Arcadia Public Library

"America is becoming a class-based society. It is now conventional wisdom to focus on the wealth of the top 1 percent-especially the top 0.01 percent-and how the ultra-rich are concentrating income and prosperity while incomes for most other Americans are stagnant. But the most important, consequential, and widening gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else. Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes...

Surrealist filmmaker Gary Burns (Waydowntown, A problem with fear) joins journalist Jim Brown on an outing to the burbs. Amidst the fresh foundations of monster homes, the two explore the dark side of suburbia and create a provocative reflection on why we live the way we do. Playing off sitcoms and reality TV, Burns and Brown turn the documentary genre inside out, crafting a vivid account of life in The late suburban age.

This historical satire, based on Heinrich Mann's world-famous novel, Der Untertan, is ranked by film critics among the 100 Most Significant German Films of all time. In Mann's biting critique of conservative Wilhelmine Germany, written during WWI, Diederich Hessling learns an important lesson for an ambitious man: one must first serve power to gain power for oneself. From then on, his modus operandi is to bow to superiors and kick underlings.

Harry Angstrom, now middle-aged and the chief sales representative of a Toyota dealership, attempts to cope with such problems as inflation, governmental ineffectiveness, the return of his prodigal son, and a chance encounter with an old girlfriend

"Paul Walden is not an alpha lobster, the hypermasculine crustacean king who intimidates the other male lobsters, beds all the lady lobsters, and "wins" at life. At least not according to the ego-bursting feedback he's given in his freshman seminar. But Paul finds a funny, faithful friend in Roby Smalls, and maybe -- oh god, please -- he's beginning to catch the interest of smart, beautiful Natalia Gutierrez. Cruising through high school as a sauced-out,...

A New York Times bestseller
America's unique prosperity is based on its creation of a middle class. In the twentieth century, that middle class provided the workforce, the educated skills, and the demand that gave life to the world's greatest consumer economy. It was innovative and dynamic; it eclipsed old imperial systems and colonial archetypes. It gave rise to a dream: that if you worked hard and followed the rules you would prosper...

Twenty-two-year-old Rabbit Angstrom is a salesman in a local department store, father of a preschool-age son, and husband to an alcoholic wife who was his second-best high school sweetheart. The squalor and tragedy of their lives reminds us that salvation is a personal undertaking.

"Barcelona, 1901. The city is going through times of great social upheaval. The stark misery of the most disadvantaged population clearly contrasts with the lavish wealth seen in the wealthiest parts of town. Dalmau Sala, son of an executed anarchist, is a young painter who lives trapped between two worlds. On the one hand, his family and Emma, the woman he loves, are firm defenders of the working class' rights and its struggle for justice; defenders...

"The scourge of America's economy isn't the success of the 1 percent--quite the opposite. The real problem is the government's well-meaning but misguided attempt to reduce the payoffs for success."--