In 1960, at the age of twenty-seven, the author, Sidney B. Silverman, started his own law practice. He began by tackling corporate giants and never stopped until he retired in 2001. He was an aggressive, street-smart trial lawyer. Upon his retirement, Silverman enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University. Concentrating in philosophy, he received a masters degree in 2007. He was as competitive in the classroom as he was in the courtroom. After graduating he looked for another challenge. He had played chess for many years. Now he wanted to play in tournaments and become a chess master. Although he tried hard to become an expert chess player, he failed. A Happy Life chronicles Silvermans adventures, before, during and after his long and successful career. What pieces of wisdom can he share that will help readers to find their best, most successful retirement years? Read on.

After retiring from a successful law practice, Silverman enrolled in graduate school and at age 74 received a master's degree.

The goal of this book is to encourage educators and researchers to understand the complexities of adolescent gang members' lives in order to rethink their assumptions about these students in school. The particular objective is to situate four gang members as literate, caring students from loving families whose identities and literacy keep them on the margins of school. The research described in this book suggests that advocacy is a particularly effective form of critical ethnography. Smith and Whitmore argue that until schools, as communities of practice, enable children and adolescents to retain identities from the communities in which they are full community members, frightening numbers of students are destined to fail. The stories of four Mexican American male adolescents, who were active members of a gang and Smith's students in an alternative high school program, portray the complicated, multiple worlds in which these boys live. As sons and teenage parents they live in a family community; as CRIP members they live in a gang community; as "at risk" students, drop-outs, and graduates they live in a school community, and as a result of their illegal activities they live in the juvenile court community. The authors theorize about the boys' literacy in each of their communities. Literacy is viewed as ideological, related to power, and embedded in a sociocultural context. Vivid examples of conversation, art, tagging, rap, poetry, and other language and literacy events bring the narratives to life in figures and photographs in all the chapters. Readers will find this book engaging and readable, yet thought provoking and challenging. Audiences for Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School, and Juvenile Court Communities include education researchers, professionals, and students in the areas of middle/high school education, at-risk adolescent psychology, and alternative community programs--specifically those interested in literacy education, sociocultural theory, and popular culture.

Understanding the Whole Student presents a holistic approach to multicultural educational issues by viewing them in terms of the student as a physical, psychosocial, cognitive, ethical, and spiritual being. Conversely, these levels of a student's being cannot be seen apart from the student's cultural identities. This unique book demonstrates that, in a pluralistic democracy, good teaching and deep learning must be multicultural and must look at the student as a whole being, not just as a future worker in a transnational corporate economy as is currently the case with both neo-liberal and neo-conservative programs for 'reform.' The authors contend that good education is, and must be, multicultural in order to gain a deeper perspective on issues under analysis in the classroom through the sharing and negotiating of many different cultural perspectives.

"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--