In Failure By Design,  economist Josh Bivens explains how policymakers have played a role in creating our economic system. He demonstrates how policy choices made by elected leaders over the past four decades have resulted in the deck being stacked against working Americans – but that it didn’t have to be.

In The Futures, Emily Lambert, senior writer at Forbes magazine, tells us the rich and dramatic history of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, which together comprised the original, most bustling futures market in the world.

What really brought down singer Buddy Holly’s plane? Gary W. Moore has new twist on the tragic crash and says the investigation should be reopened in Hey Buddy. Later, law professor Herman Schwartz says the gerrymandering orgy begins with a bizarre menagerie of electoral districts that make a travesty of democracy.

Arizona is no longer covering transplant operations under its Medicaid program because it’s too expensive. Mark Stephens, executive with the National Patient Advocate Foundation tells us what he thinks of that decision.  Then, is there an autism vaccine connection? In The Panic Virus, journalist  Seth Mnookin draws on interviews with parents, public-health advocates, scientists, and anti-vaccine activists to tackle a fundamental question: How do we decide what the truth is?

A federal judge in Virginia declared part of the health care bill unconstitutional and Dr. Margaret Flowers says that this ruling is just another sign of the deterioration of this complicated piece of legislation. Later Frances O’Brien with A Benevolent Virus, a collection of poignant and gripping stories about spirituality and near-death experiences.

Noted historian Thaddeus Russell tells a new and surprising story about the origins of American freedom. Rather than crediting the standard textbook icons, Russell demonstrates that it was those on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles helped legitimize the taboo and made America the land of the free in A Renegade History of the United States.

Did the Tea Party movement have any effect on Tuesday’s  primaries? Kate Zernike, a national correspondent for The New York Times and was a member of the team that shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting takes a surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics in Boiling Mad.

Award-winning sociologist and historian James W. Loewen with co-editor, Edward H. Sebesta,  put in perspective the mythology of the Old South in The Confederate and The Neo-Confederate Reader.

Attorney, professor and author Andrea Lyon was the first woman to serve as lead attorney in a death penalty case. Throughout her career, she has defended those accused of heinous acts and argued that, no matter their guilt or innocence, they deserved a chance at redemption in Angel of Death Row.

John Atlas is a longtime public-interest lawyer, activist, writer, and founder and president of the New Jersey-based National Housing Institute. His book, Seeds of Change, describes what really happened in ACORN‘s massive voter registration drives and why the community organizing group triggered a conservative assault by Fox News and the Republican Party.