Featured Books
This collection highlights the published books selected for recognition in the Authors@EIU speaker series.
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Nest of Matches
Amie Whittemore
Amie Whittemore’s Nest of Matches is a lavish declaration of the beauty of the natural world, queer identity, and of the imagination set free. Whittemore’s third collection explores the complexities of love—romantic, familial, and love for place—and wonders at cycles of life, finding that: “Every habit / even love—strangest / of them all—offers exhaustion / and renewal.” Moving seamlessly from meditations on the moon’s phases to explorations of dream spaces to searches for meaning through patterns of love and loss, Whittemore’s work embodies the mysteries of dichotomies—grief and joy, consciousness and unconsciousness, habit and spontaneity—and how they coexist to create our identities. Throughout the collection, Whittemore reveals how interior nature manifests into exterior habits and how physical landscapes shape the psyche.
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Seinfeld and Economics: Lessons on Everything from the Show About Nothing
LInda Ghent
As the most successful sitcom of all time, the television series Seinfeld provides a rich environment for learning basic economic principles.The major characters paint themselves as some of the most self-interested individuals in all of popular culture and are faced with dilemmas that force them to make decisions. Those decisions are at the heart of economics. Each chapter in this book explores one or more key economic concepts and relates them to key scenes from the show. These principles are then applied to other real-world situations, arming readers with the tools needed to make better economic decisions.
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Digital Design: A History
Stephen Eskilson
Stephen Eskilson traces the history of digital design from its precursors in the nineteenth century to its technological and cultural ascendency today, providing a multifaceted account of a digital revolution that touches all aspects of our lives.
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Tree By Tree: Saving North America's Eastern Forests
Scott Meiners
For decades, the forests of Eastern North America have faced pathogen and insect pests that have functionally removed tree species from the landscape. This book presents the ecological roles that the trees play, the biology of the threats faced, and the approaches that may remediate the problems.
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Women, Entertainment, and Precursors of the French Salon, 1532-1615
Julie Campbell
In sixteenth-century France, the entertainment activities of women-led circles illustrate the richly complex precursors of the more famous seventeenth-century salons. This study addresses the Italianate practices of philosophical and literary sociability as they took root in France, providing the framework for such groups. Notions from the philosophy of play, such as those developed by Johan Huizinga, Eugen Fink, and Roger Caillois, who argue that play is critically intertwined with the development of society, provide a theoretical path across these periods of women’s engagement in literary culture, and the attorney Estienne Pasquier, whose voluminous network of literary and legal connections permitted him entry into the society of such women, acts as an eyewitness to this dynamic period.
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The Middle of Somewhere: Rural Education Partnerships and Innovation
Bob Klein
As editors Sara L. Hartman and Bob Klein acknowledge, rural places have long experienced systemic inequities that decrease rural students' access to education, yet many rural schools and communities have found creative means to make up for the dearth of outside resources. The Middle of Somewhere brings to light a wide variety of partnerships that have been forged between K–12 schools, communities, and postsecondary institutions to improve educational access.
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The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going
Ryan Burge
In The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, Ryan P. Burge details a comprehensive picture of an increasingly significant group--Americans who say they have no religious affiliation.
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Teaching is a Human Interaction: How Thoughtful Educators Respond, are Responsive, and Take Responsibility
Alexis Jones
This book contains an argument supported by education philosophers as well as composite stories, data, and personal experiences. The author mentions a number of scholars (e.g., Benjamin, 1988; Buber, 1970; Noddings, 2005, 2013; Palmer, 1983; van Manen, 1986, 1991, 2000) who address important human issues in the field of education, and she ties their work and hers to show common themes within the issues of care, responsivity, and relational ethics. The work described in this book addresses the ideas of ethical “teacher perfection,” but the author fully understands teachers are not supposed to be, nor are they logistically able to be, all things to all children.
