ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Marjorie Schecter Hellerstein, AM'47, Inventing the Real World: The Art of Alain Robbe-Grillet (Susquehanna University Press). Hellerstein describes Robbe-Grillet's artistic techniques, arguing that the subjective "real" world of his characters' lives creates the narratives of wandering, confusion, and deception that constitute the plot structures of his novels and filmscripts.

Ned S. Munger, SB'43, SM'48, PhD'51, Cultures, Chess & Art: A Collector's Odyssey Across Seven Continents. Volume 2, The Americas (Mundial Press). With 238 color photographs, this book examines the cultural, anthropological, and artistic meaning of 94 chess sets from 18 countries and 15 islands in the Americas. Munger also chronicles his travels, from Panama's dense Darien jungle to a sea voyage during a Caribbean hurricane.

BIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS

Thomas P. Glynn, AB'58, Hammer. Nail. Wood. The Compulsion to Build (Chelsea Green Publishing). Glynn shares the secrets of what it takes, mentally and physically, to build a house. Memoir, how-to manual, and cautionary fable, the book delves into the psyches of the people who live near his upstate New York home.

BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

Jack E. Bowsher, MBA'56, Revolutionizing Workforce Performance: A Systems Approach to Mastery (Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer). Using a six-step process, Bowsher aims to help employees and employers increase productivity, revenues, and market share; lower operating expenses; and eliminate the need for massive downsizing.

Daniel C. Daeniker, LLM'96, Swiss Securities Regulation: An Introduction to the Regulation of the Swiss Financial Market (Kluwer Law International). Daeniker's primer encompasses regulation of Swiss financial institutions, regulation of the disclosure of shareholdings in listed Swiss companies, and rules on tender offers and the issuance and listing of securities.

Andre Gunder Frank, AM'52, PhD'57, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (University of California Press). Frank argues that the rise of the West, in economic and demographic terms, paralleled a decline in the East around 1800-and that the center of the world economy is once again moving to China.

David M. Pletcher, AB'41, AM'41, PhD'46, The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere, 1865-1900 (University of Missouri Press). U.S. trade with Canada and Latin America rapidly increased during the last third of the 19th century. Pletcher rejects the theory that the United States backed a deliberate, consistent drive for economic hegemony in the Western hemisphere, arguing that many U.S. businessmen were often more interested in domestic trade.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Claire Blake; Eliza S. Blanchard, AM'73; and Kathy Parkinson, The Paper Chain (Health Press). This illustrated book tells the story of two young boys whose mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, addressing the children's emotions and explaining specific medical treatments.

Arlene Hirschfelder, MAT'71, Kick Butts! A Kid's Action Guide to a Tobacco-Free America (Silver Burdett Press). Starting a century ago, cigarette advertisers targeted children through means such as giving away baseball cards with cigarette packs. This illustrated book educates young readers on the history of the tobacco industry and such tactics and features stories about young anti-tobacco advocates.

CRITICISM

Sally R. Banes, AB'72, Dancing Women: Female Bodies On Stage (Routledge). Banes examines canonical dance history since the early 19th century through a feminist perspective. Setting the creation of specific dances in sociopolitical and cultural contexts, she raises questions about representation in dance and shows that women characters in dance are often involved in variations of "the marriage plot."

Lawrence Rainey, AM'81, PhD'86, Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture (Yale University). Rainey looks beyond modernism's widely discussed themes and innovations, asking instead where the movement was produced and how it was picked up by certain social groups. He focuses on five major modernist figures: James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H. D. Marinetti, and F. T. Marinetti.

EDUCATION

W. Ray Heitzmann, MAT'66, Careers For Sports Nuts and Other Athletic Types (NTC/Contemporary Books). Aimed at those considering a sports career, this resource book covers athletic training, sports management, officiating, sports massage, coaching, and sports marketing.

Peter S. Hlebowitsh and William G. Wraga, MAT'80, editors, Annual Review of Research for School Leaders (Macmillan Library Reference). This 1998 edition reviews research on middle-school education, extra-classroom experiences, high-school math reform, and dropouts.

FICTION AND POETRY

Sebastian de Grazia, AB'44, PhD'48, A Country with No Name: Tales From the Constitution (Pantheon Books). Written in the form of 12 dialogues between a female British graduate student and her male American pupil, this book rethinks basic assumptions about the U.S. political system.

J. S. Fuerst, AM'41, Delicacies for Doubters and Dissenters (Chicago Spectrum Press). Fuerst presents poems on sociopolitical subjects.

Charles D. Jaco, AB'73, Dead Air (Ballantine Books). Jaco, a former CNN war correspondent, has written a thriller about Peter Dees, a veteran TV correspondent who discovers that someone is secretly selling chemical and biological weapons to Iraq. In travels from Port-au-Prince to Cairo, Dees finds the conspiracy runs much deeper than he imagined.

Alice Ryerson Hayes, AB'49, Water: Sheba's Story (Bookwrights Press). Hayes' book-length narrative poem retells the biblical story of the Queen of Sheba's journey-from her point of view-to meet King Solomon in Jerusalem. The work explores issues of identity, time, and female sensuality in ancient times.

