"On a beautiful Pennsylvania fall morning, a gunman holds college freshman Yoona Lee and three of her classmates hostage in the claustrophobic confines of their dorm room. The desperate man with his finger on the trigger--Yoona's onetime friend, Lloyd Kang--is unraveling after a mysterious accident in Korea killed his closest friend, Jaesung, who was also the love of Yoona's life. As the tense standoff unfolds, Yoona is forced to revisit her past, from growing up in an abusive household to the upheaval in her ancestral homeland to unwittingly falling in love. She must also confront the truth about what happened to Jaesung on that tragic day, even as her own fate hangs in the balance."--Provided by publisher.
A Small Revolution in Germany is about growing up, or refusing to accept what growing up means; it's about the small dishonest pacts that people make with their own futures; and it's about the rare and joyous refusal to be disillusioned. Everyone remembers what it's like to be seventeen. The conversations you have; the ideas that burst on you; the kiss that transforms you. And then you grow up, and make a deal with adulthood. A Small Revolution in Germany is about that rapturous moment when ideas, and ideals, and passion crash over one boy's head. And what happens in the decades afterwards? When you see the overwhelming truth when you are seventeen, why should you ever abandon that truth? Spike is brought into a small, clever group of friends, bursting with a passion for ideas, and the wish to change the world. They smash up political meetings; they paint slogans on walls; they long for armed revolution; they argue, exuberantly, until dawn. In the years to follow, they all change their minds, and go into the world. They become writers, politicians, public figures. One of them becomes famous when she dies. They all change their minds, and make sensible compromises. Only Spike stays exactly as he is, going on with the burning desire for change, in the safe embrace of unconditional love. Alone from the old group, he is the only one who has achieved nothing, and who has never deviated from the impractical shining path of revolution he saw as a teenager. Thirty years on, photographs of the teenage group look like a bunch of celebrated individuals, with only one unknown face in it - Spike.
In China in 1966, Chun Yu was born as the Great Cultural Revolution began under Chairman Mao. Here, she recalls her childhood as a witness to a country in turmoil and struggle--the only life she knew.
*A 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST* It's 1964, and Sunny's town is being invaded. Or at least that's what the adults of Greenwood, Mississippi, are saying. All Sunny knows is that people from up north are coming to help people register to vote. They're calling it Freedom Summer.Meanwhile, Sunny can't help but feel like her house is being invaded, too. She has a new stepmother, a new brother, and a new sister crowding her life, giving her little room to breathe. And things get even trickier when Sunny and her brother are caught sneaking into the local swimming pool -- where they bump into a mystery boy whose life is going to become tangled up in theirs.As she did in her groundbreaking documentary novel COUNTDOWN, award-winning author Deborah Wiles uses stories and images to tell the riveting story of a certain time and place -- and of kids who, in a world where everyone is choosing sides, must figure out how to stand up for themselves and fight for what's right.
A report from the front lines of higher education and technology that chronicles efforts to transform teaching, learning, and opportunity. Colleges and universities have become increasingly costly, and, except for a handful of highly selective, elite institutions, unresponsive to twenty-first-century needs. But for the past few years, technology-fueled innovation has begun to transform higher education, introducing new ways to disseminate knowledge and better ways to learn—all at lower cost. In this impassioned account, Richard DeMillo tells the behind-the-scenes story of these pioneering efforts and offers a roadmap for transforming higher education. Building on his earlier book, Abelard to Apple, DeMillo argues that the current system of higher education is clearly unsustainable. Colleges and universities are in financial crisis. Tuition rises inexorably. Graduates of reputable schools often fail to learn basic skills, and many cannot find suitable jobs. Meanwhile, student-loan default rates have soared while the elite Ivy and near-Ivy schools seem remote and irrelevant. Where are the revolutionaries who can save higher education? DeMillo's heroes are a small band of innovators who are bringing the revolution in technology to colleges and universities. DeMillo chronicles, among other things, the invention of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) by professors at Stanford and MIT; Salman Khan's Khan Academy; the use of technology by struggling historically black colleges and universities to make learning more accessible; and the latest research on learning and the brain. He describes the revolution's goals and the entrenched hierarchical system it aims to overthrow; and he reframes the nature of the contract between society and its universities. The new institutions of a transformed higher education promise to demonstrate not only that education has value but also that it has values—virtues for the common good.
Humanity started small. Where did we get the idea big is better? The establishment promote big business, big government or big culture, more often than not, all three. In Small is Powerful Adam Lent reveals how our faith in big was manufactured in the 1900s – by a group of powerful business leaders, politicians and thinkers –and gripped the collective imagination throughout the twentieth century. But the notion that vast concentrations of power should reside in the state, in corporations, or the church has failed to create a stable, fairer world. In Small is Powerful, Lent challenges this failure of imagination and asks us to consider a world where ownership, power and resources are dispersed on a smaller scale, in way that is better for everyone. He explores the roots of the 'small revolution' in the 1970s, and demonstrates how, contrary to received wisdom, this movement is intensifying today. Millions are setting up their own small businesses; political and social change is increasingly delivered by grassroots initiatives; and people are making their own decisions about how to live their lives. Small is Powerful delivers an informed and impassioned plea to stand up and fight for the fairer, wealthier and more stable world we want. It is an impassioned plea for 'smallists' everywhere to stand up and be counted.
Thomas Kuhn (1922-96) transformed the philosophy of science. His seminal 1962 work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" introduced the term 'paradigm shift' into the vernacular and remains a fundamental text in the study of the history and philosophy of science. This introduction to Kuhn's ideas covers the breadth of his philosophical work, situating "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" within Kuhn's wider thought and drawing attention to the development of his ideas over time. Kuhn's work is assessed within the context of other philosophies of science notably logical empiricism and recent developments in naturalized epistemology. The author argues that Kuhn's thinking betrays a residual commitment to many theses characteristic of the empiricists he set out to challenge. Kuhn's influence on the history and philosophy of science is assessed and where the field may be heading in the wake of Kuhn's ideas is explored.
'Don't interrupt me, ' said Wells, 'can't you see I'm dying!' In this seminal biography, Vincent Brome recounts the rich fantastic cauldron of Wells' life - from his politics and writing to his complex and torn emotional life, and his painful, lingering death. Here was a man 'whose greatness lay in his ordinariness', but who was never truly ordinary.
