Colleges and Universities Books

I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Dr.Marilyn J. Ross. She explained the reasons why African-American males tend to have a better chance at success in historically black colleges, and personally I believe that they do. They have a better chance of receiving academic help, encouragement, and assistance. Not only that there are more opportunities for learned networking through fraternal organizations, church organizations, and special interest groups.

I can honestly state that some of my strongest relationships and bonds where created while attending a historically black college. There I learned how to work hard, and become more aware as to what matters most . . . A sound faith, strong ties with my family, intense study, and community endeavors that support cultural awareness as a whole.

I read this book by Dr. Ross and she has explained why and how some African-American males succeed at historically black colleges. Dr. Ross researched the area of family and the importance of having a strong family base along with religon were highly significant to the findings of her study of why black males succeeded. Also Dr. Ross was able to perform a qualitative and quantitive analysis study to measure the results of her research to support her theory. I found this particular research interesting, because also these black males that were selected for the study were also mentored by a faculty member, administrative or staff member of the university. I would recommend this particular research to anyone who is looking to send their son or daughter to a historically black college or university. So often we debate in the African-American community should we or shouldn't we send our children to HBCUs or non-HBCUs and this particular book will be able good tool to help us make a researched base descision.

I am interested in performing the research that Dr. Ross has currently performed and hopefully one day I will get that opportunity.

Using this book for a Critical Theories class - great reading. Very clear and thought provoking. Complicated at times, but definitely a must have for English Majors!

Surrealist Women is a delightful read. I felt like I was on an adventure at a scrumptious banquet inside an amusement fun park where adults were not allowed. The book is chock filled with the most unlikely, amazing, thought provoking exoticisms. Incredible, really. It's a book I'll pick up often just to rediscover a surprise. To catch a poem in a new way. Or to remember a technique. A couple of surrealist techniques that I've tried, and a few that I've invented, have delivered such astounding results that I continue to work with them regularly.

The new dimensions that surrealism brings to the plastic arts it also brings to the literary arts, to the written word. The poetry of the surrealists is collages created from words, works of poetry art. Poetry takes on a new depth, breaking free from constraints of structure, it also breaks into new presentations of language formation, presenting Zen like non-logical word images that touch the soul with deep meaning, "perfume similar to the sound of a violin dipped in holy oil." Created from the depth of the subconscious (or is it superconscious?) mind, this is poetry that transcends gravity, time and space limitations, giving us prophetic poetry. Poetry revealing not only what will be, but what was, is and could have been.

It's hard to have favorites in this compilation, and I know that the ones that stand out for me today could change tomorrow. I found Nancy Cunard's essays on racism remarkable, especially considering the time (the 1930's) and the person (a white woman from a privileged background). Suzanne Césaire's work on Breton as poet is itself a marvel and her following piece on the collective mistake of the Martiniquan deserves special mention. Ithell Colquhoun in The Mantic Stain, Surrealism and Automatism describes for us these techniques: decalomania, fumage, parsemage and écrémage. Annie Le Brun reminds us that "in matters of revolt, we need no ancestors". Le Brun also is more interested in Oscar Wilde "than any bourgeoisie woman who agreed to marry and have children, and then, one fine day, suddenly feels that her oh so hypothetical creativity is being frustrated." Jayne Cortez has a wonderful hip-hop sounding piece "Make Ifa Make Ifa make Ifa Ifa Ifa, in eye popping punta of my heat sucking sap". Haifa Zangana smashes the work ethic in Can We Disturb These Living Coffins? Eva Švankmajerová's artwork is thrilling. I would have preferred seeing her Over All on the book's cover, but such an act would take a brave publisher indeed. Penelope Rosemont explores the life-affirming erotic, generous moral of the tale of The Golden Goose, showing how it's really a surrealist morality tale. Rosemont also explores "the very chanceology of chance" in Revolution By Chance. I noted hundreds of other examples, but instead of going on and on here, I'll just at this point highly recommend the book.

Exploring the Marvelous is not something we're taught to do. These are the things that church, state and the typical family unit tries to rid within us. Some were incarcerated inside mental jails for exploring the domain of the Marvelous. The over-rationalized beings in our society hate and fear the Marvelous and its practitioners because, not belonging to the rational realm, the Marvelous can't be explained. Or conquered. Surrealism calls for play and for uniting with the Marvelous -not to negate the rational but to make us whole by expanding our awareness. Surrealism also calls for a rejection of social norms, normalcy, conformism and anything that means dormancy. (Lock such dangerous criminals up!) It seeks to help you find your way to be a playful member of society and to "find your own voice". It demands absolute freedom for all. But why do oppressors oppress? Seemingly for this purpose alone, to have instead of to be (gathering commodities as opposed to living life). By moving more into having instead of into being, oppressors lose contact with the Marvelous.

Surrealism makes a point of keeping its door wide open to everyone, but with a special welcome mat to the outsider. It's open not only to men and to women alike, but to children and those outsiders that society labels uneducated, mentally retarded, insane. Surrealism is a celebration of all that is true of the feminine side of humanity, independent of one's gender: surrender, abandon, night, dreams, imagination, poetry, acceptance of and appreciation for the unfathomable abysses of mystery.

If modern industrialized civilization could pass laws against the night, it would. Through groan-ups, work, schooling and church, it settles instead to crush the things of the night as best it can: imagination, poetry and dreams. What civilization considers the darkest corners, it seeks to abolish through vice laws and moral lecturing: prostitution and other forms of uninhibited sex, disreputable behavior, gambling, drinking, drugs. Control the dark corners of humankind, the next best thing to abolishing night itself. Like stranger danger, civilization teaches us to fear the night. It doesn't want us to revel in what the abyss of night can bring us - the Marvelous. Surrealism says that we have too much of reason and rationality and too little of imagination and non-rationality. I'm in agreement. The night dreams deliver more daylight than simple day itself. A good dose of reason (theory and polemics) coupled with a co-equally good dose of imagination (poetry and art) is the surrealist revolution. Surrealist Women is a grand accomplishment in this - giving us a healthy dose of both. Each featured author contributes to this revolution, and leaves a strong foundation of surrealist legacy for future generations to build upon.

What a relief that a book for first year law students (and others studying law as a component of their degrees) finally address ALL of the issues that we face. This book is fantastic. Great style, easy to read, totally authoritative. No first-year (and beyond) should be without it. It's perfectly laid out so that you can go to any part of it at any time for information and comments on a particular issue, rather than having to read the whole thing from the beginning.

The title says it all! The book is set out in a comprehensive and orderly manner and addresses all the 'where'; 'how'; 'when'; and 'why' in an endeavour to make the journey of achieving a law degree an enjoyable and certainly, a less stressful one.
This is an excellant reference book for law students, in particular first year law students.

I found the book to be interesting and valuable - an authentic account of the authors attempts to deal constructively with how race and racism affect teaching and learning. It is valuable for educators to read personal accounts of this nature. The reality of how racism affects educators (of color and whites) is often obscured in academic books and articles by intellectual analyses by neglecting the fact that people's emotions, beliefs, and attitudes deeply affect what goes on in classrooms and schools.

Taking it Personally represents an excellent contribution to readings and scholarship in the area of ethnic studies, education, and multiculturalism. The narrative style of the book makes it accessible and enjoyable reading. There is dramatic tension as the teachers juxtapose their experiences of teaching about racism in a university classroom, and discuss the heated emotions that arise for students in response to the course.

This book would make an excellent core text for courses in educational foundations or ethnic studies. It is very appropriate for use in teacher education programs.

Further, it is well-written and engaging for others interested more generally in education, racism, and social justice.

Here are a few of the many reasons I keep reading everything Mike Messner writes:

1) He seems to take the feminist "personal is political" slogan to heart, revealing much more of himself and his own questions and vulnerabilities than most other male writers.

2) He uses both academic and journalistic techniques to research his topics and support his theses.

3) He lacks the arrogance of many experts, retaining an open mind as he delibertely attempts to look at things in original ways.

4) The topic of this book -- and several of his others -- continues to fascinate me. By looking at how we "do gender" in a sporting context, we come to understand so much about how and why any and all women and men behave as we do.

Highly recommended. -- Mariah Burton Nelson

USC Sociologist Michael Messner, who has spent the majority of his academic career studying issues of sport, masculinity, and power has written a truly significant book with Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports. The book finds a place for much of his previous research, as well as the research of other gender and sport scholars, to elicit the mechanisms in which gender is produced, reproduced, and contested in sport.

The premise of the book holds that gender is a product of structure, culture, and an individual's interactions within culture. This serves as the launching point for a deft discussion of the affects of sport in America. Messner has a talent for seeing the larger picture in seemingly "normal" events, and in Taking the Field he analyzes the affect that "normal" interactions in sport has on the subjugation of women and gay men, and the real and symbolic violence committed against both women and men by men.

Messner's work is important to scholars of both sport and gender, but is particularly important to gender scholars who too frequently fail to recognize the power sport, and sport media, has in shaping current gender relations, particularly the institutionalization of manhood. But Taking the Field is also highly recommend for anybody who has an interest in understanding the larger implications of American sport, beyond winning and losing. It is a must read for coaches, parents, and educators who have anything to do with sport.

To help us understand how theory hits the road, Messner highlights familiar news events such as the Columbine Massacre, or the 1999 Women's World Cup Championships, and analyzes them from a social-feminist perspective. In such he clearly elucidates the perils of the way we do sport in America and shows us that the concepts and theories he speaks of are not just found on the pages of books - that they are real, with real life application, and have a very real affect on people's lives.

Taking the Field is also important because it brings both homophobia and the mediea into the center of analysis. Whereas much attention has been given to the media's role in gender relations, I have been wholly discouraged by the absence of homophobia from much sport literature, and from sport in gender literature. Taking the Field shows the significance homophobia plays in sport, shaping and maintaining athletics as a masculine and heterosexual institution, and how important sport is in the production of gender

In the end Dr. Messner suggests that resistance to the system is possible (perhaps even inevitable). The masculinist center of sport has a soft underbelly and it is currently challenged by individual sports, female athleticism, the growing presence of gay male athleticism, and progressive individual men who are no longer willing to allow the system to function in a homophobic and misogynistic manner. But while these challenges to a hegemonic masculinity have threatened sport's ability to be openly sexist and homophobic, we must understand how sport attempts to reproduce itself covertly, so that we can continue to progress toward a culture of equality...

I have read this fine book and highly recommend it to ALL college students. Whether or not you know why you are there it can answer your questions about a year off and offer insight on how productive and riching a year can be. I'm contemplating my own year off and this book will be my bible in doing so. It offers a wide variety of activities one can do and has excellent references for those who would like to take time off. I recommend that you read this book and get a glimpse of how to live life.

Hall and Lieberhave successfully entered unchartered territory with their New York Times bestseller. While parents may scoff at the notion of their kids taking time off either before or during college, the experiences of students that Hall and Lieber chronicle suggest that valuable experience and new insight can be gained from a student sabbatical.

Hall and Lieber emphasize that students must have a mapped out plan about what they want to do and what they want to gain from their experience. Taking time off is not about bumming around. There is a intellectual component to this endeavor that parents may tend to dismiss. They shouldn't.

Finally, a book that challenges the idea that all people between the ages of 18-22 should go to immediately to college without entertaining the possibility of alternative experiences that would serve them better, at least temporariliy. There is no doubt that young men and women should obtain their college degrees, according to Hall and Lieber... the question simply is when.

KUDOS!!

If you just want to sit down and enjoy an easy, fun book to read, get this book. You can sit down at one reading and finish it, or pick it up and put it down a number of times and enjoy it.

The individuals who tell the stories are people who have lived Michigan football.

While the real Wolverine fan will love it, all college football fans will enjoy it.

