Here are 100 books that Five Miles Away, A World Apart fans have personally recommended if you like
Five Miles Away, A World Apart.
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I am a historian of education and twentieth-century U.S. history. Public schooling has been transformative for me, opening up a world of opportunities, but I know many others are not nearly so lucky. This has shaped my interest in the history of public schooling, including its promise of democracy and opportunity and the too-often reality of the way it replicates and deepens social and economic inequalities. I think history helps us understand our world, including to see the roots of inequality we live with today and to think about how we might build a more equitable system.
I love this book because it is such a groundbreaking, insightful, and comprehensive examination of the development of Southern public education systems and the fight over whether they would be instruments of domination or liberation. Every time I read it, I learn new things.
This book shows how Black Southerners' activism and support helped build public education in the South and how they tried to use education to claim and give meaning to freedom after the Civil War. At the same time, White Southerners fought (and in many ways) succeeded in using those systems for control and hierarchy.
I think the book explores this tension in education and offers profound insights about the history and ongoing effects of this history of discrimination and segregation.
James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order--supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators,…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I am a historian of education and twentieth-century U.S. history. Public schooling has been transformative for me, opening up a world of opportunities, but I know many others are not nearly so lucky. This has shaped my interest in the history of public schooling, including its promise of democracy and opportunity and the too-often reality of the way it replicates and deepens social and economic inequalities. I think history helps us understand our world, including to see the roots of inequality we live with today and to think about how we might build a more equitable system.
I come back to this book over and over again to understand the history of education and educational inequality, and every time I read it, I get new things from it. It is a classic for a reason! Even though it is over 50 years old, it is still one of the most insightful and comprehensive books about the history of urban education.
It shows us how the creation of modern urban school bureaucracies and the professionalization of education raised fundamental tensions and tradeoffs that we still wrestle with today, especially how to keep schools accountable to the community and how they serve all students.
The One Best System presents a major new interpretation of what actually happened in the development of one of America's most influential institutions. At the same time it is a narrative in which the participants themselves speak out: farm children and factory workers, frontier teachers and city superintendents, black parents and elite reformers. And it encompasses both the achievements and the failures of the system: the successful assimilation of immigrants, racism and class bias; the opportunities offered to some, the injustices perpetuated for others.
David Tyack has placed his colorful, wide-ranging view of history within a broad new framework drawn…
I am a historian of education and twentieth-century U.S. history. Public schooling has been transformative for me, opening up a world of opportunities, but I know many others are not nearly so lucky. This has shaped my interest in the history of public schooling, including its promise of democracy and opportunity and the too-often reality of the way it replicates and deepens social and economic inequalities. I think history helps us understand our world, including to see the roots of inequality we live with today and to think about how we might build a more equitable system.
I love how this book asks big and fundamental questions about the relationship between work and education and grounds them in such careful and extensive historical research. It challenges some of the things we think we know about the relationship between the economy and education and makes a powerful case that we fall into a “trap” when we ask education to fix inequalities that are rooted in and best addressed in our economic system.
I love how this book looks broadly and deeply across sectors of the economy, public and private schools, higher education, and K-12 schools at a critical moment of transformation to ask important questions about the sources of inequality and the best ways to address it.
Why-contrary to much expert and popular opinion-more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality.
For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality.
The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger's test case…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
I am a historian of education and twentieth-century U.S. history. Public schooling has been transformative for me, opening up a world of opportunities, but I know many others are not nearly so lucky. This has shaped my interest in the history of public schooling, including its promise of democracy and opportunity and the too-often reality of the way it replicates and deepens social and economic inequalities. I think history helps us understand our world, including to see the roots of inequality we live with today and to think about how we might build a more equitable system.
I love this book because it takes what we largely take for granted—local property tax and the educational inequality it produces—and shows how and why this developed over time and whose interests it has served. While we have tended to assume that funding inequality is the unfortunate byproduct of a long attachment to localism, this book explores how, in California, the state moved from centralized and more equitable funding to more localized and unequal funding through the political lobbying of the elites who benefited.
