Page 730 Research Articles

Civil War Supply and Strategy: Feeding Men and Moving Armies by Earl J. Hess

Reviewed by: Civil War Supply and Strategy: Feeding Men and Moving Armies by Earl J. Hess Thomas F. Army Jr. Civil War Supply and Strategy: Feeding Men and Moving Armies. By Earl J. Hess. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv, 432. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7332-9.) Once again, Earl J. Hess offers us an innovative approach to Civil War writing in his groundbreaking new book Civil War Supply and Strategy: Feeding Men and Moving Armies. Hess investigates the connection between armies’ strategic movements and their critical ability to feed and supply their men and animals. His argument is succinct: commanders who placed strategic operations ahead of supply and logistical concerns did so at their own peril. The author covers critical campaigns in the eastern, western, and trans-Mississippi theaters, although he pays particular attention to Union operations in the West where great distances, inhospitable civilians, and challenging environments hampered movements. Overcoming these obstacles to feed men and animals deep inside Confederate territory, Hess argues, was an “achievement...unprecedented in American history” (p. 21). Railroad management figures prominently in Hess’s book. Both the Union and Confederate armies used extensive wagon trains to supply their men, and both lived off the countryside. However, the Federal army quickly learned how to successfully manage the railroads. The North developed a remarkable system of railroad transportation, maintenance, and repair. By 1865, the United States Military Railroad, under the direction of Daniel C. McCallum, had become the largest railroad company in the world. For the North, operating on external lines of communication, the supply problems were enormous. To reach the tip of the spear, the North developed a supply chain that extended from major depots such as Cincinnati and Louisville to front-line units sometimes 350 miles away from their supply base. Confederate cavalry and guerrillas operating behind Union lines often ruined miles of track, bridges, and tunnels. Such damage threatened to leave an army vulnerable to starvation and capture deep inside Confederate territory, as nearly happened to General William S. Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga (1863) and General Nathaniel P. Banks’s Army of the Gulf at Grand Ecore on the Red River (1864). Only the ingenuity of quartermasters allowed these armies to escape total disaster. Hess argues that the Union could not have won the Civil War unless its armies could maintain mobility and meet the challenges that otherwise would have impeded Union operations deep inside the Confederacy. The author’s insightful strategic and logistic analysis of the movements of Union and Confederate armies offers scholars and general readers a fresh approach to the way historians should consider, study, and write the Civil War’s military history. For example, the author points out that during the Kentucky campaign of 1862, although General Braxton Bragg “continued to rely on wagon trains and foraging to feed both the Army of the Mississippi and the Army of East Tennessee,” he had no real supply line; and consequently, after the battle of Perryville he was forced to retreat through the mountains of East Tennessee, his men living off parched corn (p. 45). This lesson of moving rapidly and living off the countryside was not lost on Union general William T. Sherman, who later commented that he would “imitate” Bragg’s example but make sure his army remained tethered to a supply line (p. 47). [End Page 730] As in his previous book Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation (Baton Rouge, 2017), Hess pays more attention to Union operations because far more information is available and because building functioning supply lines was particularly challenging when attacking deep inside the Confederacy. Hess points out that the Confederacy’s institutional and administrative problems in feeding its soldiers created a number of strategic disadvantages. What Hess does not offer is a reason why those institutional problems existed in the South and not in the North. Hess has written an important book. Military histories look at the strategic movement of armies but often discount the problem of supply. The author has shown us a different way of writing about war. Strategic operations must be considered within the framework of supply, and...

The Sanno

The Sanno Don Lee (bio) We were supposed to stay at the Sanno Hotel for only a week or so while my parents looked for an apartment to rent, but we ended up spending the entire summer there. For me, fourteen at the time, there could have been nothing better, having the run of the sprawling hotel, being overseas again. This was forty-five years ago, in 1974. The Sanno — located in the Akasaka district of Tokyo—was called a transient billeting facility, meant to house US military personnel on R&R (Rest and Recuperation), TDY (Temporary Duty), or, as with us, in Japan for a PCS (Permanent Change of Station). Although my father was classified as an air force civilian, he was not actually employed by the military. He was in the CIA, something I’d learned two years earlier and was still trying to puzzle out. The Sanno had a pool, an arcade of stores, beauty and barber shops, a spa, a cocktail lounge, a movie theater, and several restaurants that featured a continuous rotation of buffets. Much of it was staffed by non-Japanese Asians, mostly Filipino and Korean. There [End Page 730] were also quite a few non-Japanese Asian women, mostly Thai and Vietnamese, who served as the dates or girlfriends or wives of the officers and GIs in the Sanno. Yet there were very few Asians like us — Asian Americans — at the hotel, a situation that was not unfamiliar to me. My father was Korean American, born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, until he moved to Honolulu for high school. My mother, who’d never left Oahu before meeting my dad at the University of Hawaii, was your typical Hawaiian mixed plate of Asian ethnicities: Korean and Okinawan, with some Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese thrown in there, along with a trace of Portuguese, maybe a freckle of Scottish. Apart from haoles, i.e., the white minority, practically everyone on the island was just like us. Nearly everywhere else in the world, though, we were viewed as anomalies, objects of flagrant curiosity, especially in the countries to which my father was posted (local boys would often trail after me in astonishment, yelling, “Bruce Lee! Bruce Lee!”). My father had studied Korean, Japanese, and political science at UH, but absurdly, after recruiting him, the CIA had assigned him to the Middle East desk. Thus, we were sent to Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, and Oman, with queer detours to Yugoslavia, Greece, and Zaire. We never stayed anywhere longer than two years, sometimes leaving after just one. In those days, these were not desirable or even very tolerable overseas posts, although they were relatively safe. Pretty much all of them were considered hardship assignments, meriting additional pay. “Shitholes,” my mother called them. “The armpits of the Third World. Why is it we never get to go anywhere nice?” Another one of her perennial complaints was about my dad’s covers. Almost without exception, his covers were DOD-related — some sort of military attaché or advisor or liaison officer, [End Page 731] often with the USIA or army, not as a full-fledged diplomat in the State Department. So we never got a fancy house or a maid, or a luxury sedan or a chauffeur, or a nanny or a gardener. We never got blue diplomatic license plates that would allow us to park anywhere with impunity or black diplomatic passports that would let us bypass security at airports, enter lounges, and get upgraded to first class. Generally speaking, we never got to be, as my mother desired, “big shots.” Tokyo was supposed to be a major change for us, a substantial step up, but my father’s office wasn’t even in the US Embassy building. He was in the Provost Marshal Liaison Detachment (PMLD) for the Fifth Air Force at Hardy Barracks, a little outpost in Nogizaka that contained offices for the Stars and Stripes newspaper and the Office of Naval Research (which might have been the NSA), a helipad, a tiny navy exchange store, and a lone gas pump. And we wouldn’t be living in the Grew House, the embassy housing compound near Roppongi...

