Dust Jacket Research Articles

Samuel Hideo Yamashita. Daily Life in Wartime Japan, 1940–1945.

Daily Life in Wartime Japan, 1940–1945 is a valuable addition to the small field of scholarly literature that covers the Japanese populace during the Asia-Pacific War (1937–1945). Samuel Hideo Yamashita had two purposes in writing this book: one was to show that the Japanese citizenry was loyal to the government and willing to make sacrifices for the war effort, even if there were minor grumblings and various forms of resistance; the other was to challenge the misconception that the Japanese citizenry was fanatical, backward, or misled by its government. In achieving these ends, Yamashita creates an intimate picture of the wartime Japanese, who, according to the book’s dust jacket, have remained “a largely faceless enemy to most Americans.” The book is divided into three parts, with a total of eight chapters and an introduction. Part I examines the home front, namely, the degree to which the Japanese internalized mobilization and were sacrificed for the war. Yamashita finds that most Japanese built the war into their daily routines because of their loyalty to the government. Part II covers the experiences of 1.3 million schoolchildren who were evacuated from urban centers to protect them from strategic bombing (61). This section focuses on the indoctrination of the students to make them into “splendid little citizens,” the efforts of families and teachers to monitor the children, and the responses of the children to food shortages. Parts I and II illustrate that food shortages were more serious in the larger cities than in the countryside, but that things became increasingly difficult for all people when Allied bombing began in earnest in November 1944 (56).

Peter Abrahams (1919-2017)

I never had the opportunity of meeting Peter Abrahams. I only knew him through his writings. I recall the mustiness of the copies of Wild Conquest (1950) and Tell Freedom (1954) I found hidden away behind books on a shelf at a relative’s house. Although the dust jackets of both were tattered the pages of Tell Freedom bore traces of heavy use. Not only did the latter title intrigue me but so did the palimpsests of readers past. That day I read it with increasing fervency. In hindsight, it must have been one of the first times that I recognised some familiarity, perhaps even immediacy, in a piece of writing.

Garlock, Gayle. Canadian Binders’ Tickets and Booksellers’ Labels. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2015. 158 pp. $95.00. Cloth, Illus. CD (ISBN 978-1-58456-337-2).

Garlock, Gayle. <i>Canadian Binders’ Tickets and Booksellers’ Labels</i>. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2015. 158 pp. $95.00. Cloth, Illus. CD (ISBN 978-1-58456-337-2).

Cherokee Reference Grammar by Brad Montgomery-Anderson

Reviewed by: Cherokee Reference Grammar by Brad Montgomery-Anderson Benjamin E. Frey Cherokee Reference Grammar. By Brad Montgomery-Anderson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. xv + 497 pp. Audio track cd, figures, tables, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00 cloth. Brad Montgomery-Anderson's Cherokee Reference Grammar is a welcome addition to the fields of Cherokee studies, linguistics, and Great Plains studies. This volume is currently the only Cherokee reference grammar accessible to the general public. Prior to its release, both community members and trained linguists had to resort to phrase books, a few pedagogically oriented texts, and dissertations for writings about the Cherokee language. A universally accessible reference grammar is potentially life-changing in the move toward language revitalization, as it provides a crucial tool with which to learn and analyze the language. As the dust jacket's synopsis indicates, the volume is intended for more experienced scholars. It should therefore come as no surprise that parts of the text can be dense and tend toward linguistic jargon. Despite this, the volume represents the most detailed and thorough study of Cherokee grammar I have ever seen. The work is also extremely respectful of the Cherokee community, rendering examples in the Cherokee syllabary alongside their Roman transcriptions. By using the orthography invented by Sequoyah for Cherokee speakers, Montgomery-Anderson honors the linguistic sovereignty of Cherokee in a way that many linguistic treatments do not. In addition to its value as a scholarly reference, I have found this book useful as a tool for curriculum design. With a thorough knowledge of the grammatical points presented, a teacher of Cherokee can decide which points to integrate into contextually oriented materials. This combination can produce second-language speakers of Cherokee who are also experts in the language's grammar. Such students could then expand their knowledge, providing hope for the language's future beyond the current generation of elders. As a contribution to research on the Great Plains, this work represents something of a quandary. Though Cherokees constitute the largest tribal nation in Oklahoma, they are indigenous to the Southeastern Woodlands. After forcible removal to the Great Plains, they have grown to their current population level through constant adaptation and ingenuity. As a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which still lives in the traditional Cherokee homeland, I do not think of Cherokee as an important language of Oklahoma. Even so, I cannot ignore the truth of that statement. Cherokees in Oklahoma have retained a remarkable number of speakers, roughly four times the number that remain in North Carolina, and therefore represent an example of a vibrant linguistic community in the Great Plains. Although not indigenous to the Great [End Page 145] Plains, Cherokees constitute an undeniable part of the region's continuing history. Benjamin E. Frey Department of American Studies University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Copyright © 2017 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson

Reviewed by: Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson Michael F. Steltenkamp S.J. Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary. By Joe Jackson. (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 2016. Pp. xxii, 600. $30.00. ISBN 978-0-374-25330-1.) This biography addresses the life of a Lakota (Sioux) holy man who gained admirers worldwide through John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks (1972). His fuller identity was revealed in Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala (1993) and Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic (2009). Jackson's primary focus is on the same period that Neihardt addressed. He devotes 347 pages to the man's first twenty-five years, while giving just 118 pages to his last sixty. Both factual and fictional in its portrayal of the holy man, this work is rich in speculation—with Jackson even proposing the name of a never-before-identified soldier that Black Elk may have killed at the battle of Little Bighorn. Historical events are fleshed out—providing context at times but also lengthening the work unnecessarily. This is not a criticism of the author's laudatory desire to inform but rather of his editor's having allowed so much to be reported, e.g., six pages describing John Neihardt's life! The dust jacket itself gives pause to readers [End Page 377] when two of its four testimonials are in praise of another book penned by the author (a fiction writer of some renown). Although countless assertions are made without documentation, this authorial style might appeal to nonspecialists. However, one needs to be wary of drawing conclusions about Black Elk since numerous flaws appear throughout the text—as shown in the sampling that follows: identification of Tekakwitha as "Mohican" instead of Mohawk (p. 15); reference to Lakota spirit-entities as "gods" (pp. 16, 426–27, 484); acceptance of Black Elk's fictional "lament" as fact (pp. 16, 426–27); reference to men as "braves" (pp. 154, 327), to women as "squaws" (pp. 323, 339), and to babies as "papooses" (p. 136)—terms not used in scholarly literature; misidentification of Fort Peck as Fort "Peak" (pp. 174ff); uncritical acceptance of oral traditions that are debatable or demonstrably false (pp. 272, 321, 338, 397, with all opinions given equal weight); racialization of "Lakota men" as "exotic, mysterious, sensual" (p. 272); citation of the Great Sioux "Reservation" (the proper reference) as the Great Sioux "Reserve" (p. 280); failure to attribute Red Cloud's well-known quotation (p. 281); reference to Louis "Gall" when the name is "Goll" (pp. 286ff, 580)—an important matter since there was a contemporary Lakota named "Gall" and a priest named "Gall" (pp. 461ff); erroneous placement of Bernard Fagan on the reservation in the 1930s (p. 356); a reference to interfaith dialogue "ecumenicism" where it should be "ecumenism" (p. 364); inaccurate dates for Red Cloud's war, which took place in 1866–68 (not 1865–68, as a photo notes); an assertion that Black Elk continued his traditional healing practice when evidence says the opposite (pp. 364, 366ff); ignorance of the fact that a Jesuit "provincial" (not the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions) deploys Jesuit priests (p. 370); citation of the Book of Revelation as the Book of "Revelations" (p. 373); a claim that Black Elk identified himself with the Bible's Paul, along with the proposal that this association was, and is, widespread (pp. 381ff); etc. The Catholic Church appointed a postulator in 2017 to investigate the holy man's cause for canonization as a saint, but Jackson's work will not contribute to this process. His Black Elk is more associated with the oft-heard trope that Lakota elders resisted embracing a Christian identity. Jackson's Black Elk is not a devout Catholic but is, rather, the die-hard traditionalist portrayed by John and Hilda Neihardt. It is their portrayal that Jackson adopts uncritically—echoing all the stereotypes that they espoused—of Indians, Black Elk, settlers, soldiers, and the Native encounter with Christianity. Jackson commendably provides much information related to the holy man and his people. Unfortunately, the net result is a one-dimensional misrepresentation of Black Elk's experience. The...

POETRY IN REVIEW

1 7 7 R P O E T R Y I N R E V I E W S T E P H E N Y E N S E R As the engaged reader discovers gradually and with increasing pleasure, Robert Pinsky’s new volume of poems, richly titled At the Foundling Hospital, delicately but persistently works in two ways at once. At the same time that it is a series of di√erent kinds of what we casually call ‘‘lyric’’ poems, it is a constellation of musings on a number of subtly related motifs. Among these motifs are foundlings, slaves, ancestors, musical instruments, shells, threads and other filaments and filiations, names – all surprisingly reticulated terms, a little, ultimately uncontainable lexical tribe – and (almost inevitably) language itself, especially in its etymological dimension. Pinsky is a master of his trade, one of the few living American poets who deserves that appellation. His individual compositions are prosodically firm and limber, whether in loose blank verse, longer six-to-seven-foot lines in distichs, tercets of four to five feet, or slant-rhymed couplets. He can craft a narrative, taut (‘‘Radioman ’’) or vagarious (‘‘The City’’), invent a song (‘‘The Orphan A t t h e Fo u n d l i n g H o s p i t a l : P o e m s , by Robert Pinsky (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 80 pp., $23) 1 7 8 Y E N S E R Y Quadrille,’’ ‘‘Genesis’’), deftly translate a traditional sonnet (‘‘Góngora : Life Is Brief,’’ after the Spanish poet’s ‘‘Menos solicitó veloz saeta’’), make a mercurial dramatic monologue (‘‘Mixed Chorus’’), eulogize a kind of musician (‘‘Horn’’), relate local history (‘‘The Foundling Tokens’’), and noodle on locutions (‘‘Improvisation on Yiddish’’). His signature mode is meditation that incorporates thoughtful, often aphoristic, and sometimes humorous observation on matters of general interest, crisp description, and vivid anecdote – and conjures Horace in its perspicuity and geniality. The result of the motifs binding this variety together is insistently a text, a term that stems from the Indo-European etymon teks-, which signified a fabrication, a thing made of fabric, specifically of wattle, comprising tree branches interlaced with boughs, tendrils, twigs, and the like (to be covered with clay and used as a shelter or domicile), fashioned in the first place by an ax. The first image of a fabric is on the dust jacket, a direful photograph comporting with the title, which shows, under a baby’s chubby, soiled hand, a coarsely woven cloth. The visual image of the fabric reappears as the frontispiece and then again at the other end of the book on a free rear endpaper (customarily blank), so that the connection with the traditional clothbound book and its relationship in turn to a shelter, the title’s hospital, are both reinforced. A poem near the end of the volume wittily intimates that fabrication’s association with this particular poet. Pinsky, a noted jazz aficionado who has performed poems in concert with the musicians Vijay Ayer, Bobby Bradford, and others, used to play jazz saxophone, an instrument celebrated in detail in ‘‘Horn,’’ where it is given its sobriquet ‘‘axe.’’ The hardly noticeable little link is not coincidental. When in the same poem Pinsky speculates that the ‘‘hack journeyman hornman’’ he memorializes along with his instrument had been tutored by ‘‘righteous / Teachers, his dentist, optician,’’ he recalls the volume’s third poem, ‘‘Creole,’’ which informs us that as a young man his father applied for a position as ‘‘apprentice optician,’’ a designation he supposed at the time meant ‘‘a kind of dentistry,’’ and subsequently adapted and learned how to grind lenses and sell glasses. Milford Pinsky’s son’s vocation has also turned out to have to do with seeing, as well as with improvisation and music. Names of vocations, instruments, people, and indeed peoples P O E T R Y I N R E V I E W 1 7 9 R are everywhere crucial. Throughout the poems, di√erent kinds of foundlings, or orphans, those without or in need of proper names, turn up, as do words related to hospital. Today we (meaning philologists like Calvert Watkins...

