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According to Ilana Garon, popular books and movies are inundated with the myth of the “hero teacher”—the one who charges headfirst into dysfunctional inner city schools like a firefighter into an inferno, bringing the student victims to safety through a combination of charisma and innate righteousness. The students are then “saved” by the teacher’s idealism, empathy, and willingness to put faith in kids who have been given up on by society as a whole.“Why Do Only White People Get Abducted by Aliens?” is not that type of book. In this book, Garon reveals the sometimes humorous, oftentimes frustrating, and occasionally horrifying truths that accompany the experience of teaching...
How public are America’s public schools? They may be tax funded and free, but the combination of market-based policies, exclusionary governance, insufficient funding, and structural inequities impair schools’ ability to prepare future citizens, workers, neighbors, and stewards of the planet. Gyurko offers a fresh look at the “publicness” of American education through historical accounts, scholarly research, first-hand reporting, and political analyses. Chapters on funding, governance, standards, accountability, and equity show what must be done to better identify and strengthen the shared aims of public schools. Novel insights explain how even controversial topics like charter school...
In the increasingly vital world of social media marketing, if you don’t have a strong digital presence, it’s like you’re not even there. Going Social is an indispensable guide to taking advantage of digital marketing, reaching a critical number of prospective customers, and revitalizing your business’s brand. You’ll gain answers to the questions every marketer is asking, like How much is a Facebook “like” worth? What are the best dashboards for monitoring multiple social channels simultaneously? How do you keep it all going around the clock? And which automation tools, promotional ads, scheduling platforms, and social media channels offer the greatest return on investment? For ...
Thirteen stories from a modern master "Brodsky is a master both of technique and of language, his sentences positively crackling with unexpected insights."--Publishers Weekly "Brodsky possesses a masterly control of diction and rhythm, an often startling metaphoric gift, and a range of effects extending from Swiftian bluntness to Proustian elaboration."--The New York Review of Books "He brings the reader to reflect anew on ways of knowing and truths of being in an uncertain world."--The New York Times Book Review
"Three Goat Songs" is a series of variations on a theme. It is divided into three novellas, each about a man who sits on a rocky coast by the seashore, contemplating. Herbs of goats come there to graze. The man is a husband and father of two children. "Three Goat Songs" is an exploration into the existential boundaries, in the "sea-bounded goat world." It is a philosophical look at the essential sameness and, at the same time, the diversity of all stories. It has in common with the other books of Michael Brodsky the theme of the protagonist's struggle to survive, and more than that, to comprehend. Together, this body of work has led critics to compare the writing of Michael Brodsky to that of the masters like Dostoevsky, Becket, Joyce.
This startling novel is the concentrated peak of Brodsky’s dynamic and unique vision. With a shifting group of characters—Mazel Tov Jones, Neddie and Eddie, Vladimir and Mr. and Mrs. Stein, Brodsky explores the thought process of a protagonist who is accused of a murder but is never sure of his crime or his accusers. Brodsky’s character becomes a model for all humans trying to find a self-identity, reduced to the simple yet tragic dilemma of trying to communicate with fellow men. Stripped of excess plot and locale, this novel expands on the visions of Beckett and Kafka, but with a uniquely American voice. Circuits will surprise and engage the serious reader at a level that few contemporary writers attempt to reach. Brodsky lives up to Ezra Pound’s famous challenge—Make it new—and pushes fiction and the novel to new limits with spirit and vigor.
A timely and compelling story about a bullied and overweight boy and his love of baseball. "Tanker 10" opens in Brockton, MA, in 1976, where bashful and overweight 10-year-old Jimmy just wants to read his books and toss the ball with his best friend Ben. Unfortunately, Jimmy is an entertaining victim for his older brother Cliff and his buddies. When Jimmy tries to stand up to Cliff, the verbal abuse turns physical and an accident sends Jimmy to the hospital with an injury that changes the trajectory of his life. Tanker 10 depicts the story of Jimmy during his pre-teen and teenage years as he struggles to mend his physical and psychological injuries. Finding salvation through baseball, he ded...
Detour charts the struggle of a film-crazed young man to shape his identity; it is also about his resistance to doing so at every turn. Owning an identity can mean being straitjacketed, condemned to a living death; language becomes both an escape from the straitjacket and its evilest genius. Detour is also a story of first love, as it concerns the intense, transient sexual relationship between the young man, who is very reluctant about to enter medical school in the Midwest, and a rootless former heroin addict named Anne. The hero of Detour experiences movies the way Don Quixote responds to the romances of chilvary—as being infinitely more real than anything else in the world. Hence the co...
Lurianics tells the story of a youngish man – one Isaac Luria (namesake of one of the world's great Kabbalists) – who seeks to create a "true work" which will give his life a meaning that is uniquely beyond label. Set on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the novel anatomizes this unlikely hero's ambivalence-racked relationships with a veritable cast of thousands, all of whom have one thing in common – a craving to derail his every attempt to get on with the job. They include: a smugly go-getting kid brother, a hyper-articulate mystery woman, and assorted bosses, co-workers, composers and filmmakers living and dead, ballet stars, murdered doormen, stuff-strutting sparrows, and honey locusts about to bloom. But chaos does not always reign supreme and in the end every encounter plays its part in forcing Luria to confront the ultimate question: Does he have the guts not just to erect his Valhalla (any fool can do that) but to erect it with the only building blocks worth a damn, i.e., the very things befouling the path?