Ebook of the Week - The Thinking Student’s Guide to College

Roberts, Andrew Lawrence. The Thinking Student's Guide to College : 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education.  University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Andrew Roberts, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote The Thinking Student’s Guide to College to help students take charge of their university experience by providing concrete tips they can follow to achieve their educational goals—whether at public or private schools, large research universities or small liberal arts colleges.  This book offers advice on choosing a college, selecting classes, deciding on a major, interacting with faculty, and applying to graduate school. Roberts discusses what motivates professors, where to find “loopholes” in university bureaucracy, and how to get a personalized education, all in a straightforward style accessible to undergraduates or even high school seniors looking forward to college. Based on the author’s personal experience, interviews with faculty, and educational research, The Thinking Student’s Guide to College is a useful handbook for college students striving to excel academically, creatively, and personally.
 
Previewed by John Breitmeyer.  Click here to read the book.

Ebook of the Week - Disaster and the Politics of Intervention.

Andrew Lakoff, ed. Disaster and the Politics of Intervention. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 

In Disaster and the Politics of Intervention, Andrew Lakoff edits and introduces a collection of five essays that make the collective point that government plays a critical role in mitigating individual and collective vulnerability to disaster, and the essay authors also explore the details of how this role has been and can be implemented.  The recent drive to replace public institutions with market mechanisms has challenged governmental efforts to manage collective risk. The contributors to this volume analyze the roles of the public and private sectors in the management of catastrophic risk, addressing questions such as: How should homeland security officials evaluate the risk posed by terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Are market-based interventions likely to mitigate our vulnerability to the effects of climate change? What is the appropriate relationship between non-governmental organizations and private security firms in responding to humanitarian emergencies? And how can philanthropic efforts to combat the AIDS crisis ensure ongoing access to life-saving drugs in the developing world? More generally, these essays explore the way thoughtful policy intervention can improve our capacity to withstand catastrophic events.

Previewed by John Breitmeyer.  Click here to read the book.

E-Book of the Week: Management Across Cultures

Steers, Richard M., Sanchez-Runde, Carlos J., Nardon, Luciara. Management Across Cultures: Challenges and Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

According to the authors, in a survey among US college students, only 7 percent could identify the national origins of many of their favorite brands, including Adidas, Samsung, Nokia, Lego, and Ericsson. In particular, quality ratings of Nokia cell phones soared when students believed (incorrectly) that they were made in Japan. This book addresses how management works in different parts of the world and, equally important, why these differences occur. With chapters such as "Communication Across Cultures," "Culture, Work and Motivation," "Inside the Managerial Mind," "Developing Global Management Skills," and "Leadership and Global Teams," this work digs deeper into the underlying reasons for global differences, and this information can help managers be more effective in their work or students become more familiar with global issues in the field of management. Two appendices, the first on models of national cultures and the second on OECD guidelines for global managers, offer more insight into expanding communication literacy amongst cultures.

Previewed by Joanne Helouvry, Head of Research and Instruction. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Counseling Practicum and Internship Manual

Hodges, Shannon. Counseling Practicum and Internship Manual: A Resource for Graduate Counseling Students. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2010.

This book is an excellent tool for graduate counseling students as they apply for and complete internships and practica. It provides helpful advice on how to select and apply for internships/practica. It also walks students through some of the issues they will probably face while completing their internships/practica, including ethical issues, multicultural issues, how to manage stress, crisis intervention, and how to terminate the counseling relationships at the end of the practicum/internship. The book also addresses practical matters such as clinical writing skills and what students can expect during the classroom component of their internship/practicum and their site supervision.

Previewed by Danielle Whren Johnson, Digital Access Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Children's Nature

Paris, Leslie. Children's Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp. New York: NYU Press, 2008.

