The University of Chicago Magazine
December 1997
BIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS
Christina (Ross) Middlebrook, AM'66, Seeing the Crab: A Memoir of Dying Before I Do (Basic Books). Recounting how she and her family came to terms with her diagnosis of advanced breast cancer, the author, a San Franciscobased Jungian analyst, relates the pain-and the humor-of the struggle against terminal disease.
Frank A. Sanello, AB'74, Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life (Pinnacle). In this portrait of the beloved 20th-century film actor, Sanello writes of the man who was, and continues to be, an American legend.
BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS
Michael Phillips, X'60, Gods of Commerce: How Business Really Works (Clear Glass Press). Phillips identifies three forms of commerce-trade, industry, and "clientry"-each with its own goals and operating structures. Understanding the distinction between these different types of commerce, he maintains, is vital for good management and successful marketing.
CRITICISM
Thomas E. Connolly, AM'47, PhD'51, James Joyce's Books, Portraits, Manuscripts, Notebooks, Typescripts, Page Proofs (Edwin Mellen Press). Intended for Joyce scholars and enthusiasts, this illustrated survey of the Joyce collection at SUNYBuffalo includes a bibliography of Joyce's personal library, a description of his family's art gallery, and critical essays on many of his works.
David C. Jacobson, AB'70, Does David Still Play Before You? Israeli Poetry and the Bible (Wayne State University Press). Through close readings of 50 poems, this study explores the ways that contemporary Israeli poets have made use of Biblical images. Jacobson concentrates on such frequently recurring themes as the Arab-Israeli conflict, responses to the Holocaust, gender relations, and modern challenges to traditional religious faith.
Robert Antwan and Jon I. Roberts, AB'84, editors, QPB Reader's Shakespeare (Quality Paperback Books). In its single-volume editions of Shakespeare's plays, this series omits changes introduced by 18th- and 19th-century editors and includes introductory comments by Roberts on A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, and The Tempest.
Cynthia Booth Ricciardi and (Sarah) Susan Staves, AB'63, editors, The Delicate Distress by Elizabeth Griffith. Written by actress, playwright, and novelist Elizabeth Griffith (17271793), this epistolary novel reveals the concerns of 18th-century women after marriage, including financial independence, interfaith issues, and their husbands' promiscuity. In their introduction, the editors review criticism of the work, situate the novel historically, and provide bibliographical sources.
EDUCATION
Jere E. Brophy, AM'65, PhD'67, Motivating Students to Learn (McGraw-Hill); and Bruce VanSledright, Teaching and Learning History in Elementary School (Teacher's College Press) and Teaching Problem Students (Guilford). In the first book, Brophy presents the implications of research on elementary teachers' reported strategies for coping with 12 types of students whose personalities or behavior problems create special teaching challenges. The second book, which focuses on teaching U.S. history to fifth graders, traces student learning, shows how misconceptions can persist, and includes case studies of three teachers' approaches. The third book synthesizes research on motivation and develops guidelines for teachers.
Caroline E. Heller, AB'72, Until We Are Strong Together (Teachers College Press). Heller explores the social, political, and educational functions of the Tenderloin Women Writers Workshop, where women once gathered weekly in a rough San Francisco neighborhood to share their writing and life experiences. In telling the participants' stories, Heller underscores the power and freedom conferred by education and, in particular, literacy.
Claudia J. Keenan, AB'80, Portrait of a Lighthouse School: Public Education in Bronxville, New York (McNaughton & Gunn). Chronicling the progressive era in the Bronxville, NY, public schools (19221960), Keenan examines the schools' child-centered philosophy. Individual instruction, learning by doing, and other of John Dewey's methods are discussed, as are political and social issues faced by progressive educators on the national level.
George Dennis O'Brien, PhD'61, All the Essential Half-Truths About Higher Education (University of Chicago Press). Any debate on the future of higher education, O'Brien argues, should focus on institutions rather than ideals. Yet, he adds, once incorporated into practical, institutional form, truths about higher education become half-truths. Exploring whether these half-truths accurately reflect the state of higher education, O'Brien goes on to propose ways to help colleges survive into the next century.
