Summer Reading
Posted on 16 June 2009
After a day at work, I often find it hard to come home and pick up some heavy reading. Therefore, during the school year I often gravitate towards less academic books. However, the summer is the perfect opportunity to pick up some of those books that I’ve been wanting to read.
I’m almost finished with Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle. It’s a fascinating portrait of race relations in Detroit during the 1920s. The book is based around the trial of Ossian Sweet, an African American doctor, and his friends and family. Sweet, his wife and young child moved into a white neighborhood in Detroit. During their second night in their new home, someone fired a shot from their house into the white mob outside their door, killing a man. Boyle does a great job integrating the suspense of the trial, history of race relations from the Civil War to 1920s and the often untold stories of African Americans after the Civil War but before the Civil Rights Movement into an absorbing read.
Two professional books that I have on my shelf are:
- Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice edited by Lynn Meltzer. I saw a presentation at a professional development day a few weeks back about executive functions. It inspired me to go out and pick up this book right away. I’ve started this one already and I’ll post more about executive functions after I finish the book.
- Stirring the Heart, Head and Soul: Redefining Curriculum, Instruction and Concept-Based Learning by H. Lynn Erickson. I am developing new curriculum this summer that is structured around concept-based instruction. This author came highly recommended and the book just arrived in the mail today.
Others history related books that I’m anxious to read are (in no particular order):
- History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling Over the Last 200 Years by Kyle Ward.
- The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
- Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
- Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past by Sam Wineburg
- Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World by Sharon Waxman
- The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
- Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
- Lies Across America: What American Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen
Have you read any of these? Any other suggestions? I’ll be sure to post as I finish the books.
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