These are the stories that were never in the newspaper..some things players or coaches didn't even know! The reader feels like he/she is sitting around with 50 Michigan football players and coaches listening to one story after another.. with the next story funnier or more "secret" than the last. The reader feels like they're reading the secret diaries or journals of people in Michigan football they've only seen on the field or on TV, or read about. Now each one is telling me something that no one else knew.

Thorough collection of detailed stories of the Gamecocks - not to be missed for any 'Cocks fan!
Makes us remember all the hot, steamy nights watching those Gamecocks play football...

This book is a must for Gamecock fans! Tom Price has used his years of experience as South Carolina's Sports Information Director to put together a collection of stories about the athletes, coaches, teams, and traditions that make a Gamecock proud. Everything from debunking the myth of the 'chicken curse' to how the Gamecock was chosen as the mascot.

The authors interviewed hundreds of college students whose high-school SAT math scores were at least 650 and who started their college careers in natural science, mathematics or engineering.

The interviewees were selected randomly for the authors by the participating colleges and universities, from a much larger pool of students whose academic profiles matched the authors' research design.

In accordance with this research design, approximately half of those interviewed had switched majors out of science-math-engineering (SME) programs by their senior years. The other half of those interviewed were still SME majors as seniors, and planned to graduate with a degree in natural science, mathematics or engineering.

Both groups of students voiced serious criticism of the deliberately competitive, grade on a curve, "overwhelm them and weed them out" approach that is widely used in teaching freshman and sophomore courses in SME-track curricula, particularly calculus, physics and organic chemistry.

The authors found it very difficult to predict which students had switched out of SME-track majors and which had stayed using any of the stay-vs-switch criteria commonly cited by SME faculty members, which include native ability, willingness to work hard, college grades, gender, ethnic background, and high-school preparation for college-level work in the sciences.

Rather, they found that the chief distinguishing characteristic of those who did not switch was the individuals' willingness to put up with the mental and emotional abuse heaped upon them by this "drinking from a fire hose" approach to instruction in their freshman and sophomore years.

These conclusions fit well with my own experiences at a major West Coast research university, as a white male undergraduate with a 750+ SAT verbal score and a 700+ SAT math score (without any special "prepare for the SAT" courses of any kind) who had graduated in the top 5% of my West Coast suburban high school class. I switched out of the SME track at the end of my sophomore year for several of the reasons cited in this book, and graduated two years later with a liberal arts degree in a field that had taught me to think critically, not memorize by blind repetition. Then I returned to the SME track later as a graduate student (no easy feat!) after I had had time to revisit the concepts thrown at me willy nilly in those first two years and see what they were good for. Today, I'm a registered professional engineer with an engineering master's degree, doing quite well in my field.

Based on this book's carefully assembled results and my own experience, I have avoided sending any of my children to my alma mater as freshmen or sophomores.

Instead, I have recommended that they do as my younger brother did. He did his freshman and sophomore work at a good community college, then transferred to a small state college with a very limited graduate program for his upper-division courses. Next he earned his master's degree at my alma mater, then went on to another nationally-ranked graduate program for his PhD. At each institution, he found himself in the group of students that enjoyed the focused attention of the faculty, and his SME learning experience was far, far superior to mine.

Read this book. Think about it carefully. Then plan your educational strategy to avoid being "weeded out" by SME faculty who don't want to admit that you exist until you have put up with two solid years of cheerful neglect and brutal abuse.

This book documents the tragic exit of great talents from the natural sciences that results when overdriven undergraduates lose sight of the fun and sense of wonder that are at the heart of the most successful scientific careers.

Making "Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun" (David and Judith Goodstein, 1996) and "Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar" part of the required reading list for all entering freshmen--and giving them the chance to discuss these books with lively professors who have managed to retain their own Feynmanesque senses of fun and wonder--would be a helpful antidote for this.

This book is the best resource on outcome based teaching and learning. The new edition is even better!

An excellent resource for teachers in territary institutions who have a passion for teaching for quality. It is a good resource for understand and implementing the outcomes based teaching and learning approach, which is helping students engage in deep learning approach. The chapters are well laid out in a simple and systematic manner.