When American-born Haim Watzman immigrated to Israel, he was drafted into the army and, after eighteen months of compulsory service, was assigned to Company C, the reserve infantry unit that would define the next twenty years of his life. From 1984 until 2002, for at least a month a year, Watzman, who had never aspired to military adventure, was a soldier. Watzman was a soldier as he adjusted to his new country, raised his children, and pursued a career as a writer and translator. At times he defended his adopted country’s borders; at other times he patrolled beyond them, or that gray area, the occupied territories. A religiously observant Jew who opposed Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he served in uniform in conflicts that he demonstrated against in civilian clothes. Throughout, he developed a deep and abiding bond with the diverse men of Company C--a fellowship that cemented his commitment to reserve service even as he questioned the occupation he was enforcing. In this engrossing account of the first Intifada, the period of the Oslo Accords, and Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank as lived by citizen-soldiers in the field, Watzman examines our obligations to country, friends, family, and God--and our duty to protect our institutions even as we fight to reform them.

Like her celebrated short fiction, Paley's poems are street-smart yet vulnerable, full of earthy observations and a refreshing bemusement; they display a wonderful ear for the rhythm of the speech of her native New York, where "talk is cheap but comes in variety." She "tells the story of the stories" told by children and grandmothers, which resonate "in the mind's ear" as "talk talk talk/the tickling tongue/of strangers." These poems are rich with the fullness of everyday life: the doings of Paley's Greenwich Village neighborhood, summers in Vermont, fulltime political activism, memories of family and friends. Paley's wonderful economy with words recalls William Carlos Williams and the objectivist poets. ISBN 0-88448-098-4: $19.95.

A masterful biographer now offers a thrilling, definitive portrait of one of history’s most legendary icons of adventure. In 1860, sixteen-year-old Joshua Slocum escaped a hardscrabble childhood in Nova Scotia by signing on as an ordinary seaman to a merchant ship bound for Dublin. Despite having only a third-grade education, Slocum rose through the nautical ranks at a mercurial pace; just a decade later he was commander of his own ship. His subsequent journeys took him nearly everywhere: Liverpool, China, Japan, Cape Horn, the Dutch East Indies, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, San Francisco, and Australia—where he met and married his first wife, Virginia, who would sail along with him for the rest of her life, bearing and raising their children at sea. He commanded eight vessels and owned four, enduring hurricanes, shipwrecks, pirate attacks, cholera, smallpox, a mutiny, and the death of his wife and three of his children. Yet his ultimate adventure and crowning glory was still to come. In 1895 Slocum set sail from Gloucester, Massachusetts—by himself—in the Spray, a small sloop of thirty-seven feet. More than three years and forty-six thousand miles later, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo, a feat that wouldn’t be replicated until 1925. His account of that voyage, Sailing Alone Around the World , soon made him internationally famous. He met President Theodore Roosevelt on several occasions and became a presence on the lecture circuit, selling his sea-saga books whenever and wherever he could. But scandal soon followed, and a decade later, with his finances failing, he set off alone once more—and was never seen again. Geoffrey Wolff captures this singular life and its flamboyant times—from the Golden Age of Sail to a shockingly different new century—in vivid, fascinating detail.

Mr. and Mrs. Topsy-Turvy, and their children Fern and Vern, are the most fun babysitters in the world. Lucy certainly isn't complaining when her mother asks the Topsy-Turvies to watch her -- in no time at all she's drawing on the floor and watching TV standing on her head just like the rest of the family. This is a laugh-out-loud delight chock-full of candy-colored artwork and old fashioned silliness.

All year Mr. Green has tried with no success to take a perfect Christmas picture of his six children. His frustrations and the children's antics will have readers laughing. The spare, humorous ink and wash drawings work very well with the story.

