In this bitingly funny look at American culture, NPR's "All Things Considered" commentator Bob Garfield wanders the nation in search of its eccentrics, oddities, and dreamers. He finds, among others, a psychic for pets, wealthy earthworm ranchers, and the folks of Hamilton!, Ohio, who hope that an exclamation point will revitalize their town's economy as well as its name.

It's a time of transition for the American Right. The old ideas are failing. The conservative movement is disintegrating. And the European Americans who defined and created the United States are rising in defense of their own identity and interests. Gregory Hood is one of the most eloquent and insightful of the writers defining and promoting this transition. Waking Up from the American Dream, his first book, collects some of his most important work, including the legendary "A White Nationalist Memo to White Male Republicans," and a new essay, "Trump: The Last American," on the meaning of Donald Trump's nationalist-populist insurgency. The target of Hood's withering critique is "Americanism" itself, the classical liberal ideology that is dissolving America's white ethnic and cultural core. Hood explains his intellectual path from conservatism to White Nationalism-and why you should follow. For those seeking to understand the emerging White Right, Gregory Hood is one voice you can't afford to ignore. "In our movement, Gregory Hood is unquestionably the best writer of his generation. Indeed, he could be the best writer in the entire movement."-Jared Taylor, author of White Identity "Gregory Hood is a brilliant stylist with a great sense of humor as well as a firm grasp of the issues facing white America. I found these essays a pleasure to read, and I was impressed again and again by the depth of his insight into complex issues."-Kevin MacDonald, author of The Culture of Critique "Political theater in America is usually insufferably boring and smarmy, if occasionally comical and sometimes absurd. But when Gregory Hood weighs in, I pay attention. He has an insider's grasp of the political scene and a talent for teasing the farce out of the most dismal current affairs. But he's no mere heckler. He's got a dream for America and the West, too, and he employs humor and insight to reveal what is wrong and what could very well be the New Right."-Jack Donovan, author of Becoming a Barbarian "Gregory Hood is quite simply the best political columnist to have emerged on the authentic Right since the death of Sam Francis. He is free of illusions concerning not only the regime under which we live but also the confidence tricksters of the 'conservative movement' who makes such a comfortable living shadow-boxing with it. For countless European-descended Americans gradually coming to realize they have been lied to since birth, but unsure what to do next, Hood will be an invaluable guide."-F. Roger Devlin, author of Sexual Utopia in Power "Reading Gregory Hood's Waking Up from the American Dream has reawakened the pain of an old wound. For I am old enough to remember the old America. The America that sent a man to the Moon. The America of endless possibilities. And, yes, the America that was 90% white. And that America is gone. The new America is based on anti-white envy and sexual degeneracy pushed on our smallest children. The flag may still be the same, but the old America, the Dream, is dead. Gregory Hood has written a powerful and poignant book about what we have lost. I highly recommend this book."-Ramzpaul "Calling Mr. Hood's work 'must read' doesn't quite do it justice. Perhaps no voice has been as prescient in detailing the crisis unfolding in America for its historic majority population, and in noting the proposition nation is irredeemable. This is the seminal political work for understanding the situation white people face in America."-Paul Kersey, author of Escape from Detroit "Prolific. Punchy. Powerful. Gregory Hood is one of the most insightful and entertaining writers in the Alt Right."-Richard Spencer, National Policy Institute

When he died in 1937, destitute and emotionally as well as physically ruined, H. P. Lovecraft had no idea that he would one day be celebrated as the godfather of modern horror. A dark visionary, his work would influence an entire generation of writers, including Stephen King, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, and Anne Rice. Now, the most important tales of this distinctive American storyteller have been collected in a single volume by National Book Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates. In tales that combine the nineteenth-century gothic sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe with a uniquely daring internal vision, Lovecraft fuses the supernatural and mundane into a terrifying, complex, and exquisitely realized vision, foretelling a psychically troubled century to come. Set in a meticulously described New England landscape, here are harrowing stories that explore the total collapse of sanity beneath the weight of chaotic events—stories of myth and madness that release monsters into our world. Lovecraft's universe is a frightening shadow world where reality and nightmare intertwine, and redemption can come only from below.

Immigrants will always be a part of the American landscape and the American Dream will certainly be within reach for anyone with a desire to succeed. Yuvraj Ramsaroop shares his triumph as a Guyanese immigrant as he reveals his journey to realizing the American Dream. In this rich autobiographical account, the author makes a compelling case that will inspire anyone with a gut wrenching saga of courage and determination. Readers will be given a revealing look inside life on a sugar plantation in British Guiana during colonial times. In his own words, Ramsaroop shares a vivid account of how growing up in poor conditions should never be a hindrance to an education. Seeking a better life in Canada and then the United States, his unrelenting quest to overcome the hurdles most immigrants face is a remarkable achievement. -----From successfully completing a college education to owning a home and sending his two daughters to medical schools in the United States----Realizing the American Dream is an uplifting true story. Follow the path that he walked and witness how he beat the odds. Through his experiences you will discover the secrets to success and gain ideas for achieving your own.

