The University of Chicago Magazine

October 1997

Books

 

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Debra Bricker Balken, AM'80, with William C. Agee and Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Arthur Dove: A Retrospective (MIT Press). Arthur Dove (1880­1946) is generally credited as the first 20th-century artist to produce an abstract painting. Written to accompany a retrospective of his work, this book assesses his art and his place in American cultural and intellectual history.

Sophia Shaw, AM'94, editor, The Arts Club of Chicago: The Collection 1916­1996 (The Arts Club of Chicago). This survey of the Arts Club collection-which includes sculptures, modern and contemporary paintings, and rare examples of Asian and African art-features selected pieces; provides a comprehensive chronology of exhibitions; and details the history of the Club, its programs, and its avant-garde patronage. Contributing writers include Richard A. Born, AM'75; Adam Jolles, AM'96; Franz Schulze, PhB'45; Elizabeth E. Siegel, AM'94; and David Travis, AB'71.

BIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS

B. Sue Davidson (Gottfried), AM'49, Changing the Game: The Stories of Tennis Champions Alice Marble and Althea Gibson (Seal Press). The author presents the stories of two great female athletes: Marble, whose aggressive style of tennis became the norm for professional women players; and Gibson, who broke racial barriers as the first African American to compete at the U.S. national championships and at Wimbledon.

William J. Kirwin, AM'51, PhD'64, G. M. Story, and Patrick A. O'Flaherty, editors, Reminiscences of James P. Howley: Selected Years (The Champlain Society). Each summer from 1868 to 1909, Howley traveled to the Newfoundland interior. Led by Micmac guides, he carried out geological and surveying activities. This book brings together Howley's specimens, sketches, maps, and daily records.

Ronald A. Martinetti, X'82, The James Dean Story (Carol Publishing Group). Through interviews with the actor's family and peers, Martinetti examines the myths and facts about James Dean, exploring his three film roles, brief Broadway career, and alleged bisexuality. The book is illustrated with photographs, some previously unpublished.

Frank A. Sanello AB'74, Eddie Murphy: The Life and Times of A Comic on the Edge (Birch Lane Press). Sanello details Eddie Murphy's life and career, including his father's murder and the comedian's rise to fame, downfall, and resurgence.

BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

Timothy M. Devinney, AM'79, MBA'81, PhD'84, and Jeremy Davis, The Essence of Corporate Strategy: Theory for Modern Decision Makers (Allen & Unwin). Written for researchers and advanced master's students, this book bases its theoretical approach to developing corporate strategy on current research in economics, psychology, management science, finance, and marketing.

George A. Francis, MBA'69, and JoAnn Fisher, How to Align Quality Objectives with Business Strategies (GUIDE International Corporation). This book for executives who are beginning to implement quality-management processes presents methodologies, success stories, and solutions to frequently encountered problems.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Jane Walstrum Bendix, AB'41, chaco, The Anasazi Mystery (The Council for Indian Education). In this illustrated story about a modern-day, teenage Navajo, Jamie and Mark have summer jobs at an archaeological dig in Chaco Canyon, where they discover that someone is stealing artifacts. The discovery leads to their friendship with Billy, who is learning the culture of the Navajo and who joins them in trying to catch the thieves.

V. Valiska Gregory, AM'66, When Stories Fell Like Shooting Stars (Simon and Schuster). The first of this book's two fables, "Fox's Story," tells of the sun's plunge from the sky and entanglement in the branches of a tree, resulting in greed and rivalry among the animals. "Bear's Story," a description of the moon's tumble, restores harmony as the animals work together to set things right.

CRITICISM

Jeremy M. Downes, AB'83, Recursive Desire: Rereading Epic Tradition (University of Alabama Press). Contesting the view that the epic is dead, Downes highlights the continuing production of epic poetry, especially among women poets, poets of color, and postcolonial poets. He rereads epic tradition and revisits specific epic poems, maintaining that the genre's psychological model is one of recursive desire rather than Oedipal conflict.

