Education

In 2006, psychologist Carol S. Dweck, PhD, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, released the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, as a layperson’s guide to her decades of academic research. Initially interested in areas of motivation, personality, and development, the author gravitated toward research in cognitive motivation theory. She eventually discovered that the concepts of “fixed” and “growth” mindsets explain what motivates some people to embrace challenges and... Read Mindset Summary

Moon Over Manifest is a 2010 novel by author Claire Vanderpool. It relates the story of 12-year-old Abilene Tucker, a drifting girl in search of her father, a home, and a sense of belonging. When the novel starts, her father, Gideon Tucker, has just sent Abilene to the Kansas town of Manifest, claiming that he can’t take her to Iowa, where he is allegedly taking a railroad job. It is 1936, and the Great Depression... Read Moon Over Manifest Summary

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a children’s science fiction novel written in 1971 by Robert C. O’Brien. It tells the story of a field mouse whose son becomes ill as moving day approaches, so she enlists the help of a group of highly intelligent experimental rats for help. Robert C. O’Brien was inspired to write the Rats of NIMH after a visit to the National Institute of Mental Health’s experimental rat compound... Read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Summary

... Read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle Summary

... Read Mr. Terupt Falls Again Summary

... Read Muggie Maggie Summary

My Fair Lady, a musical by Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music), opened on Broadway to tremendous critical and popular success in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews as Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. Adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s popular play Pygmalion (1914) and inspired by the Greek myth of “Pygmalion and Galatea,” the musical takes place in early-20th-century London, satirizing issues of class hierarchies, gender disparity, and how language... Read My Fair Lady Summary

... Read My Name Is Not Easy Summary

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science is a nonfiction book by Charles Wheelan published in 2002. The author holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and is a senior lecturer and policy fellow at Dartmouth College. Previously, he was a correspondent for the magazine The Economist. He has written a number of other books, including Naked Statistics and Naked Money. This study guide refers to the 2019 third edition of Naked Economics.SummaryNaked Economics is... Read Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science Summary

... Read Necessary Trouble Summary

Nightjohn is a young adult historical fiction novel written by Gary Paulsen. The story is told from the perspective of a young slave girl, as she faces the cruelty of life as a slave and learns to read and write. It was published in 1993 and adapted into a Disney Channel TV film of the same name in 1996. The idea for the novel was born when Paulsen began to research Sally Hemings, a slave... Read Nightjohn Summary

Florence Nightingale was an English nurse commonly known as the founder of modern nursing practices. Born in Italy, she became an experienced nurse and formed many of her opinions while serving in the Crimean War, enrolling in nursing school at age 24 in Germany. She penned Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What it Is Not in 1859, just a few years after serving in the war, and the work was first published in... Read Notes on Nursing Summary

Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel written by the British author W. Somerset Maugham. The novel follows the maturation of a young man named Philip Carey as he grows up in England at the very end of the 19th century. The novel incorporates elements of both realism and modernism and has been interpreted as having some autobiographical inspiration drawn from Maugham’s own life. By describing events from Philip’s life, Maugham develops themes related to... Read Of Human Bondage Summary

... Read Omar Rising Summary

On Beauty by the celebrated British author Zadie Smith was published in 2005. On Beauty was shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction. Smith is known for writing novels and essays that analyze the intersections of identity in the contemporary world with nuance, clarity, and empathy. She is also known to be influenced by the classic English author E.M. Forster. On Beauty is loosely based on Forster’s masterpiece... Read On Beauty Summary

One! Hundred! Demons! is a semi-autobiographical genre-defying graphic novel by American cartoonist and pedagogue, Lynda Barry. Over the course of her career as a prominent cartoonist with nationally syndicated comic strips, published collections, and illustrated novels, Barry has received many national and state-wide awards for her work, including two Eisner awards and MacArthur Genius Grant.Originally published serially in Salon magazine, the collected cartoon chapters were collected and published by Sasquatch Books in 2002, and later... Read One! Hundred! Demons! Summary

... Read One Native Life Summary

... Read Open Summary

The nonfiction book Outliers: The Story of Success is Malcolm Gladwell’s third book, published in 2008. Gladwell is a prolific writer for the New Yorker, where he has been on staff since 1996. His writing often incorporates research from the social sciences, as in Outliers, in which he makes the case that the way we understand and portray success is wrong. Before joining the staff of the New Yorker, Gladwell was a reporter for the... Read Outliers Summary

... Read Out of Darkness Summary