The Chicago Blog

Scott McLemee interviewed Neil Gross yesterday for his "Intellectual Affairs" column at Inside Higher Ed. Gross is the author of Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher and he discusses his new book as a work in the sociology of ideas, not just biography and intellectual history. What's the cash value of doing that? Gross explains:

My goal in this book was not simply to write a biography of Rorty, but also to make a theoretical contribution to the sociology of ideas. Surprising as it might sound to some, the leading figures in this area today—to my mind Pierre Bourdieu and Randall Collins—have tended to depict intellectuals as strategic actors who develop their ideas and make career plans and choices with an eye toward accumulating intellectual status and prestige. That kind of depiction naturally raises the ire of those who see intellectual pursuits as more lofty endeavors….

I argue that intellectuals do in fact behave strategically much of the time, but that another important factor influencing their lines of activity is the specific "intellectual self-concept" to which they come to cleave. By this I mean the highly specific narratives of intellectual selfhood that knowledge producers may carry around with them—narratives that characterize them as intellectuals of such and such a type.

In Rorty's case, one of the intellectual self-concepts that came to be terribly important to him was that of a "leftist American patriot." I argue that intellectual self-concepts, thus understood, are important in at least two respects: they may influence the kinds of strategic choices thinkers make (for example, shaping the nature of professional ambition), and they may also directly influence lines of intellectual activity. The growing salience to Rorty of his self-understood identity as a leftist American patriot, for example, was one of the factors that led him back toward pragmatism in the late 1970s and beyond.

Navigate to Insidehighered.com to read the rest of the interview. Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biography | Philosophy | Sociology
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Marilyn Hacker, award winning poet and translator of over twelve books of contemporary French poetry including Guy Goffette's recent Charlestown Blues: Selected Poems, a Bilingual Edition, has posted a piece on the art of translation to the recently launched Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux poetry blog this week.

In her post she discusses her intimate engagement with the works she translates and her constant struggle to remain true to the original. Hacker writes: "The translator must be faithful to the text's linguistic valence, its connotations, to its music as well as its meaning." And perhaps nowhere else does the translator develop this synergy between sound and sense than in Georgetown Blues where her selection of Geoffette's work all center around the notion of "blue"—the color and the emotion, as well as that quintessentially American style of musical performance. From Charlestown Blues:

Read another poem on the UCP website or see Marilyn Hacker On "The Most Engaged Form Of Reading" on the FSG poetry blog.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Poetry
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John Louis Lucaites, author of No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy has posted an apropos commentary about the Earth Day themed cover image on today's Time Magazine to his No Caption Needed blog. Detailing a photoshopped version of Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph of WWII troops on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi raising a giant conifer in place of the flag, Lucaites makes the image an occasion to deliver some interesting commentary on the history of the original photograph's appropriation and the particularly fetishistic way that the Time Magazine editors have chosen to use it today. Lucaites writes:

By most accounts Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi is the most reproduced photograph of all time—ever!…

Such reproductions have occurred not just in traditional print media, but on stamps (twice), commemorative plates, woodcuts, silk screens, coins, key chains, cigarette lighters, matchbook covers, beer steins, lunchboxes, hats, t-shirts, ties, calendars, comic books, credit cards, trading cards, post cards, and human skin, and in advertisements for everything from car insurance to condoms and strip joints.…

All of this is to say that on the face of things there is nothing particularly noteworthy about Time's appropriation of the image this week to frame and promote its "green" agenda in a special issue on the "War on Global Warming," … but my interest here is in mapping out how the particular appropriation of the original photograph coaches an attitude that seems to rely on tired and clichéd conceptions of American exceptionalism. Put simply, it is not just an appeal to be "green" (although it is that), but it also functions to translate the meaning of being "green" into a symbolic register that both defines environmentalism in terms of U.S. nationalism—"green is the new red, white, and blue"—and, more, makes something of an imperialistic fetish out of it.

Read the rest of Lucaites piece on the No Caption Needed blog, or read an excerpt from Lucaite's book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events
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The University of Chicago News Office has posted a podcast featuring Charles Lipson, author of Succeeding as an International Student in the United States and Canada speaking about his new book. In the podcast, Lipson addresses many of the hot button topics for foreign students trying to adapt to life in the United States and Canada, both in and beyond the classroom. From the norms of classroom participation to obtaining health insurance, Lipson covers what students need to know to have a successful and enjoyable adventure as an international student.

To find out more listen to the podcast or see this special website for the book featuring reviews, info on institutional use, and an excerpt from the book, "Passports and Visas: A Quick Overview."

