In the form of a series of affectionate letters to a first grade teacher at an inner-city school, educator Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under her irreverent questioning, he also reveals his own personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools. This book reignites a number of the controversial issues Kozol has powerfully addressed in recent years: the mania of high-stakes testing that turns many...

An award-winning broadcaster's fortieth anniversary tribute to the first Woodstock event draws on original interviews with such performers as Roger Daltry, Joan Baez, and David Crosby to place the gathering against a backdrop of period history and culture.

O'Brien's searing memoir of his years as a soldier in Vietnam takes readers with him through the ghostly ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong.

Provides intimate recollections, from the Chief Usher of the White House, of the social events, life-styles, and decorative preferences that characterized presidential households from Roosevelt to Nixon.

This book explores the daily lives of the men in blue who fought to save the Union. With the help of many soldiers' letters and diaries, the author explains who these men were and why they fought, how they reacted to combat and the strain of prolonged conflict, and what they thought about the land and the people of Dixie. This social history reveals that while the Yanks and the Rebs fought for very different causes, the men on both sides were very...

Describes the planes, the missions, and the men who fly reconnaissance.

A journey into one of the most fascinating minds alive today--guided by its owner. Daniel Tammet sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn new languages from scratch, in a week. He has savant syndrome, a rare condition that gives him almost unimaginable mental powers. But in one crucial way Daniel is not at all like the Rain Man: he is virtually unique among autistic people...

"I've been waiting for this book for a long time. Well, not this book, because I never imagined that the book I was waiting for would be so devastatingly smart and funny, so consistently entertaining and unflinchingly on target. In fact, I would like to have written it myself--if, that is, I had lived Linda Tirado's life and extracted all the hard lessons she has learned. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt,...

Congressman John Lewis recounts his life, which began in rural poverty in Alabama, and included leadership of the movement to desegregate Nashville, a speech at the 1963 March on Washington, chairmanship of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and election to the U.S. Congress from Georgia in 1986. "John Lewis tells his story of struggle in the civil rights movement, of comradeship in that community, of its battles and triumphs."--Jacket....

While other kids were daydreaming about dances, first kisses, and college, Jodee Blanco was just trying to figure out how to get from homeroom to study hall without being taunted or spit upon as she walked through the halls. This powerful, unforgettable memoir chronicles how one child was shunned -- and even physically abused -- by her classmates from elementary school through high school. It is an unflinching look at what it means to be the outcast,...