From Head Hog to   School Builder

 

  
  

 
   
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BOOKSHELF

The Best American Essays 1999, edited by Edward Hoagland. This year's compilation of the best of ruminative non-fiction includes the autobiographical meditation, "Hitler's Couch," by Mark Slouka '80, originally published in Harper's Magazine (Houghton Mifflin, $27.50 cloth, $13.00 paper).

Alignment Despite Antagonism: The U.S.-Korea-Japan Security Triangle by Victor D. Cha '83. A "quasi-alliance model," in which Japan and the Republic of Korea maintain common alliances with the United States despite bilateral tensions, explains how the two countries have overcome their historical enmity and preserved political stability in southeast Asia (Stanford University Press, $49.50).

Beyond the Narrow Gate: The Journey of Four Chinese Women from the Middle Kingdom to Middle America by Leslie Chang '92. This chronicle of four Chinese women, who fled extreme violence, hardship and China's Red Army, and their journeys to America is also a daughter's journey of discovery of her own identity through her mother's past (E.P. Dutton, $24.95).

Limited by Design: R&D Laboratories in the U.S. National Innovation System by Michael Crow, Executive Vice Provost, and Barry Bozeman. This exposition of the institutional underpinnings and organizational structures of the 16,000 research and development laboratories in the United States places their role in technological innovation in the context of a developing system and suggests how to make informed decisions about how best to use them (Columbia University Press, $40).

The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope by Andrew Delbanco. In three essays originally delivered as the 1998 William E. Massey Sr. Lectures at Harvard, Columbia's Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities argues that over three centuries Americans have replaced a sustaining narrative based on a vision of God with a melancholy "somnolent likemindedness" devoid of transcendence (Harvard University Press, $19.95).

The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil Rights Organizations by Dona Cooper Hamilton and Charles V. Hamilton, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government. This study of America's social welfare policymaking from the New Deal to the 1996 welfare reform act won the National Conference of Black Political Scientists Book Award (Columbia University Press, $26.50 cloth, $17.50 paper).

A Practical Companion to the Constitution: How the Supreme Court Has Ruled on Issues from Abortion to Zoning by Jethro K. Lieberman, Adjunct Professor of Political Science. This alphabetical conspectus, for lay readers and specialists, to the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution includes a word-by-word concordance, a guide to every Supreme Court justice, and a table of more than 2,500 of the high court's cases (University of California Press, $35 paper).

Place For Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical by D.A. Miller, Professor of English and Comparative Literature. A personal exercise in cultural criticism and literary aesthetics that goes beyond sitcom jokes to analyze the massive appeal of the Broadway musical to gay men (Harvard University Press, $22).

Edgar Degas, Photographer by Malcolm Daniel, with essays by Eugenia Parry and Theodore Reff, Professor of Art History and Archeology. This introduction to the French painter's photographic ouvre includes Reff's essay on "Degas Chez Tasset," the père et fille who provided Degas photographic advice, support and materials (Metropolitan Museum of Art, $50).

Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II, third edition, by Joseph Rothschild, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science Emeritus, and Nancy M. Wingfield. In this new edition, Wingfield updates Rothschild's history to include the post-communist era in former Warsaw Pact countries (Oxford University Press, $45).

Out of Place: A Memoir, by Edward W. Said. The University Professor's account of his childhood and coming of age, which was shaped by demanding yet devoted parents, education in the Middle East, Europe and America, and a general sense of not belonging (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95). For an excerpt, see Columbia Forum.

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Avalon Professor in the Humanities. A leading literary theorist tracks the figure of a "native informant" in various disciplines and defines a responsible role of a postcolonial critic in an increasingly globalized world (Harvard University Press, $49.95 cloth, $24.95 paper).

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