July 2007
Monthly Archive
Tue 31 Jul 2007
One boy. One dragon. A world of adventure.
When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself.
Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power. With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds.
Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? The fate of the Empire may rest in his hands.
Tags: eragon: the inheritance trilogy, book 1, christopher paolini, fiction, k-12 educators, kids, parents & family, science fiction & fantasy, students, young adults, dragon, fantasy, inheritance, today show, terry goodkind
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Tue 31 Jul 2007
Posted by Liz Lewis under
HistoryNo Comments
In the fall of 1846, the venerable Navajo warrior Narbona, greatest of his people’s chieftains, looked down upon the small town of Santa Fe, the stronghold of the Mexican settlers he had been fighting his whole long life. He had come to see if the rumors were true, if an army of blue-suited soldiers had swept in from the East and utterly defeated his ancestral enemies. As Narbona gazed down on the battlements and cannons of a mighty fort the invaders had built, he realized his foes had been vanquished. But what did the arrival of these “new men” portend for the Navajo?
Narbona could not have known that “The Army of the West”, in the midst of the longest march in American military history, was merely the vanguard of an inexorable tide fueled by a self-righteous ideology now known as “Manifest Destiny”. For 20 years the Navajo, elusive lords of a huge swath of mountainous desert and pasturelands, would ferociously resist the flood of soldiers and settlers who wished to change their ancient way of life - or destroy them.
Tags: blood and thunder: an epic of the american west, hampton sides, history, navajo, santa fe, manifest destiny, indians, narbona, mexicans, mexican war, canyon de chelly, invaders, cavalry, army of the west, manifest destiny, soldiers, settlers, 1800s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 19th century, east, west, american west, southwest, frontier, kit carson, federal troops
Mon 30 Jul 2007
Posted by Lady Jane under
FictionNo Comments
New York Times best-selling author Jodi Picoult is widely acclaimed for her keen insights into the hearts and minds of real people. Now she tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness.
Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age 13, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate, a life and a role that she has never challenged, until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister, and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.
My Sister’s Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child’s life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you? Once again, in My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult tackles a controversial real-life subject with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity.
Tags: my sister’s keeper, jodi picoult, fiction, family, love, leukemia, bone marrow transplant
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Mon 30 Jul 2007
What’s Your Religious Literacy IQ? Quick - can you:
Name the four Gospels?
Name a sacred text of Hinduism?
Name the holy book of Islam?
Name the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament?
List the Ten Commandments?
List the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism?
If you can’t, you’re not alone. We are a religiously illiterate nation, yet despite this lack of knowledge, politicians continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric whose meanings are missed or misinterpreted by the vast majority of Americans.
“We have a major civics education problem today,” says religion scholar Stephen Prothero. He makes the provocative case that to remedy this, we should return to teaching religion in the public schools. Alongside “reading, writing, and arithmetic”, religion ought to become the fourth “R” of American education, he says.
Many believe that America’s descent into religious illiteracy was the doing of activist judges and secularists hell-bent on banishing religion from the public square. Prothero reveals that this is a profound misunderstanding. “In one of the great ironies of American religious history,” says Prothero, “it was the nation’s most fervent people of faith who steered us down the road to religious illiteracy. Just how that happened is one of the stories this audio has to tell.”
Religious Literacy reveals what every American needs to know in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing this country today.
Tags: religious literacy, stephen prothero, nonfiction, religion & spirituality, education, religion, public schools, politics
Sun 29 Jul 2007
Buddy Bollen is a C-list movie mogul who made his fortune producing films of questionable artistic merit. When Buddy hires Sunny Randall to protect his rising star and girlfriend, Erin Flint, Sunny knows from the start that the prickly, spoiled beauty won’t make her job easy. And when Erin’s sister, Misty, is found dead in the lavish home they share with sugar daddy Bollen, there doesn’t seem to be a single lead worth pursuing.
But then Sunny meets Jesse Stone, chief of police in Paradise, Massachusetts, under whose jurisdiction the case falls. It immediately becomes clear that Jesse and Sunny have much in common. While searching for the killer, they learn an awful lot about each other, and themselves.
Tracking Misty’s murderer reveals a host of seedy complications behind Erin’s glamorous lifestyle as well as Buddy Bollen’s entertainment empire, made up of shady film deals and mobsters out for revenge. But in a world where there’s little difference between the good guys and the bad, exposing the killer could prove to be Sunny’s undoing.
Tags: blue screen, robert b. parker, mysteries & thrillers, murder, hollywood, jesse stone, sunny randall
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