Tag: Nonfiction

Capital of the World by Charlene Mires

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 32 Comments
Capital of the World: The Race to Host The United Nations by Charlene Mires
Publisher: NYU Press
Publication Date: March 2013
Source: TLC Book Tours

Description:

From 1944 to 1946, as the world pivoted from the Second World War to an unsteady peace, Americans in more than two hundred cities and towns mobilized to chase an implausible dream. The newly-created United Nations needed a meeting place, a central place for global diplomacy–a Capital of the World. But what would it look like, and where would it be? Without invitation, civic boosters in every region of the United States leapt at the prospect of transforming their hometowns into the Capital of the World. The idea stirred in big cities–Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, New Orleans, Denver, and more. It fired imaginations in the Black Hills of South Dakota and in small towns from coast to coast. 

Meanwhile, within the United Nations the search for a headquarters site became a debacle that threatened to undermine the organization in its earliest days. At times it seemed the world’s diplomats could agree on only one thing: under no circumstances did they want the United Nations to be based in New York. And for its part, New York worked mightily just to stay in the race it would eventually win. 

With a sweeping view of the United States’ place in the world at the end of World War II, Capital of the World tells the dramatic, surprising, and at times comic story of hometown promoters in pursuit of an extraordinary prize and the diplomats who struggled with the balance of power at a pivotal moment in history. 

My Thoughts:


I knew the ending of Capital of the World. We all do. The United Nations is headquartered in New York. What I didn’t know was how it ended up there. I definitely didn’t know how many cities were begging for the UN to set up camp in their backyard. 

Some of these towns went to great lengths to lure the United Nations to their neck of the woods. Ridiculous lengths really. Perhaps I only think they were ridiculous because I know where the UN ended up? Still, some of their shenanigans made me giggle.

There were serious matters to consider. The United Nations was to be a venture that promoted peace and equality. It wouldn’t do to put the headquarters in places where equality was regularly tested. (In 1945? A LOT of places had troubles with that particular issue.) The UN had to be fairly accessible to people from around the world. Even though San Francisco successfully hosted the charter conference of the UN, the powers that be decided that any city on the West Coast was out.

This book is well researched and full of interesting historical tidbits. Entertaining and spirited, Capital of the World hits the right notes.

The author: Charlene Mires is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Camden.
She is the author of Independence Hall in American Memory and a co-recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in journalism.


Thanks to TLC Book Tours for inviting me to participate in this tour. To visit other stops on the tour click here.






Sticks and Stones by Emily Bazelon

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 9 Comments
Sticks and Stones: 
Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy
by Emily Bazelon
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: February 2013
Categories: Non-Fiction, Student Life, Adolescent
Source: Library
Description:
Being a teenager has never been easy, but in recent years, with the rise of the Internet and social media, it has become exponentially more challenging. Bullying, once thought of as the province of queen bees and goons, has taken on new, complex, and insidious forms, as parents and educators know all too well.
 
No writer is better poised to explore this territory than Emily Bazelon, who has established herself as a leading voice on the social and legal aspects of teenage drama. In Sticks and Stones, she brings readers on a deeply researched, clear-eyed journey into the ever-shifting landscape of teenage meanness and its sometimes devastating consequences. The result is an indispensable book that takes us from school cafeterias to courtrooms to the offices of Facebook, the website where so much teenage life, good and bad, now unfolds.

My Thoughts:
Sticks and Stones was reviewed on a few blogs that I follow (like here at Devourer of Books) and I knew it would be something that I could dig into. When I saw it on the shelf at my local library I snatched it up.
I’ve taken to giving very quick thoughts on most of the books I grab from the library. I tend to save my wordiness for review books. But this book…oh this book. It deserves more.
I was reading Sticks and Stones while waiting to pick up my son from high school. There I was sitting in my car when I realized that I had tears rolling down my face. These weren’t sad tears. These were angry tears. Pissed off tears. I cannot believe people are so ignorant tears.
The passages that had me struck me and had me steaming:
“The Obama administration’s Justice Department had been looking for a case like this, one that could help expand the courts’ view of the protection a student deserves when he or she is harassed for not acting like a typical boy or a typical girl.”
“This wasn’t a new idea for the Justice Department so much as a return, by a Democratic administration, to a decade-old one. Ten years earlier, when Bill Clinton was president, the department submitted a brief on behalf of a Kentucky student who was humiliated by graffiti, scrawled on a wall in his school parking lot, that included his name above a drawing of two boys touching each other sexually  Clinton’s DOJ also entered a suit brought by a Missouri student who was harassed because other students thought he was effeminate, and who left his school as a result. But then George W. Bush got elected, and his Justice Department backed off: in eight years, it didn’t intervene in a single civil right action involving a student who was bullied because he or she didn’t conform to gender stereotypes.”
“”We need to protect all children from bullying,” a Focus on the Family staffer told the New York Times. “But the advocacy groups are promoting homosexual lessons in the name of anti-bullying.” Or as one pastor put it, “Of course we’re all against bullying. But the Bible says very clearly that homosexuality is wrong and Christians don’t want the schools to teach subjects that are repulsive to their values.””
“Study after study shows that the best way to prevent the harassment of gay students is to make it unacceptable.”
“…research shows that schools have to teach not just tolerance of an alternative lifestyle–the old code for keeping homosexuality at arm’s length–but acceptance.”
“…the most effective means of protecting gay kids at school runs into the wall of religious and moral objections to homosexuality.”
I could go on and on. Seriously people? This shit still happens? Ridiculous.
Social media has added a new venue to bullying. Kids can’t get away from it. Back in the day you could come home and relax until you went back to school in the morning. No more. I find this fairly terrifying and I’m so glad that I grew up when I did. Raising kids in this day and age isn’t a picnic, as many of you well know.
There are solutions to the problem of bullying and Bazelon highlights schools who are making it work. That was a wonderful section to read. All is not lost!
I found this book to be engaging, smart, and necessary. Read it.

If you are interested in this subject I recommend that you get your hands on a copy of Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case that made History. I watched it with my kids for a homeschool lesson. It’s amazing.