Book picks similar to
Do You Speak American? by Robert MacNeil
non-fiction
linguistics
nonfiction
language
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
Kurt Andersen - 2017
America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA.Over the course of five centuries--from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials--our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies--every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails.
Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
H.G. Bissinger - 1988
Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business.In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, Bissinger chronicles one of the Panthers' dramatic seasons and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires-and sometimes shatters-the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms. Includes Reader's Group Guide inside. Now a major motion picture starring Billy Bob Thorton.
The Study of Language
George Yule - 1985
It introduces the analysis of the key elements of language--sounds, words, structures and meanings, and provides a solid foundation in all of the essential topics. The third edition has been extensively revised to include new sections on important contemporary issues in language study, including language and culture, African American English, sign language, and slang. A comprehensive glossary provides useful explanations of technical terms, and each chapter contains a range of new study questions and research tasks, with suggested answers.
The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language
Melvyn Bragg - 2003
It is democratic, everchanging and ingenious in its assimilation of other cultures. English runs through the heart of the world of finance, medicine and the Internet, and it is understood by around two thousand million people across the world. It seems set to go on. Yet it was nearly wiped out in its early years.Embracing elements of Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi and Gullah, this 1500-year story covers a huge range of countries and people. The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion and trade, but also the story of people, and how their day-to-day lives shaped and continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.
Why We're Polarized
Ezra Klein - 2020
Most Americans could agree that no candidate like Donald Trump had ever been elected President before. But political journalist Ezra Klein makes the case that the 2016 election wasn't surprising at all. In fact, Trump's electoral victory followed the exact same template as previous elections, by capturing a nearly identical percentage of voter demographics as previous Republican candidates.Over the past 50 years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. Those merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.In this groundbreaking book, Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and each other. And he traces the feedback loops between our polarized political identities and our polarized political institutions that are driving our political system towards crisis.Neither a polemic nor a lament, Klein offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. A revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.
Al-kitaab Fii Ta'allum Al-Arabiyya: A Textbook for Arabic, part two
Kristen Brustad - 1997
Newly recorded colloquial audio and video materials also accompany each lesson and continue the story of Maha and Khalid and their travels to Cairo with brief explanatory vocabulary and notes provided in the text. The appendices include grammatical reference charts, an Arabic-English glossary, and a grammar index. The materials cover approximately 150 contact hours of instruction, and students who complete Part Two should reach advanced proficiency.Each lesson in Part Two centers on a text that deals with a social, historical, literary, or cultural issue. In addition to the main reading text, students will also find additional authentic texts for reading and listening comprehension, vocabulary and grammar exercises, close listening and speaking activities, and cultural background for the reading.The revised and repackaged Part Two has been restructured to reflect pedagogical developments over the last eight years, updated with new authentic reading and listening texts, and expanded with new video materials. In addition to the speaking, listening, and writing skills emphasized throughout each lesson, more time and emphasis is placed on activating vocabulary and structure with new activities for inside and outside the classroom.FEATURES: - Provides basic texts of printed media to help students connect the written and aural/oral aspects of Arabic - Features intensive reading that is focused on grammar and pronunciation - Contains substantial amounts of drills and exercises to help students memorize and gain active control of an expanded vocabulary - Explores the root and pattern system of Arabic grammar and complex sentence structure using vocabulary, complex texts, and translation exercises - Develops writing skills at the paragraph level to encourage synthesis of vocabulary and grammar - Provides explicit instructions to students and instructors on drills and activities, including recommendations on appropriate exercises for inside and outside the classroom - Interactive DVD contains reading comprehension texts with new material and new listening comprehension material - DVD presents cultural background with illustrations and continues the story of Maha and Khalid using both Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic
On Language
Noam Chomsky - 1998
Featuring two of Chomsky's most popular and enduring books in one omnibus volume, On Language contains some of the noted linguist and political critic's most informal and accessible work to date, making it an ideal introduction to his thought.In Part I, Language and Responsibility (1979), Chomsky presents a fascinating self-portrait of his political, moral, and linguistic thinking through a series of interviews with Mitsou Ronat, the noted French linguist. In Part II, Reflections on Language (1975), Chomsky explores the more general implications of the study of language and offers incisive analyses of the controversies among psychologists, philosophers, and linguists over fundamental questions of language.
Genki I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese
Eri Banno - 1999
Abundantly illustrated and containing a wide variety of exercises, Genki is sure to bring vigor to your classroom! Though primarily meant for use in college-level classes, it is also a good guide for independent learners and is a nice resource book for teachers of Japanese. Genki's authors teach at Kansai Gaidai University, which hosts the largest number of North American students spending their junior year in Japan.
The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology
Kerry O. Ferris - 2008
With a clever mix of popular culture, everyday life, and extensive student activities, The Real World fully realizes sociology's unique ability to stimulate students intellectually as well as resonate with them personally.
They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing
Gerald Graff - 2006
In addition to explaining the basic moves, this book provides writing templates that show students explicitly how to make these moves in their own writing.
Psychology in Everyday Life
David G. Myers - 2008
Students of all kinds are comfortable with Myers' manageable chapters, which include careful connections to associated visuals, comparative tables, and research-based pedagogy. For this edition, there is something completely new to a Myers text: David Myers personally selected new coauthor. Nathan DeWall's enthusiasm for teaching and writing about psychological science makes him uniquely suited to join the worlds bestselling psychology textbook author. And with about 30 more pages of coverage, this edition has become an even stronger and more complete introduction to the science of psychology for courses of all kinds.
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940
George Chauncey - 1994
Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that is not supposed to have existed. Called "monumental" (Washington Post), "unassailable" (Boston Globe), "brilliant" (The Nation), and "a first-rate book of history" (The New York Times), Gay New Yorkforever changed how we think about the history of gay life in New York City, and beyond.
American History: A Survey [with PowerWeb & Primary Source Investigator]
Alan Brinkley - 1971
From its first edition, this text has included a scrupulous account of American political and diplomatic history. Today, the book explores areas of history such as social, cultural, urban, racial and ethnic history, the history of the West and South, environmental history, the history of women and gender, and American history in a global context. The twelfth edition of this text includes the McGraw-Hill�s hit Primary Source Investigator (PSI) cd-rom, with hundreds of sources and a program that walks students through how to write a paper using those sources as evidence..
Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How They Feel about What They Do
Studs Terkel - 1974
Men and women from every walk of life talk to him, telling him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and happinesses on the job. Once again, Terkel has created a rich and unique document that is as simple as conversation, but as subtle and heartfelt as the meaning of our lives.... In the first trade paperback edition of his national bestseller, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel presents "the real American experience" (Chicago Daily News) -- "a magnificent book . . .. A work of art. To read it is to hear America talking." (Boston Globe)
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio
Philippe Bourgois - 1995
For the first time, an anthropologist had managed to gain the trust and long-term friendship of street-level drug dealers in one of the roughest ghetto neighborhoods--East Harlem. This new edition adds a prologue describing the major dynamics that have altered life on the streets of East Harlem in the seven years since the first edition. In a new epilogue Bourgois brings up to date the stories of the people--Primo, Caesat, Luis, Tony, Candy--who readers come to know in this remarkable window onto the world of the inner city drug trade. Philippe Bourgois is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He has conducted fieldwork in Central America on ethnicity and social unrest and is the author of Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). He is writing a book on homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco. 1/e hb ISBN (1996) 0-521-43518-8 1/e pb ISBN (1996) 0-521-57460-9