by Judith Warner ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020
Certain relief, for middle schoolers and their parents, from the discomfort associated with a difficult period in life.
In this call for change, a bestselling author examines the often painful middle school years and offers parents sound advice that will enable their children to become more empathetic, caring, and resilient.
This book stems from Warner’s unrelenting desire to find good explanations for what her middle school–age daughter was experiencing, why the parents and other children were behaving as they were, and what she could do to improve the situation. Over the course of two years, the author interviewed more than 100 people, including experts, educators, parents, and nonparents, from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages. With few exceptions, what she found was a shared sense of social struggle. In order to provide a better understanding of the middle school years, Warner begins by exploring the societal history of the 11- to 14-year-old age group from Colonial America to the present. She points out that the view of this age group has shifted over time and that mass media has contributed to many of the myths and negatives stereotypes often associated with middle schoolers. Warner also cites research indicating that our own memories of middle school may be inaccurate or incomplete. According to scientists, there is a “second critical period” of brain development during adolescence. For this reason, we were incapable of seeing the big picture without the help of adults—and our children are facing the same thing. The author stresses that parents should view middle schoolers as “works in progress” and help them develop the tools they need to thrive by teaching and modeling the ability to think and feel beyond themselves. Warner argues that the great danger facing middle schoolers today is the values (or lack thereof) that we are teaching them. “Selfishness, competition, and personal success at any cost” must be replaced with new norms. “By rethinking the middle school years,” she writes, “we have the opportunity to become better and happier adults.”
Certain relief, for middle schoolers and their parents, from the discomfort associated with a difficult period in life.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-101-90588-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 13, 2015
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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