Summer 2008

LC on The First Year Out (5 meetings). This circle will read and discuss Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School (University of Chicago Press, 2007).  In this highly relevant book for our university, sociologist Clydesdale tracks the “day-to-day lives of fifty young people” in their first year after high school. Princeton sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow writes: “I know of no other study that provides as rich and up-to-date insights into the decisions teenagers make as they leave high school and enter the workforce and college” (from the back of the book).

For more information, including the Table of Contents, please see:  

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/220645.ctl. If you have previously indicated your interest in this book, I have recorded your interest and your book is available immediately.

LC on Flow (5 meetings). This circle will read and discuss Mikhail Czikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial, 1991). Czikszentmihalyi is well known for his research on ‘flow’, which is said to occur when challenge and capability are appropriately matched, an idea he arrived at from his use of the experience sampling method. Flow is an important element at the intersection of the positive psychology of individuals and the appreciative inquiry of organizations.

To learn more, please see: http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0060920432/ref=ed_oe_p

LC on Forces for Good (5 meetings). This circle will read and discuss Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits (Jossey-Bass, 2008). Crutchfield and McLeod Grant strive to do for nonprofits what Jim Collins did for firms in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t (Harper Collins 2001) and hints at in Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). This is what Collins had to say about Forces: “[the authors] have made a significant contribution with a Very Big Idea—the shift in focus from building an organization to building a movement. Inspired and inspiring, this book can change the way the world works by changing how leaders think” (from the back of the book).

For extensive additional information on the book, the authors, and reviews, please see: http://www.forcesforgood.net/book.html

LC on The Ravaging Tide (4 meetings). This circle will read and discuss Mike Tidwell, The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of American's Coastal Cities (Free Press, 2007). Ravaging Tide has been selected as the summer book for incoming UNC Asheville students for the Fall 2008 semester. If you are interesting in knowing some of what they know, as well as becoming more knowledgeable about environmental sustainability, you will want to participate in this circle.

For a host of information on Tidwell’s book (and related matters), please see: http://www.firstyearbook.umd.edu/theravagingtide/author.html

LC on Silent Racism (5 meetings). This circle will read and discuss Barbara Trepagnier, Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide (Paradigm Publishers, 2006). This book was reviewed by Jeffrianne Wilder in the online journal Gender & Society on 11 February 2008. She writes:

Silent Racism is a groundbreaking text that explores the other side of racism—the well-meaning people who consider themselves ‘non-racist’—and challenges our thinking about how we understand and study racism in the twenty-first century. . . . Trepagnier’s objective is to transform the way that liberal and progressive whites think about race by pointing to the ways in which silence and passivity continue to divide Black and white Americans in modern society.

If you would like to read the entire review, please let me know as it is not costlessly available.

For the Table of Contents, please see: http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=128206. For additional information, including an NPR interview, please see: http://www.silentracism.com/