Book Jacket Research Articles

The History of Modern Japanese Education: Constructing the National School System, 1872–1890 (review)

Reviewed by: The History of Modern Japanese Education: Constructing the National School System, 1872–1890 Mark Lincicome (bio) The History of Modern Japanese Education: Constructing the National School System, 1872–1890. By Benjamin Duke. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J., 2009. xiv, 416 pages. $65.00. Publication of the book here under review—the fifth in the long career of Emeritus Professor Benjamin Duke—presents an occasion to reflect upon the development of English-language scholarship on Japanese education over the last 50 years. In 1959, when Duke joined the faculty of International Christian University (ICU) as professor of comparative and international education, there were not enough publications on the subject in English to identify Japanese education as a distinct field of study. That began to change in 1965 with the appearance of widely read works by R. P. Dore on Tokugawa education and Herbert Passin on the modernization of education in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan.1 Duke and Donald Thurston, in turn, broke new ground eight years later with the publication of their respective monographs on the left-wing teachers' movement, centered on the Japan Teachers Union.2 Between 1973 and his retirement from ICU in 1996, Duke went on to publish three more books related to Japanese education. All three were published within a notable five-year period between 1986 and 1991, best remembered as the historic watershed when "Japan, Inc." gave way to Japan's "lost decade" as the country's "economic bubble" finally burst. Like his monograph on the left-wing teachers' movement, what these three works lacked in theoretical and methodological sophistication they seemed to make up for in their choice of timely topics. His second monograph, The Japanese [End Page 455] School: Lessons for Industrial America (Praeger Publishers, 1986) appeared on the heels of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform—prepared by President Ronald Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education—and rode the wave of American angst over the economic threat posed by Japan, Inc. This was followed by a collection of biographical essays written by Japanese historians of education, which Duke compiled, edited, and published under the title Ten Great Educators of Modern Japan (University of Tokyo Press, 1989). The major contribution of this volume was that it introduced to an English-language audience some less prominent educational reformers and innovators active in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan—including Sawayanagi Masatarō, Shimonaka Yasaburō, Nanbara Shigeru, and Munakata Seiya—and the distinguished contemporary Japanese historians who wrote about them, such as Mizuuchi Hiroshi, Nakano Akira, and Terasaki Masao. Duke's final book during this period picked up on a theme similar to The Japanese School. The major difference is that instead of examining the role of Japanese education in producing a literate, loyal, hardworking labor force rivaling that of the United States, his Education and Leadership for the Twenty-first Century: Japan, America, and Britain (Praeger Publishers, 1991) examined how the Japanese school was shaping the attitudes of the country's future leaders. Regrettably, the book here under review marks a disappointing coda to Duke's prolific scholarship on Japanese education. Woe to the unsuspecting reader who reaches for Duke's The History of Modern Japanese Education solely on the basis of Thomas R. H. Havens's hyperbolic praise gracing the book jacket, which erroneously proclaims it "the first analysis in any western language of the creation of the Japanese national school system based primarily on Japanese-language documents," "a major step forward in the scholarship on this important subject," and "fresh and thorough." Anyone familiar with previous historical treatments of Japanese education during the late nineteenth century will quickly discover that this is a work of limited vision and originality, written by a seasoned scholar who has failed to stay abreast of the field he helped to establish. Indeed, the problems that plague Duke's narrative are presaged in his decision to dedicate the book "To the Japanese samurai who led their nation into the modern era," a line that smacks of the heroic narrative that dominated an earlier generation of English-language surveys covering Japan's transformation from insular, feudal backwater to modern nation...

Computational Diversions: Turtle Really and Truly Escapes the Plane

Just about anyone, when asked, can respond to the question ‘‘What is your all-time favorite book?’’ I’m no exception–in fact, for me, there’s no contest. The book is Turtle Geometry, by Hal Abelson and Andy diSessa (Abelson and diSessa 1980). Actually, Turtle Geometry is more than just a ‘‘favorite’’ book: it actually changed my life, a story I’ve never written about. In 1980, while working as a fledgling computer programmer at the Rockefeller University (my machine there was a DEC PDP-8), I happened into the University Library and plucked the book from the ‘‘new arrivals’’ shelf, intrigued by the mysterious title. A month later, I was certifiably insane, telling everyone who would listen that there was this really, really important book that you just had to read, that introduced mathematical ideas in a completely wonderful, experimental way, that made everything clear... and so forth. I had no idea who the authors were, but the book jacket said that they worked at MIT, so I applied to graduate school to study with them. My application form must have appeared sufficiently obsessive, and to my shock I was accepted. It sounds arrogant to say that ‘‘the rest is history’’, but in any event, the rest is my history. I still love Turtle Geometry, and have probably re-read the book in its entirety a half dozen times in the three decades since it was published. Abelson and diSessa use a Logolike language to present a remarkably accessible, procedural approach to geometry. In the course of about 500 pages, they introduce ideas of recursion, artificial life, Euclidean geometry, vector algebra, topology, and general relativity, to name a few. The book has lost absolutely none of its joy and freshness for me; by the way, it’s still in print, and if the interested reader wishes to consider this a plug, he or she can be my guest. The purpose of this column is to quench an ambition that has festered within me these past 30 years, since first picking up Turtle Geometry from the new-arrivals shelf. In the

Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward: Two Stories (review)

