Free Republic

Need recommendations for a Reading List for a Liberal to learn about Conservative values and positions on issues.

Nope, sorry, I don’t believe it. Barack Obama’s choice of holiday reading has been concocted by a spin-doctor. I mean, look at it: a heavyweight (and brilliant) biography of John Adams by David McCullough is set off by a goody-goody eco-book and three novels. All bases covered, then: brainy, but still a regular guy. Yeah, right. It’s a pity, because when Obama gave his all-time favourite reading list during the campaign, it rang true. He even admitted to being inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedies (it would have been slightly creepy if a man of his intelligence didn’t revere our national poet...

(CNN) — The White House has said President Obama plans to play golf and spend time with his family during his week away from Washington. But it appears the president also wants to get some reading in: a lot of it. White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters Monday Obama's vacation reading list comprises five books, including tomes from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and historian David McCullough.

Well, it's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread. I do this thread to gauge what other Freepers are reading. As all of you know, Freepers are probably some of the more well-read individuals on the Internet and I'm always curious as to what we're reading. It can be anything, a classic work of fiction, a NY Times bestseller, a technical journal, a trashy pulp novel...in short anything. Please do not ruin this thread by replying "I'm reading this thread". It become un-funny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm about halfway thru "The Horrid Pit:...

In light of a series of blunders, errors, mistakes and downright lies about history, one has to wonder about Barack Obama's grasp of the historical narrative that should inform many of his decisions as leader of the free world. He doesn't seem to have that information.An early indication is the initial selection of location for a speech in Germany of the Brandenburg Gate which Angela Merkel found odd, her spokesman saying that she has "little sympathy for the Brandenburg Gate being used for electioneering and has expressed her doubts about the idea."............In June, CNN estimated Obama's reading pace to be...

Much to my disconcertment, last night (Wednesday night), a local dowager had complained about my "bad manners" of reading while dining with nine other people; not to me--she had complained to friends of mine. I was reading the Encyclopedia Americana, specifically the entries about the silkworm industry in France during the 1840s, while everybody else was yik-yakking away. Of course, there's a practical matter here; too many people, too much light and movement, too much color, which to me is "noise," and so I can't keep track of what's being said, or what I think's being said. What is one...

Despite unprecedented efforts to improve minority achievement in the past decade, the gap between black and white students remains frustratingly wide, according to an Education Department report released Tuesday. There is good news in the report: Reading and math scores are improving for black students in public schools across the country. But because white students are also improving, the disparity between blacks and whites has lessened only slightly. On average, the gap narrowed by about seven points from 1992 to 2007, so that black students scored about 28 points behind white students on a 500-point scale. The divide between minority...

I haven't seen a good summer reading thread, so I thought I'd start one. What books have you read so far this summer, what are you currently reading, and what is in your book stack? I just started reading The Doomsday Key by James Rollins. So far it has an interesting premise, genetically altered foods, but I am only about 1/8 of the way through. I will probably read Glenn Beck's Common Sense and maybe Dred Scott's Revenge by Judge Napolitano. I love hearing what everyone else is reading!

The InsideCatholic Summer Reading List 2009 Summer is in full wilt, and that means it's time for the InsideCatholic Summer Reading List. We've asked bloggers, staff, and writers to suggest a few titles they've recently enjoyed. They've obliged. Have a look at the list -- you'll find something for every interest -- and then add your own recommendations in the Comments section below.

One of the more thought-provoking columns I make sure I read every week is called Spiritual Wealth. It's written by my good friend Alex Green, who is Investment Director of the Oxford Club. Alex gave me permission to share one of his columns with you, with the request that I also tell you about his new book. I'm delighted to do both. See the end of today's column for details on how you can receive his column every week and learn about The Secret of Shelter Island, his inspiring and informative new book. According to A.C. Nielson Co., the average...

