The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing to the horrific.                   

Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne

from Journal of Staff Development
Based on more than two decades of practical experience and empirical research, A Framework for Understanding Poverty spins a series of situational vignettes that help educators and other working professionals understand, interact with, and teach students from impoverished backgrounds.
 

The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam  

Bill Belichick is now coach of the New England Patriots football team. His teams have won three of the past five Super Bowls, and he was an assistant coach on champion teams twice before. In this book, journalist David Halberstam examines what makes Belichick, never a pro athlete himself, successful. He explores Belichick's childhood (his father was a successful collegiate coach) and early professional coaching career.

Golf is Not a Game of Perfect by Dr. Bob Rotella

One of golf guru Jim Flick's mantras is that golf is 90 percent mental, and the other 10 percent is mental, too. Dr. Bob Rotella, a noted sports psychologist and performance consultant, roots around the golfer's mind to expose--and analyze--the doubts, the fears, and the frustrations that haunt anyone who's ever picked up a club and swung it. Through anecdote and aphorism he suggests how these mental and emotional hazards can be played through, and, regardless of skill level, how teeing off with a more positive and confident outlook will translate into better performance.                                       

A Thousand Splendid Suns  by Khaled Hosseini  

 It’s difficult to imagine a harder first act to follow than The Kite Runner: a debut novel by an unknown writer about a country many readers knew little about that has gone on to have over four million copies in print worldwide. But when preview copies of Khaled Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, started circulating at Amazon.com, readers reacted with a unanimous enthusiasm that few of us could remember seeing before. As special as The Kite Runner was, those readers said, A Thousand Splendid Suns is more so, bringing Hosseini's compassionate storytelling and his sense of personal and national tragedy to a tale of two women that is weighted equally with despair and grave hope.

 

It’s  Being Done by Karin Chenoweth  
      
 Can a good school enable disadvantaged children to catch up? Some say, No, we must change society first. This scrupulous and humane book shows that a good school can make a decisive difference in giving every child a chance to achieve the American Dream. Karin Chenoweth is to be warmly thanked for showing in detail how some schools and their devoted staffs have refuted the idea that demography is fate.

A Long Way Gone; Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah                                

This gripping story recounts the experiences of a boy growing up in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, during one of the most brutal and violent civil wars in recent history. Beah was a typical 12-year-old until rebel forces destroyed his childhood innocence when they hit his village.  After several months of struggle, he was recruited by the national army, made a full soldier and learned to shoot an AK-47, and hated everyone who came up against the rebels.  Told in a conversational, accessible style, this powerful record of war ends as a beacon to all teens experiencing violence around them by showing them that there are other ways to survive than by adding to the chaos.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult              

Picoult takes on another contemporary hot-button issue in her brilliantly told new thriller, about a high school shooting. Peter Houghton, an alienated teen who has been bullied for years by the popular crowd, brings weapons to his high school in Sterling, N.H. and opens fire, killing 10 people. Flashbacks reveal how bullying caused Peter to retreat into a world of violent computer games. The judge assigned to Peter's case, tries to maintain her objectivity as she struggles to understand her daughter, one of the surviving witnesses of the shooting. The author's insights into her characters' deep-seated emotions brings this ripped-from-the-headlines read chillingly alive.

What Great Teachers Do Differently:   Fourteen Things That Matter Most by Todd Whitaker                                      

This book describes the beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and interactions that form the fabric of life in our best classrooms and schools. It focuses on the specific things that great teachers do ... that others do not.

Letters to a Young Brother by Hill Harper                                   

Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Harper, a young black actor and graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School, offers similar inspiration to young men clamoring for advice and encouragement at a time when popular culture offers little positive direction. Interspersed throughout are e-mail inquiries from young men and Harper's responses and those of other celebrities, including Nas, Venus Williams, and Barack Obama.

Three Cups of Tea : one man’s mission to promote peace — one school at a time   by Greg Mortensen   

Critics agree that Three Cups of Tea should be read for its inspirational value rather than for its literary merit, the book's central theme, derived from a Baltistan proverb, rings loud and clear. "The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger," a villager tells Greg Mortenson. "The second time, you are an honored guest. The third time you become family." It is an inspirational story of one man's efforts to address poverty, educate girls, and overcome cultural divides.