A biography of a company that for years was on the cutting edge of development of a rapidly evolving and growing industry--production of streetcars and railroad cars.

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. They have isolated our best and brightest, whose positions at the top have never been more secure or more remote. The result has been an erosion of responsibility and accountability, an epidemic of shortsightedness, an increasingly hollow economic and political center, and millions of Americans gripped by apathy and hopelessness. By examining the people and forces behind the rise of big-money lobbying, legal and financial engineering, the demise of private-sector unions, and a hamstrung bureaucracy, Brill answers the question on everyone’s mind: How did we end up this way? Finally, he introduces us to those working quietly and effectively to repair the damages. At once a diagnosis of our national ills, a history of their development, and a prescription for a brighter future, Tailspin is a work of riveting journalism—and a welcome antidote to political despair.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.”—The New York Times 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. And it is the first complete, inside account of how President Obama persevered to push through the law, but then failed to deal with the staff incompetence and turf wars that crippled its implementation. But by chance America’s Bitter Pill ends up being much more—because as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare “policy” rethinks it from a hospital gurney—and combines that insight with his brilliant reporting. The result: a surprising new vision of how we can fix American healthcare so that it stops draining the bank accounts of our families and our businesses, and the federal treasury. Praise for America’s Bitter Pill “An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary.”—The New York Times Book Review “A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the ‘toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system.’ ”—Los Angeles Times “A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform.”—The Daily Beast “One of the most important books of our time.”—Walter Isaacson “Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossible—written an exciting book about the American health system.”—The New York Review of Books

This work looks at why many of America's schools are failing and relates how parents, activists, and education reformers are joining together to fix a system that works for adults but consistently fails the children it is meant to educate. In it the author takes a look at the adults who are fighting over America's failure to educate its children, and points the way to reversing that failure.

BLAST at 100 makes an original contribution to the understanding of a major modernist magazine. Providing new critical readings that consider the magazine’s influence within contexts that have not been acknowledged before – in the development of Irish and Spanish literature and culture in the twentieth century, for example, as well as in the areas of cultural studies, performance studies and the scholarship of teaching and learning – BLAST at 100 reconsiders the magazine’s complex legacy. In addition to situating the magazine in new and often unexpected contexts, BLAST at 100 also offers important new insights into the work of some of its most significant contributors, including Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Rebecca West. Contributors are: Philip Coleman, Simon Cutts, Andrzej Gąsiorek, Angela Griffith, Nicholas E. Johnson, Kathryn Laing, Christopher Lewis, J.C.C. Mays, Kathryn Milligan, Yolanda Morató, Nathan O’Donnell, Alex Runchman, Colm Summers, Tom Walker

From crochet to tapestry, fine French seams to intricate bobbin lace, this volume has explanations and illustrations for everything necessary for an excellent needlework project. It has information about the size of the needles to use and the thread type that works best for the project that is being worked. There are clear instructions and methods for each type of needle-work, and also suggestions for backing and framing. A complete guide for many projects. Probably not for a beginner.