New Books

Grammar Dimensions 1, Fourth Edition - Form, Meaning, and Use

Victoria Badalamenti and Carolyn Henner-Stanchina

Through clear and comprehensive grammar explanations, extensive practice exercises, and lively communicative activities, this book provides students with the language skills they need to communicate accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately. (From Publisher)

Keys to Effective Learning: Developing Powerful Habits of Mind

by Carol Carter, Sarah Lyman Kravits, Judy Block

This book focuses on developing effective learning techniques to help readers excel in school, in their careers, and throughout their lives as lifelong learners. Unlike traditional study skills books, this one emphasizes how people learn effectively by involving them in the active process of mastering their mental abilities and their personal confidence. The authors outline getting ready to learn through self-awareness, goal setting and time management, as well as, critical and creative thinking, targeting success in school through reading and studying, listening and memory, taking notes and test taking, quantitative learning, researching and writing, gathering and communicating ideas, as well as, creating life success. For individuals interested in effective learning techniques.  (From Publisher)

Grammarwork: English Exercise in Context, Vol. 3

by Pamela Peterson Breyer

Instead of abstract theory and examples, this book features practice, practice, practice. This is the third level in a 4-book series that stresses grammar in action, with numerous exercises presented in real-life situations and settings. Beginning/intermediate grammar learners.  (From Publisher)

Book of the Month

The Working Poor: Invisible in America

by David K. Shipler

A book by a Pulitzer Prize winner (Arab and Jew), with an announced first printing of 40,000 copies by a prestigious trade publisher and prepub kudos by Bill Bradley and Robert Reich, is sure to capture a certain amount of media attention. If this happens, it will be well deserved. Shipler is informed and impassioned about the plight of the surprisingly diverse and numerous Americans who work but still walk the official poverty line. This conundrum is complex and rife with interlocking problems, including dead-end jobs that offer little or no healthcare benefits and depressing home and workplace environments. Not the least of these burdens is the widely held belief that poverty is related to indolence. Shipler takes a many-faceted view of this Sisyphean bind, and in his final chapter, "Skill and Will," he offers some thoughts on solutions. His writing style is highly effective and often moving, such as when he notes that our forgotten wage earners engage in "a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff." (From Library Journal)