The onset of the modernist movement in western art marked the decline of realism from its place of dominance. In sharp contrast to the realist attempt to imitate the natural world, the moderns saw their art, instead, as an extension of it. But while the modernist movement may have dismissed realism as an "illusionistic" or a "mechanical enterprise," in The Objective Eye author John Hyman takes a radical new approach to the genre that explores these works as subjects of a much deeper aesthetic interest.

Edward Skidelsky writes in a recent review for the New Statesman: "The Objective Eye… scrupulously dissects the various myths and confusions surrounding the concept of depiction, with the aim of rehabilitating realism as 'one kind of excellence in art.'" Skidelsky applauds Hyman's work for "championing what [he] sees as the natural, and pre-theoretical stance of artists themselves" and reinvigorating interest in the realist genre in the context of twentieth century criticism.

Philosophers, art historians, and students of the arts will find The Objective Eye to be a challenging and absorbing read.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After the arrests in Britain involving a plot to bomb several airliners bound for the U.S., the Transportation Security Administration says it will train and deploy screeners in airports to identify terrorists using behavioral cues. But is this really the best way to secure the safety of our airways? Bernard L. Harcourt, a University of Chicago professor of law and the author of Language of the Gun, wrote an intriguing op-ed piece for the New York Times in which he discusses the shortcomings of the statistical methods behind behavioral profiling—a discussion that sets the stage for his forthcoming book Against Predicition: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age.

Harcourt's article makes the case that "investing heavily in seemingly high-tech airport security methods like behavioral profiling" is not a viable solution to securing the nation's airways and, in fact, "may make air travel less safe on the whole." Harcourt backs up his claim by citing the "many studies of the ability to detect truth and deception" recently conducted that, he says, have been "largely disappointing."

"A review of the literature," says Harcourt, "published in 2000 found that in experiments where subjects were trying to detect whether others were telling the truth or lying, the subjects had an overall success rate of 56.6 percent—slightly better than a coin toss. In the studies that broke down their data, it was found that subjects were able to determine that they were bieng lied to only 44 percent of the time—meaning that they would have done better closing their eyes and guessing."

In light of such bad odds Harcourt suggests a back-to-basics approach. "Rather than divert hundreds of screeners and untold dollars to high tech-fantasies, we need to invest those resources in hiring more routine screeners and giving them better training in basic," (and unbiased), "searches."

In a social climate that makes it all too easy for law enforcement officials to target and punish individuals without just cause, Mr. Harcourt's book promises to be a timely and significant read. Against Prediction is scheduled for publication early in 2007.

Archived in Books for the News | Commentary | Law | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The August 20 edition of the Sunday Telegraph ran a review of Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers—Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's presentation of diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the Second World War. The review further contributes to an ongoing debate about the motivations of these soldiers and the possible similarities between their behavior and that of modern day suicide bombers. Max Hastings writes for the Sunday Telegraph:

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney is successful in convincing the reader that some of those who threw themselves against American and British forces were cultured young men with minds of their own, rather than mindless fanatics.…

[However,] the book argues that the kamikaze pilots were quite unlike modern Muslim suicide bombers. I disagree. Self-immolation, in 1945 as today, is a tactic of the weak against the strong. Some Japanese military leaders convinced themselves that a heroic human spirit could compensate for hopeless material weakness. They were wrong. The last letters of young Japanese mirror the despair of modern suicide bombers. They simply strove to make the unbearable tolerable.…

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's point that many kamikaze were not volunteers, and would have preferred to live, makes their sacrifice seem more moving, but no more sympathetic. The suicide pilots proved formidably effective defenders of their homeland. They contributed mightly, however, to creating a climate in which two atomic bombs seemed a reasonable means of curtailing grotesquely extravagant resistance to an inevitabe outcome.

Hastings, like other reviewers of this book, demonstrates the deeper significance of the Kamikazi Diaries for our own times.

Read the preface to the book.

