From the hosts of the Civics 101 podcast—and a New Yorker cartoonist—“an informative and appealing civics lesson for first-time voters and old hands alike” (Publishers Weekly). Do you know what the Secretary of Defense does all day? Are you sure you know the difference between the House and the Senate? Have you been pretending you know what Federalism is for the last twenty years? Don’t worry—you’re not alone. The American government and its processes can be dizzyingly complex and obscure. Until now! Within this book are the keys to knowing what you’re talking about when you argue politics with the uncle you only see at Thanksgiving, and a quick reference to turn to when the nightly news boggles your mind. This approachable and informative guide gives you the lowdown on everything from the three branches of government to what you can actually do to make your vote count to how our founding documents affect our daily lives. Now is the time to finally understand who does what, how they do it, and the best way to get them to listen to you. “An easily digestible, illustrated guidebook to the agencies and institutions that make up the federal government . . . Just the thing for students of civics—which, these days, should include the entire polity.” —Kirkus Reviews
From the hosts of the Civics 101 podcast—and a New Yorker cartoonist—“an informative and appealing civics lesson for first-time voters and old hands alike” (Publishers Weekly). Do you know what the Secretary of Defense does all day? Are you sure you know the difference between the House and the Senate? Have you been pretending you know what Federalism is for the last twenty years? Don’t worry—you’re not alone. The American government and its processes can be dizzyingly complex and obscure. Until now! Within this book are the keys to knowing what you’re talking about when you argue politics with the uncle you only see at Thanksgiving, and a quick reference to turn to when the nightly news boggles your mind. This approachable and informative guide gives you the lowdown on everything from the three branches of government to what you can actually do to make your vote count to how our founding documents affect our daily lives. Now is the time to finally understand who does what, how they do it, and the best way to get them to listen to you. “An easily digestible, illustrated guidebook to the agencies and institutions that make up the federal government . . . Just the thing for students of civics—which, these days, should include the entire polity.” —Kirkus Reviews
IT had rained in torrents all the way down from Schenectady, so when Jack Duane glimpsed the lights of what looked to be a big house through the trees, he braked his battered, convertible sedan to a stop at the side of the road. Mud lay along the fenders and running boards; mud and water had spumed up and freckled Duane’s face and hat. He pulled off the latter—it was soggy—and slapped it on the seat beside him, leaning out and squinting through the darkness and falling water. He was on the last lap of a two weeks’ journey from San Francisco, his objective being New York City. There he hoped to wangle a job as foreign correspondent from an old crony, J. J. Molloy, now editor of the New York Globe. Adventurer, journalist, globetrotter, Duane was of the type that is always on the move. “It’s a place, anyway, Moses,” he said to the large black man beside him, his servitor and bodyguard, who had accompanied him everywhere for the past three years. “Somebody lives there; they ought to have some gas.” “Yasah,” said Moses, staring past Duane’s shoulder, “it’s a funny-looking place, suh.” Duane agreed. Considering that they were seventy miles from New York, in the foothills of the Catskills, with woods all around them and the rain pouring down, the thing they saw through the trees, some three hundred yards from the country road, was indeed peculiar. It looked more like a couple of Pullman cars coupled together and lighted, than like a farmer’s dwelling. “Fenced in, too,” said Duane, pointing to the high steel fence that bordered the road, separating them from the object of their vision. “And look there—” A fitful flash of lightning in the east, illuminating the distant treetops, showed up the towering steel and network of a high-voltage electric line’s tower. The roving journalist muttered something to express his puzzlement, and got out of the car. Moses followed him. “Well,” said Duane presently, when they had stared a moment longer, “whatever it is, I’m barging in. We’ve got to have some gas or we’ll never make New York tonight.” MOSES agreed. The two men started across the road—the big Negro hatless and wearing a slicker—the reporter in a belted trench coat, his brown felt hat pulled out of shape on his head. “It’s a big thing,” Duane said as he and Moses halted at the fence and peered through. Distantly, he could see now that the mysterious structure in the woods was at least a hundred yards long, flat-topped and black as coal except from narrow shafts of light that came from its windows. “And look at the light coming out of the roof.” That was, indeed, the most peculiar feature of this place they had discovered. From a section of the roof near the center, as though through a skylight, a great white light came out, illuminating the slanting rain and the bending trees.
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