Taking unequal funding seriously as a deliberate project and a cornerstone for other kinds of social and economic inequalities makes us rethink many aspects of educational inequality we live with today. This book consequently says profound things about the history of American education and educational inequality, past and present.
In Dividing the Public, Matthew Gardner Kelly takes aim at the racial and economic disparities that characterize public education funding in the United States. With California as his focus, Kelly illustrates that the use of local taxes to fund public education was never an inadvertent or de facto product of past practices, but an intentional decision adopted in place of well-known alternatives during the Progressive Era, against past precedent and principle in several states.
From efforts to convert expropriated Indigenous and Mexican land into common school funding in the 1850s, to reforms that directed state aid to expanding white suburbs…
I am a child psychiatrist and children’s book author. I also teach an elective course, Creativity and the Unconscious Mind, in Lesley University’s Creative Writing/MFA program. I am the author of two fiction (Pirates Don’t Go to Kindergarten, Pippa’s Night Parade) and two nonfiction picture books (Madame Saqui, Revolutionary Ropedancer, Were I Not A Girl: The Inspiring and True Story of Dr. James Barry). Coming out in 2022 is The Sweetest Scoop: Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Revolution and there are more books forthcoming! In my free time, I read voraciously and fly through the air on aerial silks at my local circus studio.
The First Step tells an important and lesser-known story about Sarah Roberts, a schoolgirl who was not allowed to attend school in Boston in 1847 because of her skin color. Sarah and her family persisted by fighting this injustice; they took the City of Boston to court! Roberts v. City of Boston was the first case to challenge the United States’ legal system to outlaw segregation in schools. The Roberts family lost the battle, but their case was the first step toward desegregating schools. It’s important for children to learn that even if you don’t win, it’s vital to speak up and fight against injustice and that every step forward counts!
The inspiring story of four-year-old Sarah Roberts, the first African American girl to try to integrate a white school, and how her experience in 1847 set greater change in motion.
Junior Library Guild Selection
2017 Orbis Pictus Honor Book
Chicago Public LibraryKids Best of the Best Book 2016
A Nerdy Book Club Best Nonfiction Book of 2016
An NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book of 2017
In 1847, a young African American girl named Sarah Roberts was attending a school in Boston. Then one day she was told she could never come back. She didn't belong. The Otis School was…
As a Certified Divorce Coach and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst®, I work with clients during one of the most difficult stages of their lives. Clients often feel regretful about the past and fearful for the future, and the right book recommendation can really help them move forward. I often give clients reading assignments between coaching sessions that help them process their grief, figure out their goals, educate themselves about finances, feel less alone in the divorce process, and become more confident in making major decisions. I’m never not reading on this subject.
Divorcing someone with a personality disorder can be one of the most stressful things one can face. Bill Eddy is a family lawyer and therapist who understands the complexities of divorcing a high conflict person and has mastered ways to communicate and co-parent with them. This book is a must-read for anyone facing high conflict divorce as it is filled with practical tips and suggestions.
Divorce is difficult under the best of circumstances. Dealing with this inherently adversarial process can be highly emotional on both sides. But when a divorcing individual is a "persuasive blamer"-someone who suffers from borderline personality disorder (BPD), narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), or simply has a high-conflict, manipulative personality-their behavior can have devastating ramifications for their former spouses. People with these disorders may adopt physical and verbal abuse as strategies, lie to lawyers and judges, manipulate the court, and may even level charges of abuse in order to get their way. Because persuasive blamers are so convincing and even charming, these…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
As a child, I was always drawn to stories told through both words and illustrations. Why should that have to end in adulthood? Spoiler: it doesn’t, because there are SO many incredible graphic memoirs and novels written with adult audiences in mind. As a graphic memoirist myself, I love to see how other artists explore the form. I share recommendations in this genre every month in my newsletter, Haley Wrote This.
I grew up as a competitive swimmer and struggled to put words to some of the feelings I had around being a female athlete, especially given how disconnected I felt from the history of women’s sports. This book hits both of those topics as the author shares her experience as a soccer player—to the point that I had to put down the book every once in a while and just sigh with relief.
Plus, the historical look at Title Nine was so informative and, quite frankly, shocking.