Austin M. Wright, AM'48, PhD'59, Disciples (Baskerville Publishers). Wright's novel begins when an infant is kidnapped by her estranged father, who takes her to a remote New England compound organized and controlled by a man who claims to be God. The search and rescue leads to a catastrophe that kills some and brings self-discovery for others. Eight characters take turns telling the story.

HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

Paul E. Cohen, AM'75, and Roger T. Augustyn, Manhattan in Maps: 1527-1995 (Rizzoli International Publications). Telling New York's history through maps, this volume-which won the New York Society Library's 1997 New York City Book Award-includes a 16th-century woodblock engraving by explorer Giovanni da Verrazano and highly detailed satellite photos.

Edward T. Cotham, Jr., AM'76, Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston (University of Texas Press). When the Civil War ended in 1865, Galveston, Texas, was the only major port still in Confederate hands. Cotham chronicles the history and military engagements of Galveston during the war, as well as the lives of ordinary soldiers, sailors, and citizens who lived and died in the small town.

Nina Rattner Gelbart, AM'69, PhD'74, The King's Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray (University of California Press). Gelbart chronicles the life of Madame du Coudray, an 18th-century French midwife commissioned by King Louis XV to lower infant mortality by educating peasant women in the art of childbirth. She traveled the country for 30 years, reaching 10,000 women, writing a text, and inventing an obstetrical mannequin.

Awelkhan Hali, Zengxiang Li, and Karl W. Luckert, AM'67, PhD'69, Kazakh Traditions of China (University Press of America). This work examines the political history and social organization of China's Kazakh people, as well as aspects of nomadism, linguistics, and Chinese national policy.

Sally K. Spector, AB'75, Venice and Food (Arsenale Editrice). Spector explores the relationship between Venice and its cuisine from historical, social, cultural, and artistic viewpoints. The illustrated volume, available in English and Italian, includes chapters on cicheti (snacks), rice, pasta, polenta, vegetables, sweets, and spices, as well as recipes.

LINGUISTICS

Chauncey J. Mellor, AB'65, AM'67, PhD'72, Learn to Speak German (The Learning Company). Mellor's computer software program, a CD-based language course, is accompanied by a 455-page book of grammar exercises and drills.

Harold F. Schiffman, AM'66, PhD'69, Linguistic Culture and Language Policy (Routledge). Schiffman examines the evolution of language policy in India, France, and the U.S., arguing that it is a social construct dependent on belief systems, attitudes, and myths. He focuses on one linguistic minority in each nation to demonstrate how policies have evolved to deal with challenges to the "official" language.

Bert Vaux, AB'90, The Phonology of Armenian (Oxford University Press). With data from classical, middle, and standard eastern and western Armenian as well as his own fieldwork on non-standard dialects, Vaux presents a contemporary linguistic treatment of the Indo- European language, which has a literary history dating from the fourth-century translation of the Bible into classical Armenian.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH

Laurence Finberg, SB'44, MD'46, editor, Saunder's Manual of Pediatric Practice (W. B. Saunders). Highlighting clinical and lab findings as well as therapies, this is a quick reference on symptoms and disorders seen by pediatricians.

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND LAW

Larry Arnhart, AM'73, PhD'77, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (State University of New York Press). Arnhart shows how Darwinian biology supports an Aristotelian view of ethics rooted in human nature. Claiming the "good" is desirable, he argues that there are at least 20 natural desires based in human biology, and that their satisfaction constitutes a universal standard for judging social practices.

Margaret A. Bjerklie, AB'79, editor, Winning Political Campaigns (Denali Press). Bjerklie offers advice on all aspects of political campaigns.

Mark J. Lutz, AB'80, Socrates' Education to Virtue: Learning the Love of the Noble (State University of New York Press). Lutz argues that studying Plato's account of Socrates' erotic education can illuminate Socrates' virtue and broaden and deepen liberalism's moral horizon.

PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY

Norman N. Markel, PhD'60, Semiotic Psychology (Peter Lang Publishing). Focusing on the foundations of semiotic psychology, including its methodological and theoretical origins in psychology and anthropological linguistics, Markel discusses the impact of cultural forces on thinking, emotion, and communication.

Arthur K. Shapiro, MD'55, and Elaine S. Shapiro, PhD'63, The Powerful Placebo: From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician (Johns Hopkins University Press). Based on the authors' lifelong study and clinical research, the book surveys the placebo effect from antiquity to modern times. Examining the development, use, and validity of the double-blind, controlled clinical trial, they present their own study of the placebo effect in more than 1,000 patients.

RECREATION

Alzina Stone Dale, AM'57, Mystery Reader's Walking Guide: Washington, D.C. (NTC/Contemporary Publishing). Through eight walks around the capital, Dale guides readers to sites described by some 200 mystery writers.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

George Anastaplo, AB'48, JD'51, PhD'64, The Thinker as Artist: From Homer to Plato & Aristotle (Ohio University Press). Anastaplo's essays discuss most of the principal Greek writers, focusing on how they drew upon Homer. He also analyzes Raphael's "The School of Athens," a painting that features Plato and Aristotle.

