2008 Book Descriptions

Appropriate for one-semester art history surveys or historically-focused art appreciation classes, this revised fourth edition of A History of Western Art focuses on the Western canon of art history in its chronological narrative of art from prehistory to the present. New features include images with improved architectural views; introductions to the methodologies of art history; context essays and technique commentaries; chapter-ending timelines; “Beyond the West” essays; and an online learning center that offers Internet-based resources for students and faculty. Digital images from the illustration program in The Image Vault, McGraw-Hill's new web-based presentation manager, are available to adopting instructors for presentations (no Internet access required), burning to a CD-ROM, or embedding in course Web pages. The eleven-chapter supplement, World Views: Topics in Non-Western Art, is a lavishly illustrated text that is available for only a few dollars more when packaged with A History of Western Art. Laurie Schneider Adams is a professor of art history at John Jay and the Graduate Center.

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Jonathan E. Adler and Lance Rips
Reasoning: Human Inference and its Foundations
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)

This interdisciplinary work is a collection of major essays on reasoning: deductive, inductive, abductive, belief revision, defeasible (non-monotonic), cross cultural, conversational, and argumentative. They are each oriented toward contemporary empirical studies. The book focuses on foundational issues, including paradoxes, fallacies, and debates about the nature of rationality, the traditional modes of reasoning, as well as counterfactual and causal reasoning. It also includes chapters on the interface between reasoning and other forms of thought. In general, this last set of essays represents growth points in reasoning research, drawing connections to pragmatics, cross-cultural studies, emotion, and evolution. Jonathan Adler is a professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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Marilyn Aguirre-Molina, Carlos Molina, Ruth Enid Zambrana
Health Issues in the Latino Community
(John Wiley & Sons, 2001)

Sweeping in scope, this volume identifies and offers an in-depth examination of the most critical health issues that affect Latinos’ health and health care within the United States. The book offers a comprehensive approach that informs and promotes the advancement of the practice, program planning, research, and public policy to improve health care of all Latino citizens. Marilyn Aguirre-Molina is a professor of public health at Lehman College and the Graduate Center.

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Meena Alexander
Quickly Changing River: poems
(Triquarterly, 2008)

In her poetry Meena Alexander uses bright colors, sounds, smells, and feelings to evoke a strong sensual experience; and she juxtaposes vivid imagery from the natural world—birds, lilies, horses—with images from the world of humans—oppression, slavery, and violence. The songs of a bird can become the voice of a girl in a café and the red juice of mulberries can be as shocking as blood. When she focuses her attention on the cloth of a girl's sari, the material of a woman's life, or the blood in her veins, she speaks to the particular experience of women in the world. The women are vividly present—although they are sometimes hidden or veiled. It is difficult not to come away from Quickly Changing River without a new sense of the power and frailty of being alive. Meena Alexander is a distinguished professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center.

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American Social History Project
Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's History, Vols. 2; 3d edition
(Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008)

Growing out of the effort to reinterpret American history from "the bottom up," these volumes focus on the fundamental social and economic conflicts in our history, integrating the history of community, family, gender roles, race, and ethnicity into the more familiar history of politics and economic development. This new edition has restructured chapters to make the book's information more manageable for students and contains more excerpts from primary sources. The editorial team, all on the staff of the Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project (ASHP/CML), consisted of visual editor Joshua Brown, executive director of ASHP/CML and an adjunct professor of history at the Graduate Center; visual editor David P. Jaffee, a professor of history at City College and the Graduate Center; supervising editor Pennee Bender, an adjunct professor of interactive technology and pedagogy at the Graduate Center; supervising editor Ellen Noonan; and executive editor Stephen Brier, a professor of urban education and vice president for Information Technology and External Programs at the Graduate Center.

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Ronnie Ancona, David J. Murphy
Horace: A Legamus Transitional Reader
(Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2008)

This reader, designed for students moving from elementary or intermediate Latin into reading the authentic Latin of Horace, contains 203 lines of Latin selections from his Satire and Odes. Introductory materials include an overview of the life and work of Horace, bibliography, and description of Horatian meters. The Latin selections are accompanied by pre-reading materials that help students understand underlying cultural and literary concepts; grammatical exercises; vocabulary notes; notes to assist reading comprehension; post-reading materials that encourage an appreciation of Horace’s style and reflection on what has been read; appendices on grammar and figures of speech; and a pull-out vocabulary of words appearing frequently in Horace. Ronnie Ancona is a professor of classics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center.

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Geoffrey Batchen
William Henry Fox Talbot
(Phaidon, 2008)

The father of modern photography, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77) developed the process by which photographic images could be reproduced, but he has yet to be sufficiently appreciated as a photographer in his own right. A key intellectual figure of the nineteenth century working in science, mathematics, astronomy, politics, and archaeology, he is arguably the most important figure in the invention of photography. His practice established many of the medium’s most familiar genres and he was devoted to the advancement of photography, publishing the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, in 1844–46 to reveal the potential of the medium to a wider audience. This monograph features many of Talbot’s best-known landscapes made around his home Lacock Abbey and some of the first negatives ever made, but it also includes lesser-known and previously unpublished work that reveals the extraordinary diverse scope of his endeavors. Geoffrey Batchen is a professor of art history at the Graduate Center.