Here’s a small but revealing sliver of news concerning our cool, hard-to-fathom president: According to his closest advisor, David Axelrod, Barack Obama really likes the novel he’s reading right now. In fact, he likes it “a lot.” The First Novel for the First Reader (revealed by David Leonhardt in The New York Times) is “Netherland,” by Joseph O’Neill — an Irishman schooled in Holland and Britain and now living in New York City. It’s a much-praised, elegantly written, alternately inspiring, and grim portrait of present-day Gotham. O’Neill sees New York as an anything-goes metropolis, teeming with immigrants of color who...

Do my fellow iPhone owners have the secret for happy FR reading while out and about? I would like some kind of formatting secret or app that would allow me to see the entire column of text at a comfortable size on Free Republic in my view at once so as not to necessitate scrolling left and right to see the complete lines. Please help if you can.

WASHINGTON, April 9, 2009 – Anyone from the Saturday morning cartoon generation knows that “reading is fundamental.” Now, young military children will get their own version of that message through Reach Out and Read’s new military pilot program. Air Force Capt. (Dr.) Minh-Thu Le interacts with her patient, 8-month-old Alexander, as he performs the common newborn ritual of “mouthing the book.” Alexander’s parents, Air Force 1st Lt. Alice L. Shepard and her husband, Steven, happily look on at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. U.S. Air Force photo by James Spellman Jr.  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Through the...

OK everyone, it's time for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now" survey. I do this to gauge what Freepers are reading these days. Amongst many Internet sites, I find Freepers to be some of the most well-read. It can be anything...an old classic, a trashy pulp novel, a technical journal, etc. Please do not defile this thread by replying "I'm reading this post". It became extraordinarily un-funny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm two pages into "Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanmo Bay" by Gordon Cucullu. It looks to be quite interesting. Barack Obama...

Amazon.com on Monday began shipping its Kindle 2 e-book reader a day earlier than originally planned. Amazon said Monday that Kindle 2, introduced two weeks ago for preordering, is already the number-one seller on its Electronics Web site. Amazon unveiled the second version of the Kindle on Feb. 6 at an event in New York that featured Amazon Chairman, CEO and founder Jeff Bezos and best-selling fiction writer Stephen King, who wrote a novella called "Ur" exclusively for the Kindle to mark the launch. The first version of the Kindle had been out of stock since November, its sales bolstered...

Reading Between the Studies by: Bethany Stotts, February 11, 2009 David Kipen, representing the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), travelled to this year’s Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention in San Francisco to promote The Big Read, a NEA program which combats declining reading habits by enlisting members of the community to read a piece of literature simultaneously. Previous studies, including the NEA’s “To Read or Not to Read?,” have shown rates of pleasure reading dropping among American citizens. According to the 2007 NEA study • 57% of all adults read a book “not required for work or school” in...

WASHINGTON — In college, as he was getting involved in protests against the apartheid government in South Africa, Barack Obama noticed, he has written, “that people had begun to listen to my opinions.” Words, the young Mr. Obama realized, had the power “to transform”: “with the right words everything could change -— South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world.”

Immediately after the Democratic National Convention in Colorado, the Boston Globe published a letter from David Alinsky. He boasted about how Barack Obama had made effective use of his training in the methods of David's late father, the famous Chicago radical, Saul Alinsky. David Alinsky gloated: "I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday."

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, Jan. 29, 2009 – A program in Iraq is helping deployed soldiers bond with their children back home through books. Army Sgt. 1st Class James Morton records himself reading a book to his daughter, Emily, at Camp Victory, Iraq, Jan. 27, 2009. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Frank Vaughn  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. United Through Reading, a nonprofit organization, gives deployed soldiers an opportunity to record themselves reading stories on a DVD that is shipped home for their children to watch. The program, available worldwide for deployed units, is coordinated here by Army Capt....

In a letter recently submitted to Education Week CITATION Ste09 \l 1033 (Stephen Krashen, 2009) Stephen Krashen, Professor Emeritus, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, draws attention to the Reading First final impact study which showed that children following an intensive decoding-based curriculum do well on tests of decoding but not on measures of reading comprehension when compared with regular students. He reminds readers that the National Reading Panel, the foundation for Reading First, came up with similar results. From these two studies, Dr. Krashen draws the following conclusion. A high level of proficiency in decoding is not...

