New Books in Education

Cybersecurity is often presented as a technological challenge: protecting computer networks, preventing attacks and investing in increasingly sophisticated security systems. Yet even the most advanced technology may prove inadequate if organisations cannot interpret threats, communicate their consequences or respond effectively. What role does communication play in building cyber resilience, and why should it matter to business leaders as much as to cybersecurity specialists?

In this episode, Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo speaks with Nina Paine and Ashley Sweetman about Communicating Cyber Risk: Build Cyber Resilience Through Compelling Communication (Kogan Page, 2026). They discuss the book's origins and the distinction between cybersecurity and cyber resilience. Their conversation examines the role of organisational structures and management practices in shaping responses to cyber threats, as well as the challenges of communicating risk across organisational levels.

Particular attention is paid to the financial sector, where banks depend on interconnected technological infrastructures, payment networks and external service providers. The discussion considers what makes cybersecurity particularly challenging in banking, how multinational financial institutions navigate diverse regulatory environments and organisational cultures, and whether lessons from large international banks can be applied to smaller financial institutions and fintech companies.

The interview also addresses the relationship between organisational and systemic resilience. Financial institutions do not operate in isolation, and cyber incidents can have consequences extending well beyond individual firms. This raises questions about the responsibilities of banks, regulators, governments and other participants in the financial system, as well as the challenges of sharing sensitive information across institutional boundaries.

Drawing on the authors' professional experience and their interviews with senior cybersecurity practitioners, the conversation considers what their research reveals about organisational responses to cyber risk and the extent to which these findings can be generalised across different institutional settings.

Ultimately, the book invites readers to think about cybersecurity not simply as a technical responsibility but as an organisational challenge involving leadership, communication and the management of risk in an increasingly interconnected world.

References and further reading:
Arsenault, B. (Host). (2021, July 7). Leading an inclusive workforce: Emma Smith, Vodafone (No. 8) [Audio podcast episode]. In Security Unlocked: CISO Series with Bret Arsenault. Microsoft; The CyberWire Network. here

Bátiz-Lazo, B. (Host). (2022, November 1). Ashley Sweetman, "Cyber and the City: Securing London's Banks in the Computer Age" (Springer, 2022) [Audio podcast episode]. In New Books Network. here

Kaplan, J. M., Bailey, T., O'Halloran, D., Marcus, A., & Rezek, C. (2015). Beyond cybersecurity: Protecting your digital business. John Wiley & Sons. here

Paine, N., & Sweetman, A. (2026). Communicating cyber risk: Build cyber resilience through compelling communication. Kogan Page. here

Smith, E. (2026, July 29). Trust in a connected world: Why cyber resilience matters. Vodafone. here

Sweetman, A. (2022). Cyber and the city: Securing London's banks in the computer age. Springer. here

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Many of today's libraries and their workers are facing a skills crisis. By some estimates, an employee's current skills are only relevant for a maximum of five years, but other estimates put the longevity of current skills at only 18 months. Though it's crucial that library workers continuously upskill and reskill to keep up with technological changes, including those brought about by AI, libraries have limited time, budgets, and resources to devote to helping staff keep up. But as Ann Medaille demonstrates in Upskilling for Library Workers: A Guide for Future-Ready Professionals (ALA Editions, 2026, which draws on lessons learned from a three-year research project, it's still possible to adopt an inspiring, forward-thinking approach to upskilling, one that positions staff to succeed both now and in the future. Library administrators, managers, trainers, program leaders, branch heads, and staff members who work in public or academic libraries and are involved in learning or teaching new skills, or creating a skills strategy for their library, will discover why upskilling and reskilling are urgently needed by library workers to navigate information in the context of ever-changing technologies, and which skills are the most important; lessons that libraries can learn from the innovative approaches to workplace upskilling that are taking place in the corporate learning and development space; an incisive overview and analysis of learning initiatives currently underway at academic and public libraries in the United States and Canada; key concepts related to learning and instructional design; the four E's of upskilling (education, experiences, exposures, and environment) and where they fit into library workplace training and development; research-based guidance on facing such challenges as how to get started, knowing what skills to plan for in the future, deciding upon appropriate learning initiatives, motivating staff to continually learn, evaluating skill development initiatives, and confronting issues related to cost, time, and organizational culture; and hands-on strategies for the integration of upskilling into library work across a broad range of skill types and library applications, including suggested activities, reflection points, examples, and tips throughout the book.