Drawing upon camp archives as well as the writings of children (diaries, letters home), Paris presents a history of the American summer residential camp, the aspirations of the adults who created them (physical and moral invigoration for their children, temporary liberation from parental duties for themselves) and the experiences of the children who attended them from the late 19th century through the 1930s. As the nation became increasingly industrialized, many adults began to see summer camps as a way of recapturing a simpler time when contact with nature was more common. Early camps catered to the Christian elite, but as the movement flourished during the Progressive era, camps for Jewish and other working-class urban children grew in number. In the first part of the book Paris discusses the “ideological, economic, physical, and social landscape of summer camps” in the early years, while the second part focuses on the interwar years when ideals and expectations began to change. While some children, like Charlie Brown, did not enjoy being shipped off to camp, Paris concludes that for the great majority of children this was an enjoyable, even transforming, experience.

Previewed by Jack Ray, Associate Director. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Chic Ironic Bitterness

Magill, R. Jay. Chic Ironic Bitterness. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009.

In Chic Ironic Bitterness, author Jay Magill takes a rambling stroll through Western popular and intellectual traditions to discern the origins, purposes, and perception of irony in current culture and individual consciousness. His focus and anchor is recent (post-9/11) American culture, and he is trying to locate both what irony is and what it does. He champions the validity of comedic/political discourse in American popular culture such as The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Simpsons, and The Onion, and makes compelling arguments that satire speaks most effectively to people who have turned ironically ‘inward’ in an effort to hold themselves above the inauthentic mainstream of American culture.

Magill’s prose lurches between the drily academic and the snarkily adolescent, in ways that are sometimes charming and sometimes clumsy, but the overall effect is entertaining, informative, and even thought-provoking. This shelf-life of this sort of cultural argument is brief (it’s only two years old, and some of its references already seem slightly dated), so read it today! Then you can be, like, all ironic and stuff, or whatever.*

*This closing sentence is a self-aware device meant to ironically distance the writer from any earnest conclusions he appears to have reached in the course of the review.**

**This second footnote, like the first, is meant to evoke the multilayered consciousness necessary to maintain an ironic viewpoint – a technique popularized by such popular postmodern authors as David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers, both of whom are quoted by Magill in his book.Ψ


Ψ Magill likes footnotes. A third footnote on a page, like this one, is a common occurrence in the text.

Previewed by John Breitmeyer, Research and Instruction Librarian/Web Support Specialist. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: The Motivated Student

Sullo, Bob. The Motivated Student: Unlocking the Enthusiasm for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2009.

The Motivated Student provides strategies to engage and internally motivate students in order to create a meaningful learning environment. Chapters offer firsthand accounts of classroom management techniques to integrate into the classroom as well as those to avoid. Sullo’s book presents an approach that educators can incorporate into their teaching in order to minimize classroom disruptions and inspire achievement.

Previewed by Julie Nanavati, Research and Instruction Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture

Fahs, Alice, and Joan Waugh, eds. The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture is a collection of essays which explores the Civil War’s continuing social and political impact from the beginning of the war to the present. It describes changes in the portrayal of the Civil War in American culture over time and across place, and it illustrates how the varying representations of the Civil War in celebrations, monuments, textbooks, fiction, and political speech are the result of differing views of the meaning of the war. Essays on the following topics, among others, are included:

• Ulysses S. Grant’s accounts of Civil War battles in his Memoirs and in contemporary periodicals
• The “Southern Textbook Crusade,” in which southern textbook writers in the decades after the war replaced northern accounts of the War with ones that emphasized Confederate heroism and viewpoint
• Controversies over erecting Confederate monuments and statues in both northern and southern regions, and
• The portrayal of the Civil War throughout the United States during the Civil War centennial celebration.

Previewed by Anna D'Agostino, Serials/Cataloging Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Making Reform Work

Zemsky, Robert. Making Reform Work: The Case for Transforming American Higher Education. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Robert Zemsky has been an important and influential scholar of American higher education for many years at the University of Pennsylvania. This book tackles the difficult matter of changing the American university for the better, to be bolder and take more risks to improve the quality of teaching and learning. He examines the key issues of access, affordability, accountability and quality within the context of the new technologies that have emerged to challenge the way higher education has been delivered for a millennium:  as “a guild of expertise.” He recommends the development of long-term strategies and a clear, definitive process of change rather than a reactionary approach to global and political forces now at play.

