Special Groups in The Books Store

TEENAGERS WITH ADD AND ADHD gives parents insight on everything from understanding the diagnosis to treatment options, and from behavioral and academic issues, to parent involvement and self-advocacy. The new edition includes additional or updated information in several areas. A separate chapter on medications provides details on specific drugs, including many new ones, and what research shows about their effectiveness in improving attention, impulse control, and distractibility. Dendy discusses new findings about the role of executive function problems and how they relate to teenagers difficulties with organizational skills, long-range planning, and staying on task. She advises parents on their role in working with schools to find strategies for academic success. Teenagers also speak out about their condition, and Dendy points to ways to involve them in their own treatment plan. In addition, the book covers coexisting disorders such as learning disabilities, depression, anxiety, Tourette syndrome, and Asperger syndrome.

Following the phenomenal success of Dirty Red, Essence bestselling author Vickie Stringer is back with a sizzling sequel, Still Dirty, and the notorious cast of characters -- Red, Bacon, and Q -- who made Dirty Red a hit.

Red, the infamous expert of deception, is still up to no good, but faces challenges to baffle even the most clever hustler. Still, Red stops at nothing to outwit her adversaries and avoid being caught by either the law or the outlaws.

In Still Dirty, Red is again caught in a web of murder, theft, and deceit. We find her and her boyfriend Q running for a plane to Mexico after a violent fight with her ex-boyfriend Bacon, a released convict. Bacon is on their heels and determined not to let Red get away alive. Will Q come to her rescue once again? Or will he tire of cleaning up after Red's dirty deeds?

Listen to a short interview with Sudhir Venkatesh
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane

In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate, dangerous, and remarkable ways in which a community survives. We find there an entire world of unregulated, unreported, and untaxed work, a system of living off the books that is daily life in the ghetto. From women who clean houses and prepare lunches for the local hospital to small-scale entrepreneurs like the mechanic who works in an alley; from the preacher who provides mediation services to the salon owner who rents her store out for gambling parties; and from street vendors hawking socks and incense to the drug dealing and extortion of the local gang, we come to see how these activities form the backbone of the ghetto economy.

What emerges are the innumerable ways that these men and women, immersed in their shadowy economic pursuits, are connected to and reliant upon one another. The underground economy, as Venkatesh's subtle storytelling reveals, functions as an intricate web, and in the strength of its strands lie the fates of many Maquis Park residents. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country.

In a series of long essays, this book presents an in-depth look at key beliefs behind many mistaken and dangerous actions, policies, and trends. It presents eye-opening insights into the historical development of the ghetto culture that is today wrongly seen as a unique black identity--a culture cheered on toward self-destruction by white liberals who consider themselves "friends" of blacks. An essay titled "The Real History of Slavery" presents a jolting re-examination of that tragic institution and the narrow and distorted way it is too often seen today. The reasons for the venomous hatred of Jews, and of other groups like them in countries around the world, are explored in an essay that asks, "Are Jews Generic?" Misconceptions of German history in general, and of the Nazi era in particular, are also re-examined. So too are the inspiring achievements and painful tragedies of black education in the United States.