Apostle of the Lost Cause: J. William Jones, Baptists, and the Development of Confederate Memory by Christopher C. Moore

Reviewed by: Apostle of the Lost Cause: J. William Jones, Baptists, and the Development of Confederate Memory by Christopher C. Moore Timothy Wesley Apostle of the Lost Cause: J. William Jones, Baptists, and the Development of Confederate Memory. By Christopher C. Moore. America's Baptists. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019. Pp. x, 300. $50.00, ISBN 978-1-62190-593-4.) Apostle of the Lost Cause: J. William Jones, Baptists, and the Development of Confederate Memory differs from much of the recent literature on Civil War and Reconstruction-era religion in two essential ways. First, the partiality so often evident in denominational histories is nowhere to be found in this book's more than two hundred pages of text (divided into six hybrid chronological and thematic chapters). Author Christopher C. Moore believes that J. William Jones's Baptistism was the determinative force in Jones's career as a formulator and then propagator of the Lost Cause myth. Accordingly, this book is a selfevidently "Baptist" history. But while Moore stresses that Jones's denominational identity was as the heart of his every concern, Moore does not commemorate that tradition. Moore's ability to thus steer clear of qualitative considerations of Baptist doctrine, while simultaneously using it as an analytical lens, is memorable in both its sophistication and its restraint. Second, the author treats faith itself as an agent of causation. The idea that Jones's Lost Cause rationalizations were part and parcel of his religiosity is not groundbreaking. What Moore does in Apostle of the Lost Cause that is essentially innovative, however, is to consider how Jones's Baptist beliefs shaped his politics rather than how his politics informed his beliefs. In other words, rather than hypothesize about how Jones compromised his truest religious convictions to accommodate a "merciful" defense of the Confederacy and an explanation for its defeat, Moore shows how being a Baptist shaped Jones's convictions in the original. No matter, then, if it was Jones protecting the image of Robert E. Lee, or explaining away the shortcomings of the Confederate prison system, or, finally, imagining Confederate defeat as part of God's plan to imbue the American character with morality and virtue, Moore convincingly situates such memory-shaping campaigns within "a nineteenthcentury Baptist context" and then, by extrapolation, reveals how Jones's "deep-seated denominational identity fashioned Confederate memory" (p. 4). This demonstration—how to centralize religion as a historical cause rather than an effect—is the book's most important methodological contribution. All of these plaudits notwithstanding, there is a shortcoming in Moore's otherwise masterful volume. The author's consideration of the prewar Jones is frustratingly brief. Moore offers that "little is known of Jones's childhood years" beyond the general features of his education and the dates of a few milestone events in his religious development (p. 10). Nevertheless, in the name of context and as precursor for the apologist that Jones became, one wonders if Moore might have done more to explore the societal influences of what is known about the young Jones. Jones's father, Francis, presided over a slaveowning family, but the family held six enslaved people in total. Francis Jones was a magistrate of Louisa County, Virginia, yet his son, William, arrived at the University of Virginia "'an uncouth country boy,'" as one of his professors there put it, unprepared for college life (p. 10). Stated plainly, there must be real elucidatory value hiding somewhere in the knowledge that the young Virginian [End Page 730] was of an "almost elite" family, was reared in an environment of aspirational deference to the planter elite, and, yes, was baptized into a slavery-legitimating Baptist tradition. Even if that part of Jones's story remains a mystery, however, Moore deserves accolades for the light he has shone on the later life and career of this true Apostle of the Lost Cause. Timothy Wesley Austin Peay State University Copyright © 2020 The Southern Historical Association

Tangled: Organizing the Southern Textile Industry, 1930–1934 by Travis Sutton Byrd

Reviewed by: Tangled: Organizing the Southern Textile Industry, 1930–1934 by Travis Sutton Byrd Matthew Hild Tangled: Organizing the Southern Textile Industry, 1930–1934. By Travis Sutton Byrd. ( Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 356. $50.00, ISBN 978-1-62190-407-6.) Historians of the southern textile industry during the Great Depression associate two years from that era with strikes: 1929, when labor unrest engulfed mill towns such as Gastonia and Marion, North Carolina, and Elizabethton, Tennessee, and 1934, when a massive textile strike spread from Alabama to Maine. Travis Sutton Byrd has written about the 1929 strikes in Unraveled: Labor Strife and Carolina Folk during the Marion Textile Strikes of 1929 (Knoxville, 2015). Janet Irons and John A. Salmond each have also written histories of the general textile strike of 1934; Salmond has also written a book on the 1929 Loray Mill strike in Gastonia. Now, in Tangled: Organizing the Southern Textile Industry, 1930–1934, Byrd looks at the period between the textile strikes of 1929 and 1934, although he also devotes the last of the book's three parts to the 1934 strike. Part 1 of Tangled covers the "Organize the South" campaign, which was launched by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in late 1929 after the failure of the textile strikes. Byrd examines how "national union leaders … tried to convert [the] bloodshed" of those strikes "into a wedge issue that would crack the factories of the piedmont open" (p. 4). In explaining the failure of this campaign, Byrd focuses heavily on the strike that occurred at the Riverside and Dan River Mills in Danville, Virginia, in 1930, which ended in failure in four months, after strikers were evicted from company-owned houses and became destitute. With the end of that strike came the end of the AFL's southern campaign, "killed on the banks of the Dan River" (p. 146). Part 2 examines the strike in High Point, North Carolina, waged by hosiery boarders during the summer of 1932. The "Boarders' Revolt" came on the heels of wage cuts by several mills. The strike spread to include as many as 20,000 operatives in three counties, and it proved that workers could represent themselves without the United Textile Workers or the communist organizers who were in the area. The operatives won the strike in less than two weeks, in part due to the intervention of Governor O. Max Gardner, to whom Byrd ascribes "a milquetoast [End Page 730] progressivism" (p. 15). Part 2 makes the book's most original contribution with its detailed account and analysis of the Boarders' Revolt. Part 3, in contrast, deals with the far more well-trodden ground of the general textile strike of 1934. Byrd covers this strike in about fifty pages, and he suggests that "strikers agitating for reform under NIRA [National Industrial Recovery Act] Section 7(a) could be seen as a first wave of the civil rights movements that would rework sectional identity" (p. 265). He further asserts that "'right-to-work' doctrine would go hand in hand with 'massive resistance' in the 1950s and 1960s, and many supporters of the latter crossed picket lines in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s under the banner of the former" (p. 265). Finally, Byrd argues that the birth of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1935 "was the upshot and outcome of everything that had transpired in the textile belt since the autumn of 1929" (p. 286). This book makes a significant contribution to the existing literature on southern labor during the Great Depression. This review only scratches the surface of what Tangled has to offer. The book makes use of a wide variety of primary sources, including the deep level of newspaper research that the digital era affords. The lack of a bibliography is disappointing and, in a way, does the author an injustice, as it would catalog an impressive amount of research. With Unraveled and Tangled, Byrd—a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, according to the back cover—has established himself as a leading scholar in the field. Matthew Hild Georgia Institute of Technology Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical...

The Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites ed. by Andrew Gregory

Reviewed by: The Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites ed. by Andrew Gregory Matthew Goldstone andrew gregory (ed.), The Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites (Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts; New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Pp. xvi + 344. $170. As part of a series devoted to noncanonical Gospel texts, this work provides a thorough, cautious, and well-balanced assessment of the evidence for two no longer extant works: the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites (the latter title reflecting modern nomenclature). Grounded in previous scholarship and presented in a well-organized fashion, this work offers the reader an accessible and comprehensive overview of the relevant data for understanding each of these lost Gospels. Gregory is wary of the numerous pitfalls that plague such a project and masterfully reminds the reader that the available evidence is ambiguous and open to alternative interpretation. G. truly succeeds in the series' goals of providing a clear presentation of the available textual evidence and an up-to-date survey of the pertinent scholarship. The first part of the book is devoted to fleshing out the many issues involved in approaching the difficult project of analyzing brief excerpts from these lost Gospels recorded in the works of the early Church Fathers. G. draws a clear line between literary issues, the primary focus of the project, and theological and historical issues. Previous scholarship often jumped to hasty conclusions about the communities these texts reflect, and G. admirably relegates such discussions to brief and tentative sections at the conclusion [End Page 730] of his discussion of each Gospel and in an appendix. Overall, G.'s introduction sets up a critical and qualified statement about what we can and cannot say about these two Gospels. The two central parts of the work engage in an in-depth textual analysis of the available evidence for the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites, respectively. In each part, G. opens with a presentation of the available witnesses and the literary issues involved in approaching the texts before turning to the texts themselves. These sections summarize many of the crucial points and prime the reader for the evidence that follows. For the Gospel according to the Hebrews, G. creates two distinct sections in order to distinguish between probable and doubtful testimony. He also includes an appendix for those sources he considers to be spurious patristic witnesses. G.'s decision regarding the reliability of each piece of evidence is regularly clarified and supported within his discussion of the text. For each passage, G. provides the original Greek or Latin (although not Syriac), an English translation, a discussion of the context, and his commentary. Some texts also include observations regarding the attribution, that is to say, the way the patristic author refers to the Gospel. Some pericopae are accompanied by mention of parallels either in the Synoptic Gospels, for which a synopsis is typically provided, or in later works. The volume concludes with several appendixes that contain tangentially related materials as well as a discussion of the broader historical question of the groups or sects whose names are associated with these Jewish-Christian Gospels. The work is replete with qualifications of G.'s interpretations and conclusions. Although some may perhaps find this redundant, the constant reminder of the tentative nature of the assumptions upon which particular readings lie, and the regular presentation of multiple ways of understanding the evidence, force the reader to confront the implications of our paucity of evidence. While this work is firmly grounded in strong philological and linguistic analysis of Greek and Latin texts, some readers may find the engagement with Hebrew elements somewhat lacking. For example, G. (p. 142) reproduces the typographical error of tav (as opposed to ṭav), for "good ones," which originally appeared in the work of A. F. J. Klijn (Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition [VCSup 17; Leiden: Brill, 1992] 64). In discussing Jerome's translation of the term barrama, G. notes, "Both the Latin and Greek are in the plural, whereas the word that Jerome quotes appears to be a singular form, and it is difficult...

