A 2020 AESA Critics' Choice Book Award winnerThe rise of high-stakes testing in New York and across the nation has narrowed and simplified what is taught, while becoming central to the effort to privatize public schools. However, it and similar reform efforts have met resistance, with New York as the exemplar for how to repel standardized testing and invasive data collection, such as inBloom...

Alice Morgan Person (1840-1913) was a colorful North Carolinian. Born wealthy and married well, she fell into hardship after the Civil War but remarkably overcame it by marketing her own patent medicine and playing and sharing her arrangements of folk tunes. Presented here is her previously unpublished autobiography as well as a detailed account of her life based on new research and first-hand accounts. Her place in the histories of American patent medicine and southern folk music are disc...

Neoliberalism has been widely criticised because of its role in prioritising ‘free markets’ as the optimum way of solving problems and organising society. In the field of education, this leads to an emphasis on the knowledge economy that can reduce both persons and education to economic actors and be detrimental to wider social and ethical goals.Drawing on a range of international contexts across informal, adult, school and university settings, this book provides innovative example...

This timely book situates environmental education within and against neoliberalism, the dominant economic, political, and cultural ideology impacting both education and the environment. Proponents of neoliberalism imagine and enact a world where the primary role of the state is to promote capital markets, and where citizens are defined as autonomous entrepreneurs who are to fulfill their needs via competition with, and surveillance of, others.These ideas interact with environmental...

**#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile comes the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death.“As absorbing a piece of popular history as one will ever hope to find.” —San Francisco ChronicleA Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Cen...

Mark Twain's final and uncensored masterpiece, presented in three volumes, is a landmark publication in American literature.**“Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing . . . in ways that still resonate with us.”—New York Times“His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review**"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a fri...

“A remarkable biography . . . Well written and researched, this book warrants a spot on every serious American history student’s bookshelf.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewShe was the first woman to run for president. She was the first woman to address the U.S. Congress and to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street. She’s the woman Gloria Steinem called “the most controversial suffragist of them all.” So why have most people never heard of Victoria Woodhu...

This landmark study offers a rogues' gallery of women—from the Colonial Era to the 20th century—who answered abuse and oppression with murder: "A classic" ( Gloria Steinem).Women rarely resort to murder. But when they do, they are likely to kill their intimates: husbands, lovers, or children. In Women Who Kill, journalist Ann Jones explores these homicidal patters and what they reflect about women and our culture. She considers notorious cases suc...

***2017 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Nonfiction***"What's more American than Corn Flakes?" —Bing CrosbyFrom the much admired medical historian (“Markel shows just how compelling the medical history can be”—Andrea Barrett) and author of An Anatomy of Addiction (“Absorbing, vivid”—Sherwin Nuland, The New York Times Book Review, front page)—the story of America’s empire builders: John and Will Kellogg.John Harvey Ke...

An easy-to-read, page-turning account of Harriet Tubman's life--from her childhood in slavery to her years as a conductor on the Underground Railroad to her later work as a suffragette and as a spy in the Civil War. This remarkable true story brings to life one of America's greatest female role models.

An elegantly designed, beautifully composed volume of personal letters from famous American men and women that celebrates the American Experience and illuminates the rich history of some of America’s most storied families.Posterity is at once an epistolary chronicle of America and a fascinating glimpse into the hearts and minds of some of history’s most admired figures and storied families. Spanning more than three centuries, these letters contain enduring...

Personal advertisements have been around as long as newspapers themselves. If you're curious about what a "matrimonial ad" from the 1800s looked like, this is your book. Read it aloud and marvel at missives like:"Gentleman, 38, height 5 ft., 9 in., weight 170, black hair, brown eyes, fair complexion, wishes to meet lady, 35 to 38, refined, normal weight, good looking, good teeth, not tired of society, and invest and accept half interest in a manufacturing business; can handle her o...