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Education | Reference and Writing
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Nicole P. Marwell, author of Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City was recently interviewed on Brian Berger's blog Who Walk In Brooklyn. Berger—co-editor of New York Calling published by Reaktion Books and distributed by UCP—engages Marwell in a discussion of the author's experiences in Brooklyn's Williamsburg and Bushwick neighborhoods studying the social impact of the community based organizations she writes about in her book. From the preface to the interview:

Nicole gets deep into one of the most important & least glamorous aspects of understanding a city of the haves and the ain't-got-shit, the mysterious—to outsiders—world of "community based orgnanizations" (CBOs). In Brooklyn, the best known of these groups is probably ACORN, and even their notoriety is due more to Bertha Lewis' failed devil's bargain with Bruce Ratner on the so-called "Atlantic Yards" project than any of their other, less disputable initiatives.

Not all CBOs are alike, however, and because of this, Nicole spent years working with eight different groups in Williamsburg & Bushwick. Some were secular, some church-based. Both partook of a much less flashy but essential ground-level politics, a very far cry from that of the highly paid lobbyists whom an already-wealthy real estate racket uses to advance its profits at the least cost to themselves. It's been said, from La Lechonera de Coqui in Castle Hill to Angel's Lounge under the elevated BMT tracks on Broadway, that CBOs are born to lose. This may or may not be true; Berger & Marwell have their opinions but I suggest that we also remember the inspirational words of Bennie (Warren Oates) in Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia: "Nobody loses all the time." We shall see, Saltamonte, we shall see.

Read the interview on Berger's Who Walk in Brooklyn blog.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Sociology
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Newton Minow, the current vice chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates and author of Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future was interviewed today on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight. From his time as assistant counsel to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson when Stevenson first proposed the idea of the debates in 1960, to his stints as cochair of the presidential debates in 1976 and 1980, Minow has played an integral role in transforming them into the major media events we know today. In the interview Minow delivers some fascinating commentary on the history of the debates and addresses some of the criticism leveled against them. You can find the archived audio online at the Chicago Public Radio website.

Also see memorable moments from presidential debates and read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Politics and Current Events
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The Shelf, a literary blog associated with the Canadian magazine The Walrus has just posted an interview with Elise Partridge discussing her new book of poems, Chameleon Hours. Partridge, who splits her time between Vancouver, BC, and Washington State, talks with Jared Bland about the reception of her work in the U.S. and, alternatively, how she sees it fitting into a Canadian literary tradition:

Much of your work has been published in the States, including in the New Yorker, and this new book is being simultaneously issued by the University of Chicago Press. In other words, you have more southern exposure than many Canadian poets. Does this effect the way in which you see your work fitting into a Canadian poetic tradition? Not to force you into any immodest comparisons, but what strain of poetic thought do you see your work coming out of?

I think writers inevitably belong in some way to their native countries and languages, but are also often hybrids of their own making, based on their sensibilities, influences, and so on. As an English-speaking North American (a dual citizen of Canada and the United States) I've been influenced by all kinds of literature in English—British, American, Irish, Australian, Canadian—and by literature translated into English, especially Polish, Russian, German, Latin American, and Chinese.…

And as to what Canadian tradition I might fit into—if I can place myself among living poets here, I do feel a bond with many, some older than I am and perhaps even more in the rising generations. I would certainly like to see Canadian poetry get more "southern exposure." I think there is a great deal that could both inspire and invigorate American poetry, and many more readers in the US who might simply enjoy and learn from Canadian poetry.

Read the rest of the interview on The Shelf.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Poetry
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Newton N. Minow and Craig L. LeMay, authors of Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future were interviewed recently on The Biz, the blog of TVGuide editor Stephen Battaglio. In the interview Battaglio engages the authors in a discussion of the presidential debates as "one of the biggest TV attractions of the year" and their ever increasing ability to draw record ratings for broadcast television networks:

TVGuide.com: Your book points out how both Presidents Johnson and Nixon didn't want to debate their challengers…. Now it seems that it would be impossible for a presidential candidate to avoid it.
Minow: Young people who have grown up with presidential debates expect them. I don't think any candidate can escape it.
Lamay: Absolutely. Remember in 1992 when President George H.W. Bush [who balked at debating Bill Clinton and Ross Perot] was followed around on the campaign trail by the guy in the chicken suit? If you avoided a debate today, you'd have millions of virtual chickens [all over the Internet].

TVGuide.com: The first 2004 debate between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry set a record with 62.5 million viewers. Will a meeting between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton top that?
Minow: I think it will, absolutely. It will be higher and the debates will be repeated and distributed in all kinds of new ways on the Internet. Every American will have a chance to see them.

You can read the full interview on The Biz.