Erratum to: “The Fluorescence and Electronic Structure of Phenyl-Substituted Tetraazachlorin Molecules” [Optics and Spectroscopy 117, 722 (2014)

should read “porphyrazine” instead of “porphyrazin”; should read “intersystem crossing” instead of “intercombinational conversion”; should read “mirror-symmetrical” instead of “reflection-symmetric”; should read “fluorescence enhancement” instead of “fluorescence buildup.” Page 722, Abstract, lines 9–10 from the top, the sentence should read: This characteristic increases upon tetrapyrrole phenylation. Page 727, left column, lines 17–18 from the top, the sentence should read: The vibronic transition parts of the emission spectrum are diffuse, (…) Page 727, left column, lines 29–30 from the top, the sentence should read: Note that the Stokes shift in these cases is relatively large. Page 729, left column, lines 8–10 from the bottom, the sentence should read: For H2Ph8TACmp and H2Ph6TACtm, the enhancement of fluorescence is weaker than in the former case: on cooling, τF is increased by a factor of 4–5 in MTHF and by a factor of only 2.6–3 in toluene. Page 729, right column, lines 9–10 from the footnote, the sentence should read: It is seen from Table 1 that our results agree reasonably well with previously reported data. Page 730, left column, lines 16–19 from the top, the sentence should read: The lifetime for the outgassed H2TAP solution in toluene (τT0) was measured by A.S. Stasheuski as phosphorescence decay at λreg = 1070 nm using the setup described in [29]. Page 730, left column, lines 20–23 from the top, the sentence should read: The τT value derived from the kinetics of the rise of singlet oxygen luminescence [26] for the nonoutgassed solution at λreg = 1272 nm is 162 ns; Page 730, right column, lines 25–27 from the top, the sentence should read: Therefore, for H2TAP (λF00≈ 620 nm), the internal conversion probability should not be high. Page 731, left column, the heading of Table 2 should read: Bond lengths in the porphine macrocycle (A). Page 731, left column, lines 3–6 from the top, the sentence should read: For elucidating the mechanism of the deactivation of the S1 state, it was of essential interest to see whether the enhancement of H2TAP fluorescence would be observed at 77 K. Page 733, left column, lines 2–3 from the top, the sentence should read: The corresponding difference for the H2P–H2C pair is 0.013 A. Page 733, left column, lines 14–16 from the top, the sentence should read: The macrocycle undergoes additional contraction, and the symmetry of its conjugated system is very close to D2h. Page 733, right column, line 21 from the top should read: Replacement of the methine bridges (…) Page 734, left column, lines 8–11 from the figure caption, the sentence should read: This is the main reason of the large bathochromic shift of the Soret band of H2Ph8TAP and MgPh8TAP [16] relative to H2TAP and MgTAP, respectively. Page 734, left column, lines 1–4 from the bottom, the sentence should read: The complete INDO/Sm calculation yields the corresponding quantitative characteristics, which are in good agreement with experimental data (see below). Page 740, left column, reference no. 25 should read: 25. V. A. Galievsky, A. S. Stasheuski, V. V. Kiselyov, A. I. Shabusov, M. V. Belkov, and B. M. Dzhagarov, Instrum. Exp. Tech. 53, 568 (2010). 25. V. A. Galievsky, A. S. Stasheuski, V. V. Kiselyov, A. I. Shabusov, M. V. Belkov, and B. M. Dzhagarov, Instrum. Exp. Tech. 53, 568 (2010). 30. V. L. Ermolaev and E. B. Sveshnikova, Acta Phys. Pol. 34, 771 (1968).

John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary ed. by David Waldstreicher, Matthew Mason

Reviewed by: John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary ed. by David Waldstreicher, Matthew Mason Corey M. Brooks (bio) KEY WORDS John Quincy Adams, Slavery, Antislavery, Gag rule, Sectionalism John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary. Edited by David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 336. Cloth, $29.95.) In John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery, David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason have undertaken an ambitious and important scholarly editing project, compiling an extensive collection of excerpts from Adams’s copious diary writings on slavery and antislavery. Over the course of this volume, we see the profound evolution of Adams’s responses to questions of whether, when, and how to pursue antislavery politics. For those unfamiliar with Adams’s diary, this book offers an entrée into Adams’s inner thoughts on politics, policy, and personal self-improvement. The Adams that Waldstreicher and Mason show us is a man driven to reach greatness, routinely oscillating between pride in his extraordinary intellect and accomplishments and frustration at the limits [End Page 730] that both his political opponents and his own human imperfections placed on what he could achieve. As a diarist, Adams is fascinating, perspicacious, and often surprisingly self-aware (if sometimes self-serving). Through his voice, we can learn much about the politics of the slavery issue that first lurked just under the surface of, and by the end of Adams’s life came to dominate, the national political arena. In a twelve-page introduction, Waldstreicher and Mason clearly explicate their process and their overarching conclusions about Adams’s diary and the excerpts here, drawn from both published sources (mainly his son Charles Francis Adams’s twelve-volume edited version) and manuscripts available online through the Massachusetts Historical Society.1 The introduction also reviews historiography of Adams’s life and career, with careful attention to how Adams’s many biographers have used and interpreted the diary. This introduction’s relative brevity and thoughtful insights will be welcomed by many, but undergraduate or lay readers might have appreciated more background on slavery’s place in American political life during the sixty years this book spans (1785–1845). Of course in an editorial project of this scope, there are always tradeoffs. While this text can be an engaging classroom resource, instructors may need to offer further contextualization to help less knowledgeable readers navigate the diary. That said, throughout the main text, Waldstreicher and Mason present summary, context, and interpretation at least every few pages to prime readers for succeeding entries. These editorial interventions should help readers grasp the shifting political terrain on which Adams was operating, but an introductory overview of broader developments still would have been beneficial. In the book’s opening chapters, perhaps most striking is how relatively infrequently the slavery issue seemed to come up. From the early decades of the diary, the editors have identified a handful of passages in which Adams reflects on the abstract immorality of slavery. But as the editors follow him through his years abroad as a diplomat at various European courts, we mostly see a nationalistic Adams preoccupied with projecting American strength and advancing the interests of both northern and southern states. [End Page 731] While such concerns persisted through his time as James Monroe’s Secretary of State, entries from those years begin to reveal Adams’s not yet fully formed misgivings about the power and unity of American slave-holders. The most interesting reading here is Adams’s lengthy reflections on the Missouri Crisis of 1819–1821. Genuinely ambivalent about the “morally and politically vicious” (84) compromises that held the Union together, Adams nonetheless read the crisis as a portent of an almost ineluctable sectional rift over slavery. But at this point, Adams avoided public comment in light of both his cabinet post and political ambitions. This volume’s section on Adams’s presidency is relatively brief. Generally, President Adams, guided by political priorities, shied away from the slavery issue. During these years, however, we see evidence, on the one hand, that the Adams family at times relied on rented slave help, while on the...

