This is a combination of thoughtful takes on being a school bus driver, quite an interesting topic in itself (how do you deal with the kids, traffic, etc.) and

This is a combination of thoughtful takes on being a school bus driver, quite an interesting topic in itself (how do you deal with the kids, traffic, etc.) and reinventing yourself in middle age in a job far afield. It also contains reminiscence and opinions of Salaita on the controversy that cost him his promised job. This second topic is a complicated one, I suggest before being quick to to decide that he was booted off wrongly for a "thought crime" or rightly because he's an ardent anti-semite one should get familiar with the controversy. At a high-level you can read: * The Wikipedia article on the controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salaita_controversy * The NYT article from 2014: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/middleeast/professors-angry-tweets-on-gaza-cost-him-a-job.html * Chicago Tribune article from 2017: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-steve-salaita-academia-exit-perspec-0728-jm-20170727-story.html From there on, if the general topic piques your interest, you can branch off on one or many of the following topics, among others: * Role of Hamas and other organizations in Middle East * What is free speech - start with pg's essay : http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html * Role of twitter (and other social media in polarization of contemporary societies): E.g. is this a new thing or does it have analogues in history, e.g. French revolutionary pamphlets (if you're in Chicago, you can see the collection in Newberry https://www.newberry.org/french-pamphlets) * Jews and the Civil Right Movement in the US, how these two got disconnected, you can start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American%E2%80%93Jewish_relations, then check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_teachers%27_strike_of_1968 and the book *Ungovernable City* which covers the strike in detail * The relationship between the Left and Jewish Community: Whoa, this is a huge topic, New Yorker just recently covered it https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/looking-at-anti-semitism-on-the-left-and-the-right-an-interview-with-deborah-e-lipstadt * Is it all about the Benjamins? Just this month US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar had to publicly apologize for *her* tweets https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/11/ilhan-omar-antisemitic-tweets-house-democrats-apology