Anne Garvey (Dye) Phillips, AM'50, and Peter Elias Sotiriou, Steps to Reading Proficiency (Wadsworth). Now in its fourth edition, this advanced reading textbook contains exercises to teach college students techniques from skimming to critical reading.
David Skwire and Sarah E. Skwire, AM'94, Writing with a Thesis: A Rhetoric and Reader (Harcourt Brace). This writing text, now in its seventh edition, contends that all writing must follow the "persuasive principle." Through student and professional essays, many humorous in tone, the Skwires introduce such basic essay forms as narration, description, comparison and contrast, division and clarification, and definition.
FICTION AND POETRY
Campbell J. McGrath, AB'84, Spring Comes to Chicago (The Ecco Press). In his third book of poetry, which won him the 1997 Kingsley Tufts prize, McGrath's revisitations of Chicago and U of C settings establish a backdrop for his look at American culture.
F. Daniel Montague, Jr., AM'53, White Wings (Viking-Penguin). Montague's first novel tells the story of three generations of women and an exquisitely made sailboat that harbors the secrets of those who once sailed her far from safe shores.
Anne Garvey (Dye) Phillips, AM'50, Animals and Other People I Have Known (TM Renderings). Phillips's first collection includes poems from the first-person perspective of animals, reflections on people she's encountered (from strangers to the aunt who raised her), and meditations on aging.
HISTORY/CURRENT EVENTS
Thomas C. Frank, AM'89, PhD'94, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (University of Chicago Press). Frank argues that, as a youthful and rebellious counterculture emerged in the 1960s, advertisers boosted their marketing successes by casting brand-names as symbols of rule-breaking, defiance, difference, and revolt.
Majid K. Khadduri, PhD'38, and Edmund Ghareeb, War in the Gulf, 19901991: The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and its Implications (Oxford University Press). This analysis of the Persian Gulf War traces the history of the Iraq-Kuwait border dispute, examining legal issues and emphasizing differences between Western and Islamic views of the situation.
Robin A. Kirk, AB'82, The Monkey's Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press). Kirk, an independent journalist and writer who works with Human Rights Watch, combines interviews with personal accounts of her experiences while living, working, and writing for a decade in Peru, where husband Orin Starn, AB'82, was doing anthropology fieldwork. The interviews and commentaries offer insights into the Shining Path guerrilla movement.
Hans A. Schmitt, AM'43, PhD'53, Quakers and Nazis: Inner Light in Outer Darkness (University of Missouri Press). Schmitt chronicles the attempts of American, British, and German Quakers to mitigate the sufferings of Nazism's victims and sympathizers in Austria, Germany, and Lithuania. Schmitt asserts that, because of their commitment to nonviolence and the relief of suffering, nearly all Quakers living in Berlin during the war risked their lives opposing the Nazis and helping to hide Jews.
POLITICAL SCIENCE AND LAW
Bradley M. Bittan, AB'82, The Public Defender Experience: Inside the Heads and Hearts of America's "Real Lawyers" (The Graduate Group). Focusing on what public defenders do and how they feel about their work, Bittan draws on his own experiences and those of public defenders across the country to create a resource for readers with an interest in criminal law and a desire to help the less fortunate.
Daniel H. Cole, AM'81, Instituting Environmental Protection: From Red to Green in Poland (Macmillan). Cole argues that environmental protection failed under socialism and dramatically improved when socialist legal, political, and economic institutions were replaced in post-Communist Poland by liberal democratic institutions and competitive markets. The book concludes with implications for an institutional theory of environmental protection.
Daniel N. Hoffman, AB'63, Our Elusive Constitution: Silences, Paradoxes, Priorities (SUNY Press). Hoffman uses legal and political science perspectives to explore the role of the Constitution and constitutionalism in American political life.