Reviewed by: Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward: Two Stories Irmy Schweiger (bio) Richard King, editor. Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward: Two Stories. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010. 133 pp. Hardcover $ 35.00, ISBN 978-0-8248-3402-9. Paperback $15.00, ISBN 978-0-8248-3436-4. [End Page 341] The crucial point of Richard King’s edited translation Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward could not have become more evident than by simply placing these entirely contrasting narratives of heroism into one and the same book jacket: Li Zhun’s short story “Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang,” reflecting the dawn of an alleged utopia, and Wang Zhiliang’s “Story of the Criminal Li Zhongtong,” bewailing its de facto dystopia. Both literary heroes originate from the same historical period—the Great Leap Forward—but their stories are being told within a span of two decades—that is, 1960 and 1980. Naturally, we encounter two entirely different narratives of this historical disaster ranging between its optimistic, albeit naïve, takeoff and its tragic and horrifying outcome. The two stories have been selected and translated by Richard King in collaboration with five of his graduate students. Accompanied with an insightful introduction to the Great Leap, the stories are contextualized through informative portraits of the two writers. Both Li Zhun and Zhang Yigong grew up in the province of Henan, where the Great Leap not only was supported with great enthusiasm and no little naïveté but in the course of time also showed its most cruel and brutal face. Based on interviews with the editor, these biographical sketches are enriched by the authors’ recollections of that traumatic time. Furthermore, both provide information on their creative process and the literary sources they drew from when breathing life into their very different heroes. Finally, a brief glossary with relevant terms and expressions is included. Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward is a valuable document that gives historical insight into the workings of ideology and into one of the most horrific catastrophes the Chinese people endured during the twentieth century. Both stories are outstanding representations of their genre and time in various respects. As Richard King points out in his introduction, Li Zhun’s “Li Shuangshuang” is a representative and superior example of the literary doctrine of the time that combined revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism and was to replace the Soviet socialist realism. Writers and “cultural workers” in general were perceived of as “engineers of the human soul” whose crucial task was to display the nation’s glorious future. Therefore, it was the author’s task to create images of heroic figures excelling in their striving for the goals set by the national leadership. Having been reprinted more than four hundred times; read by 300 million people; adapted as a comic strip, a film, and numerous local operas, “Li Shuangshuang” was the literary success story of the Great Leap, par excellence. Wang Zhiliang’s “Li Zhongtong” cannot compete in terms of success. However, it can be seen as a typical example of what has been called “Literature of the Wounded.” Although wound-literature mainly has its focus on the tragedies and injustices of the Cultural Revolution, Wang Zhiliang’s Great Leap story follows the same narrative mindset: his hero unhesitatingly sacrifices himself since he is the one who upholds the true values of the Party, which has been betrayed by ultraleftist policies. He also shows unshakeable confidence in the new leadership that [End Page 342] would not only right the wrongdoings of the past but safely lead toward a new future. Read nowadays, both stories become tales of absurdities. Their respective literary figures emerge as true incarnations of time-bound heroes. Like the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap created a world in itself; thus, heroism followed its own logic. Equipped with the guiding brilliance of Mao Zedong’s thought, it was a world reigned by a utopian scheme that was more real than the miseries and shortcomings of daily life. Though we might find these stories and their figures ridiculous, they are at no point trivial or laughable. Certainly, we no longer read them to indulge...

Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture ed. by Gary Radke (review)

REVIEWS 269 taneously becoming less emotional. Funerals were now a carefully controlled show of hierarchy where men were stoic and honorable, which reflected their ideal nature. Conversely, women and the poor could grieve because lamentation reflected their irrational nature. These practices contrast directly with the previous century where men lamented their comrades in a show of honor. The strongest aspects of this work are Lansing’s analysis of medieval Italian literature and court cases. Her prose is lucid and insightful and the chapters on Italy teem with lively and illustrative anecdotes. The book is a welcome update to the subject of medieval death culture. My critique of Passion and Order is that Lansing’s analysis of classical thought on gender and emotion, while interesting , wanders away from her central topic. Her concentrated analysis of medieval Italy is more original than what is essentially an overview of classical and early medieval thought on gender. As well, the unconventional structure of Passion and Order causes Lansing to repeat herself in order to reestablish which part of her argument she is emphasizing. That being said, the reader comes away with a clear understanding of her points, which makes the repetition less of a concern. Lansing makes a spectacular contribution to the historical world with Passion and Order. It effectively argues a radical and interesting theory about gender in addition to examining a fascinating aspect of medieval Italian culture. Her deft integration of these varied sources demonstrates a sophisticated level of skill. Passion and Order combines social and cultural history, subtly incorporating literary analysis and creating a sturdy and compelling foundation for Lansing’s conclusions. This engaging and intellectually stimulating work should appeal to a vast audience, including scholars of gender, medieval history , and Italy, for years to come. KIMBERLY SHEPHARD, History, University of Southern California Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture, ed. Gary Radke (New Haven: Yale University Press 2009) 216 pp., color ill. Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It was edited by Gary Radke of Syracuse University and includes seven essays from scholars ranging from renowned Leonardo experts to less established figures in the field of art history. These essays are complemented by striking images beginning with the book jacket and continuing throughout the book. The gorgeous color photographs capture even the minute incised lines and blemishes on the surfaces of the statues and approximate the experience of visiting the exhibition more effectively than the vast majority of catalogues. Due to the lack of surviving Leonardo sculptures, the subject was not treated chronologically, but rather as a series of case studies. The first article, written by Radke, features an overview of Leonardo’s career and contextualizes his sculptural achievements, training, theories, and practices. The next essay is by Martin Kemp, a Leonardo specialist, and it deals with the paragone, or comparison between painting, sculpture, and poetry in the Renaissance. Kemp refers largely to Leonardo’s treatise on painting while explaining the artist’s primarily negative reaction to the medium of sculpture, which he concludes was REVIEWS 270 prompted by the competitive nature of the courtly context in which the treatise was written. Kemp goes on to describe how Leonardo was indeed a “great plastic visualizer” who actually had a great appreciation for sculpture. Pietro Marani’s essay addresses the Vitruvian Man, possibly Leonardo’s most famous drawing, and the artist’s interest in proportions. Marani points out that unlike other thinkers, Leonardo was not searching for fixed rules of human proportions, but for general rules of measurement. The author makes several comparisons to Alberti’s Treatise on Sculpture, and he hypothesizes that Leonardo was working on his own treatise on this same subject. The next two essays deal with Leonardo’s designs for various equestrian monuments, none of which were ever completed. The first of these is an extensive profile of Leonardo’s work on a colossal sculpture for Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan. The article, written by Andrea Bernardoni, includes a discussion of the complex history of the work, a...

