Celebrate Your Independence with some Good Reads!

That long afternoon of July 4th is a perfect time to do some patriotic reading. In between the burgers and the fireworks, try out a few of these books!

Wide Awake by David Levithan follows the political awakening of Duncan Weiss who travels to Kansas to volunteer after a contentious political election. Levithan's near-future America has already survived the Reign of Fear, the Greater Depression, the Jesus Revolution AND the Prada Riots. Now it's up to a new generation to create a positive political future for the country.

Cory Doctorow's techno-thriller Little Brother takes place in a scarier America, one deep in the grip of fear after a terrorist attack on San Francisco. Hacker Marcus and his friends become accidental warriors against a raging Department of Homeland Security, retrofitting their Xboxes into the last private communication network on the West Coast. How will a bunch of gamers and geeks fare against a government bent on their destruction?

For a gripping look at America during the Revolutionary War, try M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 1, The Pox Party. A group of philosophers are raising Octavian experimentally, in accordance with rational principles. What will happen when he discovers that his entire life has been a scientific construct? Anderson has recreated the sense of an America just beginning to determine its moral and philosophical underpinnings.