Biblio Reviews

Had I the financial means, I often think I'd be quite content living as a recluse. I prefer spending personal time in solitude. I attribute this to being an introvert, though that is possibly an excuse. This introversion and desire to minimize social interaction on a need-to basis may explain why, to date, I have never had a social media account and have absolutely no interest in doing so. Jon Ronson's  So You Have Been Publicly Shamed  (2015) only strengthens my resolve. Zooming in to the experiences of Justine Sacco and Jonah Lehrer while peppering other relevant anecdotes throughout, Ronson examines and details what he considers to be a resurgence of public shaming, which has historically been used as a form of social control. Ronson argues that this revival of the form, however, is unprecedented in that the viral nature of public shaming via social media, particularly Twitter, has catastrophic effects unlike anything experienced before in history. Informative and eng...

"Wait. Why is Stephen A. Smith of ESPN writing the Foreword to a soap opera actor's autobiography?" The answer is clear upon learning the important role that sports has played in Eric Braeden's life, as detailed in his autobiography,  I'll Be Damned  (2017). Braeden is the star and figurehead of television's number 1 daytime drama,  The Young and the Restless . He stars as Victor Newman, a role he originated in 1980 intended to be for a 26-week run and has parlayed it into one of nearly four decades. Born Hans Jorg Gudegast in Bredenbek, Germany, Braeden's career as an actor was quite the unlikely story. However, a curious mind and an adventurous, independent spirit takes him from a war-torn hospital basement in Kiel to the sound stages of Hollywood. I'll Be Dammed  is Braeden's first book. As such it covers the span of his life, career, and humanitarian efforts to a level of detail and name dropping that may not appeal to the masses. Fans of B...

"Huh?" was my response when the local radio update featured a clip of Jose Baez, the lawyer of former Patriots' tight end and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez, accusing the medical examiner's office of holding Hernandez' brain hostage and requested that the family's wishes be honored by releasing the brain to Boston University for CTE analysis. Seemingly out of the loop, this is how I learned of Aaron Hernandez' death by suicide a day before. Other than being surprised by the timing of his death--days after exoneration of a double homicide--and lamenting the tragic nature of Hernandez' life and all parties involved in his drama, my response was due to learning that Boston University was in the game, as it were, for CTE research and diagnosis. "Well this is certainly elevating the school's national status," I recall thinking with pride. A week and a half later, after reading Jeanne Marie Laskas's  Concussion  (2015), I downgraded m...

It was with giddiness that I stumbled upon  Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Look Behind the Lanai  (2016), Jim Colucci's guide to my all-time, favorite sitcom, the immortal juggernaut,  The Golden Girls  (1985) .  For fans of the show, this book is quite a gem as I can testify from how I literally skipped out of Amazon Books after perusing its shelves for the first time. Packed with hundreds of exclusive interviews with the suits, writers, producers, directors, stars, guest stars from the show, Colucci reveals behind-the-scenes, never-before-revealed stories and commentary. The level of detail and insight into various aspects of the show suggest that the author really did his research and is very much a fan of the show. A Bit of Trivia: Bea Arthur was "difficult" in that she took her craft seriously and wasn't about appeasing others or being unnecessarily "friendly." As such, though highly respected, she was also intimidating, especially to many...

What would China's population be today if the government had not stepped in to control the population's growth? In 1979, China faced a problem: With one billion people, the country made up 25% of the world's population. In 1980, to combat this problem, China instituted its population-control program: the one child per family policy, an unprecedented, radical take on population control. Mei Fong's  One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment  (2016)   details the unintended consequences of that policy. Part memoir and more investigative journalism, Fong does a serviceable job of providing context for understanding the why and how of the policy before examining its short and long-term consequences: An estimated 13 million people live as undocumented children because they were born out of "plan." China is a bachelor society creating an imbalance of young men who feel aimless, hopeless, sad, and lonely. China has more than 40% of the world...

