What We're Reading: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

This blog entry is the first in a series of reviews of items in the J.A. Jones library collections. If you are interested in writing a review for this series, let me know. I'd love to see a variety of voices guest blogging here. Below is Nancy Williard's review of Harper Lee's controversial sequel/early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that was published this year. Let us know what you thought of this book in the comments--we'd love to talk about it.

And, if you want to read the book, you can find it in our rental book collection near the photocopier on the main floor of the library.

From Nancy Williard:

Aside from the intrigue of seeing what preceded the famous work by Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, this earlier work is a fine story in itself. Jean Louise Finch, formerly “Scout”, is twenty-six, fresh from New York, and viewing her old hometown, Maycomb, Alabama, with the judgmenta
l eye. Through this visit the 1950’s Southern view of race relations is balanced against the more activist “color-blind” perception of the New Yorker that Jean Louise professes. The discussion of race relations is interesting to compare with the justification of Southern culture found in The Help, a more recent book set in the same time period. Scout’s headstrong rejection of Southern manners and sensibilities is as humorous and compelling as it was when Scout wore her overalls to town in To Kill a Mockingbird. Once again, Jean Louise, Scout, causes a social upheaval that involves many of our favorite characters, Calpurnia, Atticus, and Aunt Alexandra, and a new one, Henry “Hank” Clinton, a love interest. Although I found the ending lacking, I was fascinated to see where the seeds for To Kill a Mockingbird began.  What was kept and what was left out?

October New Books

Last month's additions to the Jones Library... October New Books and DVD's

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Giving Thanks 2015

I have been at BC now for a little more than a year, and it has been a truly wonderful experience. It has been a long time since I've been this happy with my work, my home, and my life. And that happiness is despite family deaths, fire, and illness that had the potential for making this a really terrible year. I think that this lovely college and community is helping me be more resilient. I thank the Brevard community for being so welcoming and comfortable.

I was talking to a dear friend of mine that I've known for 20+ years, and he reminded me of what I was looking for in my workplace at that time. I wanted to work at a residential liberal arts college that cared about its students and had an environmental ethic. And now, a lifetime later, I've found it in Brevard.

I have always been devoted to the idea of a residential liberal arts education, since my undergraduate career at Capital University shaped my outlook on life in so many ways. BC certainly supplies that. Students live together, play together, and learn together. They talk about ideas both in class and out of it. A part of BC will be carried with them throughout their lives.

And Brevard College walks the walk of its student-centered mission. Every college I have been affiliated with claims to be "student-centered," but the heart of BC really does focus on its students. Every single faculty member is here because they care about their students, and I see that caring in and out of the classroom. Administration focuses on students and learning when they make their decisions, too. It's not about making money first, although certainly we need to do that to keep the doors open,  "Branding" the college isn't about creating a facade for name-recognition; BC's "brand" is the heart of what it does. It focuses is on how our experiential learning mission makes us different from other colleges and therefore attractive and a benefit to more students.

What better place than beautiful Brevard, NC, to have a college that takes cares about the environment? Solar panels on the cafeteria and charging stations for electric cars are among this years' campus improvements. The General Education Curriculum includes an environmental issue component. There are majors in environmental studies and wilderness leadership. And we have one of the best cycling teams in the country. How cool is that?

35 Titles for Your Job and Career Search

Obviously, not all of our career resource books have numbers in their titles, but here's a fun list of some books that do. All of the eBooks are available through Brevard College's Jones Library. Print books are located in the Career Services resource collection in the AEC. As always, see Nacole for awesome advice and help with careers and job-hunting!

35 books about job hunting and careers

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September New Books

We are happy to have added the following books to the Jones Library during the month of September. Remember that this list does not included eBooks or other materials, and that many of these items were gifts to the library. Thank you, if you were one of those who donated books to our collection!

The descriptions of each title are publisher descriptions, not my own.

September New Books

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What I'm contemplating: Habits

I've been reading and learning a bit about research related to habits, why they exist and how they can be changed. I've been reading Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit, which is a reporter's interpretation of the research related to habit. Meanwhile, I've been listening to one of the "Great Courses" available on Audible, "Scientific Secrets for Self-Control."*

Duhigg has a couple of useful infographics posted online: How to Change a Habit and How to Create a Habit.

What he is saying fits nicely into the lectures I'm listening to. Basically, there is a habit cycle, with a cue to trigger a routine (the "habit"), the routine itself, and a reward for doing the routine.

To create a habit, you identify a cue (or trigger), do the routine you want to make a habit every time you encounter the trigger, and give yourself a reward. Wash, rinse, and repeat until the habit is, well, --habitual.

So I found this app that I really like to help me build new habits, called The Fabulous. I live with my smart phone in my hand or at my elbow at all times, so this really works for me. I'm also a sucker for nice graphics and soothing music. So when The Fabulous takes over my phone, plays pretty music, and tells me to drink water, I do it. Then it tells me what a good job I've done, and, just like my dog, I wag my tail and feel good about myself. If I'm lucky, the habit will be ingrained before I get tired of the tail-wagging part (that is, the habit itself will become an intrinsic motivator before the extrinsic motivator of "good girl" wears off.) There are a number of habit-building apps and programs that do the same type of thing (just google apps for habits and you will find a bunch).

As a student, I was awesome at creating a habit for studying. I didn't know it was a habit, and I certainly didn't use any theory to create it, but it made sense for me. Here were my steps:

1. Set aside specific times for studying--between classes, in big blocks of time on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, or whatever fit my schedule for the semester. 
2. Figure out what needed to be done both short-term (homework assignments, reading through class notes, cramming--er, I mean, "final touch-ups of my knowledge base"--for exams) and long term (papers. projects). I had a big 4-month calendar on the wall with dates of assignments on it (that's a habit that stuck; I'm still all about the whiteboards and calendars). The calendar or to do list, combined with the time-of-day study block was the cue.
3.  Here's the important part: When I did something as I planned, I gave myself a reward, and made it contingent on doing the homework. "If I finish this book that's due on Friday, I can take Thursday night off and hang out with friends, but if I don't finish it, I have to stay in my room on Thursday night."

