The Chicago Blog

The exhibition Maps: Finding Our Place in the World will be at the Field Museum in Chicago only until January 27. Then it moves to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where it opens on March 16. The book with the same name, though, can be visited at any time for as long as you want. Like a map of a city or river or mountain range that you once visited, or dream of visiting, the book fixes the memory or fills in the imagination.

Patrick Reardon reviewed the book in Sunday's Chicago Tribune. He called the book "a meaty work that sweeps back and forth across the centuries and millenniums, spans the continents and ranges from the micro-details of a 19th Century London neighborhood to an ancient Aztec rendering of the cosmos." It is also a thing of beauty.

Our web feature for the book presents some unusual maps. A couple of those maps recently caught the attention of a few bloggers, like the Edge of the American West, Matthew Yglesias, and Metafilter.

Resolve to see the exhibit and get the book.

Archived in Cartography and Geography | Reviews
Posted by DB at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

William Grimes reviewed Kirin Narayan's memoir of growing up in India, My Family and Other Saints, in yesterday's New York Times:

Families can be so embarrassing. Imagine the agonies of an adolescent girl whose house has become infested with India-besotted hippies from all over the globe, whose sarcastic father stumbles around in an alcoholic haze and whose mother kneels at the feet of every swami she meets. And let us not forget grandma, who holds long conversations with her cow and once met a 1,000-year-old cobra with a ruby in its forehead and a mustache on its albino face.

Gods, gurus and eccentric relatives compete for primacy in Kirin Narayan's enchanting memoir of her childhood in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). The title, which alludes to Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, originated as an act of revenge. Ms. Narayan, fed up with the family penchant for ashrams and spiritual quests, turned to her mother and warned, "When I grow up I'm going to write a book called My Family and Other Saints and put you in it." And so she did.

Narayan's memoir captures a time and place when nearly everyone, it seemed, was embarked on some sort of spiritual quest. And a family full of love, yet always on the verge of disintegration.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Biography | Religion | Reviews
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Last Saturday Michael Bywater had an interesting take on Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World by Dario Maestripieri in the Daily Telegraph:

Primate books are good for us. They remind us that we're primates, too. And the embarrassing primate books are best. Macachiavellian Intelligence is an excellently embarrassing primate book, and just the thing to make us blush and shuffle our feet.

How to write an embarrassing primate book? Focus on "the notorious 'weed monkey', the rhesus macaque."

Rhesus macaques, in short, are sods. They are despotic and nepotistic; their power structures are matrilineal. The males hang around sullenly, get into fights, emigrate to other groups, get into more fights and lead lives of violence and aggression which, as Maestripieri explains, is because they want raw power. Power gets you everything. It's worth the price.

Rhesus macaques are—after homo sapiens of course—the most successful primates on the planet, judged by population size and distribution. Is violence and aggression the reason for our success? Maestripieri's understanding of rhesus society has much to say to our own.

(Bywater also gives a passing mention to another book on primates, Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth. We have an excerpt from that book.)

Archived in Biology | Reviews
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"You don't have to travel to the Brazilian rain forest to luxuriate in the biodiversity at our feet," says Adrian Higgins in a Washington Post review of James B. Nardi's Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners. Even now, under that blanket of snow outside the window, a veritable holiday feast is underway: "organisms that can be seen by us, such as wood lice, and those that cannot, such as bacteria, set into motion a hidden, primal banquet featuring hordes of revelers and many courses."

It's the first day of winter and life in the soil is teeming. "We as a species," says Higgins, "have been largely ignorant of this universe for so long." Nardi's book "is a must-read for anyone who wants a better understanding of this world and how to protect it." Even creatures grubby and small.

Archived in Biology | Reviews
Posted by DB at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tell someone unfamiliar with the business of book publishing (and this of course describes almost everyone you meet) that you work at a university press, and you almost inevitably hear: "Oh, you publish textbooks then?" Well, no, we don't—our scholarly publishing mandate is to publish new research, which rarely describes the contents of a textbook.

