by Frank Chorba, Washburn U. zzchor@ACC.WUACC.EDU
This is Frank Chorba reporting books of interest to the PCA/ACA reviewed in
the July 9th New York Times Book Review.
Because of summer travel, the next report will not occur until after Monday
July 24th. That report will include the July 16th and 23rd Times Book
Reviews.
MIT Press:
THE ENGINE OF REASON, THE SEAT OF THE SOUL: A PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNEY
INTO TH BRAIN by Paul M. Churchland
(This is a remarkable book authored by a professor of philosophy
at the University of California, San Diego. There are many vital
questions raised as half of the book's title infers that the brain
is the biological "engine of reason" -- or unreason, hatred, love
fear and the rest. The brain may well also be, as the title's
second half puts it, "the seat of the soul." But for now we simply
don't know what, if anything, the "soul" is. And science is
unlikely ever to tell us. Among the many fascinating thoughts
expressed is the author's suggestion of the "Quart-Size
Universe." The human brain, with a volume of roughly a quart,
encompasses a space of conceptual and cognitive possiblities that
is larger, by one measure at least, than the entire astronomical
universe.)
Pantheon Books:
SECRET LIFE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Michael Ryan
(Ryan's extraordinarily absorbing and disquieting story is a portrait
of an artist as a young pervert. From his initial, fateful
encounter with a neighborhood child molester who lures him into his
"photo studio," the author goes on to vividly re-create the sex he
has had with the family pet, a male teacher and female students, as
well as with an assortment of other men and women who catch his
fancy. The book disturbs as much as it fascinates.)
Harper Collins:
THE PATH TO POWER by Margared Thatcher
( "I often think it's comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal,
That's born into the world alive,
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
After childhood, Oxford, a brief period as a scientific officer in
Lyons catering company and an unmemorable time at the bar, Lady
Thatcher tells a familiar story. Her huge political achievement
was to snatch the Conservative Party from the privileged but often
well meaning old upper-class gentlemen, and give it to the
shopkeepers, the businessmen, the people in advertising and anyone
she considered "one of us."
A GENIUS FOR LIVING: THE LIFE OF FRIEDA LAWRENCE by Janet Byrne
(Janet Byrne has written an engaging biography, but her
misfortune is to have come out with her book a year after the
publication of Brenda Maddox's "D.H. Lawrence: The Story of a
Marriage." To compare the two: Maddox's is akin to a battle-
ship bearing down on the Lawrences, a veritable dreadnought
full of scholarly steam, literary erudition and thoughtful
psychological interpretations; Ms. Bryne's is more like a sleek
greayhound, racing through the facts but wisely avoiding too
much detailed interpretation that would have mired her otherwise
breathless narrative in scholarly sludge.)
Simon & Schuster:
VICE VERSA: BISEXUALITY AND THE EROTICISM OF EVERYDAY LIFE
by Marjorie Garber
(A scholar argues that bisexuality is more common than people think,
and very difficult to define. Definition eluded the sage and serious
Kinsey, and the condition or practice of bisexuality continues to be
misrepresented in all manner of ways: for example, by people who
dismiss it as a transitional phase between homosexuality and
heterosexuality.)
1945 by Newt Gingrich and William R Forstchen
(An alternate history in which Newt Gingrich rewrites the world in
1945. The starting postulate is that on Dec. 6, 1941, four years
before the action of the book actually begins, Hitler was in a
plane crash that did not kill him but left him hospitalized long
enough for Albert Speer and the other boys to run the government
rationally for a while, meaning primarily that they temporarily
withdrew their endangered troops from the Soviet Union and they
did not declare war on the United States. Rather, Hitler plans to
take Britain and at the same time destroy the Manhattan Project:
blow up the buildings, kill all the scientists, and steal all the
papers.)
Scribner:
THE COURTS OF BABYLON: TALES OF GREED AND GLORY IN A HARSH
NEW WORLD OF PROFESSIONAL TENNIS by Peter Bodo
(Mr. Bodo draws on the two decades he has spent covering tennis,
and he is at his best when analyzing styles of play or relating
an anecodote that never made the newspapers. Having watched
thousands of matches, Mr. Bodo writes not just with an expert's eye
but with a finely tuned ear, as in this observation on John McEnroe
and Ivan Lendl: "If you closed your eyes during a match between
the two, it was easy to tell which man occupied either side of the
court. McEnroe's footfalls were as silent as those of a cat,
while Lendl made an astonishing amount of noise -- as if he were
moving furniture.")
The Free Press:
SPORTING GENTLEMEN: MEN'S TENNIS FROM THE AGE OF HONOR TO THE CULT
OF THE SUPERSTAR by E. Digby Baltzell
(The author longs for the day when tennis was a game for gentlemen and
not jerks. He argues that most of the problems in tennis today can be
traced to the amount of money sloshing around the game. Is the
author induldging in class snobbery? Baltzell replies, "But who, I
should ask, is to say that class snobbery is any worse than classless
snobbery? For snobs are often the product of leveling upward and
confident ages, while reverse snobbery or slipshod snobbery (in dress,
manners, grammar, professional pride and craftsmanship in general) are
insidious social disease of leveling downward and despairing ages
such as our own.")
G.P. Putnam's Sons:
SAYING GRACE by Lee Smith
(Fiction about an Appalachian serpent-handling preacher and con man.
For 27 years, Lee Smith has been exploring the intersection of the
sexual and the sacred in the minds and lives of Souther women. In
"Saving Grace," her ninth novel, she reacquaints her readers with
the Appalachia of "Oral History" (1983), generrally considered her
best work to date. Both novels are fundamentally concerned with loss.
But whereas the loss in "Oral History" is generational and regional --
the displacement of a rich local culture by the banalities of modern
American language and life -- the loss in "Saving Grace" is intensely
personal.)
Yale University Press:
FLORENCE kELLY AND THE NATION'S WORK: THE RISE OF WOMEN'S
POLITICAL CULTURE, 1830-1900 by Kathryn Kish Sklar
(In this first of two volumes on the life and times of Florence
Kelly, reformer and socialist, Sklar, a historian and the author
of "Catharine Beecher," has resurrected a remarkable women.
Kelly's crowning achievement was to have her report on the
conditions of sweatshops and child labor turn into a successful
bill in 1893, legislating the 8 hour day, a ban on the
employment of children and attending law school at night.)
FOLLOWING BALANCHINE by Robert Garis
(For 50 years, the dance and literary critic, Robert Garis
has been preoccupied with the ballets of George Balanchine,
primarily in performances by the New York City Ballet. This is a
firsthand account of his absorption. It serves as an intellectual
autobiography of a critic and its retrospective of Balanchine's
changing emphases as a artist.)
Graywolf Press:
JACK AND ROCHELLE: A HOLOCAUST STORY OF LOVE AND RESISTANCE
by Jack and Rochelle Sutin
(Jewish resistance in World War II is symbolized for most people
by the great Warsaw ghetto uprising. Not so well known are the
revolts in the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps. And still less
familiar is the resistance of the Jewish partisan groups that
existed in the Polish wilds.)
Send requests to review a book listed above to Peter Rollins
(rollins@osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu.).
Send queries regarding the JOURNAL OF RADIO STUDIES to Frank Chorba
(zzchor@acc.wuacc.edu) or phone 913-231-1010 x1380 or write to Frank
Chorba, Editor: JRS, Communications, Washburn University, Topeka,
KS 66621.