Pearl Cleage: sassy, seemingly self-assured and wise, I enjoyed her appearance on  The Oprah Winfrey Show  to promote her 1998 Oprah Book Club selection,  What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day  (1997), which I also enjoyed. Edwidge Danticat: a fellow compatriot, I've taken personal pride in her publishing success. James McBride: Winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction for  The Good Lord Bird  (2013), his candidness during his acceptance speech and his interview with Anna Sale for her WNYC podcast  Death, Sex, & Money (one of my favorites)   drew me in. Cheryl Strayed: Best known for her memoir-turned-into-feature-film, Wild (2012), I mostly know of her wisdom and forthrightness in sharing thoughtful and empathic advice (along with co-host Steve Almond) on another of the best podcasts around, WBUR's  Dear Sugar Radio . What do these authors have in common--other than being published, successful writers? They are...

To date, I have not watched even one minute of James Cameron's historic blockbuster, Titanic (1998). I may be one of the few, for even my 12-13 year-old students have seen it and have recommended it to me. While it irritates me that Kate and Leo and Cameron's Titanic are cemented in their mind as the definitive Titanic story, I can appreciate the fact that the film provides them with an anchor for visualizing and understanding the events detailed in Walter Lord's  A Night to Remember  (1955), truly " the  classic account of the final hours of the  Titanic. " I had not heard of  A Night to Remember  previously and was scheduled to teach it. Not a fan of the book's structure--the minute-by-minute account through no fewer than twenty different perspectives--my colleague sold me the book as a complex bore of a read. For that reason, she only ever taught excerpts of it. Going into the reading, I was tentative because it had been made so unappealing. Far f...

I have been rooting for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ever since I found out about her about five years ago. It was through her TEDTalk, " The Danger of a Single Story ," shared during a a professional development about what's been an ongoing conversation in my school district about school culture / cultural proficiency. That TED Talk is probably my favorite so far, if only because it applies more readily to the subject that I teach: English language arts. As such, it is a Talk that I share with every new group of students that I've taught. Though in 2008 she was the recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, Adichie wasn't as well-known as I thought she deserved to be. So, it was with joy that I read the many positive reviews of  Americanah  (2013) posted for CBR. I was like, "Yay! She's on her way!" Deservedly so, as evidenced by  We Should All Be Feminists (2014), a transcription of her 2012 TEDxEuston Talk . What Adichie calls for i...

Despite sweeping reforms in U.S. education in the 20th and 21st centuries, much in U.S. education has remained essentially the same. In  Transforming School Culture: How to Overcome Staff Division  (2009),   Dr. Anthony Muhammad explains that the fixed state of education in the U.S. is the result of reforms that focus on technical changes (structure, policies, teaching tools) rather than on cultural changes (mindsets and behaviors). Unless a school begins to focus on making cultural changes, no amount of technical changes will ever result in a healthy, productive, and successful school culture. This, he asserts, is because schools comprise of four key groups who each have their own agendas. A school leader who doesn't learn how to manage and fulfill the needs of these four distinct groups is susceptible to developing or maintaining a toxic and dysfunctional school culture, "the set of norms, values and beliefs, rituals and ceremonies, symbols and stories that make up the ...

Who knew that Matthew McConaughey's foray into romantic comedy--a most dreadful film genre to most critics--would be so sociologically and culturallly relevant? In Dr. Leonard Sax's Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (2009), he argues that McConaughey's Failure to Launch (2006) is a gem of a movie in that it reflects an American epidemic of men who are underachieving and who seem to be perfectly accepting of that fact. Before presenting his explanation, I offer a personal anecdote. This past school year, I experienced my most challenging teaching experience EVER. This is because I came across the most disengaged, apathetic, and academically unmotivated group of students EVER (the word bears repeating). Made up of a majority of boys, this group was so immature and indifferent to academic learning that school was simply a social experience. Of all the things that they were engaged in, academics ranke...

