Reading Social

As long as people have been writing books, authors have been using them to create misrepresentations of women. From medieval reality show-style wife tests to 21st century dating guides based on 200-year-old novels, Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman takes listeners on a guided tour of advice on what women should and should not do.

This book explores gender, disability, and literature in the Global South, concentrating on Nepal in particular. Religious and cultural values disable women’s autonomy in general, and create even greater disadvantages for women who are physically disabled. This study examines two Nepali women writers, Bishnu Kumari Waiwa and Jhamak Ghimire, who challenge stigmas of the disabled body by deconstructing the “ideology of ability” through their autobiographical narratives.

On sabbatical from teaching literature to undergraduates, and wanting to educate a different kind of student, Mikita Brottman starts a book club with a group of convicts from the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland. She assigns them 10 dark, challenging classics, including Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare's Macbeth, Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Poe's story "The Black Cat", and Nabokov's Lolita.

Andromeda Klein has a few problems of her own. Her hair is kind of horrible. Her partner-in-occultism, Daisy, is dead. Her secret, estranged, much older and forbidden boyfriend-in-theory, has gone AWOL. And her mother has learned how to text. In short, things couldn't get much worse. Until they do. Daisy seems to be attempting to make contact from beyond, books are starting to disappear from the library, and then, strangely and suddenly, Andromeda's tarot readings are beginning to predict events with bizarrely literal accuracy.

In 1987, E. L. Doctorow celebrated the Constitution's bicentennial by reading it. "It is five thousand words long but reads like fifty thousand," he said. Distinguished legal scholar Garrett Epps disagrees. It's about 7,500 words. In American Epic, Epps takes us through a complete reading of the Constitution to achieve an appreciation of its power and a holistic understanding of what it says. In this book he seeks not to provide a definitive interpretation, but to listen to the language and ponder its meaning.

A must-hear for parents, teachers, and anyone interested in education, The Reading Gap: Journey to Answers is written by a former teacher who couldn't read and who later became a prominent literacy advocate. This book interweaves the author's personal story with the current state of research, teacher training, and instruction. It also addresses the uncomfortable truth about the scope of illiteracy and sub-literacy in the US, as well as the far-reaching consequences and devastating effects on our society. Included too is this powerful message: don't blame teachers; train them.

Anne Gisleson had lost her twin sisters, had been forced to flee her home during Hurricane Katrina, and had witnessed cancer take her beloved father. Before she met her husband, Brad, he had suffered his own trauma, losing his partner and the mother of his son to cancer in her young 30s. "How do we keep moving forward," Anne asks, "amid all this loss and threat?" The answer: "We do it together."

The detectable identity of southern Louisiana's one-of-a-kind culture has been expressed in numerous descriptive phrases - "south of the South," "the northern tip of the Caribbean," "this folklore land." A strange, piquant, and savory mixture, it also has been likened to one of the region's signature dishes, gumbo.

In 1919, Texas rancher J. Frank Norfleet lost everything he had in a stock market swindle. He did what many other marks did - he went home, borrowed more money from his family, and returned for another round of swindling. Only after he lost that second fortune did he reclaim control of his story. Instead of crawling back home in shame, he vowed to hunt down the five men who had conned him. Through Norfleet's ingenious reverse-swindle, Amy Reading reveals the mechanics behind the scenes of the big con.

Why is it that we read? Is it to pass time? To learn something new? To escape from reality? For Will Schwalbe, reading is a way to entertain himself but also to make sense of the world, to become a better person, and to find the answers to the big (and small) questions about how to live his life. In this delightful celebration of reading, Schwalbe invites us along on his quest for books that speak to the specific challenges of living in our modern world, with all its noise and distractions.

From gun control to reproductive health, a conservative Supreme Court will reshape the lives of all Americans for decades to come. The time to develop and defend a progressive vision of the US Constitution that protects the rights of all people is now.

Legal luminary Burt Neuborne argues that the structure of the First Amendment as well as of the entire Bill of Rights was more intentional than most people realize, beginning with the internal freedom of conscience and working outward to freedom of expression and finally freedom of public association. This design, Neuborne argues, was not to protect discrete individual rights - such as the rights of corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.

Ever wondered what little things you can do to come across more confidently in social situations? Maybe there's a special someone out there you need a little help with getting closer to? In this book, we go over psychological tricks to navigating these social situations, and fostering better connections with the people around you, as well as reading basic body language, and building self confidence.

In just 1,337 words, the Declaration of Independence changed the world, but curiously it is now rarely read from start to finish, much less understood. Unsettled by this, Danielle Allen read the text quietly with students and discovered its animating power. "Bringing the analytical skills of a philosopher, the voice of a gifted memoirist, and the spirit of a soulful humanist to the task, Allen manages to find new meaning in Thomas Jefferson' s understanding of equality," says Joseph J. Ellis about Our Declaration.

What if you were able to tell when your colleague's smile actually mean that they were irritated with you? Would you change your tactics of negotiation if you knew how the person in your business meeting was really interpreting your suggestions? Obviously, the skill of reading people offers an amazing advantage. Most people want to think that they are already good at interpreting other people's body language signals, but the fact is that we aren't as good at this as we believe. Are you tired of guessing how people feel or constantly misinterpreting the signals of those around you?

Powerful reading and writing is fundamentally linked to civic education. The Civically Engaged Classroom is packed with practical guidance designed to support teachers in giving students the skills, knowledge, and tools to be active participants in society.

After twenty years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a global pandemic, protests against racial violence, and frequent shootings, more Americans than ever are living with the effects of trauma. The good news is that Jesus was born and died in a traumatized world, and his story speaks forever to wounded people worldwide. Army veteran and Episcopal priest David Peters explores Jesus' life story through the post-traumatic lens with which the Gospel writers first wrote it.

The truth is, we all have a deep need to feel understood and connected to others. And yet, most of us do not know how to create those connections. Some may have given up all hope, but it does not have to be this way!

Calling all poets! Fancy Nancy Clancy is so poetic, even her name rhymes. And with limericks, couplets, free verse, and more, poetry is plenty fancy! So when her teacher Ms. Glass gives Nancy and her classmates an assignment to come up with their very own poems, Nancy is determined to write one that is superb. But what happens when she can't think of a good idea? Complete with Nancy's very own poetry anthology, Fancy Nancy: Poet Extraordinaire! shows how a true love of words can be tres fancy.

In any time of disruption or grief, many of us seek guidance in the work of great writers who endured similar circumstances. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, historian and biographer Robert Zaretsky did the same while also working as a volunteer in a nursing home in south Texas. In Victories Never Last, Zaretsky weaves his reflections on the pandemic siege of his nursing home with the testimony of six writers on their own times of plague: Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, and Albert Camus.