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SirReadaLot.org


We Review the Best of the Latest Books

ISSN 1934-6557

Guide to Summer 2007 Contents

Arts & Photography / Biographies & Memoirs

New York Waters: Profiles from the Edge by Ben Gibberd, with photography by Randy Duchaine (Globe Pequot Press)

A waterfront, by definition, is the most amorphous of subjects. Where do you begin, and where do you end? What do you put in, and what do you leave out? The water mocks such arbitrary appellations as ‘river,’ ‘estuary,’ ‘bay,’ ‘sound,’ and ‘harbor,’ being all of these yet none of them alone. To even call a book New York Waters is misleading, given that New York's waters are also those of New Jersey and Long Island and the Hudson River Valley, to name only a few. – from the book

Enter the world of New York City's waterfront – steeped in tradition yet threatened by modernity. The world of the waterfront is peopled by individuals of varied backgrounds, skills, and lifestyles – but united in their passion for the waters that lap at the city's edge. Here are their stories, in text and black and white photos.

New York Waters, written by New York Times stringer Ben Gibberd, is the first book to examine and record, in text and photographs, the lives of the men and women who live, work, or play in and along the rivers and coastal waterfronts that surround New York City. The exploration includes all five of the city's boroughs and ranges from its most fabled bodies of water, such as the East and Hudson Rivers, to lesser-known ones such as the Erie Basin Arthur Kill, and Hempstead Harbor on Long Island’s North Shore. A remarkable variety of personal perspectives emerges, revealing what the subjects think about their life and work, and placing the book in the same tradition as Studs Terkel's classic, Working.

The people in New York Waters have not chosen the normal or easy path in life; instead, they have ‘followed their bliss,’ to use the still relevant phrase from Joseph Campbell; each new perspective connects a personal passion to a fabled local maritime history. Among those readers meet are

  • A dry dock operator, a fireboat preservationist, and a guerilla swimmer.
  • Scuba diver Adam Brown, who explores a dangerous underwater world amid the piers and pilings on which the city is built.
  • Octogenarian Olga Bloom who runs a floating concert hall for chamber music in a converted coffee barge off Brooklyn's Fulton Landing.
  • Nautical wood carver Sal Polisi who uses chisels rather than power tools, believing his visitors like to watch things being done the old-fashioned way.
  • The Seamans, a father and son, who practice the ancient profession of eel fishing in Jamaica Bay despite ever-growing official antipathy.

Unfortunately, the New York City waterfront is becoming an increasingly difficult place in which to lead an unorthodox, or even faintly non-mainstream, lifestyle these days. One of the sadder realizations of New York Waters is that, in a few years, many of the people profiled may no longer be doing what they do. The rapacious demand for waterfront real estate has already closed one of the businesses featured in the book, Mike Gallagher's New York Shipyards (its build­ings have been razed to make way for an IKEA). Even the owners of thriving maritime businesses, such as McAllister Towing and Caddell Dry Dock, admit that the metropolitan-area waterfront is becoming a tougher and tougher place in which to conduct business.

But New York Waters is not gloomy; there is too much life in it for that. As long as there are people around like Phil Bra­bosilo, ready to park his yellow taxicab and drop a line laden with spark plugs into the East River at the drop of a hat, or David Sharps, who spent four years pumping mud out of a sunken barge and repairing her as a living-history lesson for all, things will probably still be all right.

Through this collection of idiosyncratic and engaging individuals – young and old, male and female, of all ages – a picture of a previously unacknowledged New York community emerges, created by the very archipelago on which it exists. New York Waters conveys the sense of passion and com­mitment that animates each of the people profiled. And each profile is complemented by award winning photographer Randy Duchaine's stunning portraits. The result: a fascinating, unique look at twenty-one of the waterfront's most interesting citizens.

Arts & Photography / Home & Garden / Animal Care & Pets

Horse: A Portrait: A Photographer's Life with Horses by Christiane Slawik (Willow Creek Press)

Horse: A Portrait is a collection of photographs and writing by award-winning photographer Christiane Slawik. Taking us on her travels around the world photograph­ing horses, Slawik tells the stories behind the photos and about her personal love of horses. She writes: "Horses have been fascinating for me in a way that I can describe only with difficulty. This feeling and fascination I try to capture with my camera – this one magical moment that not only I can take home with me in my heart, but that others can share in my photos. One moment can be everything: strength, elegance, and power combined with a wild and simultaneously gentle spirit. Beauty, innocence, curiosity and again and again the wonderful and permanent will to do right by man."

Slawik in Horse: A Portrait says: "One shouldn't regard horses as merely useful animals. They are so much more. These heavenly creatures are our partners. Infinitely patient, attentive, and always ready to give their life for us. They make us proud, they give us luck, harmony, and inner peace. If we only allow it, they even train our characters and help us grow beyond ourselves. Horses are the most astonishing creatures I know."

Slawik has devoted herself to horse photography with body and soul. Filled with enthusiasm for horses since her childhood and having felt comfortable in all saddles of the world for over 30 years, she financed her academic career through painting and photographing horses. Today Slawik writes and photographs for several international professional journals and publishing houses. Her photographs and paintings have been exhibited in multiple shows. On the search for expressive moments the photo-journalist is steadily inspired by the respective situation, by light and color, by the aesthetics, and the individual charm of each horse.

Through Slawik's incredible photography and inspirational words, Horse: A Portrait reveals a portrait of both these magnificent animals and the life of a passionate and dedicated photographer.

Audio / Mysteries & Thrillers

Spare Change: A Sunny Randall Novel by Robert B. Parker, narrated by Kate Burton (5 Audio CDs, unabridged, running time 6 hours) (Random House Audio)

Spare Change: A Sunny Randall Novel by Robert B. Parker (G.P. Putnam and Sons) 

Hi, Phil,
You miss me? I got bored, so I thought I’d reestablish our relationship. Give us both something to do in our later years. Stay tuned. – Spare Change

When a serial murderer, dubbed ‘The Spare Change Killer’ by the Boston press, surfaces after two decades in hiding, the police immediately seek out the cop, now retired, who headed the original task force: Phil Randall. As a sharp-eyed investigator and a doting parent ("You're smart. You're tough. You, too, are a paradigm of law enforcement perfection, and you're my kid."), Phil in Spare Change asks his daughter, Boston P.I. Sunny Randall, to help trap the criminal who eluded him so many years before. Sunny signs on.
Back then, the ‘spare change’ killer executed victims with a single shot to the head, leaving three coins near the body. The victims were not assaulted or molested in any way and shared no defining characteristics. The killer wrote Phil taunting letters as the killings piled up. Now with a new killing and a fresh letter to Phil, he and Sunny serve as consultant and assistant respectively to a new task force. Most troubling to the Boston PD is the time elapsed between the two most recent victims: 20 years.

Sunny is certain that she's found her man after interviewing just a handful of suspects. Though she has no evidence against Bob Johnson, she trusts her intuition and plays him dangerously to get hard evidence. Meanwhile, Sunny's relationship with her ex-husband – for whom she still carries a torch – is moving to a new plateau as she tries to understand the family dynamics among her father, mother, sister and herself.

Then the killer strikes a second time, and a third; the murders take a macabre turn, as, eerily, the victims each resemble Sunny. While her father pressures her to drop the case, her need to create a trap to catch her killer grows. Sunny knows the power she has over the killer – she can feel the skittishness and sexual tension that he radiates when he's around her but she realizes too late that she’s setting herself up to become the next victim. The pressure intensifies as she tries to persuade her father and the rest of the task force to let her stay on the case in Spare Change, the fifty-plusth novel by the creator of the Spenser series, Robert B. Parker.

…Parker's signature bantering byplay and some borrowings of characters from other series (notably Susan Silverman from the Spenser novels) will delight fans. The outcome is never in doubt, but Parker hits most of the right notes, and there's still ingenuity to his cat-and-mouse. – Publishers Weekly
… The city was terrorized by the Spare Change killer two decades ago, and Phil Randall headed the task force that came up dry. …Parker, also responsible for … the Jesse Stone novels, continues to add depth to his characterization of Randall as he explores her often contradictory feelings about love. Parker's ruminations on romance are sometimes – not always – wearisome, but he never fails to entertain with humor and recurring characters whom we welcome back into our lives like old friends. – Wes Lukowsky, Booklist

Sunny joins forces with the most important man in her life – her father – to crack a twenty-year-old case and figure out some personal things. We have veteran Parker’s take on love, hard boiled, tongue in cheek, and the entertaining banter in Spare Change, a compelling game of cat-and-mouse.

Business & Economics

Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't by John R. Lott Jr. (Regnery Publishing, Inc.)

So long as people have the freedom to act on their own incentives, the U.S. economy will continue to embody the best, most creative, and – I would dare say – the most honest aspects of our society. – John R. Loft, Jr.

Are free market economies really based on fleecing the consumer? Is the U.S. economy truly just a giant free-for-all that encourages duplicity in our everyday transactions? Is everyone from corporate CEOs to the local car salesman really looking to make a buck at consumer’s expense?