Walter P. Jost, AM'74, AM'79, PhD'85, and Michael J. Hyde, editors, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader (Yale University Press). Twenty thinkers offer perspectives on the revival, interrelation, and influence of rhetoric and hermeneutics. The essayists go on to explore the disciplines' usefulness in literature, religion, law, philosophy, and political theory.

R. Lynn Keller, AM'76, PhD'81, Forms of Expansion: Recent Long Poems by Women (University of Chicago Press). Discussing the work of such poets as Rita Dove, Judy Grahn, and Susan Howe, Keller argues that the long poem's openness to sociological, anthropological, and historical material makes it an ideal mode for exploring women's roles in history and culture.

EDUCATION

Mark P. Batenburg, AM'80, The Evaluation Handbook: Practical Tools for Evaluating Service Learning Programs (Service Learning 2000 Center). Designed for K­12 teachers and program coordinators, this how-to manual provides simple tools and practical tips for evaluating progress toward students' learning, teachers' professional development, and service to the community.

Samuel H. Mitchell, AB'57, AM'58, Sociology for Educating (Captus Press) and Tidal Waves of School Reform: Types of Reforms, Government Controls, and Community Advocates (Praeger Publishers). In the first book, Mitchell reviews Canadian and American attempts at educational reform, exploring the concept of professionalism and examining issues of multiculturalism and social stratification. The second book considers educational reforms in school districts in Alberta, Chicago, and Kentucky.

Joseph J. Tobin, PhD'83, editor, Making a Place for Pleasure in Early Childhood Education (Yale University Press). In these essays, teachers and education experts argue that concerns about sexual abuse have led to trends inhibiting children's play and caretakers' use of touch-and creating a loss of pleasure in early childhood education.

FICTION AND POETRY

Kinereth D. Gensler, AB'43, Journey Fruit: Poems and a Memoir (Alice James Books). Gensler's third book of poetry locates her personal life in the context of history, as she reflects on her experiences as a Jewish child shuttling between the U.S. and Palestine during World War II.

GENDER STUDIES

Linda Racioppi and Katherine O'Sullivan See, AM'74, PhD'79, Women's Activism in Contemporary Russia (Temple University Press). The authors analyze the dynamics within such groups as the Soviet Women's Committee and the Independent Women's Forum, arguing that the activists' life histories reflect how women have responded to the changing political, economic, and social landscape of the former Soviet Union.

Norman Stockman; Norman Bonney, AM'68, PhD'71; and Scheng Xuewen, Women's Work in East and West: The Dual Burden of Employment and Family Life (M. E. Sharpe). In this study of the family and work lives of women in urban China, Japan, Britain, and the U.S., the authors analyze how historical, cultural, organizational, and political factors shape the way women attempt to combine employment with domestic roles.

Claude J. Summers, AM'67, PhD'70, and Ted-Larry Pebworth, editors, Representing Women in Renaissance England (University of Missouri Press). Focusing on female writers and subjects, this book's 15 essays aim to correct oversimplified views of women in Renaissance literature. The essays are grounded in the belief that hierarchically ordered male-female relations influence nearly all aspects of human social relations.

HISTORY/CURRENT EVENTS

Alan L. Berger, AM'70, Children of Job: American Second-Generation Witnesses to the Holocaust (State University of New York Press). In this study of novels and films created by children of Holocaust survivors, Berger explores the relationship between the Holocaust and contemporary Jewish identity.

Paul M. Cohen, AM'79, PhD'84, Freedom's Moment: An Essay on the French Idea of Liberty from Rousseau to Foucault (University of Chicago Press). Exploring the lives and ideas of such thinkers as Rousseau, Sartre, and Foucault, Cohen finds a distinctly French idea of freedom. He argues that this "master narrative" explains how, even amid historic political and social upheavals, France has held on to its faith in liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Sarah H. Gordon, AM'74, PhD'81, Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American History (Ivan R. Dee Publishers). Gordon examines how, by bringing distinct regions and peoples into close contact for the first time, U.S. railroads created and magnified conflicts, including battles over social status, land use, and the North-South rift.

