The University of Chicago Magazine August 1995
For inclusion in "Books by Alumni," please send the name of the book, its author, its publisher, its field, and a short synopsis to the Books Editor, University of Chicago Magazine, 5757 Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, or by E-mail: uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.
Krin E. Gabbard, AB'70, editor, Jazz among the Discourses and Representing Jazz (Duke University Press). In the first book, scholars from African-American studies, music, English, history, and philosophy examine the kinds of discourse-- journalism, scholarship, politics, oral history, and entertainment--that affect conventional writing about jazz. The essays in the second book chronicle jazz music's impact on various artists, including writer Eudora Welty and photographer William Claxton.
Robert J. Mullen, X'39, The Architecture and Sculpture of Oaxaca, 1530s-1980s (Arizona State University Center for Latin American Studies). A sequel to Mullen's 1975 book, Dominican Architecture in Sixteenth-Century Oaxaca, this work discusses the continuing importance of the templo in pueblo life and Mullen's finding that many pueblo churches bear Mesoamerican sacred symbols, previously recognized only by the indigenous population. The narration is accompanied by more than 400 photos and illustrations.
Richard Gordon, AB'67, four artist's books and one portfolio (Flâneur Bookworks). Satanic Reverses: a book of 14 b & w photographs and burned, randomly chosen pages from The Satanic Verses; Counting the House: an album of 12 photos with an introduction by U of C art professor Joel Snyder, SB'61; Souvenir 28 September 1994: an album bookwork of 17 b & w photos of the Robert Frank opening at the National Gallery of Art; Only Memories Remain: an artist's book of a typescript memoir, 24 b & w photos, twine, and stones in a burlap bag; and Meta Photographs: a portfolio of 47 sequential photos.
Kenneth Blackwell and Harry Ruja, AM'34, A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell (Routledge). This three-volume set documents some 3,000 works by philosopher Bertrand Russell, including books, pamphlets, articles, letters to editors, films, and records.
Douglas G. Greene, AM'67, PhD'72, John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles (Otto Penzler Books). Creator of such sleuths as Sir Henry Merrivale and Dr. Gideon Fell, Carr was known for the "now-you-see-it, now-you-don't" plot devices he used in his 70 novels and dozens of short stories and radio plays. The author discusses Carr's life and his place among mystery writers who dominated a classic period of detective fiction.
Molly McQuade, AB'81, An Unsentimental Education: Writers and Chicago (University of Chicago Press). A collection of interviews--presented as first-person essays--with 21 leading novelists and poets, this book features the writers' reflections on their U of C experiences and on education in general. Included are Saul Bellow, X'39; Philip Roth, AM'55; and Susan Sontag, AB'51.
Dorothy Beal Christelow, AB'37, When Giants Converge: The Role of U.S.-Japan Direct Investment (M. E. Sharpe). Surveying bilateral U.S.-Japan direct investments from the end of WWII through the early 1990s, the author argues the investments' importance for generating technology and productivity growth in both nations.
B. Delworth Gardner, PhD'60, Plowing Ground in Washington: The Political Economy of U.S. Agriculture (Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy). Gardner argues that agricultural and irrigation-water subsidies are produced by political rent-seeking--and that they waste economic resources, redistribute income and wealth from taxpayers and consumers to land owners, and degrade the environment.
Edward A. Riedinger, AM'69, PhD'78, Where in the World to Learn: A Guide to Library and Information Science for International Education Advisers (Greenwood Press). Riedinger's guide provides basic knowledge about library and information management to help educational advisers to develop themselves as information professionals.
Peter Smagorinsky, MAT'77, PhD'89, and Melissa Whiting, How English Teachers Get Taught: Methods of Teaching the Methods Class (National Council of Teachers of English). Using their study of syllabi from 80 courses in methods of teaching secondary English and language arts, the authors identify basic approaches to such courses, activities and assessments used in the courses, and major theoretical positions articulated through course readings.
Harry D. Eshleman, AB'50, Fierce Wish for Calm (Mellen Poetry Press). Eshleman's poems are based on memories of people, incidents, and feelings from his childhood in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
David E. Ray, AB'52, AM'57, Kangaroo Paws: Poems Written in Australia (Thomas Jefferson University Press). This collection of more than 70 poems reflect Ray's experiences and observations while on university residencies in Australia.
Esta Spalding, AB'88, Carrying Place (House of Anansi Press). Spalding's poems explore the idea of the human body as a meeting place for biology, genealogy, and geography.
James S. Thayer, JD'74, White Star (Simon & Schuster). Thayer's seventh novel centers on Owen Gray, a legendary Marine Corps sniper in Vietnam who has made a new life as a New York City federal prosecutor and the adoptive father of three Vietnamese children. Twenty-five years after the war, a vengeful sniper returns to hunt him, forcing Gray into a deadly duel.
David H. Fromkin, AB'50, JD'53, In the Time of the Americans: FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Marshall, MacArthur--The Generation that Changed America's Role in the World (Alfred A. Knopf). This generational biography describes the lifelong search of FDR and his contemporaries for an answer to the question: What role should the United States play in world affairs?
Judith Groner Gordon, AB'50, American Star Work Coverlets (Design Books). Gordon's analysis of over 80 multishaft geometric coverlets from the 19th century provides enough information for today's weavers to make reproductions. Pages from the unpublished manuscripts of Pennsylvania German weavers are reproduced, along with a detailed discussion of a previously unknown weave structure.