In Freedomnomics, economist and bestselling author John R. Lott, Jr. answers these and other common economic questions, confronting the profound distrust of the market that the bestselling book Freakonomics has helped to popularize. Using numerous examples, Lott shows how free markets liberate the best, most creative, and most generous aspects of our society – while efforts to constrain economic liberty, no matter how well-intentioned, invariably lead to increased poverty and injustice. Extending its economic analysis even further to our political and criminal justice systems, Freedomnomics Lott, senior research scientist at the University of Maryland Foundation, examines:

  • How the free market creates incentives for people to behave honestly.
  • How political campaign restrictions keep incumbents in power.
  • Why legalized abortion leads to family breakdown, which creates more crime.
  • Why affirmative action in police departments leads to higher crime rates.
  • How women's suffrage led to a massive increase in the size of government.
  • Why women become more conservative when they get married and more liberal when they get divorced.
  • How secret ballots reduce voter participation.
  • Why state-owned companies and government agencies are much more likely to engage in unfair predation than are private firms.
  • How judges who target ‘greedy’ corporations end up harming the poor, the weak, and the ill.

Believe it or not, according to Lott, price discrimination by drug companies actually saves more lives. Overall, says Loft, freedom, not fads, drives America's economic engine. Efforts to constrain economic liberty lead to increased poverty and injustice. Freedomnomics not only explains how free markets work, but shows that when it comes to promoting prosperity and economic justice, nothing works better. "Economic, criminal, and political policies work best when they direct individuals' natural motivations toward a common good. These policies allow people the freedom to profit from their own work and create meaningful disincentives to committing crimes. Because a modern economy is so complex, those tasked with devising regulations to govern it frequently create more problems than they solve," Lott explains.

Professor John Lott has guts. In Freedomnomics he yet again demonstrates his ability to topple myths and attack sacred cows. The book underscores the Founding Fathers' view of a limited federal government, and reminds us of the importance of free markets. – Larry Elder, radio talk-show host and author of The Ten Things You Can't Say in America

Freedomnomics provides a welcome antidote to the oversimplifications and shortcomings of Freakonomics. John Lott has an unusual knack for over-turning conventional wisdom with good economics. In doing so, he takes the side of such unpopular causes as high gasoline prices and political campaign donations, while vouching for the probity of real estate agents and gun own­ers. Through it all, he points out the inefficiencies of government attempts to provide everything from schooling to Arctic expeditions. – Murray Weidenbaum, professor, Washington University, President Reagan's first chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, 1981–1982

Adam Smith's insight was that we human beings not only pursue our self-interest but seek the approbation of others, and the combination makes freedom work. John Lott uses the economist's twenty-first-century tools and Smith's own com­mon sense style to explain why that insight is still right, with fascinating exam­ples ranging from why last-minute airline tickets are so expensive to why politicians may actually be voting their convictions. – Charles Murray, author of Losing Ground and coauthor of The Bell Curve

John Lott tells a compelling story of how successful economies really work: with free minds, free markets, and free exchange. John Lott nails it. – John Fund, columnist, Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com and author of Stealing Elections

Freedomnomics is everything readers wanted to know about the world but didn't know economics could tell them. Economist and bestselling author Lott shows the logic of free market economics through hard-hitting examples. Entertaining, persuasive, and based on dozens of economic studies spanning decades, Freedomnomics demonstrates that, when it comes to promoting prosperity and economic justice, nothing works better than free markets.
Business & Investing / Economics / Development Policy

Economic Growth: New Directions in Theory and Policy edited by Philip Arestis, Michelle Baddeley, & John S.L. McCombie (Edward Elgar Publishing)

In September 2005, the Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy – based in the Land Economy department of the University of Cambridge, UK – hosted its second official conference. The theme selected for this con­ference focused on the nature, causes and features of economic growth across a range of countries and regions. Economic Growth is a collection of some of the key papers presented at this conference.

Economic Growth focuses on the nature, causes and features of economic growth across a wide range of countries and regions. Covering a variety of growth-related topics – from theoretical analyses of economic growth in general to empirical analyses of growth in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), transition economies and developing economies – the distinguished cast of contributors address some of the most important contemporary issues and developments in the field. These include, among others:

  • Endogenous growth theory.
  • Keynesian theories of the business cycle and growth.
  • Unemployment and growth.
  • Foreign direct investment (FDI) and productivity spillovers.
  • Knowledge externalities and growth.

The volume is edited by Philip Arestis, University Director of Research, Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy; Michelle Baddeley, Fellow and Director of Studies (Economics); and John McCombie, Director, Centre for Economic and Public Policy, all at the University of Cambridge.

In Chapter 2, Economic Growth begins with `Is growth theory a real subject?', in which Franklin Fisher presents the paper given at the conference as an after-dinner talk. The paper has been left in that form rather than making it more formal because the anecdotes are both interesting and amusing. But the paper's informality does not conceal that fact that, together with the sugar, it is administering bitter medicine to growth theory and to macroeconomics generally. Fisher questions the widespread use of aggregate production functions in growth theory and also raises the issue of what is meant by the words ‘capital’, ‘investment’, ‘labor’, ‘productivity’ and ‘output’.

In Chapter 3, `What is endogenous growth theory?', Mark Roberts and Mark Setterfield provide a critical survey of the literature on endogenous growth theory.

In Chapter 4, `Is the natural rate of growth exogenous?', Miguel Leon-Ledesma and A.P. Thirlwall examine the question of whether the natural rate of growth is exogenous or endogenous to demand, and whether it is input growth that causes output growth or vice versa. This question lies at the heart of the debate between neoclassical growth economists on the one hand, who treat the rate of growth of the labor force and labor produc­tivity as exogenous to the actual rate of growth, and economists in the Keynesian/post-Keynesian tradition on the other, who maintain that growth is primarily demand-driven because labor force growth and pro­ductivity growth respond to demand growth. The policy message for slow-growing countries is that they need to identify constraints on demand (such as the balance of payments, and an obsession with low inflation, for example, within the EU at the present time), as well as investing in the capacity to supply.

In Chapter 5, `The representative firm and increasing returns: then and now', Stephanie Blankenburg and G.C. Harcourt return to the debates from the 1920s about the concept of increasing returns and the role of the representative firm, which culminated in the 1930 symposium in the Economic Journal. The objects of the paper are to try to clarify the exchanges between the protagonists in the 1920s and then to relate the findings to the re-emergence of similar issues and confusions in the last 20 years.

In Chapter 6, 'A dynamic framework for Keynesian theories of the busi­ness cycle and growth', Pedro Ledo recasts multiplier-accelerator models in a dynamic framework, inspired by Harrod's theory of economic growth. The results are twofold. First, the resulting model provides a satis­factory explanation for the observed self-sustained nature of booms and recessions. Second, the dynamic framework suggests that a change in investment has a greater effect on aggregate demand than on aggregate supply. This is what lies at the root of booms and recessions.

In Chapter 7, `A Keynesian model of unemployment and growth: theory', John Cornwall presents a theory of long-run unemployment, output and productivity as a two-stage recursive process generated by the interaction of aggregate demand and aggregate supply. The dominant role of aggregate demand defines the Keynesian character of the model, which emphasizes the direct effect of policy on aggregate demand and unemploy­ment, and its indirect impact on growth. Also, the included structural fea­tures are determinants of performance in the short run but are changed by the system's performance in the longer run, a path-dependent process that generates transformational growth rather than the steady state growth of the neoclassical model.

In Chapter 8, 'A Keynesian model of unemployment and growth: an empirical test', Wendy Cornwall presents an empirical companion to John Cornwall's chapter. She empirically assesses John Cornwall's model, using standard econometric techniques to test the model's ability to explain unemployment and growth in a group of developed OECD economies during the second half of the twentieth century.

In Chapter 9, `The relevance of the Cambridge-Cambridge controver­sies in capital theory for econometric practice', G.C. Harcourt returns with an assessment of the modern relevance of capital theory.

In Chapter 10, `Foreign direct investment and productivity spillovers: a skeptical analysis of some OECD economies', Carlos Rodriguez, Carmen Gomez and Jesus Ferreiro argue that one of the channels through which inward FDI can promote economic growth in host economies is the exist­ence and absorption of productivity spillovers. This chapter is an attempt to evaluate the existence, size and direction of these externalities.

In Chapter 11, `Increasing returns and the distribution of manu­facturing productivity in the EU regions', Bernie Fingleton and Enrique Lopez-Bazo estimate an empirical model motivated by recent theoretical developments in urban and geographical economics. The effects of increasing returns are illustrated by simulations, the density function and stochastic kernels, which show how equilibrium productivity level distributions alter across EU regions assum­ing different degrees of returns to scale.

In Chapter 12, `The role of wage setting in a growth strategy for Europe', Andrew Watt argues that growth performance, particularly in the euro area, has been extremely disappointing. This chapter expounds the view that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, failures in the macroeconomic policymaking regime are largely responsible. Given the extreme difficulty of achiev­ing fundamental changes in the policy architecture, Watt examines the scope for behavioral changes in wage setting, and monetary (and to a lesser extent fiscal) policy, and for developing the coordination mechanisms between these two policy areas necessary to achieve faster non-inflationary growth in the euro area.

In Chapter 13, `Economic growth and beta-convergence in the East European Transition Economies', Nigel Allington and John McCombie examine the question of whether the transition economies have exhibited any recent evidence of catching up with the EU15 countries in terms of pro­ductivity over the period 1994 to 2002. This is accomplished by estimating a number of specifications of the neoclassical beta-convergence growth model.

In Chapter 14, `Knowledge externalities and growth in peripheral regions', Fabiana Santos, Marco Crocco and Frederico Jayme Jr argue that in some models of the so-called endogenous growth theory, externalities play an important role because they are the main rationalization for the emergence of increasing returns to scale. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the fact that institutional aspects should include the centre-periphery dimension. Having this theoretical approach in mind, the paper analyzes stimuli and constraints to the emergence and absorption of externalities in a peripheral environment.

