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For nearly a century, the original version of Upton Sinclair's classic novel has remained almost entirely unknown. When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary. The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905. It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition. A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition.

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . .Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family--their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes--Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic. --front flap

Janusz Korczak was a Polish physician and educator who wrote over twenty books--his fiction was in his time as well known as Peter Pan, and his nonfiction works bore passionate messages of child advocacy. During World War II, the Jewish orphanage he directed was relocated to the Warsaw ghetto. Although Korczak's celebrity afforded him many chances to escape, he refused to abandon the children. He was killed at Treblinka along with the children.King Matt the First, one of Korczak's most beloved tales, is the story of a boy who becomes king and sets out to reform his kingdom. He decrees that all children are to be given a piece of chocolate at the end of each day. He visits faraway lands and befriends cannibal kings. Whenever his ministers tell him something's impossible, he puts them in jail. He disguises himself as a soldier and becomes a hero. But, as in real life, fantasy is tempered by reality:Matt's fellow kings become jealous of his success--and in the end, Matt falls, although it's clear that he was the greatest king there ever was.Now this rediscovered classic is available again, and with a vibrant new cover by award-winning artist Brian Selznick. This timeless tale shows that only through the honesty and spontaneity of children can grown-ups begin to imagine and to create a better world.

Holt has a way of cutting through the bullshit when it comes to how children learn (or more realistically, as the book contends: how they do NOT learn) in schools. He approaches the subject almost as a scientist, eschewing fancy, obfuscating academic language as well as cleverness and finger-pointing. It is a remarkably gimmick-free book that attempts to put aside the supply-side notion of "how can we as teachers discover clever methods for imparting knowledge to our captive charges?" in favor of "how do students actually and naturally learn, and how can we as teachers facilitate that learning?" The difference between these two questions may seem subtle, but the distinction is crucial if our goal is to truly educate.The structure of the book is built around Holt's journal of his experiences team-teaching with another man in the late '50s/early '60s (one taught while the other observed the children), interspersed with Holt's own comments, amendments, contradictions, and clarifications some 30 years later. Indicative of Holt's earnest desire to objectively account for how children learn or don't learn is his willingness to be as critical of his own methods and philosophical conclusions as he is of others'. This is refreshingly honest in a field crowded by lazy and cowardly theory and practice aimed at maintaining conventional wisdom and the status quo, both of which are deadly to real and lasting education.I was at once encouraged and depressed by this book. I was encouraged because Holt’s experiences seem to confirm many of the ideas I have been bandying about in my head as I try to educate my own students, ideas full of hope and the notion that we CAN change society’s screwed-up, anti-instinctual notions of how people are best educated. But what is depressing is that this book was written SIXTY YEARS AGO, and way too many of the backward, counterproductive, even harmful practices, thoughts, and attitudes Holt identifies in the book still dominate education! In fact, some of them (such as the Sacred Cow known as standardized testing) are even MORE ingrained now, at once bloating and eating away at education in the exact ways Holt predicted if they were not corrected. It is amazing and alarming that the diseased seeds Holt saw being planted in the mid-twentieth century have now blossomed and flourished into full-blown rotten, choking vines, an educational Kudzu from which it is almost impossible to extricate actual education. This is sad and frustrating for anyone truly invested in educating anyone. It is akin to watching Network, a movie which was supposed to be a satirical “what if?” about the merging of news and entertainment, but is now merely a darkly funny reflection of the frightening reality in which we live. Remove the satire and the dark humor (Holt is straightforward, honest, and sincere), and the same can be said of this book, only in terms of education. So why read something so depressing? Because any honest assessment of how we educate is bound to be depressing, given how broken everyone knows our educational system to be. But as with any dysfunctional social institution, ignoring the depressing truth about it can only serve to perpetuate that dysfunction, since the continued existence of the dysfunction is certain as long as we blindly obey the uniquely human instinct to pretend that the dysfunction does not exist. “What most teachers want and reward,” says Holt, “are not knowledge and understanding, but the appearance of them.” This unthinking, blind allegiance to appearance at the expense of reality is at the heart of every social dysfunction. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in challenging that dysfunction and looking for ways to make the system healthy again.

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downward in columns, and be included in a standard dictionary or lexicon.The name Scrabble is a trademark of Mattel in most of the world, except in the United States and Canada, where it is a trademark of Hasbro. The game is sold in 121 countries and is available in more than 30 languages; approximately 150 million sets have been sold worldwide, and roughly one-third of American and half of British homes have a Scrabble set. There are approximately 4,000 Scrabble clubs around the world.

A criminal pleads insanity and is admitted to a mental institution, where he rebels against the oppressive nurse and rallies up the scared patients.

1975 drama film based on the novel by Ken Kesey

In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn't go as planned.

1971 dystopian crime film directed by Stanley Kubrick

In a post-apocalyptic world, a family is forced to live in silence while hiding from monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing.

A group of friends who meet regularly for game nights find themselves entangled in a real-life mystery when the shady brother of one of them is seemingly kidnapped by dangerous gangsters.

In the Falangist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world.

2006 Mexican-Spanish dark fantasy film directed by Guillermo del Toro

Years after her aunt was murdered in her home, a young woman moves back into the house with her new husband. However, he has a secret that he will do anything to protect, even if it means driving his wife insane.

Bored waitress Bonnie Parker falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow and together they start a violent crime spree through the country, stealing cars and robbing banks.

1967 American biographical crime film directed by Arthur Penn

A serial murderer is strangling women with a necktie. The London police have a suspect, but he is the wrong man.

A struggling actress tries to help a friend prove his innocence after he's accused of murdering the husband of a high society entertainer.

An American scientist publicly defects to East Germany as part of a cloak and dagger mission to find the solution for a formula resin before planning an escape back to the West.

1966 espionage thriller movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock

A man in London tries to help a counter-espionage Agent. But when the Agent is killed, and the man stands accused, he must go on the run to save himself and stop a spy ring which is trying to steal top secret information.

Mark marries Marnie although she is a habitual thief and has serious psychological problems, and tries to help her confront and resolve them.

A tale of innocent American tourists in Morocco whose son's kidnapping sets off a twisting plot of international intrigue.

The trouble with Harry is that he is dead and, while no one really minds, everyone feels responsible. After Harry's body is found in the woods, several locals must determine not only how and why he was killed but what to do with the 

Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.

Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance; 'Rosebud'.

1941 American drama film directed by Orson Welles

A renegade reporter and a crazy young heiress meet on a bus heading for New York, and end up stuck with each other when the bus leaves them behind at one of the stops.

A former tennis player tries to arrange his wife's murder after learning of her affair.

A naive man is appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. His plans promptly collide with political corruption, but he doesn't back down.

A psychopath forces a tennis star to comply with his theory that two strangers can get away with murder.

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