The American Protest Novel in a Time of Terror: Carolyn Chute's <i>Merry Men</i>

Post-9/11, the radicalism of Carolyn Chute seemed to scare off the media and even the academy, and she still struggles to maintain a steady audience for her novels. Yet Chute's work remains strikingly relevant. Her protest novel, Merry Men, especially merits a fuller appraisal than it has so far received. A brief overview of the reception of Chute's rough, realistic, seemingly naive narratives reveals her to be as provocative and challenging as her most self-consciously postmodern or avant-garde contemporaries. It is unlikely that Chute will ever find the critics as congenial as they were in response to her first novel, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, published in 1985 by Ticknor & Fields, when Chute was thirty-seven. Here was a writer unlike any other though the novel's rural setting and largely uneducated characters inevitably brought comparisons to Faulkner's Snopes family and Flannery O'Connor's characters. Such comparisons characterize the bulk of mainstream critical response to her books to date.1 While the book jacket includes Chute's ironic remark that her work was involuntarily researched, publicity materials nonetheless emphasized the book's comic aspects. Critics tended to follow suit, glossing over the novel's trenchant social criticism in favor of the biographical details of Chute's own life, thereby producing a marketable image of authenticity, but with the reassurance that its author had written her way out of the poverty depicted in the novel. The first national profile of Chute, published in Time-Warner's People Weekly (Warner Books would issue the paperback the following year), informs its readers that Chute has paid off 10 years of debts with her Beans earnings; when a writer-friend encouraged her to send the finished draft to an agent in New York, we are told, Chute had to borrow money for postage. Class condescension (presumably unintended) characterized the book's reception among critics. A review in People classified Chute as a

Apes, Tyros, and Humans: Wyndham Lewis's Portraits

Apes, Tyros, and Humans:Wyndham Lewis's Portraits Thomas Karshan Wyndham Lewis: Portraits. National Portrait Gallery, London, 3 July-19 October 2008. Curated by Paul Edwards with Richard Humphreys. Wyndham Lewis: Portraits. Paul Edwards and Richard Humphreys. Berkeley, CA: Gingko Press; London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2008. Pp. 112. $34.95; £15.00 (paper). From July to October last year, the National Portrait Gallery in London held an exhibition of Wyndham Lewis's portraits, curated by Paul Edwards with Richard Humphreys. Once again, Joyce, Eliot, and Pound met in a single room, uneasily aware of one another—though Pound, uncharacteristically, was feigning sleep. Stephen Spender, Naomi Mitchison, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, and Edith Sitwell flanked them, along with patrons and other figures less well remembered, while the entrance was guarded by a self-portrait of Lewis himself, sporting a gargoyle-grin, empty-headed and forbidding. As a sort of rebuff or antidote, the exhibition concluded with a room dominated by several stiflingly intimate images of Lewis's wife. It was a feat bringing these portraits back together. The 1938 portrait of T. S. Eliot, familiar from critical and biographical book jackets, had to be shipped from Durban, South Africa. Rejected by the Royal Academy in 1938—a famous controversy which led to Augustus John resigning from the Academy in disgust—it was sold to Durban Art Gallery for only £250. Lewis had hoped he could make a living from portraiture, first in the early 1920s, and then when he returned to it in the late 1930s and during the Second World War. But Lewis seems always to have experienced financial contracts as a threat to his dignity, and he succeeded in sabotaging his prospects by estranging and insulting all the people he depicted—even himself. The mixed critical reception of this show in London suggests that Lewis is still not getting the respect he deserves.1 The opening self-portrait, [End Page 427] Mr. Wyndham Lewis as Tyro (1920-21), will not have helped. An obnoxious version of Lewis as spiv, heedless of any challenges to his little view of the world, leers out at us from under a sharply angled ovoid hat, his face an unhealthy sallow green set against an acrid yellow backdrop. It looks like a snapshot of a small-town lothario taken in the photo booth of a train station, and, placed here, it encourages the accusations of arrogance that Lewis liked to invite. In fact, this mercilessly self-mocking painting belongs to a sequence of "Tyros" first exhibited in 1921. The tyros, in Lewis's account, are "immense novices" who "brandish their appetites in their faces, lay bare their teeth in a valedictory, inviting, or merely substantial laugh . . . most of them are, by the skill of the artist, seen basking, themselves, in the sunshine of their own abominable nature."2 Lewis had been in the trenches, and, as Edwards and Humphreys point out, he casts himself in this self-portrait as a British Tommy, dying beneath the mask of that much-vaunted stoical British humor, which he had satirized in the first BLAST of 1914. As Tarr tells us in Lewis's 1918 novel of the same name, "all English training is a system of deadening feeling, a stoic prescription—a humorous stoicism is the anglo-saxon philosophy." This "gross and bouffonic illusion" is the atmosphere of Lewis's painting.3 Lewis imagined a universe of tyros, set twenty thousand years in the future and cut off from the earth, in which the tyros labor under an idiotic self-confidence, each considering himself "'more royal than the King'," sovereign in the petty universe of himself.4 In the painting, he has also captured this insular complacency in the pushy jostling way that his shadowless tyro-self occupies the whole picture space, without any furniture around him, forming no intelligent relationship with his environment. He exemplifies the semi-civilized state Lewis described in an early piece, "The New Egos": "a civilised savage, in a desert-city, surrounded by very simple objects and a restricted number of beings, reduces his Great Art down to the simple black human bullet . . . [he] cannot allow his personality to venture forth...

Borges and Photography

Borges is unquestionably the most photographed Argentine author. As someone who assumed something of an international celebrity status before he was widely accepted in his native country, the photographic images of Borges, which outside Argentina quickly went from newsprint to book jackets to gallery walls, were less the consequence in Argentina of any canonical role in national letters than they were the attention of local artists to their acquaintances and associates in rather closed circles.

Nostalgia for Crisis: Representing Revolution in North American Popular Culture

In contemporary North America we no longer have revolutions; instead we have nostalgia for revolution. Benjamin Arditi’s Politics on the Edges of Liberalism argues that the continued presence of marginal radical politics in Western liberal democracies is evidence of our nostalgia for revolution and that we are mourning an ideal state of the past. I argue that another more widespread site of evidence for our nostalgia for revolution is the proliferation of popular artefacts branded with revolutionary iconography. As a symbol, revolution is omnipresent in North American culture. It is on our t-shirts, magazine covers, book jackets, advertising posters,and in our language and conversations describing new political realities and cultural contexts.We are collectors of revolutionary culture: we wear it, read it, buy it, and talk about it.

Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis (review)

Reviewed by: Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis Elizabeth Bromley George Makari . Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. viii + 613 pp. Ill. $32.50 (978-0-06-134661-3). It seems true, as the book jacket claims, that Revolution in Mind is the first book "ever to fully account for the making of psychoanalysis." George Makari's impressive new book vibrantly renders the intellectual environment of late-nineteenth-century Europe, exhaustively traces psychoanalysis's development through World War II, and generously enlivens an enormous cast of thinkers who fundamentally shaped the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Makari's history includes the warts of Freud's science: the politicking, jockeying, and hand waving that plagued the effort are recounted in rich detail. Yet, through comprehensive historical detective work, Makari demonstrates why psychoanalysis was an astounding advance and an unparalleled watershed in the science of the mind and brain. This is neither a biography of Freud nor a good introduction to psychoanalytic thought, since Makari only indirectly explains Freud's ideas by detailing their development. Instead, Revolution in Mind is a history of a scientific discovery. The development of psychoanalysis as a science is finally and fully recounted: a brilliant synthesis of previously incommensurate ideas; the development of initial hypotheses and their dialectical refinement; theoretical advances in fits and starts; and an increasingly persuasive accumulation of evidence. The social portion of science is also detailed: the attacks from the mainstream aging lions; the backdoor politics enacted to maintain cohesiveness among colleagues; the uneven link between theory and practice; and the rising tide that lifted all boats. Makari demonstrates that, by prioritizing hypothesis testing and standards for data collection, Freud created an avalanche of investigation in psychological science. He deftly describes how Carl Jung, Eugen Bleuler, and other colleagues in Zurich devised experimental techniques with which to test tenets of Freud's model of the mind. Experimentation in the clinic also led to theoretical developments. Freud initially used dreams as the primary source of data about the unconscious, but dream interpretation proved a haphazard data collection tool. It took decades for psychoanalysts to recognize that the relationship between analyst and analysand could be a reliable representation of unconscious processes. Makari says, "Freud had pushed aside the complex hermeneutics of dream interpretation and replaced it with the analysis of transference. From the evidentiary point of view, this move was a winner, and Freud knew it" (p. 332). [End Page 214] Revolution in Mind is also a useful corrective, because it confronts certain totalizing myths about Freud. Freud was not an intellectual autocrat. Freud did struggle to maintain some theoretical unity among colleagues of immense diversity, and at times he squelched debate. His ideas were not inherently misogynistic. Instead, they were interpreted by some as blatantly revolutionary and libertine and by others as progressive and friendly to women. Overall, the critiques of psychoanalysis do not appear to have changed much in a century. Auguste Comte's curse haunted early analysts: psychological knowledge "could never be objective," Comte claimed, because a mind looking at itself would surely produce "as many theories as there are observers" (p. 11). Lacking rigorous laboratory techniques for gathering data, psychoanalysts argued over fundamental truths. One analyst's conclusions could easily be impugned as only "marked by the author's neurosis" (p. 170). Freud recognized that theoretical innovation emerged from introspection (e.g., following his father's death, during his own self-analysis) as often as it did from experimentation. And, as early psychoanalysts gleefully appropriated Freud's ideas to issue scathing cultural critiques, psychoanalysis as a social theory conflicted with psychoanalysis as a clinically relevant theory of the mind. For these reasons and others, psychoanalysts had difficulty maintaining a position in academic medical circles. Makari accomplishes a remarkable feat: he thoroughly explores the nuances of progress and retrenchment in this intellectual and scientific movement. His history does not shy away from the complexity of its subject. Revolution in Mind fills a significant gap, and it is a must read for scholars interested in the history of ideas about the mind or brain. [End Page 215] Elizabeth Bromley University of California, Los Angeles Copyright © 2009...

Israel Charny’s <i>Fighting Suicide Bombing: A Worldwide Campaign for Life</i>

We begin with the book jacket photo that commands the reader’s attention as the horror on a Muslim woman’s face reminds us that the terror is not reserved for Infidels only. Then the dedication of the book is “to life,” while the volume’s last words are a plea for peace—in Charny’s words, a “worldwide campaign for life” to be led by religious and secular leaders across the globe. The book concludes with a vignette from Islamic culture that speaks nobly of furthering peace and life, ending with the last word: “inshallah.” What is evident in between is Charny’s humanistic approach to this most inhumane of all modern phenomena.