Guest: Ann Medaille is Professor/Director of Research and Instructional Services at the University of Nevada, Reno Libraries. She is also Editor-in-Chief for the journal Evidence Based Library and Information Practice and a faculty member of the Medical Library Association’s Research Training Institute. She holds a PhD in education and an MS in library science. She is the author of The Librarian's Guide to Learning Theory: Practical Applications in Library Settings. She is also co-author of Visual Literacy for Libraries: A Practical, Standards-Based Guide.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is a Professor of Library Services and served for ten years as the Information Literacy Program and Library Services Coordinator at Delaware County Community College.

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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Agi Bodis speaks with Dr Carly Steele (Curtin University, Perth) about researching education with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and how to enable culturally and linguistically responsive teaching. They discuss the importance of positionality when working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context, and why it matters in collaborative work with communities.

Through her professional experience in the On-Country Teacher Education program in Western Australia, Carly reflects on the way educational scholarship is rooted in community engagement. The conversation provides insights into the needs of teacher education to better prepare graduate teachers and an example for an innovative pedagogical approach co-created with community and one that reflects the local language, culture and Country.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Designing Historical Games for Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Educators (Routledge, 2026) is a complete introductory guide for designing analog games and interactive choice‑based historical texts for history classes. It is designed to support educators who want to design games or who want to guide and assess student game‑making projects in history class.

The chapters in this book lead the educator designer through a range of topics, including the core features of historical games, the educational power of using historical games to study history, and the role of playing and designing analog games and choice‑based texts in the classroom. It also shows how to design historical analog games (such as boardgames, card games, roleplaying games, and choice-based historical text games designed with Twine) using the Historical Problem
Space Framework as a practical design guide to structure, teach, guide, manage, and assess student‑designed historical game projects, both analog games and choice‑based texts. This book provides sample plans, guidelines, and rubrics for fully implementing student‑designed historical game projects, and detailed examples throughout this text—from tabletop and choice‑based text games—provide practical help for teachers and students.

This applied guidebook will be essential reading for pre‑service and in‑service teachers of Social Studies and History Education. It is a guide for any educator who is looking to design historical games for classroom learning or have their students engage in the critical learning of historical game design.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since the early 1980s. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds three PhDs in game studies (LMU Munich, University of Passau & University of Vechta). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm HNU, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

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Who has the “right” to learn Mandarin Chinese? In Multiracial Mandarin: Asian Americans and Impossible Language(U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. David Shuang Song examines how matters of race and privilege shape US Mandarin language education and who has access to it. Through a two-year ethnographic study of two Bay Area high schools where diasporic and heritage speakers learn Mandarin alongside Black and Latinx students, Song advances a sociological and educational–linguistic inquiry into how language interacts with our understanding of identity and equity.

Comparing classroom activities in two public schools, Dr. Song investigates teachers who seek to make Mandarin accessible while detaching it from its cultural roots. As he explores the difficulties of limited resources, racial inequality, and pedagogical practices inherent in multiracial Mandarin instruction, Dr. Song shows how language education complicates how educators understand Asian American students and troubles conventional conversations around race and racial equity in schools.