In Chapter 15, `Knowledge, human capital and foreign direct investment in developing countries: recent trends from an endogenous growth theory perspective', Diana Barrowclough describes new trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) into developing countries, with a particular focus on investment in the highest value-added forms of human capital, such as knowledge, experience and technical expertise.

In Chapter 16, `Is growth alone sufficient to reduce poverty? In search of the trickle down effect in rural India', Santonu Basu and Sushanta Mallick present a theoretical analysis of growth and poverty in rural India. They employ several econometric tests to examine whether the trickle-down effect took place in rural India over a long time-period. They find little evi­dence to suggest that the trickle-down effect did occur, suggesting that the emergence of capital-labor substitution was primarily responsible for preventing growth from reducing poverty.

In Chapter 17, `Strategy for economic growth in Brazil: a Post Keynesian approach', Jose Luis Oreiro and Luiz Fernando de Paula present a Keynesian strategy for public policies aiming at higher, stable and sustained economic growth in Brazil. They hypothesize that the current poor growth performance of the Brazilian economy is due to macroeconomic and struc­tural constraints rather than to the lack of microeconomic reforms. They recommend a strategy to achieve the required increase in the investment rate of Brazilian economy from the current 20% of GDP to 27% of GDP needed for a sustained growth of 5% per year.

Economic Growth is an enlightening and significant new volume providing a useful analysis of the many facets of economic growth and pointing the way toward policy correction. The volume will be an essential read for those interested in economic theory and economic policy-making, as well as students and scholars of macroeconomics and finance.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership / Computers & Internet

24/7: Time and Temporality in the Network Society edited by Robert Hassan & Ronald E. Purser (Stanford Business Book)

For better or worse, the information and communication revolution has transformed our economic, cultural, and political world. On an individual scale, many of the traditional habits of mind and ways of being that evolved under the regime of the clock are changing rapidly, including the way individuals save, spend, and optimize time. At the organizational level, the pacing of innovation, levels of production, and new product development, are no longer temporally fixed due to the effects of living in a networked society and in the networked economy.

Edited by Robert Hassan, Research Fellow in the Media and Communications Program at the University of Melbourne and Ronald E. Purser, Professor of Management in the College of Business at San Francisco State University, 24/7 brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to analyze the differing relationships to time in an accelerated society. Offering insight and perspective into new issues and problems, this volume is the first to offer a wide range of cutting-edge thought on the new economic, cultural, and political world of the networked society.

24/7 deals with communication and information technologies that have become an integral part of almost every contemporary institutional practice in the industrialized world and beyond, and it seeks to understand this change in relation to the much older and slower, if equally pervasive, processes of global change associ­ated with the social relations, technologies, and economies of time.

Looking at the issues in the round, the chapters in 24/7 offer readers an almost holographic perspective on social relations within the network society, dealing, on the one hand, with the temporal relations of acceleration and, on the other, with nonstop activity in the sphere of work, communication, consumption, and profit creation.

Where we used to deal with space, materiality, and quantity, we are now required to encompass time, virtuality, and networked processes. Information Communication Technology (ICT) tempo­rality is embedded and functioning within social contexts of clock time that are continuing to play their dominant role and have not evaporated with the event of ICT time. This means, for example, that the control of time, afforded most prominently through clock time, and the loss of control through ICTs have to be understood with reference and in relation to each other. This requires a new temporal imagination and an approach to the social that leaves behind the world of either-or choices and moves toward the realm of tempo­ral multiplicity. Complexity rather than simplicity is the order of the day and demands new strategies that transcend the dualisms of old.

To encompass that complexity, some of the authors of the essays in 24/7 begin to unravel the historically distinct temporal logic of the network society. In the course of this work they show how this logic enframes not just understanding but also daily practice at the personal and collective level, acting as both unbounded opportunity and restricting framework that delimits room for maneuvering in every sphere of life.

If we understand the temporal relations of industrial society as a steady development toward increase of control, commodification, and colonization, we begin to realize that with networked information and communication technologies operating at or near the speed of light, control and commodifi­cation have begun to implode while the colonization of time and space has risen to previously unknown heights. On the one hand, ICT pro­vides the potential to be connected anywhere, anytime; on the other hand, it affords the capacity to be everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. This places users of ICT in the realm if not quite of the gods then at least of angels.

24/7 contains a variety of scholarly explorations and provocative essays on time and temporality in the network society. The contributions come from such disparate fields as media and communications, cultural studies, geography, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, religion, and management. They reflect the original perspectives of eminent scholars from Europe, Australia, and North America.

Part 1, Time in the Network Society, acts as a mise-en-scène for 24/7 by providing a sweeping historical, sociological, and technological overview of the temporal transformations that have resulted from the emergence of information and communication technologies. The first chapter, "New Tem­poral Perspectives in the ‘High-Speed Society,’" by Carmen Leccardi, analyzes the dynamics of acceleration in modern capitalistic society, culminating in what Leccardi describes as a ‘detemporalized present.’ Leccardi argues that the forces of temporal acceleration – social acceleration, technological inno­vation, and the accelerated rhythms of daily life – are rapidly leading to a loss of present space for reflective action that has a temporal connection to the past and future. Widespread alienation from time degrades democratic civil society, resulting in historical amnesia, a lack of personal responsibility for the future, and pervasive existential angst. Robert Hassan argues in "Network Time" that the convergence of neo­liberal globalization and the ‘revolution’ in information and communication technologies has created a new form of technologically generated time, the time of the network, which is a qualitatively and quantitatively different time from that of the clock. Network time, he argues, is very much a time of ‘potentiality.’ Hassan shows that individuals and groups are able to create the contexts for the time of the network in ways that were impossible with the ‘outside’ and abstract time of the clock.

In "Speed = Distance/Time: Chronotopographies of Action" Mike Crang presents an analysis of changing temporalities in society that are by-products of the information technology revolution. Locating the major shifts in space and time as understood by key temporal theorists, Crang suggests that such space-time shifts are more complex than commonly thought, re­quiring a conceptual approach that better captures the effects of ICTs on the spatial and temporal fabric of our daily lives. Crang provides a conceptual framework that incorporates the complexity of real-time technologies.

Adrian Mackenzie, in "Protocols and the Irreducible Traces of Embodiment: The Viterbi Algorithm and the Mosaic of Machine Time," takes the idea of control further and deeper into the log­ic of computing itself, not into the rigid binary code that constitutes the core of computing but into the algorithmic logic that is ‘attached’ to computer-based technologies. He seeks to soften the hard edges of machine time by "finding middle ground between the temporality of technologies ... and the temporal flows of subjective experience." The algorithm, in other words, brings the deadening logic of ones and zeros – the basis of binary code – to life.

In Part 2 of 24/7 the contributions turn toward the digitalization of various forms of media and communications to examine how these changes are radi­cally altering our temporal perceptions. Darren Tofts kicks off this section with an apropos cultural study of the cult classic film The Matrix. In "Truth at Twelve Thousand Frames per Second: The Matrix and Time-Image Cinema" Tofts shows how the film's signature bullet photography, designed for the DVD's ability to pause an image, represents a conver­gence of gaming and interactive video to form a kind of virtual or immersive cinema.

In his chapter, "The Fallen Present: Time in the Mix," Andrew Murphie provides a cogent and in-depth analysis of how human thinking processes are being impacted by real-time network technologies. According to Murphie our very notion of the ‘present moment’ has been redefined by network technologies to such an extent that it has ‘fallen’ and that we are constantly falling into this present – which is ‘a fall away from historical purpose or fu­ture hope.’

Thomas Hylland Eriksen, in "Stacking and Continuity: On Temporal Regimes in Popular Culture," notes a fundamental change in our culture from the relatively slow and linear to the fast and momentary, where socially shared routines for distinguishing between wanted and unwanted informa­tion are severely lacking. Contrasting the MP3 player to the CD, and the Web to the book, along with examples from rhythmic music, Eriksen argues that information society emerges as cascades of decontextualized signs that are randomly connected to each other. Given the limits on the time we have available, information is compressed and stacked in time spans that become shorter and shorter, leaving little opportunity for internal integration.

In Part 3, Temporal Presence, attention shifts to the deeper existential and ontological questions concerning human consciousness of time within the context of network technologies. Each of the three authors in this section challenges conven­tional wisdom regarding our potential for ‘being in time’ within our 24/7, networked society. In network societies what we lack is not information but the capacity for sustaining undivided human attention. Geert Lovink begins the section by exploring the time regimes of Internet users. His chapter, "Indifference of the Networked Presence: On Time Management of the Self," explores how the real challenge of being wired and online is not ‘time management’ but time and media indifference. He concludes by proposing new ideas for overcoming the binary opposition between lived time and machine time, fashioning a self-styled approach to Internet use.

In "The Presence of Others: Network Experience as an Antidote to the Subjectivity of Time" Jack Petranker explores an optimistic vision of network technologies as offering possibilities for new forms of temporal presence that are life enhancing rather than debilitating. Petranker's chapter challenges the chorus of critics that have focused on the isolating and alienating ten­dencies of network technologies (e.g., Virilio's ‘telepresence’) by exploring the phenomenological experience of feeling the presence of others at a distance – what he calls a ‘temporality of presence.’