Revisiting Delphi: Religion and Storytelling in Ancient Greece by Julia Kindt

Reviewed by: Revisiting Delphi: Religion and Storytelling in Ancient Greece by Julia Kindt William Hutton Julia Kindt. Revisiting Delphi: Religion and Storytelling in Ancient Greece. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xv, 215. $99.99. ISBN 978-1-107-15157-4. Revisiting Delphi offers a remarkably clear and concise examination of a select number of literary accounts of Delphic oracular responses. Building on her previous work on the importance of narrative in the construction and communication of religious thought in ancient Greece, Julia Kindt avoids what she characterizes as the preoccupation of previous scholars with questions of the historicity of oracle narratives to focus on how such narratives—particularly those in which ambiguous or misunderstood oracles are later proven to be correct—reveal underappreciated aspects of Greek religious thought. Kindt structures her study upon chapters devoted to five authors: Herodotus, Euripides, Plato, Pausanias, and Athenaeus. Herodotus she rightly identifies as a pattern-setter for later authors. Focusing on episodes that are rich in oracular references, such as the Croesus story in Book 1, Kindt notes that all of Herodotus’ references to oracles are embedded in narrative and fulfill a number of narratological functions. More critically, however, she identifies the notorious ambiguity of many Herodotean oracles as a means of communicating the ontological difference between human and divine knowledge in Greek religious thought, and posits that this distinction is an important aspect not only of Herodotus’ mindset but also of Greek religion in general. In subsequent chapters she looks for confirmation of that proposition in oracular tales told by other authors. In a chapter entitled “Euripides,” the Delphic oracle in the Ion that makes Xouthos think that Ion is his son is examined as a manifestation of the playwright’s “semantics of polyphony” (83). In “Plato,” Kindt gives similar treatment to the oracle in the Apology that declares no one to be wiser than Socrates. Socrates’ search for the meaning of that vague and seemingly dubious statement serves as a metonym for his entire philosophical project. In chapters devoted to “Pausanias” and “Athenaeus,” Kindt examines oracle narratives attested in later sources: from Pausanias, the story of the puzzling oracle received by the Thasians regarding a statue of the famous athlete Theagenes (a case of interplay between theology and Greek “object culture”); and, from Athenaeus, the ambiguous Delphic advice received by Parmeniscus of Metapontum on how to recover his ability to laugh. Though both examples surely derived from much older sources, Kindt argues that Athenaeus’ and Pausanias’ choice to narrate these stories shows the persistence into the Imperial period of a similar religious outlook to that found in earlier authors. In an appendix, she also offers a reading of Plutarch’s dialogue on the “E” in Delphi. While not an oracle narrative like the other texts, Kindt reads the dialogue’s aporetic investigation of the meaning of the enigmatic symbol as expressing thoughts congruent to those in oracular narratives on the limits of human knowledge. Kindt’s treatment of all these narratives is thought-provoking and persuasive, but even she seems to realize that the broad claims she makes about Greek theologies require more corroboration than this volume’s brief compass can afford. She frequently refers to forthcoming work of her own that might delve into matters in greater detail, and in her conclusions she invites other scholars to investigate the usefulness of her readings in other texts. Although she frequently emphasizes the importance of context in interpreting these stories, one aspect that continually receives short shrift is the literary context. Though organized [End Page 730] by chapters named after authors, little consideration of generic and individual literary tendencies goes into Kindt’s analysis. This is less true of Herodotus, from whose work a broad range of oracle stories is considered, but particularly true of Pausanias and Athenaeus, who are treated as little more than inert receptacles for the oracle stories Kindt focuses on. An example of where important considerations are thereby missed is the tendency of Imperial Greek authors to enact a mimesis of classical authors (for Pausanias, Herodotus above all others). This might have as much to do with why classical-style oracle stories recur in the...

Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses by Hilary Matfess

Reviewed by: Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses by Hilary Matfess Marcel Kitissou (bio) Hilary Matfess, Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses (Zed, 2017), ISBN 978-1-78699-1481, 270 pages. Plutarch (c. 45 to 125 A.D.) asserted that "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." As if to echo the warning of the Greek philosopher, twenty centuries later a contemporary writer, Yuval Noah Hariri in his book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, made the implicit explicit by asserting that "[p]eople are egalitarian by nature, and unequal societies can never function well due to resentment and dissatisfaction."1 Indeed, it is not inequality per se that causes [End Page 729] social dysfunction, but the neglect, if not the oppression, of the poor and the weak, and the injustice that accompanies inequality, particularly if seen as the result of corruption. This is especially salient in the social context in which the Boko Haram insurgency took roots. The structural violence that led to actual violence in Northern Nigeria is meticulously documented and vividly described by Hilary Matfess in her book, Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses. As she stated very forcefully, "because non-inclusive societies have proven to be prone to violence. … Peace in northern Nigeria will not be durable if it is peace made by men."2 The book is a judicious combination of the lived experiences of women, the use and misuse of masculinity, the clash of local traditions with universal norms, the inadequate coordination between local and international institutions, and the shifting lines in a battle without a frontline. Women, while trying not only to survive, but also to control their own fate in this new form of warfare once described with foresight by Martin van Creveld in his book, The Transformation of War,3 are caught in the crossfire of contending masculinities within a patriarchal society. Faced with the dilemma of serving as pawns or players in a war by and of men, they often make the conscious choice of serving alternatively, if not simultaneously, as wives, weapons, and witnesses. Each of the eight chapters of the book, based on extensive interviews, focuses on specific issues. Chapter 1 describes the background of Boko Haram as a case of "horizontal inequalities"4 used by charismatic leaders with "coherent ideology and an organization capable of mobilizing the excluded" who then unite the anti-institutional energy of "the deprived and repressed urban masses."5 Chapter 2 describes the political theology and the interplay of politics and religion in the Nigerian Fourth Republic. What does it mean to be a girl in Nigeria? Chapter 3 addresses this issue and stresses how gender politics is exploited by Boko Haram. In that context, Chapter 4 explains the symbolism of the abduction of the Chibok girls in April 2014 and depicts the dilemma of girls in Northern Nigeria: forced marriage in civil society or forced into marriage with Boko Haram fighters. To borrow a comparison from Hariri describing the process of animal domestication, "Is it better to be devoured by a lion than slaughtered by a man? Are crocodile teeth less deadly than steel blades?"6 In Chapter 5, Matfess insists that women are not passive victims in an oppressive patriarchal society: "The systemic structural violence that women face in Northern Nigerian society makes it easier for some to lend their support to anti-state movements (including the Boko Haram insurgency)"7 and, in so doing, provide reproductive support as wives and serve as weapons. While Chapter 6 points out the dire humanitarian conditions of displaced people in the Lake Chad Basin, Chapter 7 sees [End Page 730] a way forward: "Coupled with research on the importance of female inclusion for social stability and durable peace, it becomes clear that Nigeria's future must be female if it is to be peaceful."8 For Matfess, thus, if the society is to avoid recreating the conditions that lead to war, women have to be mainstreamed in post-conflict negotiations and reconstruction. Consequently, Chapter 8 focuses on best practices such as what...

