Elevate Difference

Books

The Quotable Abigail Adams

In an age of constant and instant communications, we have to sadly admit that letters are becoming a lost art. Gone are the times when lovers exhausted themselves writing page after page to send slowly across the sea, replaced with 140 character tweets or an iPhone vibrating with a picture message.

Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse

Author Linda G. Mills is a scholar, lawyer, social worker, and the founder of the Center on Violence and Recovery at New York University. In Violent Partners, Mills challenges the tenets of the battered women’s movement.

Science on the Home Front: American Women Scientists in World War II

Science on the Home Front is an introduction to the lives and tasks of specific women scientists involved in the war effort, from Marie Curie to Margaret Mead. These women come from a variety of backgrounds and pursuits in science. A professor, Jack focuses on the fields of psychology, anthropology, physics and nutrition to elaborate on the women involved who played a specific role in the war.

The Piano Teacher

Janice Y. K. Lee's debut novel, The Piano Teacher, takes the reader inside the upper social circles of Hong Kong during and ten years after World War II. The book opens in 1950s Hong Kong with Claire Pendleton, a young British wife who is bored and takes a job teaching piano to the daughter of a wealthy Hong Kong couple. “It started as an accident.

No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admissions and Campus Life

No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal is a thorough and accessible study of race- and class-based dynamics at elite American colleges and universities. Sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford report on the racial and class makeup of student populations at top U.S. schools at various stages of their college careers, and conclude with suggestions for closing the racial academic achievement divide in American society more broadly.

Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals

In the introduction to Jamie Oliver’s latest cookbook Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals, Oliver lays out his plan to get people cooking again by having them master at least one recipe from each of the fourteen chapters in the book. This is being called the “Pass it on Movement,” and it is the young chef’s hope that it will get Americans back in the kitchen and cooking healthy food.

Shark Girls

Shark Girls presents the reader with something horrific, and turns it into something humane. When a shark attacks eight-year-old Willa, her older sister Scat realizes that their lives are about to shift. At school, Scat becomes the one made fun of, because her peers don’t know what to do with the traumatic situation, but they know it would be mean to make fun of the victim of a shark attack.

Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark

When Septima Clark began teaching in 1919, she quickly learned that good education is very much like community organizing. Both start by identifying pressing needs, involve the affected in formulating solutions, and give them a stake in the final outcome.

Hard Knocks: Rolling with the Derby Girls

Shelly Calton’s Hard Knocks: Rolling with the Derby Girls is a book of photographs that illustrates everything I love about black and white photography; the smoky interplay of light and dark, negative space and shadow. These gritty, noir-ish photos of the Houston Roller Derby are captivating, but sadly the book in its entirely lacked the oomph I was hoping for. I’ve seen a lot of roller derby.

Another Dinner is Possible: Recipes and Food For Thought

My interest in vegetables is quite young; around a year and half. Since this new found vegetarian interest, I’ve been looking out for recipes which are quick and involve simple ingredients so that I don’t have to run around super-market looking for all those hard to pronounce spices. At first glance, I must confess that I was disappointed with Mike and Isy’s Another Dinner Is Possible.

Tell Me Something True

Tell Me Something True is about a young woman, Gabriella, who spends a summer visiting family in Colombia and what she learns about her mother, Helena, upon discovering her diary. Helena died when Gabriella was only a baby, so the image Gabriella has of her mother is broken when she is confronted by the secrets her mother kept.

One Amazing Thing

One Amazing Thing is one amazing set of well-woven characters and stories.

Nadirs

The first impression upon commencing Herta Müller’s collection of semi-autobiographical short stories Nadirs is one that is characterized by a child’s hybridized view of a world which is intensely real and also hauntingly and disconcertingly surreal.

Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction

When the term “anarchy” is heard, most people think of the “circle-A” graffiti on crumbling buildings and the T-shirts of punk rock kids, or else imagine a state of complete lawlessness and the breakdown of society. Popular culture does nothing to dispel these collective thoughts. In theory and philosophy, anarchy refers to the absence of a state or rulers and a society in which there is no vertical hierarchy of class, but instead a horizontal equality of societal participants.

A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen

Why do we read Jane Austen? Beyond the books themselves, films and BBC miniseries adapted from classics like Pride and Prejudice draw large audiences. Are we drawn in by Austen's characters, delightful yet no-nonsense writing style, or detailed unveiling of social dynamics? Maybe it's the happy endings that keep us coming back.

