collects blog entries of current Iraq and Afghanistan troops, while Operation: Homecoming
examines their lives once they've returned to the homeland. From a historical perspective, there's The Ghost Mountain Boys, a stunning examination of the fighting in the South Pacific, including stories of the Red Arrow Division.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Look Who's Stalking | ||||
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“Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginni Thomas,” it quoted from the voicemail. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay have a good day.”Classy.
, by Charles Dickens. Later, they'll read John Irving's Dickensian novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany
. NPR interviewed Irving six years ago, and discovered why he fell in love with Great Expectations.
gets its very own sequel next month, Luka and the Fire of Life
. Here's an interview with the writer, courtesy of BBC News:| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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(These) stories are universal and can offer comfort to any student who may be a victim of bullying. Remember, pain and isolation know no race, gender, socioeconomic status or sexual orientation.Amen.
is one of two books that led me back to college to become a teacher. John Irving's novel was challenged last year for its language and adult content, which is ironic, since one target of his subtle satire is people who get hung up on language and, as a result, miss the big picture. Can faith and doubt coexist? How do we explain the unbelievable?
, once a staple of the American classroom, now just another app on your iPhone. Seems that some folks in Menifee, CA thought it should be pulled after a parent complained about her child coming across an "adult" term. The district, in an act of cowardice by committee, is considering a permanent classroom ban of the dictionary.
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. A few parents "found its language vulgar and racist", so they asked to have it removed from their school's summer reading list. It's the only book my son read this summer, and he enjoyed it. Check it out for yourself.
Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.
The eighth decade, said Dr. Anne Basting, is “now seen as an active time of life: you’re just past retirement, that’s your time to explore and play mentally.” But while many will be healthy, others will not. “There will be an increase in frailty and disability because people are living longer,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a demographer at the University of Illinois at Chicago who studies aging. For some people, an increased risk of stroke and Alzheimer’s “is going to be the price they pay for extended longevity,” he said.
The risk, gerontologists say, is that in celebrating the remarkable stories, we make those not playing Radio City, and certainly those suffering the diseases that often accompany old age, feel inadequate.
(Kindle edition) - If you've been treated for a major disease in the past thirty years, you owe a debt of gratitude to Henrietta, whose killer cancer cells continued to grow after her death. These HeLa cells are cultivated around the world, but her family never knew the truth about what happened to Henrietta's cells until author Rebecca Skloot entered their lives.
- Turns out that Stieg Larsson isn't the only Swedish mystery novelist. Henning Mankel's been doing it for years. Faceless Killers is the first of ten novels to feature the work of detective Kurt Wallender
- If you teach, you need to read this book. Nicholas Carr explores the science behind neuroplasticity - how our brains change based on what we "feed" them. Long story short: If you've read up to this sentence, you're doing much better than the average web reader.
- Paul Harding won the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel, and it is easy to see why. As an old man lies dying, he drifts in and out of consciousness, recalling his life as well as the lives of his father and grandfather. Harding does not employ a traditional narrative, so don't expect to be pulled in a la The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
. Instead, be patient. Savor the poetic prose, especially Harding's attention to the wonder of the natural world. 
, a story about a boy, his grandfather, and his grandfather's ventriloquist dummy. The dummy "narrates" much of the story.| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
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As I sit through my third commencement in two weeks, I note, somewhat dyspeptically, that these affairs now combine the sartorial splendor of the medieval university with behavior adopted from the rowdiest of high-school basketball games. When did it become socially acceptable for adults to shriek like banshees when their graduate’s name is announced? There seem to be no ethnic, racial, or class identifiers of this obnoxious and idiotic behavior: with rare exceptions, just about everyone does it.
The award of a degree ought to mark a point of passage into adulthood. Parents, siblings, and friends who understand that might want to stop acting like berserk adolescents on these occasions.
Costing hundreds of dollars a pound, these beans are found in the droppings of the civet, a nocturnal, furry, long-tailed catlike animal that prowls Southeast Asia’s coffee-growing lands for the tastiest, ripest coffee cherries. The civet eventually excretes the hard, indigestible innards of the fruit — essentially, incipient coffee beans — though only after they have been fermented in the animal’s stomach acids and enzymes to produce a brew described as smooth, chocolaty and devoid of any bitter aftertaste.
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People don't pledge allegiance to Hadassah or the U.S. Marines or Kappa Kappa Gamma, much less to other inanimate objects. We only use the words when we're either quoting the flag pledge or riffing on it. So there's no independent reference point, no way to know what you've just signed on for that you weren't down for already.
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"There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition," Ravitch says. "Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what's [been successful] for them. They're not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block."
When I turned to it in the magazine, I got a jolt from the full-page photograph of my jaw drooping. Not a lovely sight. But then I am not a lovely sight, and in a moment I thought, well, what the hell. It's just as well it's out there. That's how I look, after all.
He called his book a response to traditional works, the first chapter – not the last – of a new kind of history."There's no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete," Zinn said. "My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times."
Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll.
couldn't spell. Perhaps she meant to write 