Archived in History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Revel with a Cause is the first comprehensive history of the satiric humor that flourished during the postwar era—an era that greatly resembles our own politically conservative times. Much like the War on Terror, the Cold War and the fears and anxieties it inspired were used to justify a crackdown on political dissent under the guise of patriotism. But, as Kercher here shows, an impressive range of creative humorists—from incisive cartoonists like Walt Kelly to outragous rebels like Lenny Bruce—responded with defiant wit. These non-conformisats were a crucial voice of criticism and dissent, attacking the supression of civil liberties, Cold War foreign policy, a seething racial crisis, and stifiling social conformity.

Revel with a Cause will be indispensible to anyone fascinated by the intersection of popular culture and politics—or anyone who simply wants to relish some great American humor.

Read the press release. Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in History | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The Intelligibility of Nature is a very impressive and compelling book about the relationship between instrumentalism and realism in the sciences from 1600 to 1950. Peter Dear argues for a fascinating reinterpretation of the Scientific Revolution and its aftermath, showing how between the time of Descarts and that of Lavoisier, natural philosophy and practical techniques merged: that process, this book shows, was decisive for the emergence of modern science. This is a lucid and intelligent history." —Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge

Read the press release.

Archived in History and Philosophy of Science | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Philip Gossett is the world's leading expert on performing Italian opera. Conductors from Riccardo Muti to Bruno Bartoletti, and singers from Marilyn Horne to Renée Fleming, consult him on how to get the works of composers like Verdi and Rossini right. This magesterial book, the capstone to Gossett's storied career and the culmination of his decades-long experience, brings colorfully to life the challenges, and occasionally even the scandals, that attend the production of the world's most favorite operas. Gossett here weds incomparable expertise with his own triumphant experiences producing such celebrated and beloved works as La traviatta, La boheme, and Rigoletto. Part musical history and part back-stage-pass, Divas and Scholars will not only enthrall aficionados of Italian opera but also newcomers seeking a more reliable introduction to it.

Read the press release. We also have an excerpt.

Archived in Music | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Who created the cave art of the Paleolithic era? And why?

In some academic quarters, those questions are regarded as more or less settled, and so R. Dale Guthrie's book, The Nature of Paleolithic Art has been received about as warmly as the Ice Age. However, in her review of the book in the August 18 issue of the Times Higher Education Supplement, Nadia Durrani recognizes that the answers to those basic questions "remain unclear."

Durrani found Guthrie's book a "fascinating and compulsive read" even as she acknowledges that it is "a controversial book." (Readers of this blog will have noted our previous postings that have excerpted bits of Guthrie's book to convey some of the fascinating content of the book. Plus we have all of the preface available online.)

What is Guthrie's thesis? The hot button that has drawn attention—and fire— is that much of the surviving Paleolithic art was not created by shamans for religious purposes or done purely for art's sake, but was done by "testosterone-laden" young boys. Guthrie's evidence for so radical a theory? Durrani explains:

Guthrie's thesis draws its main impetus … from the surprisingly limited themes dealt with by the art. Although Palaeolithic art is a readily recognisable style, unified in its elasticity and freedom, it concerns a few subject matters only. It is dominated by large mammals, many bleeding and wounded, and complemented by images of voluptuous women, isolated vulva triangles and ochre hand prints. To Guthrie, the art smacks of themes of power relevant to a specific age and sex distortion, namely, adolescent boys akin to modern graffiti artists.

Guthrie's study of Paleolithic rock art, illustrated with more than 3,000 images, is controversial, to be sure. It brings a huge array of frequently novel evidence to bear on the fundamental questions of Paleolithic art. Here at the Press we believe that it is a landmark study that will change the shape of our understanding of these images.

Guthrie's techniques for understanding the many painted handprints among the examples of cave art are appreciated by Durrani in her review:

The "negative hand print" is [a] recurring image in the rock art. These prints were seemingly made by holding the hand on to the cave wall and spraying liquified pigment from a blow-pipe onto the hand. Many prints have missing fingers. They were left by poor folk who lost fingers in the bitter cold of the Ice Age and who, by leaving their tragic hand print on the wall, were asking for magical help or healing. Or so scholars have always tended to claim.

