are a driving force in the politics of much of the world today. Throughout history they have most often been, in the widest sense, religious....

"With a new afterword from Jhumpa Lahiri, a new edition of the contemporary classic. Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. In The Namesake,...

"Ava, Caitlin, Mackenzie, Julie, and Parker are all driven to be perfect--no matter the cost. At first the girls think they have nothing in common, until they discover that they all hate the same person: handsome womanizer Nolan Hotchkiss, who's done things to hurt each of them. They come up with the perfect plan to murder Nolan--jokingly, of course. They'd never actually go through with it. But when Nolan turns up dead in the exact way they'd discussed,...

"One of the simplest and most powerful ways we understand people is as members of a generation. Your uncle is a bit racist because he's a baby boomer; your gen x boss is not a good team player; your cousin is constantly trying to go viral because he's gen z, and his generation is obsessed with fame. We also use generations as a tool for tracking how a society's values change over time (baby boomers liberated sex; millennials made it problematic),...

When more people on their strictly hypothetical hit list turn up dead, Mackenzie, Julie, Ava, Parker, and Caitlin must clear their names and keep from becoming the killer's next victims in this sequel to 'The Perfectionists.'