books
Nurture Shock by P.O Bronson and Ashley Merryman
The central premise of this book is that many of modern society’s strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring – because key twists in the science have been overlooked. Nurture Shock has been featured on Good Morning America, Nightline, All Things Considered, Fresh Air, and in Newsweek.
A Different Mirror: A history of multicultural America by Ronald Takaki
Upon its first publication, A Different Mirror was hailed by critics and academics everywhere as a dramatic new retelling of our nation's past. Beginning with the colonization of the New World, it recounted the history of America in the voice of the non-Anglo peoples of the United States--Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and others--groups who helped create this country's rich mosaic culture. This revised version of a different mirror has new additions with make it even more relevant and important. Among the new additions to the book are:
--The role of black soldiers in preserving the Union
--The history of Chinese Americans from 1900-1941
--An investigation into the hot-button issue of "illegal" immigrants from Mexico
--A look at the sudden visibility of Muslim refugees from Afghanistan.
This new edition of A Different Mirror grapples with the raw truth of American history and examines the ultimate question of what it means to be an American.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.
Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't keep stop talking by Susan Cain
Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. Taking the reader on a journey from Dale Carnegie’s birthplace to Harvard Business School, from a Tony Robbins seminar to an evangelical mega church, Susan Cain charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal in the twentieth century and explores its far-reaching effects.
Susan Cain talks to Asian-American students who feel alienated from the brash, backslapping atmosphere of American schools. She questions the dominant values of American business culture, where forced collaboration can stand in the way of innovation, and where the leadership potential of introverts is often overlooked. And she draws on cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience to reveal the surprising differences between extroverts and introverts.
The Medici Effect: What elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation by Frans Johannsson
Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.
Just Mercy: A story of Justice and redemption by Bryan Stevenson
A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life by Annette Lareau
Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children.
Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality & Insecurity by Chuck Collins
This updated edition of the widely touted Economic Apartheid in America looks at the causes and manifestations of wealth disparities in the United States, including tax policy in light of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and recent corporate scandals.
Published with two leading organizations dedicated to addressing economic inequality, the book looks at recent changes in income and wealth distribution and examines the economic policies and shifts in power that have fueled the growing divide.
The War Against the Poor by Herbert Gans
In his withering dissection of the origins and misuse of the term “underclass” to stereotype and stigmatize the poor, Herbert J. Gans shows how this ubiquitous label has relegated a wide variety of people—welfare recipients, the working poor, teenage mothers, drug addicts, the homeless, and others—to a single condemned class, feared and despised by the rest of society.
Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality by Jeannie Oakes
Selected by the American School Board Journal as a “Must Read” book when it was first published and named one of 60 “Books of the Century” by the University of South Carolina Museum of Education for its influence on American education, this provocative, carefully documented work shows how tracking—the system of grouping students for instruction on the basis of ability—reflects the class and racial inequalities of American society and helps to perpetuate them. For this new edition, Jeannie Oakes has added a new Preface and a new final chapter in which she discusses the “tracking wars” of the last twenty years, wars in which Keeping Track has played a central role.
The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol
Since the early 1980s, when the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society. Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens. –Barnes and Nobles
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
Through evocative, plain-spoken prose Justice Sotomayor engages in an earnest, soul-searching look back at her childhood as the daughter of Puerto Rican parents and at her education and years as a lawyer. She provides a visceral sense of what it was like to grow up with a dysfunctional family, overshadowed by her alcoholic father’s unpredictable behavior, and what it was like to grow up in the Bronx in the 1960s and ’70s, in a neighborhood where stairwells were to be avoided (because of muggers and addicts shooting up), and where tourniquets and glassine packets littered the sidewalks. –New York Times
The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
Two kids with the same name, living in the same city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison for felony murder. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation. Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a challenging and at times, hostile world. –About the book
Covering by Kenji Yoshino
In this remarkable and elegant work, acclaimed Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino fuses legal manifesto and poetic memoir to call for a redefinition of civil rights in our law and culture.
Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us by Claude Steele
Claude M. Steele, who has been called “one of the few great social psychologists,” offers a vivid first-person account of the research that supports his groundbreaking conclusions on stereotypes and identity. He sheds new light on American social phenomena from racial and gender gaps in test scores to the belief in the superior athletic prowess of black men, and lays out a plan for mitigating these “stereotype threats” and reshaping American identities. –Amazon
The Learner-Directed Classroom. Developing creative thinking skills through Art by Diane Jaquith and Nan Hathaway
In The Learner-Directed Classroom, practicing art educators (PreK-16) offer both a comprehensive framework for understanding student-directed learning and concrete pedagogical strategies to implement student-direct learning activities in school. In addition, research-based assessment strategies provide educators with evidence of student mastery and achievement. This book provides evidence-based, practical examples of how to transform the classroom into a creative and highly focused learning environment. -Amazon
The Mindful Leader by Michael Carroll
In The Mindful Leader, Michael Carroll explains what mindfulness is and how to develop it in the hectic and often stressful environment of the twenty-first century workplace. He focuses on ten key principles of mindfulness and how they apply to leading groups and organizations. Full of engaging stories and practical exercises, The Mindful Leader will help leaders in any field to discover their innate intelligence, bravery, and joy on the job.
Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie
What’s the difference between an African-American and an American-African? From such a distinction springs a deep-seated discussion of race in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third novel, “Americanah.” Adichie, born in Nigeria but now living both in her homeland and in the United States, is an extraordinarily self-aware thinker and writer, possessing the ability to lambaste society without sneering or patronizing or polemicizing. For her, it seems no great feat to balance high-literary intentions with broad social critique. “Americanah” examines blackness in America, Nigeria and Britain, but it’s also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience — a platitude made fresh by the accuracy of Adichie’s observations. –New York Times
"Why are all the black children sitting together in the cafeteria?" And other conversations about race by Beverly Daniel Tatum
Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, asserts that we do not know how to talk about our racial differences: Whites are afraid of using the wrong words and being perceived as "racist" while parents of color are afraid of exposing their children to painful racial realities too soon. Using real-life examples and the latest research, Tatum presents strong evidence that straight talk about our racial identities-whatever they may be-is essential if we are serious about facilitating communication across racial and ethnic divides. We have waited far too long to begin our conversations about race. This remarkable book, infused with great wisdom and humanity, has already helped hundreds of thousands of readers figure out where to start.
Exit-The Endings That Set Us Free by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Exits are ubiquitous; long or short, grand or modest, we've all left something, from resigning from a long-held position to waving goodbye to a friend after lunch. In Exit: The Endings That Set Us Free, author Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot explores endings through the stories of people in transition. Too often "we tend to ignore and diminish endings," she writes, while celebrating beginnings. Instead, we should "develop the habit of marking the small goodbyes to help us master the larger farewells."
Black Boy, White School by Brian F. Walker
Anthony “Ant” Jones has never been outside his rough East Cleveland neighborhood when he’s given a scholarship to Belton Academy, an elite prep school in Maine. But at Belton things are far from perfect. Everyone calls him “Tony,” assumes he’s from Brooklyn, expects him to play basketball, and yet acts shocked when he fights back. As Anthony tries to adapt to a world that will never fully accept him, he’s in for a rude awakening: Home is becoming a place where he no longer belongs. In debut author Brian F. Walker’s hard-hitting novel about staying true to yourself, Anthony might find a way to survive at Belton, but what will it cost him? –Harper/Collins
The Art of War by Sun translated by Samuel B. Griffith
Written in China more than 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu's classic The Art of War is the first known study of the planning and conduct of military operations. These terse, aphoristic essays are unsurpassed in comprehensiveness and depth of understanding, examining not only battlefield maneuvers, but also relevant economic, political, and psychological factors. Indeed, the precepts outlined by Sun Tzu can be applied outside the realm of military theory. It is read avidly by Japanese businessmen and in fact was touted in the movie Wall Street as the corporate raider's bible.
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.
We can't teach what we don't know: white teachers, multicultural schools by Gary Howard
Gary Howard outlines what good teachers know, what they do, and how they embrace culturally responsive teaching. He brings his bestselling book completely up to date with today’s school reform efforts and includes a new introduction and a new chapter that speak directly to current issues such as closing the achievement gap, and to recent legislation such as No Child Left Behind. With our nation’s student population becoming ever more diverse, and teachers remaining largely White, this book is now more important than ever. A must-read in universities and school systems throughout the country.
Speak Truth to Power by Kerry Kennedy
Through photographs by Eddie Adams and interviews by human rights activist Kerry Kennedy, gripping stories are revealed of 51 men and women around the globe who put their lives on the line, surviving imprisonment, torture, and death threats, because of hope for and dedication to a future where equality is common and oppression rare.-Amazon
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