The challenges facing colleges and universities today are profound and complex. Fortunately, Jon McGee is an ideal guide through this dynamic marketplace. In Breakpoint, he argues that higher education is in the midst of an extraordinary moment of demographic, economic, and cultural transition that has significant implications for how colleges understand their mission, their market, and their management. Drawing from an extensive assessment of demographic and economic trends, McGee presents a broad and integrative picture of these changes while stressing the importance of decisive campus leadership. He describes the key forces that influence higher education and provides a framework from which trustees, presidents, administrators, faculty, and policy makers can address pressing issues in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Although McGee avoids endorsing one-size-fits-all solutions, he suggests a number of concrete strategies for handling prospective students and developing pedagogical practices, curricular content and delivery, and management structures. Practical and compelling, Breakpoint will help higher education leaders make choices that advance their institutional values and serve their students and the common good for generations to come.

Few moments in parenting are as fraught as preparing your kid for college. Let a trusted pro show you how it's done. Written for parents and families of college-bound students, Jon McGee's Dear Parents is an essential tool you'll need to navigate the complex and often emotional challenge of getting your daughter or son prepared for-and through-college. Organized chronologically, the book takes readers through the stages of childhood leading up to college, as well as the process of searching for and selecting a college. From the decisions you make during your child's early years to the process of setting up their dorm room, this book provides parents with insights, wisdom, and guidance about college, college preparation, and choosing a college. Letters written by college and educational professionals, all with children, frame and illuminate each chapter. Drawing on their personal and professional experience, these experts offer practical and sympathetic advice about preparing for college. The book concludes with insights about sending children off to college and the appropriate roles for parents as your children experience these important years. Undergirded by research but informed by on-the-ground insight, Dear Parents is designed to both engage and inform while demystifying the daunting and ever-changing process of entering college. "If you've picked up this book, my guess is you don't need convincing that there is a lifelong return from a college education. You want to understand the process better and you'd like to help your teen smartly navigate their choices. You picked wisely if that's the case. . . . Jon McGee is a wonderful guide, shedding light on the mysterious process of applying to college while bringing much insight to the inevitable trade-offs."-from the foreword by Chris Farrell, Marketplace

In Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, the author follows three generations of one Lacandon Maya family. Readers track the subjects' lives as they shift through events such as marriage, parenthood, and religious conversion, all set against a backdrop of increased tourism, road construction, and the murders of two people in the community. This book encompasses both ethnography and a critique of ethnographic writing. At one level, the book is about social, agricultural, technological, and religious changes that have occurred in a Lacandon Maya community in Mexico. At a second level, the book is a critique of those who invented a Utopian picture of a "traditional" Lacandon past that never really existed. For cultural anthropologists, or anyone interested in learning more about this Mayan culture.

This comprehensive and engaging introduction to the anthropology of religion brings together a rich and balanced collection of classic and contemporary readings. Ideal for courses in the anthropology of religion or comparative religion, this exceptional anthology not only gives students the tools to analyze and comprehend religion but also enables them to consider religion's major role in contemporary world affairs.
Organized topically, Sacred Realms: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion, Second Edition, covers twelve major areas in faith, religion, and belief. Demonstrating the breadth and variety of human religious experience, the essays are written by authors from diverse ethnic and national backgrounds and include vivid ethnographic examples drawn from field studies around the world. The readings range from classic contributions by Bronislaw Malinowski, Horace Miner, and Anthony F. C. Wallace to more recent selections including one on the Rajneeshee by Charles Lindholm and articles on Sufism, witches, and American raves. The volume concludes with a unique section by the editors that describes the basic facets of five of the world's most influential religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The editors also provide helpful background material throughout; their general introduction encourages students to approach religion as an objective human experience rather than from the perspective of their own upbringings, while overviews to each of the text's six parts place subjects in context and highlight key issues. Essay introductions identify the author's perspective, the article's major points, and the questions the essay raises.
New to the secondedition of Sacred Realms is a section on the intersection of religion and politics, which includes a classic article by Raymond Firth as well as recent articles on issues in Korea and the Middle East. This edition also features a world map at the front of the book--referencing locations in each essay, by number--and a glossary of terms at the end of the book. An Instructor's Manual on CD is available to adopters.

In Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, the author follows three generations of one Lacandon Maya family. Readers track the subjects' lives as they shift through events such as marriage, parenthood, and religious conversion, all set against a backdrop of increased tourism, road construction, and the murders of two people in the community. This book encompasses both ethnography and a critique of ethnographic writing. At one level, the book is about social, agricultural, technological, and religious changes that have occurred in a Lacandon Maya community in Mexico. At a second level, the book is a critique of those who invented a Utopian picture of a "traditional" Lacandon past that never really existed. For cultural anthropologists, or anyone interested in learning more about this Mayan culture.