Strategies for making the schools we need that work for all kids Eva Moskowitz (the founder and CEO of the Success Charter Network in Harlem) and Arin Lavinia offer practical, classroom-tested ideas for dramatically improving teaching and learning. Moskowitz and Lavinia reveal how a charter school in the middle of Harlem, enrolling neighborhood children selected at random, emerged as one of the top schools in New York City and State within three years. The results of the Harlem school were on a par with public schools for gifted students and elite private schools. Describes what can be accomplished when students and adults all work to focus on constant learning and performance improvement; DVD clips can be accessed using a special link included in the book. The Success Academies have been featured in two popular and widely distributed documentaries, Waiting for Superman and The Lottery Details the Success Academies' THINK Literacy curriculum, which produces dramatic results in student's reading and writing skills In addition to providing strategies and lessons for school leaders and teachers, Secrets of the Success Academies also serves as a guide for parents, policymakers, and practitioners who are passionate about closing the academic achievement gap.

In this beautiful 64-page picture book, Esther Nisenthal Krinitz tells her story of survival during the Holocaust through her art and narrative. Acompanying text by her daughter, Bernice Steinhardt, adds historical detail, context and interpretation. While a beautiful gift for both children and adults, it is also an educational resource for teachers exploring the Holocaust and themes of social justice and tolerance."While the panels speak of an almost unfathomable loss and horror, they also stand as one woman's testimony to hope, endurance and the unquenchable passion to bear witness."Publishers Weekly (October 10, 2005)

When Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha married his cousin, the young Queen Victoria, in 1840, it was not only a match whose fertility and personal devotion provided a model for the queen's subjects, it was also a triumph of dynastic politics. It drew the couple deeply into European politics, where their personal and family relationships with many of the rulers often had repercussions at home. Despite the death of Albert in 1861, the marriage of Victoria's children into Europe's royal houses continued the dynastic theme. It was a tragedy for Germany and Europe that Vicky, Victoria's eldest daughter, and her husband, the heir to the German throne were unable to master Bismarck. Albert and Victoria is a portrait of a marriage. It also traces Albert to his unhappy family roots in Coburg and shows how important his attitudes, most of them shared by Victoria, were in their joint dynastic enterprise. >

From the bestselling author of Cultural Literacy , a passionate and cogent argument for reforming the way we teach our children "Ought to be read by anyone interested in the education and training of the next generation of Americans."--Glenn C. Altschuler, Boston Globe Why, after decades of commissions, reforms, and efforts at innovation, do our schools continue to disappoint us? In this comprehensive and thought-provoking book, educational theorist E. D. Hirsch, Jr. offers a masterful analysis of how American ideas about education have veered off course, what we must do to right them, and most importantly why . He argues that the core problem with American education is that educational theorists, especially in the early grades, have for the past sixty years rejected academic content in favor of "child-centered" and "how-to" learning theories that are at odds with how children really learn. The result is failing schools and widening inequality, as only children from content-rich (usually better-off) homes can take advantage of the schools' educational methods. Hirsch unabashedly confronts the education establishment, arguing that a content-based curriculum is essential to addressing social and economic inequality. A nationwide, specific, grade-by-grade curriculum established in the early school grades can help fulfill one of America's oldest and most compelling dreams: to give all children, regardless of language, religion, or origins, the opportunity to participate as equals and become competent citizens. Hirsch not only reminds us of these inspiring ideals, he offers an ambitious and specific plan for achieving them.

A fun-filled introduction to the joys of doing good deeds and mitzvot. Join Mitzvah Meerkat and friends as they introduce children to the everyday kindnesses that mark the beginning of a Jewish journey and a lifetime commitment to tikkun olam (repairing the world). Through lively illustrations and playful dialogue, children engage with Jewish wisdom as they share in welcoming new friends, forgiving mistakes, respecting elders, sharing food with the hungry, and much, much more.