But in a stroke of pure genius Guthrie suggests that these ghoulish missing-finger prints were childish pranks. Or rather boys' pranks: Guthrie comissioned an analysis of 201 Palaeolithic hand prints, which concluded that 162 are male and only 39 are female or young male prints. Guthrie thus attempts to get at the essence of the artists and puts a human slant on the art, which draws us close to our forebears and "the possibility that adolescent giggles and snickers may have echoed in dark cave passages.…"

Previous blog posts: "Paleolithic handprints" and "Who made this handprint on the cave wall?".
Preface to the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Art and Architecture | Biology | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Whether you love them or hate them, critics have helped to influence and, indeed, define the jazz genre. In the August edition of the Literary Review William Palmer argues "that true, improvised jazz has always been a minority taste, and, without critics and promoters like John Hammond and Norman Granz, much of what we prize as real jazz would never have been recorded." Thus Palmer is quick to rain praise on John Gennari's Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics which chronicles how these writers have affected how we listen to and how we understand jazz.

In Blowin' Hot and Cool, John Gennari provides a definitive history of jazz criticism from the 1920s to the present. The music itself is prominent in his account, as are the musicians—from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Roscoe Mitchell, and beyond. But the work takes its shape from fascinating stories of the tradition's key critics—Leonard Feather, Martin Williams, Whitney Balliett, Dan Morgenstern, Gary Giddins, and Stanley Crouch, among many others. Gennari is the first to show the many ways these critics have mediated the relationship between the musicians and the audience—not merely as writers, but in many cases as producers, broadcasters, concert organizers, and public intellectuals as well.

Read an excerpt from the book or have a look at the soundtrack Gennari compiled to accompany his work.

Archived in Music | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The L. A. Times recently ran a review of Alessandro Scafi's Mapping Paradise. Reviewer David L. Ulin says of Scafi's book: "Mapping Paradise aspires to be nothing less than a history of earthly paradise … it is an atlas of the imagination, a guide to a landscape that remains just the slightest bit out of reach." But though paradise may be beyond our grasp, fortunately, Scafi's book is not. As Ulin insists "Scafi writes with a scholar's thoroughness. Mapping Paradise is thick with footnotes; at times, the prose can get a little dense. [But] it's all redeemed by the illustrations, 21 of them in color, that appear on nearly every page."

The first book to show how paradise has been expressed in cartographic form throughout two millennia, Mapping Paradise explores the intellectual conditions that made the medieval mapping of paradise possible and the challenge for mapmakers to make visible a place that was geographically inaccessible and yet real, remote in time and yet still the scene of an essential episode of the history of salvation. A history of the cartography of paradise that journeys from the beginning of Christianity to the present day, Mapping Paradise reveals how the most deeply reflective thoughts about the ultimate destiny of all human life have been molded—and remolded—generation by generation.

Archived in Cartography and Geography | History | Religion | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday's New York Times Book Review has a review of Maggie Dietz's new collection of poems Perennial Fall. From the review:

When Dietz writes of bowls and hinges, I am reminded of Borges's distaste for the criticism of T. S. Eliot, who always seemed to be "agreeing with that professor or disagreeing with another." Borges preferred Emerson, whose writing suggested personal experience of his subjects, as does Dietz's best work, which is intimate, idiomatic, and thoroughly original. Thus "Bird Bath" which deals with grief, shows the side of the bereaved that is hopeful ("Mute eyes dreaming a sense / of heaven, of what is next.") and, at the same time, the side that is bereft ("But / everywhere the bald world and cold"). Even the saddest of topics becomes manageable in this poet's skillful hands.

At the heart of this unusually accomplished and affecting first book of poetry is the idea of the hinge—the point of connection, of openings and closings. Maggie Dietz situates herself in the liminal present, bringing together past and future, dream and waking, death and life. Formally exact, rigorous, and tough, these poems accept no easy answers or equations.