First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity by Edward G. Lengel

Reviewed by: First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity by Edward G. Lengel Christopher F. Minty First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity. By Edward G. Lengel. (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2016. Pp. viii, 280. $25.99, ISBN 978-0-306-82347-3.) Edward G. Lengel, director of the Papers of George Washington, knows a great deal about his subject. Having worked at the papers since 1997, Lengel has spent the majority of his academic career with the United States’ first president. Working at such a project confers considerable benefits. Above [End Page 150] all, Lengel’s proximity to Washington’s vast correspondence has enabled him to show a side of Washington that has gone under the radar—his entrepreneurial skills. In nine fast-paced chapters, Lengel takes readers through Washington’s life. He selectively focuses on well-known moments and periods while framing Washington as an astute businessman. In First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity, then, we see how Washington married well, maintained a fruitful estate, and commanded the Continental army as if it were a business. He thought ahead to ensure that its workforce—that is, the soldiers—were ready to go on. Equally important, he created an “administrative framework” that remained “in place until the enemy called it quits” (p. 122). Indeed, for Washington, the components of his army had to remain intact. The army had to be consistent and had to survive, and it did; and the general had to be decisive. Washington fought for supplies and manpower while skillfully attempting to maintain morale. Washington deployed many of the tried and tested business skills he had come to learn, perhaps even master, since the Revolutionary War. Most important, as president Washington desired to use the government to encourage the development, growth, and stabilization of entrepreneurial ventures. He met entrepreneurs and visited farms and factories. While appreciating that Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan would encourage partisanship, Washington recognized the overall importance of stabilizing the nation’s economy. This fact, among other items mentioned in this short biography, helped the United States find its feet alongside other great world powers, particularly during the war-torn 1790s. There are, however, some small issues with First Entrepreneur. Lengel’s claim that Washington, it seems, almost single-handedly built and secured the early United States’ economy is audacious. This contention slights the work of the thousands of “ordinary” Americans, enslaved and free, who directly or indirectly contributed to securing the nation, as many historians have endeavored to show. Many will also take issue with the dust jacket’s claim that Washington was the greatest American businessman of any generation. Also noteworthy is Lengel’s use of the term entrepreneur, which, as per the Oxford English Dictionary Online, was not in regular use until 1852. First Entrepreneur neatly fits into the “Founders Chic” category. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Academics, students, and history enthusiasts alike will take a great deal from this book. Not only does it offer a focused biography of Washington’s early years with interesting insight into his entrepreneurial acumen, but also First Entrepreneur is wonderfully written. With elegant, engaging prose and, as one might expect, a firm command of Washington’s papers, Edward Lengel adds further complexities to the American Cincinnatus. And given that so much has already been written about Washington, the fact that Lengel has offered new information should not be underestimated. Indeed, First Entrepreneur is a strong piece of scholarship, one with which Washington scholars will have to contend. [End Page 151] Christopher F. Minty The Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

Varieties of Inheritance: Leithauser, Kirsch, Sinclair, Allen, Sanders

Varieties of Inheritance:Leithauser, Kirsch, Sinclair, Allen, Sanders Stephen Kampa (bio) Emily Leithauser's poems forgo histrionics. With their careful, muted tones and measured progress toward quiet conclusions, they might seem too modest were it not for the soft-spoken brutality underlying some of them. In "Undertow," a speaker responsible for a younger swimmer considers options: I tell you that I'll steer us through,but something pulls and I release your palm from mine, letting the currentcomb and choke your little ribs for half a second. Then I decideto tug you up and lead us home. Granted, it's half a second, but it's the half a second most of us would prefer to forget. The preponderance of monosyllables and the tetrameter lend a certain childish, nursery-rhyme quality to these lines, but the verb "decide" is all grown up and frighteningly precise. It makes what might have been an anecdote about a startling day at the beach a moral assertion: to decide is to admit the possibility of having decided something else, something much darker than the language of the poem would otherwise suggest. The title of Leithauser's debut collection makes clear her themes: The Borrowed World acknowledges the world as an inheritance (that it is borrowed means that it has belonged, and perhaps still belongs, to someone else), and a contingent one (that it is borrowed means eventually we will have to give it back). The question of borrowing must be especially urgent for a writer who has two writers for parents, a fact Leithauser does not shy from in her acknowledgments. Faced with such predecessors, a poet has two options: to pretend as though she has sprung fully formed from some Greek egg or to accept her indebtedness and brave forward. Wisely, Leithauser chooses the latter, and her poems—though at times perhaps [End Page 302] tonally or formally reminiscent of the work of Brad Leithauser or Mary Jo Salter (and how could they not be?)—achieve their own successes on their own terms. The poems are richest in their wisdom about relationships, and if it seems as though the bulk of the book concerns familial grief or gratitude and a certain romantic restlessness, I see no problem: most of our lives are concerned with these very things. Leithauser can be unsparing: looking through photographs in "Haiku for a Divorce," she sees her parents in Tokyo, "such tourists / in marriage," and one senses in that phrase both her recognition of their newlywed naïveté and her rage at dissolution. In "Jacket," she considers the implications of the look—in more than one sense—of her mother in a dust jacket photo. … My mother has duly mastered self-willed words without a fuss. Unshelved, she's a vision on a book I browse and almost buy. The phrase "almost buy" surely pertains not only to the book, but also to the vision. Elsewhere, she remembers an unidentified "you / telling me a riddle" and imagines … we'd had a childwho waits to hear the answer,who finds a good excusenot to play close to meuntil I'm of some use. Those final lines are both canny and un-, making of the paradigm of innocence—a playing child—a study in pragmatism. Formally speaking, there are few surprises here—although "My Mother's Riddle" rhymes anagrammatically to dazzling effect ("amend" and "named" is the big payoff)—but Leithauser's poems do not aim for the surprise of novelty; they aim for the surprise of perfection. When she finishes a poem by rhyming cemetery and hard to carry, one thinks, "Exactly so." When she writes, "These past three days I've missed you comically," [End Page 303] one thinks, "Comically? Of course!" If I wished on occasion that Leithauser would let a poem off its leash, I came back to the final lines of "Instinct," a poem in which the speaker prepares herself to crush the skull of a suffering animal but can't find the animal after arming herself with a rock: I place the rock back in my purse. It's for the best— this instinct teased, and put to rest...