The trick there, though, is the willpower to not hang out with friends when you haven't done your homework.

What I'm learning about willpower in the Audible course mentioned above, is that the "limited energy model" indicates that we only have so much energy to devote to willpower. If you do one thing that uses up your reservoir of willpower for the day, it's much harder to stay on plan for the next bit of willpower. That's part of the reason they tell you to exercise first thing in the morning, so that you do it before you have used up your willpower stores by everyday self-control activities. Studies show that the act of self-control even goes so far as to use up glucose in our bodies, making us less able to complete multiple acts of self-control without restoring those levels.

The good news is that once something becomes a habit, it no longer takes willpower to make it happen. Your brain treats a habit differently than a new routine. So it used to take a whole lot of concentration and willpower for me to remember to drink a full glass of water, take my morning prescription med, and wait to eat breakfast for the required half hour for the med to work on an empty stomach. My habit had been to have breakfast immediately upon getting up. A year or two later, it's now habit to do the water and pill, so I'm going to add to that sequence an exercise routine before breakfast. (So the cue for this habit is actually an existing habit) Adding an exercise routine is a challenge for me, so I'm doing everything that I can to make it easy--having workout clothes and shoes right by the bed, just as I always have a water bottle on my bedside table for the earlier morning ritual. As for rewards, I'm giving myself a breakfast treat--allowing myself a bit of cheese as my breakfast protein and my favorite fresh berries, regardless of what's in season.

Breaking a habit uses the same theory, but is harder because it never really disappears from your brain. Almost 30 years after moving away from Springfield, Ohio, I can go back and drive to where I used to live and take the route I used to go to work every day. I can't find my way around in that town on routes I took less often, and I don't consciously remember the route, but the habit pops up as soon as the cue of my apartment building is in sight.

So the key is not really breaking a habit, but changing it, according to Duhigg. So you diagnose the cue and the reward that have made up your habit, and you substitute and activity that is triggered by the old cue AND delivers the old reward. So, if  my habit is to come home from work and have a glass of wine, I can change that habit by realizing that I've connected drinking that wine with allowing myself to sit still and relax after work. So, if I add a different relaxing activity into that time space--reading a book, meditating for a bit, or even exercising--I can change the habit.

So what habits are you contemplating these days? What habits do you have that you don't even notice? Drop me a line in the comments, and let's talk.

---

*Note: none of these resources are available through our library. The book is available through the Transylvania County Library. I have not purchased it for our library because it is a journalistic take on the topic, reporting secondary research, which is probably less useful for our students than more scholarly works on the subject.

JSTOR books

I am happy to present a new addition to our library collections (drumroll, please):

Thanks to ACA, we have access to over 30,000 titles from leading academic publishers, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT university presses. There are no limits on downloads or printing, and there is no need to use special software or create a login. It's just like using journals on JSTOR.

The ebooks are available in JSTOR, alongside our JSTOR journal collections, so book and chapter results will come up along with journal articles.

If you are a faculty member and would like to use the ebooks in a course, you can add the stable URL for a chapter or a full ebook to a syllabus or inside Sakai. With some of our other ebook collections, there are limits on how many people can access a book at the same time, but that's not true with JSTOR books, so they are excellent for class use. If you need help setting up those links, contact us in the library.

The books will be in our online catalog soon (along with about 300,000 other electronic books and all the print books you know and love in our stacks), and I'll let you know when that happens, but until then, you can only access the JSTOR books through the database. You can find JSTOR on the Research A-Z list on the Jones Library website.

Book Leasing Collection

In an effort to offer more up-to-date leisure reading, Jones library is leasing a small collection of books that will rotate on an ongoing basis. You'll find the collection located to the left of the photocopier, and listed in the catalog as "Brevard Book Lease Collection."

Titles in the collection include a wide range of fiction, nonfiction (even one poetry collection!) and, as part of the lease agreement, some of the books will end up in our standing collection. Skim the list below to find your favorite authors (John Grisham, J.A. Jance, Patricia Cornwall, Terry Pratchett...) or read the descriptions to see what catches your eye.

Summer is speeding quickly by...relax with a fun book before you!

Jones Library Light Reading

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ESL and Non-English Language Learning

Thanks to NCLive, the Jones Library is happy to offer access to the language learning tool Pronunciator for the BC community. I would highly recommend that you try it out!

Pronunciator helps you learn any of 80 languages in 50 other languages. That means ESL learners who speak any one of those 50 languages can use Pronunciator to work on their English. Specific tracks for small children are available, as are advanced courses and health care courses. The program includes audio lessons, interactive textbooks, quizzes, phrasebooks and pronunciation analysis. It even has a great mobile app!

Getting started with Pronunciator takes just a few steps:

• Register with Pronunciator 
• Save your Pronunciator provided login and password
• Log in and choose your native language and the language you want to learn
• Get started!

For more information about Pronunciator's learning options, you can take a tour.

Job hunting? Graduate School? Up-to-date Resources @ the Library!

Today, I just want to highlight an amazing collection of e-resources available to us at BC, the Learning Express Library. LearningExpress, which is made available to us through NCLive, provides help with graduate school and job search skills and tests (as well as a variety of other services for learners and job seekers at all levels.)

In LearningExpress, you'll set up your own personal account so that you can keep track of the tests you've taken, what you've read, and what your scores have been on practice tests.

For those of you aiming for graduate school, there are practice exams and information about the  GRE, LSAT, MAT, MCAT, and PCAT exams. If English is your second (or third, or fourth) language, many of the practice tests are available in Spanish, as well, and practice for the TOEFL test is also available.

