{"title":"Book studies:  Caste","description":"This is a collection of my favorite books:  enjoyed or surprised reading on first read.  I go back and study the book:  thinking about important passages, and noting something about the style of the writer, asking questions during the second read, pay attention to how the book is put together by the writer, and then commenting on the piece itself.","products":[{"product_id":"i-book-study-caste-the-origins-of-our-discontent-isabel-wilkerson","title":"Book Study: CASTE: THE ORIGINS OF OUR DISCONTENT, Isabel Wilkerson","description":"\u003cp\u003eBook Study: Caste: The Origins of our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePublished: 2013:  544 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCaste: 140 pages;  16,123 words, many visuals\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Brovsky\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe author of \u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eCaste\u003c\/span\u003e also wrote T\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003ehe Warmth of Other Suns,\u003c\/span\u003e her Pulitzer winner about the Great Migration of 1915-1970. In \u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eThe Warmth of Other Suns,\u003c\/span\u003e she documents three studies of where the three “heroes” grew up and why they left. I was moved by the stories of these three real people who all grew up in the South and eventually ended up in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. Caste is a follow-up study that takes race one step further. Whereas the Great Migration was a study in geography and relationships, \u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eCaste\u003c\/span\u003e is a study of why the three heroes were as unhappy in their old age as they were in a cruel South.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eCaste\u003c\/span\u003e is the next best seller, moving The Warmth of Other Suns in another direction.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eComparing the Indian, the German and the American caste systems, Wilkerson moves swiftly through the murky waters of being bound by color, or religion, or social standing and trapped in that system which favors one race over another. It is powerful and interesting to think that the overwhelming institutions of Slavery in America, of an unbreakable system of upper class and outcasts in India, and the systematic extermination of the Jews in Germany resulted in modern countries that each claim to be democracies.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003eCaste\u003c\/span\u003e is a deep dive into the ingrained system that proposes freedoms at the expense of a large group of people who are virtual slaves. Injustice is a hard pill to swallow for all men, but if they have the advantage, most will protect this special gift that they have inherited. That is the fundamental take-away in the new outbreak of fascism in America. \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBoth of my grandmothers and grandfathers came from Europe. My mom’s parents were Irish Catholics and my dad’s parents were from Slovakian Catholics—each family left for the warmth of other suns, found success, and participated in the grand American Dream. The Brovskys learned English, and the Harts lost their brogue. They became American and I enjoyed learning about how they “saved” their families by immigrating to America. I am white, and for that I was lucky. \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSo this study of Caste was important to me. And it was important to all my students of color because I witnessed, firsthand, how the system was purposefully holding them back. The system that helped me out, and inspired me to teach.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDirections for teaching: use this guide as a signpost in making your unit with the methods and timing are completely your own. I want to save you time, and I want you to become a great teacher. I think that’s your business. I resent all the “assistance” I’ve received over my career in numerous, boring classes on How to Teach, How to teach the beginning of the period, How to ask questions, How not to teach things that the test does not cover. \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eEnjoy your career. I love teachers. I hope I can help.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/caste.isabel_wilkerson_480x480.jpg?v=1637099474\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42115474915544,"sku":"5.0","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/caste.isabelwilkerson.jpg?v=1642452802"},{"product_id":"2-caste-the-origins-of-our-discontents-isabel-wilkerson","title":"Book Study:   Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson","description":"\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e Caste:  the Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished 2020; 544 pages, \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans: 75 pages, 15,102 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Caste.Wilkerson_480x480.jpg?v=1637099361\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eStudy: John Brovsky\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e The author of Caste also wrote The Warmth of Other Suns, her Pulitzer winner about the Great Migration of 1915-1970.  In The Warmth of Other Suns, she documents three studies of where the three “heroes” grew up and why they left.  I was moved by the stories of these three real people who all grew up in the South and eventually ended up in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.  Caste is a follow-up study that takes race one step further.  Whereas the Great Migration was a study in geography and relationships, Caste is a study of why the three heroes were as unhappy in their old age as they were in a cruel South.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Caste is the next best seller, moving The Warmth of Other Suns in another direction.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Comparing the Indian, the German and the American caste systems, Wilkerson moves swiftly through the murky waters of being bound by color, or religion, or social standing and trapped in that system which favors one race over another.  It is powerful and interesting to think that the overwhelming institutions of Slavery in America, of an unbreakable system of upper class and outcasts in India, and the systematic extermination of the Jews in Germany resulted in modern countries that each claim to be democracies.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Caste is a deep dive into the ingrained system that proposes freedoms at the expense of a large group of people who are virtual slaves.  Injustice is a hard pill to swallow for all men, but if they have the advantage, most will protect this special gift that they have inherited.  That is the fundamental take-away in the new outbreak of fascism in America.  \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Both of my grandmothers and grandfathers came from Europe.  My mom’s parents were Irish Catholics and my dad’s parents were from Slovakian Catholics—each family left for the warmth of other suns, found success, and participated in the grand American Dream.  The Brovskys learned English, and the Harts lost their brogue.  They became American and I enjoyed learning about how they “saved” their families by immigrating to America.  I am white, and for that I was lucky. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003e So this study of Caste was important to me.  And it was important to all my students of color because I witnessed, firsthand, how the system was purposefully holding them back.  The system that helped me out, and the system that inspired me to teach.