Search:

Results 101 to 110 of 137 | « previous |

On book banning / by Wells, Ira,1981-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A lively, accessible survey of literary censorship through the ages. The freedom to read is under attack. There are, today, more efforts to ban books from libraries than ever before. The supposed "dangers" posed by books including The Handmaid's Tale, Gender Queer, Huckleberry Finn, and the works of Dr. Seuss ... leading children down a path of sexual deviance, or harming them with racist language or non-inclusive narratives ... fuel the puritanical zeal of De Santis Republicans and progressive educators alike. On Book Banning argues that today's culture warriors proceed from a misunderstanding of literature as instrumental to the pursuit of their ideological agendas. In treating libraries as sites of contagion and exposure, censors are warping our children's relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is cancellation or outright expurgation. On Book Banning provides a lively, accessible survey of literary censorship through the ages ... from the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome, to the Catholic Church's attempts to tamp down religious dissent and scientific innovation, to state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ literature in the 1980s and beyond. Throughout, Ira Wells demonstrates how today's book bans stem from the ineradicable human impulse toward social control. In a whistle-stop tour of landmark legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, we discover that the freedom to read and publish is the aberration in human history, and that censorship and restriction have been the rule. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who reject the conflation of art and propaganda, for whom books remain sacred vessels of our shared humanity, and who will always insist upon reading for ourselves."--
Subjects: Censorship.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The president and the freedom fighter : Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and their battle to save America's soul / by Kilmeade, Brian,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Upon his election as President of the troubled United States, Abraham Lincoln faced a dilemma. He knew it was time for slavery to go, but how fast could the country change without being torn apart? Many abolitionists wanted Lincoln to move quickly, overturning the founding documents along the way. But Lincoln believed there was a way to extend equality to all while keeping and living up to the Constitution that he loved so much--if only he could buy enough time. Fortunately for Lincoln, Frederick Douglass agreed with him--or at least did eventually. In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the little-known story of how the two men moved from strong disagreement to friendship, uniting over their love for the Constitution and over their surprising commonalities. Both came from destitution. Both were self-educated and self-made men. Both had fought hard for what they believed in. And though Douglass had the harder fight, one for his very freedom, the two men shared a belief that the American dream was for everyone. As he did in George Washington's Secret Six, Kilmeade has transformed this nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find out how these two heroes, through their principles and patience, not only changed each other, but made America truly free for all"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865; Abolitionists; Presidents; Slavery; Slaves;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Defiant dreams : the journey of an Afghan girl who risked everything for education / by Mahfouz, Sola,1996-author.; Kapoor, Malaina,author.;
"A searing, deeply personal memoir of a tenacious Afghan girl who educated herself behind closed doors and fought her way to a new life. Sola Mahfouz was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1996. That same year, the Taliban took over her country for the first time. They banned television and photographs, presided over brutal public executions, and turned the clock backwards on women's rights, practically imprisoning women within their own homes and forcing them to wear cruel, tent-like burqas. At age eleven, Sola was forced to stop attending school after a group of men threatened to throw acid in her face if she continued. After that she was confined to her home, required to cook and clean and prepare for an arranged marriage. She saw the outside world only a handful of times each year. As time passed, Sola began to understand that she was condemned to the same existence as millions of women in Afghanistan. Her future was empty. The rest of her life would be controlled entirely by men, fathers and husbands and sons who would never allow her to study, to earn money, or even to dream. Driven by this devastating realization, Sola began a years-long fight to change the trajectory of her life. She decided that education would be her way out. At age sixteen, without even a basic ability to add or subtract, she began secretly to teach herself math and English. She progressed rapidly, and within just two years she was already studying topics such as philosophy and physics. Faced with obstacles at every turn, Sola still managed to sneak into Pakistan to take the SAT. In 2016, she escaped to the United States, where she is now a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University. An engrossing, dramatic memoir, co-written with young Indian American human rights activist Malaina Kapoor, Defiant Dreams is the story of one girl, but it's also the untold story of a generation of women brimming with potential and longing for freedom"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Mahfouz, Sola, 1996-; Girls; Sex discrimination in education; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