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Antoinette Blum, ed.
Jean-Richard Bloch: un théâtre engagé
"Un Théâtre en Question" series
(Paris: Complexe, 2008)

Jean-Richard Bloch (1884–1947), writer, playwright, storyteller, essayist, political thinker, and poet, was militantly anti-Fascist and committed to the Popular Front. Theatre was a major aspect of his work. André Antoine produced his first play. The Last Emperor, his second met with success at Erwin Piscator’s theatre in Berlin. But The Birth of a City, commissioned by the Popular Front, is his most ambitious play. With this avant-garde work—Fernand Léger was the set designer, Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud composed the music—Bloch wanted to revolutionize playwriting and staging and create the first French “theatre for the masses.” This volume republishes Bloch’s essays on the theatre that have been unavailable for more than fifty years. In a lengthy introduction, editor Antoinette Blum retraces the journey of an intellectual for whom the theatre links poet and public, man and his time, in an unbreakable marriage. Antoinette Blum is a professor of French at Lehman College and the Graduate Center.

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Jaqueline Braveboy-Wagner
Small States in Global Affairs: The Foreign Policies of the Carribbean Community (CARICOM)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

This book represents an update of a well-received volume published in 1989, Caribbean in World Affairs. Given the broad changes that have occurred in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and taking into account requests for a second edition from Caribbean scholars and policymakers in recent years, Jaqueline Braveboy-Wagner has written this new edition with the same aim as the original: to provide a comprehensive and theoretically-grounded account of diplomatic developments in these microstates. She provides a lasting analysis of small state behavior, noting the recent renewal of interest in small states in both the global north and south. The new material includes attention to the changed global setting, updated theoretical developments in foreign policy, and the inclusion of Haiti and Suriname, newer members of Caricom. Jaqueline Braveboy-Wagner is a professor of political science at City College and the Graduate Center.

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David C. Brotherton and Phil Kratsemenas, eds.
Keeping Out the Other: A Critical Introduction to Immigration Enforcement Today
(Columbia University Press, 2008)

America's reputation for open immigration has always been accompanied by a desire to remove or discourage the migration of "undesirables." But recent restrictions placed on immigrants, along with an increase in detentions and deportations, point to a more worrying trend. Immigration enforcement has become the fastest growing sector for spending over the past two decades, dwarfing the money spent on helping immigrants adjust to their new lives. Instead of finding effective ways of integrating newcomers into American society, the United States is focusing on making the process of citizenship more difficult, provoking major protests and unrest. David Brotherton is a professor of criminal justice, sociology, and urban education at John Jay College and the Graduate Center.

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David C. Brotherton and Michael Flynn, eds.
Globalizing the Streets: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Youth, Social Control and Empowerment
(Columbia University Press, 2008)

Not since the cultural and economic rebellions of the 1960s have the activities of resistance among lower- and working- class youth caused such anxiety in the international community. Adopting the vantage point of those whose struggle for dignity, social solidarity, self-respect, and survival takes place in the criminalized, or marginalized, spaces in which they live, the contributors to this volume examine the struggle for identity and interdependence of these youth; their clashes with law enforcement and criminal codes; their fight for social, political, and cultural capital; and their efforts to achieve recognition and empowerment. These essays contextualize and humanize the seemingly senseless actions of these youths, who make visible the class contradictions, social exclusion, and rituals of psychological humiliation that permeate their everyday lives. Michael Flynn is associate director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College and associate professor of psychology at York College, CUNY. David C. Brotherton is a professor of criminal justice, sociology, and urban education at the Graduate Center and John Jay College.

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Steven M. Cahn, ed.
Seven Masterpieces of Philosophy
(Pearson Education, 2008)

This highly anticipated anthology, compiled by noted author and scholar Steven Cahn, presents in their entirety the seven major works central to any introductory philosophy course: Plato, Meno; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Bks. I, II); Descartes, Meditations; Berkeley, Three Dialogues; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; Kant, Fundamental Principles; and Mill, Utilitarianism. Each work has had a profound influence on philosophical thought, and the authors are generally regarded as among the world’s greatest philosophers. The translations are among the most well-respected and admired translations of those works, including the Cottingham translation of Descartes and the Ostwald translation of Aristotle. Each work is introduced and annotated throughout by the editor. The book's brevity and low price allow instructors to easily build the course they want around it, assigning additional books that touch upon their personal favorites. Steven Cahn is a professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center.

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Steven M. Cahn
From Student to Scholar: A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor
(Columbia University Press, 2008)

The book offers advice on succeeding in academic careers, beginning with graduate school and proceeding through the tenure process. Catherine R. Stimpson, Dean of the Graduate School at New York University, provides the Foreward. Steven Cahn is a professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center.

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Mary Ann Caws
Provençal Cooking: Savoring A Simple Life in France
(Pegasus Books, 2008)

More than thirty years ago, Mary Ann Caws, then a young professor, moved to Provence to translate the poetry of Provençal poet René Char. What sounded like a simple romantic sojourn turned into a journey of self-discovery on the joys of living simply and enjoying the maxims of the Provençal "good life"—good company, good food, and great wine, preferably from your neighbor's vineyard. The process of preparing food and then sharing it with friends and neighbors came to embody the essence of their existence on the hillside of Mount Vertaux. Now, in this delightful and lyric meditation on Provence and its food, Mary Ann invites you to sit down at her table and share in some of her favorite recipes, the recipes of her neighbors, and her delicious memories of life in France. Mary Ann Caws is a distinguished professor of comparative literature, English, and French at the Graduate Center.

