Homeland ( 381 pages + 8 VERY interesting afterword pages)

Cory Doctorow has written a sequel to Little Brother that I reviewed in an earlier post. In this novel, he continues to focus on Marcus as the main character and leader of techie teens in San Francisco. Following a terrorist attack on San Francisco, the city experiences a severe collapse of the economy. Both of Marcus's parents have lost their jobs, resulting in Marcus needing to drop out of college. However, after he attends an annual event in the California desert known as Burning Man with his girlfriend, Ange, he meets some famous gentlemen who were early on technical whizzes. His name is passed along to a man running as an independent in the next California election. He offers Marcus a job as the campaign's webmaster, telling him that he expects some exciting new ideas. This book contains so much excitement and is a fast-paced read. The comment in the book's jacket says the ideas in this book are "as current as yesterday". It also says that Doctorow is encouraging his readers to have courage, be active, and to work to make the world a better place. And all of this being done with computers! Your students will love this book, and both you and they will gain much from reading the information included in the afterwords and the bibliography.  As a matter of fact- I might be very tempted to begin with these!