Talbot, Ian. Pakistan: A Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

This book fills the need for a broad, historically sophisticated understanding of Pakistan, a country at fifty which is understood by many in the West only in terms of stereotypes—the fanatical, authoritarian and reactionary “other” which is unfavorably compared to a tolerant, democratic and progressive India. There is a need at the time of Pakistan’s golden jubilee for it to be taken seriously in its own right as a country of 130 million people.

Rashid, Ahmed. Descent into Chaos: The United States & the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Viking Books, 2008.

After September 11th , Ahmed Rashid’s crucial book Taliban introduced American readers to that now notorious regime. In this new work, he returns to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia to review the catastrophic aftermath of America’s failed war on terror.

Lieven, Anatol. Pakistan: A Hard Country. Penguin Books, 2012.

With almost 200 million people, a 500,000-man army, nuclear weapons, and a large diaspora in Britain and North America, Pakistan is central to the hopes of jihadis and the fears of their enemies. Yet the greatest short-term threat to Pakistan is not Islamist insurgency as such, but the actions of the United States, and the greatest long-term threat is ecological change.

Toorpakai, Maria and Katharine Holstein. A Different Kind of Daughter: A Girl Who Hid From the Taliban in Plain Sight. Twelve, 2016.

Maria Toorpakai Wazir has lived her life disguised as a boy, defying the Taliban, in order to pursue her love of sport. Coming second in a national junior weightlifting event for boys, Maria decided to put her future in her own hands by going in disguise. When she discovered squash and was easily beating all the boys, life became more dangerous.

Zakaria, Rafia. The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan. Beacon Press, 2015.

For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country’s former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi—Bhutto’s birthplace and Pakistan’s other great metropolis—Rafia Zakaria’s family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her Uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death. In that moment these twin catastrophes—one political and public, the other secret and intensely personal—briefly converged.

Suleri, Sara. Meatless Days. University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Meatless Days is a searing memoir of life in the newly-created country of Pakistan. When sudden and shocking tragedies hit the author’s family two years apart, her personal crisis spirals into a wider meditation on universal questions: about being a woman when you’re too busy being a mother or a sister or a wife to consider your own womanhood; about how it feels to begin life in a new language; about how our lives are changed by the people that leave them.

Significant trauma, including witnessing or experiencing violence, is a fact of life for many students. Left unaddressed, that trauma can be an obstacle to learning. Teachers, who are typically asked to focus on cognitive rather than affective learning, sometimes feel ill-equipped to help students process their experiences. This lesson provides a curriculum-connected place to start.

In the lesson students gain an intuitive sense of the difference between affective and cognitive brain functions. They are asked to use both art and expository writing to respond to clips from the documentary film QUEST. The family shown in the film uses community connections, politics and art to cope when their youngest daughter, PJ, is shot--caught in crossfire on the streets of North Philadelphia. As students compare and contrast responses, they understand the role that affective pursuits, like artistic expression, can play in the healing process.

Prejean, Helen. Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. Penguin Random House, 1993.

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing. Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love.

Elliott, Martha. The Man in the Monster: An Intimate Portrait of a Serial Killer. Penguin Random House, 2015.

Michael Ross was a serial killer who raped and murdered eight young women between 1981 and 1984. In 2005, the state of Connecticut put him to death by lethal injection. His crimes were horrific, and he paid the ultimate price for them. When journalist Martha Elliott first heard of Ross, she learned what the world knew of him—that he had been a master at hiding in plain sight. Elliott, a staunch critic of the death penalty, was drawn to the case when the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned Ross’s six death sentences. Rather than fight for his life, Ross requested that he be executed because he didn’t want the families of his victims to suffer through a new trial. Elliott was intrigued and sought an interview. The two began a weekly conversation—and developed an odd form of friendship—that lasted over a decade, until Ross’s last moments of life.

Claiborne, Shane. Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s Killing Us. HarperOne, 2016.

A southern evangelical Christian draws on Scripture and statistics to argue against the death penalty. To illustrate his changing views on capital punishment, he compares the principles of restorative and punitive justice. What does the Bible have to say about sin, revenge and absolution? Claiborne, a popular speaker and champion of the new monastic movement, offers an impassioned argument against capital punishment rooted in his Christian faith.

Hammel, Andrew. Ending the Death Penalty: The European Experience in Global Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Examining the successful movements to abolish capital punishment in the UK, France, and Germany, this book examines the similarities in the social structure and political strategies of abolition movements in all three countries. An in-depth comparative analysis with other countries assesses chances of success of abolition elsewhere.

Blecker, Robert. The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

The Death of Punishment challenges the reader to refine deeply held beliefs on life and death as punishment that flare up with every news story of a heinous crime. It argues that society must redesign life and death in prison to make the punishment more nearly fit the crime. It closes with the final irony: If we make prison the punishment it should be, we may well abolish the very death penalty justice now requires.