For job seekers, there is career information and occupational exam preparation tools. For example, future teachers can prepare for the Praxis or for individual state tests (TExES, for example). Other tests are included for careers in areas like Allied Health, Civil Service, Homeland Security, Law Enforcement, and Postal Work, and the military.

Another section of LearningExpress that I find exciting is the Job Search section. I find it particularly awesome right now because I've been having a conversation on Facebook with friends who hire folks fresh out of college or graduate school. We we find that many people don't write acceptable cover letters and don't tailor the cover letter (or, even better, both cover letter and resume) to the job for which they are applying. As a person making a hire, I find it troubling that many don't make the effort to sell themselves for this job, not for a generic job that doesn't exist anywhere but in the applicant's imagination.

Remember that this is just another resource that you have available--but one of your best tools at BC is Nacole in the Office of Career Exploration & Development. She can give you great assistance as you make your plans for the future.

New Books December and January

Thanks to Melodie Farnham, cataloger and acquisitions librarian extraordinaire, I have a pile of new print books to tell you about. These were all added to the library's collection in the last two months--ebooks were also added, but I don't get a list of them to share with you, so be sure to wander around in our catalog periodically to find new books in your research areas.

Because there are so many listed here, I've arranged them by subject (not quite by call number), and featured at least one in each subject area. Come check them out for yourself!

Hot Topic: 

BC Call Number: 363.323 W876c
Wood, Lesley J.  Crisis and control: the militarization of protest policing. New York: Distributed by Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.

This balanced look at global policing provides an examination of the issue that is "both academic and hands-on" (Morton). Melodie describes her reasons for purchasing the book: "We have been hearing more and more about the increasing militarization of police forces across the US. I wanted to provide students with the opportunity to take a closer look at both sides of the issue."

BC Call Number: 363.232 E64p
Epp, Charles R. Pulled over: how police stops define race and citizenship. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014.

A Bit Random

BC Call Number: 025.11 S942w
Successful library fundraising: best practices. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Yep, we ordered that one for me.

BC Call Number: 646.34 H791p
Hope, Babe.  Pretty plus: how to look sexy, sensational and successful, no matter what you weigh. Far Hills, N.J.: New Horizon Press, c2010.

BC Call Number: 686.22 W235f
Walters, John L. Fifty typefaces that changed the world. London: Conran Octopus, 2013.


Publisher's description: The digital revolution has made typesetters of us all as we define our identities through the typefaces we choose to communicate with the world. In this witty and insightful book John L Waters explores 50 of the most influential typefaces and shows them in use on posters, perfume packaging, buildings and more. From the power of Gotham - the typeface used in Obama's first presidential campaign - to Wim Crouwel's digital-taming New Alphabet, this is a book of visual treats and wonderful stories.

BC Call Number: 690.892 C284b
Carlsen, Spike.  The backyard homestead book of building projects. North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2014.

Psychology

BC Call Number: 153.8 D989m
Dweck, Carol S.  Mindset: the new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books, 2008.

Melodie writes about this title, "I learned about this book last fall at a faculty development function. The author's explanation of fixed and growth mindsets will prompt readers to examine how they view challenges. This was purchased with both faculty and students in mind."


Description from Publisher's Weekly:
Mindset is "an established set of attitudes held by someone," says the Oxford American Dictionary. It turns out, however, that a set of attitudes needn't be so set, according to Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford. Dweck proposes that everyone has either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. A fixed mindset is one in which you view your talents and abilities as... well, fixed. In other words, you are who you are, your intelligence and talents are fixed, and your fate is to go through life avoiding challenge and failure. A growth mindset, on the other hand, is one in which you see yourself as fluid, a work in progress. Your fate is one of growth and opportunity. Which mindset do you possess? Dweck provides a checklist to assess yourself and shows how a particular mindset can affect all areas of your life, from business to sports and love....Dweck's overall assertion that rigid thinking benefits no one, least of all yourself, and that a change of mind is always possible, is welcome.

BC Call Number: 306.7 B511p
Bering, Jesse.  Perv: the sexual deviant in all of us.  New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

BC Call Number: 362.8292 B213w
Bancroft, Lundy.  Why does he do that? Inside the minds of angry and controlling men. New York: Berkley Books, 2003.

BC Call Number: 612.8 K13f
Kaku, Michio.  The future of the mind: the scientific quest to understand, enhance, and empower the mind. New York: Doubleday, 2014.

BC Call Number: 616.891 P578c
Physical activity and mental health. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2014.

BC Call Number: 616.890092 H662c
Hines, Kevin.  Cracked, not broken: surviving and thriving after a suicide attempt. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013.

Philosophy  

BC Call Number: 170 N414e
Neiman, Susan.  Evil in modern thought: an alternative history of philosophy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.

BC Call Number: 174.297954 S531t
Sharp, Lesley Alexandra. The transplant imaginary: mechanical hearts, animal parts, and moral thinking in highly experimental science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 174.4 S757g
Spinello, Richard A.  Global capitalism, culture, and ethics. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

BC Call Number: 741.50973 R464s
Reynolds, Richard. Super heroes: a modern mythology.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.

BC Call Number: 741.509 S959m
Superheroes and philosophy: truth, justice, and the Socratic way.   Chicago, Ill.: Open Court, c2005.

BC Call Number: 791.4372 M433i
The matrix and philosophy: welcome to the desert of the real. Chicago: Open Court, 2002.

BC Call Number: 791.4372 M488g
Philosophers explore The Matrix.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

BC Call Number: 794.801 W927c
World of Warcraft and philosophy: wrath of the philosopher king.  Chicago: Open Court, c2009.

