Books about Dropout from Amazon.com

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Price: $12.39 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"I loved David Gilmour's sleek, potent little memoir, The Film Club. It's so, so wise in the ways of fathers and sons, of movies and movie-goers, of love and loss."
--- Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls

"If all sons had dads like David Gilmour, then Oedipus would be a forgotten legend and Father's Day would be a worldwide film festival."

--Sean Wilsey, author of Oh the Glory of It All

"David Gilmour is a very unlikely moral guidance counselor: he's broke, more or less unemployed and has two children by two different women. Yet when it looks as though his teenage son is about to go off the rails, he reaches out to him through the only subject he knows anything about: the movies. The result is an object lesson in how fathers should talk to their sons." --Toby Young, author of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People



At the start of this brilliantly unconventional family memoir, David Gilmour is an unemployed movie critic trying to convince his fifteen-year-old son Jesse to do his homework. When he realizes Jesse is beginning to view learning as a loathsome chore, he offers his son an unconventional deal: Jesse could drop out of school, not work, not pay rent - but he must watch three movies a week of his father's choosing.

Week by week, side by side, father and son watched everything from True Romance to Rosemary's Baby to Showgirls, and films by Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, Billy Wilder, among others. The movies got them talking about Jesse's life and his own romantic dramas, with mercurial girlfriends, heart-wrenching breakups, and the kind of obsessive yearning usually seen only in movies.

Through their film club, father and son discussed girls, music, work, drugs, money, love, and friendship - and their own lives changed in surprising ways.



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Price: $9.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From "one of the best writers of erotic fiction around" (Susan Johnson) comes the hot novel of a young woman's sensual education at the hands of a reclusive professor who's adept at erotic mind games..
Price: $3.85 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As societal expectations about attending college have grown, professors report increasing numbers of students who are unprepared for the rigors of postsecondary education—not just more students with learning disabilities (whose numbers have more than tripled), but students (with and without special admission status) who are academically at-risk because of inadequate reading, writing and study skills.

This book provides professors and their graduate teaching assistants—those at the front line of interactions with students—with techniques and approaches they can use in class to help at-risk students raise their skills so that they can successfully complete their studies.

The author shares proven practices that will not only engage all students in a class, but also create the conditions—while maintaining high standards and high expectations—to enable at-risk and under-prepared students to develop academically, and graduate with good grades. The author also explains how to work effectively with academic support units on campus.

Within the framework of identifying those students who need help, establishing a rapport with them, adopting inclusive teaching strategies, and offering appropriate guidance, the book presents the theory teachers will need, and effective classroom strategies.

The author covers teaching philosophy and goals; issues of discipline and behavior; motivation and making expectations explicit; classroom climate and learning styles; developing time management and study skills; as well as the application of “universal design” strategies.

The ideas presented here—that the author has successfully employed over many years—can be easily integrated into any class..
Price: $22.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

To the dismay of her high society motherCissy, Dallas heiress Andy Kendricks wantsno part of the Junior League life -- opting instead for a job as a website designer and a passel of unpedigreed pals. Now her good friend Molly O'Brien is in bad trouble, accused of killing her boss at the local restaurant "Jugs." Though no proper deb would ever set foot in such a sleazy dive, Andy's soon slipping into skintight hot pants and a stuffed triple-D bra to gain employment there and somehow help clear Molly's name. But Andy's undercover lark is soon bringing her into too-close contact with all manner of dangerous adversaries -- including a shady TV preacher, a fanatical Mothers Against Porn activist ... and a killer who is none too keen on meddling rich girls.

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Price: $3.08 [Notify me when price goes down.]

They call them "pretty parties," and they're the latest rage among Dallas debutantes—get-togethers with light refreshments, heavy gossip, and Dr. Sonja Madhavi and her magic Botox needles. Former socialite Andy Kendricks normally wouldn't be caught dead at such an event, but she's attending as a favor to her friend Janet, a society reporter in search of a juicy story. And boy does she find one when aging beauty queen Miranda DuBois bursts into the room—drunk, disorderly, and packing a pistol.

Miranda's wrinkles have seen better days, and she blames it all on Dr. Madhavi. Luckily, Andy calms her down and gets her home to bed . . . where she's found dead the next morning. The police suspect suicide, but Andy knows that no former pageant girl would give up that easily. She's determined to find Miranda's killer herself, but she'll have to be careful. After all, Botox can make you look younger, but it can't bring you back from the grave.

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Price: $1.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $25.01 [Notify me when price goes down.]

More than a quarter of the students who enter four-year institutions and half of those who enter two-year schools depart at the end of their first year. This phenomenon is known as the "departure puzzle," and for years, the most important body of work on student retention has come from sociologist Vincent Tinto. In Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle, leading scholars of the college student experience--including Tinto himself--reevaluate Tinto's interactionalist perspective, which holds that students unable to connect with either the academic or social subsystems of their institutions are likely to leave. Recent critiques of this theory have indicated the need for either its serious revision or the development of a new theory altogether. The contributors to this volume offer a variety of both theoretical and methodological perspectives on student departure, with additional chapters covering minority student retention, the link between college choice and student persistence, and the effect of the classroom experience on the student's choice. The recommendations made here will not only reinvigorate research on this important topic but will also lead administrators to better manage the enrollments of their individual colleges and universities..
Price: $27.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

WEALTHY TEXAS WIDOWS NEED LOVING TOO...

...which is why Bebe Kent joined a dating service for "discriminating" seniors soon after relocating to the swanky Belle Meade retirement community. Unfortunately, Bebe didn't live long enough to meet "Mr. Right." And though doctors declared her death totally natural, extravagant blue-blooded Dallas socialite Cissy Blevins Kendricks believes her old friend's demise was hastened -- and she's ready to check herself into Belle Meade incognito to prove it.

Cissy's rebellious, sometime-sleuthing daughter, Andrea, wants no part of her mother's glittering social whirl -- and she's anything but pleased to have Cissy muscle her way into Andy's milieu. She has no choice, however, but to join her mom in search of the truth -- especially when more well-heeled widows start turning up dead...

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Price: $1.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Renegade rich girl Andy Kendricks isn't the belle of any Dallas ball—and that's just the way the debutante dropout likes it! She's got a good life and a great man: her defense attorney boyfriend, Brian Malone. Brian's such a straight arrow that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a close friend's bachelor party at a sleazy local "gentleman's club."

So why is the groom-to-be saying that Brian left the bacchanal arm-in-arm with "the hottest body in the Lone Star State?" And what was that hot body doing stone-cold dead in the trunk of Brian's car? And where is Brian anyway? The cops are looking for Andy's allegedly unfaithful/possibly homicidal beau who hasn't been seen since the party. But Andy can't believe her upstanding lover is a murdering fool, and she's determined to prove it—though she might end up with a lot more broken than just her heart.

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Price: $2.65 [Notify me when price goes down.]