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42119521173720,"sku":"5.0","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/Caste.Wilkerson.jpg?v=1642453148"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-warmth-of-other-suns-isabel-wilkerson","title":"Book Study: \"The Warmth of Other Suns,\" Isabel Wilkerson","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBook Study, \"The Warmth of Other Suns,\" Isabel Wilkerson\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The Warmth of Other Suns,\" : 48 pages; 12,382 words; visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMammoth, Monumental, Dissection of the Great Black Migration\u003cbr\u003eThe Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson\u003cimg alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/10478706_10204961337088731_8458308158693733997_o_480x480.jpg?v=1637008091\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/10478706_10204961337088731_8458308158693733997_o_480x480.jpg?v=1637008091\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Isabel Wilkerson hits the ball out of the park in her award-winning, Pulitzer Prize winning historical fiction, The Warmth of Other Suns. Three characters dominate the 538-page epic and come to life through their personal history of living their lives in the south and deciding to flee the oppression of the South. \u003cbr\u003e Little is known about the Great Migration, but Wilkerson links the story together with Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster. All these living humans opened their heartfelt stories to the author, and she follows them through their lives. They act as tour guides to reveal themselves and Black America’s struggle with the outcast, oppressed American Black person. Their stories touched the whole problem and the complete struggle of an internal migration from one section of the country to another in hopes of freedom.\u003cbr\u003e Gladney migrates with her family from a Chickasaw, Mississippi plantation to the industrial North, eventually landing in Chicago. Swanson escapes the law and the Klan in Eustis, Florida, where he organizes the fruit pickers to New York City and lands a job on the railroad and services the Migrants from the train, acting as a guide. Robert Joseph Pershing Foster leaves Louisiana as a medical doctor (surgeon) and winds up in Los Angeles. All our travelers start from the deep South but end up in very different urban settings. The three sojourners all die in their destination—and carry a sense of accomplishment, but an even heavier burden of regret.\u003cbr\u003e Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps and a whole angel flight of top voices set the tone of the Great Migration, and Wilkerson applies the emotional secret sauce of Black American voice to the biography of the three souls. \u003cbr\u003e I was compelled and surprised reading this story unknown to me about fellow citizens. But I was even more surprised to study what I didn’t know about the country’s very painful history. I highly recommend this book. American needs critical race instruction for our children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/The_Warmth_of_other_suns_480x480.jpg?v=1637533076\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/The_Warmth_of_other_suns_480x480.jpg?v=1637533076\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The Warmth of Other Suns,\" : 48 pages; 12,382 words; visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42152352022744,"sku":"3.0","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/TheWarmthofothersuns.jpg?v=1642541712"},{"product_id":"book-study-forget-the-alamo-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-american-myth-bryan-burrough-chris-tomlinson-jason-stanford","title":"Book Study:  \"Forget the Alamo: the Rise and Fall of an American Myth,\"  Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, Jason Stanford","description":"\u003cp\u003eHISTORY\u003cbr\u003e'Forget The Alamo' Author Says We Have The Texas Origin Story All Wrong\u003cbr\u003eJune 16, 202112:30 PM ET\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Forget the Alamo.\";  40 pages; 9624 words, some visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDisney had a curious way of molding the story.  I idolized Fess Parker and had a coonskin cap that earned me detention in elementary school.  I wore it to school and fought anyone who made fun of me!  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTexas' version of The Lost Cause, the Big Lie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/outside_the_Alamo_480x480.jpg?v=1637698539\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/outside_the_Alamo_480x480.jpg?v=1637698539\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVisitors walk around the outside of the Alamo in San Antonio.\u003cbr\u003eJill Torrance\/Getty Images\u003cbr\u003eRemember the Alamo? According to Texas lore, it's the site in San Antonio where, in 1836, about 180 Texan rebels died defending the state during Texas' war for independence from Mexico.\u003cbr\u003eThe siege of the Alamo was memorably depicted in a Walt Disney series and in a 1960 movie starring John Wayne. But three writers, all Texans, say the common narrative of the Texas revolt overlooks the fact that it was waged in part to ensure slavery would be preserved.\u003cbr\u003e\"Slavery was the undeniable linchpin of all of this,\" author Bryan Burrough says. \"It was the thing that the two sides had been arguing about and shooting about for going on 15 years. And yet it still surprises me that slavery went unexamined for so long.\"\u003cbr\u003eIn their new book, Forget the Alamo, Burrough and co-writers Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford challenge common misconceptions surrounding the conflict — including the notion that Davy Crockett was a martyr who fought to the death rather than surrender.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Vault","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42163214975192,"sku":"3.0","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/Forget_the_Alamojpg_480x480_3e7f7b1d-2641-4daa-94a5-06f0c7f439f0.jpg?v=1642365292"},{"product_id":"american-history-these-truths-jill-lepore","title":"American History:  \"These Truths.\"  Jill Lepore Part 1","description":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003ch5\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/66147427_2676107039083791_209525585783816192_n_d9350a11-ef21-4f10-a0da-6c0cf49a464b_480x480.jpg?v=1635885614\"\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h5\u003e\n\u003ch5\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohn Brovsky\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h5\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"These Truths\": 200 pages; 35,000 words; many visuals\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003ch5\u003eReview of Jill Lepore’s These Truths\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLepore’s study of America’s intellectual history, she uncovers some very interesting and explainable conditions that expose America’s ignorance. The ever-popular Christopher Columbus discovered that the natives didn’t have a religion, they were inferior humans because he couldn’t understand them, and they didn’t live up to his expectations—that in the East, there existed a Thomas More utopia waiting to be “discovered” by the pioneering Europeans.\u003cbr\u003eWhen Columbus returned to Spain, he had the “American” specimens for all to see and the Pope, in an act of classic capitalism, seeded the New World to Spain. \u003cbr\u003eWanting to find gold and precious gems, the Spanish settled for cheap labor. The European imperialists nations struggled to match the expansion and wealth of the Muslim empire and found that the precious commodity in Africa was not precious metal or jewels, but labor. Thus, the slave trade. And the New World was the expanse they could exploit.\u003cbr\u003eThis is not the history of America that I studied in school during the 60s. I would be hard pressed to find out that not one of the studied Jesuit priests were even aware of this situation. In a 10th grade history class, the priest asked the class about the tender point of the Civil War, and he threatened to flunk any response that had “slavery” in it. \u003cbr\u003eLater in my school career in college, I took a once-a-week 4-hour course lead by a visiting professor from the community college. Not being a Jesuit caused suspicion among the college community and resulted in a dim view of the importance of his class. But it was the most thrilling class about America that I completed. I never forgot how much the teacher was able to help the students see that America promises, dreams, and thinks, still, about being a utopia. And he didn’t fashion it out of myths. He laid out the hard facts and asked us to deal with it. And when I read Lepore’s intellectual history of America, I remembered how thrilling that a study of a past could be.