We picked up a few academic popular culture analyses during December and January, some from a really interesting batch of donations. This book is described as follows:

Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) in videogame history, World of Warcraft is everywhere — from episodes of South Park and The Simpsons, to online series like Watch the Guild, accolades and awards from game critics, and prime-time commercials with Mr. T. Inevitably, such a cultural phenomenon triggers deeper questions. When does an assumed identity become real? Does the Corrupted Blood epidemic warn us of future public health catastrophes? What are the dangers when real life is invaded by events in the game? What can our own world learn from Azeroth’s blend of primitivism and high-tech? In these lively essays, a specially commissioned guild of philosophers, including Yara Mitsuishi, Monica Evans, Tim Christopher, and Anna Janssen, tackles these and other complex questions arising from WoW.


Norton, Brian Michael.  Fiction and the philosophy of happiness: ethical inquiries in the Age of Enlightenment. Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press ; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Group, 2014.

Business & Business Ethics

BC Call Number: 174.4 S757g
Spinello, Richard A.  Global capitalism, culture, and ethics. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

BC Call Number: 174.4 A142m
Abend, Gabriel.  The moral background: an inquiry into the history of business ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 658.4038 R658i
Robinson, Alan.  The idea-driven organization: unlocking the power in bottom-up ideas.  San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2014.

Book description: Too many organizations are overlooking, or even suppressing, their single most powerful source of growth and innovation....The frontline employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services have unparalleled insights into where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact. In this follow-up to their bestseller Ideas Are Free, Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder show how to align every part of an organization around generating and implementing employee ideas and offer dozens of examples of what a tremendous competitive advantage this can offer. Their advice will enable leaders to build organizations capable of implementing 20, 50, or even 100 ideas per employee per year. Citing organizations from around the world, they explain what’s needed to put together a management team that can lead the type of organization that embraces grassroots ideas and describe the strategies, policies, and practices that enable them. They detail exactly how high-performing idea processes work and how to design one for your organization. (Source: Amazon)

BC Call Number: 658.4012 H224f
Hammerich, Kai.  Fish can't see water: how national culture can make or break your corporate strategy. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2013.

Religion

BC Call Number: 200.94 W746g
Wilson, A. N.  God's funeral. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.

BC Call Number: 201.678 P275l
Partridge, Christopher H.  The lyre of Orpheus: popular music, the sacred, and the profane. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 204 K26i
Keen, Sam.  In the absence of God: dwelling in the presence of the sacred. New York: Harmony Books, c2010.

BC Call Number: 220.863 S673t
Snodgrass, J. Turning the tables: farming and feeding in the Gospels. Charleston, S.C.: CreateSpace, 2012.

BC Call Number: 261.29514 P175j
Palmer, Martin.  The Jesus sutras: rediscovering the lost scrolls of Taoist Christianity. New York: Ballantine, 2001.

BC Call Number: 294.3 R148w
Walpola Rahula.  What the Buddha taught. 2nd ed.  New York: Grove Press, 1974.

BC Call Number: 294.513 C775m
Noble, Margaret Elizabeth. Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists. New York, Dover Publicatons, 1967.

BC Call Number: 296.396 B789j
Boyarin, Daniel. The Jewish Gospels: the story of the Jewish Christ. New York: The New Press, 2012.

BC Call Number: 297.09 R165w
Ramadan, Tariq.  Western Muslims and the future of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Review from Foreign Affairs: "In the spirit of interfaith dialogue, which Ramadan embraces, one might as well describe this book as a splendid practical catechism for Muslims in the West. There is much food for thought in it as well for non-Muslim majorities in the West and Muslim majorities in the Middle East. The book is at its best when it describes and interprets the recent explosion of accusations of witchcraft and other superstitions in the region and links them to the exercise of political power."



BC Call Number: 297.283 J75b
Jomier, Jacques.  The Bible and the Qur'an. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002.

BC Call Number: 297.283 P573m
Phipps, William E.  Muhammad and Jesus: a comparison of the prophets and their teachings. New York: Continuum, 1996.

BC Call Number: 299.785 M478n
McGaa, Ed.  Nature's way: native wisdom for living in balance with the earth. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2004.

BC Call Number: 322.109 B974t
Buruma, Ian.  Taming the gods: religion and democracy on three continents. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Education & Teaching

BC Call Number: 370.9 R589s
Ripley, Amanda.  The smartest kids in the world: and how they got that way. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013

BC Call Number: 371.01 O977c
Owens, John. Confessions of a bad teacher: the shocking truth from the front lines of American public education. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2013.

BC Call Number: 371.829 H773b
Honigsfeld, Andrea. Breaking the mold of classroom management: what educators should know and do to enable student success. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2014.

BC Call Number: 371.242 B491a Beresin, Anna R.  The art of play: recess and the practice of invention. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 371.3 P141a
Pahomov, Larissa. Authentic learning in the digital age: engaging students through inquiry. Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD, 2014.


Although aimed at K-12 teachers, the precepts explored in this volume fit perfectly with BC's experiential education focus.

Book Description: How can you create an authentic learning environment—one where students ask questions, do research, and explore subjects that fascinate them—in today’s standards-driven atmosphere? Pahomov outlines a framework for learning structured around five core values: inquiry, research collaboration, presentation and reflection. For each value, she presents:
* A detailed description of how the value can transform classroom practice and how a “digital connection” can enhance its application.
* A step-by-step outline for how to implement the value, with examples from teachers in all subject areas.
* Solutions to possible challenges and roadblocks that teachers may experience.
* Suggestions for how to expand the value beyond the classroom to schoolwide practice.</br<
* Anecdotes from students, offering their perspectives on how they experienced the value in the classroom and after graduation. (Source: Amazon)

BC Call Number: 507.12 S562e 

Shumow, Lee. Enhancing adolescents' motivation for science: research-based strategies for teaching male and female students. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin, 2014.

