How to Use Your Mind: A Psychology of Study


Harry Dexter Kitson - 1916
    The book brings value to both students and teachers/lecturers. It explores the basics of comprehension and memorization and shows effective applications of memory in learning. Some of the topics covered are: How to master the art of effective note taking; how to become avidly interested in any subject matter; how to get a mental second wind; and how to get physically conditioned for effective study. Written by Indiana University Professor of Psychology Harry D. Kitson in 1921 (Second Edition), "How to Use Your Mind" is today still as contemporary as it was then.

Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It's Good for Everyone


Richard A. Settersten Jr. - 2010
    

Where's My Happy Ending?: Happily ever after and how the heck to get there


Anna Whitehouse - 2020
    Either way, it’s hard to know if they’re really meant to be by your side until you both wear dentures. In Where's My Happy Ending? Anna Whitehouse and Matt Farquharson, authors of the Sunday Times bestseller Parenting the Sh*t Out of Life, set out to discover what it takes to make it to forever, by asking our greatest questions about love.They ask a former sex-worker and her ex-gigolo husband, celibate monks and free-loving hippies. They ask people who never wanted kids and people who have loads of them. They ask porn-makers and feminist academics, neurologists, psychologists and romance novelists. They ask a whelk fisherman and a lollipop lady. They speak to couples, throuples and singles; gay, straight and anywhere in-between.And in asking these questions, they are forced to confront their own relationship after a decade of marriage. Through tears, laughter, and one improperly discarded toenail clipping, Where’s My Happy Ending? gets answers for anyone who’s ever wondered ‘what’s next?’ Join Anna and Matt on a searingly honest, belly-laugh inducing journey through love and relationships, social media and small children, expert advice and everyday exasperation, as they navigate the muddy waters of modern romance.Discover whether love and relationships could be simpler – or more complex – than we think in this study on what it really means to find and keep love today.

Children of Immigration


Carola Suárez-Orozco - 2001
    At the center of this prospect are the children of immigrants, who make up one fifth of America's youth. This book, written by the codirectors of the largest ongoing longitudinal study of immigrant children and their families, offers a clear, broad, interdisciplinary view of who these children are and what their future might hold.For immigrant children, the authors write, it is the best of times and the worst. These children are more likely than any previous generation of immigrants to end up in Ivy League universities--or unschooled, on parole, or in prison. Most arrive as motivated students, respectful of authority and quick to learn English. Yet, at the same time, many face huge obstacles to success, such as poverty, prejudice, the trauma of immigration itself, and exposure to the materialistic, hedonistic world of their native-born peers.The authors vividly describe how forces within and outside the family shape these children's developing sense of identity and their ambivalent relationship with their adopted country. Their book demonstrates how Americanization, long an immigrant ideal, has, in a nation so diverse and full of contradictions, become ever harder to define, let alone achieve.

Positive Discipline


Jane Nelsen - 1981
    Now Jane Nelsen, distinguished psychologist, educator, and mother of seven, has written a revised and expanded edition. The key to positive discipline is not punishment, she tells us, but mutual respect. Nelsen coaches parents and teachers to be both firm and kind, so that any child–from a three-year-old toddler to a rebellious teenager–can learn creative cooperation and self-discipline with no loss of dignity. Inside you’ll discover how to• bridge communication gaps• defuse power struggles• avoid the dangers of praise• enforce your message of love• build on strengths, not weaknesses• hold children accountable with their self-respect intact• teach children not what to think but how to think• win cooperation at home and at school• meet the special challenge of teen misbehavior“It is not easy to improve a classic book, but Jane Nelson has done so in this revised edition. Packed with updated examples that are clear and specific, Positive Discipline shows parents exactly how to focus on solutions while being kind and firm. If you want to enrich your relationship with your children, this is the book for you.”–Sal Severe, author of How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too!Millions of children have already benefited from the counsel in this wise and warmhearted book, which features dozens of true stories of positive discipline in action. Give your child the tools he or she needs for a well-adjusted life with this proven treasure trove of practical advice.

Columbine


Dave Cullen - 2009
    As we reel from the latest horror . . . " So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers. In the wake of Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this plague grows more urgent every year.What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.

Savage Park: A Meditation on Play, Space, and Risk for Americans Who Are Nervous, Distracted, and Afraid to Die


Amy Fusselman - 2015
    . . if you are also trying not to die?" On a visit to Tokyo with her family, Fusselman stumbles on Hanegi playpark, where children are sawing wood, hammering nails, stringing hammocks to trees, building open fires. When she returns to New York, her conceptions of space, risk, and fear are completely changed. Fusselman invites us along on her tightrope-walking expeditions with Philippe Petit and late night adventures with the Tokyo park-workers, showing that when we deprive ourselves, and our children, of the experience of taking risks in space, we make them less safe, not more so.Savage Park is a fresh, poetic reconsideration of behaviors in our culture that — in the guise of protecting us — make us numb and encourage us to sleepwalk through our lives. We babyproof our homes; plug our ears to our devices while walking through the city. What would happen if we exposed ourselves, if — like the children at Hanegi park — we put ourselves in situations that require true vigilance? Readers of Rebecca Solnit and Cheryl Strayed will delight in the revelations in Savage Park.