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Mary Ann Caws
Salvador Dali
(Critical Lives Collection, REaktion Books, 2008)

“Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure—that of being Salvador Dalí.” A force unto himself, an icon of outrageousness, artistic brilliance, eccentricity, and unmistakable style, Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domènech, Marquis of Pubol, was one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century and, in this concise narrative, acclaimed art historian Mary Ann Caws provides a sharply written survey of his life and work, examining every twist and turn in Dalí’s long and multifaceted career and the pivotal artistic movements at whose center he stood. Caws also considers his relationships with his family, his lovers, and his friends; and his writings, drawings, photography, and painted works offer up new clues about the artist under Caws’s incisive eye, as she analyzes his lesser-known writings and creative works, as well as his Surrealist paintings and “hand-painted dream photographs” such as The Persistence of Memory. Mary Ann Caws is a distinguished professor of comparative literature, English, and French at the Graduate Center.

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Mary Ann Caws
To the Boathouse: A Memoir, paperback
(University of Alabama Press, 2008)

Caws tells us of her early life in North Carolina where she made her debut and began to struggle with accepted social values; of her educational experiences at Bryn Mawr, in Paris, and at Yale—where she weds a professor of philosophy; of the joys, small and large, of a complicated marriage that ends in divorce, after which she strives toward self-sufficiency and self-understanding; of her passion for writing, teaching, art, and poetry; of her friendships with the writers, artists, and intellectuals who provided sanctuary for her mind and heart; and of the many light-filled summers spent with her children at their house in Provence. Returning to visit the southern landscape and her hometown, she dwells on the steadying influence in her life of a singular place: the boathouse in New York's Central Park where for most of her adulthood she has retreated for peace and solace. Mary Ann Caws is a distinguished professor of comparative literature, English, and French at the Graduate Center.

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Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, ed.
“Aquí, ninfas del sur, venid ligeras.”
Voces poéticas virreinales.
(Iberoamaericana/Vervuert, 2008)

In this book, Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, noted scholar of Hispanic Studies, explores the formation of the literary and cultural personality of Spanish America from the vantage point of poetic developments. Using carefully selected voices that span the colonial period, she introduces readers to the poetry sung and written in the Americas both before and after the arrival of the Europeans. The texts are accompanied by clearly written essays that serve to underscore the similarities with and differences from foreign models. Additionally, they describe the struggle to achieve a distinct poetic expression within the peculiarities marking colonial societies and its diverse subjects. The texts have been carefully annotated by the editor and reveal the varied strains that have shaped Spanish American literature and its rich tradition. Raquel Chang-Rodriguez is a distinguished professor of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Todd R. Clear, George F. Cole, Michael D. Reisig
American Corrections, 8th ed.
(Wadsworth, 2008)

Todd R. Clear, a leading expert in the study of U.S. corrections, George F. Cole, considered by many as a "founding father" of modern criminal justice study, and coauthor Michael D. Reisig combine their talents in the new eighth edition of American Corrections. Taking a sociological and historic approach to corrections, the text treats institutional and community sanctions evenhandedly, looking at the system from the perspectives of the corrections worker as well as the offender. It also presents the concept of corrections as a "system" of interconnected organizations and carries this theme throughout the book. High-profile corrections cases taken from recent headlines and integrated coverage of career options in the field demonstrate the real-world relevance of the theories, concepts, and policies presented in the text for students. Finally, many instructors consistently choose Clear/Cole/Reisig because it provides comprehensive coverage without overwhelming students. Todd R. Clear is a distinguished professor of criminal justice at John Jay College and the Graduate Center.

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Bruce Cronin and Ian Hurd, eds.
UN Security Council and the Politics of International Authority: Law, Politics and Power
(Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2008)

This book observes how the growth of the political authority of the U.N. Security Council challenges the basic idea that states have legal autonomy over their domestic affairs. The individual essays survey the implications that flow from these developments in the crucial policy areas of: terrorism; economic sanctions; the prosecution of war crimes; human rights; humanitarian intervention; and, the use of force. In each of these areas, the evidence shows a complex and fluid relationship between state sovereignty, the power of the U.N., and the politics of international legitimation. Demonstrating how world politics has come to accommodate the contradictory institutions of international authority and international anarchy, this book makes an important contribution to how we understand and study international organizations and international law. Written by leading experts in the field, this volume will be of strong interest to students and scholars of international relations, international organizations, international law, and global governance. Bruce Cronin is an associate professor of political science at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Mario DiGangi, ed.
The Winter’s Tale: Texts and Contexts
(Bedford—St. Martin’s, 2008)

The Winter's Tale was one of the very last plays Shakespeare wrote, a moving romance whose themes are sin, forgiveness, death, rebirth, and the power of Time and Nature to heal all wounds. This edition of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale reprints the Bevington edition of the play accompanied by five sets of thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations designed to facilitate many different approaches to Shakespeare. The text includes tracts on childbirth, jealousy, women’s speech, rural festivities, and bears; royal proclamations and statutes about vagabonds and peddlers; popular ballads on marriage and monsters; treatises about monarchy, Catholic and Protestant theological debates, farm labor, and art collecting; a transcription of the trial of Anne Boleyn; and accounts of performances of the statue scene since the 19th century. The primary documents contextualize the dramatic genres of romance and tragicomedy; gender and family relations; political authority and resistance; country work and play; and the social, religious, and erotic uses of art. Mario DiGangi is an associate professor of English at Lehman College and the Graduate Center.

