I had listened to two podcasts by Mike Hixenbaugh and his journalistic partner Antonia Hylton about the events that Hixenbaugh relates in this book. By connecting the larger political picture to stories of students, parents, and educators, the author brought home the stakes in the nation's battles over the soul of our public schools.
The urgent, revelatory story of how a school board win for the conservative right in one Texas suburb inspired a Christian nationalist campaign now threatening to undermine public education in America-from an NBC investigative reporter and co-creator of the Peabody Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize finalist Southlake podcast.
Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children-small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance. All this, until a series of racist incidents became…
As someone who has found it difficult to say no to overwork, this book was tremendously eye-opening. Calarco's book is deeply researched and thoughtfully developed to show how women scramble to try to provide what other developed countries provide through a healthy social safety net--and the myths that enable this.
Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. Holding It Together chronicles the causes and dire consequences.
America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this tour de force, acclaimed Sociologist Jessica Calarco lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo.
Holding It Together draws on five years of research in which Calarco surveyed over 4000 parents and conducted more than 400 hours of interviews with women who bear the brunt of our broken system. A widowed single mother struggles to patch together…
Dorothy B. Hughes wrote one of my favorite 20th century noirs, A Lonely Place. This less well known book, though published in 1963, had incredible resonance today based on where we are socially and politically--I can't say more than that because what gives it that resonance are several spoilers.
The critic HRF Keating chose The Expendable Man as one of his Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books. A late addition to the thirteen crime stories Dorothy B Hughes wrote with great success in one prolific spell between 1940 and 1952, it was, in his view, her best book. But it is far more than a crime novel. Just as her earlier books had engaged with the political issues of the 1940s - the legacy of the Depression, and the struggles against fascism and rascism - so The Expendable Man, published in 1963 during Kennedy's presidency and set in…
For Schooled, anthropologist Catherine Lutz and high school teacher Anne Lutz Fernandez traveled the country to meet a range of educators—in traditional public schools to charters to homeschool; early in careers and near retirement; in city, town, suburb, and country—on the frontlines of teaching across diverse contexts. What they learned about teaching and learning in this historical moment provides critical insights for educators and anyone interested in American education.
