The story of how a lunatic fringe science project became favored by Rumsfeld's Pentagon.

The transformation of schooling from a twelve-year jail sentence to freedom to learn. John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction , now available in paperback, focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down , introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling. Gatto demonstrates that the harm school inflicts is rational and deliberate. The real function of pedagogy, he argues, is to render the common population manageable. To that end, young people must be conditioned to rely upon experts, to remain divided from natural alliances and to accept disconnections from their own lived experiences. They must at all costs be discouraged from developing self-reliance and independence. Escaping this trap requires a strategy Gatto calls "open source learning" which imposes no artificial divisions between learning and life. Through this alternative approach our children can avoid being indoctrinated-only then can they achieve self-knowledge, good judgment, and courage.

A "riveting," "relentlessly engrossing," and "brilliantly researched" investigation of the life of the gun -- its manufacture, its sale, and its impact -- and of our world's hugely complex relationship with firearms. In some places of the world, getting a gun is easier than getting a glass of water. In some parts of the world, an individual is allowed to carry concealed firearms into schools. In some parts of the world, there are more guns than people to shoot them. There are almost 1 billion guns across the globe today, a shocking number that is higher than ever before in history. Each year, 12 billion bullets are produced -- almost two bullets for every person on the planet. And over 300,000 people are shot dead over an average year worldwide. In The Way of the Gun award-winning investigative journalist Iain Overton takes readers on a shocking and eye-opening journey to over 25 cities all across the globe, from Cape Town to Tokyo, from San Pedro Sula to Phnom Penh, along the way encountering people from all walks of life affected by guns: Zionist anti-terror gun trainers; El Salvadoran gangland killers; porn starlets who appear as snipers in triple-X films; and South African doctors soaked in the blood of gunshot victims -- unearthing some hard truths about the terrible realities of war and gun crime. Harrowing and sobering, this riveting expose on the long-reaching and mostly unknown life of a gun is an essential and important book in today's world.

Luke Skywalker returns for an all-new adventure in this thrilling upper middle grade novel. Set between Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the story finds Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, and R2-D2 stranded on a mysterious planet, and explores a dangerous duel between Luke and a strange new villain. Hidden in the story are also clues and hints about the upcoming film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, making this a must-read for fans old and new!

Includes the decisions of the Supreme Courts of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas, and Court of Appeals of Kentucky; Aug./Dec. 1886-May/Aug. 1892, Court of Appeals of Texas; Aug. 1892/Feb. 1893-Jan./Feb. 1928, Courts of Civil and Criminal Appeals of Texas; Apr./June 1896-Aug./Nov. 1907, Court of Appeals of Indian Territory; May/June 1927-Jan./Feb. 1928, Courts of Appeals of Missouri and Commission of Appeals of Texas.