Sinfonia Eroica: The First Great Romantic Symphony by James Hamilton-Paterson

Reviewed by: Sinfonia Eroica: The First Great Romantic Symphony by James Hamilton-Paterson Nick Newland Sinfonia Eroica: The First Great Romantic Symphony. By James Hamilton-Paterson. London: Head of Zeus, 2016. [192 p. ISBN: 978-1-784-97720-7. £16.99 (hdk) / £7.99 (e-book)] On first picking up the small volume, Hamilton-Paterson's text on the third of Beethoven's nine symphonies, the reader is seduced by the quality of the production. The binding is solid, with a nicely produced dust jacket, lending a coffee-table feel to a book that promises to 'reconstruct [End Page 307] this great moment in Western culture, the shock of the music and the symphony's long after life'. The writing is indeed as indulgent as the cover suggests it will be, with a very literate and well-researched body of text. Part history book, part biography, one assumes that this is aimed at the 'mainstream' portion of the musical literature-buying public; there is an element of the specific which resides wrapped warmly in the general to ease its digestion. That is not, however, to dismiss the text. The author has separated his discourse into sensible portions, introducing the Symphony's background, conception, and ideal, also examining both the composer and the potential inspiration, Napoleon Bonaparte. Tackling Beethoven's disenchantment, Hamilton-Paterson delves beyond the usual explanation of the Emperor seizing power and thus earning the composer's disappointment and instead examines the wider issues of commerce-driven composition, Beethoven's famously tempestuous relationship with his publishers, and the centuries of myth that have built up around the work. The subject matter, the so-called 'First Great Romantic Symphony', is certainly worthy of study and the author has taken the time to compose an elegant piece, which, to the listener at home, is an ideal accompaniment to it. The writing is intelligent and interesting, with phrases appealing to eye and ear, as if asking to be read aloud. One feels as if there is a 'but' coming. The problem is that this 'but' does not relate to the text, but rather the physical volume. Whilst the small format size (19 cm x 19 cm) is almost 'cute', and the quality of the paper is sumptuous—as you would expect of this style of book, priced at £16.99—there are issues with the production. The quality of the print itself is poor, with much of the text seemingly shadowed. An orange aura surrounds it, as if bleeding, and musical examples have been enlarged to the point of pixilation on the page. A stunning selection of images is reproduced, but lose their lustre and impact because of the low colour saturation, possibly due to the absorbent nature of the aforementioned 'sumptuous' paper. Despite these limitations, the book is rather charming and ideal for an afternoon read, with Beethoven's masterpiece swirling and thundering around you. Whilst the more hardcore musicologist may not feel satisfied, certainly any fan of classical music who seeks to improve their contextual knowledge and understanding will benefit, and enjoy, this book. Nick Newland London Copyright © 2017 International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres

Eleanor Roosevelt's Place in History

Eleanor Roosevelt's Place in History Margaret C. Rung (bio) Patricia Bell-Scott. The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. xix + 454 pp. Notes and index. $30.00. Susan Quinn. Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady. New York: Penguin Press, 2016. 404 pp. Illustrations, note on sources, notes, and index. $30.00. Recent books on Eleanor Roosevelt and her relationships with two women emphasize her extensive influence on U.S. politics and society. Activist, poet, legal scholar, and spiritual leader Pauli Murray, for instance, called ER the "mother" of second-wave feminism. Thus, the deeper we delve into ER's ideals, actions, successes, and failures, the more nuanced is our understanding of the trajectory of liberalism in the twentieth century. Admirably opting for accessibility in their respective studies of ER and Lorena ("Hick") Hickok, and ER and Anna Pauline ("Pauli") Murray, Susan Quinn and Patricia Bell-Scott use biography to explore not only the lives of ER, Hick, and Murray, but also the larger contexts in which they lived. As such, Quinn and Bell-Scott move women to the center of political history, communicating to a broad audience the mark these individual women left on the New Deal, feminism, and civil rights in the tumultuous years from the 1930s to the early 1980s. Moreover, by examining ER through the prism of her relationships, the authors underscore the dialectical nature of ER's political education as well as the boundaries that women navigated as they sought to craft policies to support class, racial, and gender justice. Taking as a given the importance of these women in shaping history, the authors have penned well-written and engaging books that should fit comfortably on the shelves of chain bookstores and reading lists of college syllabi. At the same time, their narratives tend to advance a great-person version of history that assumes the power of individuals to shape history. Accordingly, the dust jacket of Bell-Scott's book asserts that the Murray-ER friendship "helped to alter the course of race and racism in America"; Quinn's subtitle proclaims Hick's relationship with ER as "The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady." [End Page 484] The danger in such claims is that readers absorb a story about heroic people that stresses individual agency, leaving them with little sense of the broad forces, systems, and groups that move history. Fortunately, educators will find much in both books that will help students grasp the intersection of social movements with the lives of activist women. Most clearly, Bell-Scott's "portrait of a friendship" offers reflections on the long civil rights movement, as it illuminates Murray's unwavering commitment to racial justice and ER's growing cognizance of the depth and perniciousness of racial inequality. From an early age, Murray possessed a sophisticated grasp of systemic racism and fought against it. Her first letter to the White House, written to Franklin Roosevelt in 1938 (with a copy also sent to ER), presented a cogent analysis of race, class, and politics. In it, she explained how low wages and racism prevented her access to the training she needed to reach her full potential as an instructor on the WPA's Workers Education Project. Excluded from the University of North Carolina due to her race, she reviewed the myriad obstacles African Americans faced as they sought an equal footing with white citizens. Weaving her own family history into the letter, she highlighted her family's lengthy and patriotic American roots and called on FDR to stand up to white Southern Democrats. In her 1938 voice, we hear contemporary scholarly analyses on race and the New Deal, such as those expounded by Ira Katznelson in Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (2014). As her correspondence and then friendship with ER grew, Murray pushed ER to be a stronger advocate on behalf of civil rights. They drew closer during the ordeal to save sharecropper Odell Waller from execution after he killed a white landlord in self-defense. In this story...

Dust Jackets to Dust?

Dust Jackets to Dust?

Carrying the Black Bag: A Neurologist's Bedside Tales

Tom Hutton, MD. 247 pages. Texas Tech University Press; 2015. Box 1037, Lubbock, TX 79409-1037. Hardcover: US $27.95; ISBN: 978-0-89672-954-4. Available from www.ttupress.org, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble. Field of Medicine: Mainly neurology, but applicable to most of the medical disciplines Format: Hardcover book. Trim size: 6 × 9 inches Recommended Readership: All members of the healthcare team and lay readers interested in the tales of a doctor who practiced medicine the old-fashioned way—listening to patients diligently, examining them carefully, and putting their welfare first, always Purpose: Part memoir and part homage to patients who faced major illnesses with courage, grace, grit, and dignity Content: There are 239 pages of text, containing a 9-page prologue, 15 chapters, and a 7-page afterword. The book also has a 2-page table of contents, 2 pages of acknowledgments, a 6-page index, and a paragraph about the author, Tom Hutton. Each chapter is a complete story. Most of the stories pertain to a specific patient or group of patients encountered during the author's 30-plus years as a practicing neurologist in Minnesota and West Texas. Several chapters, however, focus on the author's training in the 1970s, when the little black bag was still a prominent symbol of the medical profession. And one chapter, an outlier, highlights the author's interest in, and insights into, Adolph Hitler's progressive Parkinson's disease. Hutton explains how that ailment had an adverse effect on the German military strategy in World War II. Strengths: Excellent writing and editing characterize this book. I found no misspelled words, no grammatical mistakes, no faulty punctuation, no paragraphic errors, and no confusing sentences. The stories are interesting and well chosen. They entertain, instruct, and cover a wide range of human qualities—humor, sacrifice, heroism, deceit, and love. From a pure medical perspective, 2 chapters stand out—the one on Hitler and one concerning a service veteran who surreptitiously and repeatedly poisoned himself with arsenic from store-bought ant-killer. That case ultimately led to the banning of arsenic from all ant-killers in America. Other strengths include high-grade paper, a well-designed and attractive dust jacket, and print that is easy on the eyes. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this book shows the striking difference between medicine as the author practiced it (emphasis on the patient) and medicine as it is routinely practiced today (emphasis on technology). Weaknesses: None of substance. Nevertheless, most of the stories had certain details and conversations that could have been deleted without harming the message, lessening the impact, or losing the reader's interest. Overall Grade:

Judging a Book by Its Cover: An Investigation of Peritextual Features in Caldecott Award Books

While scholars have recognized the meaning making potential offered by the peritext of picturebooks, there has previously been only limited research on the nature of peritextual features. This content analysis focused on the ways in which various peritextual features (dust jackets, beginning endpapers, illustrations before title page, title pages, half title pages, dedication/copyright pages, final endpapers, and notes) contribute to the development of narratives in Caldecott award winning books published between 1938 and 2013. We found that in these quality picturebooks, peritextual features (particularly those appearing before the text of the story) contain rich character and setting information, as well as clues that often point to the genre of a story. In more recently published books especially, important plot elements may unfold only in the peritext. This analysis suggests that peritextual features frequently offer critical information that readers can use to build a framework for stepping into story worlds. Educators attuned to the potentially abundant information in the peritext may guide young readers in exploring these features, and thus foster in their students a richer understanding and fuller engagement with the narrative.

Staying on, or Getting off (the Bus): Approaching Speed in Cinema and Media Studies