BC Call Number: 780.71 B478t  Benton, Carol W. Thinking about thinking: metacognition for music learning. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Social Sciences

BC Call Number: 302.13 R125p
Radcliff, Benjamin.  The political economy of human happiness: how voters' choices determine the quality of life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 305.23 R579n
Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela.  The nature of childhood: an environmental history of growing up in America since 1865. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014.

BC Call Number: 305.896 M657c
Mills, Quincy T.  Cutting along the color line: Black barbers and barber shops in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 305.896073 M433o  (Also available as an e-book)
Matlin, Daniel.  On the corner: African American intellectuals and the urban crisis. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 306.7 B511p
Bering, Jesse.  Perv: the sexual deviant in all of us.  New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Melodie selected this book "to support students who are taking the Human Sexuality class this spring and for anyone who is looking to gain a better insight into his or her own sexual development."

Author Jesse Bering is a psychologist and columnist who combines "cutting-edge studies and critiques of landmark research and conclusions drawn by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey, and the DSM-5" to make the argument that sexual deviance is commonplace. (Source: Amazon)


BC Call Number: 322.109 B974t
Buruma, Ian.  Taming the gods: religion and democracy on three continents. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

BC Call Number: 332.4 F695m
Forbes, Steve.  Money: how the destruction of the dollar threatens the global economy--and what we can do about it. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014.

BC Call Number: 352.379 S129s
Sagar, Rahul.  Secrets and leaks: the dilemma of state secrecy.  Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 362.196 E26i
Edwards, Laurie. In the kingdom of the sick: a social history of chronic illness in America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.

BC Call Number: 363.192 L971f
Lusk, Jayson.  The food police: a well-fed manifesto about the politics of your plate.  New York: Crown Forum, 2013.

BC Call Number: 363.325 K96h
Kumamoto, Robert D.  The historical origins of terrorism in America: 1644-1880. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

BC Call Number: 363.883 P831b
Poppendieck, Janet. Breadlines knee-deep in wheat: food assistance in the Great Depression.
Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 364.1523 H491i
Hempel, Sandra. The Inheritor's powder: a tale of arsenic, murder, and the new forensic science. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015.

BC Call Number: 364.601 F353i
Ferguson, Robert A. Inferno: an anatomy of American punishment. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 391.5 G878a
Grosswirth, Marvin.  The art of growing a beard.  Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2014.

BC Call Number: 398.2089 M999b
Myths and tales of the American Indians. New York: Indian Head Books, 1992.

Math & Science

BC Call Number: 174.297954 S531t
Sharp, Lesley Alexandra. The transplant imaginary: mechanical hearts, animal parts, and moral thinking in highly experimental science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 031.02 P728b
Plimmer, Martin.  Beyond coincidence: stories of amazing coincidence and the mystery and mathematics behind them. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2006.

BC Call Number: 501 Y24o
Yanofsky, Noson S. The outer limits of reason: what science, mathematics, and logic cannot tell us. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 508.0922 B873s
Brooks, Paul.  Speaking for nature: the literary naturalists, from transcendentalism to the birth of the American environmental movement. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2014.

BC Call Number: 516 M296b
Maor, Eli.  Beautiful geometry.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 530.13 M361p
Marro, Joaquin. Physics, nature and society: a guide to order and complexity in our world. Springer, 2014.

BC Call Number: 539.7215 P277p
Pas, H.  The perfect wave: with neutrinos at the boundary of space and time. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014

BC Call Number: 551.22 D988e
Dvorak, John. Earthquake storms: the fascinating history and volatile future of the San Andreas Fault.  New York, NY:  Pegasus Books, 2014.

BC Call Number: 579.17 M742a
Money, Nicholas, P. The amoeba in the room: lives of the microbes.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014

BC Call Number: 591.5 K52h
King, Barbara J. How animals grieve. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.

An interesting controversy in science is the question of whether animals have emotion. Traditional schools of thought caution against anthropomorphizing animals. I can remember mentioning to a biologist colleague at another school how sad a particular elephant looked at a zoo, and he lectured me on how animals do not feel emotion. Little did I know at the time that it was a hot button in his field. King, however, is an anthropologist at the forefront of the movement that draws attention to animal emotions. In this book, she explores specifically the emotion of grief and how animals mourn lost companions.


BC Call Number: 591.53 B372s
Beauchamp, Guy. Social predation: how group living benefits predators and prey.  Waltham, MA: Elsevier/  Academic Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 796.0151 L668a
Levy, Joel. All the right angles: From gear ratios to calculating odds: mathematics in the world of sports. Richmond Hill, Ontario: Firefly Books, 2013.

Exercise Science, Sports & Outdoor Activities

BC Call Number: 612.044 E64s
Epstein, David J. The sports gene: inside the science of extraordinary athletic performance. New York: Current, 2014.

BC Call Number: 612.76 G476h
Gillen, Christopher M. The hidden mechanics of exercise: molecules that move us. Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 613.71 D343st
Delavier, Frederic.  The strength training anatomy workout.  Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, c2011.

BC Call Number: 616.891 P578c
Physical activity and mental health. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2014.

BC Call Number: 623.829 W288c
Warren, Graham.  Canoe paddles: a complete guide to making your own. Buffalo, N.Y.: Firefly Books, 2001.

BC Call Number: 629.2272 H186b
Hallett, Richard. The bike deconstructed: a grand tour of the modern bicycle. New York, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 796.0151 L668a
Levy, Joel. All the right angles: From gear ratios to calculating odds: mathematics in the world of sports. Richmond Hill, Ontario: Firefly Books, 2013.

BC Call Number: 796.6409 S628b 2014
Skinner, Elizabeth. Bicycling the Blue Ridge: a guide to the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Birmingham, Alabama: Menasha Ridge Press, 2014.

Anyone who has seen me can clearly tell that I am not going to be biking the Parkway anytime soon, but with the number of bicycle enthusiasts on our campus, I predict this could be a popular book. This brand new edition has updated information on  bike shops, lodging,campgrounds, road crossings, points of interests, great views and food options, listed by mileposts on the 574-mile route from Front Royal VA to Cherokee NC.