McGuffey, Ford, Baldwin, and the Jews

McGuffey, Ford, Baldwin, and the Jews by Ronald R. Stockton Henry Ford exhibited anti-Semitic attitudes throughout his life. Scholars have no definitive explanation of where these beliefs originated, although many point to political influences during Ford's youth as possible causes: an overarching xenophobia in the country as a whole as well as the tendency for fringe elements to associate Jews with the machinations of powerful banking interests which purportedly engaged in currency manipulation and fomented economic turmoil.1Neil Baldwin's recent book Henry Ford and theJews presents a new theory, that Ford learned anti-Semitism from the various editions ofMcGuffey's Eclectic Readers. Baldwin's book jacket makes the point that Ford's "early intellectual growth was dominated by The McGuffey Reader, a popular schoolbook featuring Shakespeare's Shylock, and traditional scriptural interpretations condemning Jews for not accepting Jesus Christ as the son of God."2 The first chapter in Baldwin's book ("McGuffeyland") notes that Ford grew up with the Readers. Baldwin says that McGuffey emphasized that "Protestant Christianity was the only true religion in America." The Readers taught "a Calvinist structure of reward and punishment" inwhich "hard work, thrift,and rugged conformity were the ideals. Success was desired. Failure was shunned." According to Baldwin, the Readers embraced "an ordered, rigid, and straightforward view of aworld where white was white and black was black."3 None of Baldwin's observations would surprise anyone familiar with the Readers. McGuffey's views were "a mirror of early nineteenth century America." The first two Readers were published in 1835 and 1836. Others came later.They targeted the small towns and rural areas Michigan Historical Review 35:2 (Fall 2009): 85-96 ?2009 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 1Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford, Expansion and Challenge, 1915-1933 (New York: Scribner, 1957); Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for theWorld: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century ofProgress, 1903-2003 (New York: Viking, 2003). 2Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and theJews: The Mass Production ofHate (New York: Public Affairs, 2001). 3 Ibid., 4-5. 86 MichiganHistoricalReview of what was then the West, where education was fragmentary.4Because teachers at that timewere generally not well educated, graded textbooks that introduced students (and teachers) to the great writers were amajor contribution to the curriculum. The Readers also affirmed the value of ethnic groups through a "cosmopolitan" approach that emphasized "the rich cultural traditions of other nations."5 The books included stories about Germany, England, Scodand, France, Italy, Holland, Russia, Spain, Poland, Arabia, Al Hambra, India, and Catholic Ireland. Many entries praised the ancient Hebrews, their scriptures, and theirmoral teachings. Itwas themulticulturalism of its age. Previous works on Ford's anti-Semitism mentioned theMcGuffey Readers peripherally, if at all, but a number of reviewers of Baldwin's book embraced the theory.Alison Cowan wrote that Ford's "aversion" to Jews dated to his schooldays, "when he was reared on themoralistic teachings of William Holmes McGuffey, whose books harped on sources like Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice.'" Robert Rockaway said, "Baldwin infers that Ford's phobia about Jews originated in his youth when, as a schoolboy, he fellunder the influence of theMcGuffey Readers." Carlin Romano reported that Ford "grew up reading McGuffey's Readers, fullof anti-Semitic stereotypes and the example of Shylock, Shakespeare's poster boy forJewish greed."6 At this point, it is hard to see how any work published after 2001 that addresses Ford's anti-Semitism or McGuffey could fail to note Baldwin's book. Unfortunately, however, Baldwin's arguments in his opening chapter are flawed and heavily dependent upon a selective, sometimes erroneous or forced reading of secondary sources. To support his thesis, Baldwin cites five readings fromMcGuffey. "Shylock, 4 John H. Westerhoff III, McGuffey and His Readers: Piety,Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1978), 18. 5 Henry Steele Commager, "Foreword," inWilliam H. McGuffey, McGuffey s Fifth Eclectic Reader (1879; repr., New York: New American Library, 1962), xv-xvi. 6 Alison Leigh Cowan, "Off the Shelf: The Industrial Genius Who Hated Difference," New York Times, December 9, 2001, sec. 3, 6; Robert Rockaway (review), Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production...

Cost: A Novelby Roxanne Robinson; New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, 420 pages, $25

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessCost: A NovelBaer Ackerman M.D.Baer Ackerman M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:13 Jan 2015https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2008.59.12.1476aAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail The novel Cost is a very gripping and superbly written story about the destructive effects of heroin addiction on the brain, mind, and soul of Jack Lambert and on his family. In addition to accurately describing "an intervention," Roxanne Robinson also provides superb information about the neurochemistry and neuroanatomy of addiction. She describes the concomitant cognitive, psychosocial, interpersonal, and psychodynamic distortions that both predispose to and are caused by the addiction. Ms. Robinson also beautifully describes the common regressions that can and often emerge at family gatherings, in which adults act more childlike than is ordinarily the case. The novel is in prose, but it is really a poem conveying the textures, tastes, sounds, colors, assumptions, lusts, banalities, hypocrisies, vanities, regrets, joys, iciness, warmth, smoothness, and stickiness of living, in a style ranging from luxuriant to spartan. When one first picks up this wonderful book, one is greeted on the book jacket by a beautiful pastoral painting of a cottage on a hill. The painting has been shredded into four vertical strips that visually foretell the torn, misaligned, and yet fundamentally and curiously coherent quality of the Lambert family.The dedication page reads "In memory of Henry Ward Scoville 1909–1924." Alone on the page, the words and numbers looked as if they had been etched on a tombstone. I continued to puzzle over the dedication, and after reading the book I contacted the author, who told me that Henry Ward Scoville was her mother's favorite brother who was killed while riding his bicycle to school. The pain and shock of that grief never left the author's mother, and even decades later, profound sadness welled up in her mother at the thought of that terrible day. Ms. Robinson went on to tell me that "one of the things the novel is about" is the notion that the loss of a child leaves a wound that never heals and never vanishes within a family. The sadness haunts those close to the child forever. In summary, I highly recommend Cost for anyone wanting to better understand the vicissitudes of our human condition and the tragedies of heroin addiction. Importantly, the novel is also about the centrality of memories and how each interaction either lovingly or cruelly creates a new memory and thus a new present and future. Dr. Ackerman is child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist for Alma Counseling Psychiatric Services, Plano, Texas. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 59Issue 12 December, 2008Pages 1476-1477PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2008 Volume 59 Number 12 Metrics PDF download History Published online 13 January 2015 Published in print 1 December 2008

Cost: A Novel

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessCost: A NovelBaer Ackerman M.D.Baer Ackerman M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:13 Jan 2015https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2008.59.12.1476aAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail The novel Cost is a very gripping and superbly written story about the destructive effects of heroin addiction on the brain, mind, and soul of Jack Lambert and on his family. In addition to accurately describing "an intervention," Roxanne Robinson also provides superb information about the neurochemistry and neuroanatomy of addiction. She describes the concomitant cognitive, psychosocial, interpersonal, and psychodynamic distortions that both predispose to and are caused by the addiction. Ms. Robinson also beautifully describes the common regressions that can and often emerge at family gatherings, in which adults act more childlike than is ordinarily the case. The novel is in prose, but it is really a poem conveying the textures, tastes, sounds, colors, assumptions, lusts, banalities, hypocrisies, vanities, regrets, joys, iciness, warmth, smoothness, and stickiness of living, in a style ranging from luxuriant to spartan. When one first picks up this wonderful book, one is greeted on the book jacket by a beautiful pastoral painting of a cottage on a hill. The painting has been shredded into four vertical strips that visually foretell the torn, misaligned, and yet fundamentally and curiously coherent quality of the Lambert family.The dedication page reads "In memory of Henry Ward Scoville 1909–1924." Alone on the page, the words and numbers looked as if they had been etched on a tombstone. I continued to puzzle over the dedication, and after reading the book I contacted the author, who told me that Henry Ward Scoville was her mother's favorite brother who was killed while riding his bicycle to school. The pain and shock of that grief never left the author's mother, and even decades later, profound sadness welled up in her mother at the thought of that terrible day. Ms. Robinson went on to tell me that "one of the things the novel is about" is the notion that the loss of a child leaves a wound that never heals and never vanishes within a family. The sadness haunts those close to the child forever. In summary, I highly recommend Cost for anyone wanting to better understand the vicissitudes of our human condition and the tragedies of heroin addiction. Importantly, the novel is also about the centrality of memories and how each interaction either lovingly or cruelly creates a new memory and thus a new present and future. Dr. Ackerman is child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist for Alma Counseling Psychiatric Services, Plano, Texas. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 59Issue 12 December, 2008Pages 1476-1477PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2008 Volume 59 Number 12 Metrics PDF download History Published online 13 January 2015 Published in print 1 December 2008

