Reference

The New York Times received countless letters over the years from readers moved to tears or laughter by a McG. Eschewing traditionally famous subjects, Thomas favored unsung heroes, eccentrics, and underachievers including: Edward Lowe, the inventor of Kitty Litter ("Cat Owners Best Friend"); Angelo Zuccotti, the bouncer at El Morocco ("Artist of the Velvet Rope"); and Kay Halle, a glamorous Cleveland department store heiress who received sixty-four marriage proposals ("An Intimate of Century's Giants"). In one of his classic obituaries, Thomas described Anton Rosenberg as a "storied sometime artist and occasional musician who embodied the Greenwich Village hipster ideal of 1950s cool to such a laid-back degree and with such determined detachment that he never amounted to much of anything." Thomas also eulogizes a variety of colorful local heroes, from pool hustler Minnesota Fats, to Mason Rankin, founder of an AIDS group in Utah, to Sidney Korshak, "a famous fixer for the Chicago mob."

Thomas captured life's ironies and defining moments with elegance and a gift for making a sentence sing He had an uncanny sense of the passion and personality that made each life unique.

"A provocative and jaunty romp through the dos and don'ts of writing for the internet" (NYT)--the practical, the playful, and the politically correct--from BuzzFeed copy chief Emmy Favilla.

A World Without "Whom" is Eats, Shoots & Leaves for the internet age, and BuzzFeed global copy chief Emmy Favilla is the witty go-to style guru of webspeak.

As language evolves faster than ever before, what is the future of "correct" writing? When Favilla was tasked with creating a style guide for BuzzFeed, she opted for spelling, grammar, and punctuation guidelines that would reflect not only the site's lighthearted tone, but also how readers actually use language IRL.

With wry cleverness and an uncanny intuition for the possibilities of internet-age expression, Favilla makes a case for breaking the rules laid out by Strunk and White: A world without "whom," she argues, is a world with more room for writing that's clear, timely, pleasurable, and politically aware. Featuring priceless emoji strings, sidebars, quizzes, and style debates among the most lovable word nerds in the digital media world--of which Favilla is queen--A World Without "Whom" is essential for readers and writers of virtually everything: news articles, blog posts, tweets, texts, emails, and whatever comes next . . . so basically everyone.

More than 250 new entries and senses have been added to this brand-new edition, including cloud computing, genetically modified organism, and the recently named elements flerovium and livermorium.

Over the course of sixty years, Alfred Kazin's writings confronted virtually all of our major imaginative writers, from Emerson to Emily Dickinson to James Wright and Joyce Carol Oates -- including such unexpected figures as Lincoln, William James, and Thorstein Veblen. This son of Russian Jews wrote out of the tensions of the outsider and the astute, outspoken leftist -- or, as he put it, "the bitter patriotism of loving what one knows." Editor Ted Solotaroff hasselected material from Kazin's three classic memoirs to accompany his critical writings. Alfred Kazin's America provides an ongoing example of the spiritual freedom, individualism, and democratic contentiousness that he regarded as his heritage and endeavored to pass on.

Carol Ann Tomlinson and Tonya R. Moon take an in-depth look at assessment and show how differentiation can improve the process in all grade levels and subject areas. After discussing differentiation in general, the authors focus on how differentiation applies to various forms of assessment--pre-assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessment--and to grading and report cards. Readers learn how differentiation can

Throughout, Tomlinson and Moon emphasize the importance of maintaining a consistent focus on the essential knowledge, understandings, and skills that all students must acquire, no matter what their starting point.

Detailed scenarios illustrate how assessment differentiation can occur in three realms (student readiness, interest, and learning style or preference) and how it can improve assessment validity and reliability and decrease errors and teacher bias.

Grounded in research and the authors' teaching experience, Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom outlines a common-sense approach that is both thoughtful and practical, and that empowers teachers and students to discover, strive for, and achieve their true potential.

