Reader's Corner

Growing up on Chicago’s Westside in the 90’s, Arshay Cooper knows the harder side of life. Street corners full of gangs, hallways of his apartment complex haunted by drug addicts, his mother a recovering addict. Arshay spent his school days in the home-ec kitchen dreaming of becoming a chef. And then one day he notices a boat in the school lunchroom, and a poster that reads “Join the Crew Team.”

This is an encore presentation.

In "Sunny Days," through rigorous research and extensive interviews of key Sesame Street figures, bestselling author David Kamp has produced a fun and fascinating work of cultural history.

Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master’s program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. Soon, at the age of 22, she was recruited into the CIA, one of the youngest female officers.

This is an encore presentation.

Supreme Inequality is a revelatory examination of the conservative direction of the Supreme Court over the last fifty years. Contrary to what Americans would like to believe, the Court does surprisingly little to protect the rights of the poor and disadvantaged.

Three-quarters of Americans believe that a group of unelected government and military officials secretly direct national policy in the United States. Conservatives fear the ever-growing bureaucracy is encroaching on individual rights. Liberals fear the military-industrial complex is pushing us into endless wars. The debate over the “deep state” raises core questions about the future of American democracy. Is it possible for career government officials to be politically neutral? How vast should

This is an encore presentation.

In Up All Night, author and journalist Lisa Napoli tells how we went from an age of nightly news broadcasts on three national networks to the age of 24-hour channels and constantly breaking news. The answer—thanks to Ted Turner and an oddball cast of cable television visionaries, big league rejects, and nonunion newbies—can be found in the basement of an abandoned country club in Atlanta. Because it was there, in the summer of 1980, that this motley crew somehow, against all odds, launched CNN.

Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in the Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it?