Alexandre Najjar was eight when Lebanon erupted into a bloody and brutal conflict; he was twenty-three when the guns at last fell silent. After seven years of voluntary exile spent trying to escape the nightmare of civil war, he is now back amongst his family and friends, and the past is quickly catching up with him. As he reacquaints himself with his bullet-riddled city, Alexandre is haunted by vivid memories which he sets down with extraordinary candour and good humour. Sometimes nostalgic, often brutal and shocking, The School of War offers unforgettable insight into a child's experiences during times of conflict. 'A marvellously affecting memoir of the war in Lebanon: perfectly pitched and intensely evocative, and all the more powerful from being seen through the eyes of a child.' William Boyd Delicate and unforgettable' Elle Magazine One of the most talented writers of his generation' Le Monde

In an era defined by political polarization, both major U.S. parties have come to share a remarkably similar understanding of the education system as well as a set of punitive strategies for fixing it. Combining an intellectual history of social policy with a sweeping history of the educational system, Daniel S. Moak looks beyond the rise of neoliberalism to find the origin of today's education woes in Great Society reforms. In the wake of World War II, a coalition of thinkers gained dominance in U.S. policymaking. They identified educational opportunity as the ideal means of addressing racial and economic inequality by incorporating individuals into a free market economy. The passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965 secured an expansive federal commitment to this goal. However, when social problems failed to improve, the underlying logic led policymakers to hold schools responsible. Moak documents how a vision of education as a panacea for society's flaws led us to turn away from redistributive economic policies and down the path to market-based reforms, No Child Left Behind, mass school closures, teacher layoffs, and other policies that plague the public education system to this day.

Fort Leavenworth, where Roger J. Spiller taught the army?s finest for twenty-five years, is indeed a ?school of war.? There, among military professionals who had experienced war firsthand, Spiller honed his remarkable skills as an analyst and historian, scholar and teacher?skills that have made him one of the best-known and respected military historians of our day. This volume brings together Spiller?s original and thought-provoking explorations of wars big and small and armies glorified and ignored. For each of these essays?whether on urban warfare or the Vietnam syndrome, battlefield psychology or the making of military history, and underrated vs.øoverrated generals?Spiller revisits his topic and his thinking, bringing fresh insight and a new context to an incomparable body of work. In the School of War further reveals the complex relationship between past and present in an understanding of the nature of war.

Shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, Hannah Arendt quipped that "only in America could a crisis in education actually become a factor in politics." The Cold War battle for the American school - dramatized but not initiated by Sputnik - proved Arendt correct. The schools served as a battleground in the ideological conflicts of the 1950s. Beginning with the genealogy of progressive education, and ending with the formation of New Left and New Right thought, Education and the Cold War offers a fresh perspective on the postwar transformation in U.S. political culture by way of an examination of the educational history of that era.

"Teaching About the Wars breaks the curricular silence on the U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Even though the United States has been at war continuously since just after 9/11, sometimes it seems that our schools have forgotten. This collection of insightful articles and hands-on lessons shows that teachers have found ways to prompt their students to think critically about big issues. Here is the best writing from Rethinking Schools magazine on war and peace in the 21st century."--Publisher's website.

When your chance for getting into college and your date for the prom are all on the line... Sixteen-year-old Samantha Taylor is used to having things go her way. She's head cheerleader and has all the right friends and a steady stream of boyfriends. But when she tanks the SATs, her automatic assumptions about going to college don't appear to be so automatic anymore. She determines that her only hope for college admission is to win the election for student body president. Unfortunately, with her razor wit and acid tongue, she's better suited to dishing out insults than winning votes. When she brashly bets her classmate Logan that she can go two weeks without uttering a single insult, Samantha immediately realizes that she may have bitten off more than she can chew. And when her current boyfriend dumps her, less than three weeks before the prom, it couldn't be a worse time to be forced to keep her opinions to herself. Finding a new boyfriend will be a challenge now that Logan shadows her every move, hoping to catch her slipping back into her old ways. Samantha is determined to win the election and find a dream date for the prom, no matter what it takes. After all . . . all's fair in love and war (and high school!).