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Marc Edelman, with Saturnino M. Borras Jr., and Cristóbal Kay, eds.
Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization, paperback
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2008)

Readers of this volume will encounter peasants and farmers who struggle at home and traverse national borders to challenge the World Trade Organization and other powerful global institutions. The book celebrates a dynamic sector of international civil society, and tackles the thorny questions of successes and failures, ethical and political dilemmas, troubled alliances with NGOs, protest repertoires, and representation claims; studies the activists in Brazil who uproot plots of genetically modified soybeans, forest dwellers in Indonesia who chop down rubber plantations to cultivate rice to feed their families, 'runaway villages' in China that take up arms to resist corrupt officials, and Mexican migrants who, having exited in desperation, return from abroad to transform their communities; and analyzes contemporary collective action in all its complexity, acknowledging ambiguities and contradictions, posing challenging questions, and providing concrete strategies for scholars and activists. Marc Edelman is a professor of anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center.

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Terrie Epstein
Interpreting National History: Race, identity and pedagogy in classrooms and communities
(Routledge, 2008)

How do students’ racial identities work with and against teachers’ pedagogies to shape their understandings of history and contemporary society? Based on a long-term ethnographic study, Interpreting National History examines the startling differences in black and white students' interpretations of U.S. history in classroom and community settings. Interviews with children and teens compare and contrast the historical interpretations students bring with them to the classroom with those they leave with after a year of teacher's instruction. Firmly grounded in history and social studies education theory and practice, this powerful book illuminates how textbooks, pedagogies, and contemporary learning standards are often disconnected from students’ cultural identities; explores how students and parents interpret history and society in home and community settings; and successfully analyzes examples of the challenges and possibilities facing teachers of history and social studies. Terrie Epstein is an associate professor of urban education at Hunter College and the Graduate Center.

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Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen
Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality, rev. paperback edition
(Seven Stories Press, 2008)

Typecasting chronicles the emergence of the “science of first impression” and reveals how the work of its creators—early social scientists—continues to shape how we see the world and to inform our most fundamental and unconscious judgments of beauty, humanity, and degeneracy. In this groundbreaking exploration of the growth of stereotyping amidst the rise of modern society, authors Ewen & Ewen demonstrate “typecasting” as a persistent cultural practice. Drawing on fields as diverse as history, pop culture, racial science, and film, and including over one hundred images, many published here for the first time, the authors present a vivid portrait of stereotyping as it was forged by colonialism, industrialization, mass media, urban life, and the global economy. This revised paperback edition of Typecasting contains a new prologue, a new opening section (Part I) entitled "The First Divide," and a new Coda. Stuart Ewen is a distinguished professor of history and sociology at the Graduate Center.

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Julio Cammarota and Michelle Fine, eds.
Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion
(Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2008)

Revolutionalizing Education makes unique contributions to the literature on young people by offering a broad framework for understanding a ground-breaking critical research methodology known as Youth-led Participatory Action Research. YPAR is a way to involve young people in defining the research questions and problems most relevant in their lives—and more importantly in acting upon them. Many scholars have turned to YPAR as a way to address both the political challenges and inherent power imbalances of conducting research with young people, while remaining sensitive to the methodological challenges of qualitative inquiry in recent years. This collection offers the first, definitive statement of YPAR as it relates to sites of education, in particular, drawing on a unique combination of theory and practice, and bringing together student writings alongside those of major scholars in the field. Michelle Fine is a distinguished professor of psychology, urban education, and liberal studies at the Graduate Center.

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Selcuk R. Sirin and Michelle Fine
Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods
(New York University Press, 2008)

For those seeking to understand how Muslim youth and other groups of immigrant youth negotiate their identities as Americans, this book provides a much needed roadmap. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terror, growing up Muslim in the U.S. has become a far more challenging task for young people. They must contend with popular cultural representations of Muslim-men-as-terrorists and Muslim-women-as-oppressed, the suspicious gaze of peers, teachers, and strangers, and police, and the fierce embodiment of fears in their homes. With great attention to quantitative and qualitative detail, the authors provide heartbreaking and funny stories of discrimination and resistance, delivering hard to ignore statistical evidence of moral exclusion for young people whose lives have been situated on the intimate fault lines of global conflict, and who carry international crises in their backpacks and in their souls. Michelle Fine is a distinguished professor of psychology, urban education, and liberal studies at the Graduate Center.

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Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley
Women and Politics around the World: A Comparative History and Survey
(ABC-CLIO, February 2009)

Though women represent more than half of the world's population, they account for only fifteen percent of its elected officials, and their particular concerns often go unaddressed in the political sphere. This two-volume work explores the role of women in political systems worldwide, and examines how government actions in various countries impact the lives of the female population. The first volume looks at such crucial issues facing women today as health policy, civil rights, and education. The second volume profiles twenty-two countries that represent a broad range of governments, economies, and cultures; reviews the history and current state of women's political and economic participation in each particular country; and includes an in-depth look at a representative policy. The result is a resource unlike any other—one that gives students, researchers, and other interested readers a fresh new way of investigating a truly global issue. Joyce Gelb is a professor of political science and liberal studies at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Édouard Glissant and Alexandre Leupin
Les Entretiens de Bâton Rouge
(Gallimard, 2008)

