Every spring thousands of middle-class and lower-incomehigh-school seniors learn that they have been rejected by America’smost exclusive colleges. What they may never learn is how manycandidates like themselves have been passed over in favor ofwealthy white students with lesser credentials—children of alumni,big donors, or celebrities. In this explosive book, the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporterDaniel Golden argues that America, the so-called land ofopportunity, is rapidly becoming an aristocracy in which America’srichest families receive special access to elite highereducation—enabling them to give their children even more of a headstart. Based on two years of investigative reporting and hundredsof interviews with students, parents, school administrators, andadmissions personnel—some of whom risked their jobs to speak to theauthor—The Price of Admission exposes the corrupt admissionspractices that favor the wealthy, the powerful, and thefamous. In The Price of Admission, Golde

Designed to help parents avoid the miseducation of youngchildren. Dr. Elkind shows us the very real difference between themind of a pre-school child and that of a school age child.

Discover the Rewards of Homeschooling Your Teen ?Create unlimited learning on a limited budget ?Discover teaching methods for teens with different learningstyles ?Utilize the best resources and technology ?Prepare your teen for college, career, and adult life The teen years can be the most exciting time in your child'slife. He or she is becoming an independent young adult andbeginning to make decisions for the future. Yet growing concernabout the negative social pressures, safety, and efficiency of ourtraditional high schools has prompted many parents just like you toteach their teenagers at home. With Homeschooling: The Teen Yearsas your guide, you'll discover it's not as daunting a task asyou've been led to believe. Using real-life stories from dozens offamilies, this book reveals the secrets of making homeschoolingwork for you and your teen. You'll discover how to: ?Work with your teen to create a unique, individual learningexperience ?Make coursework intere

An excellent,reassuring book for women and their partners. It carries the womanalong step-by-step in the rediscovery of her own sexuality and thepleasure it will bring her. Liberated or not, single or married,young or old, all women will find this book accessible andsupportive.

The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine.The tragedy is that my story could have been his. Two kids named Wes Moore were born blocks apart within a year ofeach other. Both grew up fatherless in similar Baltimoreneighborhoods and had difficult childhoods; both hung out on streetcorners with their crews; both ran into trouble with the police.How, then, did one grow up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decoratedveteran, White House Fellow, and business leader, while the otherended up a convicted murderer serving a life sentence? Wes Moore,the author of this fascinating book, sets out to answer thisprofound question. In alternating narratives that take readers fromheart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, TheOther Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys tryingto find their way in a hostile world.

In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist SoniaNazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy whobraves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in theUnited States. When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor tofeed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States.The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he caneat better and go to school past the third grade. Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. But shestruggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his mother to comeback. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled. When she calls,Lourdes tells him to be patient. Enrique despairs of ever seeingher again. After eleven years apart, he decides he will go findher. Enrique sets off alone from Tegucigalpa, with little more than aslip of paper bearing his mother’s North Carolina telephone number.Without money, he will make the dangerous and illegal trek up thelength of Mexico the only way he c

Good-bye, Old School. Hello, Bold School! In 2005, Maya Frost and her husband sold everything and left theirsuburban American lifestyle behind in order to have an adventureabroad. The tricky part: they had to shepherd their four teenagedaughters through high school and into college. This hilarious andconspiratorial how-to handbook describes the affordable,accessible, and stunningly advantageous options they stumbled uponthat any American student can leverage to get an outrageouslyrelevant global education. Ready to ditch the drama of the traditional hypercompetitiveSAT/AP/GPA path? Meet the bold American students who arecatapulting into the global economy at twenty with a red-hotcollege diploma, sizzling 21st-century skills, a blazing sense ofdirection–and no debt. You’ll discover: ? the one thing preventing your student from blasting forward ? why Advanced Placement isn’t so advanced ? why international programs fail to provide a truly globaleducation ? the most critical time for your student to st

Book De*ion From Haruki Murakami, internationally acclaimed author of TheWind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood, a work of literaryjournalism that is as fascinating as it is necessary, asprovocative as it is profound. In March of 1995, agents of a Japanese religious cult attacked theTokyo subway system with sarin, a gas twenty-six times as deadly ascyanide. Attempting to discover why, Murakami conducted hundreds ofinterviews with the people involved, from the survivors to theperpetrators to the relatives of those who died, and Underground istheir story in their own voices. Concerned with the fundamentalissues that led to the attack as well as these personal accounts,Underground is a document of what happened in Tokyo as well as awarning of what could happen anywhere. This is an enthralling andunique work of nonfiction that is timely and vital and aswonderfully executed as Murakami’s brilliant novels. From Publishers Weekly On March 20, 1995, followers of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyounleashed

Part diary and part reportage, The Soccer War is aremarkable chronicle of war in the late twentieth century. Between1958 and 1980, working primarily for the Polish Press Agency,Kapuscinski covered twenty-seven revolutions and coups in Africa,Latin America, and the Middle East. Here, with characteristiccogency and emotional immediacy, he recounts the stories behind hisofficial press dispatches—searing firsthand accounts of thefrightening, grotesque, and comically absurd aspects of life duringwar. The Soccer War is a singular work of journalism.

