The perfect starting point for parents of transracially adopted children and those who are considering adopting transracially.The Interracial Adoption Option is a personal guide to interracial adoption which draws on the lives and experiences of the authors, a white US couple, who adopt two African-American children. Starting from their decision to adopt their first child interracially, it describes the situations and decisions that followed as a result of their child's racial back...

Coming to Terms: The Collected Works of Jane Blankenship, an edited collection from Jane Blankenship and Janette Kenner Muir, is the story of one academic journey through self-discovery, intellectual development, and mentorship. It is a conversation that illustrates how, in Mary Catherine Bateson’s terms, one composes a life that has meaning and makes a significant difference in other lives as well. Jane Blankenship was an active member of the speech communication discipline, starting with...

An updated and revised edition of the controversial classic—now more relevant than ever—argues that boys are the ones languishing socially and academically, resulting in staggering social and economic costs.Girls and women were once second-class citizens in the nation’s schools. Americans responded with concerted efforts to give girls and women the attention and assistance that was long overdue. Now, after two major waves of feminism and decades of policy reform, w...

From a highly respected thinker on race, gender, and American politics, a new consideration of black women and how distorted stereotypes affect their political beliefsJezebel's sexual lasciviousness, Mammy's devotion, and Sapphire's outspoken anger—these are among the most persistent stereotypes that black women encounter in contemporary American life. Hurtful and dishonest, such representations force African American women to navigate a virtual crooked room that s...

From the MacArthur Award–winning education reformer and author of the bestselling Other People's Children, a long-awaited new book on how to fix the persistent black/white achievement gap in America's public schoolsAs MacArthur Award–winning educator Lisa Delpit reminds us—and as all research shows—there is no achievement gap at birth. In her long-awaited second book, Delpit presents a striking picture of the elements of contemporary public education that ...

Why do Internet, financial service, and beer commercials dominate Super Bowl advertising? How do political ceremonies establish authority? Why does repetition characterize anthems and ritual speech? Why were circular forms favored for public festivals during the French Revolution? This book answers these questions using a single concept: common knowledge.Game theory shows that in order to coordinate its actions, a group of people must form "common knowledge." Each person wants to p...

“If you fear that cultural, political, and class differences are tearing America apart, read this important book.” —Jonathan Haidt, Ph.D., author of The Righteous MindWho will rule in the twenty-first century: allegedly more disciplined Asians, or allegedly more creative Westerners? Can women rocket up the corporate ladder without knocking off the men? How can poor kids get ahead when schools favor the rich?As our planet gets smaller, cultural conflicts ar...

Few writers ask us to question our fundamental assumptions about education as provocatively as Alfie Kohn. Time magazine has called him'perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores.' And the Washington Post says he is 'the most energetic and charismatic figure standing in the way of a major federal effort to make standardized curriculums and tests a fact of life in every U.S. school.'In this new collection of essa...

How have changes in media affected our everyday experience, behavior, and sense of identity? Such questions have generated endless arguments and speculations, but no thinker has addressed the issue with such force and originality as Joshua Meyrowitz in No Sense of Place. Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is "with" us. While other ...

Filled with original essays by Howard Gardner, William Damon, Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi, and Jeanne Nakamura and based on a large-scale research project, the GoodWork® Project, Responsibility at Work reflects the information gleaned from in-depth interviews with more than 1,200 people from nine different professions—journalism, genetics, theatre, higher education, philanthropy, law, medicine, business, and pre-collegiate education. The book reveals how motivation, culture, and prof...

In 2005, famed civil rights leader and education activist Robert Moses invited one hundred prominent African American and Latino intellectuals and activists to meet to discuss a proposal for acampaignto guarantee a quality education for all children as a constitutional right—a movement that would “transform current approaches to educational inequity, all of which have failed miserably to yield results for our children.” The response was passionate, and the meeting launched a movement....

Rethinking Multicultural Education for the Next Generation builds on the legacy of social justice multicultural education, while recognizing the considerable challenges of reaching today’s college students. By drawing on breakthrough research in two fields – neuroscience and animal studies – Nadine Dolby argues that empathy is an underlying element of all living beings. Dolby shows how this commonality can provide a scaffolding for building an exciting new approach to developing m...