In 1990-91, while teaching at the University of Baton-Rouge, Louisiana, Édouard Glissant participated in a series of conversations with his medievalist colleague Alexandre Leupin. These conversations reveal his long-standing opposition to systems of thought and to fixed ideologies, as well as his interest in what philosophers generally scorn—landscapes, the blues, minorities. He envisages the collision between the European Middle-Ages and the reign of Louis XIV as a drama between two concepts of the world: the language of rationality at its height—a system of thought transmitted by Catholicism—versus Creolization—epitomized by Rabelais, Montaigne, and the Pléiade poets—which introduced and developed critical thought, secularism, the legal system, democracy, the abolition of slavery, the rights of man and woman. Throughout his personal story, Édouard Glissant exalts literature and particularly poetry which escapes the doctrine of determinism, develops the idea of “eccentric” thought, and seeks what is new and amazing in the story of human and cultural relationships today. Édouard Glissant is a distinguished professor of French at the Graduate Center.

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Kenneth A. Gould, David Naguib Pellow, and Allan Schnaiberg
The Treadmill of Production: Injustice and Unsustainability in the Global Economy
(Paradigm Publishers, 2008)

Schnaiberg’s concept of the treadmill of production is arguably the most visible and enduring theory to emerge in three decades of environmental sociology. Elaborated and tested, it has been found to be an accurate predictor of political-economic changes in the global economy. In the global South, it figures prominently in the work of structural environmental analysts and has been used by many political-economic movements. Building new extensions and applications of the treadmill theory, this book shows how and why northern analysts and governments have failed to protect our environment and secure our future. Using an empirically based political-economic perspective, the authors outline the causes of environmental degradation, the limits of environmental protection policies, and the failures of institutional decision-makers to protect human well-being. Kenneth A. Gould is a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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Kenneth A. Gould and Tammy L. Lewis, eds.
Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology
(Oxford University Press, 2009)

Building this collection on the model of a successful undergraduate classroom experience, coeditors Gould and Lewis asked the contributors to choose a topic, match it with their favorite class lecture, and construct a lesson to reflect the way they teach it in the classroom. The result is an engaging, innovative, and versatile volume that presents the core ideas of environmental sociology in concise, accessible chapters. Each brief lesson is designed as a stand-alone piece and can be easily adapted into an existing course syllabus. Ideal for any course that looks at the environment from a sociological perspective, Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology offers an insightful introduction to this dynamic subject. Kenneth A. Gould is a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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John D. Greenwood
A Conceptual History of Psychology
(McGraw-Hill, 2008)

This book explores in great depth the conceptual continuities and discontinuities that inform the history of thought about human psychology and behavior, from the speculations of the ancient Greeks to contemporary scientific psychology. Greenwood provides an engaging and stimulating analysis of the critical ideas and movements that have shaped the development of scientific psychology, including changing conceptions of the nature of science. Combining a clear and engaging writing style with a critically challenging account of the conceptual history of psychology, the author seamlessly weaves together complex ideas, movements and biographical detail to provide an exciting, detailed and comprehensive account of the historical development of psychological thought and science. The first history of psychology to stimulate students to think critically about the conceptual contours of the history of their discipline, the book also includes separate histories of the development of abnormal, clinical, social and developmental psychology. John Greenwood is professor of philosophy at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Marilyn Hacker, trans.
Venus Khoury-Ghata, Nettles
(Graywolf, 2008)

Masterfully translated by Marilyn Hacker, this new collection of original poetry is by Lebanese poet Vénus Khoury-Ghata, author of She Says, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this collection, Vénus Khoury-Ghata brings her impulses for lyric poetry and for stark narrative together into four enchanting sequences. Each confronts the realities of womanhood, immigration, and cultural conflict with an imagination and history born from both the Arabic and French languages. Marilyn Hacker is a professor of French at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Marilyn Hacker, trans.
Marie Etienne, King of a Hundred Horsemen (Roi des cent cavaliers)
A Bilingual Edition
(Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2008)
Robert Fagles Translation Prize 2008

Poet and translator Marilyn Hacker’s translation of Marie Etienne's King of a Hundred Horsemen was the first winner of the Robert Fagles Translation Prize, instituted in 2008. The first of Marie Étienne’s books to be published in English, it introduces a major voice in world literature to a new audience. Étienne’s poetry synthesizes the contemporary and the classical, the tragic and the mundane—the quotidian transformed by the tragic prisms of myth and history. Through a profound and complex reinterpretation of the sonnet form, the book reflects, as in a mosaic of shattered mirrors, many of the writer’s ongoing preoccupations: the relationship of East and West; an eroticism at once physical and cerebral; the interaction of poetry and prose; the strange blending of the everyday and the foreign, in which the most “exotic” journeys become ordinary and the most ordinary displacements partake of the strange.

