Berthoud Community Library District

Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity. Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper,...

Who hasn't wondered for a split second what the world would be like if a person who is the object of your affliction ceased to exist? But then you've probably never heard of The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of the homicidal arts. To gain admission, a student must have an ethical reason for erasing someone who deeply deserves a fate no worse (nor better) than death. The campus of this "Poison Ivy League" college--its...

"By early April 1914, Colorado Governor Elias Ammons thought the violence in his state's strike-bound southern coal district had eased enough that he could begin withdrawing the Colorado National Guard, deployed six months earlier as military occupiers. But Ammons misread the signals, and on April 20, 1914, a full-scale battle erupted between the remaining militiamen and armed strikers living in a tent colony at the small railroad town of Ludlow....

"An exploration of how workers in the U.S. have been invisible for decades because the mainstream news media lost sight of the American working class"--

In this richly detailed and eye-opening book, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between American companies and their workers. Through the stories of four major employers--General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola--he shows how big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits. At the height of the post-World War II economy, these companies also believed...

SEASON 1: Based on the popular British series of the same name, the American version follows the daily interactions of a group of idiosyncratic office employees at the Scranton, Pa. office of the Dunder Mifflin paper supply company via a documentary film crew's cameras. Features earnest, but clueless, regional manager Michael Scott, who believes himself an exceptional boss, and his office staff, who tolerate Michael's inappropriate behavior only...

Originally published on the eve of the 1848 European revolutions, "The Communist Manifesto" is a condensed and incisive account of the world view Marx and Engles developed during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration. Formulating the principles of dialectical materialism, they believed that labor creates wealth, hence capitalism is exploitive and antithetical to freedom.

Killing for Coal offers an original perspective on the Ludlow Massacre and the Great Coalfield War. In a sweeping story that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews examines the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers' strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization,...

The full-time job is disappearing-is landing the right gig the new American Dream? One in three American workers is now a freelancer. This "gig economy"-one that provides neither the guarantee of steady hours nor benefits-emerged out of the digital era and has revolutionized the way we do business. High-profile tech start-ups such as Uber and Airbnb are constantly making headlines for the disruption they cause to the industries they overturn. But,...