The critics unanimously agree that brilliant, award-winning reporter and bestselling author Steven Brill has written a powerful and sweeping narrative of the country in the first year of the September 12 era. As "the pages flutter" -- marvels one critic -- "in a race to learn the rest of the story we thought we knew so well," Brill takes us from the White House Situation Room to the living rooms of victims' families, from courtrooms to boardrooms, from border crossings to airport tarmacs. We watch as a Customs inspector struggles to protect New York harbor from a dirty bomb; a storekeeper at Ground Zero rebuilds his shoe repair shop; a Silicon Valley entrepreneur lobbies to get his baggage screening systems into every airport; Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge battles the bureaucratic minefields of Washington; a New Jersey widow struggles to help her three children cope with the loss of their father; and John Ashcroft seizes the moment to become the most powerful and controversial attorney general in a generation, while the head of the ACLU tries to block him. The result is a gritty narrative -- and trailblazing journalism -- that inspires us all as it tells the real story of how Americans moved to defend and rebuild their lives and their country.

From the bestselling author of Cultural Literacy , a passionate and cogent argument for reforming the way we teach our children "Ought to be read by anyone interested in the education and training of the next generation of Americans."--Glenn C. Altschuler, Boston Globe Why, after decades of commissions, reforms, and efforts at innovation, do our schools continue to disappoint us? In this comprehensive and thought-provoking book, educational theorist E. D. Hirsch, Jr. offers a masterful analysis of how American ideas about education have veered off course, what we must do to right them, and most importantly why . He argues that the core problem with American education is that educational theorists, especially in the early grades, have for the past sixty years rejected academic content in favor of "child-centered" and "how-to" learning theories that are at odds with how children really learn. The result is failing schools and widening inequality, as only children from content-rich (usually better-off) homes can take advantage of the schools' educational methods. Hirsch unabashedly confronts the education establishment, arguing that a content-based curriculum is essential to addressing social and economic inequality. A nationwide, specific, grade-by-grade curriculum established in the early school grades can help fulfill one of America's oldest and most compelling dreams: to give all children, regardless of language, religion, or origins, the opportunity to participate as equals and become competent citizens. Hirsch not only reminds us of these inspiring ideals, he offers an ambitious and specific plan for achieving them.

Workers at Risk is a powerful and moving documentary of workers routinely exposed to toxic chemicals. Products and services we all depend on—glass bottles, computers, processed foods and fresh flowers, dry cleaning, medicines, even sculpture and silkscreened toys—are produced by workers in constant contact with more than 63,000 commercial chemicals. For many of them, the risk of death is a way of life. More than seventy of them speak here of their jobs, their health, and the difficult choices they face in coming to grips with the responsibilities, risks, fears, and satisfactions of their work. Some struggle for information and acknowledgment of their health risks; others struggle to put out of their minds the dangers they know too well. Through extensive interviews, the authors have captured in these voices that double bind of the chemical worker: "If I had known that it would be that lethal, that it could give me or one of my children cancer, I would have refused to work. But it's a matter of survival and we just don't consider all these things. Meanwhile, we've got to make money to survive."