Jerry L. Rodnitzky, AB'59, MAT'62, and Shirley R. Rodnitzky, Jazz-Age Boomtown (Texas A&M University Press). This book, in the form of a photographic essay, depicts the social history of a small Texas town during the 1920s oil boom. Portraying changes in employment, housing, religion, and education, the pictures reflect a transformation from rural to urban values in jazz-age America.

Benjamin Heim Shepard, AM'97, White Nights and Ascending Shadows: An Oral History of the San Francisco AIDS Epidemic (Cassell Academic Press). Based on his interviews with 30 people with AIDS, the author tells of the gay experience in San Francisco from the 1970s onward. He covers the election and assassination of the nation's first openly gay official, the onset of the AIDS epidemic, and the formation of the Gay Liberation Movement.

John A. Taylor, AM'66, PhD'72, Popular Literature and the Construction of British National Identity 1707­1850 (International Scholars Publications). Taylor, a historian, argues that, after the American Revolution, British authors of popular literature protected their own interests by relying on quantitative data to win popularity.

LINGUISTICS

William O'Grady, PhD'78, Syntactic Development (University of Chicago Press). This survey of the research literature on children's language development covers theoretical and empirical issues, telling how children acquire skills of English syntax.

Wesley M. Wilson, MBA'54, Five Languages Made Simpler: French, Italian, English, Spanish, and German Grammar, Vocabulary, Phrases, and Conversation (Professional Press). For each of the five languages listed in the title, Wilson provides an analysis, a complete grammar, a phrase book, and a catalog of idioms and slang. He goes on to compare their grammars and vocabularies.

MEDIA/COMMUNICATIONS

Horace Newcomb, AM'65, PhD'69, editor, The Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television (Fitzroy-Dearborn Publishers). A three-volume reference guide to television in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the U.S., the Encyclopedia contains articles on people, programs, and more.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH

Albert Howard Carter III, AB'65, First Cut: A Season in the Human Anatomy Lab (Picador/St. Martin's). Watching first-year medical students dissect their first cadavers, Carter chronicles their growing awareness of the body's structural beauties, as well as their attitudes and emotions about life and death. Through his observations, Carter comes to realize that he has been seeking his own dead father, whose body had been donated for medical education. By the book's end, he makes peace with that death.

Erhard R. W. ("Ted") Fox, MD'35, Family Doctor (Gatewood Press). Fox imparts knowledge gained from more than 50 years of medical practice in a small, northern Idaho town. Of his 134 essays, some offer advice on how to maintain good health, while others convey his views on the role of the primary physician in health care.

Donna K. Spiker, AB'72, Helping Low Birth Weight, Premature Babies: The Infant Health and Development Program (Stanford University Press). Spiker describes the design, results, and implementation of a recent study of infant health and development. The study, which included 985 infants, evaluated the ameliorating effects of a comprehensive early-intervention program on premature babies with low birth weight.

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND LAW

Elisabeth S. Clemens, AM'85, PhD'90, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest-Group Politics, 1890­1925 (University of Chicago Press). Clemens probes the social origins of interest-group politics in the United States, with particular attention to organizational politics in California, Washington, and Wisconsin. She argues that farmers, workers, and women invented strategies to circumvent established political parties, and that the structure of federalism allowed these often-regional innovations to exert force on national political institutions.

David W. Engstrom, AM'83, PhD'92, Presidential Decision-Making Adrift: The Carter Administration and the Mariel Boatlift (University Press of America). Engstrom's case study of presidential decision- making analyzes the Carter administration's handling of the Mariel boatlift from Cuba, exploring how refugee policy is shaped by economic circumstances, domestic politics, and foreign-policy concerns. Engstrom concludes that a poor decision-making model and an ignorance of the history of Cuban immigration exacerbated the crisis.