Staying on, or Getting off (the Bus):Approaching Speed in Cinema and Media Studies Tina Kendall (bio) It seems only appropriate to introduce this In Focus by invoking the 1994 Jan de Bont movie Speed—a film peculiarly fixated on the spectacle of human bodies moving at dangerous velocities, whether trapped in elevators, handcuffed to runaway subway trains, or (most memorably) hurtling down a half-constructed freeway on a Santa Monica bus rigged with a bomb set to detonate if its speedometer drops below fifty miles per hour. Much of the suspense of this high-concept movie hinges on the pressure that such fast-paced movement puts on both characters and spectators to react physically and affectively in time with the flow of action. Protagonist Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock) acts as both the focal point of the drama and surrogate for the audience as she takes command of the bus, weaving it dexterously through rush-hour traffic, deflecting danger, and thwarting disaster at regular micro-intervals. At a moment of particular dramatic intensity, Annie approaches a freeway exit; with the bus flanked on both sides by traffic, she looks anxiously at police officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves), shouting at him to make the call: “Stay on or get off ? Stay on or get off ?” As with other climactic moments in the film, Speed responds to this question not by slackening pace but by ramping it up and pushing straight through—each of its suspenseful situations being “resolved by acceleration.”1 On the one [End Page 112] hand, this film confirms the long-standing axiom that speed equals danger but that danger is thrilling, suspenseful, and makes for good cinema; on the other hand, it also admits to a less openly avowed—but perhaps increasingly nagging—cultural suspicion that “to slow down is to die.”2 From our vantage point, Speed’s central conceit that we have no choice but to accelerate seems like a particularly prescient description of the condition of technological, economic, and cultural speed-up that characterizes daily life in the twenty-first century. In recent years, questions about speed, tempo, and pace have become the focus of keen and often polarized debate across a range of aesthetic, political, and critical contexts. It has become something of a truism to say that we live in “a 24/7, always on, and on-the-go world,” defined by ever-accelerating rhythms of media, technology, and capital.3 As the dust jacket of James Gleick’s Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything apocalyptically warns, “We have reached the epoch of the nanosecond. This is the heyday of speed. . . . Our computers, our movies, our sex lives, our prayers—they all run faster now than ever before. . . . We have become a quick-reflexed, multitasking, channel-flipping, fast-forwarding species. We don’t completely understand it, and we’re not altogether happy about it.”4 In response to this context of technological and economic speed-up, a set of “slow” cultural practices have emerged—from slow food and tourism movements to slow media manifestos, slow art and film festivals, and slow technology and computing movements.5 These cultural practices figure slowness as an emblematic mode of resistance for our time, offering the kind of hope denied by Speed: namely, that it may be possible, after all, to simply pull the hand brake and get off the proverbial bus. Such anxieties about speed as a symptom of our cultural malaise have likewise transferred over onto debates about cinema aesthetics. On the “fast” side of the spectrum, critics and film scholars have noted the emergence of “intensified continuity,” “post continuity,” or “accelerationist aesthetics” in contemporary cinema, terms that refer to the flamboyantly hyperkinetic, adrenaline-charged style that has been embraced by recent blockbuster films, including franchises such as Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007–2014), Bourne (Doug Liman, Paul Greengrass, and Tony Gilroy, 2002–2012), and Fast & Furious (Rob Cohen, John Singleton, Justin Lin, and [End Page 113] James Wan, 2001–2015).6 In both form and content, these “fast” films reaffirm the visceral thrill of speed as part of what Siegfried Kracauer identified as the medium’s basic affinities, citing the chase scene in particular...

Milton Now: Alternative Approaches and Contexts. Edited by Catharine Gray and Erin Murphy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. ix+284.

<i>Milton Now: Alternative Approaches and Contexts</i>. Edited by Catharine Gray and Erin Murphy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. ix+284.

Jesus and the Remains of His Day: Studies in Jesus and the Evidence of Material Culture by Craig A. Evans

Reviewed by: Jesus and the Remains of His Day: Studies in Jesus and the Evidence of Material Culture by Craig A. Evans Christoph Stenschke Evans, Craig A. 2015. Jesus and the Remains of His Day: Studies in Jesus and the Evidence of Material Culture. Peabody: Hendrickson. Hardbound with dust jacket. ISBN 978-1619707054. Pp. xxv + 302. $30. This collection of revised and expanded essays by renowned Canadian NT scholar Craig A. Evans avoids the Scylla and Charybdis of undue scepticism and the odd mixture between naivety and sensationalism which often characterise the popular discussion of archaeology and early Christianity. Evans combines in a masterful way research on the historical Jesus with recent advances and discoveries in archaeology in the land of Israel. He aims at showing how “the remains of material culture clarify aspects of the world of Jesus and his first followers” (xiii) and how archaeological discoveries, used responsibly and carefully, make biblical writings come alive. The essays were written between 2005 and 2012. Three studies are published for the first time in this volume. The brief “Introduction” (1–4) describes changes in biblical archaeology, summarises the following essays, and ends with a short annotated survey of important publications in this field (3f.). Regarding the changes, Evans writes: Archaeology has matured much in the last half century or so. Part of this is due to the great advances in technology that permit archaeologists to acquire and record data that their predecessors could not have imagined. But part of this maturation is due to changes in thinking and method. Today archaeologists are much more concerned with the bigger picture, the fuller context. Knowing well the lay of the land, the routes of travel, the way the ancients built, the food they ate, the clothes and shoes they wore, the records they kept, how they worshipped, how they viewed one another, and the like, are the kinds of things with which archaeologists are now concerned. We don’t ask if we can find this or prove that. (1) The essays are as follows: “A Tale of Two Cities: What We Have Learned from Bethsaida and Magdala” (5–28, the discoveries from Bethsaida may shed significant light on some disciples of Jesus), “A Boat, a House, and an Ossuary: What Can We Learn from the Artefacts?” (29–48, [End Page 213] the Kinneret boat, the Capernaum synagogue and the House of Peter, and the ossuary with the contested inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” “The principal value of artefacts and of the archaeology that uncovers, contextualises and interprets them lies in their supplying us with the details of material culture that are presupposed in literary texts but are rarely mentioned and even more rarely explained,” 47). “Excavating Caiaphas, Pilate, and Simon of Cyrene: Assessing the Literary and Archaeological Evidence” (49–66, two ossuaries and a dedication inscription illustrate what is often involved in making direct links between archaeological discoveries and persons mentioned in ancient texts). “‘Have You Never Read?’: Jesus and Literacy” (67–89, literary evidence for the literacy of Jesus and a survey of the substantial archaeological evidence for literacy in the Roman Empire, there is evidence that many of the uneducated were also literate; in view of this evidence the literacy of Jesus is plausible and probable). “Shout at the Devil: Jesus and Psalm 91 in the Light of Early Jewish Interpretation” (91–108, the exorcism psalms of Qumran, Psalm 91 in Greek, in Aramaic, in rabbinic literature, in amulets and other magic texts; the psalm from which Jesus quotes in the temptation narrative was clearly understood as having something to do with Satan and evil spirits; this interpretation was widespread and is not only attested in literary sources but also in several artefacts). “‘Hang Him on a Tree until Dead’: Hanging and Crucifixion in Second Temple Israel” (109–130, Deut 21:22f. and hanging in the OT, first-century interpretations of the texts on hanging, archaeological evidence of crucifixion during the Hasmonean and Roman periods; the stipulations of Deut 21 not only influenced judicial practice in Judea but its interpretation was itself influenced by the practice of crucifixion; there is a noticeable shift in the understanding of...