Drawing from the Buddhist tradition, as well as from his firsthand experi­ence as a Zen student and teacher, David Loy calls into question the claims that the digital revolution is extending consciousness by simulating a ‘timeless time.’ In “CyberLack” Loy juxtaposes the ‘timeless time’ of network technology against the experience of ‘timeless time’ as described by Dogen, a thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master, and illustrates how the latter supports a nondual experience of time while the former merely leads to further alienation.

The contributions to Part 4 of 24/7, Time in the Network Economy, focus on the temporal upheavals occurring in organizations, management, and the politi­cal economy as a result of the ICT revolution, examining the temporality of global networks that are linked to the flow of capital and information. Ben Agger opens this final section by tracing the historical socioeconomic dynamics of capitalism and by examining how such dynamics have amounted to what he refers to as ‘time theft.’ In "Time Robbers, Time Rebels: Limits to Fast Capital" Agger argues that recent developments due to the ICT revolution have intensified the magnitude of this time theft, in effect robbing people of the time and space for authentically recreating themselves. In the next chapter Hans Ramo is concerned with how ICT-based networks influence the formation of trust in organizations. In "Finding Time and Place for Trust in ICT Network Organizations" Ramo engages in a spatiotemporal analysis of various forms of trust in network-based organizations by focusing on the dimensions of time/timing and space/place.

Drawing on ethnographic studies of corporations and academic settings, Ida Sabelis, in "The Clock-Time Paradox: Time Regimes in the Network Soci­ety," examines contemporary patterns of time use among executives and aca­demics who have come to rely increasingly on ICTs in their daily work. Her research is focused on identifying the unintended effects of network technology on the boundaries between organizational and private life and between work and family.

This collection of thought-provoking essays addresses the relationship between contemporary times and technology, especially cybertechnology. In doing so, the essays demonstrate so very well Elliott Jaques' statement of the ultimate justification for studying time: “In the form of time is to be found the form of living.” For by developing this collection, Hassan and Purser – and the essays' authors – have made an important contribution to understanding both time and life in the early 21st century. – Allen C. Bluedorn, author of The Human Organization of Time: Temporal Realities and Experience, University of Missouri-Columbia

The authors gathered here are among the leading theorists of the new shift in dimensional thought. Original, provocative, and sophisticated, their arguments will have a profound impact on social theorists and the emerging generation of digital scholars. – Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne

Given the ubiquity of networks and the massive temporal changes occurring on a global scale, this compilation is timely in itself. The editors of 24/7 have assembled an interdisciplinary panel of international academics whose individual knowledge bases complement each other and who have pro­duced a rich body of work, presenting a wide range of interpretations and diverse opinions. Although these interdisciplinary contributions address a wide range of themes, they nonetheless share a common thread in providing a deeper and more critical understanding of the temporal dynamics of digital networks and the impact these are having on our changing temporal ecology.

By bringing together such a breadth of expertise in one volume, the editors have opened up for discussion an important contemporary development that impacts sociocultural existence almost anywhere on this planet. And these essays may serve as the foundation for a new temporal ontology through which we may have some control over the ‘new times’ that are being created with every network connection.

Business & Investing / Real Estate

Dealmaker: A Real Estate Mogul's Blueprint for Success by Jerry L. Wallace (Career Press)

Jerry L. Wallace is a mega developer who built an empire from scratch – he has put under construction, planning, or contract more than $6 billion in property in less than four years. In Dealmaker, he reveals how he did it ... and how anyone – novice or pro – can use the same process. Wallace, known widely as ‘The Dealmaker,’ is an entrepreneur, author, and one of the most publicized real estate professionals in America. His developments are valued at more than $3 billion dollars. Wallace was recognized as the most successful pre-construction agent in his city, then the Emerald Coast, then the entire southeastern United States. He is the owner of an entire township in Texas, something no one else in the country can boast.

Dealmaker is a collection of Wallace's real estate secrets – his insights, wisdom, and real-world techniques. Wallace says that he has successfully utilized all the principles he shares in Dealmaker – techniques that took him from bankruptcy to success. The book outlines:

  • How to think like a developer.
  • How to develop the skills to be self-sufficient in a shaky economy.
  • How to locate suitable properties.
  • How to negotiate the best contract terms.
  • How to attract investors.
  • How to leverage moderate success into a future fortune.

To refer to Jerry as a real estate agent is like referring to Babe Ruth as a baseball player! Jerry has certainly earned his title as `The Dealmaker'. – Ed Kirkland, broker and owner of RE/MAX Coastal Properties
Jerry Wallace's refreshing approach to real estate success is right on for today's and tomorrow's marketplace. Read his book. He shares all his secrets. – Don Nations, president, Nations Realty
As a real estate attorney, I am impressed with Wallace's step-by-step approach to real estate investing, which makes even the most complex issues easy for anyone to understand. This book explains how to become a great success in the real estate industry while maintaining your character and integrity. – Mel Weinberger, Esquire, partner, Holland & Knight LLP
No one has more down-to-earth wisdom about 'dealmaking' than Jerry Wallace, and he shows you how in this terrific book. – Robinson Callen, chairman, H.I. Development Corporation
Dealmaker is one of the most enlightening how-to books on real estate I have ever read. – Efren Ramirez, actor and TV personality

While real estate novices will find tips they can use on every page, Dealmaker is also a tool for those already involved in the real estate industry who wish to achieve greater success. This book, written in a clear and concise style, is a must-read for anyone who wants to make serious money in real estate.
Children’s / Ages 4-8 / Computers & Internet / Entertainment / Games & Activities

SmartLab: 1st Grade Challenge by Jennifer Jacobson (Becker & Mayer, Distributed by Chronicle Children’s)

  • What's the silent letter in the word comb?
  • Why do we have night and day?
  • How many pennies equal one dime?
  • 2, 4, 6, …?
  • Who became famous for refusing to sit in the back of the bus?

1st graders take on these and 495 other questions in SmartLab: 1st Grade Challenge.

This electronic game gives 1st Graders a fun and confidence-building opportunity to learn what they need to know, when they need to know it. With hundreds of questions covering all curriculum areas and a 1- or 2-player game component, kids challenge themselves and each other to hours of brain-building fun. It's a chance for them to test their memory, prove what they already know, and discover the possibilities of curriculum-connected play.
The nifty little computer, shaped like a computer game with a booklet attached, randomly generates one of the color-coded sections (Language Arts, Social Studies, Art & Music, Science, or Math) in the book and tells which question to turn to. After reading the question, the child selects from the multiple choice answers. If the answer is correct, the computer generates a smiley face and a laughing sound and increases the child’s score. If the answer is incorrect, the computer gives the child a second try.
The designer of SmartLab: 1st Grade Challenge, Jennifer Jacobson received her master's in education from Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has taught pre-school through sixth grade and has served as Curriculum Coordinator, Head of Studies, and Language Arts Specialist in several New England schools. Jacobson is the author of ten books for teachers, including the parenting series that began with How is My First Grader Doing in School: What to Expect and How to Help, and award-winning children's books.

Amazing! A teacher's dream, a parent's salvation, and a kid's hope for filling empty moments with something useful and fun! Enticing questions that beautifully cross all areas of the school curriculum. – Steve Layne, Award-winning teacher and educator (USA Today's All-Teacher Team, the Milken Foundation's National Award for Teaching Excellence, and the NCTE's Edwin A. Hoey Award for Outstanding Middle School Teacher in the U.S.)

A step up from Brain Quest! I imagine that every parent, teacher, and child would love this book for practicing and mastering curriculum concepts. I could see the kids fighting over this thing. – Donna Whyte, Author, teacher, national education consultant

SmartLab: 1st Grade Challenge gives kids a fun way to engage in curriculum-connected play. Kids will love that parents and teachers endorse taking the SmartLab: Challenge. With sequels for grades 1, 2 and 3, and with hundreds of questions across all curriculum areas, this is an electronic way to build knowledge – and confidence. These books prove it is fun to be smart.

Children’s / Ages 4-8 / Mythology

Paul Bunyan's Sweetheart by Marybeth Lorbiecki, illustrated by Renée Graef (Sleeping Bear Press)

Paul Bunyan's larger-than-life adventures have become the stuff of American legend. In Paul Bunyan's Sweetheart young readers learn the story of how the towering lumberjack met his match.

In Paul Bunyan's Sweetheart, award-winning author Marybeth Lorbiecki tells the tale of Lucette Diana Kensack, the daughter of an Ojibwe maiden and a French-English pioneer. Young Lucette tragically lost her family in a smallpox outbreak, but a big momma bear took pity on the eight-year old and raised her as her own. It could have been the pox, it could have been the berries, but little Lucette began to grow and grow – to 'Bunyanesque' proportions. Some years later, the giant lumberjack met up with the beauty from Hackensack, Minnesota and then the sparks began to fly.

When Paul Bunyan meets pretty Lucette, he knows she's the gal for him. After all, she's so tall she can't fit into an ordinary cabin. She can churn butter into a thick creamy river, and when she cleans house she can twirl up a tornado! It's a match made in heaven.

He is in love; she isn't impressed. Lucette assigns him tasks to prove his worth, an old-fashioned love test. But what finally wins her is his transformation from lumberjack to forester – an environmental change of heart that will strike a chord with readers today.

Master storyteller Lorbiecki has written more than twenty award-winning books. Her stories bring history alive for young readers, such as Jackie's Bat, about Jackie Robinson; Sister Annie's Hands, which won several awards, including the Bank Street College Children's Book of the Year; and Stickeen: An Icy Adventure with a No-Good Dog, which was a Teacher's Choice Award Winner.