"[R]eaders will certainly want to linger on the beautiful depictions of birds, people and scenes from her life. She weaves in historical context in graceful and necessary ways."
A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir chronicling how sports shaped one young girl’s life and changed women’s history forever.
Growing up playing on a top national soccer team in the 1980s, Kelcey Ervick and her teammates didn’t understand the change they represented. Title IX was enacted in 1972 with little fanfare, but to seismic effect; between then and now, girls’ participation in organized sports has…
I'm now retired. But like many historians of my generation, I've been lucky. Having gone to the University of California when there was no tuition and got through graduate school thanks to the GI Bill, I then taught history for five decades, briefly at San Francisco State College and the University of Hawaii, and for a long stretch at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. During those years, I wrote eight books, one was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and three won prizes—the Albert J. Beverage Award in 1970, the second-place Lincoln Prize in 2001, and the Langum Trust Prize in 2015. All but one deal with slavery and power.
This book also deserves more attention than it has received. And it, too, is a corrective. Taking to task a host of biographers and historians who have pretended that the “founding fathers” were blind to slavery and that slavery was a secondary issue in 1787, Finkleman contends that slavery was always a major bone of contention. Moreover, contends Finkelman, Thomas Jefferson was anything but an antislavery man. Instead, he was on the proslavery and anti-Black side in most controversies.
In Slavery and the Founders, Paul Finkelman addresses a central issue of the American founding: how the first generation of leaders of the United States dealt with the profoundly important question of human bondage. The book explores the tension between the professed idea of America as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the reality of the early American republic, reminding us of the profound and disturbing ways that slavery affected the U.S. Constitution and early American politics. It also offers the most important and detailed short critique of Thomas Jefferson's relationship to slavery available, while at the same time…
Like myself, each of these novels involved older professional Black women protagonists. Each of these authors presented multidimensional women experiencing circumstances that surpass culture and ethnicity. As women age, not only do we take on new roles, but we physically and emotionally change. I appreciate books with relatable characters coping with issues I experience—menopause, aging parents, an empty nest. Reading mysteries with fictional characters dealing with situations I experience makes me feel less isolated.
Someone is trying to kill Carole Ann. As a Washington DC lawyer, Carole Ann embraces the challenge of working in DC’s competitive fast-paced environment, but that business has placed a bullseye on her back. She must figure out why while balancing work and her personal life. I appreciated how the author created a multidimensional woman that didn’t measure success by her romantic entanglements.
No matter how hard she tries to live the quiet life, trouble has a way of grabbing Carole Ann Gibson by the throat -- and this time all her famous intuition and raw courage might not be enough to save her.
In the heartbreaking aftermath of her husband's death, Carole Ann, widely known as "the best damn trial lawyer in D.C.," left her criminal-law practice for what she hoped was a safer, saner life as a partner in her friend Jake's security firm. But when the richest man in Washington, D.C., hires her to find his daughter, she is caught…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
I am fascinated by how gender and sex, characteristics of our beings that we take to be the most intimate and personal, are just as subject to external forces as anything else in history. I have written about the cultivation of masculinity in college fraternities, the history of young people and the age of consent to marriage, and about a same-sex couple who lived publicly as “father and son” in order to be together. My most recent book is a biography of an abortion provider in nineteenth-century America who became the symbol that doctors and lawyers demonized as they worked to make abortion a crime. I am a professor at the University of Kansas.
This is the definitive account of what abortion looked like for the one hundred years during which it was almost completely illegal in the United States.
Reagan does an excellent job of showing us the different ways that women nevertheless accessed abortion care during that time, even as she points out how access was always shaped by race and class.
She is also great at demonstrating how and why police and lawmakers cracked down on abortion and made it less accessible at particular moments in this one-hundred-year period, ultimately showing why it was eventually decriminalized in 1973.
The definitive history of abortion in the United States, with a new preface that equips readers for what's to come.
When Abortion Was a Crime is the must-read book on abortion history. Originally published ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this award-winning study was the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with that monumental case in 1973. When Abortion Was a Crime is filled with intimate stories and nuanced analysis, demonstrating how abortion was criminalized and policed-and how millions of women…
