Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul

The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?

Dale Russakoff · 246 pages

"Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Christie, and Cory Booker were ready to reform our failing schools. They got an education. When Mark Zuckerberg announced in front of a cheering Oprah audience his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools -- and to solve the education crisis in every city in America -- it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their pla

Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools

Steven Brill · 496 pages

In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America's failure to educate its children and points the way to reversing that failure. Brill's vivid narrative -- filled with unexpected twists and turns -- takes us from the Oval Office, where President Obama signs off on an unprecedented plan that will infuriate t

The Shame Of The Nation: The Restoration Of Apartheid Schooling In America

Jonathan Kozol · 416 pages

"This is a book about betrayal of the young, who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended to make readers comfortable." Visiting nearly 60 public schools, Kozol finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the 15 years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. First, the segregation of black children is at a l

The Death Class: A True Story About Life

Erika Hayasaki · 275 pages

A journalist details how Norma Bowe, the professor of a popular class on the stages of dying, death, and bereavement at Kean University in New Jersey, shows her students how to truly heal and live their lives through contemplating the end.

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire

Tim Schwab · 496 pages

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

Ron Suskind · 390 pages

At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous can make you a target of violence. But Cedric Jennings will not swallow his pride, and with unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it--and it

Letters from a Father to his Daughter

Jawaharlal Nehru · 101 pages

Nehruji has described in simple language the history of civilization. It answers a child's question that where do we come from? Who were our ancestors? How the languages originated? How religion started? How kings and kingdoms came into existence? What were the early civilizations like? It is an interesting book with interesting sketches. A must read for children.

Train Go Sorry

Leah Hager Cohen · 296 pages

"Train go sorry" is the American Sign Language expression for "missing the boat." Indeed, missed connections characterize many interactions between the deaf and hearing worlds, including the failure to recognize that deaf people are members of a unique culture. In this intimate chronicle of Lexington School for the Deaf, Leah Hager Cohen brings this extraordinary culture to life and captures a piv

The Gatekeepers : Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College

Jacques Steinberg · 323 pages

A riveting, behind-the-scenes look at how a top college picks the best of the lotIn the fall of 1999, New York Times education reporter Jacques Steinberg was given an unprecedented opportunity to observe the admissions process at prestigious Wesleyan University. Over the course of nearly a year, Steinberg accompanied admissions officer Ralph Figueroa on a tour to assess and recruit the most promis

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins · 416 pages

Publication Date: January 16, 2008 A preeminent scientist—and the world's most prominent atheist—asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker f

The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

Amanda Ripley · 320 pages

Following three teenagers who chose to spend one school year living in Finland, South Korea, and Poland, a literary journalist recounts how attitudes, parenting, and rigorous teaching have revolutionized these countries' education results. In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think

The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America

Michael Ruhlman · 305 pages

Just over a decade ago, journalist Michael Ruhlman donned a chef's jacket and houndstooth-check pants to join the students at the Culinary Institute of America, the country's oldest and most influential cooking school. But The Making of a Chef is not just about holding a knife or slicing an onion; it's also about the nature and spirit of being a professional cook and the people who enter the profe

Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater

Michael Sokolove · 347 pages

Explores the life, career, and influence of Levittown, Pa., high school teacher and theater director Lou Volpe, focusing on his last school years and following a group of student actors as they work through dramas, both on stage and off.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap

Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way

Jon Krakauer · 75 pages

Argues that author and humanitarian Greg Mortenson, noted for his campaign to open schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has not been truthful about his past, his reasons for opening schools, or his abduction by the Taliban.

Among Schoolchildren

Tracy Kidder · 340 pages

Year-long case study of a fifth-grade Holyoke, Massachusetts, teacher and her class.

High School Confidential: Secrets of an Undercover Student

Jeremy Iversen · 455 pages

"As unreal as everything else had been, the locker was positively ethereal. It glinted in the sun, vivid neon Mirador green, number 6340. I approached it cautiously, hardly daring to think. By the laws of fate and time, I wasn't supposed to have a locker at a Southern California high school. I was supposed to hang my wet tan overcoat by the umbrella stand in a gray stone tower on Wall Street. I kn

Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream

Joshua Davis · 240 pages

Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion

Edward J. Larson · 336 pages

With this authoritative and engaging book, Edward J. Larson examines the many facets of the Scopes trial and shows how its enduring legacy has crossed religious, cultural, educational, and political lines. The "Monkey Trial," as it was playfully nicknamed, was instigated by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a controversial Tennessee law banning the teaching of human evolution in pub

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

Daniel Quinn · 265 pages

Altar of Secrets : Sex, Politics, and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church

Aries C. Rufo · 211 pages

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America

Paul Tough · 296 pages

An intriguing portrait of African-American activist Geoffrey Canada, creator of the Harlem Children's Zone, describes his radical new approach to eliminating inner-city poverty, one that proposes to transform the lives of poor children by changing their schools, their families, and their neighborhoods at the same time.

The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam

Eliza Griswold · 322 pages

Award-winning investigative journalist and poet, Eliza Griswold has spent the past seven years traveling between the equator and the tenth parallel: in Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The stories she tells in "The Tenth Parallel" show us that religious conflicts are also conflicts about land, water, oil, and other natural resources, and that local

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

Michael J. Behe · 307 pages

Virtually all serious scientists accept the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution. While the fight for its acceptance has been a long and difficult one, after a century the battle is over. Biologists are now confident that their remaining questions, such as how life on Earth began, or how the Cambrian explosion could have produced so many new species in such a short time, will be found to have Dar