BOOKS FOR CHILDREN, EDUCATION, AND HOMESCHOOLING
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POLITICAL LEADERS AND STATESMEN
Condoleezza Rice, Revised Edition by Mary Dodson Wade. Millbrook Press (Lerner Publishing Group), 2006. As I read this book, I was amazed at how much this woman has accomplished. Although she was a child in Birmingham in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading protests, her father, a Presbyterian minister, did not join the protests. He stood at a distance with Condoleezza on his shoulders so she could be aware of what was going on, but he told his daughter that education was the way to end segregation. And he saw that his daughter had the best.
Interestingly enough, Condoleezza's education began at home. Her birthday was in November, and she couldn't start kindergarten with others about her age, so her mother stayed home to teach her. Condoleezza did not start public school until second grade. She excelled academically, but was also very talented in music. She gave her first piano recital at the age of five, and in college she had seriously considered becoming a concert pianist.
When Condoleezza started college at the University of Denver, she was a music major. But one day she went to a lecture that changed the course of her life. The lecturer was Professor Josef Korbel, who was head of the Department of International Relations and had been an ambassador in his native Czechoslovakia. He had fled to escape the Nazis during World War II, and finally arrived in the United States. When the Communists took over his native land, he became a very loyal American citizen. He taught his students how politics affected the way governments responded in times of crisis. His influence is what inspired Condoleezza to study international relations. She was most interested in Russia and learned to speak fluent Russian.
She continued her education after graduating with honors from the University of Denver. She got her M.A. in political science at Notre Dame University in Indiana, and then returned to the University of Denver to get her Ph. D. She continued her studies at Stanford, and was soon invited to teach there. This led to her making the connections that helped her be appointed as General Scowcroft's advisor on Soviet affairs during the administration of the George H. W. Bush. In 1991 she returned to California and was named provost of the university in 1993. When George W. Bush became President she became his national security advisor and then in his second term she became the first black woman to be Secretary of State. When people tell her she's a good role model for girls and minorities, she has replied that she'd like to think she could also be a good role model for young white males.
It is evident that Condoleezza, although a black child in the segregated South, had many advantages over many of today's white children. She had two parents who loved, supported, and encouraged her to use all her gifts and talents and to be the best that she was capable of being. From her parents she got the confidence to believe she could be anything she chose to be in life. And she is now one of the most talented and powerful women in the world. She has shown that with a solid family, a good education, and an enormous amount of hard work, a person can rise to the top in spite of minority status. Although written for upper elementary grades, this book will give even parents insight into what made Condoleezza Rice the person she is today. The book contains color photographs, a chronology, a list for further reading, and an index. 48 pages. BTH-2896. $6.26-D
John Winthrop, Oliver Cromwell and the Land of Promise, by Marc Aronson. Houghton Mifflin Company, Clarion Books, 2004. In this book, second in the series The Ideas, Beliefs, and Individuals Behind the Creation of America, Marc Anronson describes events in both England and New England, because, as he says in his introduction: "…the seventeenth-century people I describe could not have imagined them as separate. Only by recovering these links across the Atlantic can we make sense of our global past, or our global present."
The author tries to show that both Winthrop and Cromwell, inspired by their faith, attempted to create Heaven on earth, believing that they were near the end of time and fighting the first battles of the final war that would bring Jesus back to earth. This fervent belief helped Cromwell turn untrained men into the best cavalry in England. The same belief gave Winthrop the strength to build a strong colony in the New World. Both hoped for a perfect world, but both, along with their followers, began to realize that as long as people themselves are not perfect, and that these imperfect people govern human societies, there can be no Heaven on earth. Instead, new principles would be necessary for human beings to live in peace with each other -- religious tolerance, political democracy, and greater social equality.
The author sees a parallel between the seventeenth century and today, as America and the West are the targets of extremists who use the language of Islam to preach holy war. He attempts to show that we are the heirs of radicals, not of established government, but that those radicals and their followers gradually saw the need for tolerance as time went on so that peace might prevail. And he shows how the preaching of Whitefield in the 1740's in Virginia, which exposed the African slaves to the Bible stories, gave those slaves an explanation for their enslavement and the hope of redemption. African Americans carried this vision of the Land of Promise into the 20th
century, laying the foundation for the Civil Rights movement. And still, today, we carry this vision of the Promised Land, not as a physical place, but a state of mind -- the condition of being free.
The end of the book contains many pages of extensive end notes and documentation, as well as a timeline of events and an index. Like all good histories and biographies, it has a point of view that captures us, showing how what happened yesterday is still relevant today. For middle school age and above. 205 pages. BTH-1634. $12.93
Hitler by Albert Marrin. Beautiful Feet Books. © 1987. Meet the man who at one time had more power than anyone in our modern history -- the man who reshaped the mind of a nation, built a mighty army from the remnants of a crushed nation, and committed genocide on an unimaginable scale. Though we might want to forget, we must not, for those who don't know or remember history are likely to repeat it. Marrin will make this man live in this book's pages. He uses many personal anecdotes to engage his readers. This is a must read for those who want to understand the nature of totalitarianism. 249 pages. BTH-2911. $13.95* Please click image to enlarge it.
Stalin: Russia's man of Steel by Albert Marrin. Beautiful Feet Books. © 1988. Meet the man who controlled his nation for over a quarter of a century and turned it from a backward land into a superpower that even the United States had to reckon with. Although once an ally of the United States during World War II, he erected an Iron Curtain that kept his people imprisoned behind it and he was determined to spread his communism to the rest of the world,. Thus his U.S.S.R. became the most feared enemy of the United States. 244 pages. BTH-2912. $13.95* Please click image to enlarge it.