\u003cbr\u003eLepore instructs, “Most of what once existed is gone. Flesh decays, wood rots, walls fall down, books burn, nature takes one toll, malice another. History is the study of what remains, what’s left behind, which can be almost anything, as long as the ravages of war; letters, diaries, DNA, gravestones, coins, television broadcasts, paintings, DVDs, viruses, abandoned Facebook pages, the transcripts o congressional hearings, the ruins of buildings. Professor Lepore looks at these remnants and connects the dots, presenting and engaging the reader in the best explanation of American history that I’ve ever learned. \u003cbr\u003eI hope you enjoy my notes on her book.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/h5\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/these-truths-a-history-of-the-united-states_480x480.jpg?v=1638055399\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch1\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/h1\u003e\n\u003ch1\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Jill_Lepore_480x480.jpg?v=1638055448\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c\/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/who_killed_the_truth_480x480.jpg?v=1638055487\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1.  These Truths: 137 pages; 19,180 words; many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2.  These Truths:  12 pages; 3396 words; many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.  These Truths: 16 pages: 4817 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4.  These Truths: 24 pages; 7442 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5.  These Truths: 1 page; 143 words, no visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch1\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/h1\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42167748952280,"sku":"3.5","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/these-truths-a-history-of-the-united-states.jpg?v=1642260967"},{"product_id":"book-study-how-the-word-is-pass-a-reckoning-with-the-history-of-slavery-across-america-by-clint-smith","title":"Book Study:  How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith","description":"\u003cp\u003eBook Study: \"How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America,\" by Clint Smith\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow the Word is Passed: 42 pages, 6388 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClint Smith’s book reckons with the lies told about American history\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe author traveled around the country to understand place and collective memory\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e• \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Clint_Smith_the_Atlantic_480x480.jpg?v=1638303281\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Clint_Smith_the_Atlantic_480x480.jpg?v=1638303281\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Author Clint Smith: “I think part of the issue is that so many people around the country are operating with a different understanding of what the history of this country is.” Clint Smith\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBY DAVID DENNIS JR. @DAVIDDTSS\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJune 1, 2021\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuided tour of slave places throughout the Transatlantic Slave Trade.  Smith visits locations and tries to tie the past to the present.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow the Word is Passed: 42 pages, 6388 words, many visuals\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAt just 32, Clint Smith has already become a nationally recognized name through his poetry collection, Counting Descent, and his work as a staff writer at The Atlantic. He’s also a colleague who I befriended while we were studying at Davidson College. Over the years, Smith has considered the ways in which the legacies of slavery have influenced everything from the prison industrial complex to infrastructure bills.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis year, he’s taking on his biggest project yet with the release of his debut nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, which took Smith from Civil War reenactments in Virginia to Juneteenth celebrations in Texas and even slave castles in Senegal to show how we consume, distort and can reshape our paths forward by being honest about our pasts.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s coming out at a prescient time where America is realizing how much of our history and our nation’s most valorized leaders have been romanticized and whitewashed of their complicity in the transatlantic slave trade. I sat down with Clint to converse as former classmates and now burgeoning authors to see what has changed and will continue to remain the same.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42206108745944,"sku":"3.0","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/HowtheWordisPassed.jpg?v=1660845640"},{"product_id":"book-study-ill-fares-the-land-tony-judt","title":"Book Study: Ill Fares the Land, Tony Judt","description":"\u003cp\u003eIll Fares the Land, by Tony Judt\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Ill Fares The Land\": 27 pages; 7068 words; visuals\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePreface by Ta-Nehesi Coates\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/TaNehisi_Coatsdjpg_480x480.jpg?v=1635546655\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/TaNehisi_Coatsdjpg_480x480.jpg?v=1635546655\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“When the moment came, it was not this present volume, but Postwar—Tony’s much-lauded synthesis of European History after WWII. This was natural given my field of study—the idea of race in American life. That road necessarily led to Europe, where the idea of race was invented. And that road brought me to Tony Judt. Perhaps it was time. I was a writer in my mid-thirties, experiencing a period of novel stability and unlikely prominence.” (xi)\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“It (Postwar) answered the gnawing questions for me as to why evil was so resilient, and why it was so difficult to. Bring forth the egalitarian world to which so many of us aspire. Postwar might have been grim, but it did not despair. It was a ruthless accounting of the depths to which men might sink, and it is a necessary precondition to a vision of the future that did not depend on slogans and fairy tales—that is to say, a true and durable hope.” (xi)\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“Tony notes that, in 2005, about a fifth of America’s national income went to 1 percent of the population. It is a tragic testament to Judt’s book that, by 2016, that 1 percent controlled a quarter of all income, and two fifths of all wealth.” (xiv)\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“never has the “eviscerated society” been more in evidence than right now. America is one of the richest countries in the world. And yet, when faced with the threat of COVID-19, it has mounted one of the weakest defenses in the world. It would be a mistake to simply see this as the result of the election of Donald Trump. The story of how America became the epicenter of a pandemic may involve Donald trump, but it began years ago, when one party took as its mission to destroy government and the other decided to grant legitimacy to that effort.” (xv)\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e“…when the executive seeks to bend the state go toward profiteering, Tony reminds us of the need to reject both hucksterism and the idea that everything of value can be captured in profit and loss.” (xviii)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/judt_480x480.jpg?v=1638731244\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/judt_480x480.jpg?v=1638731244\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Ill Fares The Land\":  27 pages; 7068 words; visuals\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42220252659928,"sku":"2.0","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/710wuJrng7L.jpg?v=1642541996"},{"product_id":"book-study-myths-to-live-by-joseph-campbell","title":"Book Study:  \"Myths to Live By,\" Joseph Campbell","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/myths_to_live_by_480x480.jpg?v=1638822370\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Joseph-Campbell_480x480.jpg?v=1638822411\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMyths to Live By, Joseph Campbell\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMyths to Live By: 37 pages; 7544 words; pictures\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e 1.