“There are lives lost in this book, and there are lives saved,too, if salvation means a young man or woman begins to feeldeserving of a place on the planet. . . . What could be moresoul-satisfying? These are the most influential professionals mostof us will ever meet. The effects of their work will lastforever.” –from the foreword by Anna Quindlen Now depicted in a bestselling book and a feature film, theFreedom Writers phenomenon came about in 1994 when Erin Gruwellstepped into Room 203 and began her first teaching job out ofcollege. Long Beach, California, was still reeling from the deadlyviolence that erupted during the Rodney King riots, and the kids inErin’s classroom reflected the anger, resentment, and hopelessnessof their community. Undaunted, Erin fostered an educationalphilosophy that valued and promoted diversity, tolerance, andcommunication, and in the process, she transformed her students’lives, as well as her own. Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writerswent on to establish t

The gripping and inspiring story of two extraordinarywomen--from their imprisonment by the Taliban to their rescue byU.S. Special Forces. When Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer arrived in Afghanistan, theyhad come to help bring a better life and a little hope to some ofthe poorest and most oppressed people in the world. Within a fewmonths, their lives were thrown into chaos as they became pawns inhistoric international events. They were arrested by the rulingTaliban government for teaching about Christianity to the peoplewith whom they worked. In the middle of their trial, the events ofSeptember 11, 2001, led to the international war on terrorism, withthe Taliban a primary target. While many feared Curry and Mercercould not survive in the midst of war, Americans nonetheless prayedfor their safe return, and in November their prayers wereanswered. In Prisoners of Hope, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer tell thestory of their work in Afghanistan, their love for the people theyserved, their arrest, t

A revealing portrait of one of the most glamorous,influential, and notorious members of the Spencer family Intelligent, attractive, and born into wealth, Harriet Spencer,ancestor of Princess Diana, married Frederick, Viscount Duncannon,at the age of nineteen. But it was her affair with Lord GranvilleLeveson Gower that resulted in the birth of two children and allbut consumed Harriet’s life. The first comprehensive biography of Lady Harriet Spencer,Privilege Scandal gives readers an inside look at the Britisharistocracy during the decadent eighteenth century, while bringingone of the era’s most intriguing women to life.

“I love those colorful, glamorous eyes I see in magazines andin movies,” you say. “They tempt me, they torment me! It all looksso simple $8212;but when I try it, I look like one of theundead. Help me!” No problem, honey, because Eye Candy ishere. In this handy new book, acclaimed makeup artist Linda Masonreveals the secrets of eye makeup with fifty hot looks. Eachselection, from everyday to night-on-the-town, is presented sosimply, so clearly, that anyone can have fabulous eyes in just afew steps. For each look, Mason provides a straightforward list ofwhat’s needed, a diagram showing what to put where, and a palettefor finding the right colors in a personal makeup collection or acosmetics aisle. Did anyone ever tell you you have beautiful eyes?Now everyone will tell you you have beautiful eyes $8212;thanksto Eye Candy !

Fingernail Moon,the true story of a mother and daughter’scourageous journey. An inspiring story of Janie Webster’s daringquest to save her daughter’s life. When Webster discovered that her husband had sexually abusedtheir daughter, her seemingly content life changed forever. Shebegan divorce proceedings, but the court allowed unsupervisedvisits between father and daughter. Then her husband was diagnosedwith AIDS. Terrified that he could further abuse and even infecttheir daughter, Janie Webster knew that she had to flee. Mother and daughter embarked on a five-year journey around theworld. Although often discouraged, they found within their physicaljourney a deep spiritual meaning. With God’s guidance, theyestablished and reestablished new lives in the countries where theystayed, finding people they could trust who provided them withfriendship and assistance. Despite the threat of deportation andimprisonment hanging over them, they sensed the hand of Godengineering their safe passage

Original essays by Top Women Writers Julianna Baggott _ Curtis Sittenfeld _ Catherine Ingrassia _Elizabeth Crane Lara Vapnyar _ Lisa Carver _ Carina Chocano _ Rory Evans _ JenniferArmstrong _ Elise Mac Adam _ Janelle Brown _ Daisy de Villeneuve _Meghan Daum _ Amy Sohn _ Samina Ali _ Farah L. Miller _ Gina Zucker_ Kathleen Hughes _ Jacquelyn Mitchard _ Ruth Davis Konigsberg _Lori Leibovich _ Julie Powell _ Jill Eisenstadt _ Anne Carle _Amanda Eyre Ward _ Amy Bloom _ Dani Shapiro Anyone who is intimated by the prospect of planning a wedding willlaugh out loud and take solace in Altared. In this unexpected,heartwarming, thought-provoking collection, more than two dozen ofour most perceptive and entertaining writers offer a wide range oftakes on the modern wedding. It's all here. Fantasies.Realities. Fond memories. A few regrets. From planning it to doingit and everything in between.