Except sometimes. One of those times was in 1958 when we published a textbook called Managerial Psychology by a youngish professor at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. The book brought the field of organizational behavior into the business school curriculum, a revolutionary idea at the time. New enough at any rate, that the book was turned down by the typical publishers of business school textbooks. But business and industry was changing rapidly in 1958 and Managerial Psychology quickly found a market.

The author of that book was Harold J. Leavitt, who died on December 8 in Pasadena, California. He was the Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior, Emeritus, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business at the time of his death. His work changed what business schools taught and how business and industry motivate and evaluate their personnel.

We published the fifth and last edition of Leavitt's textbook in 1988. We also published several editions of a companion volume, Reading in Managerial Psychology.

The Los Angeles Times ran an obituary a few days ago.

Archived in Economics | Psychology
Posted by DB at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a book we published a few years back, British classicist Simon Goldhill explained the Greek and Roman roots of everything in contemporary Western culture, from our political systems to the quest for the perfect body. Still, we have traveled some ways from those classic roots, which perhaps accounts for why the works of Greek dramatists can seem so ancient and foreign when performed on a modern stage. Most of the action takes place offstage, the characters do more speechifying than dialogue, and a chorus shuffles on and off.

Goldhill's latest book, How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today, tackles this problem. Writing in a Commentary magazine blog, the Horizon, drama critic Terry Teachout discussed the book last week. Teachout noted that "most contemporary productions of Greek tragedy are exercises in theatrical futility" and summed up Goldhill's contribution:

His approach is at once deeply informed by the best academic scholarship and no less deeply rooted in a commonsense understanding of what works on stage. The result is one of the most instructive and lucidly written books about theater to have been published in recent years. No one whose interest in drama is more than merely casual should pass it by.

Archived in Classics | Literature | Reviews
Posted by DB at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Francis Ford Coppola's newest film, Youth Without Youth, opened on both coasts last Friday. The film is based on the book of the same name written by Mircea Eliade, who was a professor in the history of religions at the University of Chicago. The first paperback edition of Youth Without Youth features a new foreword by Coppola.

Bookforum has an interview with the director that makes some interesting comparisons between the film and the book. Coppola discusses his decision to adapt the book for the big screen:

Originally, for another project, I had been thinking about the twin challenge of cinematic language, which is the expression and manipulation of time while finding ways to try and tap into our unique human consciousness. It's hard to explain it, but we all kind of know what it is: that little thing in your head that seems to be you, through which you see all your experience and feel your emotion. A lot of filmmakers in the past, even the great Sergei Eisenstein, had thought about the representation of human consciousness. He wrote about it in the second of his books [Film Form (1949)], I think. A friend of mine who was an Orientalist and a scholar pointed me to some quotes from Mircea Eliade, whom I didn't know much about. I read some of these references, which ultimately led me to this novella. And it was a hell of a thing. It surprised me at every turn: Just when I'd think I got the story, it would turn a new page. It starts off with this lightning strike. And then he's rejuvenated. And suddenly he's talking to his double. And then the Nazis are after him. And he meets this woman who seems to be the reincarnated figure of an ancient Indian nun. I kept thinking, "What next?" I felt it could be made into a film that could be enjoyed on first viewing as a surprising story, but then you could see it again and find things to ruminate on more, about our perception of reality. Given my age and where I was at the time, I found myself with the opportunity to just go off and make it and not even tell anyone that I was making it.

Manohla Dargis reviewed the film last Friday in the New York Times. You can read the review and view a slideshow and the trailer for the film on their website. But take heed of the note about the film's rating at the end of the review:

"Youth Without Youth is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Gun violence, sexual congress, female nudity, metaphysics."

Ah, metaphysics. We have the opening pages of the book.

Archived in Books for the News | Literature
Posted by TXM at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The City Room blog on the New York Times website ran a guide to holiday tipping yesterday that draws much of its advice from Peter Bearman's Doormen—a book the NYT's Sewell Chan says contains one of "the most sophisticated discussion of holiday tipping City Room has encountered." Chan's article continues:

[Holiday tips and bonuses are] fraught with meaning. [The gesture] "is both a gift, a way of saying thanks, an obligation, and yet also a sign of expected reciprocal attention and an expression of social power," Professor Bearman writes. "These contradictory meanings make the bonus difficult to talk about, and tenants often squirm in their seats (or cognitively) as they try to describe just what it means."