international praise for Diane Armstrong: 'Mosaic flows like a novel which, once started, is hard to put down. It is a compelling family history of extraordinary people played out against some of the most frightening events of our century. The depth of emotions evoked is stunning. I was thrilled and deeply moved.' Joseph Heller author of Catch-22 'Diane Armstrong's book is a source of delight to the reader. Written with fervor and talent, it will capture your attention and retain it to the last page.' Elie Wiesel Nobel Prize winner a family story you'll never forget ... This extraordinary true story begins in the Polish city of Krakow in 1890 and spans one hundred years and four continents. It is the story of a Jewish family whose patriarch, Daniel Baldinger, divorces the wife he loves because she is barren. He believes 'a man must have sons to say Kaddish for him when he dies.' To ensure having children, he marries a girl of eighteen. By 1913, Daniel has eleven children - including six sons to say Kaddish for him. Impatient for his God-given son to begin learning the sacred language of the Torah, Daniel sent Avner to cheder at Chevre Tilem when he was three years old. Most boys were enrolled at four or five, but Daniel couldn't wait for Avner's rabbinical training to begin. Cheder was the place where childhood ended. At this religious day school, Jewish boys learned Hebrew and studied the Torah. No coloured pictures, childish stories or lively games relieved the tedium of this dour classroom where Avner had to memorise words he didn't understand, learn hundreds of rules and write strange squiggles. But although God has answered Daniel's prayers, it is with a bitter twist: each of his six sons rebels against his religion, and not one of them says Kaddish for him when he dies. This richly textured portrait follows these eleven children from the 1890s, through the terrifying years of the Holocaust (when Diane and her parents assumed non-Jewish names and passed themselves off as Catholics in the little village of Piszczac), to the present. A long shadow fell across the little girl tracing patterns in the dirt with a stick. After watching her for a few minutes, the stranger asked, 'What's your name, little girl?' Without looking up, she replied, 'Danusia Boguslawska.' 'But what was your name before that?' he insisted. My father, Henek, who was standing by the open window, froze when he heard the last question. Instead of rushing outside and grabbing the child to prevent her from answering that insidious question, he was struck dumb and stood there helplessly awaiting her reply, on which all their lives depended. Mosaic is compelling storytelling at its best: from the fascinating detail of Polish Jewish culture at the turn of the century and the rivalries and dramas of family life, to its moving account of lives torn apart by war and prejudice, this is a remarkable story of a family, and of one woman's journey to reclaim her heritage. For centuries Poland has been a battleground whose fields, watered by more blood than rain, have nurtured ancient hatreds. Jews have not had a monopoly on suffering, grief and loss. Before we drive away from Szczakowa, I look back at the leafy street where the synagogue and mikveh stood, just a short stroll from the house on Parkowa Street. If I close my eyes, I can see a dapper white-haired gentleman in top hat and patent leather shoes like mirrors striding ahead of his wife in a flowered hat with feathers, her long full skirt rustling as she tries to keep up with him as they walk to the synagogue on Kilinskiego Street for the marriage of their daughter Lieba to Daniel Baldinger. In this forgotten country town, I've found important pieces of the mosaic.

Argues that recent advances in infertility treatment has led to the commercialization of children and that the field should be regulated by the government.

There was a time not very long ago when "going out" was only for the rich and the reckless. At the turn of the century, "going out" became part of everyday life as vaudeville halls, photograph parlors, penny arcades, nickelodeons, nightclubs, dance halls, world's fair midways, amusement parks, ballparks, and movie palaces opened their doors to the people of the city. The new amusement centers welcomed women, men, and children, native-born and immigrant, rich, poor, and middling. Only African Americans were excluded or segregated in the audience, though they were overrepresented on stage. Going Out chronicles the twentieth-century entertainment revolution that changed forever the ways we live, work, and play. In a matter of decades, a new public world of amusements was created where ethnic, class, and neighborhood differences were subordinated to the common pursuit of a good time. Clerks and bankers, sales girls and society ladies "turkey trotted" to ragtime in nightclubs and dance halls; "shot the chute" and clutched one another in "barrels of love"; visited "Darkest Africa" on the world's fair midways; and sat together in the dark watching pictures move on a screen. In Going Out, we meet the colorful characters who invented show business: Thomas Alva Edison, who was astonished when his phonograph made money playing music (he had designed it to take business dictation); Benjamin Franklin Keith, the circus grifter who opened a dime museum in Boston in the 1880s and within a decade owned the world's largest vaudeville theater circuit; Adolph Zukor and Marcus Loew, the New York furriers who made millions in the early picture-show business; and the dozens of small-time show businessmen who rode the rails with their "shows" in their trunks. And we hear the stories of the early black performers and their struggles to maintain their dignity and livelihood while audiences demanded their public humiliation. Going Out is a history of twentieth-century show business and of the new American public that assembled in the city's wondrous pleasure palaces, parks, and theaters. The book concludes with an account of the fall or relocation of this entertainment world, as central city amusement parks, movie palaces, and ballparks were uprooted and transported to the suburbs in the decades following World War II.