Technically, the Common Core is already here, but in case one did not know, the saturation of "Common Core aligned" notices on various workbooks, vocabulary texts, and the deluge of Common Core-themed texts on the market would make that announcement clear enough. Anxious parents, and even more anxious and novice teachers, will soon scan these shelves to buy these Common Core-themed texts in the desperate hope that they will be enlightened. Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher's  Rigorous Reading: 5 Access Points for Comprehending Complex Texts  (2014) is one such text they might come across. In the end, Frey and Fisher's  Rigorous Reading  is an overview of the reading demands of the Common Core. In it, Frey and Fisher identify five strategies ("access points") for engaging students with complex texts, a requirement of the new Common Core. These five access points include the following: Purpose and Modeling Close and Scaffolded Reading Instruction Collaborati...

Malcolm Gladwell is a storyteller. What I find particularly admirable about his work is that he is able to convey what has been traditionally a spoken language skill into a written one--while reducing seemingly complex ideas into digestible bite-size chunks. It is not surprising, then, that  The Tipping Point  (2000) was a best seller and achieved "one of the best books of the decade" status on many lists. Pulling from a broad set of examples from different aspects of life and history, such as from Paul Revere's midnight ride, to successful advertising campaigns, to  Sesame Street  and  Blue's Clues,  to the decline of the crime rate in New York City, Gladwell explains "how little things can make a big difference." More specifically, Gladwell describes how three special groups of people--connectors, mavens, and salesmen--are responsible for creating word-of-mouth epidemics. In the process, he also adds interesting bits of trivia, such as that the number...

Brian Stelter's  Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV  (2013) is a bit of a misnomer. Less of an insider expose into the "cutthroat" world of morning TV, Stelter's book is more of a chronicle of the rivalry between  Good Morning America  (GMA) and  Today  and the events that led to  Today 's eventual downfall to number two in 2012 after sixteen years at number one. Opening up with "Operation Bambi," the name given to the plan to oust Ann Curry from  Today , Stelter then details the key warring executives whose desires for power and dominance fueled the rivalry between the two shows--and some of the "talents," like Ann Curry, Deborah Norville, Lisa McRee, and Kevin Newman, among others, who were victims of their "cutthroat" plans. Top of the Morning  was a rather disappointing read in that it felt more like tabloid fodder than riveting journalism. Much of what was included was not deserving of a whole book. A...

When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I told my much older sister that she could look forward to holding in her hands  my own published    book . I spoke with such confidence that she said she believed that I would achieve that goal. Nearly twenty years later, I am no closer to attaining that goal than when I first boldly made my claim. It isn't because I lost the desire to. No, my lack of progress is more of a result of self-realization. To write--realistic fiction, in my case--would require me to do something that I have struggled to do seemingly all my life so far: be emotionally open and accessible. In other words, be willing to share my fears and insecurities, be vulnerable. Despite claims that fiction is created from a writer's imagination, I understand that there is always some personal truth in all writing. As such, there are certain levels of risk involved for the writer in every story s/he writes. Writing is, after all, personal. Like any other creative fo...

A lot can be learned from Jane Austen's  Pride and Prejudice  (1813), one of which is why it is important to smile: Mr. Bingley, who puts on a more agreeable face, is received well by the people of Netherfield Park whereas Mr. Darcy, who  doesn't, is spurned. The science behind why Mr. Bingley experiences more social success than Mr. Darcy is explained in Marianne LaFrance's  Why Smile? The Science Behind Facial Expressions  (2011). LaFrance draws on the work of latest research in biology, psychology, sociology anthropology, computer science--and even quotes various works of literature--to shed light on the effects of putting on a happy face.  Why Smile?  is organized into three sections (Life, Lies, Loyalty), in which, through extensive research and engaging writing style, LaFrance explains the complexity of smiles. [Smiles] are consequential--they affect what others feel and do...they are indispensable to physical health, psychological well-being...