Mark E. Lincicome, AM'79, PhD'85, Principle, Praxis, and the Politics of Educational Reform in Meiji Japan (University of Hawai'i Press). In 1872, Japan's newly established Ministry of Education attempted to train a corps of professional teachers for compulsory primary schools. Lincicome argues that rather than simply transferring teaching methods and materials from the U.S. and Europe, the ministry planted the seeds of broader reform that would challenge not only its own underlying doctrine of education, but its very authority over education.
Barbara H. Rosenwein, AB'66, AM'68, PhD'74; Lynn Hunt; Thomas R. Martin; R. Po-chia Hsia; and Bonnie Smith, The Challenge of the West: Peoples and Cultures from the Stone Age to the Global Age (D. C. Heath). With chapters treating the major events and themes of each particular time period, this textbook integrates political narrative with elite, popular, and anthropological culture.
David Conradt; Gerald Kleinfeld; George K. Romoser, AM'54, PhD'58; and Christian Soe, editors, Germany's New Politics (Berghahn Publishers). Romoser and 14 other specialists on German affairs analyze the 20 state, federal, and European elections in Germany in 1994. Combining empirical electoral research and discussion of new developments in German democracy, the contributors analyze implications for the future of German politics, government, and economic and foreign-policy issues.
Jay M. Feinman, JD'75, Economic Negligence: Liability of Professionals and Businesses to Third Parties for Economic Loss (Little, Brown). Feinman uses literature on the contract-tort boundary, relational contract theory, and critical legal studies to survey and analyze cases in which two parties have a contract and the negligent performance of that contract injures a third person.
Dale G. Larson, AB'71, The Helper's Journey: Working with People Facing Grief, Loss, and Life-Threatening Illness (Research Press). Chapters on emotional involvement, stress management, communication skills, and social issues address the personal, interpersonal, and societal challenges facing today's professional and volunteer helpers.
William Dean, AM'64, PhD'67, The Religious Critic in American Culture (State University of New York Press). After noting the absence of public intellectuals in American universities, the authorcalls for "religious critics" who would assess the national spiritual culture, even in the ostensibly groundless postmodern era.
J. Albert Harrill, AM'89, PhD'93, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Verlag J.C.B. Mohr). Bridging the gap between classical and New Testament studies, Harrill examines the personal liberation of Christian slaves within the context of Roman social history. Relocating the issue of slavery from a predominantly legal question to one of economic and familial considerations, Harrill concludes that manumission was of considerable importance in congregations and that early Christians did not oppose the liberation of baptized slaves.
Eugene F. A. Klug, AM'41, Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor, and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Publishing House). Church and ministry continue to be timely and often controversial subjects in contemporary pan-Lutheran and ecumenical studies of their function and order relative to the whole Christian community. Interviews with some 40 European scholars of Luther are included.
David Novak, AB'61, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People (Cambridge University Press). Novak analyzes the great change in modern Jewish thought brought about by Spinoza's inversion of the central Jewish doctrine: He argued that rather than God electing Israel, Israel had elected God. The author defends the correlation of election and revelation and maintains that a theology of election is required to deal with two questions: Who are the Jews? How are Jews to be related to the world?
Ralph Kretz, SM'57, PhD'58, Metamorphic Crystallization (John Wiley & Sons). Kretz investigates the upper regions of the crystalline Earth, where countless solid-state chemical changes have taken place during the planet's long history. The contents are grouped in five sections: geological background, mineral thermodynamics, phase equilibrium, chemical kinetics, and granular microstructures and crystallization mechanisms.
George W. Liebmann, JD'63, The Little Platoons: Sub-local Governments in Modern History (Greenwood Publishing Group). Sub-local government--small-scale structures of civil society that lie between the individual and large government actors--include community councils, educational districts, and neighborhood organizations. This book examines and identifies common attributes in sub-local government in England, France, Germany, the U.S., Russia, China, and Japan.
J. Lorand Matory, AM'86, AM'91, PhD'91, Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion (University of Minnesota Press). This book traces the role of female and transvestite-male possession priests of a major West African people, from the Oyo Empire of the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Challenging the view that gender is the cultural interpretation of a natural dichotomy between males and females, Matory points out that certain socially and politically central gender categories among the Yoruba and other peoples significantly crosscut the sexes.
Franklin Ng, AM'75, PhD'75, editor, The Asian-American Encyclopedia (Marshall Cavendish). These six volumes contain entries from more than 200 contributors about the fast-growing and diverse Asian-American population, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, South Asian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Hmong, and the Iu-Mien peoples.
Robert H. Dreisbach, MD'42, PhD'42, Guide to Northeast Oregon (Entropy Conservationists). Drawing on his hiking experiences in the region, Dreisbach describes locations where the original Oregon Trail can be viewed, including ghost towns, old mine sites, and geological and natural-history sites. The guidebook also includes suggestions for hikes, bicycle tours, and campgrounds; a summary of area history; and weather data.
Thomas Flannigan, AM'79, and Ellen Flannigan, Tokyo Museums: A Complete Guide (Charles E. Tuttle Publishing). Covering nearly 200 museums, the authors offer forthright opinions on facilities ranging from the Tokyo Tower Wax Museum to the Kanto Earthquake Memorial Museum.
Richard D. Lerner, AB'80, Backpacking with Your Dog (Menasha Ridge Press). Lerner's guide offers dog owners health, safety, and travel tips for sharing their love of nature with their pets.
For inclusion in "Books by Alumni," please send the name of the book, its author, its publisher, its field, and a short synopsis to the Books Editor, University of Chicago Magazine, 5757 Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, or by E-mail: uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.