Download or read book Zero Chance of Passage written by Ember Reichgott Junge and published by Beavers Pond Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the passage of Minnesota's first chartered school law in 1991, describing its origins, the legislative battles, the author's initial reaction to the new legislation, and how it impacted national politics.
Download or read book The Passage written by Justin Cronin and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Andromeda Strain meets The Stand in this startling and stunning thriller that brings to life a unique vision of the apocalypse and plays brilliantly with vampire mythology, revealing what becomes of human society when a top-secret government experiment spins wildly out of control. At an army research station in Colorado, an experiment is being conducted by the U.S. Government: twelve men are exposed to a virus meant to weaponize the human form by super-charging the immune system. But when the experiment goes terribly wrong, terror is unleashed. Amy, a young girl abandoned by her mother and set to be the thirteenth test subject, is rescued by Brad Wolgast, the FBI agent who has been tasked with handing her over, and together they escape to the mountains of Oregon. As civilization crumbles around them, Brad and Amy struggle to keep each other alive, clinging to hope and unable to comprehend the nightmare that approaches with great speed and no mercy. . .
Download or read book Eastern Passage written by Farley Mowat and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Farley Mowat’s bestselling memoir, Otherwise, the literary lion returns with an unexpected triumph. Eastern Passage is a new and captivating piece of the puzzle of Farley Mowat’s life: the years from his return from the north in the late 1940s to his discovery of Newfoundland and his love affair with the sea in the 1950s. This was a time in which he wrote his first books and weathered his first storms of controversy, a time when he was discovering himself through experiences that, as he writes, "go to the heart of who and what I was" during his formative years as a writer and activist. In the 1950s, with his career taking off but his first marriage troubled, Farley Mowat buys a piece of land northwest of Toronto and attempts to settle down. His accounts of building his home are by turns hilarious and affecting, while the insights into his early work and his relationship with his publishers offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a writer’s career. But in the end, his restless soul could not be pinned to one place, and when his father offered him a chance to sail down the St. Lawrence, he jumped at it, not realizing that his journey would bring him face to face with one of Canada’s more shocking secrets – one most of us still don’t know today. This horrific incident, recalling as it did the lingering aftermath of war, and from which it took the area decades to recover, would forge the final tempering of Mowat as the activist we know today. Eastern Passage is a funny, astute, and moving book that reveals that there is more yet to this fascinating and beloved figure than we think we know.
Download or read book Zero Hour written by Clive Cussler and published by G.P. Putnam's Sons. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is called zero point energy, and it really exists - a state of energy contained in all matter everywhere, and thus all but unlimited. Nobody has ever found a way to tap into it, however - until one scientist discovers a way. Or at least he thinks he has. The problem is, his machines also cause great earthquakes, even fissures in tectonic plates. One machine is buried deep underground; the other is submerged in a vast ocean trench. If Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala and the rest of the NUMA team aren't able to find and destroy them, and soon, the world will be on the threshold of a new era of earth tremors and unchecked volcanism.
Download or read book The Twelve Book Two of The Passage Trilogy written by Justin Cronin and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The end of the world was only the beginning. In his internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Passage, Justin Cronin constructed an unforgettable world transformed by a government experiment gone horribly wrong. Now the scope widens and the intensity deepens as the epic story surges forward . . . In the present day, as the man-made apocalypse unfolds, three strangers navigate the chaos. Lila, a doctor and an expectant mother, is so shattered by the spread of violence and infection that she continues to plan for her child’s arrival even as society dissolves around her. Kittridge, known to the world as “Last Stand in Denver,” has been forced to flee his stronghold and is now on the road, dodging the infected, armed but alone and well aware that a tank of gas will get him only so far. April is a teenager fighting to guide her little brother safely through a landscape of death and ruin. These three will learn that they have not been fully abandoned—and that in connection lies hope, even on the darkest of nights. One hundred years in the future, Amy and the others fight on for humankind’s salvation . . . unaware that the rules have changed. The enemy has evolved, and a dark new order has arisen with a vision of the future infinitely more horrifying than man’s extinction. If the Twelve are to fall, one of those united to vanquish them will have to pay the ultimate price. A heart-stopping thriller rendered with masterful literary skill, The Twelve is a grand and gripping tale of sacrifice and survival. Look for the entire Passage trilogy: THE PASSAGE | THE TWELVE | THE CITY OF MIRRORS Praise for The Twelve “[A] literary superthriller.”—The New York Times Book Review “An undeniable and compelling epic . . . a complex narrative of flight and forgiveness, of great suffering and staggering loss, of terrible betrayals and incredible hope.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “The Twelve is even better than The Passage.”—The Plain Dealer “A compulsive read.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Gripping . . . Cronin [introduces] eerie new elements to his masterful mythology. . . . Enthralling, emotional and entertaining.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune “Fine storytelling.”—Associated Press “Cronin is one of those rare authors who works on two different levels, blending elegantly crafted literary fiction with cliff-hanging thrills.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Download or read book Deadlock and Disillusionment written by Gary W. Reichard and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deadlock and Disillusionment: American Politics Since 1968 is an insightful consideration of the events people, and policy debates that have shaped and continue to influence, even control, the current political era. Rejects conventional wisdom that the dominant force shaping recent American politics in the last half century has been the "rise of the Right" Considers the achievements and frustrations of each administration, from Nixon to Obama, in its assessment of contemporary U.S. politics Features authorship by an expert scholar in the field who takes a thematic rather than a partisan approach to recent American politics Offers a concise, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date synthesis of the literature in the field and concludes with a comprehensive bibliographical essay, an aid to student research
Download or read book Someone Has to Fail written by David F. Labaree and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all children—but all possible advantages for our own. So argues historian David Labaree in this provocative look at the way “this archetype of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do.” Ever since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown, schools are extremely difficult to change. Labaree shows how the very organization of the locally controlled, administratively limited school system makes reform difficult. At the same time, he argues, the choices of educational consumers have always overwhelmed top-down efforts at school reform. Individual families seek to use schools for their own purposes—to pursue social opportunity, if they need it, and to preserve social advantage, if they have it. In principle, we want the best for all children. In practice, we want the best for our own. Provocative, unflinching, wry, Someone Has to Fail looks at the way that unintended consequences of consumer choices have created an extraordinarily resilient educational system, perpetually expanding, perpetually unequal, constantly being reformed, and never changing much.
