The Greatest Generationby Tom Brokaw - I've seen this book many times on the shelves of both my previous library and here at Loogootee. I've been drawn to it but never had either the time or the impetus to delve into it deeper. However, after attending a session of my Teaching American History fellowship and listening to two WWII veterans relive their harrowing experiences during this time, I felt compelled and inspired to finally read more about the amazingly heroic men who alterted the history of our great nation.

In this moving book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values--duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday lives reveal how a generation persevered through war, and were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting and useful lives and the America we have today.

Fish! by Stephen C. Lundin et al. - Suggested to me by a fellow teacher at a recent faculty book club meeting, this is a short and poignant parable that draws its lesson from an unlikely source-- the fun-loving fishmongers at Seattle's Pike Place Market. In Fish! the main character , Mary Jane Ramirez, is a recently widowed mother of two who is asked to engineer a complete turnaround of her company's troubled operations department, a group that authors Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen describe as a "toxic energy dump". Most managers would call it quits and move on, having no hope of changing a long-established environment of uninspired work practices. But the authors don't make it so easy for Mary Jane. Instead, she's left to sort out the colossal mess by drawing upon the inspriation she finds from head fishmonger Lonnie. Based on a bestselling corporate education video, Fish! strives to help employees create a fun and happy workplace. While some readers might find the storyline and prescriptions for change--such as "Choose Your Attitude", "Make Their Day" and "Be Present"--downright juvenile or laughable, others will find a healthy dose of timely motivational management techniques. If you loved Who Moved My Cheese? then you'll feel the same about Fish!.