University of North Texas and Duke University Choose The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton

John Milton is, next to William Shakespeare, the most influential English poet, a writer whose work spans an incredible breadth of forms and subject matter. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton celebrates this author’s genius in a thoughtfully assembled book that provides new modern-spelling versions of Milton’s texts, expert commentary, and a wealth of other features that will please even the most dedicated students of Milton’s canon. Edited by a trio of esteemed scholars, this volume is the definitive Milton for our time.

Duke University and University of North Texas’s English Dept have selected Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton for their Fall course on Milton.

To read an excerpt, click here.

Order an exam copy here.

Outcasts United Joins Another College’s Fall Curriculum

Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town  is the story of a refugee soccer team, a remarkable woman coach and a small southern town in Clarkston, Georgia, turned upside down by the process of refugee resettlement.

Beloit College’s Writing Program has selected the book for its Fall 2009 course on The Long Horizon: Refugees in the United States and the University of Hartford’s Politics & Government Dept. is using it for their Globalization of People course.  Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town  is also a popular common reading selection at several colleges. For a complete list, click here.

“Truly unforgettable, Outcasts United offers a stirring lesson in the power of a single person to transform the lives of many. It’s an incisive window into the world ahead for all of us, where cultural diversity won’t be an ideal or a course requirement or a corporate initiative but a fact of life that has to be wrestled with and reconciled, if never quite resolved.”
—Reza Aslan, author of No God but God

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

To read an excerpt, click here.

For Official Website, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Caldwell College, Flagler University and Others Adopt Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains for Its Fall Course

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, this book, now in paperback, recounts the story of Deo, a young man from war-torn Burundi, who endures homelessness before pursuing an education at Columbia University and going on to medical school.

“A tale of ethnocide, exile and healing by a master of narrative nonfiction. . . . Terrifying at turns, but tremendously inspiring. . . . a key document in the growing literature devoted to postgenocidal justice.” —Kirkus Reviews

Strength in What Remains is a required textbook for three classes, two on creative nonfiction and one on college research writing at Flagler University in Florida this Summer and Fall 2010. It has also been selected for Common Reading at Caldwell College, Penn State Berks, Stanford University, and University of Delaware.

Author Website: www.tracykidder.com

To download a FREE Teacher’s Guide, click here.

Click here to read an excerpt .

To order an examination copy, click here.

Professors, Get a FREE Copy of the Greatly Anticipated Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace

Professors: Be one of the first to adopt the book  Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself . Click here to request a free examination copy today.

This indelible portrait of David Foster Wallace, by turns funny and inspiring, is based on a five-day trip with award-winning writer David Lipsky during Wallace’s Infinite Jest tour. A biography in five days, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself is David Foster Wallace as few experienced this great American writer. Told in his own words, here is Wallace’s own story, and his astonishing, humane, alert way of looking at the world; here are stories of being a young writer—of being young generally—trying to knit together your ideas of who you should be and who other people expect you to be, and of being young in March of 1996. And of what it was like to be with and—as he tells it—what it was like to become David Foster Wallace.

“Highly recommended. A glimpse into the mind of one of the great literary masters of the end of the 20th century…What shines through even more is his deep passion for writing and ideas and his kind, gentle nature…Many fans of Wallace’s writing come to think of him as a friend—by the time they have finished Lipsky’s moving book, they will undoubtedly feel that even more strongly.” — Library Journal

For NPR review, click here.

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

Click here to read an excerpt.

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.

Purdue, Penn State, and Columbia Professors Agree! Thank You for Arguing Is One of the Best Books on Rhetoric

Rhetoric—the art and science of persuasion—is not just an important skill but, according to journalist/author Jay Heinrichs, it is the essential skill.

Heinrichs’ bestselling book on the topic, Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion, renders the principles of argument clearly and simply — and keeps students engaged all the way.  Dozens of colleges including Purdue University (for an English 106 – English Composition course) and Columbia University have selected the book for their curriculum.

“Magazine executive Heinrichs is a clever, passionate and erudite advocate for rhetoric, the 3,000-year-old art of persuasion, and his user-friendly primer brims with anecdotes, historical and popular-culture references, sidebars, tips and definitions.” —Publishers Weekly

Want to ask the author a question?  Visit Author Website: www.figarospeech.com/.   The author also offers free phone or e-chats to classes using the book. To contact him, click here.

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

Click here to to read an excerpt.

Click here to order an examination copy.

Zami A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography Now on the Syllabus at the University of California Santa Barbara

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is a 1982 autobiography by African American poet Audre Lorde. It started a new genre that the author calls biomythography.

“Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.”—Off Our Backs

This past Spring 2010, Zami  was used in a Feminist Studies Course, Women, Representation, and Cultural Production, at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Audre Lorde is also the author of Sister Outsider: Essays & Speechs. For more information on Lorde’s books, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

Blindspot: A Novel by Two Acclaimed Historians, Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore, Required Reading, at Oregon State University

Blindspot: A Novel, written by two acclaimed historians, Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore, is a novel of painting, passion, and politics in the age of the American Revolution. Written with wit and exuberance by two longtime friends, the novel is at once fiction and history, mystery and love story, tragedy and farce. Set in the boisterous, rebellious Boston of 1764, Blindspot is filled with the bawdy, satirical sensibility of the eighteenth century.

Oregon State University’s History Dept will be using for its course on “The Historian’s Craft” this Fall.

Jane Kamensky is a professor of American history and chair of the History Department at Brandeis University.

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University, where she is the chair of the History and Literature Program.

Author Website: www.blindspotthenovel.com

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

To read a book excerpt, 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.

Students at University of Missouri School of Journalism Get Taught The Elements of Journalism

Bill Kovach and Thomas Rosenstiel’s completely revised and updated edition of  The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect is the book used at Journalism Dept at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Course name: Principles of American Journalism.

“Kovach and Rosenstiel’s essays are concise gems, filled with insights worthy of becoming axiomatic…The book should become essential reading for journalism professionals and students and for the citizens they aim to serve.” –Carl Sessions Stepp, American Journalism Review

For more information on the book and the authors, visit http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart

Order an exam copy here.