When fourteen-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the stairs ofLittle Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she andeight other black students only wanted to make it to class. But thejourney of the “Little Rock Nine,” as they came to be known, wouldlead the nation on an even longer and much more turbulent path, onethat would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, andforever change the landscape of America. For Carlotta and the eight other children, simply getting throughthe door of this admired academic institution involved angry mobs,racist elected officials, and intervention by President Dwight D.Eisenhower, who was forced to send in the 101st Airborne to escortthe Nine into the building. But entry was simply the first of manytrials. Breaking her silence at last and sharing her story for thefirst time, Carlotta Walls has written an engrossing memoir that isa testament not only to the power of a single person to make adifference but also to the sacrifices made by familie

Finally, homeschoolers have a comprehensive guide to designinga homeschool curriculum, from one of the country's foremosthomeschooling experts. , Rebecca Rupp presents a structured plan toensure that your children will learn what they need to know whenthey need to know it, from preschool through high school. Based onthe traditional pre-K through 12th-grade structure, Home LearningYear by Year features: The integral subjects to be covered within each grade Standards for knowledge that should be acquired by your child ateach level Recommended books to use as texts for every subject Guidelines for the importance of each topic: which knowledge isessential and which is best for more expansive study based on yourchild's personal interests Suggestions for how to sensitively approach less academic subjects,such as sex education and physical fitness

In 1960 the government of Trinidad invited V. S. Naipaul torevisit his native country and record his impressions. In thisclassic of modern travel writing he has created a deft andremarkably prescient portrait of Trinidad and four adjacentCaribbean societies–countries haunted by the legacies of slaveryand colonialism and so thoroughly defined by the norms of Empirethat they can scarcely believe that the Empire is ending. In The Middle Passage , Naipaul watches a Trinidadian movieaudience greeting Humphrey Bogart’s appearance with cries of “Thatis man!” He ventures into a Trinidad slum so insalubrious that thelocals call it the Gaza Strip. He follows a racially chargedelection campaign in British Guiana (now Guyana) and marvels at theGallic pretension of Martinique society, which maintains thefiction that its roads are extensions of France’s routesnationales. And throughout he relates the ghastly episodes ofthe region’s colonial past and shows how they continue to informits language, politics, a

In her popular “Power Tools for Women” workshop, managementconsultant Joni Daniels teaches women how to be more effective andefficient at work and at home. The key is to tap into the metaphorof the tool kit. Too few women grow up wielding power tools andenjoying the sense of accomplishment and self-sufficiency theyimpart. With her new book, Daniels equips you with eleven powertools—invaluable skills you can transport between work and home.With conviction and a dose of humor, she explains how and when touse them to be more successful in every part of your life. Your newtool kit includes: * The Demolition Hammer: to break the rules * The Electrical Sensor: to follow your intuition * The Power Drill: to get the right information * Safety Goggles: to create your vision of success . . . andmore Whether you’re juggling work/life responsibilities, reenteringthe employment market, or striving to achieve your goals, this bookwill give you the right tools for the job.

In twelve nonfiction tales, Hanna Krall reveals how the livesof World War II survivors are shaped in surprising ways by thetwists and turns of historical events. A paralytic Jewish womanstarts walking after her husband is suffocated by fellow Jewsafraid that his coughing would reveal their hiding place to theGermans. A young American man refuses to let go of the ghost of hishalf brother who died in the Warsaw ghetto. He never knew the boy,yet he learns Polish to communicate with his dybbuk. A high rankingGerman officer conceives of a plan to kill Hitler after witnessinga mass execution of Jews in Eastern Poland. Through Krall's adroit and journalistic style, her reader is throwninto a world where love, hatred, compassion, and indifferenceappear in places where we least expect them, illuminating theimplacable logic of the surreal. "It is precisely the difficult path [Krall] takes toward her topicthat has made some of these texts masterpieces." -- FrankfurterAllgemeine Zeitung (on Dancing at Other People's W

Searching for Faith, Family, and Inner Peace on the Back of aMotorcycle Between 1846 and 1866, about 50,000 Mormons traveled the Mormontrail, burying more than 6,000 of the faithful along the way. Fourgenerations ago, seven of Jana Richman’s eight great-greatgrandmothers walked all or part of the 1,300-mile trek, fromNauvoo, Illinois, on the Mississippi River to Salt Lake City.Traveling on faith and little else, they endured unfathomablehardships—bitter cold, extreme heat, mud, icy river crossings,blizzards, buffalo stampedes, disease, hunger, and exhaustion—neverstopping until they reached their promised land where they could befree to practice a religion that few outsiders understood and manyviolently condemned. One hundred and fifty years later, Jana Richman packs maps and alaptop computer on the back of a motorcycle and follows the routeof her ancestors, searching for the peace and faith the womenbefore her carried with so much confidence. Jana also searches fora clearer understan

On September 20, 1998, Jose Vigoa, a child of Fidel Castro’srevolution, launched what would be the most audacious and ruthlessseries of high-profile casino and armored car robberies that LasVegas had ever seen. In a brazen sixteen-month reign of terror, heand his crew would hit the crème de la crème of Vegas hotels: theMGM, the Desert Inn, the New York—New York, the Mandalay Bay, andthe Bellagio. The robberies were well planned and executed, and thepolice–“the stupids,” as Vigoa contemptuously referred to them–wereall but helpless to stop them. But Lt. John Alamshaw, thetwenty-three-year veteran in charge of robbery detectives, was notgiving up so easily. For him, Vigoa’s rampage was a personalaffront. And he would do whatever it took, even risk his badge, tobring Vigoa down.

