NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
From one of the foremost authorities on education in the United States, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, “whistle-blower extraordinaire” (The Wall Street Journal), author of the best-selling The Death and Life of the Great American School System (“Important and riveting”—Library Journal), The Language Police (“Impassioned . . . Fiercely argued . . . Every bit as alarming as it is illuminating”—The New York Times), and other notable books on education history and policy—an incisive, comprehensive look at today’s American school system that argues against those who claim it is broken and beyond repair; an impassioned but reasoned call to stop the privatization movement that is draining students and funding from our public schools. In Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch argues that the crisis in American education is not a crisis of academic achievement but a concerted effort to destroy public schools in this country. She makes clear that, contrary to the claims being made, public school test scores and graduation rates are the highest they’ve ever been, and dropout rates are at their lowest point. She argues that federal programs such as George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top set unreasonable targets for American students, punish schools, and result in teachers being fired if their students underperform, unfairly branding those educators as failures. She warns that major foundations, individual billionaires, and Wall Street hedge fund managers are encouraging the privatization of public education, some for idealistic reasons, others for profit. Many who work with equity funds are eyeing public education as an emerging market for investors. Reign of Error begins where The Death and Life of the Great American School System left off, providing a deeper argument against privatization and for public education, and in a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, putting forth a plan for what can be done to preserve and improve it. She makes clear what is right about U.S. education, how policy makers are failing to address the root causes of educational failure, and how we can fix it. For Ravitch, public school education is about knowledge, about learning, about developing character, and about creating citizens for our society. It’s about helping to inspire independent thinkers, not just honing job skills or preparing people for college. Public school education is essential to our democracy, and its aim, since the founding of this country, has been to educate citizens who will help carry democracy into the future.
. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
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, and most southern school officials--conflicted with the aspirations of ex-slaves and their descendants, resulting at the turn of the century in a bitter national debate over the purposes of black education. Because blacks lacked economic and political power, white elites were able to control the structure and content of black elementary, secondary, normal, and college education during the first third of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, blacks persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires.
Simple Justice is the definitive history of the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education and the epic struggle for racial equality in this country. Combining intensive research with original interviews with surviving participants, Richard Kluger provides the fullest possible view of the human and legal drama in the years before 1954, the cumulative assaults on the white power structure that defended segregation, and the step-by-step establishment of a team of inspired black lawyers that could successfully challenge the law. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the unanimous Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation, Kluger has updated his work with a new final chapter covering events and issues that have arisen since the book was first published, including developments in civil rights and recent cases involving affirmative action, which rose directly out of Brown v. Board of Education.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! FOX News host Pete Hegseth is back with what he says is his most important book yet: A revolutionary road map to saving our children from leftist indoctrination. Behind a smokescreen of “preparing students for the new industrial economy,” early progressives had political control in mind. America’s original schools didn’t just make kids memorize facts or learn skills; they taught them to think freely and arrive at wisdom. They assigned the classics, inspired love of God and country, and raised future citizens that changed the world forever. Today, after 16,000 hours of K-12 indoctrination, our kids come out of government schools hating America. They roll their eyes at religion and disdain our history. We spend more money on education than ever, but kids can barely read and write—let alone reason with discernment. Western culture is on the ropes. Kids are bored and aimless, flailing for purpose in a system that says racial and gender identity is everything. Battle for the American Mind is the untold story of the Progressive plan to neutralize the basis of our Republic – by removing the one ingredient that had sustained Western Civilization for thousands of years. Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin explain why, no matter what political skirmishes conservatives win, progressives are winning the war—and control the “supply lines” of future citizens. Reversing this reality will require parents to radically reorient their children’s education; even most homeschooling and Christian schooling are infused with progressive assumptions. We need to recover a lost philosophy of education – grounded in virtue and excellence – that can arm future generations to fight for freedom. It’s called classical Christian education. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. Battle for the American Mind is more than a book; it’s a field guide for remaking school in the United States. We’ve ceded our kids’ minds to the left for far too long—this book gives patriotic parents the ammunition to join an insurgency that gives America a fighting chance.
The Work and the Man (Classic Reprint) by Agnes Rush Burr offers a thought-provoking examination of the relationship between labor and character. This thought-provoking book argues that the work a person does can shape their character, and conversely, the character can influence their work. Through insightful commentary and vivid illustrations, Burr creates a compelling discourse on the importance of work in personal development. The Work and the Man is a timeless book that will inspire and challenge you to reflect on your own work and its impact on your character. Delve into the intriguing relationship between work and character with The Work and the Man by Agnes Rush Burr. Discover the profound insights within this classic reprint today!
Public research universities were previously able to provide excellent education to white families thanks to healthy government funding. However, that funding has all but dried up in recent decades as historically underrepresented students have gained greater access, and now less prestigious public universities face major economic challenges. In Broke, Laura T. Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen examine virtually all aspects of campus life to show how the new economic order in public universities, particularly at two campuses in the renowned University of California system, affects students. For most of the twentieth century, they show, less affluent families of color paid with their taxes for wealthy white students to attend universities where their own offspring were not welcome. That changed as a subset of public research universities, some quite old, opted for a “new” approach, making racially and economically marginalized youth the lifeblood of the university. These new universities, however, have been particularly hard hit by austerity. To survive, they’ve had to adapt, finding new ways to secure funding and trim costs—but ultimately it’s their students who pay the price, in decreased services and inadequate infrastructure. ? The rise of new universities is a reminder that a world-class education for all is possible. Broke shows us how far we are from that ideal and sets out a path for how we could get there.
Joel Spring’s history of school polices imposed on dominated groups in the United States examines the concept of deculturalization—the use of schools to strip away family languages and cultures and replace them with those of the dominant group. The focus is on the education of dominated groups forced to become citizens in territories conquered by the U.S., including Native Americans, Enslaved Africans, Chinese, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Hawaiians. In 7 concise, thought-provoking chapters, this analysis and documentation of how education is used to change or eliminate linguistic and cultural traditions in the U.S. looks at the educational, legal, and social construction of race and racism in the United States, emphasizing the various meanings of "equality" that have existed from colonial America to the present. Providing a broader perspective for understanding the denial of cultural and linguistic rights in the United States, issues of language, culture, and deculturalization are placed in a global context. The major change in the 8th Edition is a new chapter, "Global Corporate Culture and Separate But Equal," describing how current efforts at deculturalization involve replacing family and personal cultures with a corporate culture to increase worker efficiency. Substantive updates and revisions are made throughout all other chapters
