English Class

The neighborhoods we live in impact our lives in so many ways: they determine who we know, what resources and opportunities we have access to, the quality of schools our kids go to, our sense of security and belonging, and even how long we live. Yet too many of us live in neighborhoods plagued by rising crime, school violence, family disintegration, addiction, alienation, and despair. In Fragile Neighborhoods, fragile states expert Seth D. Kaplan offers a bold new vision for addressing social decline in America, one zip code at a time.

Capitalism has blessed the world with wealth and technological miracles. It has also cursed it with urban slums, powerless workers, and the vicious boom-and-bust economy. If only there were some way to fix the problems of capitalism and keep all its benefits. In 1897, Henry George published his solution to this puzzle, Progress and Poverty. He suggested that, unlike all other taxes, a tax on land doesn't discourage entrepreneurship. A single tax on land can raise the revenues we need to help the poor without destroying the incentive to create wealth.

Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.

Lady Victoria Aston has everything she could want: an older sister happily wed, the future of her family estate secure, and ample opportunity to while her time away in the fields around her home. But now Vicky must marry - or find herself and her family destitute. Armed only with the wisdom she has gained from her beloved novels by Jane Austen, she enters society’s treacherous season.

In Left Behind, Collier examines how the assumption that any impoverished area will find a way to progress through market forces has devastated nations all over the world. With keen insight, he draws lessons from such disparate fields as behavioral psychology, evolutionary biology, and moral philosophy to explain how we can adapt to the needs of individual economies in order to build a brighter and fairer global future.

In an astonishing, tough firsthand reportage, Chris Hedges draws on stories from inside communities across America and reveals how the hurricanes of change have allowed an array of pathologies to arise: the opioid crisis, the retreat into gambling, the corporate coup d'état of government, the pornification of culture, the rise of magical thinking, the emboldening of violence and hate, the plagues of suicides, and the global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change.

A century ago, it was a given that a woman with a college degree had to choose between having a career and a family. Today, there are more female college graduates than ever before, and more women want to have a career and family, yet challenges persist at work and at home. This book traces how generations of women have responded to the problem of balancing career and family as the twentieth century experienced a sea change in gender equality, revealing why true equity for dual career couples remains frustratingly out of reach.

Aaron thinks genre fiction is an affront to the fiction-writing craft. He often quotes the essayist Arthur Krystal, who says literary fiction "melts the frozen sea inside of us". Ironically Aaron doesn't seem to realize that he's emotionally frozen. The vivacious Laurie, lover of flamingo-patterned attire and all things hot pink, is the one person who might be capable of melting him.

Shaw loves to sing—just not in front of people. But when Mr. Grizley's class is asked to perform a song for the mayor, Shaw would like to find the confidence to share his gift. Will Shaw be brave enough to share his talent with the whole school?

Mordecai is the newest student in Mr. Grizley's class. Before he even gets a chance to introduce himself, it is time for the school assembly. The class barely gets settled to watch a magic show when they get some bad news—the magician had to cancel. Can Mordecai work some of his own magic to save the school show?

Mr. Grizley's class is hosting a fundraiser for the animal shelter. Cecilia is disappointed that she forgot the tamales she was going to sell. Can her classmates come to the rescue and help her make a new plan?

Nicole's latest robot creation is not working right and threw a ball right through a window. No one knows how the window got broken, and Nicole decides to keep the accident to herself. But as she learns how the broken window has upset her classmates, she has second thoughts.

When Bobby learns more about homelessness, he wants to tell his classmates and help make a difference. But everyone is busy and distracted by their own activities. Can he find a way to tell this important story?

Rahma's special gift is she's good at helping her classmates make up when then have arguments. But when one of her friends gets mad at her, she isn't sure why her friend is upset or what to do about it. Can Mr. Grizley help Rahma figure out how to repair her friendship?

Ada Lace is building a new robot! She's determined to beat Milton in the upcoming robotics competition. But she's distracted - Ada finds her dad's art class impossible while Nina is the star of the class, basking in the glory of being Mr. Lace's star pupil. When Mr. Lace suggests that Nina put on an art show, Ada becomes jealous and loses her temper. Now Ada isn't speaking to her dad, she's falling behind in art class, and she still doesn't know how to fix her robot.

Nathan can't wait to share his newest jokes with his classmates at the upcoming talent show. But when Chad's hip-hop dance partner gets hurt, Chad asks Nathan to step in and dance with him instead. What will Nathan do?

This completely revised second edition pulls from years of research, practice, and results to reanalyze and reevaluate the nine instructional strategies that have the most positive effects on teaching and learning. A new framework organizes the nine instructional strategies that have the most positive effects on teaching and learning in preparation for instructional planning, and it highlights the point that all of the strategies are effective and should be used to complement one another.

Economists regularly promote Capitalism as the greatest system ever to grace the planet. With the same breath, they implore us to leave the job of understanding the magical powers of the market to the "experts." Despite the efforts of these mainstream commentators to convince us otherwise, many of us have begun to question why this system has produced such vast inequality and wanton disregard for its own environmental destruction. This book offers answers to exactly these questions on their own terms: in the form of a radical economic theory.

Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff's harrowing vision of his country's indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live.

Skye Sebring is a hospitality greeter inside the pearly gates of an unorthodox Heaven, where carefree and lusty angels get tipsy in the Live a Little Lounge, practice cloud art, and are guided by a brassy female deity who sounds and looks like Bette Midler. During the course of her duties, Skye meets lawyer Ryan Blaine, who has a brush with death due to a motorcycle accident. It's not Ryan's time to die yet, so he returns back to Earth, but Skye can't get him out of her mind. Why does Ryan seem so familiar to her, and why does she feel an unexplainable attraction to him?