Garden City Community College now has online access to the Garden City Telegram through NewsBank.

Date Range: (9/12/1997-Current)

Publishing Frequency: Daily

http://infoweb.newsbank.com

My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture by Susan D. Blum

“Classroom Cheats Turn to Computers.” “Student Essays on Internet Offer Challenge to Teachers.” “Faking the Grade.” Headlines such as these have been blaring the alarming news of an epidemic of plagiarism and cheating in American colleges: more than 75 percent of students admit to having cheated; 68 percent admit to cutting and pasting material from the Internet without citation….(Cornell University Press)

The Lost City of Z: a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve      “the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century”: What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z?….(Randomhouse.com)

Pride and prejudice and zombies : the classic regency romance–now with ultraviolent zombie mayhem — by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Yes, Zombies!  And you thought reading wasn’t fun…

Toros & torsos by Craig McDonald

“Hector Lassiter is a legendary crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector frequently goes a step beyond, drawing friends and lovers into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his fiction. Now, the large-living pulp author has at last met his match in the ultimate performance artist: a phantom killer committed to the art of murder… a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of macabre tableaus modeled on famous works of surrealist painting and photography… “

A people’s history of sports in the United States : 250 years of politics, protest, people, and play

“The Yankee Years” by Joe Torre and Tom VerducciAmazon.com Product Description:

Amazon.com Product Description:

Twelve straight playoff appearances. Six American League pennants. Four World Series titles. This is the definitive story of a dynasty: the Yankee years

When Joe Torre took over as manager of the New York Yankees in 1996, the most storied franchise in sports had not won a World Series title in eighteen years. The famously tough and mercurial owner, George Steinbrenner, had fired seventeen managers during that span. Torre’s appointment was greeted with Bronx cheers from the notoriously brutal New York media, who cited his record as the player and manager who had been in the most Major League games without appearing in a World Series

Twelve tumultuous and triumphant years later, Torre left the team as the most beloved and successful manager in the game. In an era of multimillionaire free agents, fractured clubhouses, revenue-sharing, and off-the-field scandals, Torre forged a team ethos that united his players and made the Yankees, once again, the greatest team in sports. He won over the media with his honesty and class, and was beloved by the fans.

But it wasn’t easy.

Here, for the first time, Joe Torre and Tom Verducci take us inside the dugout, the clubhouse, and the front office in a revelatory narrative that shows what it really took to keep the Yankees on top of the baseball world. The high-priced ace who broke down in tears and refused to go back to the mound in the middle of a game. Constant meddling from Yankee executives, many of whom were jealous of Torre’s popularity. The tension that developed between the old guard and the free agents brought in by management. The impact of revenue-sharing and new scouting techniques, which allowed other teams to challenge the Yankees’ dominance. The players who couldn’t resist the after-hours temptations of the Big Apple. The joys of managing Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, and the challenges of managing Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi. Torre’s last year, when constant ultimatums from the front office, devastating injuries, and a freak cloud of bugs on a warm September night in Cleveland forced him from a job he loved.

Through it all, Torre kept his calm, kept his players’ respect, and kept winning.

And, of course, The Yankee Years chronicles the amazing stories on the diamond. The stirring comeback in the 1996 World Series against the heavily favored Braves. The wonder of 1998, when Torre led the Yanks to the most wins in Major League history. The draining and emotional drama of the 2001 World Series. The incredible twists and turns of the epic Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series against the Red Sox, in which two teams who truly despised each other battled pitch by pitch until the stunning extra-inning home run.

Here is a sweeping narrative of Major League Baseball in the Yankee era, a book both grand in its scope and fascinating in its details.

