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First Class
- The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School
- Narrated by: Alison Stewart
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
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Publisher's summary
Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, defied the odds and, in the process, changed America.
In the first half of the 20th century, Dunbar was an academically elite public school, despite being racially segregated by law and existing at the mercy of racist congressmen who held the school’s purse strings. These enormous challenges did not stop the local community from rallying for the cause of educating its children.
Dunbar attracted an extraordinary faculty: one early principal was the first Black graduate of Harvard, almost all the teachers had graduate degrees, and several earned PhDs - all extraordinary achievements given the Jim Crow laws of the times. Over the school’s first 80 years, these teachers developed generations of highly educated, high-achieving African Americans, groundbreakers that included the first Black member of a presidential cabinet, the first Black graduate of the US Naval Academy, the first Black army general, the creator of the modern blood bank, the first Black state attorney general, the legal mastermind behind school desegregation, and hundreds of educators.
By the 1950s, Dunbar High School was sending 80 percent of its students to college. Today, as with too many troubled urban public schools, the majority of Dunbar students struggle with reading and math. Journalist and author Alison Stewart, whose parents were both Dunbar graduates, tells the story of the school’s rise, fall, and path toward resurgence as it looks to reopen its new, state-of-the-art campus in the fall of 2013.
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- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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When Mark Zuckerberg announced in front of a cheering Oprah audience his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools - and to solve the education crisis in every city in America - it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their plans soon ran into a constituency not so easily moved - Newark's key education players, fiercely protective of their billion-dollar-per-annum system.
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Well-researched - Provides Good Answers
- By Denyse on 01-11-16
By: Dale Russakoff
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Whatever It Takes
- Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America
- By: Paul Tough
- Narrated by: Ax Norman
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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What would it take?That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children, not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children's Zone, a 97-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America.
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Aboslutely terrific!
- By Anthony on 09-21-10
By: Paul Tough
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Radical
- Fighting to Put Students First
- By: Michelle Rhee
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Part memoir, part manifesto, Radical is this fearless advocate's incisive, intensely personal call-to-arms. Rhee combines the story of her own extraordinary experience with dozens of compelling examples from schools she's worked in and studied-from students from unspeakable home lives who have thrived in the classroom to teachers whose radical methods have produced unprecedented leaps in achievement. Radical chronicles Rhee's awakening to the potential of every child, her rage at the special interests blocking badly-needed change, and her recognition that it will take a grassroots movement to create outstanding public schools.
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Good read after seeing Waiting for Superman
- By Marie on 04-10-13
By: Michelle Rhee
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A Mighty Long Way
- My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
- By: Carlotta Walls Lanier
- Narrated by: Peter Fernandez, Lizan Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1951, Carlotta Walls Lanier was one of the nine African-American students to integrate Little Rock High School, and the first to earn a diploma. Here she provides a firsthand account of her experiences - including the bombing that rocked her home, the constant threats she and her classmates faced, and the pressure and bullying her parents endured.
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Very insightful book
- By karen feek on 01-05-21
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My Grandfather's Son
- A Memoir
- By: Clarence Thomas
- Narrated by: Clarence Thomas
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
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Wonderful read
- By Amazon Customer on 10-17-21
By: Clarence Thomas
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The Golden Thirteen
- How Black Men Won the Right to Wear Navy Gold
- By: Dan Goldberg
- Narrated by: Sam Manual
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Through oral histories and original interviews with surviving family members, Dan Goldberg brings 13 forgotten heroes away from the margins of history and into the spotlight. He reveals the opposition these men faced: the racist pseudoscience, the regular condescension, the repeated epithets, the verbal abuse, and even violence. Despite these immense challenges, the Golden Thirteen persisted—understanding the power of integration, the opportunities for black Americans if they succeeded, and the consequences if they failed.
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The Golden 13 is a must read for American history
- By BE on 03-24-21
By: Dan Goldberg
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We Are Our Mothers' Daughters
- Revised and Expanded Edition
- By: Cokie Roberts
- Narrated by: Cokie Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In this 10th anniversary edition, renowned political commentator Cokie Roberts once again examines the nature of women's roles. From mother to mechanic, sister to soldier, Roberts reveals how much progress has now been made and how much further we have to go. Updated and expanded to include a diverse new cast of women, including Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Billie Jean King, and others, this collection of essays offers tremendous insight into the opportunities and challenges that women encounter today.
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A must read or “listen” for all women and girls!!
- By monica on 09-30-19
By: Cokie Roberts
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The Ones We've Been Waiting For
- How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America
- By: Charlotte Alter
- Narrated by: Charlotte Alter
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A new generation is stepping up. There are now 26 millennials in Congress - a fivefold increase gained in the 2018 midterms alone. In The Ones We've Been Waiting For, Time correspondent Charlotte Alter defines the class of young leaders who are remaking the nation - how grappling with 9/11 as teens, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, occupying Wall Street and protesting with Black Lives Matter, and shouldering their way into a financially rigged political system has shaped the people who will govern the future.
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Born before the lint roller invented
- By ML Sadler on 03-05-20
By: Charlotte Alter
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Boom!
- Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today
- By: Tom Brokaw
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Boom! One minute it was Ike and the man in the grey flannel suit, and the next minute it was time to "turn on, tune in, drop out". While Americans were walking on the moon, Americans were dying in Vietnam. Nothing was beyond question, and there were far fewer answers than before.
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boring survey of a generation
- By Andy on 01-01-08
By: Tom Brokaw
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Savage Inequalities
- Children in America's Schools
- By: Jonathan Kozol
- Narrated by: Mark Winston
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Jonathan Kozol traveled from the most blighted neighborhoods of Chicago to the urban wreckage of Camden, New Jersey; from the ghetto suburbs of Detroit to inner-city San Antonio; East St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Everywhere, he discovered separate systems of public schools, with the children of America's poor condemned to schools that are underfunded, understaffed, physically crumbling, and imbued with despair.
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Excellent book for budding education professionals
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-17
By: Jonathan Kozol
What listeners say about First Class
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- Marie
- 08-09-21
Good history of DC's elite Black High School
I've seen other citations of this book regarding the history of the Dunbar school, so I figured since this was an audiobook to give it a listen. There are issues with the audio quality. I see the author was the narrator, and after listening to several other audio books sometime one can tell the difference between a carefully edited audiobook, with a professional narrator, done in a studio. I could tell the difference. But it wasn't so bad that I didn't enjoy the book, it's just that I noticed.
The best part of the book was the content of the book. It inspired me to get a paperback copy of the physical book!
The book intermixes the school's past and near present. The present at the time being Barack Obama's inauguration and the marching band's entry in the parade. I lived not far from Dunbar and I remember students practicing on the neighborhood's streets. Since I despise crowds I did not attempt to see them perform. I also missed their TV coverage and the opinions Stewart writes about in her book. This was to illustrate the stark difference between the Dunbar of yesteryear and the Dunbar of today.
The book covers the beginnings of the M Street school and its eventual evolution into the Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School. Stewart highlights the school's glory days in the face of racism and criticism. I liked how she explained how the staff supported students and although it was not a neighborhood school, its students were not all from the elite class or pale shades of brown, She also covers the changes that made Dunbar a school for high achieving academically minded African Americans to a neighborhood school with other aims.
She criticizes, but doesn't put down what Dunbar has become. She praises some of the students from the post- segregation era.
Stewart also does a decent job of explaining what there have been four different buildings in the school's history. This includes efforts by the alumni to save the old building facing 1st street which was torn down for a Brutalist structure that was eventually demolished.
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