“Impact of Science on Myth” (1961)\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eStory of a Mother, a young elementary student, his younger brother, a lady at the lunch counter, and me.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLittle Child: (turning to me after ordering lunch with his family): “Jimmy wrote a paper today on the evolution of man, and Teacher said he was wrong, that Adam and Eve were our first parents.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMe: My Lord, I thought. What a teacher!\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLady: (three seats away) : “Well, Teacher was right. Our first parents were Adam and Eve.:\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMe: (Thinking). What a mother for a 20th Century child!\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYoung student: “Yes, I know, but this was a Scientific paper.”\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMe: (thinking) I will recommend this student to the Smithsonian.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMother; “Oh, those scientists! (angrily) “Those are only theories.”\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eYoung student: “Yes, I know, but they have been factualized; they found the bones.”\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThen, they ate lunch.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMyths to Live By: 37 pages; 7544 words; pictures\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Vault","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42224631775448,"sku":"2.5","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/MythstoLiveBy.jpg?v=1642444900"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-tyranny-of-merit-can-we-find-the-common-good-michael-sandel","title":"Book Study:  The Tyranny of Merit:  Can We Find the Common Good?\"  Michael Sandel","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Tyranny of Merit, Michael Sandel\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Tyranny of Merit: 56 pages; 9380 words, many visuals\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Tyranny_of_merit_480x480.jpg?v=1639163684\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Tyranny_of_merit_480x480.jpg?v=1639163684\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCovid 19\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e-amid the pandemic rancor and mistrust came a plague that demanded the kind of solidarity few societies can summon except in times of war.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e --“We are all in this together”\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/sandel_480x480.jpg?v=1639163719\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/sandel_480x480.jpg?v=1639163719\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e --unprecedented inequality and partisan rancor\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e --those who are left behind deserve their fate\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e --our social bonds and respect for one another came unraveled\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e--How do we get back to the common good?\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Tyranny of Merit:  56 pages; 9380 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42243007611096,"sku":"4.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/Tyrannyofmerit.jpg?v=1642540685"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-fire-next-time-james-baldwin","title":"Book Study:  \"The Fire Next Time,\" James Baldwin","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Fire Next Time, James Baldwin\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cimg data-mce-fragment=\"1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/51goxvTBqNL._SX258_BO1_204_203_200_480x480.jpg?v=1640803269\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/51goxvTBqNL._SX258_BO1_204_203_200_480x480.jpg?v=1640803269\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMy Dungeon Shook, Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePowerful Book about an important man, Baldwin, and the men who tried to influence his thinking, and why Baldwin chose to follow his own path.  A biography that surfaces one of the modern, complicated Americans.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Fire Next Time:  56 pages: 11,180 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42304696025304,"sku":"3.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/TheFireNextTime_JamesBaldwin.jpg?v=1642445425"},{"product_id":"book-study-writing-beyond-race-living-theory-and-practice-bell-hooks","title":"Book Study:  Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice, bell hooks","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBook Study\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWriting Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ehooks, bell\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Writing Beyond Race: 36 pages; 11,126 words, many visuals\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Writing_beyond_race_480x480.png?v=1641235052\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Writing_beyond_race_480x480.png?v=1641235052\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e1. Introduction\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePage 4\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eImperialist, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/bell-hooks_480x480.jpg?v=1641235091\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/bell-hooks_480x480.jpg?v=1641235091\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePage 5 \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ewhite supremacy has little meaning in the contemporary United States, that it is too harsh a reality to be relevant to discussions of race and racism.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePage 5 \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ewhite supremacy is the covert ideology that is the silent cause of harm and trauma.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Page 6 \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOverracializing whiteness then made it seem as though white skin and the privileges that it allows were the primary issues, and not the white supremacist ways of thinking and acting that are expressed by folks of all skin colors. It may very well be that the re - centering of whiteness has helped silence the necessary theories and practice that are needed if we are as a nation to truly learn how to be rid of racism.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWriting Beyond Race:  36 pages; 11,126 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Vault","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42319737454808,"sku":"2.0","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/Writingbeyondrace.png?v=1642541177"},{"product_id":"intellectual-history-the-souls-of-black-folk-w-e-b-dubois","title":"Intellectual History: The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois","description":"\u003cp\u003eIntellectual History:\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Souls of Black Folk\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDu Bois, W. E. B.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Souls of Black Folk; 20 pages; 6787 words, some visuals\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/The_Souls_of_black_Folk_480x480.jpg?v=1641240869\" alt=\"\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\" data-mce-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/The_Souls_of_black_Folk_480x480.jpg?v=1641240869\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eI .