Arguing that language practice and instruction must always be considered in relation to diaspora, ethnicity, and racialization, Multiracial Mandarin offers a frank analysis of the risks and benefits of teaching a diasporic language and asks if this practice ought to be replicated in more schools. As he applies innovative conceptual frameworks for talking about language among Asian Americans, Dr. Song’s timely and theoretically sophisticated analysis has wide-ranging implications for how students, teachers, and administrators approach essential questions around education, privilege, and language survival.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whosebook focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Discover the untold story of why homeschooling moved from the margins to the mainstream of American education. In this groundbreaking study Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2026), historian Dixie Dillon Lane traces the rise of homeschooling in the United States, from the modern movement's beginnings in the 1950s as a fringe activity to its current status as a widely accepted educational choice. Through compelling nationwide data and vivid case studies from Los Angeles County, Lane uncovers a powerful truth: homeschooling taps into long-held American beliefs in local control and parental rights that have shaped our nation's schools for generations. Writing in an engaging, accessible style, Lane demonstrates how homeschooling's rise reflects Americans' response to the increasing centralization of public education. As public schools have shifted toward consolidation and away from local oversight, parents have rediscovered their voice, choosing homeschooling as an innovative way to renew parental influence in education. Unlike most authors writing on this topic, Lane writes as both a credentialed historian and an experienced homeschooling parent. As such, she offers an honest, balanced view that acknowledges the homeschooling movement's challenges as well as its strengths. Skipping School will be of interest to parents, historians, educators, policymakers, and anyone seeking a fuller understanding of American education.

Dixie Dillon Lane holds a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame and is a homeschooling mother of four (who writes at The Bad Homeschool Moms substack). She serves as an associate editor of Hearth & Field and a contributing editor of Front Porch Republic.

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The French Médersa: Islamic Education and Empire in Northwest Africa (Cornell UP, 2026) explores how the French state pursued a century-long project of bicultural Franco-Muslim education in its northwest African colonies, resulting in a new type of school, the médersa, that combined French and Islamic curricula. French officials frequently described these schools and their students as "hyphens," drawing connections between larger French and Islamic forces. Samuel D. Anderson highlights this hyphenating idea, situating Franco-Muslim education between beliefs about not only France and Islam but also about tradition and modernity and about North and West Africa.

The médersa project had two goals: to create an elite class of Muslims friendly to the French imperial project and, subsequently, to mold Islam into a form that could be more easily controlled. A total of ten médersas opened across Algeria, Senegal, French Soudan, and Mauritania and closed only in the 1950s. The graduates of these schools, the medérsiens, went on to shape their societies profoundly but not always in the ways the French anticipated.

Drawing on archival and oral sources from Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal, and France, The French Médersa proposes new ways to approach trans-Saharan history. Anderson argues that across northwest Africa, and for more than a century, Franco-Muslim education was central to the history of the French empire and Islamic education alike.

Samuel D. Anderson is history teacher at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California.

Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

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When the founding fathers of the United States inaugurated a system of government that was unprecedented in the modern world, they knew that a functioning democracy required an educated electorate capable of making rational decisions. But who would validate the information that influenced citizens’ opinions? By spotlighting various institutions of learning in Creating an Informed Citizenry: Knowledge and Democracy in the Early American Republic (U Virginia Press, 2025), George Oberle provides a comprehensive look at how knowledge was created, circulated, and consumed in the early American republic.

Many of the founders, including George Washington, initially favored the creation of a centralized national university to educate Americans from all backgrounds. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, however, politicians moved away from any notion of publicly educated laypeople generating useful knowledge. The federal government ultimately founded the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, to be run by experts only. Oberle’s insightful analysis of the competing ideas over the nature of education offers food for thought as we continue to grapple with a rapidly evolving media landscape amid contested meanings of knowledge, expertise, and the obligations of citizenship.

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In An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa (Cambridge UP, 2026), Elisa Prosperetti argues that while racialized, colonial notions of development saw African bodies as the primary sites of economic value, anticolonial development imagined the minds of Africans as the key to economic productivity. Thus, the broadening of access to Europhone education (that is, using European languages) was a central component of anticolonial and antiracist visions of an emancipated African future. But this educationally-driven vision of the future had deep roots, calling back to other experiences of freedom, however partial, in the Black Atlantic world. Thus, the book further argues that the forms that decolonization took in coastal West Africa are best explained by framing decolonization as a Black Atlantic emancipation, akin to 19th-century slavery abolitions. Although decolonization in West Africa shared parallels with what happened across other parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East after World War II, a Black Atlantic frame accounts for certain regional specificities that the general process/category of decolonization does not. Combining more than sixty interviews with former students, teachers, and school administrators with research in state and institutional archives in West Africa, Europe, and the United States, An Anticolonial Development analyzes the rise and fall of public education as the principal project of anticolonial development in West Africa.