Ruth W. Grant, AB'71, AM'75, PhD'84, Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau, and the Ethics of Politics (The University of Chicago Press). Drawing on the writings of Machiavelli and Rousseau, Grant maintains that the irrationality of human nature makes a totally honest and rational politics impossible. Grant argues that the tasks of politicians, from building coalitions among conflicting interests to uniting groups that mistrust each other, are best accomplished, not by remaining inflexibly attached to principle, but through compromise.

Paul W. Kahn, AB'73, The Reign of Law: Marbury v. Madison and the Construction of America (Yale University Press). Analyzing the 1803 Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison, Kahn uses the techniques of cultural theory to examine the American belief in the rule of law, which he argues is America's deepest political myth. Kahn maintains that, having secularized the conception of divine edict, the American imagination still regards law as if it were the revealed will of the sovereign.

Oliver Lepsius, LLM'93, Verwaltungsrecht unter dem Common Law: Amerikanische Entwicklungen bis zum New Deal (Mohr Siebeck). Investigating the influence of common law on the development of American administrative law from the 1880s to the New Deal, Lepsius argues in favor of U of C law professor Ernst Freund's alternative approach to administrative law.

K. Filip Palda, PhD'89, Here the People Rule: A Toolbox for Reforming Democracy (Paragon House). In this critique of contemporary Western democracies, Palda submits government to economic notions of competition. He advocates more citizen initiatives, greater decentralization of federal powers, and unregulated campaign spending.

Carolyn Nygren, PhD'72, Starting Off Right in Law School (Carolina Academic Press). Written for those considering or recently enrolled in law school, this guide includes facts about the legal system and tips on study skills. Legal issues, vocabulary, and case structures are illustrated using examples drawn from a hypothetical case.

Bruce L. Rockwood, JD'74, editor, Law and Literature Perspectives (Peter Lang Publishers). In his contribution to the 16 papers comprising this volume, Rockwood explores John Irving's Cider House Rules from a law and literature perspective, concentrating on the issue of abortion. In the book's introduction, Rockwood reviews the field.

Payton Smith, JD'57, Rosellini: Immigrants' Son and Progressive Governor (University of Washington Press). Smith draws a portrait of the early life and political career of Albert Dean Rosellini, governor of the state of Washington from 1957 to 1964. Depicting Rosellini as a forward-looking activist leader in an era commonly viewed as conservative and complacent, Smith tells how Rosellini restructured the state's prison and mental health systems, facilitated highway and bridge construction, and helped involve the state in Pacific Rim economies.

Ronald J. Terchek, AB'58, AM'60, Republican Paradoxes and Liberal Anxieties: Retrieving Neglected Fragments of Political Theory (Rowman & Littlefield). Reexamining the classic and contemporary debate between communitarians and liberals, Terchek emphasizes common ideals and principles, arguing that both rights and individual moral development should be considered.

PSYCHIATRY/PSYCHOLOGY

Richard L. O'Connor, AM'76, PhD'83, Undoing Depression (Little, Brown). O'Connor uses case studies to illustrate his discussion of the nature of depression. While recovery is possible, he argues, medication and traditional psychotherapy fail to change the self-destructive habits that perpetuate depression. As a supplement, O'Connor provides explanations and exercises for developing the skills to replace these negative habits.

Joan K. Peters, AB'67, AM'68, PhD'74, When Mothers Work: Loving Our Children without Sacrificing Ourselves (Addison Wesley). Peters details the psychological and cultural pressures that force women into the role of primary parent, making it difficult for them to be successful working mothers. She then offers strategies for mothers struggling to balance work, family, and self, arguing that women and children prosper when old concepts of mothering are discarded.