Stephen J. Morewitz, PhD'83, The Medical Malpractice Handbook (Austin and Winfield). Illustrated with case law and state citations, this handbook contains information on investigating medical malpractice suits, using expert witnesses, participating in settlement discussions, and planning trial strategies.
Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry, JD'79, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law (Oxford University Press). The authors argue that the stances of radical feminists, critical race theorists, and other postmodern scholars lead to racism and anti-Semitism.
PSYCHIATRY/PSYCHOLOGY
David F. Barone, AB'69; James E. Maddux; and C. R. Snyder, Social Cognitive Psychology: History and Current Domains (Plenum). In narrating a history of social cognitive psychology, the authors cover the viewpoints of diverse approaches within the field-including personality, social, clinical, and counseling psychology.
RECREATION
Roger W. Axford, AM'49, PhD'61 Stupid Jokes for Jolly Folks (Enlightenment Press). With the premise that "very often, belly laughs heal," Axford presents his third book of jokes, which includes an introduction by Steve Allen.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
John C. Cooper, AM'64, PhD'66, The Spiritual Presence in the Theology of Paul Tillich: The Influence of the Pauline Spirit-Christology on Tillich (Mercer University Press). Examining Tillich's systematic theology, Cooper extricates a single strand from the theologian's dialogue with the histories of philosophy and theology. Cooper argues that St. Paul's teachings on the holy spirit and the spirit of Christ are vitally important in Tillich's doctrine of spiritual presence.
Karen Silvia de Leon-Jones, AB'88, AM'88, PhD'94, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah: Prophets, Magicians, and Rabbis (Yale University Press). De Leon-Jones sets Bruno's thought in the context of the widespread interest in non-Christian religions in 15th- and 16th-century Italy, arguing that the mystic was a practicing Kabbalist, not merely an intellectual observer. For Bruno, she maintains, the Kabbalah reconciled science with theology and provided biblical support for theories he wished to prove scientifically.
Lowell K. Handy, AM'80, PhD'87, The Educated Person's Thumbnail Introduction to the Bible (Chalice Press). Devised for use as a Bible-study group text, this book provides information on Christian and Jewish canons. Handy provides histories of the canons' origins, sources for interpretations, and introductions to select scholars of Bible history. He also covers the biblical texts' relation to the Koran.
Valerie J. Hoffman, AM'79, PhD'86, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt (University of South Carolina Press). Drawing on fieldwork and textual analysis of recent and medieval sources, Hoffman examines Sufism as it exists in Egypt today. She compares contemporary Sufism with its classical antecedents, illustrating the movement's evolving beliefs about the annihilation of the ego, the role of the Prophet and his family in Sufi life, and the often communal nature of modern Egyptian mystical experience. Chapters on mysticism's role in an age of rapid social change place Sufism in the broader social and spiritual context of modern Egypt.
Albert M. Kanter, AM'56, PhD'69, Psychotheology: An Inquiry into the Rationale of Mitzvot (Hebrew Theological College Press). Tackling the question of why humans should follow God's commandments, Kanter argues for "Torah-Madda," which he defines as an amalgamation of scripture and science. He also emphasizes the covenantal relationship be- tween "two mighty monarchs," human and divine.
Werner H. Kelber, AM'67, PhD'70, The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. (Indiana University Press). Taking as his premise the idea that how people receive information depends on whether it is conveyed orally or in writing, Kelber applies this concept to biblical studies. Discussing how orality and textuality interacted at various points in the early Christian tradition, Kelber probes the implications these interactions hold for biblical hermeneutics.
Eugene F. A. Klug, AM'41, translator, Sermons of Martin Luther: House Postils (Baker Book House). Suffering from illness, Martin Luther preached these sermons on the traditional gospel periscope texts to a small circle of family members, students, and university colleagues in the Lutherhalle at Wittenber from 1532 to 1534. Originally transcribed by Luther's friend Georg Roerer, these sermons are available in English for the first time in these three volumes.