A solution for the reading gap between black and white children was discovered four decades ago. So, why aren't we taking advantage of it?One does not expect to see New York's school Chancellor Joel Klein on the same stage as Reverend Al Sharpton. Klein is infamous for his emphasis on test scores and shutting down schools that fail to measure up. Not so long ago, Sharpton was in the barricades with Russell Simmons protesting mayor Michael Bloomberg and Klein's plan to cut New York City's education budget. Yet these days the two are teaming up for the Education Equality Project,...

By KARL ROVE With only five days left, my lead is insurmountable. The competition can't catch up. And for the third year in a row, I'll triumph. In second place will be the president of the United States. Our contest is not about sports or politics. It's about books. It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval...

LONDON – British police charged a 43-year-old man Thursday with plotting an act of terrorism and having two improvised explosive devices, chemicals, timers, and a Nazi-themed handbook. Neil Christopher Lewington was first arrested last week after police discovered a suspected explosive device when they searched him at a railway station in Lowestoft, a coastal city in eastern England. --snip-- Scotland Yard said in a statement that Lewington carried two improvised explosive devices to Lowestoft from Reading, a city near London where he lives, on Oct. 30. --snip-- The police statement said Lewington had four containers of weed killer, seven timers,...

Judging a Generation Bethany Stotts, October 20, 2008 Is the Millennial Generation just plain dumb? That’s the premise put forward by Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. (The book is sub-subtitled, Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30, a phrase Bauerlein says makes his wife wince). If one looks at this year’s Common Core history and literature results, many readers might understand why older generations might agree with Bauerlein. According to Common Core, out of 12,000 17-year-olds surveyed, • 43% of knew that “The Civil War...

Autumn is coming on and it feels like Halloween in southwest Missouri. My wife and I were thinking of some seasonal reading. So what do YOU recommend? Scare me!

During his six years as New York’s schools chancellor, Joel Klein has spent many a Sunday morning speaking from the pulpit of a black church about his efforts to reform the public school system and to help African-American kids get a better education. “We have to make education the civil rights issue of our time,” Klein asserted in a speech for Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in Memphis this year. “In America today, we have a racial achievement gap that is the shame of this great nation, and until we get right on education, we are not going to be...

As a voracious reader, the genre does not matter as much as the story’s ability to engage and interest me, to help me view things from a different perspective and learn a bit along the way. As a child, I read books everywhere: school, home, church, and the car. During college, there was enough academic work -- and extracurricular activities -- to keep me busy, with little time for pleasure reading. In recent years I have begun to read more. As the mother of two young children, I have tried to pass this love of reading to them. We read...

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, July 28, 2008 – Iraq is targeting more than 6 million illiterate adults through a national literacy campaign. Iraqi policemen submit applications for modified security badges, May 22, 2007, in Salman Pak, Iraq. Literacy is a requirement for members of the Iraqi security forces. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Shawn Weismiller  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates that more than 60 percent of the adult population in Iraq cannot read or write. This was not always the case, U.N. officials said. At one time, Iraq...

...Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others...

RAMADI — A middle-aged Iraqi woman, widowed and a mother of two young children, walks into a cream-colored concrete classroom filled with women of all ages. The woman, draped in a black abaya, sits down in a wooden desk-chair and gazes at the instructor with a look of determination and conviction. She knows, along with the other women in the classroom, she must learn to read and write if she is going to continue to support and properly care for her two children and has taken the initial steps in bettering her family and herself. Women’s Literacy Program classes are...

Can't resist it - I was raised on American culture and am all the happier for it. It formed me culturally and made me what I am. Since I come into contact with Americans professionally on a frequent basis, it's always a great pleasure to have 'common ground', so to speak. Today I started reading 'Moby-Dick' for the fifth time. And believe me, I do have an exceptional memory. But this book is so rich that you can spend a lifetime with it and still miss out on some things. The pretty pragmatic, relativistic Ishmael embarks on a boat trip...

HAWIJAH — In the month which marked the birth of the United States of America and the liberation of other nations, July 5, will be remembered in Hawijah, Iraq, as the day its country’s deputy minister of education Nehad Al-Juburi and the prime minister’s education advisor Zaid Chaid paid a historic visit to bring national attention to a pilot literacy program underway here. Five-hundred SoI members in four of the sub-districts of Hawijah, Iraq - Zaab, Abassi, Riyadh and Hawijah city - are currently participating in this program, which teaches students up to a 3rd to 4th grade reading...

OK everyone, it's time for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread. I like finding out what Freepers are reading lately. It can be anything...a technical journal, a trashy pulp novel, an old classic...in short, anything! Please do not defile this thread by posting "I'm Reading This Thread". It became very unfunny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm close to finishing "The Last Valley" by Martin Windrow. It's about the siege/battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Well, what are you reading now?!

I was talking to a friend the other day who teaches at an elementary school and has a student whom I shall name Shakir. Shakir is ten, and he's barely literate. My friend's class is not a large one; she has five to eight students. She also has a teaching assistant, and between them, the kids receive a lot of personal, one-to-one attention. Nevertheless, Shakir still can't read. The why of this phenomenon is quite important; you see, there are lots of Shakirs in the black community. For he is one of many kids flunking his way through the educational system,...

Reading and math scores for New York students in grades three through eight showed extraordinary gains across the state since last year, with particularly striking leaps in the large urban areas, including New York City. The gains were apparent for nearly every grade tested in both subjects, in some cases with double-digit increases in the percentage of students performing at grade level or above, according to the scores on the annual statewide exams released by education officials on Monday. The improvements were so substantial that several education experts expressed skepticism, noting that large gains were posted even by cities like...

FReeps have such great taste! So, I thought I would put this out there. One of my favorite things to do during the summer months is read to my children before they go to sleep. Actually, I do this year round, but particularly enjoy reading to them during the summer months. At times we get carried away with some of the great children’s lit available ~ with Mom finally coming up tho the bedrooms at 10:30 to shut down the evening's activities. At which point we may have to get real quiet and me straining my eyes. It’s great to...

Employers, the military and intelligence services may soon be using computerised mind-reading techniques and there is a need for a public debate about "mental privacy," a leading neuroscientist said yesterday. At the Cheltenham Science Festival, backed by The Daily Telegraph, Prof Geraint Rees of University College London said that, although hospital patients and experimental volunteers are protected, there is a need for debate about, for example, whether employers could use mind reading methods to decode brain activity to screen job applicants. Another possibility raised by studies of how the brain encodes memories and other information is that these methods could...

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas, May 8, 2008 – Wilford Hall Medical Center here has launched a new program emphasizing the importance of literacy to parents and children alike. Reach Out and Read, a national nonprofit organization, uses several methods to promote early literacy as part of routine pediatric care, including having volunteers reading aloud in pediatric waiting rooms. Its main approach, though, is to promote literacy during well-baby or well-child visits for children from ages 6 months through 4 years. Pediatric providers trained in the Reach Out and Read model offer age-appropriate tips to emphasize to parents and...

Reading, PA - An impromptu celebration of the Dominican Republic’s independence day involving as many as 1,500 students outside Reading High School erupted in violence Wednesday afternoon. A city police captain was injured and at least a half-dozen students were arrested. An unruly crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 high school students blocked streets around the school and threw rocks and bottles at police when officers tried to disperse them, authorities said. Deputy Police Chief Mark E. Talbot Sr. said the violent mob was unprecedented and created one of the scariest situations he’s had in his career in Reading.

Looking for FR book recommendations.

