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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Through very readable storytelling and surprising insight, Steven D. Levitt, an award-winning University of Chicago economist, and co-author Stephen J. Dubner, a journalist and radio personality, show that economics is, at its root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they explore topics that don't seem to have a relationship, but it turns out they do.

It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America

Since it might be months before we can get a copy of Bob Woodward's recent book, we decided to read a similar book about the impacts of the Trump administration on US democracy. David Cay Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, knows Donald Trump better than any other. Having followed him since 1988, he goes inside the administration to show how the federal agencies that touch the lives of all Americans are being undermined.

November 1, 2018: Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope, the former Executive Director and Chairman of the Sierra Club, have come together to propose a bipartisan plan for saving the planet based on action instead of procrastination and hand wringing. They lay out a powerfully persuasive argument about how cities can play an outsize role in fighting and reversing the dangerous effects of a warming planet.

December 6, 2018: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Through heart wrenching stories, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee, WI to tell the story of eight families on the edge and the landlords that control their fate. Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data by the author, Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" recipient, this book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem.