The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age

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"Media critic Clark (dir., Estlow International Ctr. for Journalism & New Media, Univ. of Denver; "From Angels to Aliens") suggests ways to enable parents to negotiate their children's engagement with the Internet, social media, and mobile technology. Over 11 years, Clark and her research team conducted extensive interviews with dozens of families of different economic means in urban, suburban, and rural areas of the United States to learn about the impact of digital media on family life. Most of the book comprises an intriguing analytical narrative developed from the interviews. Clark finds that, generally, middle- and upper-middle-class parents respond to media use in terms of its utility for their children's self-expression and advancement, while parents with lower incomes prioritize the ways media use reinforces family closeness and mutual respect. VERDICT Clark notes that while new technology has brought significant change, including constant connectedness and a persistent trail of information, it has not changed the basics of teen development or heightened the dangers facing children. She concludes with a cogent set of recommendations--some at the family level and some at the policy level--addressing parenting behavior, inequitable access to technology, and the problems of a consumption-oriented society. Clark's treatment reflects her dual role as researcher and mother and will be of interest to both scholars and parents"  (Library Journal)

Undaunted: The Real Story of America's Servicewomen in Today's Military

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"Biank (Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives, 2006) analyzes the increasingly important role played by women in the military. The author, whose first book was developed into the popular TV series Army Wives, follows the military career of four women currently playing a vital role in today's integrated armed forces: Brig. Gen. Angela Salinas, the Marine's first Hispanic female general; 2nd Lt. Bergan Flannigan, a military policewoman in Afghanistan; Sgt. Amy Stokley, who drives recruits at Parris Island; and Maj. Candice O'Brien, who struggles through deployment to Afghanistan with a strained marriage and two children back at home. Biank shows forcefully how this commitment to service still runs up against sexism and prejudice. Three of the four served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet nonsensically, by law, women are still prevented from deployment in combat. Women in the armed forces train to the same standards of excellence as their male colleagues who qualify for combat, and they must maintain the same levels of physical fitness and endurance. In Iraq, when Stokley was a driver, her truck came under attack, and one of her passengers died. Flannigan lost her leg to a roadside booby trap when working to train the Afghan National Police. Biank follows the careers of the four individuals over time, as they advance in their chosen spheres. Salinas chose to continue to serve when she was told by a corporate headhunter that she "would not find what you have in the Marines here....You're not going to find loyalty or camaraderie here like you're used to." An eye-opening account of a military in transition."  (Kirkus Reviews)

The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent

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"A 2012 "ECONOMIST" BOOK OF THE YEAR
Many of the United States' most innovative entrepreneurs have been immigrants, from Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell, and Charles Pfizer to Sergey Brin, Vinod Khosla, and Elon Musk. Nearly half of Fortune 500 companies and one-quarter of all new small businesses were founded by immigrants, generating trillions of dollars annually, employing millions of workers, and helping establish the United States as the most entrepreneurial, technologically advanced society on earth.
Now, Vivek Wadhwa, an immigrant tech entrepreneur turned academic with appointments at Duke, Stanford, Emory, and Singularity Universities, draws on his new Kauffman Foundation research to show that the United States is in the midst of an unprecedented halt in high-growth, immigrant-founded start-ups. He argues that increased competition from countries like China and India and US immigration policies are leaving some of the most educated and talented entrepreneurial immigrants with no choice but to take their innovation elsewhere. The consequences to our economy are dire; our multi-trillion dollar loss will be the gain of our global competitors.
With his signature fearlessness and clarity, Wadhwa offers a concise framework for understanding the Immigrant Exodus and offers a recipe for reversal and rapid recovery."  (Publisher Marketing)

With Charity for All: Why Charities Are Failing and a Better Way to Give

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"In this provocative expose, the former CEO and COO of National Public Radio takes a critical view of today's nonprofit world, calling for reform and a redefinition of what constitutes a charity. For anyone who has given time or money to not-for-profits, Stern's critique will prove both disturbing and thought-provoking; he questions the value and efficacy of the more than 1.4 million not-for-profit organizations in the U.S., asserting that this industry is beholden to anecdotes rather than the rigorous study of results, leaving "little credible evidence that many charitable organizations produce lasting social value." Stern systematically cites the failures and foibles of organizations like the Red Cross, as well as calling out college bowl games and college sports as multimillion-dollar organizations with charitable status. In addition, he discusses fraud, excessive compensation, and the lack of oversight from regulators. Donors, Stern argues, are frequently uninformed, give reactively, and often unintentionally create more harm than good. Stern's praises organizations like the Gates Foundation, which have created a culture of accountability and measurement, and devotes a short chapter to what is necessary for reform to occur. An engrossing read, this look at the evolution and current state of the charitable world is sure to stimulate debate"  (Publishers Weekly)

The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change

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"Almost a decade ago, Al Gore was presented with a question, "what are the drivers of global change?" Unable to immediately answer the question in full, he has continued to revisit the query, and over the last two years has researched, analyzed and produced a complex and comprehensive map of the forces that are shaping our world. The result is "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change." While mapping the future is a risky undertaking, perhaps the only thing riskier is doing nothing"  (Publisher Description)

Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons

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"A compelling, plainspoken piece of advocacy in which the author maintains that everything we think we know about nuclear weapons is wrong. Though Wilson stops just short of making the case for immediate and unilateral nuclear disarmament, he builds a methodical, step-by-step argument that the very notion of such weapons as a deterrent is fallacious, based on a misunderstanding of when and why Japan decided to surrender in the wake of the bombing of Hiroshima. What makes his case so convincing (though not all will be convinced) is that he makes it not in the spirit of Utopian idealism, but fact-facing pragmatism. He argues that most of the support for nuclear weaponry is in fact irrational, based on the misconception that mankind has no control over the future--that, having opened the Pandora's box of nuclear technology, we live in fear of apocalypse. The fallacy begins with the bombing of Japan, where "the danger is that we have overinflated their value [of nuclear weapons] by misinterpreting that one event." The threat of Russian invasion, not the nuclear bombing, forced Japan's hand--"the atomic bomb swept all mistakes and misjudgments under the rug." If it didn't end a war, as generally perceived, neither has it stood as a deterrent, with Wilson citing the Cuban missile crisis as a sign of recklessness that actually pushed us closer to war. Yet even if one agrees with every one of his points, the author admits that "I am not sure what can and should be done with nuclear weapons." He offers the plea that "the wisest scholars need to be enlisted to go back over the problem." A provocative reframing of a problem that still awaits a solution."  (Kirkus Reviews)

The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe

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"Shore's Europe is populated with prostitutes and pimps, street urchins and skinheads; the landscape is "cold and gray... burnt to ashes and rebuilt in Stalinist architecture." The National Jewish Book Award winner's newest (after Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918 1968) begins and ends with the suicide of a friend, an emigre who returned to Prague only to find that the city he remembered no longer exists, and many of the characters who fill its pages are ghosts refugees of time and ideology, unable to make peace with the capitalist theme park that replaced their homelands. A historian of the Holocaust and of communism, Shore journeys through Eastern Europe probing the wounds left by the twin disasters of the 20th century. A mix of memoir, travelogue, and philosophical treatise, her book is above all an anthropological study of a people living in a world obscured by cobwebs, more mindful of yesterday than today, where the future cannot be realized until the deaths of all those who witnessed the abyss. The one who makes such observations can only be an outsider, or in the words of one of Shore's interlocutors one who knows "too much and not enough, and nothing." Challenging and sometimes maddening, but also warm and compassionate, the resulting work is an examination of what it means to live in a society where "the realm of the not possible expansive" and where history, "proceeding inexorably and inevitably, " shapes identity."   (Publisher's Weekly)