New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization ed. by Beverly C. Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick

Reviewed by: New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonizationed. by Beverly C. Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick Elisabeth Engel New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization. Edited by Beverly C. Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick. Southern Dissent. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, 2017. Pp. x, 356. $89.95, ISBN 978-0-8130-5424-7.) New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonizationrevisits the history of the movement to relocate black Americans to Africa in the nineteenth century. Its sixteen chapters focus on the American Colonization Society [End Page 729](ACS), the organization, founded in 1816, that supported African recolonization as an approach to resolve the issue of slavery by transporting free black people to Liberia. The purpose of the volume is to go beyond existing scholarship that primarily debates "whether colonization was proslavery or antislavery" (p. 17). The assembled contributions foreground, instead, the missionary, political, and diplomatic dimensions of colonizationism and new methodologies and perspectives for the study of colonization. By adopting this multidimensional approach, the volume aims to trace the "movement's complexity" while "redirecting the field and encouraging deeper analysis not only of actions but also of implications and results" (p. 17). Beverly C. Tomek's introduction discusses "The Past, Present, and Future of Colonization Studies." She offers a brief history of the ACS and a comprehensive review of the historiography since the nineteenth century, highlighting how historical interpretations of the ACS changed in certain periods, such as the civil rights era. From her discussion of the literature, Tomek drafts out where the contributors indicate potentially new fields of study. The gist of her analysis is that the contributors begin a transnational research agenda that considers ACS-related archives and historical actors in the context of American foreign policy history as well as entirely beyond the United States. This agenda is evident in contributions that bring African perspectives (such as chapters 3, 4, 11, and 13) and the place of colonization in the history of American expansion and imperialism (chapters 8 and 9) to the fore. What is less clear is how the contributions relate to or develop the concept of African American recolonization that is proposed in the title of the volume. Part 1 consists of four detailed case studies that explore the religious motivations and practices of the colonization movement in Africa. Gale L. Kenny analyzes the "missionary sensibility" of ACS supporters in New England to show that Christian ideals of sympathy and compassion helped raise a racially biased interest in black people who were well out of their sight (p. 34). Ben Wright looks into "nonspecific Protestantism" as a cultural foundation on which even conflicting groups of black and white Americans from the North and the South could agree to define colonization as a means to achieve Africans' conversion (p. 51). Andrew N. Wegmann argues that black American missionaries, starting with Lott Cary in 1822, helped breed a "populist Christian nationalism" in the interior of Liberia that differed from the Western role models that the ACS, missionary boards, and Americo-Liberian elites promoted in Monrovia (p. 83). Debra Newman Ham honors African American women as the largest segment of ACS emigrants by exploring the educational and religious initiatives that they devised on behalf of the "biblical Great Commission" to shape a new society in Liberia (p. 91). Part 2 concentrates on the colonization movement's political and diplomatic dimensions. David F. Ericson introduces the "private-public partnership" that the ACS maintained with the U.S. government due to a shared goal to suppress the transatlantic slave trade (p. 111). Daniel Preston shows that President James Monroe developed his plan of "gradual compensated emancipation linked to colonization" in view of the ACS (p. 135). Nicholas P. Wood reveals that the legalization of slavery in Missouri in 1820 eroded cross-sectional support for African colonization at the federal level, while prompting the rise of a [End Page 730]decentralized network of auxiliary colonization societies in various states. Brandon Mills argues that the ACS's idea of founding an independent black republic, as opposed to a colony, in Africa reflects an anticolonial version of U.S. expansionism. Bronwen...

Scholarly Knowledge in the Physical Sciences

Scholarly Knowledge in the Physical Sciences Jeremiah P. Ostriker (bio) the paradigm of the physical sciences, embodying the "scientific method" and self-consciously promoted by Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), has been, to a greater or lesser extent, followed in other areas of scholarship. It has three essential elements: 1. Quantitative experimental input. 2. Regularities observed or implied are expressed with simple mathematical models, and both input data and output theory are openly published to the general scientific community. 3. Theories explaining the phenomena in question can be tested and falsified—this last piece emphasized especially by Karl Popper (1902–1994)—i.e., they can be proved wrong. Socially, scholarship has been the province of individual investigators or small teams led by individuals, and this mode was well suited to the established method. Support for major projects (starting with Galileo and lasting until the second World War) was often provided by wealthy individuals. The overall enterprise has been phenomenally successful. Now, to a rapidly increasing degree, funding is diffused among government, university, and private sources; and big data, often gleaned from commercial databases, is analyzed by large teams of scientists using very complicated computer models. In most cases, the [End Page 729] complex mathematical elements of these models were designed and tested by specific noninteracting groups, so that even the leaders of large experimental projects, including the academic ones such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), have a detailed understanding of only pieces of the overall program. In addition, large-scale scientific modeling enterprises, such as the "Illustris Simulation" for the cosmological assembly of galaxy growth by merger, have been developed in which responsibility is diffused; the innumerable parameters essential to the modeling are determined by fitting to observations; and the model is judged an accurate or inaccurate representation of nature by the extent to which its output fits extant observations. In such efforts, much of the data on which the theories are based is not publicly available, and many of the computed consequences of the theories are also not published, so the empirical basis and output validity are difficult for the general scientific community to judge. Furthermore, since input parameters are adopted on the basis that the results fit observations, it is logically unsatisfactory to conclude that the theories have satisfied the test of congruence with reality when the results match observations. Still other enterprises, such as the fundamental physics based on string theories, have so many possible representations that no unique tests of validity have been found. Thus, scholarly knowledge in the physical sciences has been increasingly departing from its (perhaps too) simple methodological origins, and, while some practitioners are aware and concerned about the changes, the vast majority of young scientists plow forward in whatever direction their mentors indicate, without much concern for the increasingly unstable foundations of their disciplines. Some aspects of this issue, such as the growing complexity of funding and input tools, are unavoidable. But the practice of science would be improved if greater attention were given in the education of scientists to logic and to methodological issues. There is an increasing amount of attention being given to "reproducibility" of results in the sciences; this is laudable, but it approaches the issues from the [End Page 730] endpoints only. Even if this effort bears success, it will leave the scientific enterprise still on shaky foundations, departing ever further from its enormously successful beginnings, since results can be reproducible but still empty (i.e., tautologically based on circular reasoning) or wrong (based on inconsistent algorithms or unexamined input data). More attention to the logical basis for the scientific method is required. [End Page 731] Jeremiah P. Ostriker jeremiah p. ostriker, a senior research scholar at Princeton University and professor of astronomy at Columbia University, has been very influential in advancing the concept that most of the mass in the universe is not visible and consists of dark matter. His research has also focused on the interstellar medium, galaxy evolution, cosmology, and black holes. Copyright © 2017 The New School

On Relativism

On Relativism Avery Cardinal Dulles S.J. (1918–2008) IN A NEWSPAPER COLUMN after the first year of the Pope’s pontificate, John Allen wrote: “In terms of content, no one has to speculate about Benedict XVI’s most important teaching concern. He told us, the day before his election, in his homily Pro Eligendo Papa on April 18, 2005: the challenge to a ‘dictatorship of relativism’ in the developed West.”1 Allen’s prediction finds support in a long series of documents. As Prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger frequently pointed to the evils of relativism. At Hong Kong in 1993, he called it “the gravest problem of our time,” and at Guadalajara in 1996, he called it “the central problem of faith for our time.”2 Ratzinger returns to the theme of relativism in several books published in English since he became pope, notably Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures and Without Roots: Europe, Relativism.3 From [End Page 729] these and a few other sources, we can piece together a fairly complete description of his critique. Origins of Relativism Relativism holds that mutually opposed points of view can all be valid. According to Ratzinger, relativism is an outgrowth of the metaphysical agnosticism of Immanuel Kant (TT, 126, 135). Rejecting the possibility of metaphysics in the usual sense, Kant held that the human mind can properly know only sensory “phenomena” or what can be logically deduced from them. Knowledge is therefore conditioned by appearances, which are relative to the observer. The absolute, Kant maintained, cannot be found within history or validly deduced from it, though earthly realities may be interpreted as pointing to it. Kant himself, while denying that we can strictly know eternal and necessary principles, avoided relativism by affirming that there were universal and necessary a priori forms of the intellect and postulates of practical reason that enjoyed the same universality. Making use of these postulates, the enlightened person could, in Kant’s opinion, construct a system of morals and a viable religion within the limits of reason alone without appeal to the supernatural. But Kant continued to hold that there can be no knowledge properly so called of transcendent realities.4 Nineteenth-century thinkers in the West, sharing Kant’s agnosticism, likewise stopped short of relativism. The dominant outlook was scientific positivism, a system that attempted to account for all reality on the basis of fixed mechanical laws. This system eliminated morality as a specific category. The favored theory was utilitarianism, which assessed the goodness and badness of human acts not on grounds of transcendental precepts or intrinsic values, but on the basis of their beneficial or harmful consequences.5 Moreover, socialists of various types attempted to construct a fully scientific explanation of society. Marxism was the last great effort to found a universally valid code of behavior and to lay the foundations of a new society. The collapse of Marxism in central and eastern Europe in 1989 brought about a profound disillusionment. Relativism has filled the resulting vacuum (TT, 116–17). [End Page 730] In WR, co-author Marcello Pera discusses two forms of contemporary philosophical relativism: contextualism and deconstructionism (Pera in WR, 11–22). Ludwig Wittgenstein and his followers represent the first. They maintain that different cultures have their own rules of thinking and speaking. Different linguistic universes, they say, are incommensurable. What one community holds to be true, beautiful, and good is only so according to the criteria by which that community guides its judgment. There are no meta-criteria by which to judge what is universally true, beautiful, or good. Since all the criteria are contextual, relativism, they argue, must in the end prevail. The second form of relativism derives from Nietzsche and is masterfully represented by Jacques Derrida, who deconstructs supposedly universal concepts and assertions to show that they are self-contradictory. For this school of thinkers, there are no facts, only interpretations. The meaning of a text depends entirely on the subjectivity of the reader. Wittgenstein and Derrida have their disciples and peers in the United States. The names of Willard Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Richard Rorty, and John Caputo come to mind. But I shall not...

Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood by Steven Elliott Tripp

Reviewed by: Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood by Steven Elliott Tripp Trent Brown Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood. By Steven Elliott Tripp. ( Lanham, Md., and other cities: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Pp. xxii, 401. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-4422-5191-5.) Over a two-decade career, Ty Cobb dominated baseball, setting records for offensive production in nearly every category that mattered. More than a star athlete, Cobb was an American celebrity. Where he went, the press followed, as Cobb developed a reputation for daring, aggressive acts on the diamond and beyond. Historians of baseball have consistently recognized Cobb'srole in creating the modern game. Biographies of Cobb have appeared regularly in [End Page 730] recent decades. Steven Elliott Tripp's Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood, however, demonstrates how a skilled historian can cause us to rethink a figure we believe we know. Tripp's book is one of the best recent studies not only of baseball but of southern and American masculinity as well. Tripp shows us how essential it is to ground Cobb's conception of manhood, and consequently his entire baseball career and public persona, in models that Cobb studied while growing up in Georgia at the end of the nineteenth century. Cobb, explains Tripp, learned that honor was central to manhood and that honor depended on insisting that other men recognize one's standing and independence. Were racism and violence central to the culture that shaped Cobb? Of course they were. One of Tripp's great achievements here is to squarely address that fact, while demonstrating both the complexity of Cobb and the reasons he appealed so broadly to American men, who saw in baseball a game that required "brains, brawn, and bravado," making it "the ideal training ground for modernity" (p. 233). "Baseball," wrote Cobb himself, "is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men" (p. 1). Cobb's conceptions of manhood clashed with those of his more demographically diverse fellow players, many of whom formed their "conception of honor" in the "factories, shops, bars, and fraternal organizations of the industrial North and West" (p. 163). Cobb's sense of honor, too, depended on others, but the others were largely his peers, among whom Cobb could demonstrate that he was "man enough to be a big leaguer" and against whom he might display his "gameness" (pp. 82, 179). His southernness indeed made Cobb conspicuous, but it was more than a matter of accent or racial attitudes. Baseball, Cobb believed, was a serious business in which one worked constantly to exact tribute from fellow players and the crowd. American men of the era saw in Cobb something that spoke to their sense that they were engaged in an arena of struggle. Baseball, like life itself, they believed, was a race in which "every moment is tense with anxiety, lest something already gained be lost," whether that something was a corporate position or the possession of second base (p. 234). Cobb worked to defend the reputation that he built. As a writer of opinion pieces and memoirs, Cobb wished to have others recognize that his will, daring, work, and drive were the keys to his success. While he might not have been sociable, Cobb displayed the "manly fortitude" that fellow players and fans prized (p. 178). Driving himself relentlessly, Cobb proved he could, to quote Christy Mathewson, "stand the gaff" (p. 179). Throughout the book, Tripp shows a sure hand at setting Cobb within the broader context of American history, from the rural South to the urban world of the early twentieth century through the commercial boom of the 1920s. Chapter by chapter, Tripp corrects misconceptions and plain errors of fact that have obscured Cobb. On every page Tripp displays a thorough command of the scholarly literature on baseball and on American history more broadly. Anyone who wishes better to understand American masculinity and the appeal of baseball in the early twentieth century should consider Tripp's measured, persuasive reading of Ty Cobb. [End Page 731] Trent Brown Missouri University of Science and Technology Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

Epidemiology of Pathogenic Fungi from Private Hospital of Jabalpur, India

Fungi are ubiquitous in our environment, only a few people realize how intimately our lives are related to these fungi. Mycotic diseases of men are an emerging public health problem which receives growing alternate from the health authorities. The inter-human, mananimal and manenvironment relationship constitute the prime factors that explain the presence or absence of the infection. Special human activities and changes in human behavior are responsible for different susceptibilities in individual populations. Noscomial infections are transmitted in hospital through three main environmental routes-air, surface contact and water. This study reports the result of environmental surveillance of fungi in specific areas of Private Hospital of Jabalpur (M.P.). The air samples in the hospital yielded Aspergillus, Alternaria, Candida, Fusarium, Rhizopus, Penicillium, Tricophyton, and Microsporum. The dust samples were positive for Aspergillus, Alternaria and Fusarium. The sample of drinking water of the hospital no fungi was isolated. Key-wordsUbiquitous, Susceptibilities, Nosocomial infection, Surveillance -------------------------------------------------IJLSSR----------------------------------------------INTRODUCTION Pathogenic fungi are fungi that cause disease in human or other organism. Fungi are ubiquitous in our environment. Fungal infections of hospital origin are gaining importance in recent years due to their progressive increase into the high rates of mortality and morbility with which they are associated [1-2]. Hospital–acquired infection or nosocomial infections are one of leading cause of death in the world and typically affect patients whose immune systems are compromised. This paper reports the result of environmental surveillance of fungi in specific areas of Private hospital of Jabalpur (M.P.) Air, dust and drinking water samples were collected from hospital. Many of these infections are endogenous in nature, but others can be acquired by exogenous roots, through the hands of healthcare workers,contaminated infusion products and bioAccess this article online Quick Response Code: Website: www.ijlssr.com DOI: 10.21276/ijlssr.2016.2.6.12 materials and abiotic environmental sources [3]. Candida species remain a major cause of nosocomial infection. Candida albicans was the main agent for causing Fungemia and Funguria [4]. [1] Reported that many of fungal infections arise from an endogenous source. Outdoor air markedly influences the prevalence of fungal spore levels in indoor air and thus, is the major source of fungal infections in indoor environments especially in hospitalized individuals [5]. Mycotic diseases of man are an emerging public health problem which receives growing alternation from the health authorities. Aspergillus species are the common cause of hospital acquired fungal infection. Airborne spores probably also infect tissues exposed during surgery. Conidia of Aspergillus may gain entry, susceptible patient by contaminated hospital supplies [6-7]. [8] Isolated Aspergillus fumigates and A. Niger from the soil of various potted indoor plant kept in the room at the patient suffering from Aspergillosis. Aspergillums species were isolated in a multi centre hospital study from water mycoflora from the hospital environment [9]. In the hospital environment, the airborne micro biota is formed mainly by filamentous fungi, especially those belonging to the genera, Aspergillus, Cladosporium, Paecilomyces, Scopu Cariopsis [10]. Yeast has been found at the genera Candida, Rhodofforula, Uraptococeus and Trichosporon [11-13]. To identify the Research Article (Open access) Int. J. Life. Sci. Scienti. Res., VOL 2, ISSUE 6 http://ijlssr.com Copyright © 2015-2016 International Journal of Life-Sciences Scientific Research Page 730 source of fungal infection the environment of the patient, viz. air, water and dust of the hospitalized room were investigated for the presence of pathogen. The pathogen were isolated in culture and identified on the basis of culture, micro and macro morphology. MATERIALS AND METHODS Sampling Site: To explain the possible source of infection of deep mycoses, air, dust and water sample were screened from the environment of hospitalized patient were investigated. The air samples were collected from the General ward(G.W.), Private wards(P.W.), Deluxe room, Minor operation theater (MOT), Operation theater (OT), Intensive care unit (ICU). Dust sample were collected from the floor of passage of hospital and water sample was collected from the drinking water source of the hospital. At each location samples were taken at the time periods between 12:00 pm to 1:00pm which are visiting hours of the hospital. All the samples were taken during year 2015.