Previewed by John McGinty, Library Director. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Body Panic

Dworkin, Shari and Faye Wachs. Body Panic: Gender, Health and the Selling of Fitness. New York: NYU Press, 2009.

In this work the authors explore cultural portrayals of health and body image, and how the two have been conflated, focusing primarily on health and fitness magazines. Do they encourage readers to stay fit in order to stay healthy, or for better performance in sports or outdoor activities? Or are they focused on how the reader can improve their looks and sexual success? In exploring these questions, the authors look at gendered presentations of men and women depicted in these publications, and how the pursuit of health and fitness has been commercialized.

Previewed by Alison Cody, Public Relations & Instruction Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Conspiracy Theories

Fenster, Mark. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Fenster advances a progressive argument that conspiracy theories are a form of American (though perhaps not exclusively American) popular political interpretation, and he contends that understanding how they circulate through mass culture helps us better understand our society as a whole. Starting with (and revising) theories from Richard Hofstadter's seminal work The Paranoid Style in American Politics, he goes on to offer contemporary critiques of the militia movement, "The X-Files," popular Christian apocalyptic thought, and such artifacts of suspicion as The Turner Diaries, the Illuminatus! trilogy, and the novels of Richard Condon. He also analyzes the "conspiracy community" that exists in radio, publishing, Internet sites, and role-playing games. He believes conspiracy theory has become, among other things, a thrill for a bored subculture that reinterprets "accepted" history and is cynical about contemporary politics, but often longs, implicitly or explicitly, for a utopian future.

Previewed by John Breitmeyer, Research and Instruction Librarian/Web Support Specialist. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Uncorking the Past

McGovern, Patrick E. Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

In Uncorking the Past, Patrick McGovern explores the history of alcohol in civilizations around the world. From Africa to Asia, he discusses archaeological sites he’s visited and the types of analysis used to determine what types of beverages were consumed. He also provides background information on the types of situations in which these beverages were used (burials, particular celebrations, etc.) and how they may have been enjoyed.

Previewed by Alison Cody, Public Relations & Instruction Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Demanding Respect

Lopes, Paul. Demanding Respect: The Evolution of the American Comic Book. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009.

You might think an erudite text about comic book history is a bit oxymoronic. But you may be wrong. It’s not as if Paul Lopes uses a graphic presentation to tell this story.

The first age is referred to as the “industrial age,” later ages as “heroic,” from the 1930's till 2008. That was then and this is now. Today we live in an era of graphic novels, graphic education and still graphic entertainment, with great appeal to an ever widening audience. I recommend this E-book for anyone wishing to connect the dots between Marvel and DC comics, the works of Harvey Pekar, Robert Crumb (“American Splendor”) and Art Spiegelman. Just imagine movies today without all the metaphoric action heroes including: Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Cat Woman, Iron Man, Swamp Thing and the Incredible Hulk. Mainly but not exclusively male.

I then recommend going beyond American graphic novels to such artworks as “Maus,” “Persepolis” and “Stuck Rubber Baby.” The concluding chapter, “The Development of an Art Form” is particularly fascinating. The graphic publishing field is evolving at lightning speed now, quickly suggesting an update is in order, even with a historical treatment. And what about the graphic material now on the Web? So don't get me started.

Previewed by Philip Fryer, Digital Media Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Japan

OECD Publishing. Japan: Large-Scale Floods and Earthquakes. Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 2009.