Nancy L. Segal, AM'74, PhD'82; Glenn E. Weisfeld, PhD'78; and Carol C. Weisfeld, AM'77, PhD'80, editors, Uniting Psychology and Biology: Integrative Perspectives on Human Development (American Psychological Association). This book, honoring U of C human development professor Daniel G. Freedman, elaborates on his research and theories about the evolutionary bases of behavior and argues that psychology benefits from the infusion of biological concepts and methods. The essays acknowledge Freedman's influence in such areas as developmental psychobiology, cross-cultural research, and evolutionary psychology.

RECREATION

Jerome Holtzman, X'54, and George Vass, The Chicago Cubs Encyclopedia (Temple University Press). With photographs, statistics, rosters, season-by-season descriptions, anecdotes, and more, this volume tracks the Cubs from their glory days as baseball's first dynasty through their recent half century as "lovable losers."

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Ralph Keen, PhD'90, Divine and Human Authority in Reformation Thought: German Theologians on Political Order, 1522­1550 (DeGraaf). Surveying the political theories formulated by Lutheran, Catholic, and Anabaptist theologians in Germany between the Reformation and the Peace of Augsburg, Keen emphasizes the theological context of each school's political position.

Douglas R. McGaughey, PhD'83, Strangers and Pilgrims: On the Role of Aporiai in Theology (Walter de Gruyter & Co.). McGaughey diagnoses a crisis of irrelevancy in contemporary Christian theology. To revitalize the virtues of "faith, hope, and love," he recommends rethinking current theological views of experience in terms of six "aporiai" or paradoxes.

Stephen C. Rowe, THM'69, AM'70, PhD'74, The Vision of James (Element Books). Through a "conversational encounter" that includes selections from the philosopher's writings, Rowe presents the life and thought of William James, introducing readers to the core elements of the pragmatist's philosophy.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Gene I. Rochlin, SB'60, SM'61, PhD'66, Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization (Princeton University Press). Examining such diverse uses as military commands, international fund-transfers, and library cataloging, Rochlin identifies potential risks and irreversible changes in our business, social, and personal lives arising from constraints imposed by computerized information and control systems.

William P. Sheehan, AM'78, and Richard Baum, In Search of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton's Clockwork Universe (Plenum). This "detective story from the history of science" follows 19th-century astronomer Urbain Le Verrier from his initial calculation revealing a problem with the motion of Mercury, through speculation on the existence of a "lost planet" very close to the sun, and finally to the rise of a worldwide planet-spotting obsession.

Bruce A. Shuman, AB'63, AM'65, Beyond the Library of the Future: More Alternative Futures for the Public Library (Libraries Unlimited). Designed for librarians and library administrators, this sequel to Shuman's 1989 book, The Library of the Future, presents eight fictional scenarios exploring possibilities for the future of libraries. Virtual reality, robots, time travel, biotechnology, and computer viruses are among the topics discussed.

Herbert A. Simon, AB'36, PhD'43, The Sciences of the Artificial (MIT Press). This third and substantially revised edition of Simon's inquiry into the nature of scientific law in complex domains (including economics, cognitive psychology, and design) contains a new chapter on the relation between recent theories of complex systems and the role of hierarchy in the nature and evolution of complex systems.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Mabel Berezin, AM'74, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Cornell University Press). In examining the culture of Italian fascism, Berezin focuses on the Mussolini regime's deliberate construction of a non-liberal public sphere to support its political aims. Fascism, she argues, stresses form over content and relies on the motivating power of public spectacles-such as parades, commemoration ceremonies, and holiday festivities-to build political support.

Lester B. Brown, AB'69, AM'71, PhD'80, editor, Two Spirit People: American Indian Lesbian Women and Gay Men (Harrington Park Press). Brown posits six gender styles in traditional American Indian culture: heterosexual men and women, not-men and not-women (persons of one biological sex assuming the identity of the opposite sex in some form), and gays and lesbians. The essays in this collection emphasize American Indian spirituality and help readers begin to examine the place of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Indians within American Indian culture and American society.

