Free Copy Offer to Educators: Be the First to Adopt The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa’s Worst Human Rights Crimes by John Prendergast with Don Cheadle

In their New York Times bestseller, Not On Our Watch, human rights activist John Prendergast and Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle focused the world’s attention on genocide in Sudan by offering readers strategies on how to take action to end the tragedies. Here now is their continued call to action: The Enough Moment : Fighting to End Africa’s Worst Human Rights Crimes (Three Rivers Press; September 2010), an empowering look at how people’s movements and inspired policies can stop genocide, child soldier recruitment, and rape as a war weapon in Africa. 

In The Enough Moment , Prendergast and Cheadle explain how hope, anger, citizen activism, social networking, compassion, celebrities, faith in action, and globalization are all coming together to produce the beginnings of a mass movement against human rights crimes.  

As Prendergast and Cheadle describe, an “Enough Moment” is defined as that time when outrage triggers action and bystanders become “Upstanders,” or people who take action on behalf of others. But can ordinary citizens turn their Enough Moments into instruments of meaningful change? Prendergast and Cheadle say “yes,” illustrating with such examples:

 • A high school student in Chicago started Youth United for Darfur to raise awareness of genocide.

• An eleven-year-old former child soldier in Uganda formed a group of others like him to aid in reconciliation.

• A seventy-eight-year-old retired educator in Seattle founded a coalition of churches and organizations to raise awareness and funds for humanitarian relief.

• A young Darfurian woman founded an association of women journalists that uses radios and phones to warn towns of militia groups in their area.

 In addition to providing action steps, Prendergast and Cheadle also connect with well-known and influential people to discuss how they have been moved to action by their Enough Moments. Interviews in The Enough Moment include:  Madeleine Albright, Dave Eggers, Mia Farrow, and a number of members of Congress.

For readers who hear their Enough Moment calling, and for those who are already involved in the people’s movement, The Enough Moment offers fourteen action steps for change, including contacting Congress, alerting the media, and using social media to organize, to help us become part of the solution. 

 Visit the website: http://www.enoughproject.org/

Educators: To request a FREE examination copy, click here and mention our blog.  Copies are limited.

Another College Joins the List of Adoptions for Tracy Kidder’s Acclaimed Mountains Beyond Mountains

 Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, a perennial favorite book used in colleges and common reading programs, has recently been selected at Cornell University, along with more than 100 other colleges and high schools since its publication. This compelling and inspiring book shows how one person can work wonders. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man, Dr. Paul Farmer, who loves the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it. “Mountains Beyond Mountains unfolds with a force of gathering revelation,” says Annie Dillard, and Jonathan Harr notes, “[Paul Farmer] wants to change the world. Certainly this luminous and powerful book will change the way you see it.”

“[A] masterpiece . . . an astonishing book that will leave you questioning your own life and political views . . . Kidder opens a window into Farmer’s soul, letting the reader peek in and see what truly makes the good doctor tick.”—USA Today

For a list of colleges that have selected Mountains Beyond Mountains, click here.

To read a book excerpt, click here.

Strength In What Remains is Tracy Kidder’s newest book.  To watch the book’s trailer, click here.

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

Author Website: www.tracykidder.com/

Order an exam copy here.

Word of Mouth is Spreading On The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, now Adopted at Several Colleges

In 1951, an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks, stricken with cervical cancer, became an involuntary donor of cells from her cancerous tumor, which were propagated by scientist George Otto Gey to create an immortal cell line for medical research. These cells are now known worldwide as HeLa. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, award-winning science writer Rebecca Skloot brilliantly weaves together the Lacks’s story–past and present–with the story of the birth of bioethics, the story of HeLa cells, and the dark history of experimentation on African Americans. Important, powerful, and compassionate, this is a remarkable work of science and social journalism. 

Since its publication in February 2010, this amazing book has been already been selected for several 2010-2011 Common Reading programs, including Fairmont State University, Grand Valley State University, Honors College at University of Arizona, Johns Hopkins University, Keene State College, Loyola Marymount University (English Dept.), Marian University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Siena Heights University, St. Bonaventure College, Sweet Briar College, University of California, Merced, University of Kansas School of Medicine, University of Wisconsin, Big Reads, Virginia Commonwealth University, and is also being used in several classes at California State University Los Angeles, Fairmont State University, Henderson State University, Ohio University, Old Dominion University, Stockton College, University of Colorado-Boulder, and the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa.