Two young men were brought to the American colonies, one from England and the other from East Africa. Neither was here by choice since they were both brought here as slaves. That’s right, even the one from England. At this point, life did not offer either of them a great deal of promise. There was no racial distinction, only one of class. The British noblemen running the show had but one objective, and that was to turn the American colonies into their own kingdoms. The patriotic sentiments expressed in our founding documents were chiefly those of the peasantry. The last thing the ruling class sought was liberty and justice for all. Their primary concern was who might serve them in their domains. As the events of America’s history began to unfold, the two young men and their descendants were caught up in the development of our nation. The only guiding principle was a belief in freedom and equality. The peasants were not prepared for the duplicitous designs of their leaders. They went along with the program believing that those in charge had their best interests at heart. Today, we remain victims of that duplicity. It still exists because we are either unaware of it, or we have simply resigned ourselves to the inevitable. We have been conditioned to blame one another for our losses, when in fact we are all victims of the same grand design. The good thing is, we possess the power. In our democratic society, we the people are the ultimate overseers. Though the American dream may differ somewhat from person to person, it is still the guarantee that we will be allowed to achieve our dreams.

Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Desperate young lovers on the lam (They Live by Night), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist (Nightmare Alley), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress (No Man of Her Own), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name (Somewhere in the Night)—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream. Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it. Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.

In the author’s words “American Dreams was a radical experiment, because the whole idea was to let the stories erupt and evolve on their own. I would draw a word and then use that word in the most interesting sentence I could think of, and then create the next most interesting (and connected) sentence I could think of, and so on until the energy ran out. Much to my surprise, I wrote an entire chapter the first time I tried this technique. It was as if I had discovered a magic lamp. And that’s the way it continued: a single word created each chapter. As I created more characters, I made a chart and assigned them numbers and then I rolled dice to decide which character would run into which other character. After all, in real life you’re constantly running into new people. Who knows why?”

For some, the American Dream is a pre-fab house in the suburbs with 2.5 kids and a two-week vacation at the end of the year. To others, it is working a push fruit cart in Oakland in order to put food on the family's table in Oaxaca. In The American Dream Harmon Leon draws upon his experiences of adopting personas and disguises to infiltrate the various institutions of everyday life, living among a diverse range of subcultures and learning first hand how they see their vision and utopia. His incursions include working as a marijuana farmer in a hippie commune in Northern California; becoming a carnie in rural Indiana; visiting a tourist attraction in Mexico (that allows people to simulate illegally crossing the border); venturing to Hollywood while trying to climb the ranks in the star-making machine; and working in the strawberries fields of California with newly arrived immigrants. The American Dream is a funny, satirical, and ultimately poignant take on what it means to be an American today.

Do you fear for our democracy? Are you ready to throw in the towel? Don't! This is your guidebook to reassembling our hyperpolarized American society in six (not-so-easy) steps, written by the cohost of WNYC's On the Media. As is often observed, Trump is a symptom of a virus that has been incubating for at least fifty years. But not often observed is where the virus is imbedded: in the psychic core of our identity. In American Manifesto: Saving Democracy from Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves, popular media personality Bob Garfield examines the tragic confluence of the American preoccupation with identity and the catastrophic disintegration of the mass media. Garfield investigates how we've gotten to this moment when our identity is threatened by both the left and the right, when e pluribus unum is no longer a source of national pride, and why, when looking through this lens of identity, the rise of Trumpism is no surprise. Overlaying this crisis is the rise of the Facebook-Google duopoly and the filter bubble of social media, where identity is insular and immutable. But fear not! WNYC's On the Media cohost Garfield has ideas about how we may counter the forces of fragmentation—the manifesto itself: six steps to take to reassemble our fractured society. A quick, fascinating read, American Manifesto offers not only a vision of a country in extremis, but also a plan for how to address the ways in which our democracy is imperiled. Provocative, profound, and sometimes hilariously profane, American Manifesto is a call to action like no other.

A triple-shot anthology featuring the first three Mike Hammer novels—from the undisputed master of detective fiction. In Mickey Spillane's classic detective novels, the action exploded in a bone-crunching catharsis. Men and women didn't make love, they collided. Tough brutes used their fists to drive home a message. Tougher broads used guile. And no one's morals were loftier than the gutter. No apologies. Little redemption. They rendered critics powerless, shocked intellectuals, inspired a new wave of pulp mayhem, and left the public hungry for more. Given their hot, fever-pitch prose and breathless pacing, Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels quickly became one of the most successful series in publishing history—an innovative, no-holds-barred, ultravisceral explosion of sex and violence that made Hammer a literary legend, and Spillane, one of the bestselling authors of all time. After fifty years, neither has lost their power to sucker punch the reader. Find out for yourself in this omnibus featuring the first three Mike Hammer novels by the living master of the hard-boiled mystery... Includes: I, the Jury My Gun is Quick Vengeance is Mine!