What has happened to the American family in the last few decades? And what are these changes doing to our children? A renowned child psychologist and author of several influential works on child development, David Elkind has devoted his career to these urgent questions. This eloquent book - the culmination of his inquiry - puts together all the pieces, puzzling facts, and conflicting accounts, and shows us as never before what the American family has become. Today's postmodern family is under enormous stress. And as a result, the needs of hurried children have been sacrificed to the needs of their harried parents. Childhood innocence has been supplanted by the illusion of childhood competence; teenage immaturity has given way to pseudo-sophistication; and parental intuition has been traded in for a mechanical reliance on technique. These changes and a host of others have undermined the well-being of children and adolescents. From Freud to Friedan to Foucault, Elkind traces the roots of the postmodern family back to the failure of the modern nuclear family and its supporting institutions - the media, the so-called helping professions, the legal system, and the schools - to meet the needs of parents. The new postmodern family is more flexible, more permeable, more urbane, but also out of balance because it fails to meet the needs of children. Treated like miniature adults, today's children and adolescents go without the protection and security they need, while their once-sheltered baby-boomer parents, facing new economic pressures for which they are unprepared, secretly wonder why they've never really felt like grown-ups. But all is not bleak. Elkind finds evidence of an emerging vital family that melds the best of the modern and postmodern, one in which the needs of all family members are held in a dynamic, if delicate, balance. Many books have decried the decline in family values, the negative impact of divorce, the increase in single-mother families, and impoverished prospects for our children. But none has pulled all these fragments together as Elkind's does and put them into a solid framework, one that finally makes sense of the way we were, and what we as families may become.

Coming generations will ask themselves how it was possible that millions of people, victims of an artificially induced enthusiasm, could be moved to do the very things which led to their own ruin. The answer could be given in hundreds of thousands of words, but, if it were expressed in one word alone, that word would be: Goebbels. Curt Riess, a Jewish Berliner who fled Germany upon Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933, considered Goebbels to be 'the most outstanding man of the Nazi regime, not even barring Hitler himself.' Without Goebbels' genius for organization and propaganda, Nazism could never have amassed the support it needed to gain and keep power in Germany. From provincial obscurity, Goebbels scurried through the Nazi ranks to become one of the most dominant and trusted members of Hitler's inner circle. His career was marked by formidable powers of administration, his ruthless hatred of the Jews, his resourcefulness in promoting Nazi ideals, and his inflexible devotion to the Führer, asserted in his final morbid gesture of propaganda: the sacrifice of his wife, six children, and himself in Hitler's bunker in 1945. Riess' biography was first published in 1949 and benefitted greatly from the discovery of Goebbels' diaries in 1946. It explores the many fascinating and pertinent aspects of Goebbels' character: the insecurities brought on by his diminutive stature; his rejection by his family; his consuming jealousy of his rivals; and his obsession with sex. It remains a compelling and authoritative biography of the man whose manipulative genius steered the German nation to ruin.