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is an ideal book for classroom discussions in bioethics, history of science, and science journalism. Author Rebecca Skloot does an exceptional job of raising critical issues that should encourage both scholars and students to reevaluate the research decision making process, the way research subjects are treated, and the balance of power in this country as determined by race, economics, and even education. An incredibly readable and smart text that should be a part of countless university discussions.” — Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, and Professor of Journalism, University of Wisconsin-Madison 

“This book not only describes the enormous contributions of Henrietta Lacks, her family and the many physicians and scientists to the history of science  –  it humanizes their contributions. In this way the public owes a debt to Rebecca Skloot for explaining science and its ethical issues in a way that should enlighten and inform. In my mind, she’s written the perfect bioethics book.”– Eric M. Meslin, Ph.D.  Director, Indiana University Center for Bioethics 

“Deftly weaving together history, journalism and biography, Rebecca Skloot’s sensitive account tells of the enduring, deeply personal sacrifice of this African American woman and her family…A stunning illustration of how race, gender and disease intersect to produce a unique form of social vulnerability, this is a poignant, necessary, and brilliant book.”—Alondra Nelson, associate professor of sociology, Columbia University 

Also visit the blog post by Case Western professor, Jacqueline D. Lipton, Professor; Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research; Co-Director of the Center for Law Technology and the Arts; Associate Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center. Click here. 

For a review in Health Affairs Journal, click here.

For Booklist’s Story Behind the Story: Rebecca Skloot’s Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, click here.

Author website: www.rebeccaskloot.com

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

Click here to read an excerpt.

Click here to order an examination copy.

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton Vs. Starr Now Being Used in Political Science Course at Carlow University

Ten years after one of the most polarizing political scandals in American history, author Ken Gormley offers an insightful, balanced, and revealing analysis of the events leading up to the impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton. From Ken Starr’s initial Whitewater investigation through the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit to the Monica Lewinsky affair, The Death of American Virtue is a gripping chronicle of an ever-escalating political feeding frenzy. In exclusive interviews, Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal, and many more key players offer candid reflections on that period. Drawing on never-before-released records and documents—including the Justice Department’s internal investigation into Starr, new details concerning the death of Vince Foster, and evidence from lawyers on both sides—Gormley sheds new light on a dark and divisive chapter, the aftereffects of which are still being felt in today’s political climate.

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton Vs. Starr has been selected at Carlow University for its Spring 2010, Introduction to Political Science course.

“Anyone who lived through the improbable sequence of events that led to the impeachment of President Clinton will be riveted by this vivid dissection of a saga of ambition, pride, and raw politics that diminished both a president and his prosecutor.”—LINDA GREENHOUSE, lecturer in law, Yale Law School, and former Supreme Court correspondent, New York Times 

For more information on the book or author, 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.

Students Are Reading Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect, The Full Story Behind The Stanford Prison Experiment, the Now-Classic Prison Study He Conducted in 1971

Winner, the William James Book Award of the Society for General Psychology (Division 1 of the American Psychological Association)

In The Lucifer Effect , renowned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains how–and the myriad reasons why–we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” Drawing on examples from history as well as his own trailblazing research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women.

Another two colleges join the growing list of adoptions for The Lucifer Effect! The University of Nevada, Reno’s Gender, Race and Identity Dept has chosen the book for its fall course and Notre Dame de Namur University has selected it for a Political Psychology course.

For a story about Prof. Zimbardo’s Sicilian experience and educational foundation, click here.

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

For Official Website, click here.

To rder an examination copy click here.

Plain, Honest Men Chosen for Political Science Course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution by distinguished historian Richard Beeman is a dramatic and engrossing account of the men who met in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to design a radically new form of government. Plain, Honest Men takes readers behind the scenes and beyond the debate to show how the world’s most enduring constitution was forged through conflict, compromise, and, eventually, fragile consensus.

Gordon S. Wood, Professor of History and author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution calls it “the fullest and most authoritative account of the Constitutional Convention ever written.”

Plain, Honest Men will be taught in a Political Science Course entitled “American Political Thought” at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

To read an excerpt, click here.

Order an exam copy here.