Increased Reach of Genetic Cancer Risk Assessment as a Tool for Precision Management of Hereditary Breast Cancer.

Genetic cancer risk assessment (GCRA) is an interdisciplinary clinical practice that incorporates genetics, oncology, and counseling skills to quantify risk and implementmore precise care for individualswith inheritedcancerpredisposition.1GCRA is warranted for individuals with features suggesting hereditary cancer, such as early age at onset, triple-negative breast cancer, and/or a family history of breast or ovarian cancer. The cloning of theBRCA1 gene on chromosome 17 in 1994, and of a second high-risk locus (BRCA2) on chromosome 13 in 1995, ushered in an erawith increasing appreciation of the potential for oncogenetics to influence breast cancer screening, treatment, andprevention.Thesubsequentdecadeshavebeen marked by an ever greater understanding of gene-specific pathology and age-specific risk for BRCA-associated breast cancers, as well as a growing understanding of hormonal and genetic modifiers of risk.1 Commercial testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 became available in theUnitedStates in1996,andprofessional societypolicy statements and practice guidelines affirm the value of BRCA testing for identifyingandmanaginghigh-risk individuals and families.2,3 In this issue, Rosenberg and colleagues4 describe BRCA gene testing and surgical decision-making outcomes amongparticipants in theYoungWomen’sBreastCancerStudy (YWS), amulticentercohortofwomen40yearsoryoungerwho had limited-stage breast cancer (ie, stage 0-II) and received GCRA at academic and community clinics between 2006 and 2014.Participantsweremostlywhite,well educated (85%completed college and/or graduate school), and virtually all had health insurance. One positive finding of the study was a relatively robust reach, in that most of the YWS study participants (87%) received BRCA gene testing within 1 year of their breast cancer diagnosis. While concerns have been expressed about proposed population-based BRCA testing for unaffected young women,5 we are heartened by the increasing participation in standard-of-care GCRA by young women with breast cancer. We concur with the authors4 that, unfortunately, it is unlikely that this level of access to, or participation in, GCRA would be found in the community setting or among the economically underserved or ethnic minorities. It is disconcerting that 48% of thosewho did not get testing indicated that they and/or their physician did not think a BRCA mutation was likely, despite the fact that the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline2 has recommended genetic counseling and BRCA testing for women with breast cancer diagnosed at 40 years or younger since the outset of the YWS study. The study results did not identify addeddistressasa reasonfordecliningBRCA testingat the time of cancer diagnosis, but the authors2 suggest this as a potential factor, referencingprevious studies that examinedand reported on this finding. The authors2 note the need to explain the practical purpose for genetic testing at the time of a new breast cancer diagnosis and address patient concerns. These issues are most consistently addressed as an essential component of pretest counseling when conducted by clinicians with expertise in GCRA. Comprehensive GCRA also addresses the challengesof conveying complex,uncertainoruninformative test results in a way that reduces confusion and uncertainty about risk management decision-making. Only a few participants (15) indicated concerns about genetic discrimination as a reason they declined BRCA testing. While historically a barrier to genetic testing, additional protectionswith theGenetic Information andNondiscriminationActof2008and lackofevidenceofgeneticdiscrimination6 have reduced these concerns in recent years. There is also a broadening social awareness andacceptability of genetic testing for hereditary predisposition. Thiswasmost dramatically evidencedduring the latterportionof theYWSsampling frame, when in May 2013 actress and director Angelina Jolie announced that she carries a BRCA1 mutation and chose to undergo a bilateral risk reductionmastectomy (RRM) and reconstruction. This announcement generated considerable interest in testing, evidenced by a surge in uptake of GCRA services and testing noted in the YWS study and others in the United States and internationally.7,8 It is notable that most of themedia sound bites on Jolie’s announcement included her clear admonition that although bilateralmastectomywas the answer forher, it is not always the answer—aqualification that is consistent with the NCCN guideline classification of RRM as an option for BRCA carriers.2 The YWS study2 reported a high uptake of RRM (86%) among the women diagnosed as having a BRCA mutation. While the precise timing of genetic testing relative to treatment decision-making was not reported in the study, the authors2 suggest that because testing took place within 3 months of diagnosis formost, andwithin 1 year for all participants, it is likely thatBRCA statuswas available at the time of surgical decision-making in context of breast cancer treatment. This finding is consistent with those of previous studies9-11documentingahighrateofRRMamongwomenwith newlydiagnosedbreast cancer identified asBRCA carriers, including an international study12 that noted significant variaRelated article page 730 Opinion

The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College by Eva Díaz

Reviewed by: The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College by Eva Díaz Patrick Lee Lucas The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College. By Eva Díaz. ( Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Pp. x, 215. $40.00, ISBN 978-0-226-06798-8.) Eva Díaz traces the founding and short life of Black Mountain College (1933–1957), which was situated in western North Carolina and was home to a small group of faculty who were deeply influential in the evolution of art and design education in the twentieth century. With well-developed prose and [End Page 730] a good narrative, Díaz excels at providing context and content for an important story of experimentation on this campus and in subsequent locations inspired or directly impacted by the Black Mountain College approach to education. By reminding readers how avant-garde the pedagogy of the Black Mountain faculty was, Díaz ably situates the “complicated and contested concept defined by projects as varied as geometric abstraction, serialized and mass production, dome architecture, chance-based musical composition, and explorations of monochromatic painting” (pp. 3–4). Díaz introduces readers to three significant people—“artist Josef Albers, composer John Cage, and architect-designer R. Buckminster Fuller”—singling them out among the faculty as the great innovators who fueled the Black Mountain experience (p. 1). After an introduction that leads readers through the founding of the institution and the complex pedagogical and philosophical positions of its faculty, Díaz unfolds a chapter each on Albers, Cage, and Fuller, the main bulk of the two-hundred-page work. In the chapter on Albers, Díaz stresses how the artist focused on experience rather than outcomes and believed in “an experience in and of perception that facilitates complex understandings of the visual world” (p. 52). In chapter 2 Díaz notes Cage’s opposition to Albers’s approach and explains the composer’s formulation of what he termed the “chance protocol,” a process designed to accentuate “an exploration of uncertainty, not a careful examination of variables” (pp. 103, 57). Careful to provide context for this evolution in the process, Díaz points to the presence of a more mature generation of students and the decline and replacement of the original faculty as factors contributing to the shift. In chapter 3, Díaz analyzes Fuller’s interpretation of “total thinking” as his model of experimentation, one that “leveraged the creativity of the artist and the technological innovativeness of the scientist to completely rethink acts and objects of design” (pp. 103, 101). Significantly, Fuller’s experimentation resulted in the idea that anyone could be a designer and perhaps signaled the beginning of the end for Black Mountain College. Fuller’s own experimentation, Díaz reminds us, stemmed from the “scientificity in a spirit of American technological optimism and exceptionalism” that placed design at the heart of social and technological processes of the mid-twentieth century (p. 147). In the closing chapter of her work, Díaz speculates about the impact of Black Mountain on subsequent generations of educators, connecting the experiments that took place in western North Carolina with prospective research projects to examine Albers’s, Cage’s, and Fuller’s models for experimentation. Díaz’s interpretation of the written evidence seems on target with the evidence in ample supply in the notes. The extensive bibliography provides significant sources for readers to dig into the subject matter more deeply. Though the book includes a wide range of illustrations in black-and-white and in color, this reviewer found the treatment of the chosen images flattened by a lack of critical analysis. Given the visual nature of the fields the author investigates for the book, this oversight seems slightly troubling: how might each piece of visual evidence tell the reader more about the theme of experimentation so central to the volume? While the images are interesting visually, [End Page 731] it is not clear how their inclusion helps tell the story, the chief shortcoming of this otherwise well-conceived publication. Patrick Lee Lucas University of Kentucky College of Design Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

NEUROSCIENCE. Astrocytes tell neurons when to listen up.