Factoid Attack: Galaxy at risk! Intelligent life in short supply!
In 1961, Astronomer Frank Drake estimated the number of probable intelligent civilizations inhabiting our galaxy. Using conservative numbers, that estimate came to 10,000. Unfortunately, we are not included in that total.
Factoid Attack: Colorblind bulls hate all matadors equally!
The color of a matador's cape, or muleta, is traditionally red, which is widely believed to irritate the bull. In reality, bulls are colorblind, so it is irrelevant what color cape a matador uses to antagonize them. Shot in the dark, but maybe it's the being stabbed with swords bit that pisses them off.
Forget Fringe, Warehouse 13, and The X-Files. In this book, you'll find more weird and wacko truths than in all those combined. From golden poison dart frogs with enough venom to kill ten grown humans to cockroaches that can survive radiation 15 times stronger than what kills people, scary and strange just got scarier--and stranger!

Not long ago, same-sex couples had to jump through endless hoops to make their relationships even close to legal. Happily, those days are over. But here's the rub: many gay and lesbian couples, accustomed to living off-grid, are so thrilled to have the benefits of marriage that they jump into it without fully considering the consequences.

In Before I Do, leading gay rights attorney Elizabeth F. Schwartz spells out the range of practical considerations any couple should address before tying the knot. She explains the rights married couples have--and those they do not. With cameos from some of the most prominent LGBTQ+ professionals, Schwartz explores all of the implications of marriage from name changes and getting a license to taxes, insurance, Social Security, and much more.

Chapters on estate planning, pre- and post-nuptial agreements, and organizing finances make Before I Do a crucial handbook for anyone considering marriage--because, as Schwartz explains, just because you can get married does not mean you should.

"During my thirty years of covering the gay beat for the Miami Herald, never did I imagine the need for a marriage guide for LGBT couples. Yet today nothing is more urgent. Before I Do guides all couples, gay and otherwise, about the responsibilities of marriage. Ignore it at your peril." --Steve Rothaus, The Miami Herald

"Essays are restless literature, trying to find out how things fit together, how we can think about two things at once, how the personal and the public can inform each other, how two overtly dissimilar things share a secret kinship," contends Rebecca Solnit in her introduction. From lost languages and extinct species to life-affirming cosmologies and literary myths that offer cold comfort, the personal and the public collide in The Best American Essays 2019. This searching, necessary collection grapples with what has preoccupied us in the past year--sexual politics, race, violence, invasive technologies--and yet, in reading for the book, Solnit also found "how discovery can be a deep pleasure."
The Best American Essays 2019 includes Michelle Alexander, Jabari Asim, Alexander Chee, Masha Gessen, Jean Guerrero, Elizabeth Kolbert, Terese Marie Mailhot, Jia Tolentino, and others.

Wells Central is just one of numerous schools that attribute their success to Ardith Davis Cole's Better Answers process. Since 2002, her book Better Answers has offered teachers and school districts a powerful alternative to "test-prep" workbooks. It presents a dramatically different instructional model that helps students construct thoughtful test responses, but it also prepares them for any task requiring thorough, cogent answers to questions and prompts -- both in and out of school.

Now, with students tested more frequently than ever, and with teachers increasingly concerned about incorporating substantive test-taking skills into children's learning, Ardith Cole responds with a new updated and expanded edition of Better Answers. Informed by Ardith's ongoing work in classrooms where students struggle over constructed-response tasks, the new edition makes the Better Answers "sandwich" even easier to implement. The book has also been significantly reorganized, as well as expanded to include two new chapters, "Understanding the Prompt" and "What to do When." Also included is a resource-packed CD-ROM that contains everything teachers need to support their lessons and is a great tool for staff development:

The Better Answers process is easy to grasp and uses a gradual-release instructional process that begins with teacher modeling, invites increasing amounts of student participation, and eventually moves students into independent response writing. The book clearly explains each element of the process and provides helpful activities, authentic classroom vignettes, and tips on how to handle typical stumbling blocks along the way.

This book traces the development of the corset from ancient to modern times, paying particular attention to its popular resurgence as an outer garment from the late 20th century to the present day.

The author, Velda Lauder, is one of the most celebrated corset designers of our times. Here, she combines extensive reference material alongside a personal journey through the evolution of the corset.

Velda's enthusiasm and fascination with her subject make her ideally qualified to write about the corset from the viewpoint of an industry insider who has devoted the last 15 years to celebrating the female form through tailoring and corsetry techniques. This is her journey in her own words.