Some interesting stories I’ve found so far.

* A Russian soldier holed up in a farmhouse during the Russian invasion of Poland went outside to go to the bathroom to do number 2. In the process, he was shot in the leg. He ran back to the farmhouse and didn’t go the bathroom for another 7 days.

* A woman waiting for rationed food in the blockaded city of Leningrad had her food stolen by a man in line behind her. The starvation had reached such a crisis point that she reached down his mouth and pulled out what was left of the food in order to take it home for her family.

* In order to combat the problem of desertion in the Russian army, Stalin devised a strategy where Russians would approach the German line with their hands raised in a “surrender” position. Then, when they got close to the Germans, they would throw grenades. The Germans began responding to surrendering Russians by shooting them. Russian soldiers learned this, and what their fate would be if they surrendered to the enemy.

Yes, the word “nigger” is offensive as hell. But it’s in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for a reason, and removing it is really stupid and counterproductive.

You don’t teach people about history by self-censoring it. And Finn is one of the great works of American literature. Rather than run for the hills at the sign of controversy, we ought to be teaching students why the word is used in the book, and what its significance is.

The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst

This book is a great re-assesment of Hearst, whose influence we still feel today in the work of big media organizations and moguls like Rupert Murdoch. The author, a Canadian conservative named Kenneth Whyte, makes a compelling case that a lot of the history of Hearst’s early newspaper years has been misinterpreted. He does this by doing what rarely (I’ve found) happens in books about historical journalism: he reproduces the actual work and compares it to the journalism of its day.

What he finds is that some of the criticism of Hearst is unwarranted and suffers because it comes from a perspective of historical hindsight and standards, while some of what Hearst produced was just shoddy. I tend to be in the camp that admires Hearst as his goal was an entertaining newspaper, something today’s papers have largely abandoned, so this book filled in the picture for someone who should not have the negative place he does in journalism history.

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America

This book, and Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, is truly inspiring (I’ve written about it before, and the zone’s site is here). This book explains the current work around urban education in language a layman can understand, while also following Canada’s plan to create a social safety net for Harlem children so they can have the support system those of us in middle class America take for granted.

I should note that in the process of reading this book I called my mom twice to thank her for doing almost exactly what the research says leads to a child prepared for the modern world, despite the economic background she came from.

The book has prompted me to do more reading and writing about this vital public service, and made me think we should all we can do to get programs like the Children’s Zone everywhere in America we can.

UPDATE: FYI, the Department of Education’s “Promise Neighborhoods” is an attempt by President Obama to spread the Children’s Zone model to more cities.

For a while I thought I would use an iPad, whenever I get one, as an e-reader. But I’m hearing some negative things about the weight of it for that purpose. The reviews of the Nook haven’t been so great and I don’t trust Barnes & Noble to support it forever, so I’ve been leaning towards Kindle. We’ll see.