Career and Technical Education Month

February is Career and Technical Education Month, described as a time to “celebrate the value of Career and Technical Education and the achievements and accomplishments of CTE programs across the country.” Find a history of career and technical education here.   We’d like to highlight a few books that can help your students navigate their

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Black History Month 2021

Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Find more on the

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Remembering William Melvin Kelley, author of A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University Anthony Reed remembers William Melvin Kelley.   William Melvin Kelley is often described as a “lost” or “forgotten” author. Those who needed to know about him have always had a way of finding him. As a young writer, interested in fiction and poetry, I knew a lot about

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Neal Gabler on Teaching the Next Generation About Their Political Heritage

Contributed by Neal Gabler, author of Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932-1975 What happened to America?  What happened to bring us to this moment of deep and perhaps unbridgeable polarization, of disorder and chaos, of skepticism about science, institutions, even the very idea of fact itself, of rising white supremacy, of

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A Note to Teachers From Pity the Reader Author Suzanne McConnell

By: Suzanne McConnell As a teacher of fiction writing at Hunter College, I was always on the look-out for a book to use in classes that was instructive but not academic.  I wanted a non-textbook text that was compelling, entertaining, encouraging, and practical – one that delivered helpful news about writing in such a way

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Martin J. Sherwin gives a reinterpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis

By Martin J. Sherwin The Cuban Missile Crisis ended peacefully because neither President John Kennedy nor Premier Nikita Khrushchev wanted a war. It ended peacefully because Fidel Castro frightened Khrushchev into believing that the United States was about to start a war. It ended without a war because America’s ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai

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Oxford Professor Margaret MacMillan Reveals How War Has Shaped Human History

Contributed by Margaret MacMillan, author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us Let me start with what my book is not about. It is not a history of war, although it contains many historical examples. Nor is it, unlike the many books that line the shelves of libraries or bookshops, devoted to a particular campaign or

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BEATEN DOWN, WORKED UP is an essential examination of labor in America

Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead.    Beaten Down, Worked Up Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential

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Transcendent Kingdom is Yaa Gyasi’s powerful follow-up to Homegoing

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi’s stunning follow-up to her award-winning novel Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered story about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.   Transcendent Kingdom Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and

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Sir Ken Robinson: 1950 – 2020

Viking/Penguin shares the sad news of the passing of Sir Ken Robinson, internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation, and human potential, and author of such bestselling books as The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Creative Schools,  and You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education. Robinson died on Friday,

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