Currie, Gregory, Fernandez, Bina and Marina de Regt, ed. Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

This collection of essays examines the social and political dimensions of migrant labor in the Middle East. For over 50 years, economic migrants from Africa and Asia have found employment in the Middle East, particularly as domestic workers. These essays analyze how the conditions of migrant labor affect family life in various countries, including Argentina, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and Ukraine.

Choudry, Aziz and Mondli Hlatshwayo, ed. Just Work?: Migrant Workers’ Stuggles Today. PlutoPress, 2016.

From trade unions in South Africa to resistance in oppressive Gulf states, migrating forest workers in the Czech Republic, and illegal workers’ organizations in Hong Kong, Just Work brings together a wealth of lived experiences and frontline struggles for the first time. Highlighting developments in the wake of austerity and attacks on traditional forms of labor organizing, the contributors show how workers are finding new and innovative ways of resisting. The result is both a rich analysis of where the movement stands today and a reminder of the potentially explosive power of migrant workers in the years to come.

Cholewinski, Ryszard, Paulde Guchteneire and Antoine Pecoud, ed. Migration and Human Rights: The United Nations Convention on Migrant Workers’ Rights. Paris: UNESCO, 2009.

This volume provides in-depth information on the Convention and on the reasons behind states’ reluctance towards its ratification. It brings together researchers, international civil servants and NGO members and relies upon an interdisciplinary perspective that includes not only law, but also sociology and political science.

Foer, Franklin. How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. HarperCollins, 2004.

How Soccer Explains the World is a unique take on the world’s most popular sport. Foer argues that soccer is a lens that can help us understand politics, the global economy and cultural movements of today.

Galeano, Eduardo. Translated by Mark Fried. Soccer in Sun and Shadow. Nation Books, 2013. (Originally published in Spanish in 1995.)

Renowned Uruguayan author and journalist Eduardo Galeano’s international history of soccer is both comprehensive and poetic. He celebrates the star players behind the game but also reveals its dark underbelly, including corrupt international politics and questionable labor practices. Ultimately, Galeano’s love letter to soccer presents the sport as a great equalizer that brings together people of all classes and nationalities.

Kuper, Simon and Stefan Szymanski. Soccernomics(2018 World Cup Edition). Hachette Book Group, 2018.

Written with an economist’s brain and a soccer writer’s skill, Soccernomics applies high-powered analytical tools to everyday soccer topics, looking at data and revealing counterintuitive truths about the world’s most beloved game. It all adds up to a revolutionary new approach that has helped change the way the game is played. This World Cup edition features ample new material, including fresh insights into FIFA’s corruption, the surge in domestic violence during World Cups, and Western Europe’s unprecedented dominance of global soccer.

DeVincent Hayes, Gianni. Zambelli: The First Family of Fireworks: A Story of Global Success.Paul S. Eriksson, 2003.

The story of the Zambelli family, the world's largest manufacturer and exhibitor of fireworks, unfolds in this biography about an Italian family that came to America in search of a better life and, through hard work and determination, achieved extraordinary success in the pyrotechnic industry. The Zambellis have been in charge of some of the largest and most prestigious firework displays and have contributed to more than 100 years of Fourth of July celebrations. The moving stories behind the family and their business are intertwined with information about how and where fireworks are made, what goes on behind the scenes at a fireworks show, and what bigger and brighter fireworks will ignite the future.

Kelly, Jack. Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World. Basic Books, 2004.

When Chinese alchemists fashioned the first manmade explosion sometime during the tenth century, no one could have foreseen its full revolutionary potential. Invented to frighten evil spirits rather than fuel guns or bombs-neither of which had been thought of yet-their simple mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal went on to make the modern world possible. As word of its explosive properties spread from Asia to Europe, from pyrotechnics to battleships, it paved the way for Western exploration, hastened the end of feudalism and the rise of the nation state, and greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution.

Fehrenbach, T. R. Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico. Da Capo Press, 1995.

There have been many Mexicos: the country of varied terrain, of Amerindian heritage, of the Spanish Conquest, of the Revolution, and of the modern era of elections and the rule of bankers. Mexico was forged in the fires of successive civilizations, and baptized with the blood of millions, all of whom added tragic dimensions to the modern Mexican identity. T. R. Fehrenbach brilliantly delineates the contrasts and conflicts between them, unraveling the history while weaving a fascinating tapestry of beauty and brutality

Merchasin, Carol M. This is Mexico: Tales of Culture and Other Complications. She Writes Press, 2015.

This is Mexico is a collection of essays on the often magical and mysterious—and sometimes heartrending—workings of everyday life in Mexico, written from the perspective of an American expatriate. By turns humorous and poignant, Merchasin’s stories provide an informed look at Mexican culture and history, exploring everything from healthcare, Mexican-style, to religious rituals, and from the educational role of the telenovela to the cultural subtleties of the Spanish language.

