Dear Paulo: Letters from Those Who Dare Teach is a heartfelt response from teachers, academics, and community workers to the work of the internationally renowned educator and author Paulo Freire. From newly minted teachers terrified of facing their first day in the classroom to seasoned academics whose work has largely been inspired by Freire, this collection, accompanied by photographs of Freire with some of the letter writers, is both a loving memorial and a call to action to work for social justice, praxis, and democracy, ideals envisioned and brilliantly articulated by Paulo.

A young artist in Mussolini's Italy must work for the propaganda machine if he wants to continue to paint. His obsession with his muse Mathild drives him to make any sacrifice. But his adoration for her forces him into new and dangerous circles. The art world of 1940s Rome is beguiling and glamorous but threaded deep within is a frightening world where no-one should be trusted and it is very easy to disappear without a trace.

Set amidst the turbulence of WW1, Mary Wood’s evocative historical saga The Abandoned Daughter follows Ella, a voluntary nurse tormented by soldiers' cries and the wound of a shattered trust. As her friendships teeter, exacerbated by the strains of war, Ella's isolation deepens. Within the confines of a French military hospital, she finds companionship in Connie and Paddy, and comfort in the arms of a French officer, Paulo. As war rages around them, could Paulo be Ella's refuge? With the end of the war on the horizon, surely things have to get better? Ella grew up not knowing her real family but a clue leads her in their direction. What did happen to Ella’s parents, and why is she so desperate to find out? The second book in The Girls Who Went To War series, The Abandoned Daughter takes you on an emotional roller-coaster of love, deception, and the relentless pursuit of truth amidst war's chaos.

Changing Lives recounts the experiences of a dozen men on probation in Massachusetts who took classes for three months to read and talk about great works of literature. The men explored the writings of Malcolm X, Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, amongst others. In these writings the men discovered many issues relating to their own lives, such as substance abuse, family breakdown, poverty and racism. The lessons create a safe space for reflection and earnest conversation, in which the students no longer have to bluff or be cool, guarded, or evasive. And because the classroom puts them on equal footing with authority figures - teachers, probation officers and even judges - a new social awareness begins to emerge. Changing Lives shows how reawakening moral consciousness and a fresh commitment to society is essential if probationers are not to cycle endlessly through the limbo of street life and jail time.

Fueled largely by significant increases in the Latino population, the racial, ethnic, and linguistic texture of the United States is changing rapidly. Nowhere is this 'Latinisation' of America more evident than in schools. The dramatic population growth among Latinos in the United States has not been accompanied by gains in academic achievement. Estimates suggest that approximately half of Latino students fail to complete high school, and few enroll in and complete college. The Latinization of U.S. Schools centres on the voices of Latino youth. It examines how the students themselves make meaning of the policies and practices within schools. The student voices expose an inequitable opportunity structure that results in depressed academic performance for many Latino youth. Each chapter concludes with empirically based recommendations for educators seeking to improve their practice with Latino youth, stemming from a multiyear participatory action research project conducted by Irizarry and the student contributors to the text.

"A gem of a book. Its topics are timely and provocative for cultural studies, sociology, English, literary theory, and education classes. The authors are brilliant thinkers and clear, penetrating writers." -Peter McLaren, UCLA, author of Capitalists and Conquerors: A Critical Pedagogy Against Empire Class in Culture demonstrates the power of moving beyond cultural politics to a deeper class critique of contemporary life. Making a persuasive case for class as the material logic of culture, the book is written in a double register of short critiques of life practices-from food and education to race, stem-cell research, and abortion-as well as sustained critiques of such theoretical discourses as ideology, consumption, globalization, and 9/11. Surpassing the orthodoxies of cultural studies, Class in Culture makes surprising connections among seemingly unrelated cultural events and practices and offers a groundbreaking and complex understanding of the contemporary world.

This book explores the freedom to use the language resources we have at our disposal to learn to our fullest, to engage in inquiry about learning and teaching, and to go beyond the surface in topics of schooling and education. Within a particular school context, the author explores how these freedoms came into being, how they took shape, and what they meant for the individuals involved. She shows that the individual and social freedoms in which the teacher and the learner operate within schools are important measures and outcomes of intellectual development. In connecting language, culture, learning, and intellectual development as freedoms in her own life, the author explores a new way of seeing the role of multiple languages in education and the freedom to learn.