\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOf Our Spiritual Strivings\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePage 4 \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e One ever feels his twoness — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePage 6 \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTo be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eW. E. B. DuBois was a leading figure from the Renaissance though the Civil Rights Era.  At the forefront of the NAACP and eventually becoming an expatriot.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Vault","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42320441639128,"sku":"","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/TheSoulsofblackFolk.jpg?v=1642616183"},{"product_id":"book-studies-stamped-from-the-beginning-part-1-cotton-mather-thomas-jefferson-william-jennings-bryan-w-e-b-dubois-and-angela-davis","title":"Book Studies: Stamped From the Beginning.  Part 1   Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Jennings Bryan, W.E.B. DuBois, and Angela Davis","description":"\u003cp\u003ePart 1:  Cotton Mather and Thomas Jefferson: establishing slavery in the United States\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart 2: William Jennings Bryan\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart 3: W. E. B. DuBois\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart 4: Angela Davis\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAre you a racist?  Are you a assimilationist?  Are you an antiracist?  Americans are all these people.  Kendi explains the reasons why in this History of American Facism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart 1:  Mather and Jefferson; 77 pages, 24,681 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43594860953816,"sku":"4.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/products\/Stamped.jpg?v=1672266000"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-good-lord-bird-james-mcbride","title":"Great Writers, THE GOOD LORD BIRD, James McBride","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished 2013, 432 pages,\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal, 125 pages,53,388 words, visuals from TV series Ethan Hawke and James McBride\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhirlwind story about the famous raid at Harper's Ferry when the famous abolitionist fanned the flames of the Civil War against slavery.\u0026amp;nbsp; Different, almost Mark Twainish journey from the eyes of a 14-year-old boy who dresses like a girl and becomes John Brown's talisman, called \"Onion.\"; Steven Douglass and Harriet Tubman appear and advise the famous terrorist\/hero John Brown. The wild and crazy version and more of a hero than we know today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e;\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrings history into life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50248837759192,"sku":"5.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/BookCover_4db0937d-d6e1-4e03-a8d5-86585a3c50f2.jpg?v=1741809413"},{"product_id":"book-study-deacon-king-kong-james-mcbride","title":"Book Study: DEACON KING KONG, James McBride","description":"\u003cp\u003e“Deacon King Kong” is many things: a mystery novel, a crime novel, an urban farce, a portrait of a project community. There’s even some western in here. The novel is, in other words, a lot. Fortunately, it is also deeply felt, beautifully written and profoundly humane; McBride’s ability to inhabit his characters’ foibled, all-too-human interiority helps transform a fine book into a great one. He has written beautifully before, in his beloved memoir, “The Color of Water,” and, with terrifying irreverence, in his National Book Award-winning novel, “The Good Lord Bird.” But “Deacon King Kong” reads like he’s tapped a whole fresh seam of inspiration and verve. It’s clear that he’s having a blast, and his spirit of funning irreverence supercharges the entire narrative like home-brewed black lightning. McBride’s got jokes like Ali Wong’s got jokes. Like your colmado’s got jokes. I made the mistake of reading “Deacon King Kong” on the Tokyo subway and my nonstop chortling made me no friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut just because McBride is playing doesn’t mean he’s fooling around. For all the laughs, he never loses sight of the terrible longitudinal harm that African diasporic and Latine peoples have suffered in the New World. He doesn’t just pivot from the humor to the agony; he seems to deploy both modes at once, and it speaks to his talents that he does so with dexterous aplomb. McBride will be cracking wise and without missing a beat he’ll hurl a thunderbolt whose clarifying rage could light up half a borough: “the Republic of Brooklyn, where cats hollered like people, dogs ate their own feces, aunties chain-smoked and died at age 102, a kid named Spike Lee saw God, the ghosts of the departed Dodgers soaked up all possibility of new hope and penniless desperation ruled the lives of the suckers too black or too poor to leave, while in Manhattan the buses ran on time, the lights never went out, the death of a single white child in a traffic accident was a Page 1 story, while phony versions of black and Latino life ruled the Broadway roost, making white writers rich — ‘West Side Story,’ ‘Porgy \u0026amp;amp; Bess,’ ‘Purlie Victorious’ — and on it went, the whole business of the white man’s reality lumping together like a giant, lopsided snowball, the Great American Myth, the Big Apple, the Big Kahuna, the City That Never Sleeps, while the blacks and Latinos who cleaned the apartments and dragged out the trash and made the music and filled the jails with sorrow slept the sleep of the invisible and functioned as local color.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Deacon King Kong” brings to mind the scholar Glenda Carpio’s observation that “African-American humor has been, for centuries, a humor of survival. It has been a safety valve, a mode of minimizing pain and defeat, as well as a medium capable of expressing grievance and grief in the most artful and incisive ways. It has been a way of asserting one’s humanity in the face of pulverization and mass murder.” Turns out the good Deacon got it wrong: Our tale is an American Crime Story, just not the kind that is on TV or Broadway.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePublished:2020: pages 371\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal: 106 pages, 47,975 words\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50252832440536,"sku":"5.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/BookCover_fba816a4-5958-4e4b-9aa2-78b334c7a20a.jpg?v=1741888795"},{"product_id":"book-study-tar-baby-toni-morrison","title":"Book Study: TAR BABY, Toni Morrison","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 1981, 306 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans: 92 pages, 41,226 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom THE FORWARD\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce upon a time, a long time ago…\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003eThere were four of us in the room: me, my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. The oldest one intemperate, brimming with hard, scary wisdom. The youngest, me, a sponge. My mother gifted, gregarious, burdened with insight. My grandmother a secret treasure whose presence anchored the frightening, enchanted world. Three women and a girl who never stopped listening, watching, seeking their advice, and eager for their praise. All four of us people the writing of Tar Baby as witness, as challenge, as judges intent on the uses to which stories are put and the manner of their telling.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003eBut only one of them needed my dreams. (3)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50252846956760,"sku":"4.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/TarBaby.bookcover.jpg?v=1741889248"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-ascent-of-man-jacob-bronowski","title":"Book Study: The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Ascent of Man, Published 2013, 352 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLesson Plans, Dialectic Journal 42 pages, 13,292 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBronowski trances man's scientific development though the ages of man.