Download or read book Fooled by Randomness written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan–has written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill. This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading–Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives. The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness. However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance. Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared. Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year
Download or read book The Official Guide for GMAT Review written by GMAC (Graduate Management Admission Council) and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-09-17 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 12th Edition is the only book on the market written by the creators of the GMAT exam. Inside you’ll find more than 800 actual GMAT questions from previous tests with answers and detailed explanations. There’s also a grammar review, math review, actual essay topics, sample responses, and scoring information insights into the GMAT exam that debunk test-taking myths. Plus, use the diagnostic section to pinpoint your skill level and focus on the areas where you need the most help.
Download or read book ZeroZeroZero written by Roberto Saviano and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Zero zero zero” flour is the finest, whitest available. “Zero zero zero” is also the nickname among narcotraffickers for the purest, highest quality cocaine on the market. And it is the title of Roberto Saviano’s unforgettable exploration of how the cocaine trade knits the world into its dark economy and imposes its own vicious rules and moral codes on its armies and, through them, on us all. Saviano’s Gomorrah, his explosive account of the Neapolitan mob, the Camorra, was a worldwide publishing sensation. It struck such a nerve with the Camorra that Saviano has lived with twenty-four hour police protection in the shadow of death threats for more than seven years. During this time he has become intimate with law enforcement agencies around the world. Saviano has broadened his perspective to take in the entire global “corporate” entity that is the drug trade in cooperation with law enforcement officials, who have fed him information and sources and used him to guide their own thinking and tactics. Saviano has used this extraordinary access to feed his own groundbreaking reportage. The result is a truly amazing and harrowing synthesis of intimate literary narrative and geopolitical analysis of one of the most powerful dark forces in the global economy. In Zero Zero Zero, Saviano tracks the shift in the cocaine trade’s axis of power, from Colombia to Mexico, and relates how the Latin American cartels and gangs have forged alliances, first with the Italian crime syndicates, then with the Russians, Africans, and others. On the one hand, he charts an astonishing increase in sophistication and diversification as these criminal entities diversify into many other products and markets. On the other, he reveals the threat of violence to protect and extend power and how the nature of the violence has grown steadily more appalling. Saviano is a journalist of rare courage and a thinker of impressive intellectual depth and moral imagination, able to see the connections between far-flung phenomena and bind them into a single epic story. Most drug-war narratives feel safely removed from our own lives; Saviano offers no such comfort. As heart racing as it is heady, Zero Zero Zero is a fusion of a variety of disparate genres into a brilliant new form that can only be called Savianoesque.
Download or read book Addicted to Reform written by John Merrow and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America's misguided approaches to K-12 school reform During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow—winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize—reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America's obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary. Now, the revered education correspondent of PBS NewsHour distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that Merrow describes as being "addicted to reform" but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century. This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters—including "Measure What Matters," and "Embrace Teachers"—that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing. Addicted to Reform is written with the kind of passionate concern that could come only from a lifetime devoted to the people and places that constitute the foundation of our nation. It is a "big book" that forms an astute and urgent blueprint for providing a quality education to every American child.
Download or read book The Western Passage Exodus written by G. Dicarlo and published by Black Rose Writing. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thousand miles of wilderness. Innumerable dangers. Uneasy alliances. A bond forged in blood. The odds are great, and survival has never been more uncertain. Vampires and humans have always been bitter enemies, destined to push each other to extinction. But when a group of scientists develops a genetic enhancement meant to boost the effectiveness of human hunters, tragic results threaten to bring about the destruction of vampires and humans alike. After the fallout of Year Zero and rise of mutated hybrids known as morphs, the remaining humans retreat into five fortresses. All seems well until Easthaven is attacked in an assault that leaves only thirty survivors. Enter Marcus Warren, one of the most powerful hunters in existence. Reluctantly, Marcus assumes leadership and decides that the group's only chance of survival is to cross a thousand miles of wilderness to Ashland. Forced to trust a hybrid named Clio and a vampire called Aya, Marcus and the others set out. Dangers lurk everywhere, and enemies seem destined to destroy them...if they don't destroy each other first.
