An edited and abridged version of Alexis de Tocqueville's study of the United States, written in 1831 when the democracy was still young, encompassing the history, geography, politics, legal system, economy, and culture of America, and addressing issues such as a free press and racism that are still pertinent in the twenty-first century.

Follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years, a chaotic period that saw the rise to power of Kim Jong Il and the devastation of a famine that killed one-fifth of the population, illustrating what it means to live under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.

Rivalry between rich and poor gangs in 1960s Oklahoma leads to the deaths of three teenagers and intense soul-searching for one of the kids involved, a sensitive fourteen-year-old writer named Ponyboy.

"The book debunks stereotypes and shows how California's Great Central Valley intertwines a vanishing Old West and an emerging New West to create America's True West, a country of 21st-century rural and small-town Westerners of many races and ethnicities who often feel ignored or looked down on, several with ties to Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Texas, but all shaped as was Bergon by California's Great Valley"--Provided...