Herbert F. Vetter, AB'47, DB'52, editor, The Heart of God: Prayers of Rabindranath Tagore (Charles E. Tuttle). This collection includes 77 prayers or poems by Tagore, a Bengali poet who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Thomas D. Schultz, AB'77, and C. Barry Knisley, The Biology of Tiger Beetles and a Guide to the Species of the South Atlantic States (Virginia Museum of Natural History). The authors review the research on the natural history, systematics, behavior, physiology, ecology, and conservation of tiger beetles. These beetles have become one of the most studied non-pest insects, and are increasingly chosen as indicator species in efforts to preserve natural habitats.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Gabriel A. Almond, PhB'32, PhD'38, Plutocracy and Politics in New York City (Westview Press). Almond traces changes in the lifestyle, attitudes, and social adjustment of New York City's business and political elites-from 1776 until 1936-in response to the democratization of the political and business sphere, arguing that a plutocratic state is incapable of exhibiting genuine democratic sentiment.

Paul G. Buchanan, PhD'85, State Labor Capital: Democratizing Class Relations in the Southern Cone (University of Pittsburgh Press). Bucha- nan explores attempts to promote democratic labor relations systems in post-authoritarian Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

Sam D. Gill, AM'71, PhD,'74, Storytracking: Texts, Stories, and Histories in Central Australia (Oxford University Press). Gill applies the narrative technique of "storytracking," practiced by Australian aboriginal peoples, to the academic study of their culture. Stripping away European interpretation, he works to reveal the indigenous peoples' true perceptions and beliefs.

John L. Hammond, AM'68, PhD'72, Fighting to Learn: Popular Education and Guerrilla War in El Salvador (Rutgers University Press). Inspired by Paulo Freire's literacy activist work in Brazil during the 1950s, popular education brought literacy to isolated, impoverished rural communities and peasant soldiers in Latin and South America. Hammond recounts the experiences of more than 100 El Salvadoran students and teachers, using their own words.

Carol A. Heimer, AM'76, PhD'81, and Lisa R. Staffen, For the Sake of Children: The Social Organization of Responsibility in the Hospital and the Home (University of Chicago Press). Heimer and Staffen explore social organization by asking who takes responsibility for critically ill newborns. Drawing on medical records and interviews with parents and staff at two neonatal intensive-care units, they conclude that individual responsibility is not enough-organiza- tions must also provide support.

Susan H. Lees, AB'65, The Political Ecology of the Water Crisis in Israel (University Press of America). Examining Israel's water crisis, Lees illustrates the interplay of local-level actors and institutions governing regional and national management of resources. The book emphasizes opportunistic reactions to climatic, political, technological, and economic crises.

Edward J. Mullen, former dean of the School of Social Service Administration, and Jennifer L. Magnabosco, AB'85, AM'85, editors, Outcomes Measurement in the Human Services: Cross-Cutting Issues and Methods (NASW Press). This handbook provides expert thinking on outcomes measurement in social sciences, child and family services, and health care. Topics explored include accountability for mental and behavioral health-care services, ideas on merging good clinical practice with outcomes research, and practice-research case studies.

Yuko Furuyama Ogasawara, AM'89, PhD'95, Office Ladies and Salaried Men (University of California Press). Ogasawara delves into the power dynamics between men and women in Japanese office culture, revealing the opinions and experiences of "office ladies"-temporary, anonymous clerical workers-who are typically unmarried young women. Ogasawara argues that while the women may not have formal power, they can influence the men's careers through gossip or unofficial work strikes.

Sherelyn Ogden, AM'78, Preservation Planning: Guidelines for Writing a Long-Range Plan (American Association of Museums/Northeast Document Conservation Center). This manual for library and museum use details the process of creating a long-range collections care plan. It includes guidelines and worksheets, a checklist on updating a collection, and a sample plan.

Calliope D. Spinellis, MCL'62, DCL'64, Crime in Greece in Perspective (Ant. N. Sakkoulas Publishers). Surveying criminological research in Greece, Spinellis explores factors related to criminal activity-drug abuse, poor familial relations, and changing values in Grecian society-and offers possible solutions.

Frederic G. Reamer, AM'75, PhD'78, Ethical Standards in Social Work (NASW Press). The book analyzes the new National Association of Social Workers code of ethics, written by a task force chaired by the author. The book provides an overview of the history of social-work ethics, discusses social work's core values, and examines 155 ethical standards designed to guide social workers' conduct.

R. Keith Sawyer, AM'92, PhD'94, Creativity in Performance (Ablex). Cross-cultural study suggests performance may be a more common and accessible form of creativity than the arts and sciences. Sawyer investigates the latest research on creativity in performance, ranging from African dancing to children's puppet plays to Nepalese drumming.

For inclusion in “Books by Alumni,” please send the book’s name, author, publisher, field, and synopsis to the Books Editor, University of Chicago Magazine, 1313 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637, or by e-mail: uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.