“Uncommon: finding your path to significance” by Tony Dungee

Amazon.com Product Description:

Super Bowl-winning coach and #1 New York Times best selling author Tony Dungy has had an unusual opportunity to reflect on what it takes to achieve significance. He is looked to by many as the epitome of the success and significance that is highly valued in our culture. He also works every day with young men who are trying to achieve significance through football and all that goes with a professional athletic career-such as money, power, and celebrity. Coach Dungy has had all that, but he passionately believes that there is a different path to significance, a path characterized by attitudes, ambitions, and allegiances that are all too rare but uncommonly rewarding. Uncommon reveals lessons on achieving significance that the coach has learned from his remarkable parents, his athletic and coaching career, his mentors, and his journey with God. A particular focus of the book: what it means to be a man of significance in a culture that is offering young men few positive role models.

“Teenage: the prehistory of youth culture 1875-1945″ by Jon Savage

Reviews: “The definitive history of youth in revolt, from the gaslight age to the dawn of rock.”
-David Fricke, Rolling Stone

“Compulsive reading . . . Teenage is a rich, rewarding book that makes an important contribution to cultural history.”  -Camille Paglia, The New York Times Book Review

“Resonant . . . Savage explores . . . [an] array of teenager types, from the wild, sensational precursors to juvenile delinquency to the straight-laced good-citizen proto-preppie. It’s Savage’s claim to being a great historian, and it’s mighty convincing.”  -The Onion

“The Hip Hop Wars: what we talk about when we talk about hip-hop, and why it matters” by Tricia Rose

Amazon.com Product Description:

Hip-hop is in crisis. For the past dozen years, the most commercially successful hip-hop has become increasingly saturated with caricatures of black gangstas, thugs, pimps, and ’hos. The controversy surrounding hip-hop is worth attending to and examining with a critical eye because, as scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip-hop has become a primary means by which we talk about race in the United States.

In The Hip-Hop Wars, Rose explores the most crucial issues underlying the polarized claims on each side of the debate: Does hip-hop cause violence, or merely reflect a violent ghetto culture? Is hip-hop sexist, or are its detractors simply anti-sex? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop undermine black advancement?

A potent exploration of a divisive and important subject, The Hip-Hop Wars concludes with a call for the regalvanization of the progressive and creative heart of hip-hop. What Rose calls for is not a sanitized vision of the form, but one that more accurately reflects a much richer space of culture, politics, anger, and yes, sex, than the current ubiquitous images in sound and video currently provide.

“The Ten-Cent Plague: the great comic book scare and how it changed America” by David Hajdu

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. After writing about the folk scene of the early 1960s in Positively 4th Street, Hajdu goes back a decade to examine the censorship debate over comic books, casting the controversy as a prelude to the cultural battle over rock music. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, the centerpiece of the movement, has been reduced in public memory to a joke—particularly the attack on Batman for its homoeroticism—but Hajdu brings a more nuanced telling of Wertham’s background and shows how his arguments were preceded by others. Yet he comes down hard on the unsound research techniques and sweeping generalizations that led Wertham to conclude that nearly all comic books would inspire antisocial behavior in young readers. There are no real heroes here, only villains and victims; Hajdu turns to the writers and artists whose careers were ruined when censorship and other legal restrictions gutted the comics industry, and young kids who were coerced into participating in book burnings by overzealous parents and teachers. With such a meticulous setup, the history builds slowly but the main attraction—EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines’s attempt to explain in a Senate committee hearing how an illustration of a man holding a severed head could be in good taste—holds all the dramatic power it has acquired as it’s been told among fans over the past half-century. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

“Boxing: a cultural history” by Kasia Boddy

“Boddy intelligently takes up-via art, literature, film, and the media-the many issues that have historically veined the sport: ”nationality, class, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, and different versions of masculinity,” plus dialectics like ”brawn versus brains, boastfulness versus modesty, youth versus experience.” Her reach is considerable, but so is her grasp. The result is a sweeping critical history and a perfect power-to-weight ratio.”–Atlantic Monthly