A Friendship Between the Last American Cowboy and the Man in the Bushes

A Friendship Between the Last American Cowboy and the Man in the Bushes Carol Boggess (bio) Book jackets identify Don West with phrases like “Appalachia’s legendary poet-activist,” and give his friend James Still the title “Dean of Appalachian Literature.” Such labels indicate accomplishments but reveal little about who the men really were. Still generated a more colorful description when he once called West the “last American cowboy” (see George Brosi’s afterword in No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems). About that same time, he was in the process of crafting his own image as the “man in the bushes.” Consider these contrasting images. A cowboy is independent and on the move, a man with a cause that involves mastering nature, herds of livestock, and sometimes uncooperative people. The man in the bushes is stationary, an individual who blends into nature and takes refuge there; he is solitary and hidden away, even mysterious. Though no real person ever fits a simple type, these descriptions inform us about the friendship of West and Still. West was an activist, a person who never avoided conflict and sometimes created it; he pursued his cause with vigor and wrote poetry to advance that cause. He liked the natural environment but was more interested in the conditions of the people in it. Still was, as his name implies, “still.” After he settled in Knott County, Kentucky, in 1932, he lived there for the remainder of his long life, and much of that time he lived simply and alone. Though he was not passive, he certainly was never the activist that West wanted him to be. Still was an observer who was immersed in the natural world and wrote what he heard and experienced. To explore the friendship that developed between the two, we need to begin in 1927 when they first met. Their backgrounds were similar, but their personality differences were obvious from the start and grew with time. [End Page 21] Childhood The boys experienced parallel childhoods in Georgia and Alabama. Both were born in the summer of 1906, the oldest sons of large families. Because their fathers were small farmers, they were never accustomed to luxury and frequently experienced hardship. Each boy was the first in his family to go to college, and by chance they ended up at the same one, Lincoln Memorial University in East Tennessee, because there they had the opportunity to work for an education. College years: Lincoln Memorial University and Vanderbilt Don and Jim knew each other at lmu but were not close friends. Jim was a slight young man who was nearly overcome by the physical labor required to earn the money that would keep him in school. He was shy as well, especially his first two years. The only club he joined was the Grant-Lee Literary Society. By contrast, Don was a big man about campus from the moment he arrived. He was always gregarious and busy. An example of his active involvement is revealed in the December 12, 1928, issue of the student newspaper, The Blue & Gray, where his name appears in four articles: as leader in establishing a new literary society, as representative of the student body in greeting a guest evangelist, as president of the Harrogate ymca, and as a star member of the track relay team. If all that, along with his work and studies, was not enough to keep him occupied, he ran a business collecting dry cleaning for the Middlesboro Laundry (lmu archives). Though never so active, Jim became better known by the time he was a junior, largely because he was on the honor roll and won essay prizes. He also helped Don organize the new Howard Literary Society. Another interest they shared was scout work. According to the summer 1928 issue of The Mountain Herald, Still was the scoutmaster for the Lincoln Memorial Boy Scouts and West was the assistant (lmu archives). This work would have appealed to both men because it offered the camaraderie Don craved and the contact with the outdoors Jim enjoyed. As a senior, Jim was quietly solidifying a relationship with his favorite mentor, Iris Grannis, and his future patron, Guy...

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (review)

Reviewed by: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century Richard D. Burbank The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. By Alex Ross. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. [xiv, 624 p. ISBN-13: 978-0-374-24939-7. $30.] Illustrations, bibliographic references, discography, index. Music librarians have a treasure in this wonderful new book: unlocking the treasure chest itself is best accomplished by reading the index first. That way, names you might want to see in the text but that do not appear there will not surprise you. The index provides a detailed overview of just who and what are discussed in the book. Next, read the preface. That is where Alex Ross reveals his purpose: “Each chapter cuts a wide swath through a given period, but there is no attempt to be comprehensive: certain careers stand in for certain scenes, certain key pieces stand in for entire careers, and much great music is left on the cutting-room floor” (p. xiv). Ross emphasizes in his preface that he “chronicles not only the artists themselves but also the politicians, dictators, millionaire patrons, and CEOs who tried to control what music was written; the intellectuals who attempted to adjudicate style; the writers, painters, dancers and filmmakers who provided companionship on lonely roads of exploration; the audiences who variously reveled in, reviled, or ignored what composers were doing, the technologies that changed how music was made and heard; and the revolutions, hot and cold wars, waves of emigration, and deeper social transformations that reshaped the landscape in which composers worked” (p. xii–xiii). After reading the book itself, the reader may want to read the endnotes to find out just where all of these bits of information came from, and to see how artfully Ross has woven them into his text. Ross freely admits that “portions of the book originally appeared, in different form, in The New Yorker.” He also states that his subtitle is meant literally: “this is the twentieth century heard through its music” (p. xiii). He informs the reader that the book is the result of fifteen years of work as a music critic. He also occasionally reiterates the purpose of the book as the text unfolds, as, for example, when he writes that the book illuminates “the cultural predicament of the composer in the twentieth century” (p. 185). These interjections make the book an excellent lesson and a wonderful ride. Finally, near the end of the book, Ross once again highlights his intent: “This has been a book about the fate of composition in the twentieth century” (p. 514). As the text on the book jacket points out: “The end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.” Here, then, are some composers the reader will not find in Ross’s book. It is important to list these names so that, in case the list contains some of your favorites from the twentieth century, you will be able to calm down and allow Ross to shine his own lights on that century: Isaac Albéniz, Dominick Argento, Arthur Benjamin, Richard Rodney Bennett, Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Bliss, Ernest Bloch, William Bolcom, Henry Brant, Havergal Brian, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, Michael Colgrass, Roque Cordero, Chou Wen-Chung, Mario David-ovsky, Frederick Delius, Edison Denisov, Jacob Druckman, Gottfried von Einem, Gerald Finzi, Elena Firsova, Michael Finnissy, Arthur Foote, Alberto Ginastera, Umberto Giordano, Rheinhold Gliere, Alexander Gretchaninoff, John Harbison, Elizabeth Lutyens, Bruno Maderna, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Victor Herbert, Alun Hoddinott, York Höller, Vagn Holmboe, Jacques Ibert, Vincent d’Indy, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Andre Jolivet, Joseph Jongen, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Jean Langlais, Paul Lansky, Benjamin Lees, Ton de Leeuw, Alan Jay Lerner, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Jules Massenet, Nicholas Maw, Thea Musgrave, Andrzej Panufnik, Vincent Persichetti, Astor Piazzolla, Bernard Rands, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Ottorino Respighi, Wolfgang Rihm, Edmund Rubbra, Aulis Sallinen, and the Tcherepnins. Ross divides the twentieth century into three parts: 1900–1933; 1933–1945; 1945–2000. He uses the two world wars as major [End Page 75] points of demarcation after writing about Vienna (prior to World War I), then Hitler and Stalin, then New York...