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir that inspiredthe film October Sky, Rocket Boys is a uniquelyAmerican memoir--a powerful, luminous story of coming of age at thedawn of the 1960s, of a mother's love and a father's fears, of agroup of young men who dreamed of launching rockets into outerspace . . . and who made those dreams come true. With the grace of a natural storyteller, NASA engineer Homer Hickampaints a warm, vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia miningtown of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, whenanything was possible, even in a company town that swallowed itsmen alive. A story of romance and loss, of growing up and gettingout, Homer Hickam's lush, lyrical memoir is a chronicle oftriumph--at once exquisitely written and marvelouslyentertaining. Now with 8 pages of photographs.

The immediate human toll of the 1994 Flight 427 disaster wasstaggering: all 132 people aboard died on a Pennsylvania hillside.The subsequent investigation was a maze of politics, bizarretheories, and shrouded answers. Bill Adair, an award-winningjournalist, was granted special access to the five-year inquiry bythe National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) while itsinvestigators tried to determine if the world's most widely usedcommercial jet, the Boeing 737, was really safe. Their findingshave had wide-ranging effects on the airline industry, pilots, andeven passangers. Adair takes readers behind the scenes to show whomakes decisions about airline safety—and why.

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller For the first time, rock music’s most famous muse tells herincredible story Pattie Boyd, former wife of both George Harrison and Eric Clapton,finally breaks a forty-year silence and tells the story of how shefound herself bound to two of the most addictive, promiscuousmusical geniuses of the twentieth century and became the mostlegendary muse in the history of rock and roll. The woman whoinspired Harrison’s song “Something” and Clapton’s anthem “Layla,”Pattie Boyd has written a book that is rich and raw, funny andheartbreaking–and totally honest.

In May 1787, in an atmosphere of crisis, delegates met inPhiladelphia to design a radically new form of government.Distinguished historian Richard Beeman captures as never before thedynamic of the debate and the characters of the men who laboredthat historic summer. Virtually all of the issues in dispute—theextent of presidential power, the nature of federalism, and, mostexplosive of all, the role of slavery—have continued to provokeconflict throughout our nation's history. This unprecedented booktakes readers behind the scenes to show how the world's mostenduring constitution was forged through conflict, compromise, andfragile consensus. As Gouverneur Morris, delegate of Pennsylvania,noted: "While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, othershave given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons tobelieve that it is the work of plain, honest men."

In this forceful manifesto, Hirsch argues that childrenin the U.S. are being deprived of the basic knowledge that wouldenable them to function in contemporary society. Includes 5,000essential facts to know.

Free cable television. Imaginary tax deductions. Do you takeyour chance to cheat? David Callahan thinks many of us would;witness corporate scandals, doping athletes, plagiarizingjournalists. Why all the cheating? Why now? Callahan blames thedog-eat-dog economic climate of the past twenty years: Anunfettered market and unprecedented economic inequality havecorroded our values and threaten to corrupt the equal opportunitywe cherish. Callahan's "Winning Class" has created a separate moralreality where it cheats without consequences-while the "AnxiousClass" believes choosing not to cheat could cancel its only shot atsuccess in a winner-take-all world. Updated with a new afterwordanalyzing the latest on cheating from the Martha Stewart trial tothe Tyco and Enron sentencings, The Cheating Culture takes us on agripping tour of cheating in America and makes a powerful case forwhy it matters.

First published in 1928, Herbert Asbury's whirlwind tourthrough the low-life of nineteenth-century New York has become anindispensible classic of urban history. Focusing on the saloon halls, gambling dens, and windingalleys of the Bowery and the notorious Five Points district, TheGangs of New York dramatically evokes the destitution and shockingviolence of a turbulent era, when colorfully named criminals likeDandy John Dolan, Bill the Butcher, and Hell-Cat Maggie lurked inthe shadows, and infamous gangs like the Plug Uglies, the DeadRabbits, and the Bowery Boys ruled the streets. A rogues gallery ofprostitutes, pimps, poisoners, pickpockets, murderers, and thieves,The Gangs of New York is a dramatic and entertaining glimpse at acity's dark past.

On March 23, 2003, in the city of An Nasiriyah, Iraq, membersof the 507th Maintenance Company came under attack from Iraqiforces who killed or wounded twenty-one soldiers and took sixprisoners, including Private Jessica Lynch. For the next week, AnNasiriyah rocked with battle as the marines of Task Force Tarawafought Saddam's fanatical followers, street by street and buildingto building, ultimately rescuing Private Lynch.

Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson'sspellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--thebrilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair,striving to secure America’s place in the world; and the cunningserial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death.Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, ErikLarson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newlydiscovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.