A student standing on a wall threatening to moon the school, while simultaneously flipping the bird to approaching police officers. A boy who quotes verbatim "R" rated films while running around the room half-naked. Back-and-forth banter where kids insult each other (on purpose) for the sake of memorizing good "comebacks". A loner whose mom locked him out of the house to teach him a lesson, and his attempt to jump off a roof to teach her one. On that first, innocent, and fateful day, as he stepped into the mire of public education, these were not the stories that Derek Stooks imagined he would eventually tell. What he discovered was that it was the student's words, actions, tears and yes, their craziness that would ultimately impact his life in profound ways. Take a front row seat on this hilarious journey through the beginnings of a career in Special Education, where the stories are too unbelievable to be anything but true. Then join him as he makes the transition into teaching General Education, learning the "ups and downs" of dealing with a system in which the cards are inevitably stacked against you.

Germany’s overseas colonial empire was relatively short lived, lasting from 1884 to 1918. During this period, dramatically different policies were enacted in the colonies: in Southwest Africa, German troops carried out a brutal slaughter of the Herero people; in Samoa, authorities pursued a paternalistic defense of native culture; in Qingdao, China, policy veered between harsh racism and cultural exchange. Why did the same colonizing power act in such differing ways? In The Devil’s Handwriting, George Steinmetz tackles this question through a brilliant cross-cultural analysis of German colonialism, leading to a new conceptualization of the colonial state and postcolonial theory. Steinmetz uncovers the roots of colonial behavior in precolonial European ethnographies, where the Hereros were portrayed as cruel and inhuman, the Samoans were idealized as “noble savages,” and depictions of Chinese culture were mixed. The effects of status competition among colonial officials, colonizers’ identification with their subjects, and the different strategies of cooperation and resistance offered by the colonized are also scrutinized in this deeply nuanced and ambitious comparative history.