Archived in Poetry | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The philanthropic landscape is changing dramatically as a new generation of wealthy donors seeks to leave its mark on the public sphere. Peter Frumkin reveals in Strategic Giving why these donors could benefit from having a comprehensive plan to guide their giving. After listening for years to scores of individual and institutional funders discuss the challenges of giving wisely, Frumkin argues here that contemporary philanthropy requires a thorough rethinking of its underlying logic. Philanthropy should be seen, he contends, as both a powerful way to meet public needs and a meaningful way to express private beliefs and commitments. He demonstrates that finding a way to simultaneously fulfill both of these functions is crucial to the survival of philanthropy and its potential to support pluralism in society. Essential reading for donors, researchers, and anyone involved with the world of philanthropy, Strategic Giving provides a new basis for understanding philanthropic effectiveness and a promising new way for philanthropy to achieve the legitimacy that has at times eluded it.

Read the press release.

Archived in Economics | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an opinion piece in yesterday's edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer discussing the current conflict in Lebanon, columnist Trudy Rubin says that U. S. military strategy for dealing with guerilla tactics has shifted.

"Hasn't anyone at the White House noticed the U. S. Army is changing its doctrine on guerilla warfare?" asks Rubin. "Instead of all-out military assault, the new doctrine calls for waging a political battle for 'hearts and minds' while exercising military restraint so as not to drive civilians into the arms of terrorists."

"One key army text," Rubin continues, "is Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife by Lt. Col. John Nagl, which focuses on counterinsurgency lessons from the 1950's war in Malaya and the Vietnam war. … Nagl focuses on the ability of armies to learn from mistakes and adapt their strategies and tactics—skills in which he finds the U. S. forces lacking. He shows how the British in Malaya were nimble enough to defeat a communist insurgency, while U. S. military in Vietnam clung to a failing doctrine of force."

In the light of recent events demonstrating the need for the U. S. military forces to develop a more effective strategy for dealing with conflict in the Middle East, it is indeed, as Rubin concludes, "past time to make Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife required reading at the White House."

Read the new preface to Nagl's book, written following his combat experience in Iraq.

Archived in Books for the News | History | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adding to the large amount of attention this book has received recently, September's Washington Monthly features a two page review of David S. Brown's Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography. According to the reviewer, Jacob Heilbrunn, "Brown has written an account worthy of Hofstadter himself: wry, humane, and illuminating"—a very gracious compliment considering Hofstadter's extensive corpus of works, many of which, due to their sharp insights and engaging style, are considered classics in their field. Here's an excerpt from the review:

A biography of a historian seems fated, more often than not, to be a rather boring affair. Unless the historian has played a leading role in great events, it's hard to imagine what even the most diligent biographer can uncover. That his subject read a lot of books, took copious notes, visited libraries and archives, and sat behind a desk, or, these days, computer screen, for a good part of the day?

Somehow David S. Brown has surmounted these obstacles to produce a biography of Richard Hofstadter, the historian and author (The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life), that is not only a revelation, but also a fascinating read.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Biography | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A review of John Gennari's Blowin' Hot and Cool in this month's issue of The Wire commends the book, calling Gennari's in-depth look at the history of jazz criticism "superb," "nuanced," and "insightful." The review focuses on Gennari's penetrating argument that jazz criticism has not only played an essential role in documenting the jazz tradition but, to a large extent, has been responsible for creating that tradition. Yet most interesting about The Wire review is its acknowledgment of Gennari's work as his own addendum to that tradition— his attempt to "write his academic self" into the "problematic history" of jazz criticism which he describes. If The Wire article is any indication, Gennari's work will continue to make an impact in circles beyond the walls of the academy. From The Wire:

[Gennari] focuses on what he calls jazz's "superstructure"—its critics essentially, but also some of its businessmen—to analyze what a much related story says, or almost says, about about racial and cultural politics in the American 20th century.… An account of Leonard Feather's 1935 encounter with John Hammond sets up key themes of distance, engagement, and responsibility. Gennari has the pair at the Savoy in Harlem to hear Teddy Hill, pushing past the dancers to stand, concentrating and motionless, in the front of the stage. [This] image of the critics, part of yet seperate from the crowd, advertising their own aesthetic perogative, recurs throughout the book.…

Read an excerpt from the book. Gennari has also outlined a soundtrack for the book.