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls


Mary Pipher - 1994
    Why were so many of them turning to therapy in the first place? Why had these lovely and promising human beings fallen prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and crushingly low self-esteem? The answer hit a nerve with Pipher, with parents, and with the girls themselves. Crashing and burning in a “developmental Bermuda Triangle,” they were coming of age in a media-saturated culture preoccupied with unrealistic ideals of beauty and images of dehumanized sex, a culture rife with addictions and sexually transmitted diseases. They were losing their resiliency and optimism in a “girl-poisoning” culture that propagated values at odds with those necessary to survive.    Told in the brave, fearless, and honest voices of the girls themselves who are emerging from the chaos of adolescence, Reviving Ophelia is a call to arms, offering important tactics, empathy, and strength, and urging a change where young hearts can flourish again, and rediscover and reengage their sense of self.

Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties


Jeffrey Jensen Arnett - 2004
    Rather than marrying and becoming parents in their early twenties, most people in industrialized societies now postpone these transitions until at least their late twenties, and instead spend the time in self-focused exploration as they try out different possibilities in their careers and relationships. In Emerging Adulthood, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett identifies and labels, for the first time, this period exploration, instability, possibility, self-focus, and a sustained sense of being in limbo. An increasing number of emerging adults emphasize having meaningful and satisfying work to a degree not seen in prior generations. Marrying later and exploring more casual sexual relationships have created different hopes and fears concerning long-term commitments and the differences between love and sex. Emerging adults also face the challenge of defending their non-traditional lifestyles to parents and others outside their generation who have made much more traditional choices. In contrast to previous portrayals of emerging adults, Arnett's research shows that they are particularly skilled at maintaining contradictory emotions--they are confident while still being wary, and optimistic in the face of large degrees of uncertainty. As the demographics of American youth, the American workplace, and adulthood continue to evolve, Emerging Adulthood is indispensable reading for anyone wanting to understand the face of modern America.

Feminist Therapy


Laura S. Brown - 2009
    Feminist therapy has become a practice that encompasses work with women, men, children, families, and larger systems. In this book, Dr. Brown presents and explores this approach, its theory, history, the therapy process, primary change mechanisms, empirical basis, and future developments.

Ordinary Resurrections


Jonathan Kozol - 2000
    In this national bestseller, now in paperback, the acclaimed author of Savage Inequalities recounts the lessons he has learned from the struggles and unlikely triumphs of children in the South Bronx, one of America's most impoverished neighborhoods.

The Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence, and the American Dream


Randol Contreras - 2012
    For this riveting book, he returns to the South Bronx with a sociological eye and provides an unprecedented insider’s look at the workings of a group of Dominican drug robbers. Known on the streets as “Stickup Kids,” these men raided and brutally tortured drug dealers storing large amounts of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and cash.As a participant observer, Randol Contreras offers both a personal and theoretical account for the rise of the Stickup Kids and their violence. He mainly focuses on the lives of neighborhood friends, who went from being crack dealers to drug robbers once their lucrative crack market opportunities disappeared. The result is a stunning, vivid, on-the-ground ethnographic description of a drug robbery’s violence, the drug market high life, the criminal life course, and the eventual pain and suffering experienced by the casualties of the Crack Era. Provocative and eye-opening, The Stickup Kids urges us to explore the ravages of the drug trade through weaving history, biography, social structure, and drug market forces. It offers a revelatory explanation for drug market violence by masterfully uncovering the hidden social forces that produce violent and self-destructive individuals. Part memoir, part penetrating analysis, this book is engaging, personal, deeply informed, and entirely absorbing.

The College Fear Factor: How Students And Professors Misunderstand One Another


Rebecca D. Cox - 2009
    Eye-opening even for experienced faculty and administrators, this book reveals how the traditional college culture can actually pose obstacles to students' success, and suggests strategies for effectively explaining academic expectations.

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money


Bryan Caplan - 2018
    In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity—in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As and casually forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for the average worker but instead in runaway credential inflation, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely if ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy.Caplan draws on the latest social science to show how the labor market values grades over knowledge, and why the more education your rivals have, the more you need to impress employers. He explains why graduation is our society's top conformity signal, and why even the most useless degrees can certify employability. He advocates two major policy responses. The first is educational austerity. Government needs to sharply cut education funding to curb this wasteful rat race. The second is more vocational education, because practical skills are more socially valuable than teaching students how to outshine their peers.Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense — The Case against Education points the way.