English Class

As an English teacher, Kate Roberts has seen the power of whole-class novels to build community in her classroom. But she's also seen too many kids struggle too much to read them - and consequently, check out of reading altogether. Kate's had better success getting kids to actually read - and enjoy it - when they choose their own books within a workshop model. "And yet," she says, "missed my whole-class novels." In A Novel Approach, Kate takes a deep dive into the troubles and triumphs of both whole-class novels and independent reading and arrives at a persuasive conclusion.

From the beet fields of North Dakota to the wilderness campgrounds of California to an Amazon warehouse in Texas, people who once might have kicked back to enjoy their sunset years are hard at work. Underwater on mortgages or finding that Social Security comes up short, they're hitting the road in astonishing numbers, forming a new community of nomads: RV and van-dwelling migrant laborers, or "workampers".

If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one. Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But, one afternoon, on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned.

Peabody and Emmy Award–winning journalist Jane Marie expands on her popular podcast The Dream to expose the scourge of multilevel marketing schemes and how they have profited off the evisceration of the American working class.

Millions of Americans have lost confidence in our political and economic system. After years of stagnant wages, volatile job markets, and an unwillingness by those in power to deal with profound threats such as climate change, there is a mounting sense that the system is fixed, serving only those select few with enough money to secure a controlling stake. With the characteristic clarity and passion that has made him a central civil voice, Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy.

When the 13th Classroom is struck by purple lightning, something strange happens - all of the students get superpowers! You might think this was superb, but it was not. (It was sorta silly.) With great gifts comes wild weather, giant roaches, atomic farts, and other tricky troubles. As the students of Classroom 13 are about to learn, getting superpowers is not always super.

They Stole Your Status. Now Steal It Back. Tired of being labeled “toxic” for wanting to lead? Watched your job, dignity, and role as provider vanish to welfare traps and feminist gynocracies? Feel like a beta cuck in a world rigged by Eton elites and simps funding OnlyFans thots?

You might be beginning your career as an elementary school teacher, and you’re both excited and a little nervous to get up to get started. But this is a big step forward, so you’re secretly a little worried. Or you might be an experienced elementary school teacher. You’re feeling a little overwhelmed, burnt out, and wondering if teaching is still the right vocation for you. The good news is that you’re in the right place. This book will share with you the proven tips and strategies to help you confidently manage your classroom.

Along the path to any goal - completing a marathon or a thesis paper, winning a medal or a contract - familiar mental hurdles arise: We may fixate on the odds of failure or find our interest flags two-thirds of the way through. That’s when elite endurance athletes - top performers in running, cycling, and swimming - turn to their rich arsenal of cognitive strategies to overcome self-doubt and unlock peak performance.

Many black strategies of daily resistance have been obscured—until now. Race rebels, argues Kelley, have created strategies of resistance, movements, and entire subcultures. Here, for the first time, everyday race rebels are given the historiographical attention they deserve, from the Jim Crow era to the present.

In early August 1889, César Ritz, a Swiss hotelier highly regarded for his exquisite taste, found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. He had come at the request of Richard D'Oyly Carte, the financier of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operas, who had modernized theater and was now looking to create the world's best hotel. D'Oyly Carte soon seduced Ritz to move to London with his team, which included Auguste Escoffier, the chef de cuisine known for his elevated, original dishes.

In this, his best-known work, the controversial American economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen appropriates Darwin's theory of evolution to analyze the modern industrial system. For Veblen, the shallowness and superficiality observed in society results from the tendency to believe that true accomplishment lies in arriving at a condition of ostentatious wealth and status.

Capitalism as a system has spawned deepening economic crisis alongside its bought-and-paid-for political establishment. Neither serves the needs of our society. Whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve.

If you’ve ever been a room parent or school volunteer, Jen Dixon is your hero. She says what every class mom is really thinking, whether in her notoriously frank emails or standup-worthy interactions with the micromanaging PTA President and the gamut of difficult parents. Luckily, she has the charm and wit to get away with it - most of the time. Jen is sassier than ever but dealing with a whole new set of challenges in the world of parental politics and at home.

George S. Clason’s classic guide to financial health, The Richest Man in Babylon, has won millions of followers since 1930. Told as a series of parables set in ancient Mesopotamia, The Richest Man in Babylon is enthralling in its wisdom and simplicity. But times have changed. The enduring crisis of economic lockdown, spiraling health costs, and working from home were not even figments in the mind of this great author. Now, PEN Award-winning historian and popular voice of self-help Mitch Horowitz marries Clason’s insights to the challenges of our present-day financial lives.

America, says Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges, is convulsed by an array of pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter despair and a civil society that has ceased to function. The opioid crisis, the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress, the pornification of culture, the rise of magical thinking, the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. All these ills presage a frightening reconfiguration of the nation and the planet.

With the appearance of Grunch of Giants, R. Buckminster Fuller consummates his literary canon, his panoramic lifetime survey of all aspects of the responsibility of human beings for their own destiny. This book is a modern allegory - his long-gestated myth-of the villainy of capitalism and the fecklessness of classic economics. For Fuller, the academic discipline of economics is irrelevant since it derives from an invalid assumption of scarcity.

With the way behind them sealed, the only way forward for Eve and her friends is down. Down the narrow steps carved into the mountain. Down into the oppressive toxic fog. Down into the Dead Fields. But the Dead Fields are not so dead as they seem. Things lurk in the mist, things far beyond the levels of Eve, Wes, Preston, and, especially, the hatchling Reginald.

Imagination: A Manifesto offers visionary examples and tactics to push beyond the constraints of what we think, and are told, is possible. This book is for anyone who is ready to take to heart Toni Morrison's instruction: "Dream a little before you think."

A weekend service call changes the life of Doc Anderson forever. Johnny, the surprisingly wealthy energy whiz-kid, introduces Doc to a compelling new investment theme - following the rise of a new spending class. As they set course on a fact-filled adventure, Doc’s eyes are opened to the impact that billions of new consumers will have on our environment and how their increased participation in our fast-changing world will figure into the economy of the future.