You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
American Happiness is an eclectic collection of verse from a bold poet of everyday life, Jacqueline Allen Trimble. Ironically titled, the work addresses everything from the death of parents to racial tension to the encroachment of coyotes into urban spaces. The title is taken from a poem in the book which considers the kinder, gentler exploits of Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney during a time when Southern law enforcement was neither universally kind or gentle. Says Trimble, “Barney had one bullet/and no need for a rope./The only burning he did was for his Thelma Lou.” On her poetic journey, which takes us from the personal to the political, Trimble probes our racial divide. She is by turns compassionate and fierce, cutting at our hypocrisy with the knife of her words and willing us toward our better common humanity.
Have you ever had a Christmas gathering or family vacation that was way too interesting? Have you had a family member in the military or deployed to a combat zone? Have you struggled with your Christian faith? Have you or a family member faced cancer or another serious illness? If so, you are not alone, although you may sometimes feel like it. Author Terry A. Roberts has felt that way. He shares his experiences in his memoir, Youve Got to Be Somewhere. This slice of Americana, sometimes hilarious and sometimes starkly intense, recalls Robertss idyllic childhood, filled with baseball, Boy Scouts, and outdoor boondoggles. Life later finds him as a single Baptist minister in the South and Midwest while also serving as a marine. He saw combat in the first Gulf War, later as a US Navy/Marine Corps chaplain, and once again during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He was later diagnosed with cancer, a fact that changed his life forever. Through it all, his faith in God has helped him through the difficult times while making him more appreciative of the good in his life. Now he tells the story of his truly American lifean odyssey of humor, tough issues, and faith.
Every teacher wants and expects his or her students to be reading increasingly complex texts, yet sometimes the gap between our expectations and our students' abilities seems wide and deep. It's tempting to look at that gap and step in to fill it for them, but then we'd be doing most of the heavy lifting the understanding, analysis, and interpretation that our students should be learning for themselves. So how can teachers reverse this trend and ensure that our students are fully entering, absorbing, and experiencing texts? How can we make sure they're making complex meaning independently and proficiently,- as the Common Core State Standards require? Readers Front & Center answers these ques...
The primary goal of Everday Thoughts about Nature is to understand how typical ninth-grade students and their science teachers think about Nature or the natural world, and how their thoughts are related to science. In pursuing this goal, the book raises a basic question about the purpose of science education for the public. Should science education seek to educate `scientific thinkers' in the pattern of science teachers? Or, should science education seek to foster sound science learning within the matrices of various cultural perspectives? By carefully examining the ideas about Nature held by a group of students and their science teachers, Cobern argues that the purpose of science education for the public is `to foster sound science learning within the matrices of various cultural perspectives'. Cobern's two books, World View Theory and Science Education Research and now Everyday Thoughts about Nature, provide complementary accounts of theoretical and empirical foundations for worldview theory in science education. While many graduate students and researchers have benefited from his earlier work, many more will continue to benefit from this book.
Milwaukee's jazz scene has forever stood in the shadow of Chicago's illustrious institution, but it stands strong. Cream City has produced a wealth of talent, attracted top-notch transplants, and hosted legends like Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Billie Holiday, and Wynton Marsalis. From the heyday of the 1940s and 1950s to the renaissance of the 1970s, from the streets to the classrooms, from grand ballrooms to outdoor festivals, from swing to bebop, from smoky bars to dimly lit clubs like the Flame, Thelma's Back Door, and the Jazz Gallery, Milwaukee has been a hotbed of improvised music, providing a noteworthy contribution to the story of jazz in America.
None
Donald Fagen will forever be associated with Steely Dan, the band he formed with Walter Becker and four other musicians in 1972. The smooth, radio-friendly veneer of the duo's songs made Steely Dan internationally popular and famous in the 1970s, but the polish glossed over the underlying layers of anger, disappointment, sleaze, and often downright weirdness lurking just beneath the surface. The elliptical lyrics were—and continue to be—an endless source of fascination. What kind of person was capable of writing such songs? Fagen has always kept his true self hidden behind walls of irony, confounding most journalistic enquiries with a mixture of obscurity and sarcasm. Nightfly cracks ope...