In view of the recent catastrophes suffered by Japan, it is instructive to peruse this 2009 report from the OECD Futures Project on Risk Management. As the project name suggests, this review plays more to policy wonks than general readers, but it is well organized, clearly written, and features executive summaries for its two major topics. Interestingly, threats to nuclear power plants receive scant attention, although buried on p. 104 is the prescient recommendation that “chemical and nuclear industries and activities need to be obliged by law to take flood-related risks…more specifically into account, especially large scale ones…”

Previewed by Jack Ray, Associate Director. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Politics of the Piazza

Canniffe, Eamonn. Politics of the Piazza: The History and Meaning of the Italian Square. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008.

Broken into four parts, this book discusses the relationship between political systems and their methods of representation in architecture. Illustrated with contemporary photographs, analytical drawings and historic images, it examines approximately 70 significant piazzas and situates these in their social and political contexts, highlighting shifts between autocratic and democratic forms of government from antiquity to the present day. Great for people planning on traveling to Italy or interested in Italian history.

Previewed by Joanne Helouvry, Head of Research and Instruction Services. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Mobile Phones

de Bruijin, Mirjam, Francis Nyamnjoh and Inge Brinkman. Mobile Phones: The New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group, 2009.

Mobile Phones explores the way cell phones are reshaping Africa. Each chapter, written by a scholar from a different African country (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania), delves into the societal, economic, and cultural changes brought on by the use of cell phones in these regions, and how the technology is being adapted and transformed by African society. Topics include the many ways in which cell phones are being used: indigenous healers treating patients, individuals staying connected with family members who migrate to other countries, and farmers and merchants selling their goods.

Previewed by Julie Nanavati, Research and Instruction Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: The Invisible Gorilla

Chabris, Christopher F. and Daniel J. Simons. The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.

The Invisible Gorilla examines six areas related to our perceptions -- areas that are often faulty, yet stubbornly resistant to change even when we are made aware of the flaws. Chabris and Simons use examples from psychological experiments and real life situations to demonstrate the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, cause, and potential. They also discuss how we can attempt to overcome the flawed logic that results from these illusions.

Previewed by Danielle Whren Johnson, Digital Access Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Buffalo Gal

Pedersen, Laura. Buffalo Gal: A Memoir. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2008.

Laura Pedersen  is a Wall Street millionaire who grew up the snowy city of Buffalo, New York, and this is her comically written memoir. Like many families subsisting in the frigid North during the energy crisis, the Pedersens feared rising prices at the gas pump, argued about the thermostat, fought over the dog to stay warm at night, and often slept in their clothes. From a blue collar family, Laura became the neighborhood wild child, skipping school, playing poker, betting on the horses, and trading stocks. After graduating from high school Pedersen became the youngest person to have a seat on the American Stock Exchange and a millionaire by age 21.

Previewed by Charles Lockwood, Digital Services Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: William Shakesepare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Bloom, Harold (ed.). William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996.

This book provides a critical overview of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bloom starts off the work with a biography of Shakespeare, followed by information on the characters, themes and structure of the play, an especially helpful foundation for those who have found Shakespeare's language difficult to interpret. Following this, Bloom has compiled a list of extracts from critical works reaching back to the early 1800s. Each extract is prefaced by a very brief biography of the author and the work being quoted. Bloom concludes the volume with a bibliography of Shakespeare's works and works about A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Previewed by Alison Cody, Public Relations & Instruction Librarian. Click here to read this book.

E-Book of the Week: Growing the Game

Klein, Alan M. Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

Major League Baseball (MLB) is becoming an increasingly international enterprise, seeking out talent and business opportunities not only in areas such as Asia and Latin America where the sport is well established, but also in Europe and Africa where interest is still marginal and development is necessary. Indeed, Klein argues that globalization is “imperative” to ensure MLB’s future prosperity, but to succeed it must be a “decentralized global enterprise” and not a form of neo-colonialism. He focuses on the efforts of the Dodgers and Royals, as well as the Commissioner’s Office; his final chapter poses the intriguing question, “When Will There Be a Real World Series?”

Previewed by Jack Ray, Associate Director. Click here to read this book.