Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels by Hella Winston

In this book, Hella tells the story of Yossi, a 25 year old Hassidic Jewish man who rejects the Hassidic lifestyle along with the stories of several other men and women who have also left the insular communites and/or lifestyles of the Hassidic Jews living in New York. As she met more and more people from that community she learned how their belief in separation from the world and their own religious educational system leaves people emotionally scarred and lacking in knowledge of the outside world making it incredibly difficult for them to leave the Hassidic communities even if they want to. Similar to the FLDS, and possibly the Hutterites and Amish, the Hassidic Jews cut themselves off from the rest of the world to the extent that they don't even know what it is like or how to interact within it. They often speak mostly Yiddish and don't know much English, have very little education in Math, Science or Social Studies, making it difficult for them to get any kind of employment outside of their community. Women are second class citizens who are expected to marry young to a man who they are allowed to meet twice for 20 minutes each time before the wedding and are encouraged to have as many children as they possibly can. Unsuprisingly, depression and mental illness occur frequently among the Hassidic Jews.
Interestingly, many of the young Hassids begin to learn about the outside world and other opinions when they visit Israel, which is much more liberal than the Hassidic Jewish communities of New York.
The stories in this book are illuminating and sad.

Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy by Maggie Anderson

As a social and economical experiment, Maggie and her husband John decided to buy only from Black owned businesses for a year. The experiment was highly publicized and Maggie spoke in many different forums about the goal of investing in Black owned businesses. They found, to their distress, that it was most difficult to find Black owned grocery stores and two of the ones they did find went out of business during 2009 while they were participating in this experiement that they have named the Empowerment Experiment.
Maggie shares lots of statistics about why there are not many Black owned businesses and studies that explain why and how people need to become better informed and educated in order to help Black owned businesses to succeed and increase.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

The sequel to "Divergent".
Bit of a dissappointing ending. Once again, the factions are having strife, Tris and Tobias, aka Four, are romantic, there is lots of action and people jumping on and off of trains that we know nothing about. The factionless join forces, Tris tries to find out the secret knowledge that her parents were killed trying to hide and people are manipulated with the wierd simulation stuff as Jeanine leads the Erudite in trying to find all of the divergents to learn what makes them tick and how to overpower them.

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass

Four children, a candy contest and a confectionary conundrum. When Logan, the son of the Candymaker at the Life is Sweet candy company, is 12 years old, he is finally able to enter the annual New Candy Contes of the Confectionary Association. Three other 12 year olds join him to create new candies. Along with Logan; Philip, Miles, and Daisy, each tell their part of the story and their roles in helping to solve the mystery and create a winning confection. The story is mouth wateringly fun! I highly recommend it!

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher, PhD.

Dr. Pipher shares her experiences of treating teenage girls in her psychology practice and gives practical advice to parents and other adults about what teenage girls are going through, how they think and how to help them through adolescence. As a teacher - I taught middle school for 13 years and now substitute in middle and high schools - and as a parent of two daughters - one who is 19 and one who is 10, I found the book to be very practical and helpful.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

I read the DaVinci Code before I read this book, and the DaVinci Code is a better book. I was sad to see that the same formula is followed in both books - start with a tragic death and the body mutilated in some bizare religiously symbolic way causing someone to call Robert Langdon, a professor who specializes in religious symbology, then have a crazed assassian working for an unknown boss for a cause that he believes is in some way helping some odd religious group, add in some help from the daughter or granddaughter of the murdered man and a race within 24 hours to solve the mystery including real and imagined "facts" about religion and science and you have the basic plot of both books. This book is gripping and fun to read and I look forward to reading the third book in the series next.

The Pregnancy Project by Gaby Rodriguez

Last year, 17 year old Gaby Rodriguez pretended she was pregnant as her senior project to gague prejudice and sterotyping. She had the cooperation of her mom and boyfriend, but most of their families and friends and teachers at school, had no idea that she was not really pregnant. In this book, Gaby tells about her family and how she planned the project. It turned out to be more difficult than she expected and got much more attention than she had ever imagined, going national with major networks fighting for her story.
The book is interesting and brings up issues that pregnant teens face that many people may not be aware of.