Virginia Tech is America's Cursed College, home to horrifying events from hit-and-runs to students being shot in the woods; prison escapes to public self-mutilations; police officers being gunned down to public beheadings; and of course, the notorious mass shooting that killed 33 people. But why is Virginia Tech the most infamous university in the United States? What is the reason for Virginia Tech's many tragedies? Chuck Marsh has written the only book of its kind: a gripping and frightening account of the Hokie Horrors. The Many Deaths of Virginia Tech is a spellbinding chronicle -- an expose -- of an oversized American university locked in a death-struggle with itself -- or with unseen forces. This book takes the reader on a tour through the many crimes and calamities at Virginia Tech in the past decade: a no-holds-barred account of an out-of-control hunger for violence at an American university.

The world watched in horror in April 2007 when Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho went on a killing rampage that resulted in the deaths of thirty-two students and faculty members before he ended his own life. Former Virginia Tech English department chair and distinguished professor Lucinda Roy saw the tragedy unfold on the TV screen in her home and had a terrible realization. Cho was the student she had struggled to get to know–the loner who found speech torturous. After he had been formally asked to leave a poetry class in which he had shared incendiary work that seemed directed at his classmates and teacher, Roy began the difficult task of working one-on-one with him in a poetry tutorial. During those months, a year and a half before the massacre, Roy came to realize that Cho was more than just a disgruntled young adult experimenting with poetic license; he was, in her opinion, seriously depressed and in urgent need of intervention. But when Roy approached campus counseling as well as others in the university about Cho, she was repeatedly told that they could not intervene unless a student sought counseling voluntarily. Eventually, Roy’s efforts to persuade Cho to seek help worked. Unbelievably, on the three occasions he contacted the counseling center staff, he did not receive a comprehensive evaluation by them–a startling discovery Roy learned about after Cho’s death. More revelations were to follow. After responding to questions from the media and handing over information to law enforcement as instructed by Virginia Tech, Roy was shunned by the administration. Papers documenting Cho’s interactions with campus counseling were lost. The university was suddenly on the defensive. Was the university, in fact, partially responsible for the tragedy because of the bureaucratic red tape involved in obtaining assistance for students with mental illness, or was it just, like many colleges, woefully underfunded and therefore underequipped to respond to such cases? Who was Seung-Hui Cho? Was he fully protected under the constitutional right to freedom of speech, or did his writing and behavior present serious potential threats that should have resulted in immediate intervention? How can we balance students’ individual freedom with the need to protect the community? These are the questions that have haunted Roy since that terrible day. No Right to Remain Silent is one teacher’s cri de coeur–her dire warning that given the same situation today, two years later, the ending would be no less terrifying and no less tragic.

Driving is a daily routine for more than 200 million people in the U.S. alone, but it is far from a mundane task: Every time drivers hit the road, they face multiple risks. In their new book “Survive the Drive: A Guide to Keeping Everyone on the Road Alive,” authors Tom Dingus and Mindy Buchanan-King combine years of facts, figures, reports, research, results from the newest and largest driving study ever conducted, and personal anecdotes into the first driving guide of its kind to help drivers understand and handle their everyday risks. This book is meant for everyone to read – adult drivers, teen drivers, senior drivers, professional drivers, and motorcyclists.

Emerging social media and so-called Web 2.0 technologies will continue to have a great impact on the practice and application of the emergency management function in every public safety sector. Disasters 2.0: The Application of Social Media Systems for Modern Emergency Management prepares emergency managers and first responders to successfully apply social media principles in the operations, logistics, planning, finance, and administrative aspects of any given disaster. Using real-life examples of domestic and international disasters, the book reveals how social media has quickly become a powerful tool for both providing emergency instruction to the public in real time and allowing responding agencies to communicate among themselves in crisis. A definitive and comprehensive source, the book explores topics such as: Social media basics Citizen journalism Strategic implementation Safety and responsibility Monitoring and analytics Operational implementation Geolocation systems Crowdsourcing Public notification Mobile and other emerging technologies Each chapter begins with a list of objectives and includes a collection of case examples of social media use in past events. Practitioner profiles show real people implementing the technology for real solutions. Demonstrating how to effectively apply social media technology to the next crisis, this is a must-read book for those charged with disaster management and response.

Virginia Tech is America's Cursed College, home to horrifying events from hit-and-runs to students being shot in the woods; prison escapes to public self-mutilations; police officers being gunned down to public beheadings; and of course, the notorious mass shooting that killed 33 people. But why is Virginia Tech the most infamous university in the United States? What is behind Virginia Tech's many tragedies?Chuck Marsh has written the only book of its kind: a gripping and frightening account of the Hokie Horrors. The Many Deaths of Virginia Tech is a spellbinding chronicle -- an expose -- of an oversized American university locked in a death-struggle with itself -- or with unseen forces. This book takes the reader on a tour through the many crimes and calamities at Virginia Tech in the past decade: a no-holds-barred account of an out-of-control hunger for violence at an American university.This new, updated second edition discusses some of the criticisms of the first edition, as well as attempts to censor the book.

T. Marshall Hahn, Jr., became president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1962. By the time he left twelve years later, the school had become auniversity. No longer a small military school that emphasized agriculture and engineering for white male undergraduates, Virginia Technical Institute and State University had become a multiracial, coeducational research university with a thriving college of arts and sciences as well as burgeoning graduate programs.Bringing together the biography of a man and the history of an institution through a dozen years of transformation, Strother and Wellenstein discuss the school's tremendous growth in sheer numbers of faculty and students, the increased enrollment of female and non-white students, and the increased emphasis on intercollegiate athletics. From VPI to State University is the story of the transformation of public higher education in the United States -- especially in the South -- in the 1960s. Much of the book relies on the recollections of the people who -- as faculty, administrators, or other leaders -- experienced, even brought about, the changes chronicled in these pages.Warren H. Strother worked with Marshall Hahn for ten years while Hahn transformed VPI into a university. A South Carolina native, Strother grew up in Virginia and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in Journalism from Northwest University. After twelve years as a journalist he worked at Virginia Tech from 1964 to 1990.

One of the best-selling young adult books of all time, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Zindel. John Conlan is nicknamed “The Bathroom Bomber” after setting off firecrackers in the boys’ bathroom 23 times without ever getting caught. John and his best friend, Lorraine, can never please their parents, and school is a chore. To pass the time, they play pranks on unsuspecting people and it's during one of these pranks that they meet the “Pigman.” In spite of themselves, John and Lorraine soon get caught up in Mr. Pignati’s zest for life. In fact, they become so involved that they begin to destroy the only corner of the world that has ever mattered to them. Can they stop before it’s too late?'