From the quiet rolling hills of Hackensack comes a story that is larger than life. Paul Bunyan's Sweetheart is a lovely book about courtin' the old fashioned way with an important environmental message for readers today. This book is a beautiful way to share the message of good stewardship and enjoy a tall tale at the same time. – Kate Kessler, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

With Paul Bunyan's Sweetheart Lorbiecki brings together history and legend for a rollicking American tall tale. And Renee Graef's folksy artwork tenderly gives life to the biggest love story the north woods region has ever seen. Her illustrations provide a glimpse back to the colorful past of the American wilderness.

Children’s / Ages 9-12 / Humor / Science Fiction & Fantasy

The Chaos King by Laura Ruby (Eos, HarperCollins Children’s Books)

The Chaos King has a city filled with wonders, and in it, one girl can do the most wonderful thing of all.

Georgie is special.

In this fantasy tale of an alternative universe, not only is Georgie the one person who can disappear at will, but since she found her parents, she's become The Richest Girl in the Universe.

She may be special, but is she lucky? Her parents have forbidden her to vanish, her new school is full of snooty heiresses, she's had a growth spurt that makes her as graceful as a grizzly, and her best friend in the world, a belligerent boy named Bug, seems to have abandoned her.

But adventure is just around the corner in The Chaos King, written by Laura Ruby, a Chicago-based fiction writer, as a madman who calls himself The Chaos King has Georgie and Bug in his sights. In their efforts to save themselves from his insane plans, Georgie and Bug discover some of the amazing secrets of the city they love. Their journey will lead them to confront a pack of blasé vampires, a living lion of stone, a disgruntled teenage poet, a candy-loving sloth, The Second Richest Girl in the Universe, a fussy man named Mr. Fuss, and finally, the brink of the unimaginable. . . .

Praise for Ruby’s previous book, The Wall and the Wing:
Witty and ironic, Ruby's sharp writing propels the story to an exhilarating climax. – VOYA (starred review)

Fast-paced wackiness that will have young readers giggling even as they cheer. – SLJ

Utterly odd and charming. Inspired silliness from start to finish. – Publishers Weekly

The Chaos King is all, delightfully, about chaos. This story of a post-modern heroin is great fodder for the adolescent imagination.

Children’s / Ages 12 and up / Family Life

Beyond the Billboard by Susan Gates (Harcourt Children’s Books)

Firebird took one last longing look at the billboard. But it had no help to offer – she had to decide for herself. Slowly, she moved away from its shelter and protection, away from the swamp where she'd spent all her life. She felt a queasy cramping in the pit of her stomach. But it wasn’t just fear that was making her feel sick. There was another emotion churning inside her. It was excitement.

She’d made up her mind. Firebird took a deep, shaky breath and plunged into the scrubland, following Gran and Swamp Dog toward the city. – from the book

In Beyond the Billboard, written by Susan Gates, almost nobody knows that thirteen­-year-old Firebird Tucker and her family exist. Their primitive ramshackle house is completely hidden, thanks to the massive billboard shielding it from prying eyes. Firebird is not allowed to leave their wilderness swamp, not even to go to school. And she must never, ever talk to strangers.

But suddenly, strangers are everywhere – encroaching from the dangerous city that looms nearby, intruding beyond the billboard, discovering the most secret corners of the swamp – and threatening her family's survival. And despite the Tuckers' insistence that nothing must change, everything does. In the midst of the turmoil, Firebird finally finds what she's been looking for: a way out.

Beyond the Billboard is an affecting coming-of-age novel, set in an isolated and mysterious world, a chilling portrayal of a girl's struggle to break free of family secrets – no matter the cost.

Cooking, Food & Wine

Easy and Healthy Japanese Food for the American Kitchen by Keiko O. Aoki, photographed by Susumu Miyamoto (Quill Driver Books)

My busy New York lifestyle may have kept me out of the kitchen for many years, but I'd learned how to cook Japanese food from a real expert, my mother. When I was growing up in Tokyo, she taught me how to prepare our native dishes. But before she taught me how to cook, she taught me how to shop, which to a Japanese housewife is very important. – from the book

The Japanese diet promotes good health and longevity in many ways while also being delectable. According to Keiko Aoki, one reason many Americans don't cook Japanese meals is that they feel it is too difficult. They think special skills are required and they assume it is hard to get the proper ingredients. Actually cooking Japanese food is easy, because the ingredients used are simple, and most dishes do not have complicated sauces like the ones used in Europe.

With this collection, Aoki, a Tokyo-born, New York-based businesswoman and housewife, has set out to simplify matters so those living in the U.S. can share in the benefits of Japanese cuisine at home. Most cookbooks are written by chefs, aimed at people who already know how to whip up a fancy meal and who are seeking new recipes to add to their repertoire. Easy and Healthy Japanese Food for the American Kitchen also has new recipes readers have probably never seen in a cookbook, but that's where the similarity ends. Aoki has modified her mother's old-country recipes so they are easily prepared using ingredients that can be found in most modern supermarkets. She is married to Rocky Aoki, the man who brought Japanese food to the U.S. via his string of Benihana restaurants. Rocky may have introduced millions of people to Japanese food, but Keiko has a bigger goal, the transformation of every kitchen in America into a Japanese chubo.

Easy and Healthy Japanese Food for the American Kitchen combines easy cooking techniques with traditional Japanese cuisine. Most of the recipes in Easy and Healthy Japanese Food for the American Kitchen can be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Aoki balances the delicate Japanese flavor and difficulty with ingredients and equipment found in the average American kitchen. The book features entrée recipes with beef, chicken, pork, seafood, vegetables, tofu, sushi, and also dessert selections. Each recipe is accompanied with a full-color photograph. Resources include shopping lists, substitutable ingredients, cooking tips, product websites, and an index.

There are ingredients that Japanese eat almost every day which promote good health which are mostly absent from the American diet, primarily soy beans which are used in various ways including miso and natto, both of which are basically fer­mented soybeans.

As explained in Easy and Healthy Japanese Food for the American Kitchen, the Japanese people enjoy the highest longevity of any people in the world. Some of the properties of fermented soybeans have been scientifi­cally proven, such as their ability to reduce blood clots and prevent heart attacks. But they Japanese also believe, and there is some evidence for it, that products like miso and natto prevent cancer, lower cholesterol, have an antibiotic effect, improve diges­tion, prevent obesity, and reduce the effects of aging.

Three-quarters of Japanese cooking in New York now is where French cooking was in the mid-1970s: on the verge of a major breakthrough in quality and authenticity. Japanese is the new French. – New York Times

The book takes away the potential obstacle to cooking healthy Japanese food: time. These quick-to-prepare recipes are designed to accommodate the hectic and busy lifestyles most Americans endure. The recipes take no more than thirty minutes, and many take even less than that. Easy and Healthy Japanese Food for the American Kitchen provides readers with recipes that are easy to prepare, healthy, and don't cost very much. This is a sure-to-please cookbook for all enthusiasts of Japanese food, as well as those looking to prepare healthier meals for their families.

Education / Biographies & Memoirs

The Short Bus: A Journey beyond Normal by Jonathan Mooney (Henry Holt and Company)

A young man once labeled ‘severely learning disabled’ journeys across America to find others who have used humor, imagination, and attitude to create satisfying lives beyond ‘normal’ in The Short Bus.

When his teachers decided Jonathan Mooney needed special ed because he couldn't follow directions, sit still, or read well out loud, he feared he'd lost his chance to be a regular kid. Suddenly he was ‘not normal.’ Labeled dyslexic and profoundly learning disabled with attention and behavior problems, Mooney was a ‘short bus rider’ – a derogatory term used for kids in special education and a distinction that told the world he wasn’t normal. Along with other kids with special challenges, he grew up hearing himself denigrated daily. Ultimately, Mooney surprised skeptics by graduating with honors from Brown University. But he could never escape his past, so he hit the road. To free himself and to learn how others had moved beyond labels, he created an epic journey. He bought his own short bus and set out cross-country, looking for kids who had dreamed up magical, beautiful ways to overcome the obstacles that separated them from the so-called normal world. In The Short Bus, his humorous, irreverent, and poignant record of this odyssey, Mooney describes his four-month, 35,000-mile journey across borders that most people never see. He meets thirteen people in thirteen states, including Ashley, an eight-year-old deaf and blind girl who likes to curse out her teachers in sign language. He meets Kent, a performance artist with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who loves ‘yo mama’ jokes and may just be the new Andy Kaufman; and Jeff, an obsessive eccentric who keeps lists that describe his world in unex­pectedly moving ways. Then there’s also Butch Anthony, who grew up severely learning disabled but who is now the proud owner of the Museum of Wonder. These people teach Mooney that there’s no such thing as normal and that to really live, every person must find their own special ways of keeping on.