We keep the dead close : a murder at Harvard and a half century of silence / by Cooper, Becky,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious 23-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment. Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims. WE KEEP THE DEAD CLOSE is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny, and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history"--
Subjects: Biographies.; True crime stories.; Britton, Jane Sanders, 1945-1969.; Harvard University; Murder; Cold cases (Criminal investigation); Murder victims; Women graduate students; Women in higher education; Sex discrimination in higher education;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Meet Buffy Sainte-Marie / by MacLeod, Elizabeth.; Deas, Mike,1982-;
"Meet Buffy Sainte-Marie, music legend, activist and teacher! Buffy Sainte-Marie is not exactly sure where or when she was born, but it was likely the Piapot Reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan. As a baby she was adopted out to a white family in the United States. But nothing would stop Buffy from connecting to her roots and sharing the power and the beauty of her heritage with the world. Buffy's songs have inspired three generations of fans, garnering international acclaim and many awards. But her talents don't stop there! She's an accomplished visual artist and has broken important ground on television, including a regular stint on Sesame Street. A peace activist from the start, Buffy became an advocate for education, creating programs for Indigenous students in 1969, then in 1996 taking full advantage of computer technology to connect classrooms worldwide to share Indigenous learning. Still an activist today, she is a prominent supporter of Idle No More. After an incredible career lasting more than 60 years, Buffy's music and message is as uplifting and important today as it ever was."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Sainte-Marie, Buffy; Musicians; Singers; Composers; Cree Indians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Zucked : the education of an unlikely activist / by McNamee, Roger,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."If you had told Roger McNamee even three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying our democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund's bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg. Still a large shareholder in Facebook, he had every good reason to stay on the bright side. Until he simply couldn't. ZUCKED is McNamee's intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world's most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing. It's a story that begins with a series of rude awakenings. First there is the author's dawning realization that the platform is being manipulated by some very bad actors. Then there is the even more unsettling realization that Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are unable or unwilling to share his concerns, polite as they may be to his face"--
Subjects: Zuckerberg, Mark, 1984-; Facebook (Electronic resource); Online social networks; Disinformation; Propaganda;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Letters from an astrophysicist / by Tyson, Neil deGrasse,author.;
Tyson shares 101 letters from people across the globe who have sought him out in search of scientific answers.A luminous companion to the phenomenal bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world's largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by revealing his correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 101 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto. His succinct, opinionated, passionate, and often funny responses reflect his popularity and standing as a leading educator. Tyson's 2017 bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry offered more than one million readers an insightful and accessible understanding of the universe. Tyson's most candid and heartfelt writing yet, Letters from an Astrophysicist introduces us to a newly personal dimension of Tyson's quest to explore our place in the cosmos.
Subjects: Tyson, Neil deGrasse; Astrophysicists; Astrophysics.; Cosmogony.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Catching the wind : Edward Kennedy and the liberal hour / by Gabler, Neal,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The epic, definitive biography of Ted Kennedy--an immersive journey through the life of a complicated man and a sweeping history of the fall of liberalism and the collapse of political morality. Edward M. Kennedy was never expected to succeed. The youngest of nine, he lacked his brothers' natural gifts and easy grace. Yet after winning election to the Senate at the tender age of thirty, he became the most consequential legislator of his lifetime, perhaps even American history. Surviving the traumas of his brothers' assassinations, Ted Kennedy ultimately exerted the greatest effort keeping alive the mission of an active and caring government. He swept into the Senate at the high-water mark of the mid-century New Deal consensus and fulfilled the promise of that momentum throughout his glory years in the Senate as the booming voice of American liberalism. That voice found its greatest impact in the laws he passed that wove government firmly into American life, extending aid and opportunity to those in most desperate need. Two thousand pieces of legislation, ranging from health care to education to civil rights, bore Ted's fingerprints. He worked tirelessly to better people's lives, even after the Reagan-era push for limited government rewrote the contract between nation and citizens. He did this because he felt he owed it to those who suffered, and those with whom he empathized out of his own pain and ever-present sense of inadequacy. But Ted Kennedy was not immune to the darkness that plagued his family. He lived long enough to fail, to sin, to fall in and out of favor. The infamous incident at Chappaquiddick marked an unfortunate turning point in the youngest Kennedy's life, and it would not be his last brush with controversy. As his personal failures compounded in the public eye, he struggled to maintain the traction that had carried his agenda so far. The product of a decade of work and hundreds of interviews, Catching the Wind will be an essential work of history and biography. The first of two volumes in a sweeping narrative, it traces the extraordinary life of an American statesman from his early years through the turning point of the 1970s. It is a landmark study of legislative genius and a powerful exploration of the man who spent his career upholding his mandate in service of a better America"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Kennedy, Edward M. (Edward Moore), 1932-2009.; United States. Congress. Senate; Legislators;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Medicine river : a story of survival and the legacy of Indian boarding schools / by Pember, Mary Annette,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture. From the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their families to attend boarding schools that claimed to help create opportunity for these children to pursue professions outside their communities and otherwise "assimilate" into American life. In reality, these boarding schools -- sponsored by the US Government but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation -- were an insidious attempt to destroy tribes, break up families, and stamp out the traditions of generations of Native people. Children were beaten for speaking their native languages, forced to complete menial tasks in terrible conditions, and utterly deprived of love and affection. Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother was forced to attend one of these institutions -- a seminary in Wisconsin, and the impacts of her experience have cast a pall over Mary's own childhood, and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark portrait of communities still reckoning with the legacy of acculturation that has affected generations of Native communities. Through searing interviews and assiduous historical reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of a culture whose country has been seemingly intent upon destroying it"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Pember, Bernice Rabideaux, 1925-2011.; Pember, Mary Annette; Robidou family.; St. Mary's Indian Boarding School (Odanah, Wis.); Indigenous children; Ojibwe; Ojibwe women; Residential schools;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The world as it is : a memoir of the Obama White House / by Rhodes, Benjamin J.,1977-author.;
For nearly ten years, Ben Rhodes saw almost everything that happened at the center of the Obama administration--first as a speechwriter, then as deputy national security advisor, and finally as a multipurpose aide and close collaborator. He started every morning in the Oval Office with the President's Daily Brief, traveled the world with Obama, and was at the center of some of the most consequential and controversial moments of the presidency. Now he tells the full story of his partnership--and, ultimately, friendship--with a man who also happened to be a historic president of the United States. Rhodes was not your typical presidential confidant, and this is not your typical White House memoir. Rendered in vivid, novelistic detail by someone who was a writer before he was a staffer, this is a rare look inside the most poignant, tense, and consequential moments of the Obama presidency--waiting out the bin Laden raid in the Situation Room, responding to the Arab Spring, reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran, leading secret negotiations with the Cuban government to normalize relations, and confronting the resurgence of nationalism and nativism that culminated in the election of Donald Trump. In The World as It Is, Rhodes shows what it was like to be there--from the early days of the Obama campaign to the final hours of the presidency. It is a story populated by such characters as Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates, and--above all--Barack Obama, who comes to life on the page in moments of great urgency and disarming intimacy. This is the most vivid portrayal yet of Obama's worldview and presidency, a chronicle of a political education by a writer of enormous talent, and an essential record of the forces that shaped the last decade.
Subjects: Biographies.; Obama, Barack.; Rhodes, Benjamin J., 1977-; Presidents;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Results 101 to 110 of 137 | « previous |