Academic Learning

The inspirational story of a former Microsoft executive’s quest to build libraries around the world and share the love of books What’s happened since John Wood left Microsoft to change the world? Just ask six million kids in the poorest regions of Asia and Africa. In 1999, at the age of 35, Wood quit a lucrative career to found the nonprofit Room to Read. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "the Andrew Carnegie of the developing world", he strove to bring the lessons of the corporate world to the nonprofit sector - and succeeded spectacularly.

We all have a lot to learn from the diary of a teacher named Esmé Raji Codell, an educator who has struggled to maintain individuality in the face of bureaucracy and whose defiant stand against mediocrity will reverberate in companies as well as classrooms everywhere.

We all know what is wrong with today’s schools - or do we? Tracy Kidder spent a year in a fifth grade class in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The teacher is excellent, but something else is very wrong. Kidder skillfully presents the problems and leaves the listener to ponder the solutions.

Newspaperman tells the story of how an immigrant's shy son from Queens, New York, rose to the top of his industry, powered by little more than passion, brains, and hard work. Phillips began his career working as a copyboy for the New York Herald Tribune for 16 dollars a week... and ended it as publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of its parent corporation, Dow Jones & Company. The life story of Warren Phillips is the story of the American newspaper business.

After devoting half of his lifetime transforming his start-up business into a multi-million dollar industry leader, author John McLaughlin set out in a new direction: to teach what he had learned to others. Due to a lack of teaching experience, his only job offer was to teach entrepreneurship to prisoners at a minimum-security camp in North Carolina. John gradually builds an effective program until a scandal involving prison officials blindsides his progress and threatens to bring his teaching career to an unceremonious end.

She was a wife, mother, teacher, and the first civilian to fly into space, but Christa’s dream tragically ended on a cold January day with the needless explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Uncanny Valley is a captivating account of Anna Wiener’s struggle to find meaning and fulfilment in an industry that was brimming with optimism but felt ever so selfish, insidious, and hostile. This is a summary, analysis, and review of the book and not the original book.

This audio study guide for Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink includes detailed summary and analysis of each chapter and an in-depth exploration of the novel’s multiple symbols, motifs, and themes, such as the failure of planning and life-and-death decisions. Featured content also includes commentary on major characters, 25 important quotes, essay questions, and discussion topics.

This audio study guide for Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business by Harold Livesay includes detailed summary and analysis of each chapter and an in-depth exploration of the novel’s multiple symbols, motifs, and themes such as the old world versus the new and ethical dilemmas in 19th-century capitalism. Featured content also includes commentary on major characters, 25 important quotes, essay questions, and discussion topics.

This audio study guide for Lab Girl by Hope Jahren includes detailed summary and analysis of each chapter and an in-depth exploration of the book’s multiple symbols, motifs, and themes such as misogyny in the science, injustice, and plants. Featured content also includes commentary on major characters, 25 important quotes, essay questions, and discussion topics. Lab Girl is Professor Hope Jahren’s 2016 best-selling memoir, a chronicle of a life spent in pursuit of big ideas and discoveries.

Adam Habib, the most prominent and outspoken university official through the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa's campuses in this new book. Habib charts the progress of the student protests that erupted on Wits University campus in late 2015 and raged for the better part of three years, drawing on his own intimate involvement and negotiation with the students, and also records university management and government responses to the events.

In Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level (2019), technology journalist Leander Kahney explains how a mild-mannered man from a small town in Alabama became the CEO of one of America’s most influential and successful companies. Cook, who once served as Apple’s chief operating officer, was considered a strange choice to replace Steve Jobs when he was announced as the company’s new leader in 2011...

About the original book: The Threat, by the former FBI deputy director, Andrew G. McCabe, is equal parts memoir and equal parts wake-up call for the American people. In a fast-paced style worthy of a thriller, McCabe narrates how the FBI has overcome challenges to counter the invisible menaces of terrorism and organized crime and how these efforts could be undone by a selfish and incompetent administration under President Trump. This book merits being in the must-read list of anyone interested in the details of some of the biggest FBI cases of recent times.

Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time (1997) details how a small coffee roastery in Seattle became a monolithic corporation with a worldwide reputation for providing affordable luxury beverages. Author Howard Schultz, now retired CEO and chairman of Starbucks, recounts how he grew the company into an internationally recognized chain after joining Starbucks in the early 1980s and buying it later that same decade...

In From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America (2019), Howard Schultz examines how his upbringing in a working class New York family influenced his actions when he became chairman and CEO of Starbucks. Schultz uses his eventual professional success to argue that the United States still can be a land of opportunity if those with means are willing to give chances and resources to those without.

Aren't you a lucky child? A long time ago, the right to suffrage was only granted to certain members of the society. These days, everyone can vote. The question now is: "Who should you vote?" You will find your answer will depend on the influences of the people around you. Get to know the individuals who will shape your voting preference later on in life.

This FastReads Summary & Analysis offers supplementary material to The Third Wave to help you distill the key takeaways, review the book's content, and further understand the writing style and overall themes from an editorial perspective. Whether you'd like to deepen your understanding, refresh your memory, or simply decide whether or not this book is for you, FastReads Summary & Analysis is here to help. Absorb everything you need to know in under 20 minutes!

In John Hunter’s classroom, students fearlessly tackle global problems and discover surprising solutions by playing his groundbreaking World Peace Game. These kids - from high school all the way down to fourth grade, in schools both well funded and underresourced - take on the roles of politicians, tribal leaders, diplomats, bankers, and military commanders. Through battles and negotiations, standoffs and summits, they strive to resolve dozens of complex, seemingly intractable real-world challenges.

An explosive new look at the pressures on today's teachers and the pitfalls of school reform, Confessions of a Bad Teacher presents a passionate appeal to save public schools, before it's too late. When John Owens left a lucrative job to teach English at a public school in New York City's South Bronx, he thought he could do some good. Faced with a flood of struggling students, Owens devised ingenious ways to engage every last one. But as his students began to thrive under his tutelage, Owens found himself increasingly mired in a broken educational system.

It takes drive, persistence, and plenty of stamina to practice cardiology at the highest level. The competition for training fellowship spots is intense. Hundreds of applicants from all over the world compete to be accepted into the Cardiovascular Disease Training Fellowship at Johns Hopkins. Only nine are chosen each year. This is the story of one of those fellows.