Murder in the Name of Honor: The True Story of One Woman's Heroic Fight Against an Unbelievable Crime

Rana Husseini is a journalist from Jordan, and in Murder in the Name of Honor, she writes of the aftermath and trauma of honor killings in Jordan and around the world that she has researched and witnessed. Honor killings are defined as the murder of a woman by a family member(s), usually a man or men, because the woman has in some way brought dishonor upon the family.

The Edge of Change: Women in the 21st Century Press

My bias as a journalist and editor made me want to love The Edge of Change, but the stubborn remnants of the journalistic outlook into which I was indoctrinated gave bias a real beating. So, in the end, I just liked some parts and hated others. The concept was great, but the construction was lacking.

A Place of Belonging: Five Founding Women of Fairbanks, Alaska

The thing I remember most about my brief visit to Alaska is that even in Anchorage, I could feel the lessening of human population as soon as I stepped off of the plane.

The Courage to Feel: Buddhist Practices for Opening to Others

As someone who recently developed an interest in Buddhism, I feel like a walking cliché. It seems almost inevitable that one will explore an alternative religion at some point in their life. We have become a society of seekers.

Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone's Favorite Treats

Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar is a tasty new book by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. It looks so good I’m tempted to eat it, Cookie Monster-style, but then I wouldn’t be able to follow the recipes.

An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots

In An Angle of Vision, we are presented with a series of extraordinarily well-written essays centered upon one of the most taboo topics in U.S. culture: class. More specifically, we are presented with first-person, female-centered examinations of two groups who are steadily disappearing from both the public discourse and the popular culture of the United States: the poor and working class.

The Gospel of Hip Hop: The First Instrument

Just as jazz is a uniquely American phenomenon whose sentiment and message resonate with people the world round, so is hip-hop. Hip-hop began as a means by which to illustrate the experiences of people living their daily lives in the ‘hoods of New York. Although the originators of hip-hop, such as the Sugar Hill Gang were instrumental in shedding light on teen pregnancy, drug addiction, and violence it wasn’t until the era of KRS-One that hip-hop evolved to the status of Cultural Revolution. KRS-One, best known as Teacha, brought hip-hop to the mainstream.

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

Julie Powell wrote a blog called the Julie/Julia Project, which was turned into a book entitled Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and last summer Julie & Julia hit the big screen as a movie featuring Meryl Streep.

Thinandbeautiful.com

As someone who has struggled with disordered eating, I was very eager to dig into Thinandbeautiful.com. This young adult book was written by Liane Shaw, a teacher who once struggled with anorexia. The story follows Maddie, an anorexic teenage girl who finds herself sucked into the "pro-ana" (pro-anorexia) website thinandbeautiful.com.

Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness

This short but meaningful book is a smart combination of self-help, memoir, and academic study. Gore does not surmise a remedy for the blues, she does not use her life as an anecdote to overcome defeat or as a guiding light toward beatitude, nor does she use statistics and theory to expose her education.

Sexualities Special issue: "Researching and Teaching the Sexually Explicit: Ethics, Methodology and Pedagogy"

I am just about to begin teaching a new course in Human Sexuality, so I was excited to review this special issue of Sexualities, the UK-published journal that features new and different voices from sexology, gender studies, and cultural studies. Each of the eight original essays provides teachers, activists and researchers with much-needed breathing space.

I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen—My Journey Home

I was working in my college dining hall when I first caught wind of Jessica Lynch’s capture back in 2003. As I scraped steam trays, I compared our situations. She is a brave soldier somewhere in the sands of Iraq. I am a pansy who spent her days in purgatorial peace in the tundra of upstate New York. I didn’t know—many people didn’t know—that five other soldiers, including Shoshana Johnson, the first African-American female prisoner of war, were also being held.

Under the Dome

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had an interest in things that go bump in the night–the unknown and the unexplainable. So, it was only natural that I would discover Stephen King. I’ve only read a quarter of the eighty or so books he has written, but I’ve always considered myself a King fan.

Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen

Forget fairytales and fables that threaten rape and violence to women who go off the beaten path, deny their parents, or refuse to marry. Marilyn Chin's novel, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, doesn't lock away its female protagonists into a tower so a prince can climb up their hair and doesn't ask the women to honor and obey their parents.

How to Ruin Your Boyfriend's Reputation

The world of young adult books never ceases to be amazing. With a range of topics reminding us of our stressful adolescent selves, young adult books hold a set amount of information about friendships with other girls, jealousy, boyfriends, questions about sex, and overall embarrassing experiences that the characters will laugh about when they look back on their lives. How to Ruin Your Boyfrend's Reputation fits perfectly into this mold.
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