Archived in Music | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the August 11 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education columnist Richard Byrne takes note of the recent "flurry of scholarly work" that "has opened up new vistas in the history of Dada." Byrne reviews several new contributions to the subject including The Dada Reader: A Critical Anthology. An excerpt from Byrne's review follows:

Expanding Dada's reach and placing it in a wider context is the aim of another new collection, The Dada Reader: A Critical Anthology. Edited by Dawn Ades, a professor of art history and theory at the University of Essex, The Dada Reader pulls together the key excerpts from the explosion of Dada journals between 1916 and 1924. Not only does the new anthology present dozens of texts that have never been available in English, but it also brings in journals far from Dada's traditional loci in Switzerland, Germany, France, and the United States—including ones from the Netherlands and Yugoslavia.

The revolutionary Dada movement, though short-lived, produced a vast amount of creative work in both art and literature during the years that followed World War I. Rejecting all social and artistic conventions, Dadaists went to the extremes of provocative behavior, creating anti-art pieces that ridiculed and questioned the very nature of creative endeavor. To understand their movement's heady mix of anarchy and nihilism—combined with a lethal dash of humor—it's essential to engage with the artists' most important writings and manifestos. And that is is precisely where this reader comes in.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Literature | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stefan Timmermans's Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths recently underwent something of a medical examination itself. The August 9 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association features a review commending Timmermans, a professor of sociology, for his "perceptive, insightful, and revealing view of the profession." A quote follows:

Sociologists rigorously scrutinize as outsiders professions that they study and, consequently, are often received as excessively critical and naive. This is certainly true of medical sociologists. I noted that many of my colleagues viewed this work with skepticism and concern. However, Timmermans asks hard and penetrating questions that the forensic pathology community needs to be asking itself and that others are already asking in court and in budget committees.

Timmermans speaks to professional and cultural components of a "forensic authority" for investigations of suspicious deaths, which derives from a societal need for "death-brokering," from a legal mandate to investigate suspicious deaths, and from scientific expertise. In so doing, he does not merely describe the work of forensic pathologists or interesting cases but instead probes the foundations of forensic pathology practices. … Postmortem is a wake-up call to forensic pathology, and every practitioner should read it. The book should be viewed as provocative, rather than threatening, and should be a stimulus for important discussion and action by the forensic pathology community.

Read the rest of the JAMA review or read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For his weekly poetry feature in the Washington Post, Robert Pinsky recently picked two poems by Kenneth Fields from his collection, Classic Rough News. Pinsky chose the poems "Cutting His Losses" and "Tangled," and analyzed some of the finer points of the author's meticulously constructed lines. Specifically, Pinsky focuses his praise on the clarity and intimacy with which Fields' language engages the difficult topic of alcoholism:

Many excellent movies and novels have dealt with the ordeal of alcoholism. So too, has poetry, including the recent book by Californian Kenneth Fields. Reflective and vivid, cool rather than melodramatic, these compact poems have a grotesque comedy that makes the booze-curse more dire, not less. Fields presents his characters—"Billy," "Burton," a woman called "Billie,"—with blunt appraisal, clear-eyed sympathy and understated judgement.… Though the material is sad, the poems have the bracing, redeeming and even exhilarating feeling that comes from precision.

We have another poem, "In The Place of Stories", also from Classic Rough News.