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The hand is the cutting edge of the mind. Civilization is not a collection of finished artefacts; it is the elaboration of processes. In the end, the march of man is the refinement of the hand in action. The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is is pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better. You see it in his science. You see it in the magnificence with which he carves and builds, the loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery. The monuments are supposed to commemorate kings and religions, heroes, dogmas, but in the end the man they commemorate is the builder. “\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The University is a Mecca to which students come with something less than perfect faith. It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not her to worship what is known but to question it.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e42 pages 13,296 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50252898664664,"sku":"4.0","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/BronowskiJacob-AscentOfMan500x250px.jpg?v=1741891171"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-killers-of-the-flower-moon-david-grann","title":"Book Study: THE KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, David Grann","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 2017, 352 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePowerful Book that Martin Scorcese adapted for his new film.\u0026amp;nbsp; The book focuses on the Osage Murders that followed the Tulsa Massacre.\u0026amp;nbsp; kThe osage Indians were being relocated from their Kansas reservation, and when they got to the Oklahoma hill country, they retained the mineral rights on their new land.\u0026amp;nbsp; At the same time the landrush in Oklahoma was on--and white men claimed Indian land because they did not protect themselves with original \"headrights.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; Grann researched The Reign of Terror on the Osage reservation:\u0026amp;nbsp; Osage tribesmen who originally relocated were awarded with \"headrights' which made these Indians the richest men and women in America.\u0026amp;nbsp; Grann focuses on Mollie Burkhart who is trying to protect the lives of her sisters, which are ruined by the barbaric white men to marry these women and then plot their deaths to obtain the headright they inherit by marriage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/ Lesson Plans: 77 pages; 23,877 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50257302323416,"sku":"4.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/DavidGrann.png?v=1741981593"},{"product_id":"book-study-alexander-hamilton-ron-chernow","title":"Book Study:  Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 2005, 818 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStudy Guides: Dialectic Journals (Annotations on Selected Passages from Each Chapter)\u003cbr\u003e1.     Prologue-Chapter 9:  51 pages, 20,090 words\u003cbr\u003e2.     Chapter 10-Chapter 18, 47 pages, 41,817 words\u003cbr\u003e3.    Chapter 19- Chapter 25, 23 pages, 8,764 words\u003cbr\u003e4.    Chapter 26-Epilogue: 55 pages, 20,820 words\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuardian Review: “The Man Behind the Musical,”  5 pages, 1430 words\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNew York Times, “Creating Capitalism,” David Brooks, 3 pages, 1639 words\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50322242437336,"sku":"6.0","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Alexander_Hamilton.olderbook_56c29f46-e73f-4daf-b86d-6c14f38fd6d0.jpg?v=1743612716"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-heaven-and-earth-grocery-store-james-mcbride","title":"Book Study: \"The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,\" James McBride","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, published 2024; 400 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLesson Plans, Dialectic Journal 67 pages, 20,535 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was trying to think through the experience of reading James McBride’s “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,” when suddenly I asked myself this question: \u0026amp;nbsp;“Who is the hero?” \u0026amp;nbsp;and the answer led me to write this little evaluation:\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Malachi the Dancer is the hero. \u0026amp;nbsp;He opens and closes the novel, and he solves a mystery that haunts the head-scratching story. Malachi appears like the monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey and his appearance seems to move the story along. He pops up in 1972 as a suspect in a unsolved murder—a skeleton and some jewelry are found in a random grave on Chicken Hill, where he lives in the nearby dilapidated synagogue. The police are investigating and tell Malachi that he’s a suspect. Then, that night, historic Hurricane Agnes \u0026amp;nbsp;wipes out the town; all the buildings are flattened \u0026amp;nbsp;and the skeleton has been washed away. \u0026amp;nbsp;Malachi is gone he next morning. \u0026amp;nbsp;He reappears, in flashbacks, every ten years. \u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Moshe Ludlow could be next the hero. \u0026amp;nbsp;He has the good sense to turn little into plenty. \u0026amp;nbsp;In the 1920s, he takes a confusing, racist advertisement, changes it a little and stages a concert\/dance that attracts a raucous crowd. That makes him a moneyed-man and a respected community leader. \u0026amp;nbsp;He has the good sense to fall in love with the Grocery store’s daughter, propose to her, marry her, and live off her good sense and community love. \u0026amp;nbsp;He’s able to “ride out” with a little patience many social problems that most people find unsolvable. \u0026amp;nbsp;Probably his greatest asset is “hold tight and see what happens.”\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Moshe and Malachi are great friends, beginning in the 1920s. \u0026amp;nbsp;Whenever Malachi is in Pottstown, he charges Moshe to act.\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Chona, Moshe’s wife, is the hero. \u0026amp;nbsp;She has a special sense of being able to “read” people. \u0026amp;nbsp;She studies; then she judges. \u0026amp;nbsp;And just when she seems about to conquer, she dies. \u0026amp;nbsp;Her death was the biggest, heaviest wrench thrown by McBride into the story. \u0026amp;nbsp;Her magical powers of “being right” are offset by physical disabilities: she’s had polio but beautiful; she has a wild reputation but was totally correct about her hunches: don’t move out of Chicken Hill, offer credit to all her Black customers; encourage Moshe to turn the former funeral home into his Dance Hall and invite Black Audiences. \u0026amp;nbsp;Also, add the first black entertainer Chick Webb to the mixed audience. \u0026amp;nbsp;Webb is also crippled.\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; At the weekly meeting of the Pottstown Association of Negro Men, Nate Timlin, arriving late, learns that a 14-year-old boy, has lost his mother, and has been seen riding a train around Pottstown county. \u0026amp;nbsp;His mother nursed the boy back to life after the home stove blows up. \u0026amp;nbsp;Dodo, the boy, loses his sight and his hearing. \u0026amp;nbsp;Since then, he has recovered his sight. \u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Addie Timlin, Nate’s wife, upset with the men discussing Chona’s illness and the and the rumors about Dodo’s possible commitment to the Pennhurst State Hospital for the Insane and Feeble-minded, gets her husband to hide Dodo in the dank basement of the Dance Hall. When Chona hears about this, insists on transferring Dodo from the Dance Hall to the Grocery Store. \u0026amp;nbsp;The Dance Hall basement is too dank and smelly for a child to survive.