ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Richard Rand and Juliette M. Bianco, AM’96, Intimate Encounters: Love and Domesticity in Eighteenth-Century France (Princeton University Press). In this exhibition catalog, Rand and Bianco explore genre painting within the broader cultural context of Enlightenment France. Presenting 51 paintings and 29 prints by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, and others, the catalog accompanied an eponymous traveling exhibition, helping to connect the artists’ renderings of gender roles to debates over family relations, child-rearing, and illicit love. 

BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

Peter S. Fox-Penner, PhD’89, Electric Utility Restructuring: A Guide to the Competitive Era (Public Utilities Reports). Fox-Penner explains recent changes in the electric utilities industry and how economic and political pressures are moving it toward deregulation. His analysis further examines public policies that seek to balance utility, consumer, and environmental concerns.

CRITICISM

Lesley Brill, AB’65, John Huston’s Filmmaking (Cambridge University Press) and The Hitchcock Romance (Princeton University Press). In the first book, Brill contests the traditional view of Huston’s films as stories that simply depict masculine failure. Instead, Brill suggests Huston’s characters reveal the individual’s struggle for a self-identity. Brill’s second work claims that the conventions of the traditional romantic narrative shape Alfred Hitchcock’s films, examining 20 of Hitchcock’s movies, from The Lodger (1927) through Frenzy (1972).
John L. Bryant, AB’71, AM’72, PhD’75, and Robert Milder, editors, Melville’s Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays (Kent State University Press). This essay collection surveys scholarly criticism of Herman Melville’s work at the centennial of his death. It also anticipates future interpretations of his writings.
Wendelin A. Guentner, PhD’82, Esquisses littéraires: Rhétorique du spontané et récit de voyage au XIXe siècle (Librairie Nizet). Guentner examines travel narratives by 19th-century French authors such as Hugo and Flaubert. The author also investigates the cultural origins of the fragment as a dominant aesthetic and literary paradigm of the 20th century.
Thomas M. Harwell, Jr., AM’47, Studies in Texan Folklore: Rio Grande Valley (The Edwin Mellen Press). Harwell provides commentaries and notes on Hispanic folk tales from Texas about the weather, ghosts, treasures, animals, and other regional subjects.
Robert W. Kirschten, AM’75, PhD’77, editor, “Struggling for Wings”: The Art of James Dickey (University of South Carolina Press) and Critical Essays on A. R. Ammons (G.K. Hall). In the first book, a compilation of reviews, interviews, and essays, Kirschten examines James Dickey’s poetic career. In the second book, Kirschten edits essays reviewing Ammons’s poetry and offers his own critique of Ammons’s Ommateum. Other essayists include Helen Vendler, Geoffrey Hartman, and Laurence Lieberman.

EDUCATION
 
Philip G. Altbach, AB’62, AM’63, PhD’66, editor, The International Academic Profession: Portraits from 14 Countries (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) and Edward Shils, the Order of Learning: Essays on the Contemporary University (Transaction Publishers). The first book surveys the work of 20,000 academics from 14 countries. In the second, Altbach introduces a collection of essays by the late Chicago sociologist Shils, X’37. The essays address topics such as academic freedom and the history of universities.
Steven E. Grosby, PhD’89, editor, and Edward Shils, X’37, The Calling of Education: “The Academic Ethic” and Other Essays on Higher Education (University of Chicago Press). Edited after Shils’s death, this book closely examines the ethical obligations of individuals in the academic professions. Shils focuses on the integration of teaching and research, discussing the role of academic freedom at universities.
Marguerite Crowley Weibel, MST’69, Choosing and Using Books with Adult New Readers (Neal-Schuman Publishers). Weibel puts together an annotated bibliography of more than 700 books that are available at public libraries and appropriate for working with new readers. The cited books fall into a wide range of categories, including poetry, fiction, and reference.

FICTION AND POETRY

Thomas M. Harwell, Jr., AM’47, Then and Now (1941­1991): Poems About You and Me & War & Women & Art (University of Salzburg Press). Harwell expresses his thoughts on 50 years of history through a collection of poems. Experimental in both language and style, the poems represent the “beginnings of a reader’s involvement in words and ideas.”
Alfred W. Israelstam, PhD’31, JD’33, Verses for the 21st Century: Adam and Eve on the Internet (Chicago Spectrum Press). In his first book of sonnets, Israelstam reflects on the expanding world of information and its impact. Anticipating the next century, he explores subjects ranging from acceptance to religion.
Louise McReynolds, PhD’84, translator and editor, The Wrath of Dionysus (Indiana University Press). McReynolds translates and edits the first English-language edition of this book by Russian novelist Evdokia Nagrodskaia. The novel confronts issues of individuality, sexual desire, and sexual identity in Russian society during the early 20th century.

HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS
 
Philip G. Altbach, AB’62, AM’63, PhD’66, Student Politics in America: A Historical Analysis (Transaction Publishers). Altbach examines the history of student political activism, including those movements grounded in conservatism and religion.
Fernando Coronil, AM’70, PhD’87, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (University of Chicago Press). Coronil traces the beginning of modernity in Venezuela and argues its promises were never fulfilled. He maintains the country is still struggling with a slow economy and civil discontent.
Stanton T. Friedman, SB’55, SM’56, Top Secret/Majic (Marlowe & Company). Friedman, a nuclear physicist, synthesizes the results of his 11-year study of documents related to Operation Majestic 12, a special commission established by President Truman to investigate the July 1947 recovery of an unidentified flying object that crashed near Roswell, New Mexico.
David W. Gleicher, JD’69, Louis Brandeis Slept Here: A Slightly Cynical History of American Jews (Gefen Publishing House). Gleicher offers a humorous yet realistic history of how Jewish people settled in America. In his analysis, he explains how American Jews are descendants of those Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. He also examines American Zionism, anti-Semitism, and the birth of Israel as an independent state.
Barbara A. Strang, editor, Paul E. Nessman, AB’50, F Company: 347th Infantry Regiment, 1942­1945 (Golden Acorn Publishing). Strang compiles stories from diary entries and the National Archives to portray the lives of soldiers who served in the frontline infantry company of General George S. Patton’s Third U.S. Army. Strang includes the memoirs of Nessman, a member of the company.
Gundars Rudzitis, AM’73, PhD’77, Wilderness and the Changing American West (Wiley). Rudzitis discusses the management of America’s wilderness areas. He delves into hotly debated management issues and the agencies involved, addressing the role of environmental groups, the protection of wilderness species, and ecosystem management.
Joseph P. Ward, AB’87, Metropolitan Communities: Trade Guilds, Identity, and Change in Early Modern London (Stanford University Press). In this survey of the social, economic, and political changes that occurred in 16th- and 17th-century London, Ward counters the view that London’s traditional institutions, such as trade guilds, were destabilized by rapid growth.

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND LAW

Francisco F. Martin, AM’84, et al., International Human Rights Law and Practice: Cases, Treaties and Materials (Kluwer Law International). A law student casebook and lawyer’s deskbook, Martin’s work examines the international implementation of human-rights policies. He also compares America’s domestic law and that of other nations.
Abner J. Mikva, JD’51, a visiting professor at the Law School, and Eric Lane, An Introduction to Statutory Interpretation and the Legislative Process (Aspen Law & Business). Mikva and Lane provide a secondary textbook offering background in the legislative process and statutory interpretation for courses in administrative law, environmental law, legal writing and research, and legislation.

PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY

Robert Blauner, AB’48, AM’50, Our Mothers’ Spirits: The Death of Mothers and the Grief of Men (ReganBooks, HarperCollins). Blauner presents 35 essays by American men on losing their mothers. Though some reclaim love for their mothers only after their mothers die, Blauner concludes that men need not keep their mothers at a distance. Essayists include John Updike, Wallace Stegner, and Nelson Algren.
Mark J. Blechner, AB’72, editor, Hope and Mortality: Psychodynamic Approaches to AIDS and HIV (Analytic Press). Blechner edits a collection of essays on therapeutic issues that arise during the treatment of AIDS and HIV. The essays also offer thoughts on how clinicians’ attitudes toward life and death have been shaped by their patients.
Paul R. Fleischman, AB’67, Cultivating Inner Peace (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). Fleischman discusses the positive effect meditation has on an individual’s sense of peace and balance, including the practices of leaders such as M.K. Gandhi, Walt Whitman, and John Muir.
Herbert I. Kutchins, AB’55, and Stuart A. Kirk, Making Us Crazy: DSM, the Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders (The Free Press). Kutchins and Kirk criticize the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a standard handbook for psychiatrists, for contributing greatly to the growing trend of American society to label a human behavioral abnormality as a “disorder” rather than viewing it as a natural consequence of human pathos. They argue the DSM’s categories of disorders are shaped by political pressures and contemporary culture instead of scientific research.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Maryell Cleary, DB’50, editor, The Wonder of Life (Meeting House Press Revisited). Cleary presents an introductory anthology of 100 selections from Kenneth L. Patton’s religious poetry and prose writings.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Jarrett Leplin, AM’67, PhD’72,  A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism (Oxford University Press). In his examination of the current standards of scientific evaluation, Leplin argues that a realist interpretation of science better predicts novel empirical results than a nonrealist one does. Leplin draws on scientific theories dating to the 19th century and on current developments in theoretical physics.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Stephen E. Cornell, AM’74, PhD’80, and Douglas R. Hartmann, AB’89, AM’90, Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (Pine Forge Press). A volume in the Sociology for a New Century series, this advanced undergraduate and graduate text investigates the force of ethnic and racial identities. Cornell and Hartmann delve into the emotional power of such identities, and contend they should not be understood as products of class or other social associations.
Katherine P. Ewing, PhD’80, Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and Islam (Duke University Press). Ewing examines the relationship between Western modernity and Sufi religious practices in Pakistan. She explains the development of identity amid cultural and ideological conflicts. She also challenges the concept of a monolithic Islamic society and critiques Eurocentric cultural theorists, Orientalist discourse, and the philosophies of postcolonial thinkers Homi Bhabha, a U of C professor, and Gayatri Spivak.

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