Jonathan Mooney is an uplifting, rebellious voice who will strike a chord with anyone who has ever had a hard time marching in step in a culture of conformity. …In person, in his amazing speeches around the country, Jonathan speaks with heart, spirit and energy, helping audiences re-imagine their lives. He does this same thing in his remarkable, magical book. Get on the short bus and fasten your seat belts. No matter who you are, you won't be the same at the end of this ride. – Edward M. Hallowell M.D., author of Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most Out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder

Curious and compassionate, clearheaded and self-questioning, enlightened and illuminating, Jonathan Mooney takes us on a modern yet timeless odyssey. … A long overdue tribute to our brothers and sisters on the short bus, and a desperately needed battle cry against the tyranny of normalcy. – Rachel Simon, author of Riding the Bus with My Sister
This book should be required reading for anyone who thinks they are in the business of ‘helping’ or ‘serving’ people with disabilities. Mooney understands the power that comes when disabled children and adults claim their identity, reject social constructs of what is normal, and define success on their own terms. By journeying beyond normal, Mooney shows the way to a more human, more interesting destination that can transform the field of education, lay bare the shortcomings of the helping professions, and help disabled people get in touch with their own power. – Andrew Imparato, President and CEO American Association of People with Disabilities

The Short Bus is a wonderful ‘on the road’ story that beats out even Kerouac’s book. … Superbly written. – John McKnight, author of The Careless Society
The view from The Short Bus is candid, irreverent and eye opening. Mooney takes us On the Road, asking what happens when you stop chasing the horizon of normalcy and start reveling in your differences. – Harold S. Koplewicz, M.D., Chairman, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine, Author of Moore than Moody and It’s Nobody’s Fault
Ride Jonathan Mooney’s The Short Bus and you will be changed. With captivating storytelling, Mooney kidnaps the reader away from ‘normal’ for a journey that is hilarious, heartbreaking, and ultimately liberating. Anyone has had to deal with the ill fitted suit of ‘normalcy’ in their coming-of-age will recognize the struggles in these stories – and as it turns out that means every one of us! The Short Bus gives us a whole new way to understand all young people, and to support the genius of difference in our communities. – Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of All Souls and Easter Rising 

The Short Bus is an inspiring record of his odyssey and a unique gem, propelled by Mooney’s humor, and outrageous rebellions. With a unique writer's heart, mind, and spirit, the book is a rebellious, funny, and incredibly colorful investigation of life lived happily outside the lines.

Education / History / Civil Rights / African Americans

Still Not Equal: Expanding Educational Opportunity in Society edited by M. Christopher Brown II, with assistance from RoSusan D. Bartee, with a foreword by Michael L. Lomax (Peter Lang)

I hope you find this book both challenging and stimulating. Further, I hope that you will keep in your consciousness the very simple but powerful message that we keep before us at the College Fund every day in all the work that we do: A mind is a terrible thing to waste. – Michael L. Lomax, President and CEO, United Negro College Fund, from the Foreword

The educational, political, and social influence resulting from Brown v Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and their progeny have shaped the dynamics of the collective educational and social experiences of people of color. Notwithstanding, the obstacles, barriers, and enablers of educational, occupational, and economic status outcomes impact the formation and interpretation of public policy, specifically, and public perception, generally, about racialized notions of schooling and learning. The pursuit of educational access, attendance, and attainment is intertwined with the implications of academic research and public policy to improve local practices in school settings.
Still Not Equal addresses the successes and failures of Brown and the Civil Rights Act, as well as the continuing challenge of expanding educational opportunity in the United States and across the Black Diaspora. The book, a product of the United Negro College Fund's (UNCF's) 2004 Patterson Research Conference, is edited by M. Christopher Brown II, Professor and Dean of the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; previously Vice President for Programs and Administration at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Director of Social Justice and Professional Development for the American Educational Research Association and Executive Director and Chief Research Scientist of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the United Negro College Fund.

Still Not Equal focuses on the implications of racial inequalities in school and societal settings. According to Brown, racial inequalities impede the processes by which institutions of higher education develop human potential and talent. The effects of racial inequalities represent an unfinished quest to secure equality in educa­tional settings at large. Given the demands of the diverse nature of schools and other settings, it is necessary to conceptualize policies and implement practices that promote oppor­tunity, access, and hopefulness. Racial inequalities interrupt the ability to create an academic continuum that seeks to be inclusive rather than exclusive. The context of an academic continuum must be forged in order to provide cultural sensitivity and awareness of the challenges that the racial divide creates.

Still Not Equal engages various perspectives related to student performance and assessment in education. Student performance levels for African Ameri­cans are becoming increasingly linked to the quality of ‘the teacher’ and ‘the teaching.’ How teachers are prepared in teacher education programs impacts the ways in which their students learn in school classrooms. Stan­dardized assessments must be developed in concert with the school's cur­riculum and pedagogy. The use of traditional forms of curriculum and pedagogy can no longer be accepted without question. As all children can learn, it is our civic responsibility to develop to the highest capacity all of our human capital. The time has come to close the achievement gaps, to place all children on the same college preparatory curricular track, and to provide the resources necessary to acquire the best learning facilitators, school environ­ments, and scholastic materials.

While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 sought to eliminate the external impact of segregation, the vestiges of segregation denied African Americans full participation in society and produced a de facto apartheid within America's proclaimed dem­ocratic society. Segregation systematically reproduced inequalities between racial groups, and it evoked feelings of inferiority among students within the schools (as do practices such as classroom tracking and ability grouping). As Brown explains, historically, a two-tiered system of higher education emerged as a result of these vestiges – one for African Americans and one for Whites. Today, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) provide African Americans with quality education and training that consistently and statistically adequately prepares them for viable professions and positions that contribute to this soci­ety's productivity. HBCUs are meeting national standards as afforded by accrediting agencies as well as surviving the political battles that periodically question their existence. The challenge now remains securing the future of HBCUs, particularly given the competitiveness of traditionally White institu­tions (TWIs) that are attracting increased numbers of African American students, the rising costs of tuition at HBCUs, and the fiscal challenges of maintaining the operations at HBCUs.

Still Not Equal exposes the role of the school and the community in creating environments for learning. It is important to have community involvement within the processes of educational settings. The community can provide input that has practical and applicable value. Such input is crit­ical to preparing the families of school-age children to parent in ways that are transferable within school contexts. Literacy does not begin and end in the school. Literacy is required in both the home and school environ­ments in order for children to do well in academic activities.

The chapters included in this volume represent the most instructive and innovative ideas to emerge from a historic 4-day meeting of the United Negro College Fund's (UNCF's) 2004 Patterson Research Conference. Still Not Equal highlights the global dimensions of both education and school. Attaining higher levels of performance for all persons at all levels in all sectors is critical to global participation and productivity. What is becoming increasingly clear is that the skills students need to be successful in college go beyond K–12 academic preparation. Without prior academic development and financial aid materials, students may suf­fer from disparate educational attainment across their lifespan. This phenomenon requires continued attention to the details of what it truly means to leave no one behind. It highlights the continued inequality across myriad contexts and invites everyone to assist in expanding opportunity throughout society.

If we commit ourselves to this greater cause, maybe sometime in the not­-so-distant future we can reflect on what we have achieved on behalf of gen­erations yet unborn.

Still Not Equal identifies some of the most criti­cal educational and social issues impacting the educational attainment levels of African Americans. Many of the issues are central to the work of the College Fund, which strives to increase African American college enrollment, strengthen historically Black colleges and uni­versities, and increase access to education for deserving young men and women. While UNCF has broadened educational opportunities for thousands of students over the last 60 years, there is still much work to be done to ensure that all children have an equal chance.

Collected together in Still Not Equal are selected research findings, conceptualizations, and initiatives by the dedicated educators, researchers, and professionals who joined in that historic meeting in September 2004, marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Negro College Fund, the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Each chapter presented identifies challenges, develops strategies for eliminating barriers, and/or introduces ideas for creating an educational environment that is truly equal for everyone.

Entertainment / Music

The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music with consulting editor Bob Allen & general editor Tony Byworth (Billboard Books)

True country music is honesty, sincerity, and real life to the hilt. – Garth Brooks

You’ve got a song you’re singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. – Johnny Cash

Country is old. Country is new. Country is us.

Although the first seeds of country music were brought to the New World by British and European settlers, they took root to create a music that embodies an American spirit, grounded in a primal, rural world.

The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music explores this durable genre, following its development through the twentieth century and up to today. With consulting editor Bob Allen, a country music journalist, historian, and critic for the past twenty-five years and general editor Tony Byworth, who has been involved in country music for over 30 years, the chapters trace the history of country chronologically.

Over the years, country has evolved from the early hillbilly music of Roy Acuff and the Carter Family, ‘singing cowboys’ such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, and the fast-paced bluegrass of Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers, to wilder forms such as honky-tonk with Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb, rockabilly with Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, and Nashville with Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. More recently, country music has taken such forms as country rock, launched by bands like the Byrds and the Eagles, and mainstream and pop crossovers, famously embodied by Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton, before coming full circle with neo-traditionalists such as Garth Brooks and Emmylou Harris. It thrives today with variations on all of the previous forms of country music as well as the more recent ‘alt country’ (Lucinda Williams & Gillian Welch), and the bluegrass revival (Alison Krauss & Bela Fleck).

From the earliest days to the latest artists, The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music tells the story of country music in words and pictures, with detailed information on the groundbreaking artists that helped to develop and expand the style. Organized chronologically by era, the introductory text to each chapter provides background information, while the Influences and Development sections place the music in its cultural context and discuss how it evolved during the period. A separate essay in each chapter features specific topics of discussion, such as how the film O Brother Where Art Thou? has encouraged a revival in the popularity of bluegrass. In addition, biographical sections focus on the key artists of each decade, detailing the key tracks and classic recordings of each artist, before exploring the lives of numerous other musicians and artists in an alphabetical listing. A comprehensive reference section also includes information on country instruments and equipment.