Boyle on Atheism (review)

Reviewed by: Boyle on Atheism A.H. de Quehen Robert Boyle . Boyle on Atheism. Transcribed and edited by J.J. MacIntosh. University of Toronto Press. xxvi, 494. $95.00 In 'the weightiest, and most solemn part' of his History of the Royal Society Thomas Sprat explains how 'their Enterprise . . . will be found as much averse from Atheism, in its issue and consequences, as it was in its original purpose.' No experimenter was more averse than Robert Boyle. His projected book on the causes and remedies of atheism remained unpublished, but his manuscripts contain a mass of drafts and related writings, which J.J. MacIntosh has now collected and arranged according to Boyle's general scheme. The three major sections are 'Demonstration and Its Difficulties,' 'Arguments for God's Existence,' and 'The Unprevalence of Arguments against God's Existence,' each with a substantial introduction where MacIntosh analyzes Boyle's arguments, not just in their seventeenth-century phase but from their classical or mediaeval origins through to their most recent formulations. This is all immensely informative and provides, in conjunction with the explanatory notes on passages and the detailed account of manuscript changes, a clear view of Boyle's thought and its development. Collecting passages from different places according to topic does highlight Boyle's 'well-known tendency to repeat himself'; however, his verbal alterations are often interesting. If one is curious to know what comes before or after in the manuscript, MacIntosh's appendix is of some help; but it is best to have on hand Michael Hunter's revised catalogue in The Boyle Papers (2007), which includes cross-references to Boyle on Atheism. As almost all MacIntosh's material is from the manuscript volumes not yet online, one must still consult microfilms of the originals. Boyle saw the hand of providence in surviving his childhood accidents: for example, when he was at Eton with his brother and 'a greate part of the wall of their chamber, with the Bed, Chaires, Bookes & furniture of the next chamber over it, fell downe upon their Heads.' MacIntosh, after referring readers to Michael Hunter for Boyle's later [End Page 245] career, concentrates his introductory biography on those early years during which Boyle became a committed Christian. (The publisher has the idealized young Boyle ofWilliam Holl's 1828 engraving on the book's jacket – wrongly captioned 'The original is in the collection of The Earl of Liverpool' as the painting passed to the Cotes family on the third earl's death in 1851.) Boyle takes the conventional view, 'not to expect metaphysical or rigid Demonstrations of a Deity, but to be content with a moral one,' and he uses a favourite analogy – 'the incommensurableness of the side and Diagonal of a square' – to counter the atheist's argument 'That there are some things belonging to the receiv'd Notions & Attributes of a Deity, that are not comprehensible by Human Reason, & therefore ought not be admitted by it.' Believing as Bentley would do when he gave the first Boyle Lectures that 'our moderne Atheists . . . are Somatists, who admit no substance but Body; and relye wholly upon the Epicurean principles & Hypothesis,' Boyle concentrates his attack on Epicurus. For example (anticipating Paley's Natural Theology), '[W]hen I consider, that all the Action that one part of matter can have upon another, is to put it into motion, and by the intervention of That, produce those Effects that are the natural Results of Local motion; I do not expect that chance can make a Clock, that shall know it selfe to be a Clock, and invent the art of makeing other Clocks; and reason about the notion of Time which it measures.' But precisely because Epicureans, 'allowing nothing substantial but Bodyes, reject many things & admit so very few' to which others assent, it is particularly hard 'to dispute with them upon their owne Principles.' In the end Boyle accepts that 'resolv'd Atheists' must be reclaimed 'not by Gods ordinary workes, but by his Extraordinary Power.' Hence his great interest in miracles and his preferring 'the Miracle at Pentecost to any other, because it evinces among other Truths, that of the Resurrection itself: which is tho< ught&gt...

The fertility diet Groundbreaking research reveals natural ways to boost ovulation &amp; improve your chances of getting pregnant

The fertility diet Groundbreaking research reveals natural ways to boost ovulation &amp; improve your chances of getting pregnant

The College Library Collection at Your Fingertips

Looking for a book or journal on a particular topic or by a particular author? The library's online catalogue is the place to start. Growing all the time, the catalogue holds details of nearly 67,000 titles (93,000 items) held in the library, with many more titles published pre-1850 yet to be added. Records for most recently published books include summaries, tables of content and book jacket images.