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Marilyn Hacker, ed.,
Wayne Miller, Kevin Prufer, eds. in chief
New European Poets
(Graywolf Press, 2008)

Marilyn Hacker was the editor of the French and Francophone section and also served as a translator for this landmark anthology, which is compiled from works by poets whose writing was first published after 1970—a new generation of poets who have come of age since Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, Federico García Lorca, Eugenio Montale, and Czeslaw Milosz. The 270 selected poets represent every country in Europe, and many of them are published here for the first time in English. The poetry is fiercely intelligent, often irreverent, and engaged with history and politics. The range of styles is exhilarating. Poetry translated from more than thirty languages is represented, including French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and more regional languages such as Basque, Irish Gaelic, and Sámi. Marilyn Hacker is a professor of French at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Dagmar Herzog
Sex in Crisis
(Basic Books, 2008)

Only three decades after the legalization of abortion, the broad gains of the feminist movement, and the emergence of the gay rights movement, America has gone frigid. They are not anti-sex, but they’re increasingly anxious about it—largely due to the tactics of the Religious Right. How has the Religious Right achieved this ascendancy? Surprisingly, argues Dagmar Herzog, evangelicals have appropriated the lessons of the first sexual revolution far more effectively than liberals. With the support of a billion-dollar Christian sex industry, evangelicals have crafted an astonishingly graphic and effective pitch for the pleasures of “hot monogamy”—for married, heterosexual couples only, of course. This potent message has enabled them to win elections and seduce souls, with disastrous political consequences. Sex in Crisis wittily and fiercely forces America to confront its national sexual dysfunction and demand a more sophisticated national conversation about the facts of life. Dagmar Herzog is Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar and professor of history at the Graduate Center.

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Benjamin Hett
Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand
(Oxford University Press, 2008)
2007 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History, Wiener Library, London

The book is a biography of the German lawyer Hans Litten (1903–38) who devoted his legal practice to fighting the Nazis, and on one occasion in 1931 subjected Adolf Hitler to a withering three-hour cross examination. Hitler took his revenge after 1933, and Litten died in the Dachau Concentration Camp in 1938. and on the other a study of the collapse of the rule of law in Germany in the years just before and just after the Nazi takeover. The first full-length biography of this very brave man, the book also explores the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic, the collapse of the rule of law in Germany in the years just before and just after the Nazi takeover, and the terror of Nazi rule in Germany after 1933. Benjamin Hett is an assistant professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center.

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Hildegard Hoeller, ed.
Horatio Alger Jr.'s Ragged Dick
(W.W. Norton, 2008)

Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is arguably the best known of Horatio Alger's American rags-to-riches stories. It is canonical as a cultural text, rather than a purely literary one, as this Norton Critical Edition reflects. An extensive “Contexts" section includes maps, photographs, and documents showing how and why Alger used the backdrop of New York City to highlight problems of urban poverty, immigration, and child labor in mid-nineteenth century America. "Criticism" is thematically organized around contemporary reviews and responses, the heated public debate about whether Alger should be available in American public libraries, parodies of and related responses to Alger, and four recent critical essays by Mary Wroth Walsh, Glenn Hendler, Michael Moon, and Hildegard Hoeller. Hildegard Hoeller is a professor of English at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center.

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Edwin P. Hollander
Inclusive Leadership: The Essential Leader-Follower Relationship
(Routledge/Psychology Press, 2008)

This landmark book by a noted organizational social psychologist highlights the leader-follower relationship as central to effective leadership. Inclusive leadership is a process of active followership emphasizing follower needs and expectations, with the guiding principle of "Doing things with people, not to people," in a two-way influence relationship. The book provides strong theoretical and empirical guidance for leadership development and includes many of Hollander’s key original papers. Each is updated in a chapter with his new reflective commentary, including those on "Interdependence," "Women and Leadership," "Power and Leadership," "Legitimacy," "Ethical Challenges," "Idiosyncrasy Credit," and "Civil Liberties." Six new chapters begin with an "Overview of Inclusive Leadership," identifying distinctive concepts and practices, and an "Historical Background." There also are new chapters on such topics as "Applications," "Presidential Leadership," and "College and University Leadership." It concludes with "Lessons from Experience," a revealing "Afterword" on his career, and a comprehensive Bibliography. Edwin P. Hollander is a distinguished professor emeritus of industrial and organizational psychology at Baruch College and the Graduate Center.

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Anne Humpherys and Louis James, eds.
G.W.M. Reynolds: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Politics, and the Press
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)

G. W. M. Reynolds (1814–79), a prolific novelist and an influential journalist and editor, was a man of contradictions in both his life and writing: a middle-class figure who devoted his life to working class issue; the founder of the radical newspaper Reynolds Weekly, as well as a bestselling author of historical romances, gothic and sensation novels, oriental tales, and domestic fiction; a perennial bankrupt who nevertheless ended his life prosperously. A figure of such diversity requires a collaborative study. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars, this volume does justice to the full range of Reynolds's achievement and influence. With proper emphasis on new work in the field, the contributors take on Reynolds's involvement with Chartism, serial publication, the mass market periodical, commodity culture, and the introduction of French literature into British consciousness, to name just a few of the topics covered. Anne Humpherys is a professor of English at Lehman College and the Graduate Center.

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Helen L. Johnson and Arthur Salz, eds.
What is Authentic Educational Reform: Pushing Against the Compassionate Conservative Agenda
(Routledge, 2007; paperback, 2008)

Challenging the compassionate conservative agenda for educational reform—an agenda which seeks to improve American education through a business model focused on scripted lessons, lock-step approaches to teaching, high-stakes testing, and rigid accountability measures—this book critiques the assumptions of this agenda, examines the problems that have riddled its implementation in schools, and suggests constructive alternatives. Educational theorists and researchers—including Joel Spring, Sonia Nieto, Bill Ayers, and Susan Ohanian—classroom teachers, and parents, offer a mix of perspectives on: the social and political contexts of current educational reform initiatives; the impact of the compassionate conservative agenda on educational policies and practices; the ways in which children and teachers are affected by this agenda and its policies; and approaches that hold out hope for implementing authentic education reform. Helen L. Johnson is a professor of educational psychology and urban education at Queens College and the Graduate Center.