Archived in Poetry | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the rising impact of mainstream media on public culture and the recent popularity of the irony-laden brand of political satire found on shows like Comedy Central's The Daily Show, humor arguably plays a much more serious role in American politics than ever before. As Jessica Clark has noted in her August 4, 2006, review for the Chicago monthly In These Times, Paul Lewis's book Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict delivers an in-depth exploration of this contentious world of controversial, manipulative, and disturbing laughter. Clark writes:

Paul Lewis examines how conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have effectively dismissed and diminished progressive ideas and politicians making them the "butt" of taunts. Such derisive humor works in tandem with serious policy initiatives to sandbag losers in what Lewis earnestly terms "butt wars."…Now the tables are turning. Bush was spared much mockery in the wake of 9/11, but with his popularirty tanking, the "butt-in-chief" is again fair game.

In a culture that both enjoys and quarrels about jokes, humor expresses our most nurturing and hurtful impulses, informs and misinforms us, and exposes as well as covers up the shortcomings of our leaders. Wondering what’s so funny about a culture determined to laugh at problems it prefers not to face, Lewis reveals connections between such seemingly unrelated jokers as Norman Cousins, Rush Limbaugh, Garry Trudeau, Ronald Reagan, Beavis and Butt-Head, and Bill Clinton. The result is a surprising, alarming, and at times hilarious argument that will appeal to anyone interested in the ways humor is changing our cultural and political landscapes.

Archived in Politics and Current Events | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sam Tanenhaus has written a detailed four page review of David S. Brown's Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography which ran in both the August 4 edition of the International Herald Tribune as well as the New York Times Book Review of August 6. Tanenhuas calls Brown's work "intelligent and stimulating" citing Brown's ability to "admirably balance his respect for his subject with a critical distance," that allows Brown to achieve an unparalleled degree of authenticity in his account of the legacy of one of liberalism's most celebrated and respected intellectuals.

The author of The American Political Tradition and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Richard Hofstadter was one of the most important historians of twentieth-century America. His championing of the liberal politics that came out of the New Deal, his fierce opposition to McCarthyism and then the acolytes of Barry Goldwater, and the many ideas that he introduced to our nation's political conversation shaped not only the way we think of the historian's role in civic life, but steered the direction of American politics as well. David S. Brown's Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography explores Hofstadter's remarkable life story in the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The economy is ubiquitous in modern life. From the choice of what type of automobile we drive, to where we live, and which books we read, the economy influences nearly every decision we make. Yet, despite its importance to our daily lives, economists have often struggled to define the organizing principles behind its unpredictable behavior. In a recent review in the Times Literary Supplement David Thorsby praises Margaret Schabas's The Natural Origins of Economics for its detailed look at the historical struggle to gain an intellectual perspective on the economy. A quote from the review:

Although early economic thinkers drew much inspiration from nature…the concept of the economy as an autonomous entity did not start to take shape until the first half of the nineteenth century. The transformation mirrored a transformation that was occuring in the political economy itself, from an intellectual discourse deriving its inspiration from the natural sciences to one oriented towards the behavior of individuals, in which nature was relegated to the sidelines.

Margaret Schabas's fascinating book, The Natural Origins of Economics, charts the progress of this transformation, beginning not with Bacon and Descartes but with the origins of formal economics in the moral philosophy of the French Enlightenment. Schabas goes on to trace the influence of the natural sciences on the thinking of David Hume, Adam Smith and, in due course, on Ricardo, Malthus and other political economists of the early and mid-nineteenth century. She pays particular attention to John Stuart Mill, whom she sees as a turning point in what she calls the "denatralization" of the economic order.… He proposed an economy that was separated from the natural order, setting the stage for W. Stanley Jevons, F.Y. Edgeworth, Alfred Marshall and the other neo-classicals in the late nineteenth century. The "denaturalized" economics that these economists developed, where maximization of individual utility was paramount, where rational behavior reigned and where markets reached equilibrium, is still with us today.

