Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Political

Six months ago, Mia Rhodes was a Seattle office manager, toiling away from nine to five and spending her weekends managing her online political competition, Ameritocracy. Now, that competition is spreading across the American political landscape, making Mia a celebrity and giving Ameritocracy a real shot at upending the two-party system in the 2020 election. But as the final voting draws near, Mia is betrayed by one of the people she trusts most, throwing Ameritocracy into disarray, and possibly ending her dream of changing American politics forever.

Mia Rhodes created Ameritocracy to make it possible for anyone to become president. But as her online political competition races towards its finale, it’s poised to elect a Machiavellian manipulator with a winning smile, leaving Mia to wonder whether she’s changed anything at all. As the competition builds to its spectacular final debate in Washington, DC, Mia and her team must question everything they’ve done so far, and defeat a threat to democracy they had never imagined.

A man known only as K. arrives in a mysterious town where an all-powerful castle filled with unseen "gentlemen" controls every aspect of life. When the ridiculous bureaucracy of the castle officials makes K.'s original reason for coming to the village, working as a land surveyor, seem impossible, K. must find a way to make a life within a system where the only answer he ever seems to get is "no". K. struggles in vain to get in contact with anyone at all within the castle to help solve his predicament. But still, there may be some tenderness to be found in this absurdist landscape.

Though written in the 1930s, Anthem addresses controversial subjects in society that are still relevant today: equality, environment, sexism, mental health, the role of government. In revisiting this book and its many subjects, one keeps catching glimpses of understandings, and connections with our society today.

In this novella, set in the French Revolution, Leonid Andreyev explores the behavior of a people as it prepares to exchange one form of public servitude for another. As with most of the works of Andreyev, the mood is somber and reflects the author's extreme disillusion with the fallout from the Russian revolution, which he had initially greeted with enthusiasm.

Is being a part of the "herd" really a good thing? In Ayn Rand's Anthem, we join our protagonist in this dystopian future world where humankind's compulsion to seek and live in the "safety of numbers" can go horribly wrong. Anthem was published in 1938 but is scarily relevant to our modern world.

A year after the adventure of The Thirty-Nine Steps, Major Richard Hannay is plucked from the trenches of the Western Front, and sent on a perilous journey through the very heart of the German empire, to Constantinople. There, he and his small band of missionaries must frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world aimed at dealing a crushing blow to Britain's interests in the East, and winning the war for Germany.

The classic dystopian novella, Anthem, is one of the earliest books to explore a theme which has become a standard motif in science fiction literature: the search for individualistic expression in a repressive and rigorously organized society.

This book contains two plays by Henrik Ibsen. Norma is a satirical opera designed as a dramatic parody of Vincenzo Bellini's opera Norma, in which the characters are portrayed as central figures in the political life of contemporary Norway. St. John's Night is a fairy-tale comedy that takes place during a midsummer feast on a farm in Telemark. It is inspired by many sources, most notably A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, and features many of the same themes.

After a lifetime of political disillusionment, Mia Rhodes created an alternative to the two-party system: Ameritocracy. Part American Idol, part Iowa Caucus, her online political competition will find the most popular independent candidate in America and give them a genuine shot to win the presidency. Anyone can run...The American people vote online...The winner receives instant fame and a campaign war chest to battle the Democrats and Republicans in 2020.

Ramona Ortegna, the foster child of Señora Moreno, is much loved by all who live and work at the Moreno ranch, except Señora herself, who cannot bring herself to think of the girl as anything but a mixed-blood child. Half white, half Indian, Ramona had been adopted by the Senora’s sister who then entrusted the child to her upon her death. Already embittered by the loss to the Americans of much of her southern California land as the result of the 1846 Mexican-American War, the pious old woman is also distraught by the near destruction of California’s Catholic missions.

A self-serving dictator is preparing to engage his country in a war that none of the citizens want to participate in. The dictator is well protected by his loyal guards, leaving his subjects with two options: fight or pray for peace. But wait....