Book Review Archives - Early Learning Nation

Personal Business: Emily Oster’s New Book Runs the Numbers on Young Kids

Mark Swartz·Sep 21, 2021·4 min read

Economists are famously bad at predicting the future. (There’s even an old joke: Why did God create economists? To make weather forecasters look good.) Nevertheless, thinking like an economist can help prepare us for what lies ahead for our children.

Book Review: Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move Out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One

Majora Carter’s Community Manifesto Starts with Real Estate

Mark Swartz·Feb 1, 2022·3 min read

Gentrification is a subject that has launched a million listserv arguments. It often starts with complaints from longtime residents of...

Book Review: A Surgeon’s Road Map to a “Parent Nation”

Mark Swartz·Apr 12, 2022·5 min read

Dana L. Suskind, surgeon and “self-trained social scientist,” balances an incredible amount of empathy and urgency in her second book, Parent Nation.

Book Review: The Emotionally Intelligent Child

Mark Swartz·Aug 9, 2022·3 min read

Rachael Katz (MS Ed.) and Helen Shwe Hadani (Ph.D.) are excellent companions for mothers, fathers and caregivers of young children. Their views on parenting derive from their own families, as well as extensive reading into the science of brain development.

Book Review: Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit

K.C. Compton·Aug 18, 2022·6 min read

Along with this history of metastatic industrial development, staggering pollution, relentless corruption and breathtakingly bad policy, Rector presents the other side of the coin: the fierce, courageous, dogged commitment of activists pushing back decade after decade, demanding cleaner air, better working conditions and water that wouldn’t poison their children.

Book Review: Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

K.C. Compton·Sep 8, 2022·6 min read

Essential Labor is both a memoir and a call to action. The caregiving crisis the US finds itself in now will outlast the pandemic and we must figure out ways to care for each other.

Book Review: The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

K.C. Compton·Oct 5, 2022·5 min read

In The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, Paul effectively makes the case that most of the metaphors we have for cognition are not useful because they allude to Western society’s assumption that thinking only happens inside the brain: the ubiquitous admonition to “use your head.”

Book Review: “The Stolen Year” by Anya Kamenetz: Heart-Wrenching, Heart-Warming Stories of Children in the Pandemic

Mark Swartz·Oct 13, 2022·4 min read

Children and the people who love them endured a lot in 2020 and 2021. This was one of the most trying times in human history, and NPR education correspondent Kamenetz eloquently and humanely depicts the panic that reigned in every household, office, court and classroom.