I really loved High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (McSweeney’s Books) edited by Audrey Petty. It’s a series of edited first-person accounts of people who lived in Cabrini-Green, the Taylor Homes, and other projects in Chicago -- such a deep look at the human heart under duress, and a reminder that, even under pressure, we are always seeking goodness.

In the gripping first-person accounts of High Rise Stories, former residents of Chicagos iconic public housing projects describe life in the now-demolished high-rises. These stories of community, displacement, and poverty in the wake of gentrification give voice to those who have long been ignored, but whose hopes and struggles exist firmly at the heart of our national identity.

If you’ve ever wondered, "How did those Russians ever get into a state where they were killing each other on the street and cannibalizing and dragging each other way to secret prisons?" this book will give you the answer: they did it by enduring a long condition of extreme inequity, and then behaving just the way we would under those circumstances.

Vast in scope, based on exhaustive original research, and written with passion, narrative skill and human sympathy, this book offers an account of the Russian Revolution for a new generation.

An amazing survey of the literature of the Civil War, with one of the most daring and edgy introductions ever.

Regarded by many critics as Edmund Wilson's greatest book, Patriotic Gore brilliantly portrays the vast political, spiritual, and material crisis of the Civil War as reflected in the lives and writings of some thirty representative Americans.