BC Call Number: 796.50289 G659b
Reed, Tom.  NOLS Bear Essentials: hiking and camping in bear country. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, c2009.

BC Call Number: 796.54 T581w
Tilton, Buck.  NOLS winter camping. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, c2005.

BC Call Number: 796.58 W453w
Wells, Darran.  NOLS wilderness navigation. 2nd ed.  Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, c2013.

BC Call Number: 796.75 L991b
Lyon, Danny. The bikeriders. New York: Aperture, 2014.

Health Science  

BC Call Number: 362.196 E26i
Edwards, Laurie. In the kingdom of the sick: a social history of chronic illness in America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.

BC Call Number: 612.8 K13f
Kaku, Michio.  The future of the mind: the scientific quest to understand, enhance, and empower the mind. New York: Doubleday, 2014.

BC Call Number: 614.5 L666d
Levitt, Alexandra M.  Deadly outbreaks: how medical detectives save lives threatened by killer pandemics, exotic viruses, and drug-resistant parasites. New York: Skyhorse Pub., c2013.

BC Call Number: 615.7922 B644m
Blaser, Martin J. Missing microbes: how the overuse of antibiotics is fueling our modern plagues. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014.

BC Call Number: 616.042 D261c
Davis, Daniel M. The compatibility gene: how our bodies fight disease, attract others, and define our selves. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

We each have around 25,000 genes, but the genes in this story are those that vary the most from person to person. These genes--called compatibility genes--are, in effect, a molecular signature that distinguishes each of us as individuals. Davis tells the remarkable story of the discovery of compatibility genes, and how decades of patient scientific inquiry, punctuated with individual strokes of genius, have unraveled their workings. Davis reveals how our compatibility genes fight disease, and how this fight varies in all of us....What is particularly fascinating is that these same genes influence the wiring of our brains, the lovers we choose, and successful pregnancies....By bringing together evidence from diverse fields of biology, this book argues that our compatibility genes are central to how we live and when we die, and that a shocking amount of what we do and who we are is determined by how we have evolved to survive disease. Science has never been more elusive or tantalizing than in revealing the nature of ourselves--and unlocking the secrets of our compatibility genes will be central to 21st-century medicine. (Source: Amazon)

Art

BC Call Number:704.9499 B676a
Bohm-Duchen, Monica. Art and the Second World War. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 709.2 E59v
Brian Eno: visual music. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2013.

BC Call Number: 709.2 K29m (Oversized)
Mike Kelley.   [Amsterdam]: Stedelijk Museum ; New York: Prestel Publishing, 2013

BC Call Number: 709.730905 A784a (Oversized)
Art studio America: Contemporary artist spaces. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2013.

BC Call Number: 741.59 S666o  (Oversized)
Smolderen, Thierry.  The origins of comics: from William Hogarth to Winsor McCay. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

BC Call Number: 746.92 P973l
Przybyszewski, Linda.  The lost art of dress: the women who once made America stylish. New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books  Group, 2014.

BC Call Number: 759.9492 M741t
Troy, Nancy J. The afterlife of Piet Mondrian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

This title reminded me that, in my first apartment, I had sheets and curtains I thought of as my Mondrian decor. It fascinates me how fine art can become a visual icon in pop culture. I can't wait until the book is returned and I can find out more about this process with Mondrian.

Here's the publisher's description: "Dutch painter Piet Mondrian died in New York City in 1944, but his work and legacy have been far from static since then. From market pressures to personal relationships and scholarly agendas, posthumous factors have repeatedly transformed our understanding of his oeuvre. InThe Afterlife of Piet Mondrian, Nancy J. Troy explores the controversial circumstances under which our conception of the artist's work has been shaped since his death, an account that describes money-driven interventions and personal and professional rivalries in forthright detail. Troy reveals how collectors, curators, scholars, dealers and the painter's heirs all played roles in fashioning Mondrian's legacy, each with a different reason for seeing the artist through a particular lens. She shows that our appreciation of his work is influenced by how it has been conserved, copied, displayed, and publicized, and she looks at the popular appeal of Mondrian's instantly recognizable style in fashion, graphic design, and a vast array of consumer commodities. Ultimately, Troy argues that we miss the evolving significance of Mondrian's work if we examine it without regard for the interplay of canonical art and popular culture. A fascinating investigation into Mondrian's afterlife, this book casts new light on how every artist's legacy is constructed as it circulates through the art world and becomes assimilated into the larger realm of visual experience." 


BC Call Number: 759.13 G881z (Oversized)
Mark Grotjahn. Aspen, CO: Aspen Art Museum: Aspen Art Press ; New York, N.Y.: Artbook / Distributed Art Publishers, 2012

BC Call Number: 769.92 C623j
Johnston, Melinda.  Lateral Inversions: The Prints of Barry Cleavin.  Christchurch: Canterbury University Press , 2013.

BC Call Number: 770 Z967s
Zuromskis, Catherine.  Snapshot photography: the lives of images. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 779 R414p (Oversized)
Poetics of light: contemporary pinhole photography: selections from the Pinhole Resource Collection.  New Mexico History Museum.  Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, [2014]

BC Call Number: 779.092 H468o (Oversized)
Robert Heinecken: object matter.  New York, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014.

BC Call Number: 779.092 K96n (Oversized)
Kuhn, Mona.  Native. Gottingen: Steidl, 2009.

BC Call Number: 779.092 C236y (Oversized)
Young, Cynthia Capa in color.  New York:  International Center of Photography, 2014.

BC Call Number: 779.092 M391k (Oversized)
Charles Marville: photographer of Paris.  Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2013.

