First incorporated in 1836, Bridgeport is notorious for a raucous political history that includes both liberating accomplishments and salacious scandals. From a state senator who spent several years in prison for racketeering to a mayor who was caught taking drugs while in office, Bridgeport has had its fair share of unlawful politicians. The political playground of the city has also seen invigorating leaders who fought hard to bring jobs, industries...

Over the last several decades, the United States has undergone one of the most radical social and economic transformations in its history: Finance has become America's dominant industry, while manufacturing has nearly disappeared. The financial sector has become increasingly criminalized, with widespread fraud going completely unpunished. Federal tax collections are at their lowest level in sixty years, with the wealthy enjoying the greatest tax reductions....

After the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked, 'Well, Doctor, what have we got-a Republic or a Monarchy?' Franklin's response: 'A Republic-if you can keep it.' This book argues: we couldn't keep it. A true republic privileges the common interest above the special interests. To do this, our Constitution established an elaborate system of checks and balances that disperses power among the branches of government, which it places in...

Provocative political commentator Arianna Huffington yanks back the curtain on the unholy alliance of CEOs, politicians, lobbyists, and Wall Street bankers who have shown a brutal disregard for those in the office cubicles and on the factory floors. As she puts it: The economic game is not supposed to be rigged like some shady ring toss on a carnival midway. Yet it has been, allowing corporate crooks to bilk the public out of trillions of dollars,...

A keen observer of America's social fabric, writer-director John Sayles uncovers the haunted past buried beneath a small Texas border town in this sprawling neo-western mystery. When a skeleton is discovered in the desert, lawman Sam Deeds, son of a legendary local sheriff, begins an investigation that will have profound implications both for him personally and for all of Rio County, a place still reckoning with its history of racial violence. Sayles's...

"A dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two people caught in the riptides of wealth, power, poverty, and corruption, by the celebrated author of Stay With Me"-- Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. Because his father has lost his job, Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers, begging when he must, dreaming of a big future. Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family....

A mythic and emotionally charged hero's journey that tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence, a commodity capable of unlocking humanity's greatest...

When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced...

"From the prizewinning journalist and internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world comes a major work that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future. In this unflinching exploration of corruption in America, Chayes exposes how corruption has thrived within our borders, from the titans of America's Gilded Age (Andrew...

A wandering Samurai-for-hire eventually finds a dramatic solution to the problems of a town with two warring clans.