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I Praise My Destroyer (Random House, 1998) is Diane Ackerman's
(English; best known for A Natural History of the Senses) 15th book.
These lyric, witty, intense poems, like her other work, respond
to and relate nature, science, and society, Her previous book, A Slender Thread:
Rediscovering Hope at the Heart at Crisis (Vintage Books, Random House, 1998),
is a reflection on Ackerman's experience as a counselor on a suicide
and crisis hotline. The Chicago Tribune said it was "lyrical and
cosmic...personal and affecting." The Book at Love (W. W. Norton & Co., 1998),
edited by Ackerman and Jeanne Mackin, is an anthology of letters,
poems, fiction, essays, and memoirs. Analytical Development Economics: the Less Developed Economy Revisited (MIT, 1997), by Kaushik Basu (economics), is a new edition of a text intended for a one-semester, graduate-level survey. Professor Alain de Janvry said: "Professor Basu's 1984 Less Developed Economy has been a teaching classic to show students the power of rigorous economic modeling in explaining the fundamental issues of the development problem and exploring alternative policy options. This new edition extends this approach to a number ot the issues .. .that are currently dominating the field Languages of Power in Islamic Spain (CDL Press, 1997), by Ross Brann (Near Eastern studies), is an eight-paper volume, the third in the series of Occa-sional Publications of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and Program of Jewish Studies, It discusses, among other things, various aspects of the Muslim, Christian,and Spanish cultural interaction and investigates the significance of some of the contested cultural bound-aries erected between and within the communities in Spain between the Muslim conquest of al-Andalus in 711 until the Christian conquest of Granada in 1492. The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (Random House, 1997), by Joan Jacobs Brumberg (women's studies), draws on unpublished diaries of adolescent girls, as well as on many other historical sources to describe how growing up in a female body has changed over the past century and why that experience is more difficult today than ever before. Medieval Architecture in Western Europe from A.D. 300-1500 (Oxford, 1998), by Robert G. Calkins (history of art), fills a gap between the slight treatment of major medieval buildings in general surveys of art history and specialized studies The nicely illustrated examples, representative of traditions and innova-tive solutions, will serve tourists as well as students, It includes a CD-ROM. Easy Women: Sex and Gender in Modern Mexican Fiction (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), by Debra A. Castillo (Ro-mance studies), is concerned with the "area of slippage between boundaries and their transgression...where women-through the force of circum-stance or personal choice-step outside such dominant culture codings of female behavior and thus enter into a sliding category: loose women, easy women, public women, 'locos,' prostitutes. Women who infringe upon the public space remain scandalous..., quite apart from . . . sexual availability" (pp. 3-4). Greeks and Barbarians: Essays on the Interactions between Greeks and Non-Greeks in Antiquity and the Conse-quences for Eurocentrism (Occasional Publications of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Program of Jewish Studies, Cornell, Vol. 4, 1997), edited by John E. Coleman (classics) and Clark A. Walz, includes contributions from many experts with differing perspectives, including other Cornell faculty members Martin Bernal (government) and Gail Hoist-Warhaff (comparative literature). Discipline and Experience: the Math-ematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago, 1995), by Peter Dear (history and science and technol-ogy studies), reconceives the nature of the scientific revolution. Dear focuses on changing notions of experience and how these developed into the experi-mental work that is at the center of modern science. The book has just received the Ludwik Fleck Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science the society's main book award. Quasioptical Systems (IEEE Press/Chap-man Hall, 1998), by Paul F. Goldsmith (astronomy), explains how systems for radio astronomy, remote sensing, com-munications, and other applications can be designed taking diffraction into account, but with the efficiency and economy afforded by Gaussian beam propagation analysis. This book includes extensive theoretical discussion and practical description of focusing, frequency selective, and polarization processing components. Decadence and Catholicism (Harvard, 1997), by Ellis Hanson (English and women's studies), pursues a gay studies approach to the intersections of the erotic,the aesthetic and the religious. Late-nineteenth-century aesthetes (Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, J.-K. Huysmans, Walter Pater, and Paul Verlaine) found in the Church a peculiar language that gave them a means of artistic and sexual expression. Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Cornell, 1997),edited by Peter J. Katzenstein (government; Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies), argues that Germany, although larger than any other member of the European Union and playing a crucial role in the economic and political life of Eastern Europe, has pooled some of its power through the institutions of the European Union rather than seeking to maximize national power narrowly defined, Germany trades in one kind of power for another, German domination over Europe is thus a mirage, asserts Katzenstein, both close at hand and receding. Aquinas's Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann (Cornell, 1998), edited by Scott MacDonald (philosophy; Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies) and Eleonore Stump, explores the ethical dimensions of philosophical and theological topics in Aquinas's texts: happiness, moral virtue, natural law, the metaphysical basis of Aquinas's account of goodness, the ramifications of his concerns for philosophy of language, and the significance of his philosophical psychology for his ethics. (Norman Kretzmann, 1928-1998, was the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters at Cornell.) History and Memory after Auschwitz (Cornell, 1998), by Dominick LaCapra (history; Bryce and Edith Bowmar Professor in the Humanities and director of the Society for the Humanities),focuses on the interactions among history, memory, and ethicopolitical concerns as they emerge in the after- math of the Shoah" (p. 2). In doing so, LaCapra's chapters contribute to consideration of general questions such as "What aspects of the past should be remembered and how. . .? Are there phenomena whose traumatic nature blocks understanding and disrupts memory while producing belated effects that have an impact on attempts to represent or otherwise address the past? What, in general, is the significance of trauma in history? .. .Can-or