Download or read book A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door written by Jack Schneider and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A trenchant analysis of how public education is being destroyed in overt and deceptive ways—and how to fight back In the “vigorous, well-informed” (Kirkus Reviews) A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, the co-hosts of the popular education podcast Have You Heard expose the potent network of conservative elected officials, advocacy groups, funders, and think tanks that are pushing a radical vision to do away with public education. “Cut[ing] through the rhetorical fog surrounding a host of free-market reforms and innovations” (Mike Rose), Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire lay bare the dogma of privatization and reveal how it fits into the current context of right-wing political movements. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door “goes above and beyond the typical explanations” (SchoolPolicy.org), giving readers an up-close look at the policies—school vouchers, the war on teachers’ unions, tax credit scholarships, virtual schools, and more—driving the movement’s agenda. Called “well-researched, carefully argued, and alarming” by Library Journal, this smart, essential book has already incited a public reckoning on behalf of the millions of families served by the American educational system—and many more who stand to suffer from its unmaking. “Just as with good sci-fi,” according to Jacobin, “the authors make a compelling case that, based on our current trajectory, a nightmare future is closer than we think.”
Download or read book A Smarter Charter written by Richard D. Kahlenberg and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving beyond the debate over whether or not charter schools should exist, A Smarter Charter wrestles with the question of what kind of charter schools we should encourage. The authors begin by tracing the evolution of charter schools from Albert Shanker's original vision of giving teachers room to innovate while educating a diverse population of students, to today's charter schools where student segregation levels are even higher than in traditional public schools. In the second half of the book, the authors examine two key reforms currently seen in a small but growing number of charter schools, socioeconomic integration and teacher voice, that have the potential to improve performance and reshape the stereotypical image of what it means to be a charter school.
Download or read book Education Reform Before It Was Cool written by The Center for Education Reform and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1983, Americans, content with the failing education establishment and ill-equipped to change the status quo were handed a wake-up call in the form of A Nation at Risk. This national report exposed the problems in the system, and slowly, Americans began to see possibilities where there were none. Successes bloomed in cities desperate for change; states began to sign bills into laws. Parents and teachers were starting schools on their own and gutsy governors and legislators began to put education reform at the top of their lists. The Center for Education Reform (CER) has led the charge for change since ideas for reform weren't more than dreams, and now, it seems, perseverance has paid off. Education reform is back in the national spotlight and CER remains the cornerstone of the movement. With the Center's vast experience in two decades of reform, Education Reform: Before It was Cool recounts successes, remembers the pioneers of education reform, and continues to press on for our nation's children as the destination for all Americans who seek something better for our country's education.
Download or read book Light Shines in Harlem written by Mary Bounds and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Light Shines in Harlem tells the fascinating history of New York's first charter school, the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem, and the early days of the state's charter school movement. Told through the experiences of those on the inside—including a hero of the civil rights movement; a Wall Street star; inner-city activists; and real-world educators, parents, and students—this book shows how they all came together to create a groundbreaking school that, in its best years, far outperformed public schools in the neighborhoods in which most of its children lived. It also looks at education reform through a broader public policy lens, discussing recent research and issues facing the charter movement today, describing what makes a public charter school—or any school—succeed or fail, and showing how these lessons can be applied to other public and private schools to make all of them better. The end result is not only an exciting narrative of how one school fought to succeed, but also an illuminating glimpse into the future of education in the United States.
Download or read book Year Zero of the Arab Israeli Conflict 1929 written by Hillel Cohen and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In late summer 1929, a countrywide outbreak of Arab-Jewish-British violence transformed the political landscape of Palestine forever. In contrast with those who point to the wars of 1948 and 1967, historian Hillel Cohen marks these bloody events as year zero of the Arab-Israeli conflict that persists today. The murderous violence inflicted on Jews caused a fractious - and now traumatized - community of Zionists, non-Zionists, Ashkenazim, and Mizrachim to coalesce around a unified national consciousness arrayed against an implacable Arab enemy. While the Jews unified, Arabs came to grasp the national essence of the conflict, realizing that Jews of all stripes viewed the land as belonging to the Jewish people. Through memory and historiography, in a manner both associative and highly calculated, Cohen traces the horrific events of August 23 to September 1 in painstaking detail. He extends his geographic and chronological reach and uses a non-linear reconstruction of events to call for a thorough reconsideration of cause and effect. Sifting through Arab and Hebrew sources - many rarely, if ever, examined before - Cohen reflects on the attitudes and perceptions of Jews and Arabs who experienced the events and, most significantly, on the memories they bequeathed to later generations. The result is a multifaceted and revealing examination of a formative series of episodes that will intrigue historians, political scientists, and others interested in understanding the essence - and the very beginning - of what has been an intractable conflict.