Elisa Prosperetti is a historian at the National Institute of Education (part of the Nanyang Technological University) in Singapore. Her research focuses on modern African and global history, particularly histories of diaspora, education, race, development, economic and intellectual history, and decolonization. Her first book, An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa, was published in 2026 by Cambridge University Press. She received her MA (2015) and PhD (2019) degrees in History from Princeton University and her BSc in International History and International Relations from the London School of Economics (2008). Prior to graduate school, she worked for several years as a classroom teacher.

You can learn more about Dr. Prosperetti’s work here

Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana.

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Working with Critical Realism: Stories of Methodological Encounters (Routledge, 2022) is an international and interdisciplinary collection that gathers stories from researchers and research students about their methodological encounters with critical realism. Whether the contributors are experienced or novice researchers, they are predominantly new to critical realism. For various reasons, as the contributors' detail, they have all been drawn to critical realism. It is well known that critical realism can be bewildering and even overwhelming to newcomers, especially to those unfamiliar with language of, and without a grounding in, philosophy. While there are now numerous and important introductory and applied critical realist texts that make critical realism more accessible to a broader audience, stories from newcomers have been absent - especially as part of a single collection. The significance and uniqueness of this collection lies in its documentation of first-hand reflective insights on the practical use and implementation of critical realism. The contributors feature critical realist inspired research journeys in Australia, England, Scotland, Belgium, Sweden, and Spain. The hope of this book is that the stories and accounts presented in it will inspire - or at least sufficiently arouse - the curiosity of others to explore critical realist possibilities, which we believe offer enormous value to serious researchers across and within all disciplines and subjects who are interested in rigorous intellectual work with a socially progressive purpose.

Books and resources mentioned in the episode

• Critical Realism Network —useful general hub with introductory materials, library, workshops, videos, interviews and links into the wider CR community,
• Roy Bhaskar, ed. Gary Hawke, The Order of Natural Necessity: A Kind of Introduction to Critical Realism
• Mervyn Hartwig, Up From Midnight: Fathoming the Depths of Reality with Ram Roy Bhaskar
• Andrew Collier, Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy
• Roy Bhaskar edited by Gary Hawke - The Order of Natural Necessity: A Kind of Introduction to Critical Realism
• Grant Banfield, Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education
• Alpesh Maisuria, ed., Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education

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Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing (U Michigan Press, 2025) by Katherine L. Alexander explores how one late Qing Confucian reformer sought to rebuild society in the aftermath of the Taiping Civil War. Focusing on the prolific writer and teacher Yu Zhi (1809–1874), the book examines how he used writing, printing, education, and performance to promote a vision of moral renewal from the ground up, arguing that ordinary people could become agents of social transformation through literature and teaching.

Drawing on Yu Zhi’s extensive body of writings, the book shows how literature functioned not simply as a vehicle for moral instruction but as a practical tool for social reform. Through detailed and careful readings of Yu’s efforts to reach schoolchildren, women, and popular audiences through textbooks, morality plays, precious scrolls, and other forms of vernacular literature, the book reveals how conservative Confucian ideals were advanced through innovative and accessible media. More broadly, it offers a compelling portrait of how late imperial intellectuals responded to crisis and how they framed texts, performance, and education as a means to restore a fractured society.

Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing should appeal to readers interested in late Qing history, popular literature, religion, education, and anyone interested in how print and performance can be used to shape ideas about moral reform and social change.

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What does it mean to learn when algorithms increasingly shape how knowledge is produced, organized, and interpreted? Editors Elizabeth de Freitas, Matthew X. Curinga, and Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román join Shreya Urvashi to talk about their book Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions (U Minnesota Press, 2026), a collection that examines how artificial intelligence and computational systems are changing education, cognition, and ideas of human intelligence. The editors discuss the complexities of algorithm, training data as curriculum, AI bias, and the concept of more-than-human learning. They also explore the relationship between contemporary technologies and colonial forms of reason, the limits of treating bias as a purely technical problem, and what happens to human agency as learning becomes increasingly entangled with algorithmic systems.