should- historiography define itself in a purely scholarly and professional way that distances it from public memory and its ethical implications'?.. Does art itself have a special responsibility with respect to traumatic events that remain invested with value and emotion?" (p. 1). Saul Friedlander says,"... LaCapra has become the most sensitive and pen-etrating interpreter of the highly complex and difficult issues raised by the repre--sentation of the Holocaust." And Geoffrey Hartman says,"... LaCapra makes it clear not only how complex the act of reception is in this case but also how easily it can go wrong,and what concepts may help usto avoid error. The New Empire: An interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-7898 (Cornell,1998), by Walter LaFeber (history; Marie Underhill Noll Professor of American History) is the 35th anniversary edition (with a new preface) of this Beveridge Award-winning study. LaFeber's argument that economic forces propelled America to world power in the 19th century has been widely influential. The American Historical Review says,"...those who shaped American diplomacy believed expanding foreign markets were the cure for recurring depressions...The theory that America was thrust by events into a position of world power it never sought and was unprepared to discharge must now be re-examined. Also brought into question is the thesis that American policymakers have depended for direction on the uncer-tain compass of utopian idealism," LaFeber's most recent book, The Clash: A History of U.S-Japan Relations, won both the Bancroft Prize for History and the Organization of American Historians' Ellis W. Hawley Prize. Power Sleep: The Revolutionary Program That Prepares Your Mind tar Peak Performance (Villard, 1998), by James B. Maas (psychology), is, says author of The One Minute Manager Ken Blanchard '63, "a revolutionary and powerful approach to success in the workplace." Risk-Taking in International Politics: Prospect Theory in American Foreign Policy (Michigan, 1998), by Rose McDermott (government), applies a psychological model to understand decision making under conditions of risk. Suggesting that decision makers who confront losses are more likely to take risks than those who are satisfied with the status quo, prospect theory enables understanding of international cases that other models cannot explain. The Queen's Men and Their Plays, 7 583-1603 (Cambridge, 1998), by Scott McMiIIin (English) and Sally-Beth MacLean, is the first full account of the acting company that was a chief rival to Shakespeare's company-indeed, the company from which Shakespeare lifted some of his plots. Chemical Ecology: The Chemistry at Biotic Interaction (National Academy Press, 1995), edited by Thomas Eisner (biological sciences: Schurman Professor of Biology and director of Cornell Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology) and Jerrold Meinwald (chemistry; Goidwin Smith Professor of Chemis-try), presents medicinally and agricultur-ally important case studies of chemical signals among organisms that form what one expert calls "a vast communicative interplay, fundamental to the fabric of life." Drama Trauma: specters of race and sexuality in performance, video, and art (Routledge, 1997), by Timothy Murray (English),examines the artistic struggle over traumatic fantasies of race, gender, sexuality, and power, Murray links the impact of trauma on recent political projects in performance and video with specters of difference haunting Shakespeare's plays. Mimesis, Masoch-ism, and Mime: The Politics of the Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought (Michigan, 1997), introduced and edited by Murray, is a collection of writing by fifteen leading French theorists and philosophers. The Bible and the Ancient Near East (W. W. Norton, 1997), by Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg (Near Eastern studies), is a general introduction to the history of ancient lsrael,the literature of the Bible, and the ancient Near East in general. This book is the fourth edition,thoroughly revised,of an earlier book by Gordon from the 1950s and 1960s. This new edition brings all the recently discovered archaeological evidence from Israel and elsewhere in the Near East to further our understanding of the Bible. The Substance of Civilization: Materials and Human History tram the Stone Age to the Age of Silicon (Arcade, 1998), by Stephen L. Sass (materials science), grew partly out of Sass' experiences teaching students in the liberal arts and sciences about the physical structures and properties and the social impact of human use of materials: stone, ceramics, metais,and minerals. On Concurrent Programming (Springer-Verlag, 1997), by Fred B. Schneider (computer science), is a graduate-level text that provides a thorough and self-contained introduction to concurrent programming. The presentation is based on the use of assertional methods for reasoning about and deriving synchroni-zation and communications structures, The text is based on a graduate course taught at Cornell. Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship Between Modern Art and Modern Literature (St. Martin's Press, 1997),by Daniel R. Schwarz (English), suggests diverse ways of the studying that relationship and proposes striking pairs such as Gauguin and Conrad, Manet and James, and Cezanne and Eliot as well a as triptych of Picasso, Stevens,and Joyce. The book focuses on 1890-1940 and includes discussion of the influence of African, Asian, and Pacific cultures on European modernism. Schwarz's edition of the Secret Sharer for Bedford's series, Case Studies in Cant em-porary Criticism, was published by Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press. Economic Analysis of Production Price Indexes (Cambridge, 1998), by Franklin M. Fisher and Karl Shell (economics: Thorne Professor of Economics), presents a more general theory of both output-price and input-price indexes (a price index is a scalar representation of a list of prices relative to some base value) than in their previous work, Essays I and II (1972). Zvi Griliches says this "book extends their earlier work to the important case of imperfectly competitive markets and also to open economies." Our Babies, Ourselves. How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent (Anchor Books, 1998), by Meredith Small (anthropology), explores the new science of ethnopediatrics,the study of how biology and culture shape parenting styles across cultures. The book is written for parents and science lovers and helps us decide what is actually best for babies. Carl Sagan's Universe (Cambridge, 1997),edited by Yervant Terzian and Elizabeth Bilson (both of astronomy), is the proceedings of the Sagan sympo-sium, held in 1994 on the Cornell campus to celebrate Sagan's 60th birthday. Distinguished contributors delivered papers dedicated to Sagan's work in planetary exploration, life in the cosmos, science education, and public policy about science. |
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