"How to turn personal passion into an organization with impact. For anyone setting out to change the world, launching a nonprofit venture can be a powerful way to enact change. Whether bringing donated eyeglasses to children who have never seen clearly, revamping inner city schools, or bringing solar cookers to refugee camps, the act of doing good can be life-changing. Yet starting a nonprofit--and running it well--can also pose challenges. The Art of Doing Good is an essential companion for anyone looking to start an organization that makes a real difference. Drawing from their own leadership roles in the nonprofit world, as well as interviews with 18 celebrated social innovators, the authors prepare would-be social entrepreneurs with guidance and real-world advice for sustaining the spirit, ambition, and ingenuity to keep their vision alive and thriving. Features real-life stories of 18 notable social entrepreneurs and the organizations they run, including Geoffrey Canada (Harlem Children's Zone), Darell Hammond (KaBOOM!), and Michael Brown (City Year) Reveals what particular issues nonprofit leaders can expect to face throughout the lifespan of their organization and shares strategies for meeting challenges Written by world-renowned philanthropists Bronfman and Solomon, respectively cofounder and CEO of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies and coauthors of The Art of Giving With thoughtful and comprehensive insight on how the most effective social ventures do good well, The Art of Doing Good is essential reading for both new and experienced nonprofit leaders."--

'Buy it for yourself, your husband or partner. Most importantly, buy it for your children' Sunday Express Essential reading from Catherine Mayer, recently named one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Global Policy on Gender Equality. Cometh the hour, Cometh the women. In this inspirational book, the co-founder of the Women's Equality Party sets out compelling evidence for the social and economic benefits of gender equality and lays bare the mechanisms holding women back. Everywhere women are, at best, second-class citizens. Progress towards equality hasn't only stalled; in many places, it is reversing. Things needn't be this way. Join the author on a journey to Equalia, the gender-equal future that could be ours. In this new and fully updated edition Catherine Mayer reports from the frontline of 2017, a tumultuous year that saw women's rights and protections rolled back and the global tally of female leaders fall, but galvanised feminism. It was also a tumultuous year for the author herself, who for the first time writes in detail about her sex and age discrimination suit against her former employer, TIME, and how her battle for justice, like #MeToo, demonstrated the extraordinary power of women sharing stories. JOIN THE REVOLUTION.

As a young woman, Carolyn Heilbrun made a resolution not to live past "three score years and ten." Taking her own life at the age of seventy, she reasoned, would lend clean closure to a life well lived, and would keep her from the many tragedies of aging--becoming a burden to her children, witnessing the deterioration of her body, falling prey to a crippling disease. But on the advent of her seventieth birthday, she looked back on the past ten years and found, to her surprise, that her sixties had been the happiest decade of all: after fifty years, her marriage had matured into a happy balance of companionship and respect for solitude; she had developed deep friendships with her grown children and a small circle of peers; she had mastered a highly successful career as a scholar and writer. In the poignant, essayistic writing that best showcases her elegant talent and provocative mind, Carolyn Heilbrun celebrates the many pleasures of a mature life. Filled with wisdom, knowledge, wry humor, and literary allusion, The Last Gift of Time is a moving book for all women invested in the pursuit of leading a woman's life to its fullest capacity.

From Morocco to Libya, from Ostia to Surrentum - Caroline Lawrence has travelled widely to give the Roman Mysteries unrivalled authenticity among historical novels. Her research trips have yielded a dazzling array of insights that allow Caroline to vividly re-imagine the ancient world and to bring her characters and stories to life. This book gathers together anecdotes, factual information and advice for children and their families looking to explore exotic locations, as well as offering compelling background to the real world behind the bestselling Roman Mysteries novels.

Rosie the sassiest kid on her block of Brooklyn's Avenue P entertains herself and her friends by acting out showbiz fantasies notably directing and starring in an Oscar-winning movie. Written by the author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are and other popular children's books Really Rosie is a jewel for children and adults. Author Maurice Sendak is the winner of a Caldecott Medal National Book Award and a National Me