“Books” by Larry McMurtry

Amazon.com Review
It wasn’t enough for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry to become one of the most prolific, bestselling, and beloved of American writers. Besides writing nearly forty books, including the Pultizer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, he has emerged as one this nation’s greatest bookmen. In Books: A Memoir, McMurtry shares with readers his lifelong passion and dogged pursuit of books. In short, gem-like chapters, he paints a fascinating picture of the landscape of American book culture and book selling over a 50-year period. The story is as dusty, musty and crusty as any of McMurtry’s fictionalized Westerns, and filled with characters who seem like they stepped out of central casting. Whether you love McMurtry, books, bookstores or a combination thereof, you’ll find something to love in Books: A Memoir. Settle in with a cuppa coffee and let McMurtry kindle your passion for physical books. –Lauren Nemroff

“Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus” by Kathleen A. Bogle

“Hooking Up is a welcome, empirical addition that informs all readers of the collegiate state of affairssexual and otherwise. It will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of gender, sexuality, family, relationships, and higher education.”
—Rachel Kalish, Gender & Society

For additionl press and reviews please see the NYU Press website found here.

“Landscape of Slavery: the Plantation in American Art” edited by Angela D. Mack and Stephen G. Hoffus

From the Inside Flap:

“Landscape of Slavery is a landmark study that shows how the plantation has endured in the American consciousness as a nostalgic memory for whites and as an open wound for blacks. For more than three centuries, artists have captured the plantation in works that are both profoundly moving and deeply disturbing. Through their art, this Janus-faced memory of the American South and its black and white people touches our heart, as if three centuries were only a moment past. The images in this collection and the eloquent essays that accompany them remind us that our memory of the plantation is contested along racial lines that continue to divide our nation.”–William R. Ferris, senior associate director, Center for the Study of the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser – Born Digital

From Publishers Weekly:

In this critical but optimistic overview, academics Palfrey (of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet &        Society) and Gasser (of the Swiss U. of St. Gallen) share their concern about the legal and social ramifications of the Internet with regard to the generation of “Digital Natives” born after 1980. In a wide-ranging examination of “the future opportunities and challenges associated with the Internet as a social space,” Palfrey and Gasser find most young people fail to recognize the vulnerability of their information-that internet posts are never really private-and suggest tactful parental and school oversight. They find a more serious problem in the failure of the U.S. to regulate data mining by search engines, which even now have the potential to create cradle-to-grave dossiers on individuals, including online medical and financial records; they compare the U.S. system with Europe’s policies, which have put in place much more effective data protection. Parents and educators will benefit from Palfrey and Gasser’s discussion of issues like safety, content control and illegal file sharing; with proper attention from them, the authors see a bright future for the Internet that should foster “global citizens” with a “spirit of innovation, entrepreneurship and caring for society at large.”
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Marc Bauerlein – The Dumbest Generation: how the digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future (or, don’t trust anyone under 30)

From Amazon.com. product description:

This shocking, lively exposure of the intellectual vacuity of today’s under thirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a nation of know-nothings.

Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up?

For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. At the dawn of the digital age, many believed they saw a hopeful answer: The Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.

That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map. The Dumbest Generation is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its consequences for American culture and democracy.

Drawing upon exhaustive research, personal anecdotes, and historical and social analysis, Mark Bauerline presents an uncompromisingly realistic portrait of the young American mind at this critical juncture, and lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies.

About the Author
Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and has worked as a director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversaw studies about culture and American life.

For 2009 every week Saffell Library will high light two new titles recently added to our collection.  These items  may consist of novels, memoirs, collected essays, poetry, biographies, DVDs, or any manner of academic monographs.  Whatever they may be, we hope these titles will trigger at least one person’s curiosity, will maybe entice you to try out something new, something unexpected.  Who knows, you might just like it.

David Sedaris – When You Are Engulfed in Flames

From Amazon.Com:  “David Sedaris’s ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art,” (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book.  Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers    using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris’s sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from “a writer worth treasuring” (Seattle Times).

David Crystal – Txtng: The Gr8 Db8

From Amazon.Com: “Reports of the demise of the English langauge have been gr8tly exaggerated, according to David Crystal. In his new book, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, the British linguist dismisses reports that text messaging is bad for the brain, literacy, for language itself. He taps history, technology, and new research to create his counter-argument, a highly cnsumable work of pop linguistics.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review