"A Small Man in Big Spaces": The New Negro, the Mestizo, and Jean Toomer's Southwestern Writing

Taos is an end-product. It is the end of the slope. It is an end-product of the Indians, an end-product of the Spaniards, an end-product of the Yankees and puritans. It must be plowed under. Out of the fertility which death makes in the soil, new people with new form may grow. I dedicate myself to the swift death of the old, to the whole birth of the new. In whatever place I start work, I will call that place Taos. --Jean Toomer, Drama of the Southwest (Notes) (n.d., c. 1935) (1) A photograph of Jean Toomer taken by his second wife, Marjorie Content, shows him posed at table with his typewriter before him, replete with sheet of paper. (2) Content was noted photographer and this portrait has the posed look of book jacket. Its composition seems highly constructed: the ream of paper next to the typewriter and the books on the shelf in the background are perfectly placed. The writer is artfully posed with his hand under his chin, as if thoughtfully contemplating his work. Words are barely visible on the sheet of paper exiting Toomer's typewriter; the distance from which this portrait has been taken has obscured them. They appear faint, apparitional, and illegible. The year is 1935, more than decade after the publication of Cane (1923). While this image might be read as contrived, as little more than fantasy of authorship for writer who, according to most critical accounts, had already by this date, the possibility of this photograph as documentary evidence remains. After all, this is the same year that Charles Scruggs and Lee VanDemarr suggest that Toomer's writing reengaged with a radical analysis of the politics of his time, although ... an open discussion of racial matters (219). Like Content's photograph, scholarship on Toomer has continued to represent dichotomously the writer best known for Cane. In effect, critics and biographers have created two Jean Toomers. One is the writer of Cane, often considered the signal text of the Harlem Renaissance. He is politically engaged, interested in race, and aesthetically experimental. This Toomer looks back to the Southern past and slavery, and views black folk as sources for emergent, modernist, New Negro sensibilities. The other Toomer is post-Cane and is not poet, but psychologist, philosopher, or spiritual guru. This second Toomer disconnects himself from the New York scene of Waldo Frank, Broom, or Harlem. He denounces his black heritage, marries white women, and becomes little more than mouthpiece for his spiritual mentor, George Gurdjieff. The promise of Toomer's early experimental writing is thus diminished and he is characterized as never again achieving the literary merit of Cane. Charles R. Larson, for example, wonders why Jean Toomer failed as writer after the publication of that one brilliant work. What diminished whatever potential there was in his later works? (xiii). These oppositional narratives about Toomer's career have remained relatively untroubled. Content's photograph, however, raises more than just the question of whether Toomer was writing in this period. It also exposes where he was writing. This is not an image captured in Sparta, Georgia, in the small cabin adjacent to the school where Toomer acted as substitute principal, domicile eerily recreated in the Kabnis section of Cane. It is also not the lush interior of Toomer's childhood brownstone in Washington, DC, its propriety mimicked in the stifling atmosphere of Mrs. Pribby's house in Cane's Box Seat. Nor is it the Chicago dorm room recorded in Bona and Paul, perhaps modeled on Toomer's education at that city's American College of Physical Training. Instead, this photograph shows Toomer's books stacked neatly on the imperfectly curved bookshelf of hand-built adobe house. He writes by the warmth of distinctive, semi-circular kiva fireplace, fixture of Pueblo architecture in the New Mexican Southwest. …

Psychotic Depression

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessPsychotic DepressionNancy T. Block M.D.Nancy T. Block M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Jan 2008https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2008.59.1.120aAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail A brief introductory paragraph, reprinted on the back of this book's jacket, defines psychotic depression as "a distinct and acute clinical condition along the spectrum of depressive disorders… .often [inducing] physical deterioration, mortally dangerous acts toward self or others, or completed suicide." It further promises that "Medical readers of this book will come away able to diagnose and readily treat psychotic depression and thus will be able to serve their patients better. Non-physician readers will come away with the message that this is a terrible illness, but there is hope." It concludes that "This book fills an important gap in the realm of psychiatric literature."Conrad Swartz, the first author, affiliated with Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, is identified as "a board-certified psychiatry professor who has written and lectured extensively on depression, anxiety, and the use of [electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)] for severe depression." He is presumably responsible for the bulk of the content. His coauthor, Edward Shorter from the University of Toronto, who has written three books on the history of psychiatry, seems to have contributed two chapters titled "History of Psychotic Depression" and "Treatment in Historical Perspective." Both chapters are well written and interesting and meet the challenge of capturing the evolution of psychiatric terminology in tandem with changing clinical concepts through modern times. Both authors have done their homework. More than 300 references are in the bibliography, and some are in several European languages as well as English, dating from 1900 to the present, one-third of them since 2000. Though 20 of the references are from Dr. Swartz's own writings, they appeared in well-respected professional publications. There are also a detailed index and two appendices offering summary guides to psychiatric concepts as well as to psychotropic medication—a very extensive inventory—and other treatment modalities. The agenda of the book, which frequently carries a tone of frustration and even outrage at the status quo in psychiatry, is to focus attention on psychotic depression, indisputably one of the most devastating afflictions of humankind. Swartz correctly perceives that psychotic depression is misdiagnosed and improperly treated, if it is treated at all, in a shameful number of cases. His mission is to make sure that it is not missed and that it is properly diagnosed and promptly treated in an effective manner. He offers his perspectives on classification and treatment with numerous case histories to illustrate his arguments, based on years of experience in urban settings among a largely underprivileged population. He struggles mightily to bring clarity to the diagnostic morass that arguably still characterizes the nosology of depressive and related conditions, and he has little use for DSM paradigms, except for administrative—but not research or treatment—purposes. In a separate chapter, Swartz also tries to convey the depressed patient's excruciatingly painful experience of the illness and its consequences, such as posttraumatic stress disorder. In outlining detailed treatment strategies, Swartz demonstrates hands-on expertise in psychopharmacology, but his recurring plea is for better acceptance and far more frequent use of ECT than at present. He offers evidence, personal and from a large body of literature, for ECT as being an extremely useful, even essential tool in the successful treatment of the severest of psychiatric illnesses. He makes many valid points, in my opinion. I found Swartz's categorization of psychotic depressive states—with a heavy load of bipolarity—potentially quite useful, though he has not succeeded in avoiding embroilment in the same troublesome depression descriptors such as "melancholic," "atypical," and "reactive" that he is trying to sort out for his readers, which often results in confusing, even contradictory, phraseology. I believe this book might better engage its intended readership if it were tightly edited down to its essential diagnostic and treatment principles. However, it has practical wisdom to offer, and the crafters of DSM-V could well give thought to some of its provocative concepts. Dr. Block is clinical associate professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 59Issue 1 January, 2008Pages 120-121PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES January 2008 Volume 59 Number 1 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 January 2008 Published in print 1 January 2008