Archived in Economics | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're reading this then you're probably already aware of how much digital technology has insinuated itself into our daily routines. But just how much could we, or should we, devote to our online lives? The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal recently ran a review of two books about the increasing popularity of "virtual realities" including our own Edward Castronova's Synthetic Worlds:

Mr. Castronova's Synthetic Worlds argues that virtual reality is a thriving place with millions of inhabitants world-wide. And it bears close watching… Synthetic Worlds explains the trend, obvious to anyone who has dipped into the online subculture over time, that virtual worlds are populated differently now than they used to be: they began as the province of nerds and outcasts but are now approaching the mainstream—as reflected in recent media reports and the increasing share of quotes in such coverage drawn from the housewife and married-dad demographics.

Read an interview with the author, or check out his blog.

Archived in Economics | Film and Media | Philosophy | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An article in the August 4 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education quotes Susan Bielstein, our executive editor for art and architecture: “The art monograph is now seriously endangered and could well outpace the silvery minnow in its rush to extinction.”

Publishing art monographs is financially challenging, for the author and for the publisher. To obtain an image of a work of art suitable for reproduction, the author usually has to pay a permission fee to the owner of the work—a museum, say—even if the work itself is in the public domain. An author might shell out tens of thousands of dollars for such fees. Costs are high for the publisher as well, what with color illustrations, coated paper stock, and the durable binding needed for a hefty, oversized book.

The CHE article discusses the state of art-history publishing at several university presses and a forthcoming Mellon-funded report, "Art History and Its Publications in the Electronic Age." The article concludes: “All parties agree that it is harder than ever to navigate what Ms. Bielstein calls 'the ecosystem of rights publishing.' What's fair use? Should a museum be able to charge for a reproducible image of an out-of-copyright object in its collection? Most do. And as digital publication tempts more and more publishers and scholars, how will they protect images that appear in an electronic book or an electronic version of a journal article?”

These issues of art and copyright are the subject of Bielstein's recently-published book, Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property, an invaluable compendium of insight and advice for authors and others working in the visual arts. Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Reference and Writing
Posted by DB at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's New York Times carries an article by John Noble Wilford on the revival of academic interest in alchemy. The article was occasioned by a conference late last month, hosted by the Chemical Heritage Foundation and organized by Lawrence M. Principe.

The Times article discusses the research presented at the alchemy conference including a paper by William R. Newman. Newman spoke about Issac Newton's fascination with alchemy: “his notebooks contain thousands of pages on alchemic thoughts and experiments over 30 years,” reports the Times.

Chicago has published a number of books that reflect the new interest in alchemy. Principe and Newman collaborated on Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry, which argues that many of the principles and practices characteristic of modern chemistry derive from alchemy. They also edited a key alchemical text, the Alchemical Laboratory Notebooks and Correspondence of George Starkey.

Newman is the author of the recently published Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution, in which he challenges the view that alchemy impeded the development of rational chemistry. Newman also wrote Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature, an investigation of the how alchemists thought about the difference between the natural and the artificial. We have an excerpt from Promethean Ambitions.

Archived in Books for the News | History and Philosophy of Science | Medieval and Renaissance
Posted by DB at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The July 28, 2006, issue of Financial Times ran a review of John Gennari's Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics in which resident jazz critic Mike Hobart doesn't hesitate to rain praise on Gennari's latest work:

This is a book about jazz in which the music is in the background, for John Gennari's main concern is a critique of jazz criticism from the 1930's to the present. Densley researched, broadly partisan and compiled with a wry sense of humor, Blowin' Hot and Cool still manages to reveal much about jazz, and more about the lives of its musicians than many recent hagiographies.…

His account opens in the 1930's, with two patrician figures of great infulence: John Hammond and his English acolyte, Leonard Feather. Negotiating a racially segregated world of thrill seekers, jitterbugs, and the communist party's popular fronts, they fought for racial integration and jazz as an art, yet fell out over the authenticity of modern jazz. In the process they discovered Count Basie and Billie Holiday, recorded Bessie Smith, and persuaded Benny Goodman to drop schmaltz.

Our excerpt from the first chapter talks more about Feather and Hammond. Gennari also outlined a soundtrack for the book.

Archived in History | Literature | Music | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)