Professor Bearman writes that the holiday bonus is most often construed in one of two ways. "On the one hand, the Christmas bonus is often represented as the acknowledgment of all of the assistance received during the past year," he notes, adding later, "On the other hand, the Christmas bonus is often represented as a pre-payment or down payment for the next year, an advance on the services to be received."

He distinguishes the bonus from a mere tip, a payment for services rendered. "Whereas tipping encodes the relationship too starkly as a service relationship, because the number of small favors is endless, the Christmas bonus symbolizes the value of all the little services over the past year." But it is also "a hedge for service in the coming year."

Our excerpt from the book discusses the Christmas bonus.

Update: Based on the large number of responses the NYT's City Room blog got from it's last article about holiday tipping they also published this follow-up based on their reader's comments.

Archived in Books for the News | Economics | Psychology | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every year about this time many magazine and newspaper book reviewers take a break from their regular routine to pick their "best books of the year." Thus here for your gift giving edification, are some of the UCP titles that appear on the lists for the 2007 season.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a list of recommended coffee table books for the holiday season that includes both Clarie Nouvian's photo journey to the bottom of the sea, The Deep, and Marcia Lausen's insightful critique of ballot design in Design for Democracy. The Inquirer praises both books for being "more nuanced coffee-table winners, for a variety of tastes." —See our special site for The Deep.

Playboy magazine is also currently running a best of the year section in the January edition of the magazine. Playboy asked contributor and NYU professor of sociology Eric Klinenberg to name his picks for 2007. On his list was David Grazian's new book On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife, a fascinating exposé of the various illusions that make up Philadelphia's thriving nightlife scene.

In the December 14 Wall Street Journal "Holiday Book Guide," under the subheading "Photography," you can also find Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan's new book, Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News. The Journal's Richard Woodward writes:

Most institutional archives contain historic photographs that the passage of time has turned into objects of wonder. Mark Jacobs and Richard Cahan have uncovered a bundle in Chicago Under Glass: Early Photographs From the Chicago Daily News. Images that began their lives as nothing more than photo-ops—an alderman wrestling a bear, men playing indoor baseball, or policemen standing on a street corner in 1926 next to a recent invention, the traffic light—are slowly acquiring a patina that will only make them more curious and hard to distinguish from art.

Last but not least the Financial Times named Pierre Laszlo's Citrus: A History as one of the best food books for 2007. From the FT:

Today, a billion citrus trees produce 100 million tons of fruit annually. Their diversity is astonishing, with more than 1,500 species. Pierre Laszlo's short, brilliant history summarises citrus's global importance, including religion and the arts, and also contains some excellent recipes.

You can even check out some of those recipes right now if you like on the special site we've created for the book.

Also see the press's own comprehensive list of books for the holiday season.

Archived in Books for the News
Posted by TXM at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An interesting review of Daniel S. Greenberg's Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism is currently running in the January-February issue of the American Scientist. Reviewer Robert L. Geiger praises Greenberg's book for its lucid and balanced look at the influence of corporate funding on American academic institutions:

[In] Science for Sale, [Greenberg] ventures outside the Beltway to scrutinize the state of academic science and its supposed burgeoning ties with the corporate world. Although the somewhat fraught title would seem to place this work with an abundance of books condemning university ties with industry, Greenberg has provided a more nuanced analysis and offers some different conclusions.…

He begins with an iconoclastic portrayal of corporate-sponsored research. Far from dominating or corrupting universities, it has been a marginal and (since 2000) shrinking portion of the research they conduct. Academic research has great value for industry, but companies prefer to let the government pay for it. "Not many corporations are besieging universities to take their money," Greenberg says. "Eagerness for even more business is strongest on the university side of the relationship." Moreover, he sees little scope for industry to take advantage of this hunger: "In the current era of heightened sensitivity to abuse of academic integrity, the risk of public opprobrium for offending accepted values is substantial." Given the predominance Greenberg ascribes to self-interested behavior, it is not surprising that he frequently alludes to the fear of institutional embarrassment or individual ruin as the force driving ethical behavior. However, when he returns to this theme in his conclusion, he emphasizes the growing effectiveness of the systems now in place to police and punish scientific misconduct.

