America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s acclaimed book on how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing—and failing to change—the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare.

In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half-century, America's core values - meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even democracy itself - have somehow managed to power its decline into dysfunction.

In Race to the Bottom, Luke Rosiak uncovers the shocking reason why American education is failing: Powerful special interest groups are using our kids as guinea pigs in vast ideological experiments. These groups’ initiatives aren’t focused on making children smarter—but on implementing a radical agenda, no matter the effect on academic standards.

The true story of a young teacher attempting to change lives in a troubled educational system. According to Ilana Garon, popular books and movies are inundated with the myth of the "hero teacher" - the one who charges headfirst into dysfunctional inner-city schools like a firefighter into an inferno, bringing the student victims to safety through a combination of charisma and innate righteousness. The students are then "saved" by the teacher’s idealism, empathy, and faith. This is not that type of book....

Education is in bad shape in America and beyond today. It’s obvious. Everyone perceives it. Something is going badly wrong in our schools. Our children aren’t learning as they should be. Their mastery of core academic curriculum like reading, writing, history, mathematics, science, and civics has declined to crisis levels and shows no signs of improvement. Meanwhile, they’re all learning to be activists, turning their backs on their nations, societies, and even their parents and religions.

From coronavirus lockdowns to critical race theory in the classroom, it has become crystal clear that America’s schools aren’t working for America’s students and parents. No one knows this better than Betsy DeVos. In Hostages No More, DeVos unleashes her candid thoughts about working in the Trump administration, recounts her battles over the decades to put students first, hits back at “woke” curricula in our schools, and details the reforms America must pursue to fix its long and badly broken education system.

In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system - one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware.

President Bill Clinton's My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to serving the public. It is the fullest, most concretely detailed, most nuanced account of a presidency ever written, and a testament to the positive impact on America and on the world of his work and his ideals.

In the past, you may have thought it was impossible to implement any new patterns in the education system. With all the rules and regulations, teachers think they can’t make any sort of lasting impact on the system…until now. Social-emotional learning is an approach to education that can increase trust and emotional safety in the classroom and help each child find fulfillment, joy, and success in education! Know exactly how to identify and tackle the problems in the education system, help struggling students, and make education student-centered again.

A leading conservative intellectual defends charter schools against the teachers' unions, politicians, and liberal educators who threaten to dismantle their success.

John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.

Are you above average? Is your child an A student? Is your employee an introvert or an extrovert? Every day we are measured against the yardstick of averages, judged according to how close we come to it or how far we deviate from it. The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average—like GPAs, personality test results, and performance review ratings—reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our consciousness that we don't even question it. That assumption, says Harvard's Todd Rose, is spectacularly—and scientifically—wrong.

An indictment of the American educational system criticizes the fact that the system has discarded the traditional goals of transmitting knowledge and fostering cognitive skills in favor of building self-esteem and promoting social harmony.

Over the last few decades, Americans have turned college admissions into a terrifying and occasionally devastating process, preceded by test prep, tutors, all sorts of stratagems, all kinds of rankings, and a conviction among too many young people that their futures will be determined and their worth established by which schools say yes and which say no.

Ken Robinson is one of the world's most influential voices in education, and his 2006 TED Talk on the subject is the most viewed in the organization's history. Now, the internationally recognized leader on creativity and human potential focuses on one of the most critical issues of our time: how to transform the nation's troubled educational system.

Part memoir, part manifesto, Radical is this fearless advocate's incisive, intensely personal call-to-arms. Rhee combines the story of her own extraordinary experience with dozens of compelling examples from schools she's worked in and studied-from students from unspeakable home lives who have thrived in the classroom to teachers whose radical methods have produced unprecedented leaps in achievement. Radical chronicles Rhee's awakening to the potential of every child, her rage at the special interests blocking badly-needed change, and her recognition that it will take a grassroots movement to create outstanding public schools.

When Mark Zuckerberg announced in front of a cheering Oprah audience his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools - and to solve the education crisis in every city in America - it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their plans soon ran into a constituency not so easily moved - Newark's key education players, fiercely protective of their billion-dollar-per-annum system.

Barack Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, inspired the world. But the great promise of “Change We Can Believe In” was immediately tested by the threat of another Great Depression, a worsening war in Afghanistan, and an entrenched and deeply partisan system of business as usual in Washington. Despite all the coverage, the backstory of Obama’s historic first year in office has until now remained a mystery.

In The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies, Jonathan Alter uses his unmatched access and deep knowledge of politics and history to produce the first full account of America at the crossroads. He pierces the bubble of the White House and of the presidential campaigns with exclusive reporting and rare historical insight. More than a campaign book, this is the epic story of an embattled president facing a historic moment he considered more pivotal than 2008.

In this full and frank memoir - a personal story of duty, family, justice, politics and resilience - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reflects on his rise, fall, and rise in politics, and recounts his defining personal and political moments and tough but necessary lessons he has learned along the way.

Mitt Romney has masterfully positioned himself as the front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Even though he's become a household name, the former Massachusetts governor remains an enigma to many in America, his character and core convictions elusive, his record little known. Who is the man behind that high-wattage smile? In this definitive, unflinching biography by Boston Globe investigative reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, listeners will finally discover the real Romney.

With Barack Obama's historic election in 2008, pundits proclaimed the Republicans as dead as the Whigs of yesteryear. Yet even as Democrats swooned, a small cadre of Republican operatives, including Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, and Chris Jankowski, began plotting their comeback with a simple yet ingenious plan. These men had devised a way to take a tradition of dirty tricks - known to political insiders as "ratf**king" - to a whole new unprecedented level.

Bernie Sanders' campaign for the presidency of the United States has galvanized supporters all over the country, drawing attention to issues of economic, racial, and social justice and spotlighting one of the most interesting and unconventional candidates in decades.

Michael Bloomberg is not only New York City's 108th mayor; he is a business genius and self-made billionaire. He has run the toughest city in America with an independence and show of ego that first brought him great success and eventually threatened it. Yet while Bloomberg is internationally known and admired, few people know the man behind the carefully crafted public persona.

In the first comprehensive biography of Chavez, Miriam Pawel offers a searching yet empathetic portrayal. Chavez emerges here as a visionary figure with tragic flaws; a brilliant strategist who sometimes stumbled; and a canny, streetwise organizer whose pragmatism was often at odds with his elusive, soaring dreams.

Nothing to Fear brings to life a fulcrum moment in American history - the tense, feverish first 100 days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, when he and his inner circle completely reinvented the role of the federal government.

In their second book on our current White House occupant, Ivins and Dubose take the wire brush to the Bush presidency and show how he has applied the same flawed strategies he used in governing Texas to running the largest superpower in the world.

"I was prime minister for three years and three days. Three years and three days of resilience. Three years and three days of changing the nation. Three years and three days for you to judge." On Wednesday 23 June 2010, with the government in turmoil, Julia Gillard asked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for a leadership ballot. The next day, Julia Gillard became Australia's 27th prime minister, and our first female leader.

An eye-opening account of how Congress today really works - and doesn’t - that follows the dramatic journey of the sweeping financial reform bill enacted in response to the Great Crash of 2008. The founding fathers expected Congress to be the most important branch of government and gave it the most power. When Congress is broken - as its justifiably dismal approval ratings suggest - so is our democracy.

In this unique insider account, John H. Sununu pays tribute to his former boss - an intelligent, thoughtful, modest leader - and his overlooked accomplishments. Though George H. W. Bush is remembered for orchestrating one of the largest and most successful military campaigns in history - the Gulf War - Sununu argues that conventional wisdom misses many of Bush's other great achievements.