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How Girls Achieve points out a simple and overlooked truth: most schools never had girls in mind to begin with. That is why the world needs what Dr. Sally Nuamah calls “feminist schools,” deliberately designed to provide girls with achievement-oriented identities. And she shows how these schools would help all students, regardless of their gender.

Educated women raise healthier families, build stronger communities, and generate economic opportunities for themselves and their children. Yet millions of disadvantaged girls never make it to school—and too many others drop out or fail. Upending decades of advice and billions of dollars in aid, Dr, Nuamah argues that this happens because so many challenges girls confront—from sexual abuse to unequal access to materials and opportunities—go unaddressed. But it isn’t enough just to go to school. What you learn there has to prepare you for the world where you’ll put that knowledge to work.

Dr. Nuamah reveals that developing resilience is not a gender-neutral undertaking. Preaching grit doesn’t help girls; it actively harms them. Drawing on her deep immersion in classrooms in the United States, Ghana, and South Africa, Nuamah calls for a new approach: creating feminist schools that will actively teach girls how and when to challenge society’s norms, and allow them to carve out their own paths to success.

Guest: Dr. Sally A. Nuamah is an associate professor of Urban Politics in Human Development, Social Policy and Political Science (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. She has received numerous awards; began the TWII Foundation to provide funding for girls striving to be first in their families to go to college; and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and a Women and Public Policy fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Host is: Dr. Christina Gessler is the producer of the both Academic Life podcast and the show’s weekly newsletter. She is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics.

Listeners may be interested in:

• Teacher By Teacher
• Doing the Work of Equity Leadership for Justice and Systems Change
• Black Girls and How We Fail Them
• Leading from the Margins
• How We Show Up
• How Schools Make Race
• Black Woman On Board
• Remembering Lucille
• Can I Say That?
• Teaching About Race And Racism

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

This episode was originally published Nov 6, 2020

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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick chats with Professor Dr. Natalia Filatkina, Dr. Kerstin Roth and Research Associate Miriam Hinterholzer. All three work at the University of Hamburg in Germany on a long-term research project, called FSL Digital, that investigates language history, language attitudes and everyday communication in the context of multilingualism in early modern Europe.

As part of this project, today’s guests annotate and analyse multilingual foreign language textbooks from the 15th to 17th centuries.

Today’s guests discuss these textbooks, the research project, and what historical foreign language manuals can tell us about language attitudes and expectations of foreign language learning.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Library Technical Services: Future Forward(Bloomsbury, 2025) edited by Mary Beth Weber and Melissa De Fino looks at the future of technical services post-pandemic and at the brink of technological disruptions through a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility lens. Libraries have undergone a tremendous transformation that has been driven by multiple factors that include technological developments, and societal impacts such as declining college enrollment and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has introduced changes to how technical services professionals work and provide services. Whereas the library is often perceived by users as a building to house print books and journals, the reality is that the library encompasses both physical and virtual spaces. For many users, the library's online catalog and website are their first (and perhaps only) experience with the library. Our user community is global, and technical services work has evolved to serve users with a growing array of electronic resources, including e-books, databases, and e-journals. These resources differ from their print counterparts in that they cost more, require licenses and contracts that must continually need to be renegotiated and renewed, must comply with accessibility standards, and require different skill sets to catalog. The virtual spaces and services libraries provide are built on the foundation provided by technical services librarians. Assessment is an important, yet often overlooked, aspect of technical services work, and is addressed in this book. It is critical for collection development and acquisition of electronic resources. It is also an important component of the work of electronic resources librarians, who monitor usage and trends. Developing an appropriate skill set for technical services work is essential for success. This includes knowing the standards for the work performed, awareness of emerging standards, and remaining relevant.

Guests: Mary Beth Weber is the inaugural Coordinator for Training and Mentorship for Rutgers University Libraries. In this capacity, she serves as an advisor to the Faculty Mentoring Program, collaborates with colleagues to identify, develop, and implement a continuous program of enrichment activities to meet the needs of the Libraries' personnel. She previously served as the Head of Central Technical Services for 2008-2025, and her new role is the result of a large-scale reorganization undertaken by Rutgers University Libraries. Weber has had a long career in technical services, overseeing both resource description and acquisitions, and collaborating with collection development librarians. She representedRutgers on the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s Heads of Cataloging Committee from 2014-2025. Other offices she has held include serving as editor-in-chief for Library Resources and Technical Services, one of ALA Core’s official journals, for nine years. In addition to three books she has published with Bloomsbury, she co-authored Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management, 5th edition, with Peggy Johnson. She may be contacted via her LinkedIn profile. She earned her MLS from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and earned my BA from Michigan State University, where I had a double major of English and Art History.