Culture, Interaction and Person Reference in an Australian Language: An Ethnography of Bininj Gunwok Communication by Murray Garde

Reviewed by: Culture, Interaction and Person Reference in an Australian Language: An Ethnography of Bininj Gunwok Communication by Murray Garde William B. McGregor Culture, Interaction and Person Reference in an Australian Language: An Ethnography of Bininj Gunwok Communication. Murray Garde. Culture and Language Use 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013. Pp. xx + 274. $149.00 (hardcover). This book makes a very welcome and important contribution to the study of personreference in the Australian language Bininj Gunwok (non-Pama-Nyungan, Arnhem Land). It addresses from ethnographic and linguistic perspectives the problem of how speakers of the language know who is being referred to in discourse. The author himself is especially well placed to undertake this study, having extensive and rich experience in the field with speakers of the language extending over a couple of decades–“the envy of any true ethnographer,” as John Haviland puts it on the dust jacket–and a high level of speaking control of the language. The book comprises nine chapters, the first of which presents background information on the language, the language situation, and contact history. This chapter also sets the scene for the investigation by overviewing the approach taken and delimiting the domain of investigation. Chapter 2 presents the kinship systems and social categories (principally moieties and subsections) of Bininj Gunwok, some of which differ markedly across the regional varieties. As in Australian Aboriginal societies generally, kinship is universal in the sense that everyone in the known social universe is incorporated. There is detailed discussion of the kinship system, the Crow-style generation skewing that is deployed, the system of basic (binary) kinship terms, and the social categories. The indexical functions of these terminologies in person reference are discussed, as is how variation in the systems can be deployed by speakers for purposes of affiliation and disaffiliation. Chapter 3 surveys the linguistic means of referring to people in Bininj Gunwok, including the use of basic kin terms, dyadic kin terms (i.e., kin terms that denote two referents in the specified relationship), kinship verbs, subsections, clan names, nicknames, etc. Extensive and illuminating discussion is provided of examples of use of these types of expression. It is shown that reference to persons is often achieved via the enumeration of clues to the referent’s identity, not in response to repair initiation but in a progression from less precise to more precise specification that constructs an increasingly precise recognitional profile of the referent. Different sex siblings are in an avoidance relation, and there is especially interesting discussion of reference to and address of cross-sex siblings–the brother typically uses a range of malonisms (or dysphemisms), [End Page 453] while the sister employs circumspection. The conventions can be flouted for interactive purposes; an instructive example is discussed of a husband shouting out to his wife the personal name of her brother in an expression of frustration and anger (pp. 85–87). This problematic kinship relation is returned to on a number of subsequent occasions. The kun-debi system of “triadic” kin terms–i.e., kin terms that index the kin relations between three persons rather than two (as in the case of basic binary kin terms), also known as “triangular” and “ternary” terms–is the topic of chapter 4. (The term “triadic” is somewhat unfortunate: “dyadic” is employed for kin terms that specify two referents, whilst “triadic” terms specify just one referent, not three, although they do imply three kin relations.) Bininj Gunwok has a very extensive set of triadic kin terms, numbering about 170–many more than documented for most other Australian languages (e.g., O’Grady and Mooney 1973; McConvell 1982; McGregor 1996). The forms and meanings of these terms are discussed in detail, including the factors motivating choice of center (propositus) and perspective. So also is their use in establishing reference. Garde shows that they have limited value as recognitionals, and suggests (p. 134) that a factor motivating their employment may be to encode multiple perspectives on the referents. Chapter 5 highlights the (apparent) referential obscurity that is typical of Bininj Gunwok conversation and narrative. The applicability of pragmatic maxims and conversation analytic preferences across the board, in all interaction types, is questioned, and it...

David Stuttard. Greek mythology: a traveller’s guide from Mount Olympus to Troy

Is there anything new to be said about classical mythology? Recent decades have seen a flurry of encyclopaedias, overviews of and introductions to the subject, and monographs on specific figures or themes. Any author wishing to enter the fray must, I imagine, suppress some queasiness at such competition. Not so David Stuttard (hereafter ‘S.’). S.’s book is of a very different kind and is perhaps best described as a Pausanias for our times. S. is a gifted and prolific populariser of Classics, renowned for (co)authoring and editing over a dozen books on various aspects of Classical civilization and producing a further dozen translations, half a dozen adaptations, and many a staging of Greek dramas. Greek Mythology is a perfect addition to his oeuvre. The dust jacket promises that this book is ‘[t]he perfect companion to the Greek myths and the landscapes and ideas that shaped them.’ As the introduction (12–13) and dust jacket freely admit, it is aimed at real and armchair travellers alike (the quality of the cover suggests the second category is the majority of the envisioned readership). While not written for the specialist, the book may be of interest to (armchair) scholars as well.

