Overly detailed at times, but an impassioned insider narrative about American education.
A teacher offers personal commentary in his exploration of various types of U.S. schools.
This is an unusual book: It presents a lengthy record of a teacher’s own experiences with the American education system as a basis for an examination of public, private, charter, and cooperative schools. The author appears to have a unique background for an educator, as indicated in the “scholastic resume” he includes at the beginning: He attended both public and private schools, some parochial and some charter, and held a variety of positions, primarily as a substitute teacher, at public, private, parochial, charter, and cooperative schools. He also continues to work as a tutor, which adds another dimension to the story. In an opening “letter,” Felton (Tommy Wrought, 2015) suggests he wrote this volume to assist parents in evaluating and selecting appropriate schools for their children, yet as the book unfolds, it seems that teachers and administrators might actually be a more suitable audience. The sheer amount of specifics associated with the description of each school and every classroom experience, including discussions of teaching methodologies and materials, may only excite a professional educator. Still, the author’s firsthand observations of various types of schools are not without broader appeal. Also enticing, if a bit too flowery at times, is Felton’s expansive, engaging writing style and a strong storytelling element that makes the book read like a memoir. This autobiographical approach considerably enhances the content, but at times it can be unnecessarily detailed, particularly when the copious, lengthy footnotes overwhelm the text itself. The volume opens with a lovely, heartfelt tribute to an instructor “without whom there would no ‘Mr. Felton,’ ” evidence that the author was inspired to teach at a young age. The book then breaks into chapters, several of which address particular types of schools: parochial, public, private, charter, single sex, cooperative, and immersion (multilingual/multicultural). In each of these chapters, the author uses his own direct experiences with the type of school to comment on it, adding a very personal touch to the content. For example, Felton shares the surprising fact that he has been both a student and teacher at Hebrew, Roman Catholic, and Quaker parochial schools but has “never belonged” to any of these religions. The final two chapters concentrate more specifically on the author’s experiences as a tutor, substitute teacher, and, ultimately, a “lead” teacher. He observes that all of these roles allowed him to view and understand the educational process from significantly different perspectives. Felton’s glowing appraisal of his most recent school position is intriguing as a contrast to some of his less desirable employment situations; however, delving into the fine points of the curriculum may simply be too much for average readers to bear. Despite these occasional informational transgressions, the book exudes an enthusiasm and respect for education as a calling that are hard to ignore.
Overly detailed at times, but an impassioned insider narrative about American education.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 378
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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