Town Government

In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting: Follow the money. When McKinsey Comes to Town is a a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous.

This is the story of a local government manager who got hired by a small mountain town in the Colorado Rocky Mountains in his first city manager job. The job got complicated from the first day and developed into more and more complexity.

Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take. In The Fight to Save the Town, urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places.

A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the best-selling author of Nothing to Envy.

Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-have resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Listeners will find discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment; explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism; and a comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis.

A mage on the run. A doctor with a conscience. A city on the brink. Magic is outlawed. Robots enforce the law with deadly precision. In Cairnisle, trust is a risk only the rich can afford. Fourteen-year-old Fia scrapes by in the slums of Dirt Town with a knife in her boot and a secret in her blood: she’s an illegal mage. When a desperate escape lands her in the path of Aldrich Durante—a privileged young doctor from the gleaming streets above—their collision sparks a truth neither can ignore. Aldrich was raised to fear magic. But the girl he saves isn’t a monster—she’s a mirror ...

The great thing about Washington is no matter how many elections you lose, how many times you're indicted, how many scandals you've been tainted by, well, the great thing is you can always eat lunch in that town again. What keeps the permanent government spinning on its carousel is the freedom of shamelessness, and that mother's milk of politics, cash. What Julia Phillips did for Hollywood, Timothy Crouse did for journalists, and Michael Lewis did for Wall Street, Mark Leibovich does for our nation's capital.

McKinsey earns billions advising almost every major corporation as well as countless governments, including Britain's, the USA's and China's. It boasts of its ability to maximise efficiency while making the world a better place. Its millionaire partners and network of alumni go on to top jobs in the world's most powerful organisations. And yet, shielded by non-disclosure agreements, its work remains largely secret—until now. In this propulsive investigation, two prize-winning journalists reveal the reality.

Our current economic path is coming to an end. The signposts are all around us: sluggish growth, rising inequality, stubbornly high pockets of unemployment, and jittery financial markets, to name a few. Soon we will reach a fork in the road: One path leads to renewed growth, prosperity, and financial stability, the other to recession and market disorder.

In graduate school, Rachel Martin was sent to a small town in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy to attempt court mandated desegregation.

By following the struggle for survival of one small-town hospital, and the patients who walk, or are carried, through its doors, The Hospital takes listeners into the world of the American medical industry in a way no audiobook has done before. Americans are dying sooner, and living in poorer health. Alexander argues that no plan will solve America’s health crisis until the deeper causes of that crisis are addressed.

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe.

In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, renowned speaker and author of Strong Towns Charles L. Marohn, Jr., delivers an accessible and engaging exploration of America's transportation system, laying bare the reasons why it no longer works as it once did, and how to modernize transportation to better serve local communities.

Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first nonfiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment that occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters.

Seeking to understand the recent deaths and disappearances in their town, a disgraced homicide detective and a group of grieving high schoolers unwittingly join forces. But what this ragtag bunch of answer-seekers find will not only force them into a fight to save themselves and their town, but all of humanity as we know it... Welcome to Cedar Mills. PRAISE FOR CEDAR MILLS... “Plunges right into the action and never lets up!” Readers' Favorite "Cedar Mills is the kind of horror novel that stays with you..." Independent Book Review "Great action, a scary beast, and a beating heart in the...

Eamonn McCann’s account of what it is like to grow up a Catholic in a Northern Irish ghetto - first published in 1974 - quickly became a classic account of the feelings generated by British rule. The author was at the center of events in Derry which first brought Northern Ireland to world attention. He witnessed the gradual transformation of the civil rights movement from a mild campaign for “British Democracy” to an all-out military assault on the British state. This book describes the people involved in the war and gives an account of the springs of the "Catholic" opposition.

Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children—small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance.

In the idyllic town of Autumn Creek, the annual Harvest Festival is a celebration of life. But as the leaves turn gold, a secret as old as the mountains awakens. Two people have vanished, and a prize steer has been ritualistically slaughtered, its entrails arranged in a perfect, horrifying spiral . The idyllic mask is slipping, and the town’s folklore is about to become its eulogy. They sent a weapon to handle it. Rebuilt from the wreckage of a past massacre, Commander Quinn Mallory is more monster than woman, her body a fusion of scarred flesh and cutting-edge prosthetics . She and her ...

The annual UFO festival in New Mexico is a joke, a tourist trap. For five friends, it’s a way to kill a summer afternoon. But when they stumble upon a dusty, forgotten notebook filled with cryptic equations and terrifying eyewitness accounts, the joke ends. The notebook leads them to a shocking discovery: the legendary 1947 crash was real, but the story the world knows is a lie. The government isn’t just hiding a crashed ship; they're hiding a beacon. And it's been reactivated. Hunted by a shadowy organization that will kill to protect its secrets, the group is locked in a desperate ...

The mother of Matthew Shepard shares her story about her son's death and the choice she made to become an international gay rights activist.