Melissa De Fino is Team Lead for Cataloging and Metadata Services and Metadata Librarian for Special Collections and Audiovisual Materials at Rutgers University Libraries. She has worked at Rutgers for more than 20 years, beginning her career there as a Special Collections Cataloger. Her research focuses on the evolution of technical services librarianship. Melissa is the co-author, with Mary Beth, of Virtual Technical Services: A Handbook, has published several peer-reviewed articles, and served for five years as editor of the “Tech Services Online” column in Technical Services Quarterly. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science and an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Rutgers University, as well as a B.A. in English from Fordham University.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is a Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

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Stop waiting for permission to lead!

Most of us have suffered under badly behaved managers, enduring micromanagement, navigating toxic "mindfields," and watching great ideas die at the bottlenecks of the traditional chain of command.

We’ve been sold a lie: that leadership is a title, a rank, or a corner office. Clinging to this outdated assumption limits your potential and leaves your team trapped in a cycle of cynicism and burnout.

What if leadership isn’t a position you attain but a set of practices you choose?

In the fully revised second edition of What the Heck Is Leadership?, Gary A. DePaul, PhD, dismantles the top-down myths that hold organizations back. He clarifies the crucial distinction between management (a neutral tool for coordinating tasks) and leadership (the intentional practice of helping others mature mentally and morally). You don’t need formal authority to transform your workplace. You just need the right principles and a new way of being.

This isn't a book of abstract theories; it’s a practical, creative guide for the 21st-century workplace. Inside, you’ll discover how to:

• Break the Traps of Traditional Leadership: Stop equating power with leadership and learn why giving up control actually strengthens your team.
• Neutralize Workplace Toxicity: Identify and navigate adult bullying, pervasive cynicism, and high-conflict behaviors that quietly erode psychological safety.
• Harness the Compound Effect: Use small, incremental daily actions to build the invisible momentum that sustainably transforms your culture over time.
• Build True Community: Shift from isolated groups to collaborative networks united by a shared purpose.

Leadership isn't something you are; it's something you do. It's about being a lighthouse anchored in principles, guiding others through the storm and empowering others to perform at their best.

Gary A. DePaul PhDis an author, educator, consultant, and speaker whose work explores a deceptively simple question: What helps people do their best work? Drawing on decades of experience in performance improvement, learning and development, human resources, consulting, and university teaching, he helps individuals and organizations turn leadership ideas into everyday practices.

Gary believes leadership has been needlessly complicated and too often associated with titles and positions of authority. Instead, he views leadership as a set of intentional practices that anyone can use to help others grow, strengthen relationships, and improve the workplace.

You can follow his work or connect with him via LinkedIn or contact him at garydepaul@gmail.com.

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An invitation to K-12 educators to reimagine their roles through the transformative lens of design In Educators as Designers, Jim Gaona Ellis draws on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the latest UDL guidelines to position teachers as creators, innovators, and problem-solvers, empowering them to craft classroom experiences that are not only accessible, but also inspiring, inclusive, and responsive to every student's unique needs. This timely and original book challenges readers to see themselves not just as implementers, but as architects capable of reshaping learning cultures and opportunities for all students. At the heart of this work is a practical toolkit that seamlessly bridges powerful design concepts--such as affordances, choice architecture, hostile design, and the design cycle--with everyday classroom realities. Gaona Ellis offers engaging vignettes, actionable strategies, and a concrete change management framework that honor teachers' expertise while guiding them to collaborate, ideate, and iterate solutions. The book doesn't shy away from addressing systemic inequities, instead arming educators with the language, habits, and mindset to foster learner agency, equity, and belonging--regardless of external constraints or shifting DEI mandates. More than a guide, this is an invitation to innovate, co-create, and lead. With storytelling at its core and a focus on practical impact, this book will inspire educators and school leaders to bring fresh clarity, delight, and possibility to their practice--one designed solution at a time.