The world watched in horror in April 2007 when Virginia Techstudent Seung-Hui Cho went on a killing rampage that resulted inthe deaths of thirty-two students and faculty members before heended his own life. Former Virginia Tech English department chair and distinguishedprofessor Lucinda Roy saw the tragedy unfold on the TV screen inher home and had a terrible realization. Cho was the student shehad struggled to get to know–the loner who found speech torturous.After he had been formally asked to leave a poetry class in whichhe had shared incendiary work that seemed directed at hisclassmates and teacher, Roy began the difficult task of workingone-on-one with him in a poetry tutorial. During those months, ayear and a half before the massacre, Roy came to realize that Chowas more than just a disgruntled young adult experimenting withpoetic license; he was, in her opinion, seriously depressed and inurgent need of intervention. But when Roy approached campus counseling as well as others inthe u

I am just one of those rare and probably defective people whoreally enjoy the company of teenagers. Brendan Halpin’s It Takes a Worried Man—a memoir of how he andhis family dealt with his wife’s battle against breast cancer—waspraised for its can-dor, raw humor, and riveting voice. Halpin nowturns his unique talent to an unforgettable account of the pursuitof his true calling: teaching. Losing My Faculties follows Halpin through teaching jobs in aneconomically depressed white ethnic town, a middle-class suburb, alast-chance truancy prevention program in the inner city, and anambitious college-prep urban charter school. In the same cuttinglyobservant voice that marked It Takes a Worried Man, Halpin tells uswhat it really means to be a teacher—the ups and downs in theclassroom, the battles with administrators and colleagues, and thejoy of doing a job that matters. Not the tale of a hero who changeshis troubled students’ lives in one year, Losing My Faculties is,rather, the story o

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLEBOOK In this exquisite book of personalreflections on a woman’s life as a child, wife, and mother, KathrynHarrison, “a writer of extraordinary gifts” (Tobias Wolff), recallsepisodes in her life, exploring how the experiences of childhoodrecur in memory, to be transformed and sometimes healed through thelives we lead as adults. At the heart of Seeking Rapture isthe notion that a woman’s journey is a continuous process oftransformation, an ongoing transcendence and re-creation ofself.

Kelsey Byden is still reeling from her husband's affair-andgoing through a divorce-when a letter arrives that shakes her tothe core. It is from her mother, Naomi, whom Kelsey thought longdead. When she discovers the truth-that her mother is alive and hasjust been released from prison-Kelsey journeys to Naomi's horsefarm, and the two start the fragile process of getting to know eachother. It is there that she meets Gabe Slater, a handsome gamblerwho sets off a powerful reaction in her. But their newfoundrelationship will set in motion a shocking series of events thatputs Naomi's future--and Kelsey and Gabe's very lives--at risk.

This is the story of three people: acclaimed writer JuliaBlackburn; her father, Thomas - a poet and alcoholic with anaddiction to barbiturates; and her mother, Rosalie - a flirtatiouspainter with no boundaries.After Julia's parents divorced, hermother took in male lodgers with the hope they would become herlovers. When one of the lodgers began an affair with Julia,competitive Rosalie was devastated; he later committed suicide,shattering whatever relationship between mother and daughterremained. After thirty years, Rosalie, diagnosed with leukemia,came to live with Julia for the last month of her life. Only thenwere they allowed, at long last, to exist with an ease they hadnever known.

The island is nearly deserted, haunting, beautiful. Across aslip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of familieson Yamacraw island, America is a world away. For years the peoplehere lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe.Waste from industry threatens their very existence–unless, somehow,they can learn a new life. But they will learn nothing withoutsomeone to teach them, and their school has no teacher. Here is PAT CONROY’S extraordinary drama based on his ownexperience–the true story of a man who gave a year of his life toan island and the new life its people gave him.

Somewhere. . . there is a place of sanity where education isintense and substantive. . . . It's in that place that DeborahMeier has been working all these years. Her voice conveys a life ofstruggle in the front lines-victories and losses, hopes anddisappointments. . . . It's a voice our nation needs to hear.--Jonathan Kozol, from the Foreword Acclaimed educator Deborah Meier offers a fresh take onstandardized tests. While others have criticized standards and whatthey measure, Meier rejects the very idea of a centralizedauthority that dictates how and what teachers teach.Standardization, she argues, prevents citizens-includingteachers-from emerging as thoughtful, responsible adults, seriouslyengaged with shaping their own schools, classrooms, andcommunities. As a result, young people can't learn from them how tobe thoughtful, responsible adults and good citizens, the primarygoal of public education in a democracy. The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals