Middle America

A mosaic of seven regular townsfolk are going about their days, blissfully unaware their lives are about to interweave, interchange and interact; entangling into such a messy web that, together—and unbeknownst to them—they end up changing the face of America forevermore. In the mold of movies such as Traffic, Magnolia & The Usual Suspects, In the Middle of Middle America follows multiple characters, allowing the listener to become a fly on the wall to observe seven lives as they entangle into such a mess that it all leads to a head-spinning twist.

Retired army colonel and New York Times bestselling author Andrew J. Bacevich provides a searing reassessment of U.S. military policy in the Middle East over the past four decades. From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the...

On February 28, 2026, bombs fell on Tehran. The Supreme Leader was killed. Within hours, oil surged past $170 a barrel, global markets plunged, and the world stood on the edge of a wider war. This was not a sudden crisis. It was the detonation of a fuse lit decades earlier. Most people believe this conflict began in 1979 — with the Iranian hostage crisis, the birth of the Islamic Republic, and chants of “Death to America.” They are wrong.

'Beautifully written and deeply researched' The Observer Upon victory in 1945, Britain still dominated the Middle East. But her motives for wanting to dominate this crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa were changing. Where ‘imperial security’ – control of the route to India – had...

Offering insight into self-managing some, or all, of a retirement portfolio, this book discusses the necessary information for those approaching retirement, as well as those already in retirement. It also offers ideas about what things to consider before making investments within a retirement portfolio.

In this groundbreaking audiobook, Russ Alan Prince and Lewis Schiff examine the far-reaching impact of the middle-class millionaires - people who enjoy a net worth ranging from one to 10 million dollars who have earned rather than inherited their wealth. Comprising 8.4 million households, the working rich are exerting a powerful influence on our attitudes and on society.

On January 18, 1984, Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated by a pair of gunmen outside his office. His murder, in the wake of the bombing of the U.S. Marines' barracks, Palestinian guerrilla warfare, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, was just one more shocking headline in a city ravaged by chaos. There was no investigation. Four decades later, the question of who killed Malcolm and why still haunts Kerr's family, including his son Steve, a now world-famous basketball player and NBA coach.

What happens when democracy produces "bad" outcomes? Is democracy good because of its outcomes or despite them? This "democratic dilemma" is one of the most persistent, vexing problems for America abroad, particularly in the Middle East. When Islamist parties rise to power through free elections, the United States has too often been ambivalent or opposed, preferring instead pliable dictators. With this legacy of democratic disrespect in mind, and drawing on new interviews with top American officials, Shadi Hamid explores universal questions of morality, power, and hypocrisy.

‘What sets Valeria Luiselli’s new novel apart is its clarity, its immediacy, its vividness’ COLM TÓIBÍN ‘Inventive, brilliant, playful … dazzles on every page’ KATIE KITAMURA From the award-winning author of Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli, comes a wondrous, tender and...

From the first cannonballs fired by American warships at North African pirates to the conquest of Falluja by the Marines, and from the early American explorers who probed the sources of the Nile to the diplomats who strove for Arab-Israeli peace, the United States has been dramatically involved in the Middle East. For well over two centuries, American statesmen, merchants, and missionaries, both men and women, have had a profound impact on the shaping of this crucial region.

Steven A. Cook charts the course of the United States' encounter with the Middle East from the mid-twentieth century through the present day. Looking back, Cook makes a bold claim: the US was—despite setbacks and moral costs—successful. That record of achievement began to unravel in the early 1990s when policymakers embarked upon a set of overly ambitious policies to remake the Middle East. Cook highlights that calls to withdraw from the region are rash given the important interests the US maintains in the region.

In The Whigs' America, Joseph W. Pearson explores a variety of topics, including the Whigs' understanding of the role of the individual in American politics, their perceptions of political power and the rule of law, and their impressions of the past and what should be learned from history. Long dismissed as a party bereft of ideas, Pearson provides a counterbalance to this trend through an attentive examination of writings from party leaders, contemporaneous newspapers, and other sources.

Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere: Tales of Humor and Healing from Rural America is a collection of humorous and poignant stories from a veterinarian in a small, dusty farming and ranching community in rural West Texas. Dr. Brock gives you an intimate look into his small-town and big-hearted perspective on life, animals, and their owners. His unique perspective and tales of doctoring beloved pets, cantankerous livestock, and occasionally their owners will make you smile, laugh, cry, and evoke every other emotion under the sun.

A work of true crime following one American family’s search for the truth after a 1984 murder in war-torn Beirut, where the Iranian revolution collided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, setting off the geopolitical conflagration that burns to this day, from acclaimed and bestselling author...

Self-proclaimed liberals, Ellen and her “old man”, struggle to fit in with their fellow (mostly right-wing) "Trailer Dogs", as they recover from devastating personal and financial losses. Often profane, often caustic, and frequently satirical, Revenge of the Trailer Dogs takes up where Garrison’s first audiobook left off, at “The Resort”, a trailer park populated by wackos, racists, Evangelicals, hippies, NRA enthusiasts, transsexuals, homosexuals, and lesbians, each with their own views and prejudices.

A groundbreaking work of history about the American middle class—its rise, why it faltered, and who truly benefited from its dominance. In Promised Land, David Stebenne “invites us to remember those decades in which both the middle class and the Democratic Party were ascendant” (The Wall...

When thinking about America's role in the world, Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush, and Barack Obama may not seem to have a lot in common. But they do. While divided by background, generation, and political party, they exemplify a distinct and underappreciated tradition of American leadership: The Middle Way. As the scholar and former senior foreign policy official Derek Chollet shows in this deeply researched book, these three presidents took a centrist - and effective - approach to foreign policy.

The mainstream media and ultra-liberal Democrats can't understand why white voters, especially white men, are so angry. Wayne Allyn Root is an angry white male, and he knows why. This is his story, his testimony, and a look at what's happening to an entire group of good people: law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working, middle-class people. They're being targeted, silenced, intimidated, persecuted - virtually wiped off the planet.

America's political and economic elite spent so long making such terrible decisions that they caused the collapse of 2008. So how can they continue down the same road? No one in charge wants to publicly acknowledge is that things are still pretty great for the people who run America. It was an accident of history, Jeff Faux explains, that after World War II the US could afford a prosperous middle class, a dominant military, and a booming economic elite at the same time. For the past three decades, all three have been competing, with the middle class always losing. Next the military.

Trailer Dogs is the profoundly profane, hysterically funny, yet often poignant, story of survival in today's near-extinct middle class. After losing their small business and life savings to the government's unfathomable shutdown, the author and her husband are forced to sell their home and move into a travel trailer.