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Michio Kaku
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
(Bantam Books / Random House, 2008)

One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, Michio Kaku, a renowned physicist and cofounder of string field theory, explores to what extent the technologies and devices of science fiction that are deemed equally impossible today might well become commonplace in the future. In a compelling, thought-provoking, and entertaining narrative, he explains how the science of optics and electromagnetism may one day enable us to bend light around an object; how ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us to the nearby stars; how telepathy and psychokinesis may one day be possible; and why a time machine is apparently consistent with the known laws of quantum physics. Michio Kaku is a professor of physics at City College and Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Graduate Center.

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Fred Kaplan
Coffee with Mark Twain
(New York: Sterling; London: Duncan Baird, 2008)

Mark Twain shaped our view of childhood, the frontier spirit, slavery, and humankind’s follies and pretensions. Revel now in his caustic wit, tall tales, and colorfully expressed opinions, all told to a distinguished professor and biographer. This master of repartee regales us with stories about his many different guises, from humorist to riverboat pilot to inventor of the self-pasting photograph album. Fred Kaplan is a distinguished professor emeritus of English at the Graduate Center.

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Fred Kaplan
Lincoln, The Biography of a Writer
(Harper, 2008)

For Abraham Lincoln, whether he was composing love letters, speeches, or legal arguments, words mattered. No president since has written his own words and addressed his audience with equal and enduring effectiveness. An admirer and avid reader of Burns, Byron, Shakespeare, and the Old Testament, Lincoln was the most literary of our presidents. His views on love, liberty, and human nature were shaped by his reading and knowledge of literature. Kaplan focuses on the elements that shaped Lincoln's mental and imaginative world; how his writings molded his identity, relationships, and career; and how they simultaneously generated both the distinctive political figure he became and the public discourse of the nation. This unique account of Lincoln's life and career highlights the shortcomings of the modern presidency, reminding us, through Lincoln's legacy and appreciation for language, that the careful and honest use of words is a necessity for successful democracy. Fred Kaplan is a distinguished professor emeritus of English at the Graduate Center.

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Philip Kasinitz, John H. Mollenkopf, Mary C. Waters, Jennifer Holdaway
Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age
(Russel Sage Foundation; Harvard University Press, 2008)

Behind the contentious politics of immigration lies the question of how well new immigrants are becoming part of American society. To address this question, Inheriting the City draws on the results of a ground-breaking study of young adults of immigrant parents in metropolitan New York to provide a comprehensive look at their social, economic, cultural, and political lives. While some experts worry that these young adults would not do as well as previous waves of immigrants due to lack of high-paying manufacturing jobs, poor public schools, and an entrenched racial divide, Inheriting the City finds that the second generation is rapidly moving into the mainstream—speaking English, working in jobs that resemble those held by native New Yorkers their age, and creatively combining their ethnic cultures and norms with American ones. Philip Kasinitz is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center. John H. Mollenkopf is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The Graduate Center. Mary C. Waters is M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Jennifer Holdaway is a Program Director at the Social Science Research Council.

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John Klenig
Ethics and Criminal Justice: An Introduction, paperback
(Series: Cambridge Applied Ethics; Cambridge University Press, 2008)

This textbook looks at the main ethical questions that confront the criminal justice system — legislature, law enforcement, courts, and corrections—and those who work within that system, especially police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, juries, and prison officers. John Kleinig sets the issues in the context of a liberal democratic society and its ethical and legislative underpinnings, and illustrates them with a wide and international range of real-life case studies. Topics covered include discretion, capital punishment, terrorism, restorative justice, and re-entry. Kleinig's discussion is both philosophically acute and grounded in institutional realities, and will enable students to engage productively with the ethical questions which they encounter both now and in the future—whether as criminal justice professionals or as reflective citizens. The book is ideal for applied philosophy and criminal justice ethics courses. John Kleinig is a professor of criminal justice and philosophy at John Jay College and the Graduate Center.

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William Kornblum and Joseph Julien
Social Problems, 13th edition
(Prentice Hall, 2008)

Written by a respected scholar in the field, this authoritative and very accessible text offers students a contemporary introduction to social problems by introducing the major trends and future outlook for each social problem. Social policies devised to address social problems—and their consequences—are examined in depth by presenting the key research conducted to examine, explain, and alleviate today’s social problems. The text takes the discussion of social problems one step further by looking at each problem from a global perspective. New features of this revised and updated thirteenth edition include a discussion of the “culture war”; a current controversies box on the Virginia Tech massacre; expanded discussions of the effects of crowding and military duty on mental health; and sections on identity theft, political discrimination—including felony disenfranchisement and anti-voter fraud campaigns, shelter poverty and homelessness, abstinence-only programs, modes of entry for illegal immigrants, immigration reform, and patterns of global terrorism. William Kornblum is a professor of psychology and sociology at the Graduate Center.