The review concludes:

Overall… Greenberg has provided an important assessment of the state of academic science. He finds that public doubts about the integrity of the research enterprise are probably overdone: "Science is in good shape, productive and socially beneficial," he says. "The negative elements," he believes, "pose a more complicated, less measurable story." But Greenberg's account makes it clear that those negative elements are concentrated in the biomedical borderlands, where vigilance in the enforcement of ethical standards is indeed called for.

Read the full review on the American Scientist website.

Archived in Biology | Economics | Education | History and Philosophy of Science | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Emily Bazelon, senior editor at Slate has chosen David Shulman's Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine as one the best books of 2007. Bazelon summarizes the book writing:

During what he calls the "unhappy years" from 2002 to 2006, David Shulman, an Israeli professor at Hebrew University, did some of the harder work of his country's peace movement: clashing with police and settlers to deliver food and medical supplies to Palestinian villages. In his excellent record of these years, Dark Hope, Shulman vividly describes the small bands of Palestinians who live in caves in the Hebron Hills. While they try to tend sheep and goats, as their people have for centuries, Jewish settlers scatter tiny blue-green pellets of poison amid the grazing grounds. Shulman bears "moral witness" to such misdeeds, Avishai Margalit writes in this provocative review. The author knows that the Palestinians also "stagger under a burden of folly and crime," but says, "my concern in these pages is with the darkness on my side."

Note that the Slate article contains a link to The New York Review of Books where Avishai Margalit has a much more in-depth review of Shulman's book.

Also read an excerpt.

Archived in Books for the News
Posted by TXM at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Harry Collins and Robert Evans' Rethinking Expertise was given an interesting review last Friday by Matthew Reisz writing in the December 7 Times Higher Education Supplement. Praising the book Reisz writes:

The book offers a rich and detailed "periodic table" of expertise, ranging from the kind of beer-mat knowledge useful only in pub quizzes to the levels of skill that enable people to make a contribution to cutting-edge science. It considers wine buffs and art connoisseurs, hoaxers, journalists, and pseudoscientists. It looks at deep philosophical issues of "embodiment"—whether you need to move around in the world to acquire language or the jargon of a specialist field—that have major implications for the field of artificial intelligence and computer learning. It is full of case studies, anecdotes and intriguing experiments. But at its heart are questions arising out of the authors' work in the sociology of science and the challenges of scientifically literate public decision making.

A deep exploration of what it means to be an expert and the role expertise plays in our society Rethinking Expertise is essential reading for scientists, scholars, and policy makers alike.

Archived in Anthropology | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jessica Riskin's Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life was recently given a great review by science fiction writer Greg Bear in Nature. Riskin's book collects seventeen essays from a conference of distinguished scholars in several fields who bring a historical perspective to this most contemporary of scientific topics. And as Bear notes in his review, the result is a particularly comprehensive treatment of the history of artificial life. Bear writes:

The strength of Genesis Redux lies in its scholarship and range of topics. Clockworks, mechanical toys and their influence on biological concepts are presented in fascinating detail. Joan Landes introduces us to the Hoffmanesque works of Jacques de Vaucanson's feminine flautist and (excreting) duck, and to the flayed, preserved and posed cadavers, the écorchés, of Jean-Honoré Fragonard: there is a dancing fetus and a very naked man staring in horror, jawbone in hand. Landes delivers a lively analysis of our reactions to the abject and uncanny, the frisson so beloved by fans of Dr Frankenstein.

The review continues:

Genesis Redux takes the time to shed light on areas I would not naturally consider, and thus enlightens and expands the topic. Its cautious perspective—the enthusiasms of the past considered in the sober light of history—provides a useful counterpoint to [other books on the subject].

See the rest of the article on the Nature website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | History | History and Philosophy of Science | Philosophy | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Primatologists Dorothy Cheney and Richard Seyfarth, authors of the new book Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind were featured last week on NPR's Fresh Air to discuss their years of research in Botswana's Okavango Delta observing baboons and their social world. The results of their studies, available in their book, reveal the surprising complexities of baboon society and the fascinating intelligence that underlies it—and indeed may even give us some valuable insights into our own social behaviors. You can listen to archived audio of the interview online at the NPR website or read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biology | Philosophy
Posted by TXM at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan's new book Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News seems to have caught the attention of the local papers recently. Already this month the book has received three separate reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times, Time Out Chicago, and the Chicago Suburban News. As Tom Cruze notes in the Sun-Times, in Chicago under Glass Jacob and Cahan have amassed a collection of the best photographs from the archives from the now defunct Chicago Daily News to document one of the most tumultuous and fascinating periods in Chicago history:

Chicago history circa 1901-30, with its triumphs, disasters and celebrities, comes alive through the lenses of Daily News photographers in this expansive treatment by former Sun-Timesmen Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan. The images, some 250 culled from more than 57000 recently put online (the original glass negatives reside at the Chicago History Museum), are bundled into themes easily explored by browsing history buffs. Probably the most fascinating photos here show familiar areas of Chicago that have changed throughout the years. Construction shots of Buckingham fountain and the Field Museum make the familiar seem fascinatingly strange.

And from the Chicago Suburban News.

The 250 photographs they chose for their resulting volume depict a gritty burg evolving through cultural upheavals and technological advances. Some of the buildings and vistas look vaguely familiar today, but the fashions and hairstyles surely don't. "We haven't been exposed to that many pictures from this era," Cahan said. "This is kind of an unknown period—I know that sounds funny—but also really the beginning of the modern age because of the car.

You can check out the rest of the Chicago Suburban News article online but you'll have to pick up a copy of the Sun-Times or the latest Time-Out magazine for the others. Also be sure to check out the Chicago History Museum's online archive of images from the Chicago Daily News.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chicago magazine has a nice piece in the December issue about the inspiration behind Francis Ford Coppola's new film—his first in ten years—Youth Without Youth. If you've been paying attention, of course, you already know some of the story. The literary inspiration for the film is the book of the same name by Mircea Eliade and the book was placed in Coppola's hands by Wendy Doniger, a professor of religion here at U of C and a longtime friend of Coppola.

The magazine article by Robert Loerzel tells more about the friendship:

Doniger says she and Coppola were members of a "little coven of misfits and existentialists" at Great Neck High School on Long Island in the mid-1950s. "We were anti–Doris Day," Doniger says. They wrote Hemingwayesque stories, listened to jazz in Greenwich Village, and smoked cigarettes. Doniger remembers Coppola as a "gawky" boy with a head full of ideas.

But don't read that "gawky boy" comment as too dismissive. Loerzel writes that "Coppola offers a little more detail: 'She was, in fact, the first girl I ever kissed.'"

We have an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Fiction | Film and Media
Posted by DB at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times Book Review ran a piece about Sherry Buchanan's new book Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers' Engravings and Stories in last Sunday's holiday books wrap up. Placing Buchanan's book on his list of new art and design books for the season, reviewer Steven Heller writes:

For grunts fighting the Vietnam War, statements of patriotism and protest found an outlet… on metal Zippo lighters. Vietnam Zippos, illustrated with objects from the collection of the artist Bradford Edwards, documents what the author, Sherry Buchanan, calls "amulets and talismans bringing the keeper invulnerability, good luck and protection against evil." Sadly, these personalized mementos also served as last testaments for many who were killed in action.

An extensive published record exists for documents and relics from the Vietnam War, yet this book, well designed and photographed by Misha Anikst, offers a rare personal dimension. The mottoes on these lighters, like "When I die I will go to heaven because I spent my time in hell," provide candid insight into what these soldiers thought of the war.

Read the rest of the review on the NYTBR website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | History
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Barry B. LePatner's Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry is featured in today's Wall Street Journal business section. Reviewer James R. Hagerty uses LePatner's book to cite one possible benefit of the otherwise gloomy housing market crisis—weeding out the weaklings in the contracting businesses. Hagerty writes:

Every now and then, a major construction project is completed on time and on budget. Everyone is amazed.

Barry LePatner, a New York lawyer specializing in construction cases, thinks this exception should become the rule. Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets outlines his proposals for making that possible.

Mr. LePatner's swift kick to the construction industry comes when it is already down. Commercial construction is slowing, and house building is in a severe slump, partly caused by a glut of new homes erected by overly optimistic builders even before the subprime crisis made it harder to find qualified buyers. The downturn will apply the wrecking ball to many of the weaker construction companies. But that won't be enough, according to Mr. LePatner. He argues that the industry will become efficient only when its customers become savvier and more demanding.

His solutions involve, among other things, hiring experts who can monitor builders and who have financial incentives to prevent needless overruns. Tougher contracts should enforce fixed costs or, at least, severely limit the scope for escalation. And thorough background checks—looking for lawsuits, public complaints and financial troubles—may lower the chance of hiring dodgy engineers and construction teams.

Such steps would force out of business weak firms that can't deliver on their promises. The survivors, Mr. LePatner thinks, would be larger firms that are less reliant on subcontractors and are better able to train employees and invest in technology.

To find out more see the WSJ article (available for seven days free to non-subscribers) or navigate to www.brokenbuildings.com.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Economics | Law | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The perceived conflicts between science and religion have dominated the media lately with controversies surrounding everything from intelligent design to stem cell research making headlines almost daily. But nowhere was this apparent contradiction more fully resolved than in the figure of A. S. Eddington (1882—1944), a pioneer in astrophysics, relativity, and the popularization of science, and a devout Quaker. Matthew Stanley's new book Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington provides an in-depth study of how Eddington successfully incorporated both religious and scientific values into his life and work. In a recent edition of Nature magazine reviewer Owen Gingrich explains:

To analyse the relationship between science and society (including religion), Stanley examines the bridging function of what he calls "valence values". Like the bonding ring of electrons, these values facilitate the interaction between science and culture. Through the lens of these values, Stanley uses Eddington as a test case for exploring the interaction of science and religion in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.

Unlike the natural theologians of the previous century, Eddington did not seek a harmonization between science and religion. He saw both as processes of seeking. As he reminded his audience at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, "A knowledge of nature is the great end of our work; but, if we cannot attain that, there is at least the struggle after knowledge, which is perhaps no less a thing." Eddington could have said the same of his religion.

Presenting a fascinating picture of Eddington's refreshingly liberal views on the intersection of religion and science Practical Mystic is a timely study of Eddington's brilliant life and work.

Archived in History | History and Philosophy of Science | Religion | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When Frances Ford Coppola was first introduced to Youth Without Youth by his former high school classmate and University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger, he was inspired to make his first film in ten years. Mircea Eliade's novella, now a major motion picture from Sony Pictures Classics, lies at the intersection of the natural and supernatural, myth and history, dream and science. The psychological thriller features an elderly academic who experiences a cataclysmic transformation that endows him with prodigious powers of memory and comprehension. Sought by the Nazis for medical experiments on the potentially life-prolonging power of electric shocks, Matei flees through Romania, Switzerland, Malta and India in a surreal fantasy that tests the boundaries of genre and imagination.

Read the press release. Also read an excerpt.

Archived in Literature | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Philosophy is perhaps the least visual of all the disciplines, yet as Tamara Chaplin reveals in her new book Turning On the Mind: French Philosophers on Television, by the end of the twentieth century some of the most prominent postwar French philosophers of the day including Bachelard, Badiou, Foucault, Lyotard, and Lévy managed to appear on over 3500 televised programs. In the upcoming edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education Nina C. Ayoub describes one of the more memorable performances detailed in Chaplin's book:

When the psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan agreed to appear in 1974 on Un certain regard, he insisted in advance, outrageously, that he would not be addressing everyone, only the "nonidiots." Despite what many viewed as incomprehensible talk—"Was this linguistically tortured charlatanism, or inspired brilliance?," quips Ms. Chaplin—the show was highly entertaining. "You don't really have to understand him to appreciate his satanic humor and to be fascinated by the insolent spectacle. …," France Soir reported. "Lacan beats Jerry Lewis on his own ground," offered Le Figaro. It was good television.

Read the rest of the Chronicle piece on their website.

Archived in Film and Media | History | Philosophy | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)