Party City

Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography.

Step up to the gates. After years in the wilds, Lenk and his companions have come to the city that serves as the world's beating heart. The great charnel house where men die surer than any wilderness. They've come to claim payment for creatures slain, blood spilled at the behest of a powerful holy man. And Lenk has come to lay down his sword for good. But this is no place to escape demons.

On a December morning in 1982, the courtyard of a Beijing siheyuan - a lively quadrangle of homes - begins to stir. Auntie Xue’s son Jiyue is getting married today, and she is determined to make the day a triumph. Despite Jiyue’s woeful ignorance in matters of the heart - and the body. Despite a chef in training tasked with the onerous responsibility of preparing the banquet.

When Fumiko emerges after one month locked in her dorm room, she's already dead, leaving a half-smoked Marlboro Light and a cupboard of petrified food in her wake. For her boyfriend, Henrik, an aspiring translator, these remnants are like clues, propelling him forward in a search for meaning. Meanwhile, Fumiko, or perhaps her doppelganger, reappears: in line at the Louvre, on street corners and subway platforms, and on the dissection table of a group of young medical students, including “you”.

On Harlem’s 145th Street, things happen that don’t happen anywhere else in the world. Get to know Big Joe, who’s throwing his own funeral while he’s here to enjoy it, and everyone’s invited. Meet Kitty and Mack, teens with a love story more real than anything they’ve ever known. Follow Monkeyman, the quietest kid on the block and the last person you’d expect the Tigros gang to target. And don’t miss the block party of the year - the whole neighborhood will be there. From danger and despair to hilarity and joy, literary legend Walter Dean Myers captures every mood.

Are you excited about planning your next trip? Do you want an edible experience? Would you like some culinary guidance from a local? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this Eat Like a Local book is for you.

From the man widely hailed as “the Dean of Moderators” comes a lively and revealing book that pulls back the curtain on more than 40 years of televised political debate in America. A veteran newsman who has presided over 11 presidential and vice-presidential debates, Jim Lehrer gives readers a ringside seat for some of the epic political battles of our time, shedding light on all of the critical turning points and rhetorical faux pas that helped determine the outcome of America’s presidential elections—and with them the course of history.

Black voters have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party for the last fifty years - and for their loyalty, black Americans have been rewarded with worsening schools, collapsed families, skyrocketed incarceration rates, disappearing jobs, and rising crime. Crystal Wright, editor of the blog Conservative Black Chick, exposes how the Democratic Party has systematically betrayed black voters.