What will happen to reading and writing in our time? Could the doomsayers be right? Computers, they maintain, are destroying literacy. The signs -- students' declining reading scores, the drop in leisure reading to just minutes a week, the fact that half the adult population reads no books in a year -- are all pointing to the day when a literate American culture becomes a distant memory. By contract, optimists foresee the Internet ushering in a new, vibrant participatory culture of words. Will they carry the day? Maybe neither. Let me suggest a third possibility: Literacy -- or an ensemble...

"As a school librarian, I wind up reading all sorts of damning reports on students' lack of reading skills. The latest dire news came from the National Endowment for the Arts' recent "To Read or Not to Read" study, which warned that "less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier." High school students are faring even worse: Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of "non-readers" has doubled over a 20-year period, from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004. This multitasking generation, we're led to believe, can't focus on any item for...

In her recent biography of Condoleezza Rice, Elisabeth Bumiller tells us that Condi, a former professor and provost at Stanford University, has a curious relationship to books — curious at least for an academic. As she was growing up, Rice relates, her parents piled books up on her nightstand and the result was a distaste for reading. “She stopped reading for pleasure, and does not to this day,” Bumiller writes. This was the strangest fact of many curious nuggets that can be gleaned from Bumiller’s work. And it left me wondering about modernity’s relationship with books. Many of the most...

It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" inquiry. I'm always curious as to what Freepers are reading and what they're recommending to others. It can be anything...a classic novel, a scientific journal, a magazine, a cheap pulp novel...anything. Do not deface this thread with a smart-ass answer like "I'm Reading this Thread". It became very un-original a long time ago. I'll start. I'm reading "The Great Deluge: Hurrican Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast" by Douglas Brinkley. This is a full account of Katrina striking the Gulf Coast. The book starts 48 hours before...

It was hard not to notice that Kindle was born unto us about the same moment the National Endowment for the Arts released a report on reading's sad lot in our time. Amid much other horrifying data, it revealed that the average 15- to 24-year-old spends seven minutes daily on "voluntary" reading. Cheerfully, this number rises to 10 minutes on weekends. An earlier, equally grim NEA report, "Reading at Risk," announced the collapse of interest in reading literature -- basically books. This newer study widened the definition of "reading" to include magazines, newspapers and online leisure. No matter. Even if...

In his preface to the new 99-page report Dana Gioia, chairman of the endowment, described the data as “simple, consistent and alarming.” Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading...

..One thing is certain: Americans—of either gender—are reading fewer books today than in the past. A poll released last month by The Associated Press and Ipsos, a market-research firm, found that the typical American read only four books last year, and one in four adults read no books at all. A National Endowment for the Arts report found that only 57 percent of Americans had read a book in 2002 a four percentage-point drop in a decade. Book sales have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Among avid readers surveyed...

An angry parent has blasted the East Penn School District for requiring its students to read books he said are "full of filthy vulgarity." Richard Jones of Upper Milford confronted the school board Monday about some of the books on his 15-year-old son's 10th-grade summer reading list at Emmaus High School, saying they're trash. Following its standard practice, the board limited Jones to three minutes and didn't respond to his criticism during the meeting. But later, board President Ann Thompson said, "We listened carefully and it is being investigated carefully."

It is not surprising that when doctors examined people who had worked at a lead smelter for years, they found no lack of neurological problems associated with lead. But not every worker was affected equally, a new study says, especially when it came to those who were good readers. While those workers had the same sorts of motor skill losses as their colleagues, they had retained much more of their thinking skills. People who are good readers, generally a sign of better education, have been found in earlier studies to have better health. The presumption has been that this is...

Richmond, Virginia In a classroom at Ginter Park Elementary School, a century-old brick schoolhouse on a dreary, zoned-commercial truck route that bisects a largely African-American neighborhood in Richmond, a third-grade teacher, Laverne Johnson, is doing something that flies in the face of more than three decades of the most advanced pedagogical principles taught at America's top-rated education schools. Seated on a chair in a corner of her classroom surrounded by a dozen youngsters sitting cross-legged on the floor at her feet, Johnson is teaching reading--as just plain reading. Two and a half hours every morning, systematically going over such basics...