Gendering Transatlantic Anti-Slavery History

Gendering Transatlantic Anti-Slavery History Marilyn Walker (bio) In Women, Dissent, & Anti-Slavery in Britain & America, 1790–1865 (Oxford, 2011), Elizabeth J. Clapp, Julie Roy Jeffrey, and a plethora of historians explore the activism of British and American women abolitionists and the powerful role of religion in their humanitarian mission to end the slave trade and slavery. Commissioned by the Dr. Williams Centre for Dissenting Studies, the collection focuses on Puritanism and Protestant Dissent. Non-conformists (Methodists, Evangelicals, Quakers, Puritans, Pilgrims, Baptists, Catholics, and Separatists) include sects outside of the Church of England.1 From the Restoration through the early Victorian Period, they were subject to discrimination because of their beliefs, methods of worship, and disavowal of Anglican doctrine. They were unable to attend universities such as Cambridge and Oxford without an oath, cast a vote for parliamentary representation, or work for local or national government (7). They were second-class citizens in England. In search of religious liberty outside of the boundaries of Britain, in 1620, some non-conformists sought exile in Holland and North America.2 The majority of Dissenters in England and America cherished an unmediated relationship with God, enthusiastic worship, and desire for reform in the Church of England. Their descendants would advocate for the physical freedom of slaves in the modern world. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women of a variety of socio-economic classes also endured discrimination and social and institutional oppression. In England, women were unable to attend university, own property within the confines of marriage, or vote for parliamentary representation. Thus, in an interdisciplinary manner, Women, Dissent, & Anti-Slavery illuminates a nexus between a transatlantic Dissenting tradition and women’s persistent activism against African slavery. With contributors such as Clapp, Jeffrey, David Turley, Claire Midgley, and Stacey Robertson, this collection also brings many activists (e.g., Martha Gurney, Mary-Anne Rawson, Ann Taylor Gilbert, Mary Davis, Susan Bishop, Sarah Ernst) to the forefront of the history of abolition and provides a multidimensional appraisal of well-known anti-slavery writers such [End Page 401] as Elizabeth Heyrick and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Studies such as Moira Ferguson’s Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery 1670–1834, Karen Sánchez-Eppler’s Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and The Politics of the Body, and Midgley’s Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780–1870 also provide extensive histories about protest through domestic economy, theatrical productions, literature, petitions, and boycotts.3 This most recent book intently focuses upon the belief systems that inspired women on both sides of the Atlantic to resoundingly reject slavery in Africa, the West Indies, and the American South. Women, Dissent, & Anti-Slavery also relies on the juxtaposition of iconic images of slavery and freedom. Complementing chapters about women’s devotion to their religious communities and civic engagement, a visual and verbal representation of the British and American movement is prominently displayed on the dust jacket of the book. In the late eighteenth century, Josiah Wedgewood and British women’s societies (such as the Female Society of Birmingham, and the Manchester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society) created and circulated artistic representations of visual messages of one of the earliest liberation movements.4 The original artwork was a male figure with shackled hands and this emotional appeal appeared on publications, brooches, quilts, pottery, and hairpins. Resembling the history and traditions examined within the text, the dust jacket features Thomas Halliday’s medallion, “Slavery abolished by Great Britain, 1834,” a feminized depiction of multiple abolitionist themes. Beneath the depiction of the enslaved woman (with shackled hands) and Lady Justice, a populist and universal rhetorical question appears: “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?” Seemingly, this is the enslaved woman’s plea to Lady Justice and potential emancipators beyond the scope of the medallion. In a penultimate plea to the viewer, Halliday’s emblematic medallion proclaims, “Let us break their hands asunder and cast away their cords,” a reference to Psalms 2:3.5 His medallion solicits the agency of the audience to act on behalf of brethren under the yoke. “Slavery abolished by Great Britain, 1834” was also printed on the cover of Lydia Maria Child’s Authentic Anecdotes of American Slavery (1838...

Some Thoughts on “The State of Academic Publishing”

Some Thoughts on “The State of Academic Publishing” Thomas Schatz (bio) I strongly suspect that I was invited to contribute to this In Focus forum because of my sheer longevity in the film studies arena. This year marks my fortieth in the Radio-Television-Film (RTF) Department at the University of Texas and nearly a half century since I began thinking seriously about “film” as something that might actually be studied. When I started teaching at UT in August 1976, RTF was a small, disreputable, and very lively department, and its steady growth in size and stature has mirrored that of film studies in higher education and in publishing as well. Indeed, the film school phenomenon of the 1970s sparked not only the Hollywood renaissance, as the movie brats with their MFAs stormed the studio gates, but also an explosion in publishing, as both trade and academic presses went after a suddenly surging market of film students and cinephiles. I experienced that surge firsthand as an author and a book series editor. I have also witnessed a widening rift since the 1980s between academic and trade publishing, which in my view has been one of the most important developments in film and media studies in recent decades. As an author, I’ve been on both sides of this divide—which by now is a yawning chasm—and as a series editor I know the university press “side” all too well. The aim of this brief essay is to sort out my own experiences and perspectives as an author and editor and to provide my take on the current state of academic publishing—which like the academy itself is in the throes of massive change. The Rise of Film Studies—An Author’s Perspective I happened into film studies when the field was in its formative stages. After securing two previous degrees in literature, I enrolled in the graduate program “Broadcasting and Film” at the University of Iowa in 1973, shortly after Dudley Andrew launched it (upon the completion of his PhD in comparative lit there at Iowa). Iowa was among the first universities to offer a PhD in film studies, and the new program was hitting its early stride. When I arrived, David Bordwell had just finished his PhD and headed off to Wisconsin, and my grad cohort at Iowa included Phil Rosen, Mike Budd, Jane Feuer, Robert C. (Bobby) Allen, Mary Ann Doane, and several other Young Turks in the nascent field of film studies. My dissertation on Hollywood film genres was codirected by Dudley and Rick Altman, and after settling in at Texas, I began [End Page 148] thinking about turning it into a book. The publishing prospects were vastly different then than they are today for two main reasons: first, the relative dearth of university (and academic) presses doing film studies, and, second, the fact that trade presses were seriously interested in scholarly and academic books. In fact, trade publishers were well ahead of their university press counterparts in cultivating the new field of film studies—with three notable exceptions, Oxford, Cambridge, and California, which even then were in a class by themselves. Dudley introduced me to John Wright, his editor at Oxford University Press, who handled The Major Film Theories and had just edited the first edition of Horace Newcomb’s Television: The Critical View.1 Although Oxford was an extremely attractive option, I went with the Random House College Division. And to further complicate matters—and to underscore how different the publishing world was back then—the so-called trade edition of Hollywood Genres was published (in a nice hardback with a dust jacket) by Temple University Press.2 Neither of these publishing options would be available for long, and in fact Random House sold the College Division in 1989 to the educational publishing giant McGraw-Hill, which handled Hollywood Genres for the following two decades (and cut various copublishing deals overseas, including mainland China, where the book still generates royalties, to my utter amazement). The sale of Random House’s academic operation to McGraw-Hill was one obvious sign of the growing split between trade and academic publishers. I was caught in the midst...