Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia Added to Course Syllabi at the University of Colorado

According to acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, the new Russia is marching in an alarming direction under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. Emboldened by escalating oil wealth as well as newfound prominence as a world power, Russia has veered back toward the authoritarian roots planted in Imperial/Czarist times and firmly established during the Soviet era. Though Russia has a new president, Dmitri Medvedev, Putin remains in control, endangering the democratic reforms of the post-Soviet order. Now, in Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia , LeVine provides a penetrating account of modern Russia under the repressive rule of an all-powerful autocrat. LeVine, who lived in and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, portrays the growth of a “culture of death”—from targeted assassinations of the state’s enemies to the Kremlin’s indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered. Drawing on new interviews with eyewitnesses and the families of victims, LeVine documents the bloodshed that has stained Putin’s two terms as president. 

Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia will be used in a Political Science course at the University of Colorado this Fall.  Get an inside look at the Russian leader’s autocratic regime and his turn away from the West.  Click here to read an article from BusinessWeek.

For more information on the book or author, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

What’s on family dinner tables around the globe? Find out in Hungry Planet, a Book Selection at University of Tennessee

For the Fall 2009 semester, Hungry Planet, published by Ten Speed Press, is the book of choice at the University of Tennessee. Course Name: Geography 101.  The book is by cultural geographers and award-winning authors Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. What is your favorite food? For a fascinating and informative look at the foods consumed around the world, click here.

For more information on the book or author, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Three Modern Library Books Get Taught at The College of Saint Rose

Three books from Random House’s Modern Library acclaimed collection has been selected for English courses at The College of Saint Rose–The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or, Gustavus Vassa, the African (Olaudah Equiano), The Algerine Captive: or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill (Royall Tyler), and Charlotte Temple (Susanna Rowson).

For Modern Library’s Website, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Author and Yale Professor Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography Teaches His Book at Yale University

“…[T]he best biography ever written about the U.S. Constitution….”

So said Harvard University professor Laurence H. Tribe of Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography.  

We have just learned that Professor Amar will be teaching his book this Fall in his large Constitutional Law course at Yale University.  Lucky students!

“I was about to describe America’s Constitution as the best biography ever written about the U.S. Constitution  — until it occurred to me that it’s the only real biography of that remarkable document. As with the gaggle of myopic elephant attendants each of whom sees and strokes only one small part of the whole, many have written about some part of the Constitution or its history, or about the Constitution as seen from the perspective of one branch (usually, the judiciary), but only Yale Law School’s justly legendary Akhil Amar has undertaken to tell the story of the Constitution as a whole. And what a story he tells!  What David McCullough is to John Adams, what Walter Isaacson is to Benjamin Franklin, Akhil Amar is to the Constitution of the United States. Marvelously readable and breathtakingly informative, Amar’s biography of our nation’s founding document fills a huge void  — and fills it brilliantly.”
–Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor Harvard University

For more information on the book or author, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Daniel Goleman’s Ecological Intelligence – Essential Book at Antioch University McGregor and Virginia Tech

The bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership now brings us revealing the hidden environmental consequences of what we make and buy, and how with that knowledge we can drive the essential changes we all must make to save our planet and ourselves.

“Drawing on his capacious intelligence Daniel Goleman dissects the issues involved in the attainment of long term sustainability and details promising and intriguing solutions. Once again, he has written an essential book.”– Howard Gardner, author and Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education

Virginia Tech has selected Ecological Intelligence for its 2009-2010 Common Book Project as well as Antioch University McGregor’s Graduate Management Program for its Fall course on Environmental Management.

Official Website: www.danielgoleman.info/

For more information on the book or author, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Sam Walton’s Made in America Book of Choice at California State University Chico

Sam Walton’s book Made in America has been selected for California State University Chico’s Management course, Understanding Global Business.

For more information on the book, click here.

Order an exam copy here.

Reza Aslan’s No god but God on the Curriculum at the University of Georgia

An authoritative study of the Islamic faith in relation to the other world religions, Reza Aslan’s No god but God: Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam sheds new light on its origins and history, from the social reformation role of Muhammad to the impact of fundamentalism and terrorism on Islam.

This Fall, the University of Georgia will be teaching Reza Aslan’s No god but God: Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. No god but God, has been translated into thirteen languages and was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. Aslan is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror.

“An eloquent, erudite paean to Islam in all of its complicated glory.”–Los Angeles Times Book Review

Official Website: www.rezaaslan.com/

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

Important Discussions are Taking Place in Pittsburgh – Root Shock Adopted at the University of Pittsburgh

By Mindy Fullilove, who is a M.D. and professor of public health at Columbia University, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It is an important discussion of urban renewal and its effect on the African American community, when between 1949 and 1973 this federal program, spearheaded by business andreal estate interests, destroyed 1,600 African American neighborhoods in cities across the country.

Root Shock has been taught in several courses including the University of Pittsburgh’s course on the History of Black Pittsburgh.

“There is a sense in America that every day is morning time and that everything can be remade. In a powerful dissenting voice Mindy Fullilove says no: a society cannot knock down local worlds and tear up the roots of its people without bad things happening.  Tearing up Ebbets Field led the way to the destruction of the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and removed more than the Brooklyn Dodgers, but whole lives. Dr. Fullilove uses many such examples to illustrate ‘root shock’. Its effects have traumatized generations of Americans, and especially African Americans. This powerfully imaginative work by a leading social psychiatrist offers original ideas that sponsor not just a critique but ways to respond and prevent a major source of social and health problems in our time. A book of real importance.”–Arthur Kleinman, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology,  Harvard University

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

Order an exam copy here.

Vanderbilt University’s Political Science Department Takes Up The Strongest Tribe

From a universally respected combat journalist, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq is a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the war was turned around–and the choice now facing America.

The Strongest Tribe by Bing West will be the book taught by Vanderbilt University’s Political Science Department for their course: War in Iraq.

“A brilliant exposition. Based on extensive experience in the war zone, Bing West recounts how Soldiers and Marines showed the President and the Pentagon the way to solve the Iraq insurgency problem. Echoing the admonition that “all politics are local”, The Strongest Tribe  convincingly argues that it was a grass roots strategy developed by on-scene officers who forged ties at the tribal level that brought stability to Iraq’s turbulent Anbar Province and provided hope for all Iraq.”
– Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor USMC (Ret.) Co-author of The Generals’ War
and COBRA II: The Inside Story of the Invation and Occupation of Iraq

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

To view related video, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Le Moyne College Teaching Against the Machine for Fall 2009

From the author hailed by the New York Times Book Review for his “drive-by brilliance” and dubbed by the New York Times Magazine as “one of the country’s most eloquent and acid-tongued critics” comes a ruthless challenge to the conventional wisdom about the most consequential cultural development of our time: the Internet.

Le Moyne College is teaching Against the Machine this Fall.

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.