Also see these memorable moments from presidential debates and read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History | Politics and Current Events
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Donald S. Lopez Jr., author of several books on Tibetan Buddhism including The Madman's Middle Way: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel and Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West has written an interesting piece for openDemocracy on the recent turmoil in Tibet and the future of the movement for Tibetan independence. Lopez draws a parallel between Tibet's current political relationship with China, and Latvia's former relationship with the USSR. Lopez notes that since the 19th century Latvia, though culturally distinct from Russia, was repeatedly placed under communist control between brief respites of independence, only to gain what Latvians hope will be a lasting independence when the USSR collapsed in 1991. Thus Lopez writes: "Is there anything to do but wait? Latvia regained its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It would seem that Tibet could only regain its independence with the collapse of the Peoples Republic of China. In Buddhism, time is measured not in centuries, but in cycles of creation, abiding, destruction, and vacuity, then creation again."

Read the full article on the openDemocracy website.

Also find out 7 Things You Didn't Know about Tibet, a web feature for Prisoners of Shangri-La.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Politics and Current Events
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Lt. Col. John A. Nagl is a leading experts on U.S. counterinsurgency operations. Authoring and contributing to several recent books on the topic—Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife and The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual—Nagl has been instrumental in promoting an alternative to conventional counterinsurgency strategy: increasing the U.S. military's advisory role to foreign forces, and "[empowering] our partners to defend and govern their own countries." In an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times Nagl takes a look at the ongoing conflict in Iraq and offers his advice on how "to [successfully] shift of the combat load from American forces to the Iraqi and Afghan armies." Nagl writes:

First, United States military and civilian leadership must recognize that resources to support this major shift in strategy have to be re-routed from our regular forces. Left to themselves, the military services will inevitably neglect advisory efforts to sustain conventional forces.…

Second, shifting the burden from our forces to Iraqi and Afghan troops will call for close coordination between our civilian leadership and commanders in the field. Even as American combat forces draw down in favor of adviser-supported local armies, American combat support in the form of firepower, intelligence and logistics will continue to be crucial…

Third, the United States' success depends on the willingness of the Iraqi and Afghan armies to fight with tenacity and skill. Soldiers of both countries are good fighters when well led. But we'll let them down if we don't send more and larger teams to embed with locals.

Finally, the American people must continue to be patient. In the 20th century, the average counterinsurgency campaign took nine years. The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to run longer, and other commitments loom in this protracted struggle against Al Qaeda and its imitators. Bitter experience has long recognized that only local armies can ultimately prevail in counterinsurgency operations.

Read the rest of the article on the NYT website.

Also read the preface from Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife or Nagl's foreword to the Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The University of Chicago Press, in partnership with the City of Chicago's Mayor's Office of Special Events, announces the launch of a new lecture series—Great Chicago Places and Spaces: Conversations Within Communities. With a goal of fostering dialogue between Chicago citizens and Chicago writers, Conversations within Communities brings award-winning authors Mary Pattillo, Ronne Hartfield, Sally A. Kitt Chappell, Louise W. Knight and Stuart Dybek to the public square. Each author will be featured in free noontime lectures in the Millennium Room at the Chicago Cultural Center, followed by free evening readings at community sites throughout Chicago. All evening readings begin at 6:30 P.M.

For more information call 312.744.3315 or navigate to the city of Chicago's Great Chicago Places and Spaces website.

Read the press release.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts
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Eddie Glaude, professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton, and author of the recent In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America was interviewed recently on the Fox News program Hannity and Colmes. In the interview Glaude takes on the conservative half of the Hannity and Colmes duo to debate religion, blackness, and the church in the context of Obama and the recent Jeremiah Wright controversy.

Also read an excerpt from Glaude's book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts
Posted by TXM at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday's New York Times ran an interesting op-ed piece by author and sociologist Monica Prasad on recent proposals to impose a tax on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide in an effort to combat global warming and other negative impacts of greenhouse gasses. In the article Prasad—author of the 2005 book The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States—uses her superior knowledge of European economic policy to demonstrate how one European country has made the carbon tax work. Prasad writes:

The very thought of new tax revenue has a way of changing the priorities of the most hard-headed politicians—even Genghis Khan learned to be peaceful, the story goes, when he saw how much more rewarding it was to tax peasants than to kill them. But if we want lower emissions, the goal of a carbon tax is to prompt producers to change their behavior, not to allow them to continue polluting while handing over cash to the government.

How do you get them to change? First, you prevent policy makers from turning the tax into a cash cow. Carbon tax discussions always seem to devolve into gleeful suggestions for ways to spend the revenue. Reduce the income tax? Give the money to low-income consumers? Use it to pay for health care? Everyone seems to forget that the amount of revenue is directly tied to the amount of pollution that is still going on.

Denmark avoids the temptation to maximize the tax revenue by giving the proceeds back to industry, earmarking much of it to subsidize environmental innovation. Danish firms are pushed away from carbon and pulled into environmental innovation, and the country's economy isn't put at a competitive disadvantage. So this is lesson No. 1 from Denmark.

Read the rest of the article online at the NYT website.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Economics | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to the New York Times, yesterday evening marked a significant checkpoint in the War in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded killing four more U.S. troops, bringing the total American death toll in Iraq to 4000. With no end in sight and casualties steadily rising, media outlets around the globe have used the 4,000th death as an opportunity to look back on the war and the many soldiers who have lost their lives there since 2003. But providing perhaps one of the most vivid and personal of these retrospectives, is NYT photojournalist and author Ashley Gilbertson's recent Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War. Documenting the conflict from the initial invasion, to Iraq's first national elections, Gilbertson's book tells candidly of his own experience photographing the war and of the lives of the soldiers fighting it.

To preview some of the images from the book navigate to the author's portfolio on the NYT website.

To hear more about the Gilbertson's experience in Iraq, you can navigate to the Press's special website for the book which features and exclusive half-hour interview with the author, or see this archived video from CSPAN's Book TV of Gilbertson's talk earlier this month at a Borders Books & Music in Vienna, Virginia.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Books for the News | History | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Podularity.com, a literary blog based in the UK, is running an interesting podcast of an interview with author Martin Kemp on the topic of his recent book The Human Animal in Western Art and Science. Interviewer George Miller engages Kemp in a discussion of the links between humans and animals embedded in Western culture to explore the question; where is the line between animal and human? And, does the line even exist at all? Navigate to Podularity.com to listen.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History and Philosophy of Science
Posted by TXM at 03:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nicholas J. G. Winter is publishing his book, Dangerous Frames: How Ideas about Race and Gender Shape Public Opinion at the perfect time, just as these issues are getting their most concrete expression in the political sphere. We asked him to reflect on the the Democratic presidential race in light of the ideas he explores in his book.

The historic presence in the Democratic primary race of both the first woman and the first African American with serious shots at a major party nomination has understandably brought lots of media attention to the roles of gender and race in Americans’ political thinking and voting. Much of this coverage obscures rather than clarifies those roles.

On the one hand, commentators ask whether black and female voters support “one of their own.” Do black voters support Obama? Do women support Clinton?

On the other hand, others ask some version of the question “Are Americans more racist or more sexist?” Is gender more fundamental to American social structure, or is racism more centrally embedded in American politics. More concretely, will white male swing voters be more disinclined to vote for a woman or an African American man in the general election?

Continue reading "Race, Gender, and Politics: Dangerous Frames" »

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Politics and Current Events
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An interview with Jan Golinsky author of British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment was posted yesterday to Benjamin Cohen and David Ng's science blog, the World's Fair. The interview begins with an interesting synopsis of the book and its unique contribution to both cultural history and the history of science. From the World's Fair:

WORLD'S FAIR: What do we have here? When you sent in the prospectus to Chicago, what did you tell them this would be about?

JAN GOLINSKI: The book explores beliefs about weather and climate in eighteenth-century Britain and its colonies. I argue that these beliefs reflect some of the important social and cultural changes of the period. People began to study the weather in a way that we recognize as more "scientific," but traditional attitudes also survived, even what we might call "superstitions." The tensions between scientific and traditional approaches seemed to me symptomatic of the age, and to some extent of modern attitudes to the natural environment in general.

WF: You're a premier historian of science, respected, influential, articulate, good-humored, don't worry, I'm going somewhere with this…namely, what does a book about the weather contribute to our understanding of the history of science?

JG: I think of it as a combination of history of science with cultural history. I didn't set out to trace the origins and growth of a science of weather, but to place scientific practices like record-keeping and the use of instruments in their cultural context. So, I suppose it contributes to the way we can understand science as a set of practices and beliefs that has developed in specific historical settings.

Read the rest of the interview on the World's Fair blog.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History | History and Philosophy of Science
Posted by TXM at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an op-ed published in last Sunday's Washington Post Lt. Colonel John A. Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam and contributor to the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, draws on his hands-on knowledge of counterinsurgency operations to deliver an insightful analysis of current U.S. strategy in the Middle East. While praising the success of last year's "surge" Nagl warns that it may still be a bit "too soon to take a victory lap." Nagl writes:

The "surge" of five brigades and the extension of Army combat tours in Iraq from 12 to 15 months has strained the Army to the breaking point. Neither the Army nor the Marine Corps has a reserve of ground troops to handle other crises. Meanwhile, the Taliban is regaining strength in Afghanistan and the lawless border regions of Pakistan,… and the foreseeable consequences of a hasty U.S. withdrawal from Iraq… could easily reverse last year's gains and provide a new home for terrorism in the Middle East.

The best short-term solution is rapidly expanding the Iraqi and Afghan security forces to hold towns cleared by U.S. forces. Local forces, stiffened by foreign advisers, have historically been the keys to success in counterinsurgency warfare. As such, I've been among the serving officers and veterans who've urged the U.S. Army to create a standing Adviser Corps.

But even greatly expanding and institutionalizing the role of advisers cannot win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Insurgencies are ultimately inspired by ideas, and defeating the Iraqi insurgency will require a counter-narrative—backed up by robust economic development, a solid and committed government in Baghdad, and providing the Iraqi people with basic services such as water, electricity and (above all) security. As such, the single most important step the United States could take toward victory is re-creating an information agency to discredit our enemies' narratives and amplify those of our allies.

Read more Nagl in his new preface to Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, or see his foreword to the The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, “The Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency”

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Politics and Current Events
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Last Sunday David Shulman author of Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine was interviewed on the CBC's Sunday Edition. Focusing on Shulman's experiences as a member of Ta'ayush—a peace group working to end violence in the West Bank—Shulman recounts the extreme injustices suffered by Israelis and Palestinians as they struggle to survive in an environment of constant violence and upheaval.

You can listen to the complete interview online at the "Sunday Edition" web page. Also read an excerpt from Shulman's book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biography | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Wednesday David Grazian, author of On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife was featured on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed with host Laurie Taylor. In the show Taylor and Grazian engage in a fascinating discussion about the various schemes and scams that the nightlife industry employs in order to separate customers from their money, as well as the scams perpetuated by the clientele themselves in their relentless search for sex, self-esteem, and status.

Listen to archived audio from the show on the BBC Radio 4 website.

Also, read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Psychology | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Wednesday the Drug Law Blog authored by San Francisco attorney Alex Coolman ran an interesting interview with Doris Marie Provine, author of Unequal under Law: Race in the War on Drugs. The interview focuses on the topic of her book, exploring how issues of race have influenced American anti-drug efforts. Coolman prefaces the interview with some positive words about Provine's fascinating new book:

Professor Doris Marie Provine of Arizona State University's School of Justice & Social Inquiry is the author of a really interesting and challenging new book called Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs. I keep coming back to this book as a reference point for talking about some of the thorniest issues related to the intersection of race with American action—and inaction—on drug policy. These are issues that are so big and obvious that they're almost hard to recognize as issues. Unequal Under Law, however, does a really nice job of emphasizing that we are, in fact, making racial choices in drug policy—both consciously and unconsciously—that profoundly affect the lives of our fellow citizens.

Read the interview on the Drug Law Blog.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Law | Politics and Current Events | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John G. Geer, author of In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaign, argues that negative ads are positive—they focus on important political issues and give voters critical information about differences between candidates. Attack ads do not degrade but enrich the democratic process. See his pick of the genre in John Geer’s Attack Ad Hall of Fame.

Inevitably, Geer himself was swiftboated on Youtube.

Comments on Geer's Hall of Fame selections are welcome.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Books for the News | Politics and Current Events
Posted by DB at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of the introduction to The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual was featured on the Charlie rose show in late December of last year to discuss her part in the development of the manual and the new approach to U. S. counterinsurgency tactics it has helped to develop. You can watch an archive of the video below or by navigating directly to the Charlie Rose website.

Read an excerpt from the Manual, "Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations", or the foreword by John A. Nagl.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts
Posted by TXM at 01:07 PM | 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)

Ashley Gilbertson, author of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War recently joined fellow photographer Nina Berman on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show to discuss their recent projects documenting the lives of American soldiers in Iraq and how they manage to cope with their experiences after they come home. As Lopate reveals in his interview, both books offer a candid look into the horrors of modern warfare soldiers are forced to endure and the toll it takes on them both physically and emotionally. Navigate to the WNYC website to listen to archived audio from the show as well as view two photo galleries featuring a small sampling of each photographer's work.

Gilbertson was also recently interviewed by Sandip Roy for NPR's UpFront radio to discuss Gilbertson's personal experiences as a photographer in Iraq. You can find a transcription as well as archived audio of their conversation online at the UpFront website.

Finally, don't miss the UCP's own Whiskey Tango Foxtrot website where you can read more about Gilbertson's book, place an order, and view our own video interview with Gilbertson.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week we mentioned that Barry B. LePatner, author of Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry was going to be featured on Chris Gondek's business management podcast, The Invisible Hand. Well, while the podcast officially airs on Mr. Gondek's site this Saturday, he was kind enough to give us a link to the full audio from his talk with LePatner a couple of days in advance.

Listen to The Invisible Hand Podcast Episode 61 (mp3) as LePatner and Gondek engage in a fascinating discussion about how America's fractured construction industry is costing the nation billions of dollars, and what LePatner suggests can be done to fix it.

Also check out LePatner's special website for the book with excerpts and other resources.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Economics | Law
Posted by TXM at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This essay by Barry B. LePatner, author of Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry, is reprinted from the August 12 edition of the Boston Globe.

In April, a gasoline tanker overturned beneath a key stretch of highway in Oakland, Calif., erupting into flames that melted the steel of an overpass and brought a section of road crashing to the ground.

Repairs were projected to cost $5.2 million and snarl Bay Area traffic for months. The state solicited bids for the work, offering a set of bonuses for finishing early, and got a surprising offer: One company said it would take the job for $867,000.

The firm, C.C. Myers, set to work around the clock, working closely with suppliers and fabricators across the country. The repairs took just 18 days, earning the company a $5 million bonus, giving commuters a smooth drive home far sooner than anyone expected—and sending waves of surprise through the industry.

"I haven't encountered anything like this," one union official told the San Francisco Chronicle as he watched the project unfold.

American construction is the industry that time forgot. Over the last century, the nation's other great industries—oil, automobiles, even computers—have undergone waves of profound modernization, breeding competitive, innovative companies where on-time, under-budget projects are nothing unusual. But the construction industry, which at $1.2 trillion in annual revenues constitutes 5 percent of the nation's economic output, remains a bastion of waste and inefficiency.

Protected by a tradition of contracts that insulate them from the costs of their own mistakes, the nation's thousands of construction companies have resisted innovation and now survive as the last large mom-and-pop industry, where each project brings together a new assortment of subcontractors, and nobody—not the lead contractor, not the architect, not the person who is paying for it all—can say in advance how much a particular project will really cost.

This has always been deeply frustrating for anyone wrestling with the industry's unpredictable costs and timelines, but it is now becoming an urgent problem on a national scale. The deadly and dramatic collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis—and the growing tally of troubled roads and bridges—has brought home just how much building must be done to make our infrastructure safe. In Massachusetts alone, the repair tab could be more than $17 billion, according to a recent Pioneer Institute study. Another national study found that by 2030, America faces some $25 trillion in new construction just to build houses, schools, and offices for our growing population. If the construction industry is not reformed, this will lead to waste on an almost unimaginable scale.

Construction touches every part of the economy. It creates the buildings where we live and work, our hospitals and schools, and the roads we use to reach them. Done right, it transforms our cities and towns for the better—but more often, its inefficiency inflates home prices and bogs down corporate growth, fattens our tax bills and delays civic improvements.

Making construction faster, less expensive, and more reliable will free up time and energy for society's higher priorities. Saving even 5 percent on a school project would translate into millions of dollars to spend on books and teacher salaries, or simply return to the taxpayer. It would make home ownership more accessible and make companies more nimble and competitive. And even more broadly, a genuine transformation would give birth to a new American export, a construction industry that can lead the world.

Continue reading "The industry that time forgot" »

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Economics
Posted by TXM at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Author Richard Halpern was featured last Friday on NPR's On the Media to discuss the myth of American innocence, and the various cultural forces that contribute to its production. Halpern recently spoke at a New York University symposium on the subject—“Shocked! Shocked!! Just How Many Times Can a Country Lose Its Innocence?”—and is the author of a book on a man he claims is one of the most prolific manufacturers of American naïeveté, Norman Rockwell. In Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence, Halpern argues that Rockwell's art, even as it actively works to create a sentimental American style of innocence, in fact, frequently teems with perverse acts of voyeurism and desire. Listen in as Halpern debunks Rockwell and the American innocence industry online at the NPR website.

Read an excerpt from Halpern's book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biography | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lt. Col. John A. Nagl will be a featured guest this weekend on Book TV's After Words. Nagl will join Sean Naylor, senior writer for the Army Times, to discuss The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Nagl was on the team of writers who created the new Counterinsurgency Manual.

Our edition of the Manual includes Nagl's foreword as well as an introduction by Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. We also have online “Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations,” an excerpt from the first chapter.

You can catch Nagl's discussion of the book on C-SPAN2 this Saturday at 9 pm, Sunday at 6 pm and 9 pm, and again Monday at 12 am. (Times are Eastern.) Check the Book TV website for more details.

Nagl is also the author of one of the most influential books on counterinsurgency, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam; we have his preface to the book available.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The online news and media magazine AlterNet has just published a fascinating interview with Kevin Rozario, author of The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America. In the interview Onnesha Roychoudhuri talks with Rozario about everything from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to 9/11 to explore some of the ways Americans have responded to such disasters—responses which Rozario argues have played a vital role in shaping the nation that we know today. From the interview:

OR: You argue a broader point in the book that our economy may require this kind of obliteration in order to stay afloat.

KR: Capitalism itself is a system of destruction and creation. You have to keep destroying the old in order to clear space for then new. Otherwise, it achieves stasis, and if it achieves stasis, it dies. It depends on constant expansion just to keep going. But again, to be very clear about this, not all Americans think this is a blessing. This is a process that can be extremely lucrative for businesses, but it's a process that can be extremely destructive for laborers. The benefits of disaster are very unevenly portioned and they go to those with power and influence rather than ordinary Americans.

Read the rest of the interview on the AlterNet website or read an excerpt from Rozario's book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History
Posted by TXM at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis many have turned their attention to the problems posed by America's aging infrastructure. A potential sinkhole for millions of taxpayer's dollars, the cost of fixing roads, bridges, and other public works sometimes acts to prevent essential repairs from being made, and may result in tragedy. But according to Barry B. LePatner, author of the forthcoming Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry, providing a safe and well-maintained infrastructure does not have to mean wasting the taxpayer's money. In an article last Sunday for the Boston Globe LePatner argues that by consolidating a fragmented industry into larger "national construction powerhouses" the business of construction could become much more efficient:

The modern construction business hasn't changed significantly since the first steel-frame skyscrapers began to rise in the early 1900s. Early tall buildings such as the Tribune Tower in Chicago and the Woolworth Building in New York grew too complex to remain under the purview of a single 'master builder,' the architect who knew and supervised every detail of the project. Instead, each required an assembly of specialists—electricians, plumbers, heating contractors, excavators. Dozens, then hundreds of companies arose to handle those systems, each a local family-run shop that drove its truck to one project at a time. Today, in 2007, that's still basically how the business works.…

This fragmentation has enormous costs. It guarantees that any building site will be an assembly of strangers, with a high risk of miscommunication. It traps the industry in conservative practices, ensuring that any new learning will spread slowly, if at all. Splintered into so many firms, the construction industry has never developed the economies of scale, financial cushions, or comfort with risk that would allow it to enter a new phase and truly modernize.

But, LePatner argues, "under a regime of incentives and real accountability, construction companies would begin to transform. The industry would spawn a few winners that, as they prospered, would acquire the capacity to research new techniques, retain skilled employees through down periods, and buy up dozens or even hundreds of small specialized players."

To read the rest of LePatner's article navigate to the Boston Globe website. To find out more about the book, (due out this October), navigate to http://www.brokenbuildings.com/.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Economics
Posted by TXM at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Would you rather chair your university department or manage an amateur softball team? Edwin Amenta, NYU professor of sociology and author of Professor Baseball: Searching for Redemption and the Perfect Lineup on the Softball Diamonds of Central Park, was pretty sure he'd enjoy the softball team a lot more. In an interesting piece of commentary for the careers section of the Chronicle of Higher Education Amenta relates how he was passed over for departmental chair but then was given the opportunity to spend the summer as manager of the Performing Arts Softball League. But as it turns out Amenta got a little more than he bargained for. Amenta writes:

Near the end of the season, I realized that not only was managing not that much fun, it was not greatly different from being a department chair.

Both jobs provide an undercurrent of excitement, with little crises to attend to all the time. Sometimes there are important general managerial decisions to make—like deciding which players or faculty members to recruit.

But the rest of the work is extensive and thankless. It takes great effort to get teammates and colleagues to do things they should volunteer for, like practicing or serving on committees. Teammates want always to play their favorite positions the way colleagues like to teach their favorite classes.

To improve the team or curriculum requires making a few people angry, while the majority who benefit will barely notice. Winning or success in hiring new faculty members—all that is to be expected and brings little praise. Losing or failing in hiring brings blame.

Navigate to the Chronicle's website to read the rest of Amenta's article or read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biography | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lieutenant Col. John A. Nagl was featured yesterday on NPR's All Things Considered to discuss the recent re-publication of the U. S. Army's Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II. Nagl—who wrote the forward to the new edition—joins host Michele Norris to discuss the valuable lessons to be found in this small advice manual issued to soldiers serving in Iraq more than 60 years ago; advice which Nagl argues is still very much relevant today. In his interview, Nagl laments the fact that the army had not heeded some of this advice before the current counterinsurgency operations began in 2003, and encourages the adoption of some of the book's suggestions in the context of the United States' current efforts to win Iraqi hearts and minds.

Navigate to the NPR website to listen to archived audio of the show as well as read an illustrated excerpt from the book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mary Pattillo, author of the recently published Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City, penned a fascinating op-ed piece for Sunday's Chicago Tribune on the rapidly changing face of Chicago's black urban communities. Pattillo's article begins:

"No more blacks." That was the forecast of a resident of the Oakland community when asked about the future of her South Side neighborhood.

"No more blacks?" I responded, worried in no small part because my research is about black gentrification.

"[A] couple of blacks" would be left, the woman then allowed. "They got money.

This simple prediction is rich with meaning. For one thing, it helps establish the players in the widespread upscaling of Chicago: The little man. The middleman. And then, The Man.

The prediction also lays out what's at stake, not just in Oakland and North Kenwood on the South Side, but in various Chicago neighborhoods. In the process of "building, breaking, rebuilding" the City of the Big Shoulders, as Chicago's poet Carl Sandburg so eloquently put it, who is going to keep the little man from being left behind? Are Chicago's shoulders big enough to serve, include and celebrate everyone?

Pattillo's article seems to leave this question open ended, but makes a point that it is the rising black middle class who must ultimately shoulder the responsibility of brokering between the lower and upper classes if the future of some of the more underprivileged members of Chicago's black urban communities is to look any brighter.

Also, social historian Arnold Hirsch (Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960) reviewed Pattillo's new book in the July 14 edition of the Tribune. The online version is still up on their website.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lt. Colonel John A. Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam and contributor to the recently published U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, was the subject of an article in Tuesday's Manhattan Mercury discussing the counterinsurgency in Iraq. The article focuses on Nagl's strategies for winning the conflict, which he claims requires a fundamentally different approach than the "conventional large scale World War II search and destroy tactics" that the U.S. military has traditionally employed. Mark Scott writes for the Mercury:

Instead [the U.S. Army] must focus on building up the government, economy and security forces of the host nation. This is essentially the approach being used by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan with the military transition team plan, which embeds American soldiers with Iraqi and Afghan forces to train them to ultimately take over the defense of their country.

"These are long, hard, slow wars," Nagl said. "Ultimate success in Iraq very much depends on the political growth and development of the Iraqi government, which is still enormously young and faces some very severe challenges."

Recently, Nagl has been pushing a proposal for the Army to create a permanent "Army Advisor Corps," that would embed such "transition teams" full-time with Iraqi national security forces. (His proposal has recently been taken up by U.S. Senator John McCain.) Could Nagl have the key to improving what many believe to be a deteriorating situation in Iraq? To find out more get the rest of the article on the Mercury's website.

Also see Nagl's new preface to Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, his foreword to the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, and an excerpt from the Manual, "Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency."

Last Saturday Nagl was a guest speaker at Chicago's Pritzker Military Library. Head on over to their website for an audio podcast of his talk.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The News Hour with Jim Lehrer ran a fascinating piece yesterday featuring author and deep sea explorer Claire Nouvian on her new book, The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss. Nouvian joins Spencer Michels along with a panel of researchers to discuss the many new species scientists are currently discovering in the deep ocean, and the new techniques that make their discoveries possible. On the News Hour website you can listen to a RealAudio podcast of the discussion, archived video of the show, or view a images of some of the fascinating creatures featured in Nouvian's book.

Combining the latest scientific discoveries with astonishing color imagery, The Deep takes readers on a voyage into the darkest realms of the ocean. Revealing nature's oddest and most mesmerizing creatures in crystalline detail, The Deep features more than two hundred color photographs of terrifying sea monsters, living fossils, and ethereal bioluminescent creatures, some photographed here for the very first time. Accompanying these breathtaking photographs are contributions from some of the world's most respected researchers that examine the biology of deep-sea organisms, the ecology of deep-sea habitats, and the history of deep-sea exploration.

See our special website for The Deep which includes a gallery of images and an interview with the author.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biology
Posted by TXM at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Prolific literary blogger Marshall Zeringue recently devoted several postings to two fresh voices in Chicago's Phoenix Poets Series: Peter Campion, author of Other People, and Peg Boyers, author of the recently published Honey with Tobacco.

On his blog Writers Read Zeringue invites Campion to discuss some of the books he's currently reading, offering a great chance to listen in on the literary insights of a pro. Zeringue also takes the time to link to Campion's work in Slate magazine where Campion has been reprinted as well as made audio recordings of several of his poems from Other People.

Zeringue also features Peg Boyers discussing her recent book, Honey with Tobacco, on The Page 69 Test—another blog authored and administrated by Zeringue in which he asks an author to quote and briefly discuss whatever text can be found on page 69 of their book (though he does bend the rules a bit for Boyers, whose book weighs in at a short but sweet 64 pages).

You can find out more about Other People and Honey with Tobacco as well as read more excerpts on the UCP website.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Poetry
Posted by TXM at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An essay by David Shulman, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine.

Israeli peace activists don’t expect to be popular. Although by all accounts most Israelis do want peace and would accept any reasonable compromise, they normally react with bitter scorn and hatred for anyone who seems to cross the lines. Organizations like mine, Ta’ayush—“Jewish-Arab Partnership,” one of the most effective of the peace groups operating at the grassroots level in the occupied territories—are viewed as naïve at best, treasonous at worst. Last month’s events in Gaza confirmed everyone’s worst prejudices. “You want to make peace with them?” my neighbors asked me in supercilious tones. “Can’t you see