BC Call Number: 779.092 W365m (Oversized)
Webb, Alex. Memory City.  Santa Fe, New Mexico: Radius Books, 2014.

Music

BC Call Number: 016.78 E64m
Epperson, Bruce D. More important than the music: a history of jazz discography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 780 H387v
Havers, Richard.  Verve: the sound of America. London: Thames & Hudson, Inc., 2013.

BC Call Number: 780.71 B478t
Benton, Carol W. Thinking about thinking: metacognition for music learning. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

BC Call Number: 781.43 D256r
Davies, J. Q.  Romantic anatomies of performance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 781.17 C771b
Cook, Nicholas. Beyond the score: music as performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 781.542 D685o
Donnelly, K. J.  Occult aesthetics: synchronization in sound film. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 781.66 E59m
Ensminger, David A.  Mavericks of sound: conversations with artists who shaped indie and roots music.  Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

BC Call Number: 782.14 G393s
Gestures of music theater: the performativity of song and dance.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 782.14092 K39h
Hischak, Thomas S. The Jerome Kern encyclopedia. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2013.

BC Call Number: 782.42162 O25v
Odo, Franklin.  Voices from the canefields: Folksongs from Japanese immigrant workers in Hawai'i.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2013

BC Call Number: 782.421644 S426b
Baram, Marcus. Gil Scott-Heron: pieces of a man. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2014.

Publisher's description: Best known for his 1970 polemic "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Gil Scott-Heron was a musical icon who defied characterization. He tantalized audiences with his charismatic stage presence, and his biting, observant lyrics in such singles as "The Bottle" and "Johannesburg" provide a time capsule for a decade marked by turbulence, uncertainty, and racism. While he was exalted by his devoted fans as the "black Bob Dylan" (a term he hated) and widely sampled by the likes of Kanye West, Prince, Common, and Elvis Costello, he never really achieved mainstream success. Yet he maintained a cult following throughout his life, even as he grappled with the personal demons that fueled so many of his lyrics. Scott-Heron performed and occasionally recorded well into his later years, until eventually succumbing to his life-long struggle with addiction. He passed away in 2011, the end to what had become a hermit-like existence. In this biography, Marcus Baram--an acquaintance of Gil Scott-Heron's--will trace the volatile journey of a troubled musical genius. Baram will chart Scott-Heron's musical odyssey, from Chicago to Tennessee to New York: a drug addict's twisted path to redemption and enduring fame. In Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man, Marcus Baram puts the complicated icon into full focus.

Film

BC Call Number: 781.542 D685o
Donnelly, K. J.  Occult aesthetics: synchronization in sound film. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 791.430233 C994b (also e-book)
Cybulski, Mary.Beyond continuity: script supervision for the modern filmmaker. New York ; London: Focal Press, 2014.

Publisher's description: "A guide to the craft of script supervising, Beyond Continuity features practical instruction through real-world examples demonstrating and explaining the skills needed by a professional script supervisor. Mary Cybulski, one of Hollywood's premier script supervisors, imparts her sage wisdom as she walks you through the process of training and working as a professional script supervisor, covering the basic skills of breaking down a script, taking notes on set, matching, cheating, determining screen direction, and knowing what the director, actors, and editor expect from a script supervisor. She also details many of the more subtle, but just as important skills-- how to get a job, how to think like an editor, how to tell what is important in a script and on set, how to get along with the cast and crew, and how not to get overwhelmed when there is too much information to process"

BC Call Number: 791.4372 M433i
The Matrix and philosophy: welcome to the desert of the real. Chicago: Open Court, 2002.

BC Call Number: 791.4372 M488g
Philosophers explore The Matrix.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Literature

BC Call Number: 809.933578 P479m
Petermann, Emily. The Musical Novel: Imitation of Musical Structure, Performance, and Reception in Contemporary Fiction. Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2014.

BC Call Number: 810.936 T737w
Toward a literary ecology: places and spaces in American literature. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2013.
BC Call Number: 508.0922 B873s

Brooks, Paul.  Speaking for nature: the literary naturalists, from transcendentalism to the birth of the American environmental movement. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2014.

If you are interested in the interconnections between literature and ecology, these two books are a nice pairing. The interdisciplinarity of the subject is highlighted by their Dewey classifications--you'll note that 800's are literature and 500's are sciences. Toward a Literary Ecology is much more a literary theory text, with a compilation of essays that discuss works of several authors, genres, and geographies. Speaking for Nature is a biographical source, with profiles of nature writers both literary and activist and drawings by the author.


BC Call Number: 810.9896073 W319o
Washington, Mary Helen. The other blacklist: the African American literary and cultural left of the 1950s. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 810.9975 C737g
A companion to the literature and culture of the American south.  Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004.

BC Call Number: 811.308 O962k  Over the river and through the wood: an anthology of nineteenth-century American children's poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, [2014]

BC Call Number: 813.54 D886l
Leak, Jeffrey B.  Visible man: the life of Henry Dumas.  Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 821.9 H646h
Hill, Geoffrey. Broken hierarchies: poems, 1952-2012. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

BC Call Number: 823.914 B365f
Beahm, George W.  Fact, fiction, and folklore in Harry Potter's world: an unofficial guide. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Pub. Co., c2005.

BC Call Number: 809.3033 N882f
Norton, Brian Michael.  Fiction and the philosophy of happiness: ethical inquiries in the Age of Enlightenment. Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press ; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Group, 2014.

History

BC Call Number: 909.04924 S299s
Schama, Simon. The story of the Jews: finding the words, 1000 BC-1492 AD.  New York, NY: Ecco, 2014.

BC Call Number: 938 S428d
Scott, Michael. Delphi: a history of the center of the ancient world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 973.7092 G659a
Gopnik, Adam.  Angels and ages: a short book about Darwin, Lincoln, and modern life.
New York: Vintage Books, 2010.

BC Call Number: 940.5472 O419c
Okubo, Mine. Citizen 13660.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014.