\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; From here on the plot shifts into high gear. \u0026amp;nbsp;Chona is sick; Dodo is free; Moshe is still in charge; Malachi has in and out again. \u0026amp;nbsp;But Doctor Earl Roberts enters the story—and he is not a hero.. \u0026amp;nbsp;He went to school with Chona, was rejected by her because she had a bad “feeling” about him. \u0026amp;nbsp;He went to college, graduated with a medical degree, and returned to Pottstown to practice medicine. \u0026amp;nbsp;The Whites loved him; the Blacks raged against him; the Jews left him alone—all the Jews except for Chona. \u0026amp;nbsp;Chone knew he marched in the KKK parade each year, because she recognized his limp. Doc, too, was a cripple--and a very bad man.\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; Trying to find Dodo, Doc went to the store, confronted the sick Chona and got in a heated fight which caused Chona to stroke out. \u0026amp;nbsp;Instead of trying to save her life, Doc tries to rape Chona—until Dodo appears from behind a counter and attacks Doc—causing him to run out of the store. \u0026amp;nbsp;While helping Chona, Doc returns with the police, and they chase down the child. \u0026amp;nbsp;Trying to escape the police Dodo runs to the roof and is thrown off the roof by the police. Doc manages to convince the authorities and most of Chicken Hill that Chona was not assaulted. \u0026amp;nbsp;He was.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp;nbsp; \u0026amp;nbsp; In bad shape with broken bones from the fall, Dodo wakes up at the sanitarium locked in a crib next to a pale, white, deformed boy named Monkey Pants, and they both are heroes—because they’re stuck in the worst ward at a dirty hospital with a guard who is one of the biggest perverts imaginable, named Son of God.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReviews, Analysis, Dialectic Journal, images\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e67 pages;20,735 words; images\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50322430460120,"sku":"4.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Heaven_EarthGrocerystore.jpg?v=1743621400"},{"product_id":"book-study-what-the-truth-sounds-like-michael-eric-dyson","title":"Book Study: What the Truth Sounds Like, Michael Eric Dyson","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished 2018; 288 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson, Class Notes:\u0026amp;nbsp; plans: 33 pages, 8,603 words, many visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTHOSE WHO BEAR THE GREATEST RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CHAOS IN BIRMINGHAM AND NOT IN BIRMINGHAM.;AMONG THOSE RESPONSIBLE ARE J. EDGAR HOOVER, SENATOR EASTLAND (MISS.), THE POWER STRUCTURE WHICH HAS GIVEN BULL CONNOR SUCH LICENSE, AND PRESIDENT KENNEDY, WO HAS NOT USED THE GREAT PRESTIGE OF HIS OFFICE AS THE MORAL FORUM WHICH IT CAN BE. THE CRISIS IS NEITHER REGIONAL NOR RACIAl. IT IS A MATTER OF THE NATION’S LIFE OR DEATH;NO TRUCE CAN BE BINDING UNTIL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND OUR REPRESENTATIVES ARE ABLE TO ACCEPT THE SIMPLE FACT THAT A NEGRO IS A MAN.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e--King himself was disappointed in the foot-dragging approach of the Kennedy administration to civil rights legislation\u003cbr\u003e-Baldwin had become, overnight, the spokesman for Negroes, and eventually he would put his literary career on hold for a time in order to herald the racial Armageddon that awaited the nation should it not heed his voice and pay attention to militant students and prophet like MLK, Jr.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50325861236952,"sku":"2.0","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/WhattheTruth.Book.jpg?v=1743707007"},{"product_id":"book-studiy-sherman-alexie-the-absolutely-true-diary-of-a-part-time-indian","title":"Book Studiy: Sherman Alexie, \"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian\"","description":"\u003cp\u003eForeword\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I was born with water on the brain.” The opening line from a masterful work by a genius storyteller. The other night I thought I’d try reading this book out loud to my nine-year-old son. The copy we have is worn and dog-eared, a first edition bought only a few days after it was published in 2007. At the time I didn’t yet have a son, and my daughter was still very young. I had bought Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for myself, having already, before it was published, heard how amazing it was. With that opening line, Alexie brought me into the world of Junior—struggling artist, ballplayer, survivor of two very different kinds of education. And inside Junior’s world, I was awakened to life on the reservation—meeting people and finding myself in situations I had never imagined.\u003cbr\u003eDr. Rudine Sims Bishop, who has written extensively about the importance of children’s literature, talks about how books can be both mirrors and windows—mirrors in which readers can see themselves on the pages of literature and thereby know their existence in the world is valid and true, and windows into worlds they might never have imagined. This book is a window into Junior’s world—a window Alexie pulls the curtains back from and lovingly invites us into. But it is also a mirror for the many First Nations people who have not seen themselves in literature. It is hard to read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and not find a part of yourself in its pages.\u003cbr\u003eThe other night, as my son and I ascended the stairs to his bedroom, I grabbed the book off the shelf—“Let’s just try it,” I said. My son, holding a comic book, said, “No.” Flatly. “Yes,” I said. “We’re going to give it a try.” I knew at once he’d love Junior and Rowdy and the many people he’d meet on the reservation. With that first line, my boy was hooked, the way I had been many years ago. The way my now-teenage daughter had been two summers ago, when she closed the book and exclaimed, “This book is so good, I cannot believe it was assigned.”\u003cbr\u003eHow does one author touch so many different people at so many different points in their lives? Alexie’s brilliance lies in his ability to speak truth to power with humor, grace, and love. He loves the characters he brings to the page, and, by extension, we fall in love with them, too. Two pages in, I told my son we could move on to his comic book if he wanted. “Nah,” he said. “Keep reading.” After a moment, he smiled and said, “I think this book is going to be good.”\u003cbr\u003eWe read long past his bedtime. For me, moving back into Junior’s world felt like visiting an old friend. For my son and for so many of you coming to this story for the first time, I know this book will be revisited often and, most of all, loved deeply. —Jacqueline Woodson (xv)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e34 pages; 11,476 words; visuals\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50333047292120,"sku":"4.0","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/TheAbsolutelyTrueDiary.jpg?v=1743884810"},{"product_id":"book-studies-a-prayer-for-owen-meany-john-irving","title":"Book Studies: A. PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, John Irving","description":"\u003cp\u003eA PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, John Irving\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished: 1989, 656 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans 137 pages; 55,541 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Foul Ball \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. I make no claims to have a life in Christ, or with Christ—and certainly not for Christ, which I’ve heard some zealots claim. I’m not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament, and I’ve not read the New Testament since my Sunday school days, except for those passages that I hear read aloud to me when I go to church. I’m somewhat more familiar with the passages from the Bible that appear in The Book of Common Prayer; I read my prayer book often, and my Bible only on holy days—the prayer book is so much more orderly. (2)\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis might be the best firsdt paragraph written during my lifetime. All student should study this and almost memorize it. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50608891429080,"sku":"5.0","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/OwenMeanyrdtruck.jpg?v=1752250108"},{"product_id":"book-study-the-word-according-to-garp-john-irving","title":"Book Study: THE WORD ACCORDING TO GARP, John Irving","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished, 1976, 570 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDidactic Journal\/ Lesson Plans: 189 pages, 80,817 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eTWENTY YEARS AGO, which was twenty years after The World According to Garp was published, I wrote an Afterword to the novel. Rewriting is the unglamorous part of creating, but revision is essential for clarity. In rewriting this new Introduction to Garp, of course I found things to cut or change in that 1998 Afterword, and I found a lot of necessary things to add. In retrospect, it’s unnecessary to say that Garp is a worst-case scenario or that I am a doomsayer novelist, but in 1972–75—when I was teaching at the Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City, where I began writing Garp—I was worried that the subject of sexual hatred (of intolerance of sexual minorities, and sexual differences) would be outdated before I finished the novel. In 1976–77, when I was living in Massachusetts and Vermont, where I finished Garp, it was inconceivable to me that the sexual violence I was writing about would long endure. In short, I thought sexual discrimination was too backward and too stupid to last. \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 1978, when Garp was published, I thought I’d written a period piece. Garp is an angry and a comic novel—a feminist novel and an ode to the women’s movement, which is at once exalted and satirized—but, above all (I thought), Garp is a period piece. I was wrong. The World According to Garp isn’t prescient, but sexual hatred hasn’t gone away. It’s not good news that Garp is still relevant. We should be ashamed that sexual intolerance is still tolerated, but it is. (x)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50617975046360,"sku":"7.0","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/RobinWilliamsasGarp.jpg?v=1752535243"},{"product_id":"book-studies-grant-rod-chernow","title":"Biography,  Book Studies: GRANT, Rod Chernow","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished: 2017, 1,104 pages, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans: 398 pages, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eThe caricature of Grant as a filthy “butcher” is ironic for a man who couldn’t stomach the sight of blood, studiously refrained from romanticizing warfare, and shied away from a military career. “I never went into a battle willingly or with enthusiasm,” he remarked. “I was always glad when a battle was over.”15 Invariably he deprecated war. “It is at all times a sad and The caricature of Grant as a filthy “butcher” is ironic for a man who couldn’t stomach the sight of blood, studiously refrained from romanticizing warfare, and shied away from a military career. “I never went into a battle willingly or with enthusiasm,” he remarked. “I was always glad when a battle was over.”15 Invariably he deprecated war. “It is at all times a sad and cruel business. I hate war with all my heart, and nothing but imperative duty could induce me to engage in its work or witness its horrors.”16 Grant never grew vainglorious from military fame, never gloated over enemy defeats, never engaged in victory celebrations. He has been derided as a plodding, dim-witted commander who enjoyed superior manpower and matériel and whose crude idea of strategy was to launch large, brutal assaults upon the enemy. In fact, close students of the war have shown that the percentage of casualties in Grant’s armies was often lower than those of many Confederate generals. If Grant never shrank from sending masses of soldiers into bloody battles, it had nothing to do with a heartless disregard for human life and everything to do with bringing the war to a speedy conclusion. \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe relentless focus on Grant’s last battles against Robert E. Lee in Virginia has obscured his stellar record of winning battles in the western war long before taking charge of Union forces in early 1864. After that, he did not simply direct the Army of the Potomac, but masterminded the coordinated movements of all federal forces. A far-seeing general, he adopted a comprehensive policy for all theaters of war, treating them as an interrelated whole. However brilliant Lee was as a tactician, Grant surpassed him in grand strategy, crafting the plan that defeated the Confederacy. The military historian John Keegan paid homage to Grant as “the towering military genius of the Civil War” and noted the modernity of his methods as he mobilized railroads and telegraphs to set his armies in motion.17 Grant, he concluded, “was the greatest general of the war, one who would have excelled at any time in any army.”18 (xxii)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50641197957336,"sku":"8.0","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/Grant_Chernow.jpg?v=1752943621"},{"product_id":"book-studies-the-world-according-to-garp-john-irving","title":"Book Studies: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, John Irving","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished 1976, 570 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003edialectic Journal\/Lesson Plans: 189 pages, 80,818 words, visuals\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eTWENTY YEARS AGO, which was twenty years after The World According to Garp was published, I wrote an Afterword to the novel. Rewriting is the unglamorous part of creating, but revision is essential for clarity. In rewriting this new Introduction to Garp, of course I found things to cut or change in that 1998 Afterword, and I found a lot of necessary things to add. In retrospect, it’s unnecessary to say that Garp is a worst-case scenario or that I am a doomsayer novelist, but in 1972–75—when I was teaching at the Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City, where I began writing Garp—I was worried that the subject of sexual hatred (of intolerance of sexual minorities, and sexual differences) would be outdated before I finished the novel. In 1976–77, when I was living in Massachusetts and Vermont, where I finished Garp, it was inconceivable to me that the sexual violence I was writing about would long endure. In short, I thought sexual discrimination was too backward and too stupid to last. \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 1978, when Garp was published, I thought I’d written a period piece. Garp is an angry and a comic novel—a feminist novel and an ode to the women’s movement, which is at once exalted and satirized—but, above all (I thought), Garp is a period piece. I was wrong. The World According to Garp isn’t prescient, but sexual hatred hasn’t gone away. It’s not good news that Garp is still relevant. We should be ashamed that sexual intolerance is still tolerated, but it is. (x)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mr. Brovsky's Office","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50641784996056,"sku":"7.0","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/8862\/2040\/files\/0thanniversary_b2633a92-0579-479b-b9cb-ace5059f63ea.jpg?v=1753220978"},{"product_id":"book-study-project-hail-mary-andy-weir","title":"Book Study, PROJECT HAIL MARY, Andy Weir","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished 2021; 496 pages\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDialectic Journal\/Lesson plans: 200 pages, 140,907 words.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA Major Picture at the Theaters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDr. Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship in another solar system and after a few chapters he discovers who he is and who the other two dead people on his space-ship were.  Then he starts to remember.  Eva Stratt has recruited him among all other qualified scientists to save the earth.  The solar ystem of our sun was dying and it was a matter of time when the Earth's population would die of starvation because the sun didn't shine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd other Systems were dying also.  Grace meets Rocky, an engineer from another planet. trying to do the same thing.  He is better building. but a willing partner to learn more science from the middle-school science teacher from Earth. 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