The accessible, informative text is accompanied by over 500 color and black-and-white photographs that paint a vivid picture of the people who have created and played country music throughout the years, and the transition from rural to urban environments that influenced its development. Written by a team of experts, The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music is an invaluable reference book for anyone whose imagination has been captured by the rich and diverse sounds of country.

Entertainment / Music / Classical

Debussy – The Quiet Revolutionary: Unlocking the Masters Series, No. 13, with CD by Victor Lederer (Unlocking the Masters Series, No. 13: Amadeus Press)

Debussy's music, some of the greatest composed in the twentieth century, also ranks among the century's most challenging. His influence on others was enormous.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was famous before he was thirty and the extraordinary sophistication and refinement of his music would, in fact, later influence some of the world’s greatest composers – Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, and Olivier Messiaen included – notes author Victor Lederer in Debussy – The Quiet Revolutionary. Bartok, Stravinsky, Webern, Boulez, and Messiaen all freely acknowledged their debt to their groundbreaking predecessor.

Lederer, New York-based music critic and writer, in Debussy – The Quiet Revolutionary explores Debussy's music, pointing out subtleties that otherwise could take years of careful listening to fully appreciate. He shows how the composer developed his own unmistakable sound from a variety of musical inspirations, including folk, medieval, the musical languages of Spain and Java, as well as the seventeenth-century French clavecinistes and his musical ancestor and idol, Chopin. Lederer also illustrates how Debussy's exquisite music, with its shimmering tonalities and bold harmonies, parallels the impressionist movement in painting. There is also a chapter on Debussy’s life. The book, now available in the Unlocking the Masters series, includes an accompanying full-length Deutsche Grammophon CD with selections from the maestro's masterworks.

"It is clear when listening to Debussy that what one hears is beautiful, but its beauty turns out to be surprisingly hard to get one's ears around, and even harder to define," declares Lederer in Debussy – The Quiet Revolutionary.

Readers explore Debussy's unmistakable sound and its inspirations in Debussy – The Quiet Revolutionary, learning to appreciate the subtlety in his music. Each of the books in this series, of which this is the thirteenth, make it possible for reader/listeners to become astute at understanding beloved composers including Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Shostakovich, Monteverdi, Hayden, Dvorak, Mozart, Mahler and Wagner.

Entertainment / Sports

The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History by Jayson Stark (Triumph Books)

It's one of the oldest pastimes known to man, dating as far back as the invention of the wheel (somewhat overrated) and the discovery of fire (vastly underrated). But not until thousands of years later, with the arrival of baseball, did the overrated-underrated debate really fulfill its potential.

Baseball was virtually made for the debate. Whether readers are hardcore fans or casual observers, they almost certainly have been lured into a war of wits on the merits, or lack thereof, of a particular ballplayer, team, or record-setting achievement. Sports-radio-talk-show hosts are well-known instigators of these kinds of debates, as are baseball columnists, friends, ex-friends, or the complete stranger sitting three seats down at the local watering hole.

The O-U debate is so subjective that any argument could last for hours, regardless of the presence of statistical facts or hardball knowledge in the discussion. That was the case, that is, until Jayson Stark took it upon himself to end the debate once and for all in The Stark Truth – or, more likely, energize it for years to come. Stark, a baseball columnist and television analyst for the better part of the last three decades, attempts to identify the most overrated and underrated players of all time at each position. He'll be the first to admit that his selections will invite skepticism and even controversy, which is the very essence of the O-U debate.

Stark, senior writer for ESPN.com, formerly at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 21 years, is one of the best minds in baseball, someone whose reputation precedes him as knowing every aspect of the game. So when he says Phil Rizzuto is the most overrated shortstop of all time he doesn't just offer his opinion, he proves it with stats. An entire constellation of baseball stars are going to have a little of the shine on their careers taken away. Some of the players Stark ranks as overrated or underrated are: Babe Ruth, Nolan Ryan, Duke Snider, Derek Jeter, Frank Robinson, Andrew Jones, Pete Rose, Yogi Berra, and Sandy Koufax.

When I first knew Jayson Stark, he was often mistaken for Bernie Carbo, the erstwhile Red Sox outfielder. In a very short time, Jayson was himself unmistakable for his creative, thoughtful, human, humorous, and passionate writing that has made him one of the greatest of all baseball journalists. Everything he has done has been thoroughly researched and thought out, which is what makes his study of the most underrated and overrated players so fascinating. You know one thing as you open the book – that Stark will touch on things you never even thought about. – Peter Gammons, Hall of Fame baseball writer and ESPN baseball analyst

Jayson Stark has always, in my opinion, been the most underrated baseball writer since man started writing about the game. Of course, I may have been influenced a little by the fact that I'm in his book. Nevertheless, if this book doesn't end up in Oprah's Book Club, then Oprah's list is overrated. – Andy Van Slyke, underrated centerfielder, underrated back-jacket blurb writer, and current Tigers first-base coach

There is no one with more passion for baseball than Jayson Stark... Once you've read this book, you'll know why... – Mike Greenberg, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, and co-host of ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning

One can be considered the best player of his time and still be overrated – or underrated – which makes The Stark Truth a fascinating journey into the greatest debate about the greatest game. Team loyalists will be intrigued to read Stark's rankings. Fans will be stunned to see their beloved heroes such as Ernie Banks and Joe Carter labeled as overrated and the nicknames tagged on them by Stark. The Stark Truth finally brings closure to this classic debate. Ha!

History / Americas / African American / Biographies & Memoirs

An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege by Heidi Ardizzone (W. W. Norton)

What would you give up to achieve your dream?

Could you hide your secrets in the light of celebrity and notoriety?

These are some of the questions explored by Heidi Ardizzone, assistant professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame, in An Illuminated Life.

An Illuminated Life reveals the secret life of the sensational woman behind the J.P. Morgan masterpieces, who lit up New York society. Born to a family of free people of color, Belle da Costa Greene (1879-1950) changed her name and invented a Portuguese grandmother to enter white society. In her new world, she dined both at the tables of the highest society and with bohemian artists and activists. She also engaged in a decades-long affair with art critic Bernard Berenson.

When Morgan hired Greene in 1905 to organize his rare book and manuscript collection, she had only her per­sonality and a few years of experience to recom­mend her. Soon she was Morgan's confidante, responsible for shaping his world-renowned collection of rare books and art. Famous in her time for her self-made exper­tise, her acerbic wit, her endless energy, and her flirtatious relationships, Greene was an enigma even to those who knew her well. She gained access to a world that would have been denied her had her true story been known, touring Europe for work and pleasure and, most impor­tant, becoming the director of the Morgan Library for twenty-five years, a rare position for a woman. She lived in a whirl of activity, as com­fortable in Greenwich Village as she was dining at the tables of highest society. By the end of her life, however, rumors of her black ancestry had caught up with her.

Belle da Costa Greene was born Belle Marian Greener, raised in a family of color who had long been a part of Washington, D.C.'s ‘Black Four Hundred.’ Belle changed her name as an adult and lived as white – more or less. Defying the simple categories of black and white, she loved to joke about having black ancestry, drawing attention to the rumors that began to swirl around her even as her career and public recognition developed.

As told in An Illuminated Life, Greene eventually reached a level of professional stature that few women of her generation were able to attain. An independent and impatient soul, Belle never married. Nevertheless, she did become ‘hipped,’ as she put it in her customary slang, to a new man once or twice a year and took several lovers. New York was on the cusp between Victorian ideals and modernity. Belle was far from alone in flouting the traditions of monogamy and marriage, but she was in an unexpectedly vulnerable and exposed position.

Slightly exotic compared with the ‘old-stock’ Americans of western and northern European ancestry who worked and socialized with Mor­gan and his peers, Belle's physical appearance prompted much com­ment. Belle herself attributed her beige complexion to a Portuguese grandmother, like the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who were adding their southern and eastern European faces to the mixture of American ethnicities. Belle could not have achieved the social and professional promi­nence she did at the turn of the twentieth century had she been com­pletely open about her background. She certainly could not have reached such heights without her quick wit, fearless persona, and extraordinary ability to handle millionaires, art dealers, scholars, and the occasional obsessed would-be or ex-suitor. Scholars estimate that thousands of people of mixed ancestry left communities of color to live as white every year in the early twentieth century. Had Belle followed her mother and siblings into historical obscurity, she and they would have been simply a few more anonymous members of this quiet response to segregation and racism. But when Belle met J. P. Morgan on that fateful day in 1905, she stepped out of obscurity and into history.

An Illuminated Life is not exactly a rags-to-riches story; Belle's childhood was not one of poverty. But she and her family did live with prejudice, even as a rel­atively comfortable family of color, or light-skinned ‘Negroes’ – the polite term of the time roughly equivalent to today's ‘African American.’ Her family's history includes enslavement and active struggle at first against slavery, then against segregation, and always against dis­crimination and racism. And she did not end up marrying riches, or even becoming independently wealthy – at least not by the standards of the Morgans and their ilk. But she certainly did achieve privilege. And she did so despite constant rumors about her ancestry and her identity.

Belle's emergence from nowhere into such an intoxicating existence evokes Americans' love of the self-made man – or woman, in this case – making her fortune through hard work, character, and ability. In this myth there are no insurmountable obsta­cles to wealth, no uncrossable lines dividing the democratic society. That there are so few examples of actual self-made men, and fewer still of women, illuminates the real power of social class to restrict oppor­tunity. But it was a story many believed in, and Belle was one of them. In some sense she absolutely was a self-made woman, a success story of the promise of the American dream. But the patronage and protec­tion of J. Pierpont Morgan and his son were crucial to her rise.