First published in 1946, this classic illustrated memoir tells the story of a California-born Japanese American artist forced into the "relocation centers" established by executive order in 1942. 120,000 ethnic Japaneses were incarcerated in these camps. This piece of shameful American history is poignantly depicted in Mine's line drawings and text. I can envision a senior project drawing on this memoir and both primary and secondary source historical documents on this topic.



BC Call Number: 940.282 S862f
Stites, Richard.  The four horsemen: riding to liberty in post-Napoleonic Europe. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014.

BC Call Number: 907.2 B894g
Brundage, Anthony.  Going to the sources: a guide to historical research and writing. Fifth Edition.  Chichester, West Sussex, UK ; Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2013.

11 Great Sources of Educational Videos Online

Videos can be a great teaching tool. In a flipped classroom, students can watch a video outside of class to replace or supplement text readings or standard lectures. Within a classroom, a short video can provide fodder for discussion or classroom activities. Thanks to streaming media, video can be watched anywhere, anytime an Internet connection is available. That's a lot easier than those 16mm films we watched years ago. With streaming, you don't even have to check a DVD out of the library to take to class. Not all eleven of these videos may be appropriate for the classroom; some are more for individual edification or edutainment, but there are interesting nonetheless.

I just want to highlight a few places you can find videos for the classroom or just to feed your intellectual curiosity. I haven't included MOOC or whole-course video sites, like Khan Academy, Coursera, or Academic Earth.

1. Films on Demand. (If the link doesn't work for you, check your local library for this one.)

Thanks to NCLive, the Jones Library provides access to this resource for all students, faculty and staff of Brevard College. The collection contains over 21,000 streaming videos from a variety of sources aimed at both academic and public library users. Academic areas covered include business, health, humanities, social sciences, science and mathematics. Also included are travel and fitness programs, home and DIY videos, indie films, and popular music performances. If you are using information from the videos in a paper or media creation of your own, FoD conveniently provides citations in MLA and APA formats--no excuse for plagiarism, folks.

2. NC Live Video Collection (Again, this is a Brevard College link. Check your local library for access)

This collection also comes to BC thanks to NCLive. The collection consists primarily of selected PBS videos, including series like Masterpiece (no, not Downton Abbey), Nova, Eyes on the Prize, and Ken Burns' work. Also included are videos specific to North Carolina history and the arts. Gotta love PBS when you're looking for educational video!

Thus ends our library promo of the week. The rest of these video resources are freely available on the interwebs.

3. iTunes U

From individual lectures to whole courses from colleges and universities schools, iTunes U is an amazing collection of free educational content. Quality of video and audio content does vary greatly, depending on the creator, so you might have to surf a bit to find the gems. If you happen to be a Brevard faculty member reading this blog, you might want to talk to Jodi in IT about posting your own material on Brevard's iTunes U site.

4. Curiosity

If you are an intellectually curious sort, this is a site you must explore. The videos are brief and interesting, and each teaches a concept of some sort. Today, I learned a bit about quantum physics, how to make my own disco ball, and the history of the Ouija board. You can search by keyword, browse subject categories or popular videos, or--my favorite--hit the "surprise me" button to see a random video on any topic. Just now, the surprise was a video titled "Are cockroaches good for your health?" I admit that I didn't watch that one. Just the opening image gave me the heebie-jeebies.

5. Ted

If you want to hear the best researchers and thinkers in the world talk for less than 18 minutes about great ideas, Ted is the place to go. Ted talks are fascinating, thoughtful, timely, and cover a wide range of subjects. These talks are among the best informational videos the internet has to offer.

6. BrightTalk

Focused on business topics, BrightTalk offers webinars and videos organized in the following "communities": accounting, management, facilities, healthcare and life sciences, information technology, investment management, marketing, and sales. These videos aren't the short bites of information you find elsewhere; rather, they tend to be full-length lectures or conversations.

7. Green.TV

It's not easy being Green, but this website of environmental videos provides far more than strategies for creating a greener, more sustainable planet. Science and social science combine to support the mission of the organization through thoughtful videos with strong production values. The group launched in 2005 in a partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and continues to work collaboratively with strong partner organizations.

Educational YouTube Channels

8. True Facts About...

Every week, Ze Frank releases a new video about a random animal. These videos are always hilarious and often NSFW. Ze Frank's formal and excessively plummy voice-over makes the scripting and side comments all the better, but between giggles and snorts, you learn a great deal of trivia about a particular animal in a short time. You will also learn more about the animals' genitals and excretory organs than Wild Kingdom ever shared--and that can be some weird stuff. Ask the ruddy ducks.

9. Crash Course

These videos run from 10-15 minutes and cover academic topics. John and Hank Green, the brothers who create this series, encourage using their videos with students, either as homework or in class, so they are designed to support classroom work as well as independent learning. They are interesting, fast-paced mini-lectures with fun examples, but the videos I sampled were a bit less infotainment than than the vids on the Curiosity site. Their playlists are in the categories of world and U.S. history, literature, biology, ecology, chemistry, and psychology.

10. VSauce

This site asks and answers random questions like "Why are we morbidly curious?" and "Why do we kiss?" Production quality is excellent, and the range of topics interesting. Some are less educational than others, but they are entertaining and informative, nonetheless.. 

11. Nerdwriter

Another YouTube channel, Nerdwriter's stated purpose is to "cultivate worldview." It is very much a video podcast from an individual perspective. The creator wants to cultivate "well-rounded individuals" who "live the intellectual life." I'd say that's the goal of a liberal arts education, too--especially the "well-rounded" part. As you might expect, the vocabulary and topics covered are intellectual and a little pretentious. Nonetheless, Nerdwriter's critical analysis of the world we live in can spark thoughtful reflection and conversations. The videos range from opinionated commentary to introductory discussions of topics.