David Gordon White, AM'81, PhD'88, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (University of Chicago Press). White describes theoretical connections between Hindu alchemy, Hatha yoga, and tantric sex. With a historical overview of the alchemical literature and its authors, White also locates the alchemical tradition within the medieval history of Indian religions.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Michael S. Kaplan, AB'71, Planning and Implementing Technical Services Workstations (American Library Association Editions) This book, written for technical-services librarians, tells how to implement technical-services work stations. The author gives details on hardware, software, on-line documentation, and training.
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Diane J. Austin-Broos, AM'70, PhD'74, Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders (University of Chicago Press). Examining how Pentecostalism became prevalent in Jamaica, the author argues that, with its emphasis on expressive worship, the individual experience of grace, and the ritual efficacy of spiritual healing, Pentecostalism mediates between a characteristically African striving for personal freedom and happiness and the Protestant struggle for salvation through rigorous ethical piety.
Howard S. Becker, PhB'46, AM'49, PhD'51, Tricks of the Trade: How to Think About Your Re- search While You're Doing It (University of Chicago Press). Becker's "tricks" for thinking about research projects cover topics from creative imagery to sampling methods, and from organizational concepts to research implications. He addresses his comments to students in fields as diverse as art history, sociology, and philosophy.
Marianne Berry, AB'81, AM'82, The Family at Risk: Issues and Trends in Family Preservation Services (University of South Carolina Press). In considering the future of family preservation programs-controversial and relatively new sets of services for families at risk of child removal-Berry maintains that these home-based programs allow families to remain intact while addressing issues that threaten their safety and survival.
William M. Cross, X'44, AM'51; Nancy Kleniewski; and Thomas R. Shannon, Urban Problems in Sociological Perspective (Waveland Press). Reviewing U.S. urban history and central theoretical issues in urban sociology, the authors explore contemporary urban problems at home and abroad, also examining policies that have been advanced to address these problems. Topics include the changing locales of U.S. regional growth and decline, changes in the welfare system, and the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe.
Kumari Jayawardena and Malathi Nalika De Alwis, AM'89, Embodied Violence: Communalising Women's Sexuality in South Asia (Zed Books). Entering contemporary debates in feminist and postcolonial theory, this essay collection asks how women's bodies become sites of cultural tension. Specifically, the book focuses on the rhetoric and practice of communalism in South Asia, exploring the effects of communal violence on identity formation, ideology dissemination, women's experience, and women's positions within their communities and the state.
Daniel Glaser, AB'39, AM'47, PhD'54, Profitable Penalties (Sage/Pine Forge Press). Glaser theorizes that society profits most when criminal penalties are based not only on the crime committed, but also on the total life history of the individual convicted. Sentencing, he argues, should be guided by contrasting the recidivism rates that follow different kinds of penalties for similar lawbreakers.
Richard Kurin, AM'74, PhD'81, Reflections of a Culture Broker: A View from the Smithsonian (Smithsonian Institution Press). Arguing that cultural exhibits reflect decisions about representation, Kurin discusses the ethical and technical problems faced by filmmakers, journalists, festival producers, scholars, and museum professionals-anyone charged with portraying culture in a public forum. He presents cases in which, in his view, the Smithsonian "brokered" culture for the American public.
Shail Varma Mayaram, AM'81, Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory, and the Shaping of Muslim Identity; and Ashis Nandy, Shikha Trivedi, and Achyut Yagnik, Creating a Nationality: The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and the Fear of Self (Oxford University Press). In the first book, Mayaram examines how the liminal identity of a community of Muslims changed during the course of the 20th century. The second book analyzes the culture of ethnic conflict, the nature of organized mass violence, and the political psychology of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India.
Helene Slessarev, PhD'90, The Betrayal of the Urban Poor (Temple University Press). Challenging conservative social critics who claim that excessive government generosity is responsible for increased U.S. poverty, Slessarev argues that policies allegedly designed to promote the welfare of the urban poor have been half-hearted, repeatedly failing to meet basic needs or provide economic opportunities.
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