I have only recently discovered the series “What Everyone Needs to Know” from Oxford University Press. That was mostly
due to a project which students were completing on the Arab Spring, ISIS, and Taliban. Students found our copy of The Arab Uprisings
to be so useful that I ordered a second one and started to investigate some other
titles in the series. Each is written by
a leading authority in the field and is presented in a question-and-answer
format which, when combined with a detailed index, is very helpful for our high
school students.
I have now previewed Drones (March 2016) since
I have a number of students investigating that subject. There was a fairly large section on the
history of drone development and another on their relationship to sci-fi speculation,
but I could not easily find comments related to the moral impact of the use of drones
as unmanned weapons. Also, the author,
an Associate Professor at Cornell University, made a reference to possible
future registration which should be updated since it seems the FAA did begin to require that
last year. I was happily surprised to see emphasis and a set of questions
related to civilian and commercial use of drones and conjecture regarding their
future miniaturization.
In addition, I also looked through China’s Economy
(April 2016) which was written by a Senior Fellow at Brookings-Tsinghua Center
who has lived in Beijing since 2002. That one, in particular, seemed to have an extremely
helpful “further reading” section and an extensive set of footnotes which would
allow students to investigate context and/or more in-depth knowledge on their
own. I will continue to watch this series since upcoming titles reflect topics about
which students have recently shown interest, including Artificial Intelligence,
Campaign Finance, and Cuba.
