Radical Prunings or The Last Best Hope

Radical Prunings: A Novel of Officious Advice from the Contessa of Compost

Author: Bonnie Thomas Abbott

This rather deceptive work purports to be the collected horticultural columns of one opinionated Mertensia Corydalis. As Mertensia answers her readers' innocent gardening questions, she reveals more than she intends about her life, her relationships (from her prissy ex-husband to questionable interactions with her employees, Miss Vong and Tran), and her state of mind.

Radical Prunings is a literate, funny, and surprisingly bittersweet fiction debut from a writer with a sharp wit and a very green thumb.

Interesting book: Breathing Underwater or Wilderness First Aid

The Last Best Hope: A Democracy Reader

Author: Stephen John Goodlad

Sponsored by the Institute for Educational Inquiry

What are the conditions necessary for democracy to exist and flourish? Is democracy a sustainable ideal? What does individual freedom mean in a democracy? What is the relationship between democracy and morality? What roles does or should education play in a democratic society? Address some of the most important issues confronting democracy in the twenty-first century with this comprehensive anthology.

In addition to providing a provocative view of a complex subject, this collection will also be invaluable to anyone seeking a general introduction and overview of contemporary thought on the subject of democracy and education. Democracy demands of its citizens the ability to discuss, debate, and learn from one another. The Last Best Hope, a companion volume to Developing Democratic Character in the Young, encourages and makes a major contribution to such discourse.

Table of Contents:

Source Texts.
Introduction (S. Goodlad).
Acknowledgements.
The Editor
WHY DEMOCRACY?
Democracy (N. Postman).
An Aristocracy of Everyone (B. Barber).
CONCEPTS AND COMPLEXITIES.
What Makes Democracy Work? (R. Putnam).
The Democratic Virtues (C. Lummis).
Was Democracy Just a Moment? (R. Kaplan).
CITIZENSHIP AND CHARACTER.
The Masses in Representative Democracy (M. Oakeshott)
Reorientation in Education (B. Bode).
The Education of Character (M. Buber).
DEMOCRACY AND ITS TROUBLES.
Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order (N. Chomsky).
Law and Justice (H. Zinn).
Jefferson, Morrill, and the Upper Crust (W. Berry).
THE PUBLIC AND THE PERSONAL.
Democracy and Human Nature (J. Dewey).
Egalitarian Solidarity (P. Green).
Moral Imagination (M. Johnson).
EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY.
How Colleges of Education Package the Myth of Modernity (C. Bowers).
Democratic Education in Difficult Times (A. Gutmann).
What Is Education For? (D. Orr).
HUMAN POTENTIAL AND DEMOCRACY'S FUTURE.
The Domain of the Future (M. Csikszentmihalyi).
Practical Utopianism (M. Midgley).
Index.