Joyce E. Canaan, AM'79, PhD'90, and Debbie Epstein, editors, A Question of Discipline: Pedagogy and Power in the Teaching of Cultural Studies (Westview Press). Using cultural studies as an example, contributors explore the contradictions that can arise when disciplines with a radical agenda are taught and researched in the context of hierarchical and oppressive institutions. The writers probe critical debates on the transformation of oppressive power relations in teaching and learning, issues of self-reflexivity in university teaching, and the paradoxical positions of teachers and students in cultural studies.

Robert L. Dean, AM'47, Clinical Social Work: The Profession That Lost Its Way (PPC Books). Dean chronicles the development of clinical social work and argues that the profession is moving toward a diminished role in society.

Marcia Douglass and Lisa Douglass, PhD'91, Are We Having Fun Yet? The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Sex (Hyperion). In this critique of U.S. sexual culture, the authors call for a redefinition of sex from the perspective of women's pleasure, suggesting new ways of thinking about the body.

Gretha S. Kershaw, AM'60, PhD'72, Mau Mau From Below (Currey Press). Based on her research in four villages in Kenya's Kiambu district during the 1950s, Kershaw explores the villagers' attitudes towards Mau Mau, a guerrilla group that was struggling for Kenyan independence from British colonial authority.

David F. Lindenfeld, PhD'73, The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the 19th Century (University of Chicago Press). Examining a group of disciplines that originated in Germany as the curriculum for training state officials, Lindenfeld argues that these sciences of state inaugurated a method of deliberation that serves as a model for contemporary administrations. Drawing on the work of Foucault and Bourdieu, he explores the ways in which some systems of knowledge became extinct, while others came into existence, and still others migrated into different subject areas.

Edward MacNeal, AB'48, AM'51, MacNeal's Master Atlas of Decision Making: A New Kind of Guide to the Maps People Use in Making Up Their Minds (International Society for General Semantics). MacNeal surveys the structures, benefits, and dangers of the 20 types of decision-making logic people use.

Herbert A. Simon, AB'36, PhD'43, Administrative Behavior (The Free Press) and Models of Bounded Rationality, Volume 3 (MIT Press). The first book, in its fourth edition, supplements each chapter of the earlier text with commentary based on recent research in human organizations. The second book collects the Nobel laureate's published economics papers of the past 15 years. Its 27 articles consider such topics as the compatibility of altruism with Darwinian evolution, and the contrast between neoclassical economic theories and empirically supported theories that regard rationality as bounded by the limits of human knowledge.

Richard H. Steckel, AM'73, PhD'77, and Roderick Floud, editors, Health and Welfare During Industrialization: International Perspectives (University of Chicago Press). This book uses such indicators as real wages, education levels, and anthropometric data, as well as more traditional measures of health and welfare, to compare standards of living in eight countries during and after industrialization.

In-Jin Yoon, AM'88, PhD'91, On My Own: Korean Business and Race Relations in America (University of Chicago Press). To examine how Korean businesses have intensified racial tensions in minority neighborhoods, Yoon presents a study of relations between African Americans and Koreans in Chicago and L.A. He then goes on to analyze national patterns of Korean immigration, entrepreneurship, and race relations.

TRAVEL AND LEISURE

Orin K. Hargraves, Jr., AB'77, London at Your Door (Graphic Arts Center Publishing). Writing for those who want to enter London culture for more than a short vacation, Hargraves covers the history and politics of the city; provides insights on how Londoners think, behave, and communicate; and gives advice on finding a residence.

Wesley M. Wilson, MBA'54, Countries and Cultures of the World, Then and Now (Professional Press). Based on journals written during his four trips around the world, Wilson's three volumes explore the histories, economies, geographies, and cultures of various regions in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and the Americas, including the U.S. The books provide photographs and research on more than 300 cities, including museums and attractions.

 

For inclusion in "Books by Alumni," please send the book's name, author, publisher, field, and a short synopsis to the Books Editor, University of Chicago Magazine, 1313 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637 or email us.

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