"In Improbable Scholars, David L. Kirp challenges the conventional wisdom about public schools and education reform in America through an in-depth look at Union City, New Jersey's high-performing urban school district. In this compelling study, Kirp reveals Union's city's revolutionary secret: running an exemplary school system doesn't demand heroics, just hard and steady work"--

A NEW APPROACH TO WORLD HISTORYThis uniquely-told world history interweaves the lives of twenty-six women and men who are not well known with the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments that have shaped the human experience through the course of the last 570 years. Meticulously researched and hailed by scholars, yet purposefully written for a broad audience, this book details the lives of doctors and musicians, aristocrats and artists, businessmen and suffragettes, scientists and generals who made essential, but now-largely forgotten, contributions to places and eras as diverse as Reformation Europe, Mughal India, Tokugawa Japan, colonial Australia, and post-colonial Kenya. Improbable Voices possesses both the vivid depth and the expansive breadth a satisfying history of the world warrants. The book is handsomely illustrated and includes over forty original maps. Specific figures include Ethiopia's regent queen Eleni in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Spain's moderate viceroy in Mexico and Peru, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, in the seventeenth; France's talented salonnière Julie de Lespinasse in the eighteenth, Polynesia's indigenous Christian missionary Ta'unga in the nineteenth; and Saudi Arabia's colorful oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani in the twentieth. The book concludes by examining the work of German and Canadian climatologist Kirsten Zickfeld and the environmental challenges we face in the twenty-first century.

Higher education today faces a host of challenges, from quality to cost. But too little attention gets paid to a startling fact: four out of ten students -- that's more than ten percent of the entire population - -who start college drop out. The situation is particularly dire for black and Latino students, those from poor families, and those who are first in their families to attend college. In The College Dropout Scandal, David Kirp outlines the scale of the problem and shows that it's fixable - -we already have the tools to boost graduation rates and shrink the achievement gap. Many college administrators know what has to be done, but many of them are not doing the job - -the dropout rate hasn't decreased for decades. It's not elite schools like Harvard or Williams who are setting the example, but places like City University of New York and Long Beach State, which are doing the hard work to assure that more students have a better education and a diploma. As in his New York Times columns, Kirp relies on vivid, on-the-ground reporting, conversations with campus leaders, faculty and students, as well as cogent overviews of cutting-edge research to identify the institutional reforms--like using big data to quickly identify at-risk students and get them the support they need -- and the behavioral strategies -- from nudges to mindset changes - -that have been proven to work. Through engaging stories that shine a light on an underappreciated problem in colleges today, David Kirp's hopeful book will prompt colleges to make student success a top priority and push more students across the finish line, keeping their hopes of achieving the American Dream alive.

The Improbable War explains why conflict between the USA and China cannot be ruled out. In 1914 war between the Great Powers was considered unlikely, yet it happened. We learn only from history, and popular though the First World War analogy is, the lessons we draw from its outbreak are usually mistaken. Among these errors is the tendency to over-estimate human rationality. All major conflicts of the past 300 years have been about the norms and rules of the international system. In China and the US the world confronts two 'exceptional' powers whose values differ markedly, with China bidding to challenge the current order. The 'Thucydidean Trap' - when a conservative status quo power confronts a rising new one - may also play its part in precipitating hostilities. To avoid stumbling into an avoidable war both Beijing and Washington need a coherent strategy, which neither of them has. History also reveals that war evolves continually. The next global conflict is likely to be played out in cyberspace and outer space and like all previous wars it will have devastating consequences. Such a war between the United States and China may seem improbable, but it is all too possible, which is why we need to discuss it now.

The Improbable Conquest offers translations of a series of little-known letters from the chaotic Spanish conquest of the Río de la Plata region, uncovering a rich and understudied historical resource. These letters were written by a wide variety of individuals, including clergy, military officers, and the region’s first governor, Pedro de Mendoza. There is also an exceptional contribution from Isabel de Guevara, one of the few women involved in the conquest to have recorded her experiences. Writing about the conditions of settlements and expeditions, these individuals vividly expose the less glamorous side of the conquest, narrating in detail various misfortunes, infighting, corruption, and complaints. Their letters further reveal the colony’s fraught relationship with the native peoples it sought to colonize, giving insight into the complexities of the conquest and the colonization process. Pablo García Loaeza and Victoria Garrett provide an introduction to the history of the region and the conquest’s key players, as well as a timeline and a glossary explaining difficult and archaic Spanish terms.

This volume offers a collection of essays focused upon the representation of one of the most traumatic events in the history of India―the 1947 Partition―in literature and cinematographic adaptations. The focus here is placed on various strategies of representation and different types of memory at work in the process of remembering/re-membering Partition. All these avoid the traditional Hindu vs. Muslim perspective, and analyse other sides of the same story, seen from the perspective of marginal people belonging to other religious minorities, whose stories have generally been ignored and silenced by the official historical discourse. The book also demonstrates that the multiple “truths” engendered by this crucial event in India’s history lie along “improbable lines” randomly generated between history, amnesia and memory, between personal drama and collective trauma, loss and rupture, religion and nationalism, and longing and belonging.

Capital Ideas traces the origins of modern Wall Street, from the pioneering work of early scholars and the development of new theories in risk, valuation, and investment returns, to the actual implementation of these theories in the real world of investment management. Bernstein brings to life a variety of brilliant academics who have contributed to modern investment theory over the years: Louis Bachelier, Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, Franco Modigliani, and Merton Miller. Filled with in-depth insights and timeless advice, Capital Ideas reveals how the unique contributions of these talented individuals profoundly changed the practice of investment management as we know it today.