"A brilliant, funny, generation-defining memoir about the double bind of crafting perfect adversity narratives for highly selective institutions, while fumbling through the far murkier reality of actual life in foster care and inpatient mental health treatment. As a child, Emi Nietfeld was caught between a hoarder mother who got her put on antipsychotic medication, but was also the only person to believe she was exceptional, and a state system exemplified...

"A masterful tale of social climbing and entrenched class distinctions, as seen through the eyes of an outsider who desperately wants in. Tense, hilarious, and bursting with gorgeous language. Stephanie Clifford is a 21st-century Edith Wharton." -J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Engagements. It's 2006 in the Manhattan of the young and glamorous. Money and class are colliding in a city that is about to go over a financial...

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class.

Examines the trend of Americans away from the traditionally mobile, risk-accepting, and adaptable tendencies that defined them for much of recent history, and toward stagnation and comfort, and how this development has the potential to make future changes more disruptive. --Publisher's description.

"This book explains why so many efforts by liberals to help the black underclass not only fail but often harm the intended beneficiaries. The intentions behind welfare programs may be noble, but in practice they have slowed the self-development that was necessary for other groups to advance. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they also have a long history of pricing blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative...