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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