Jim Gaona Ellis is an educator, consultant, and storyteller exploring the intersections of culture, belonging, and instructional design.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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In this episode of New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with Dr. Hanna David about Erika Landau’s Contribution to the History of Gifted Education: Family Characteristics of Gifted Children (Springer, 2025), a study of gifted education, family background, gender differences, educational opportunity, and the legacy of one of Israel’s most influential pioneers in gifted education.

Drawing on quantitative research on gifted children aged 5–15 who attended the Erika Landau Institute for Gifted and Creative Children and Youths in Tel Aviv between 1968 and 2003, David examines how giftedness is identified, how family characteristics shape educational trajectories, and how institutional practices affect boys and girls differently. The book focuses on parents’ education, family size, birth order, siblings, admission examinations, and long-term patterns across several decades.

A central part of the conversation concerns gender inequality in gifted education. David discusses the persistent imbalance between boys and girls identified as gifted and asks whether conventional testing procedures fully capture the abilities needed to thrive in gifted programs. The book addresses affirmative-action standards in admissions, noting that girls who may score lower on entrance examinations can demonstrate strengths in social skills, persistence, fine motor development, and successful integration within highly able peer groups.

The interview also explores Erika Landau’s broader legacy. David evaluates both the importance and limitations of Landau’s work, combining historical reconstruction, empirical data, and critical assessment. The book examines Landau’s academic writings across several languages and asks what educators, psychologists, counselors, and researchers can still learn from her educational philosophy and institutional practice.

The discussion places gifted education within wider questions of equality, childhood development, educational psychology, family sociology, gender, and public policy. It raises a fundamental issue: who is recognized as gifted, by what criteria, and with what consequences? The book also offers a valuable historical record of gifted education in Israel and its changing social context.

Dr. Hanna David is affiliated with the Hebrew Literature Research Institute at Tel Aviv University. She is also an author in the European Hebrew Journal. Her peer-reviewed article “Haim Nachman Bialik in Vienna”, published in EHJ Volume 1, Issue 1 (2026), examines Bialik’s activities in Vienna in 1913, Hebrew cultural revival, Zionist cultural thought, the Hebrew book, and the intellectual background of the future Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

David will also speak at the European Hebrew Journal International Online Conference, New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies. On 10 November 2026 at 14:00 CET, she will present “The Literary Work of A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, David Grossman, Yoram Kaniuk, Benjamin Tammuz and Zeruya Shalev in Israeli Cinema.” Her biography, abstract, academic profile, and session details are available on Hanna David’s conference landing page.

The interview is hosted by Željko Stanojević, President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of the European Hebrew Journal, and a New Books Network host in Biblical Studies.

Keywords and themes: gifted education, gifted children, Erika Landau, Hanna David, giftedness in Israel, educational psychology, gender and giftedness, family characteristics, parents’ education, siblings, birth order, giftedness testing, affirmative action, child development, Israeli education, gifted girls, gifted boys, Jewish studies.

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Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit’s struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North (FSG, 2025), the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight—and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth’s landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The “metropolitan remedy” could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate—and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today. Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures—including Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today’s backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country’s promise.

My guest today is Michelle Adams. Michelle Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. The former codirector of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, she served on the Biden administration’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and as an expert commentator on the Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America and the Showtime series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, and elsewhere. She was born and grew up in Detroit.

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Race and Place: School Desegregation in Prince George's County, Maryland (Rutgers University Press, 2025) considers the everyday experiences of community members throughout the process of school desegregation and how race, place, and truth came to matter in this process in Prince George's County, Maryland from 1945 through 1973. Organized around several successive policies that emerged in this time: school equalization, school choice, neighborhood schools, school construction, school closure, busing for racial integration, and school discipline, Dougherty shows how these policies contained and reinforced assumptions about place and created new racial truths about people and schooling.

Dierdre Mayer Dougherty is an Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Knox College.

Max Jacobs is a PhD student in Education at Rutgers Universty.

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