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Rachel Meredith Kousser
Hellenistic and Roman Ideal Sculpture: The Allure of the Classical
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Rachel Kousser draws on contemporary reception theory to present a new approach to Hellenistic and Roman ideal sculpture. She analyzes the Romans’ preference for retrospective, classicizing statuary based on Greek models over the innovative creations prized by modern scholars. Using a case study of a particular sculptural type, a forceful yet erotic image of Venus, Kousser argues that the Romans self-consciously employed such sculptures to represent their ties to the past in a rapidly evolving world. At the same time, the Romans’ flexible and opportunistic use of past forms had important implications for the future: it constituted the origins of classicism in Western art. The book includes a re-evaluation of major monuments such as the Venus de Milo, the Column of Trajan, and the Arch of Constantine; and covers major topics of contemporary interest, such as the transformation of Greek art in Rome, metropolitan art in the provinces, and pagan art in the newly Christian Roman Empire. Rachel Kousser is an assistant professor of art history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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Richard Kramer
Unfinished Music
(Oxford University Press, 2008)

Unfinished Music draws its inspiration from the riddling aphorism by Walter Benjamin that serves as its epigraph: “the work is the death mask of its conception.” The work in its finished, perfected state conceals the enlivening process engaged in its creation. An opening chapter examines some explosive ideas from the mind of J. G. Hamann, eccentric figure of the anti-rationalist Enlightenment, on the place of language at the seat of thought. These ideas are pursued as an entry into the no less radical mind of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose bold idiosyncrasies, like Hamann's, disrupted the discourse of Enlightenment aesthetics. Bach is a central player here, his late music the subject of fresh inquiry; but there are others whose unfinished works are addressed—among them, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert—as the author explores the uneasy relationship between the finished work and the elusive traces of profound labors buried in its past. Richard Kramer is a distinguished professor of music at the Graduate Center.

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Marnia Lazreg
Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad
(Princeton University Press, 2008)

This book looks at the intimate relationship between torture and colonial domination through an examination of the French army's coercive tactics during the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962. Drawing extensively from archives, confessions by former torturers, interviews with former soldiers, and war diaries, as well as writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others, Lazreg argues that occupying nations justify their use of torture as a regrettable but necessary means of saving Western civilization from those who challenge their rule. She shows how torture was central to guerre révolutionnaire, a French theory of modern warfare that called for total war against the subject population and which informed a pacification strategy founded on brutal psychological techniques borrowed from totalitarian movements. Lazreg also seeks to understand torture's impact on the Algerian population and on the French troops who became their torturers and explores the roles Christianity and Islam played in rationalizing these acts. Marnia Lazreg is a professor of sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center.

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Gerald P. Mallon, ed.
Social Work Practice with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People, 2nd rev. edition
(Routledge, 2008)

Although the vast majority of LGBT persons are healthy, resilient, and hardy individuals who do not seek social work intervention, some have been or will be clients in social work agencies. Social Work Practice with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People, second edition, is the updated classic text that has expanded its scope to include new content on practice with bisexual and transgender populations—and incorporated this content throughout. This informative book provides a knowledge base of practice that will better prepare students and practitioners for working sensitively, competently, and effectively with LGBT individuals. Gerald Mallon is an associate professor of social welfare at the Hunter School of Social Work and the Graduate Center, and executive director of the National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning.

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Pyong Gap Min
Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City
(Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 2008)

Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival is at once a sophisticated empirical analysis and a riveting collection of stories —about immigration, race, work, and the American dream. Pyong Gap Min takes Korean produce retailers as a case study to explore how involvement in ethnic businesses—especially where it collides with the economic interests of other ethnic groups—powerfully shapes the social, cultural, and economic unity of immigrant groups. Pyong Gap Min returns to the racially charged events surrounding black boycotts of Korean stores in the 1990s, which were fueled by frustration among African Americans at a perceived economic invasion of their neighborhoods. The Korean community responded with rallies, political negotiations, and publicity campaigns of their own. The disappearance of such disputes in recent years suggests that ethnic unity is not inevitable but rather emerges, often as a form of self-defense, under certain contentious conditions. Solidarity, Min argues, is situational. Pyong Gap Min is a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center.

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Kevin D. Murphy, with photographs by Paul Rocheleau
The Houses of Greenwich Village
(Abrams, 2008)

With its patchwork of secluded courtyards, gardens and narrow tree-lined streets, New York’s Greenwich Village is one of the very few neighborhoods that still retains the charm and timelessness of old New York. In this overview of houses from the early nineteenth century to contemporary Modernist examples, Kevin Murphy explores the architecture and interiors of eighteen houses and two gardens located in what has become one of New York City’s most exclusive and desirable residential communities. Beginning with the Robert Blum House (1827), he traces the history behind each home and delves into the biographies of its original owners and architects, revealing the evolution of structure, design, and style in the neighborhood throughout the nineteenth century, as well as its vibrant and at times eccentric character into the twentieth century. The photographs by Paul Rocheleau, specially commissioned for this book, give readers unprecedented access to some of the most beautiful homes in New York. Kevin Murphy is a professor of art history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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Kevin D. Murphy, ed.
Folk Art in Maine: Uncommon Treasures, 1750–1925
(Down East Books, 2008)

Folk art fascinates, perhaps because it proves that producing utilitarian objects can provide the opportunity for self-expression by generally self-taught artists. From decoys to doll houses, from scrimshaw to sea chests, from weathervanes to whirligigs, folk artists find wonderment in the workaday, transforming the mundane to the marvelous. This volume serves as an introduction for the novice, a treasure for the collector, and as a companion piece to the 2008 Maine Folk Art Trail, with exhibits in eleven of the state’s museums. The book features a general introduction by Stacy C. Hollander, senior curator of the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, and commentary from curators of Maine’s folk art collections. Kevin Murphy is a professor of art history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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