Campbell, Patricia Shehan. Music, Education, and Diversity: Bridging Cultures and Communities. New York, NY: Teacher’s College Press, 2018.

This book provides important insights for educators in music, the arts, and other subjects on the role that music can play in the curriculum as a powerful bridge to cultural understanding. The author documents key ideas and practices that have influenced current music education, particularly through efforts of ethnomusicologists in collaboration with educators, and examines some of the promises and pitfalls in shaping multicultural education through music. The text highlights World Music Pedagogy as a gateway to studying other cultures as well as the importance of including local music and musicians in the classroom.

Mattern, Mark. Acting in Concert: Music, Community and Political Action. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

In this lively account of politics and popular music, Mark Mattern develops the concept of "acting in concert," a metaphor for community-based political action through music. Through three detailed case studies of Chilean, Cajun, and American Indian popular music, Mattern explores the way popular muisicians forge community and lead members of their communities in several distinct kinds of political action that would be difficult or impossible among individuals who are not linked by communal ties.

Tolan, Sandy. Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land. New York: Bloomsbury, USA, 2016.

It is an unlikely story. Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a child from a Palestinian refugee camp, confronts an occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then, through his charisma and persistence, inspires scores of others to work with him to make that dream real. The dream: a school to transform the lives of thousands of children-- as Ramzi's life was transformed-- through music.

Tunstall, Tricia. Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.

This is the story of conductor extraordinaire Gustavo Dudamel, and the music education program, El Sistema, that led him to success.

Countryman, Matthew J. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press, PA, 2005. Up South traces the efforts of two generations of black Philadelphians to turn the City of Brotherly Love into a place of promise and opportunity for all. Although Philadelphia rarely appears in the histories of the modern civil rights struggle, the city was home to a vibrant and groundbreaking movement for racial justice in the years between World War II and the 1970s. By broadening the chronological and geographic parameters of the civil rights movement, Up South explores the origins of civil rights liberalism, the failure of the liberal program of anti discrimination legislation and interracial coalition-building to deliver on its promise of racial equality, and the subsequent rise of the Black Power movement.

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2014. Claudia Rankine’s bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seemingly slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV—everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person’s ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named “post-race society.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.New York, NY: WW Norton, 2017.In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it wasde jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Smith, Mychal Denzel. Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching. New York, NY: Nation Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group Inc., 2016. How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren't considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgent-for him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.

Smith, Tracy K.. Ordinary Light: A Memoir. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. In Ordinary Light, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith tells her remarkable story, giving us a quietly potent memoir that explores her coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter. Here is the story of a young artist struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America.

Winfrey Harris, Tamara. The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015. What is wrong with Black women? Not a damned thing but the biased lens most people use to view them, says Tamara Winfrey Harris. When African women arrived on American shores, the three-headed hydra of asexual and servile Mammy, angry and bestial Sapphire, and oversexed and lascivious Jezebel followed close behind. In the ‘60s, the Matriarch, the willfully unmarried baby machine leeching off the state, joined them. These caricatures persist - even in the ‘enlightened’ 21st century- through newspaper headlines, Sunday sermons, social media memes, cable punditry, government policies, and Top 40 lyrics. The Sisters Are Alright delves into areas like marriage, motherhood, health, sexuality, beauty, and more. And using progressive author analysis brought to life by the stories of real women, it reveals the effects of anti-black woman propaganda and how real black women are living their lives and pushing back against distorted cartoon versions of themselves.

Wolfinger, James. Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.In a detailed study of life and politics in Philadelphia between the 1930s and 1950s James Wolfinger demonstrates how racial tensions in working-class neighborhoods and job sites shaped the contours of mid-twentieth-century liberal and conservative politics. As racial divisions fractured the working class, he argues, Republican leaders exploited these racial fissures to reposition their party as the champion of ordinary white citizens besieged by black demands and overwhelmed by liberal government orders.

In this lesson, students will use a real-life situation--the construction boom occurring as Qatar prepares to host the 2022 World Cup--to investigate a workforce development plan for a fictional U.S. company. They will work in teams to research various facets of the issue and write final recommendations as if they were presenting written reports to higher management. The task will require them to learn about Qatar, consider ethical labor practices and human rights standards and think through workers' needs as they make decisions about whether to invest company resources. To prepare for their task, students will view clips from the documentary The Workers Cup, which provides students with an extraordinary opportunity to learn about the lives of foreign workers currently in Qatar.

As a blind, undocumented immigrant, Pedro faces uncertainty to obtain his college degree, become a social worker, and support his family. Through experimental cinematography and sound, unseen reimagines the accessibility of cinema, while exploring the intersections of immigration, disability, and mental health. A Co-Presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB).