• In total there are 12 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 12 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

Official Poll - Feb. & Mar. 2009 Non-Fiction Book

Collaborate in choosing our next NON-FICTION book for group discussion within this forum. A minimum of 5 posts is necessary to participate here!
User avatar
Chris OConnor

1A - OWNER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 17019
Joined: Sun May 05, 2002 2:43 pm
21
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 3511 times
Been thanked: 1309 times
Gender:
Contact:
United States of America

Official Poll - Feb. & Mar. 2009 Non-Fiction Book

Unread post

[align=center]Official Poll - Feb. & Mar. 2009 Non-Fiction Book [/align]

This poll starts on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 and ends sometime during the evening of Sunday, January 25, 2009. So the poll will be up for a little longer than usual. Hopefully lots of members get involved in helping us pick our next books.

RULES:

You must have at least 25 total posts on our forums to vote so please don't cast a vote if you're not yet qualified. It doesn't take much time or energy to get up to 25 total posts.

Everyone is entitled to cast a total of 3 votes and these 3 votes can be distributed however the voter deems appropriate. Assign all 3 votes to just one of the book choices or break up the 3 votes based on your interest level in each book. If you don't assign all 3 votes we will assume you meant to assign all 3 of your votes to whatever book you picked. Actually, I will assume you didn't read these instructions. :hmm:

There are 3 total choices on this poll. All were suggested by members. Your choices are as follows:

Drum roll please...
Last edited by Chris OConnor on Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Chris OConnor

1A - OWNER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 17019
Joined: Sun May 05, 2002 2:43 pm
21
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 3511 times
Been thanked: 1309 times
Gender:
Contact:
United States of America

Unread post

BOOK 1
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
by Barack Obama

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140008 ... 1400082773

From Publishers Weekly
Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the intellectual journey he planned to recount became instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life. Born in 1961 to a white American woman and a black Kenyan student, Obama was reared in Hawaii by his mother and her parents, his father having left for further study and a return home to Africa. So Obama's not-unhappy youth is nevertheless a lonely voyage to racial identity, tensions in school, struggling with black literature?with one month-long visit when he was 10 from his commanding father. After college, Obama became a community organizer in Chicago. He slowly found place and purpose among folks of similar hue but different memory, winning enough small victories to commit himself to the work?he's now a civil rights lawyer there. Before going to law school, he finally visited Kenya; with his father dead, he still confronted obligation and loss, and found wellsprings of love and attachment. Obama leaves some lingering questions?

From Booklist
Obama argues with himself on almost every page of this lively autobiographical conversation. He gets you to agree with him, and then he brings in a counternarrative that seems just as convincing. Son of a white American mother and of a black Kenyan father whom he never knew, Obama grew up mainly in Hawaii. After college, he worked for three years as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side. Then, finally, he went to Kenya, to find the world of his dead father, his "authentic" self. Will the truth set you free, Obama asks? Or will it disappoint? Both, it seems. His search for himself as a black American is rooted in the particulars of his daily life; it also reads like a wry commentary about all of us. He dismisses stereotypes of the "tragic mulatto" and then shows how much we are all caught between messy contradictions and disparate communities. He discovers that Kenya has 400 different tribes, each of them with stereotypes of the others. Obama is candid about racism and poverty and corruption, in Chicago and in Kenya. Yet he does find community and authenticity, not in any romantic cliche{
User avatar
Chris OConnor

1A - OWNER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 17019
Joined: Sun May 05, 2002 2:43 pm
21
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 3511 times
Been thanked: 1309 times
Gender:
Contact:
United States of America

Unread post

BOOK 2
The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Children and What Parents Can Do About It
by Sara Bennett

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030734 ... 030734018X

Product Description
Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more than assigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increase vocabulary
User avatar
Chris OConnor

1A - OWNER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 17019
Joined: Sun May 05, 2002 2:43 pm
21
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 3511 times
Been thanked: 1309 times
Gender:
Contact:
United States of America

Unread post

BOOK 3
The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
by Henry A. Giroux

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159451 ... 1594514232

Product Description
President Eisenhower originally included academic in the draft of his landmark, oft-quoted speech on the military-industrial-complex. Giroux tells why Eisenhower saw the academy as part of the famous complex--and how his warning was vitally prescient for 21st-century America. His newest book details the sweeping post-9/11 assault being waged on the academy by militarization, corporatization, and right-wing fundamentalists who increasingly view critical thought itself as a threat to the dominant political order. Giroux argues that the university has become a handmaiden of the Pentagon and corporate interests, it has lost its claim to independence and critical learning and has compromised its role as a democratic public sphere. And yet, in spite of its present embattled status and the inroads made by corporate power, the defense industries, and the right wing extremists, Giroux defends the university as one of the few public spaces left capable of raising important questions and educating students to be critical and engaged agents and concluded by making a strong case for reclaiming it as a democratic public sphere.

Review
Henry Giroux has been like a canary in the mine of U.S. culture when he sends an alert, you know something is really amiss. If you have worked or studied in one of our universities, this is essential reading. --Toby Miller, author of Cultural Citizenship

Henry Giroux is a tribune for democracy. He sees universities as democratic public spheres that must be defended in the repressive aftermath of 9/11. His new book is a tool we need to get the job done. --Ira Shor, CUNY Graduate School

I know of no more acute a commentator on higher education in the United States today. Henry Giroux's passion for education fires his powerful critique of the university, as it becomes more and more in thrall to big money and to the military. While Giroux's analysis is profound and unsparing, his book concludes with an imaginative strategy to transform the university into a truly democratic institution. --Howard Zinn
User avatar
Grim

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
Brilliant
Posts: 674
Joined: Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:59 pm
15
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 21 times

Unread post

3 votes for Book3 The University in Chains
User avatar
Raving Lunatic
All Star Member
Posts: 138
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:23 am
15

Unread post

3 for Dreams for My Father
If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun.
--Katherine Hepburn
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Unread post

I'll cast 3 for Dreams from My Father.
Trish
Experienced
Posts: 114
Joined: Sat Dec 29, 2007 5:52 pm
16
Been thanked: 2 times

Unread post

2 Votes Dreams of My Father
1 Vote University in Chains
User avatar
farmgirlshelley
Intern
Posts: 159
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:29 pm
15
Location: Kentucky USA
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 2 times

Unread post

3 for the case against homework.
A woman is like a tea bag- you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
User avatar
Ophelia

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
Oddly Attracted to Books
Posts: 1543
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2007 7:33 am
16
Location: France
Been thanked: 35 times

Unread post

3 votes or "Dreams from my father".
Ophelia.
Locked

Return to “What non-fiction book should we read and discuss next?”