Belle's story is a compelling one for many reasons. The force of her personality alone explains her strong presence in the memories and imaginations of many who knew her and knew of her. Ardizzone in An Illuminated Life says she has, like many of her contemporaries and peers, succumbed to the vitality of Greene’s presence as it lingers in the stream-of-consciousness scrawl of her letters. The energy and personality that so many of her contempo­raries marveled at leap off the page and reveal a woman who was constantly thinking and learning and seeking inspiration and new ideas.

An Illuminated Life focuses on Belle de Costa Greene's background and experiences, on the social worlds and times she inhabited. Belle grew up in the struggling elite community of people of color in Washington, D.C., and eventually lived as a nominally white upper-middle-class New Yorker. In the earliest chapters, when there is very little direct evidence of Belle the child, Belle the schoolgirl, Belle in her first library experiences, the social and cultural history serves to reconstruct the period and places in which she lived. Even in the cen­tral chapters, when Belle's voice and the voices of her contemporaries offer rich descriptions of her experiences in the 1910s and 1920s, the cultural context plays an important role. Belle lived through two world wars and, according to Ardizzone, suffered losses in each of them. She saw social norms open up – for women, for sexual expression, for eccentricity – and close again. She rode financial booms up the economic ladder to privilege, and watched the stock market crash and fail to recover for a decade. She lived in New York as it transformed itself from an island city into a multi-borough modern metropolis of skyscrapers and motor cars, con­nected by bridges and tunnels, first competing with and then surpassing European cities in size and power.

Belle lived in a series of social realities, moved in and out of different circles (sometimes permanently), and embraced complicated public identities. At the turn of the twenty-first century, hardly a public figure emerges without a written or televised biography explaining his or her personal and family background and its impact on his or her career or public activities. But in her generation Belle was not alone in scorning personal history as irrelevant, in destroying personal papers, and in maintaining very different public and private personas.

Her attitude on this issue throws some obstacles into the path of those who have tried to tell her story. Belle was remarkably successful in limiting and controlling publicity about her private life both during and after her lifetime. No published study of Belle exists. A number of essays and a few public lectures focus on her, and she appears in biographies of Morgan and the other great men in her life, most notably Bernard Berenson. The absence of more pub­lished information is due in no small part to her decision to burn all of her personal papers shortly before her death, in 1950. And, as her own protégée and friend Dorothy Miner wrote in her posthumous tribute collection, Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, few of her intimates felt they really knew her well.

Belle took some secrets, especially about her early life and career, to her grave. And the friends and colleagues who knew her best have passed away. So too have her siblings, who might have been greatly affected had her story been told during their lifetimes. Belle was not completely successful, however, in destroying her papers. She left shelves full of her profes­sional, and occasionally not so professional, correspondence in her records at the Morgan Library. A few key folders have disappeared in recent years, but the files are still a rich source. Moreover, since written correspondence was the main way people did business in the early twentieth century, she left thousands of letters in the files of dealers, curators, and scholars, many of which have since been archived. The bulk of these papers document Belle's daily work in acquiring, assess­ing, and making accessible the artistic and scholarly treasures of the Morgan Library, but some – in handwritten postscripts or letters that stood in for both professional and personal updating – contain clues to Belle's social life and experiences that are the focus of An Illuminated Life.

Most significantly Bernard Berenson kept a trunk of her letters – over six hundred of them – dating from the period 1910-44. The bulk were written during the initial years of their friendship, 1909-16, when the two maintained a passionate although mainly long-distance love affair. These letters are a gold mine of information about her social life, about her work, about the people and events around her, about her own life and thoughts. Belle wrote so prolifically and engagingly about New York and the world in the early twentieth century that her letters to Berenson beg to be published in full. These letters, which Belle called her diary, contain a record of her life. Not a complete record, not an unbiased one, but almost no biog­rapher has that to work with.

Through a combination of these letters, the professional papers kept at the Pierpont Morgan Library and her correspondence scattered through dozens of archives, as well as public records, memoirs of her contemporaries, and stories told by those who knew her, Ardizzone in An Illuminated Life derives the events and patterns not just of Belle Greene's life but of the many social circles and worlds she inhabited. Over the course of her life, she moved between and across lines of color, class, culture, nation, and world views. Perhaps most astonishingly, she also illuminated her inner world, where she lived ‘behind the curtain of my mind.’

Ardizzone's competent, complimentary biography explains the complicated, glamorous woman who transcended her lack of formal higher education and obfuscated her race to become head of the Pierpont Morgan Library and confidante of the financial mogul who founded it. … the daughter of a civil rights activist who was the first African-American man to graduate from Harvard College … Although Ardizzone delineates the intricacies of major art transactions, she devotes more space to the copious details of Greene's flamboyant personal life than to assessments of the Morgan treasures that were her legacy. Still, Ardizzone (coauthor, Love on Trial) showcases the impressive talents of a woman who once wielded enormous power in New York society. – Publishers Weekly
A splendid biography! – Kathy Peiss, author of Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture
Adrizonne's definitive biography unravels the mystery of the bi-racial woman who made herself a world-famous celebrity. – Carla Kaplan, editor of Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters

The contradictions of Greene’s life only serve to accent her achievements. Secretive yet constantly in the public eye, Greene is pure fascination – the buyer of illuminated manuscripts who attracted others to her like moths to a flame. That one woman lived in so many different worlds offers readers the oppor­tunity to examine this moment in history through the eyes of an individual and watch a single person, a very singular person, navigate her way through the cultural shifts of communities and time. Ardizzone approaches this project with the gaze, experience, and tools not of an art scholar or a paleographer but of a social historian and a biographer. Greene’s world, and the many social circles she inhabited, comes through in An Illuminated Life.

History / Americas / Civil Rights

Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965 by Robert J. Cook, with series editor David Goldfield (Making the Modern South Series: Louisiana State University Press)

After years of neglect, the Civil War centennial is finally gaining the recognition it merits from historians – not so much because of the intrinsic importance of the event itself but for what it tells us about the diversity, pli­ability, and openness to manipulation of American memory at a time when elite and popular anxieties over change were rendered acute by the country's ongoing battle against communism and the growing stridency of the African-American civil rights movement.

As told in Troubled Commemoration, in 1957, Congress voted to set up the United States Civil War Centennial Commission. A federally funded agency within the Department of the Interior, the commission's charge was to oversee preparations to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the central event in the Republic's history. Politicians hoped that a formal program of activities to mark the centennial of the Civil War would both bolster American patriotism at the height of the cold war and increase tourism in the South. Almost overnight, however, the patriotic pageant that organizers envisioned was transformed into a struggle over the Civil War's historical memory and the injustices of Jim Crow. In Troubled Commemoration, Robert J. Cook, Professor of American History at the University of Sheffield in England, recounts the planning, organization, and ultimate failure of this controversial event and reveals how the broad-based public history extravaganza was derailed by its appearance during the decisive phase of the civil rights movement.

Cook shows how the centennial provoked widespread alarm among many African Americans, white liberals, and cold warriors because the national commission failed to prevent southern whites from commemorating the Civil War in a racially exclusive fashion. The public outcry followed embarrassing attempts to mark secession, the attack on Fort Sumter, and the South's victory at First Manassas, and prompted backlash against the celebration, causing the emotional scars left by the war to resurface. Cook demonstrates that both segregationists and their opponents used the controversy that surrounded the commemoration to their own advantage. Southern whites initially embraced the centennial as a weapon in their fight to save racial segregation, while African Americans and liberal whites tried to transform the event into a celebration of black emancipation.

Forced to quickly reorganize the commission, the Kennedy administration replaced the conservative leadership team with historians, including Allan Nevins and a young James I. Robertson, Jr., who labored to rescue the centennial by promoting a more soberly considered view of the nation’s past. Though the commemoration survived, Cook illustrates that white southerners quickly lost interest in the event as it began to coincide with the years of Confederate defeat, and the original vision of celebrating America's triumph over division and strife was lost.

Although Cook in Troubled Commemoration says he has been influenced by the recent surge in scholarly interest in historical memory, his desire to write what is, perhaps surprisingly, the first full-length study of the centen­nial derives primarily from his preoccupation with the Civil War itself and the wider black struggle for freedom and equality in the United States. Neither Martin Luther King's ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in August 1963 nor President John F. Kennedy's contemporaneous public pro­nouncements on civil rights can be read effectively without recognizing that they were delivered a hundred years after the issuance of Lincoln's Emancipa­tion Proclamation. In the midst of the faltering Civil War centennial, history provided both of these leaders with vital leverage in their efforts to promote racial equality in America. Troubled Commemoration therefore was not conceived originally as another contribution to the growing corpus of literature on historical mem­ory but, rather, as a more specialized investigation of the Civil War's continu­ing impact on the United States in the mid-twentieth century. While certainly it can be read as a test case of historical memory, it builds less on the work of theorists such as Pierre Nora than on that of empirical scholars such as David W. Blight and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, whose research and publications stem directly from a concern for racial justice in the nation as a whole and the South in particular.

Troubled Commemoration suggests that an assessment of this under-explored event can contribute to a fuller understanding of the civil rights struggle and the role of historical memory in the development of modern America, especially the modern South. Chapter 1 probes the cold war origins of the commemoration as well as the formation and initial organizing activities of the United States Civil War Centennial Commission. Chapter 2 investigates white southerners' relatively enthusiastic response to the commemoration with particular em­phasis on loc