Astrocytes ensure communication between neurons of the same circuit [Also see Report by Martín et al. ]

A Place of Our Own: The National Museum of African American History and Culture

A Place of Our OwnThe National Museum of African American History and Culture Howard Dodson (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Gallery Space. Rendering by Adjaye Associates (2011). [End Page 729] The most significant African American artistic statement that will be made in Washington, DC, over the next decade will not be a painting, a sculpture, a dance, a theatrical production, or a monument. It will be the official opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) scheduled to take place in 2016—before the end of Barack Obama’s second term as President of the United States. The NMAAHC will likely be one of the last, if not the last, museum constructed on the National Mall. This first Smithsonian Institution museum on the National Mall dedicated to documenting and interpreting the centrality of the African American experience in the making of America and Americans promises to substantially change the national conversation about America, its history, and its cultural identity. As much a venture into revealing the depth, breadth, and complexity of African American’s cultural and artistic imprint on America as it is into interrogating the relationship of Black people to the economic, political, social, and cultural development of these yet-to-be United States, the National Museum of African American History and Culture will shed new light on both what America has been and what it still has the potential to become. It has been a long time in the making. Almost a hundred years ago, black Civil War veterans and their supporters started black Americans’ quest to establish such an institution to commemorate African Americans’ role in the making of America. These veterans of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) were simply seeking to have the nation acknowledge, recognize, and honor them for the part they had played in the Union victory. Fifty years earlier, they had not been so honored. They were not even invited to march in the Grand Review Parade for the victorious Union armies which took place in Washington, DC, in May of 1865. Veterans of three white Union armies marched down Pennsylvania Ave. to the applause and cheers of President Andrew Johnson and thousands of grateful citizens. But there was, apparently, no place for the regiments of the USCT in the victory parade. No place, no honor for the more than 180,000 African Americans who had served in the Union army. USCT veterans—and African American citizens—were committed to participating fully in the 50th Anniversary of the Grand Review slated to take place in Washington, DC, in May of 1915. To support this effort, they formed a Committee of Colored Citizens of the Grand Army of the Republic. The official organizing committee for the anniversary parade had made no [End Page 730] provisions for black participation. The Committee of Colored Citizens provided such support, raising money to cover housing, food, and logistical costs for USCT Veterans. Significantly, after the parade, they used leftover funds to form the National Memorial Association to create a more permanent memorial to African Americans’ military contributions. Within a year, this germinal idea had evolved into a proposal to create a memorial building to house a comprehensive National African American Museum. The fully articulated vision of the proposed museum included the following: It is the purpose of the National Memorial Association to erect a beautiful building suitable to depict the Negro’s [sic] contribution to America in the military service, in art, literature, invention, science, industry, etc.—a fitting tribute to the negro’s contributions and achievements, and which would serve as an educational center giving inspiration and pride to the present and future generations that they be inspired to follow the example of those who have aided in the advancement of the race and Nation. (qtd. in Wilkins 8)1 Though no specific site was identified for the construction of this memorial building, the unarticulated expectation was that it would be built on the National Mall in Washington, DC. This was because by 1915, the Mall had become generally recognized as the place that most exemplified the nation’s sense of honor and dignity. As home to the...

Compression of venous ulcers: standardizing standard care.

Venous legulcers (VLUs) are common, affectingupwardof 1% of adults and with increasing incidence and prevalence with advancing age. Venous leg ulcers are associatedwith reduced quality of life and significant health care costs in addition to sustained ambulatory venouspressure (venoushypertension),whichmostoftenresults from thrombosis and/or valve disease, affecting the superficial, perforator, or deep veins.As a result, calfmusclepumpdysfunctionensues, leading to ulcer formation. Standard care withmultilayered compression wraps is aimed at reversing these changes, and applicationofwell-deliveredcompressionachieveshealing inup to 75% of patients. Applying compression, however, is a challenge. Often viewedbypatients andpractitioners as cumbersome,uncomfortable, andoppressive, compression interruptspatients’ lives by altering their bathinghabits and the clothes and shoes they wear. In this issueof JAMADermatology,Zarchi and Jemec1 report that even those with moderate confidence in their ability to apply compression vary substantially in compression application, with less than one-third applying optimal compression, suggesting patients may not be getting the treatment prescribed.2 Given that dermatologists often see patients with VLUs, addressing the gap of providing substandard compression is important. The initial barrier toward change is for practitioners to appreciate the importance of compression in healing VLUs.Without optimal compression, substandard care is provided. Practitioners should understand compression systems and recommend the appropriate system. For example, elastic compression (Coban2 [3M] or Profore [Smith and Nephew])providescompressionwhenpatientsareeitherwalking or resting and differs from inelastic compression (Unna Boot),whichapplies compressiononlywhenpatientsarewalking (the latter is more desirable in patients with mild arterial insufficiency). Next, it is critical, given the variability in compression applied, that well-trained and experienced personnel apply compression. This need typically causes patients to visit a physician’s office, seek treatment at awound center, or usehomehealth services once or twiceweekly, depending on the amount of exudate. Application of compression by patients or untrained caregivers, such as family members, risks inappropriate provision of care; however, recent work suggests firm compression stockings (30-40 mm Hg) may result in similar outcomes for selected patients.3 Education and training of practitioners, staff, and patients about the importance and application of compression are key. Related article page 730 Research Original Investigation Compression Therapy for Venous Leg Ulcers

Oxygen saturation targeting—an illusion

The optimal oxygen saturation for very preterm infants has been extensively discussed, primarily because of the potential for competing outcomes. A lower saturation range target can decrease retinopathy of prematurity, but may increase mortality, and a higher target range can increase the severity or frequency of bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Which target range is optimal for neurodevelopment remains of conjecture. Three trials reported almost 5000 randomized infants in aggregate, and each trial was interpreted by the authors somewhat differently (NEJM 2013;368:294-104; NEJM 2010;362:1959-69; and JAMA 2013;309:2111-20). The neurodevelopmental outcomes should be available soon, which will then allow for a meta-analysis of the trials. However, a consensus of all investigators is that it is very difficult to keep the oxygen saturation in the desired target range. That difficulty is highlighted in this issue of The Journal in a report by Lim et al, who evaluated oxygen saturation targeting at 88% to 92% and with alarms set at 85% to 94% when oxygen was used for infants receiving continuous positive airway pressure. The authors found that these infants spent 31% of the time in the target range despite a major nursing effort. The infants were outside of the wider alarm limits almost 50% of the time. The neonatal community will need to use the information from the 3 large oxygen targeting trials and from reports such as this one by Lim et al to develop practical goals for oxygen targeting. Article page 730▶ Oxygen Saturation Targeting in Preterm Infants Receiving Continuous Positive Airway PressureThe Journal of PediatricsVol. 164Issue 4PreviewThe precision of oxygen saturation (SpO2) targeting in preterm infants on continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is incompletely characterized. We therefore evaluated SpO2 targeting in infants solely receiving CPAP, aiming to describe their SpO2 profile, to document the frequency of prolonged hyperoxia and hypoxia episodes and of fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2) adjustments, and to explore the relationships with neonatal intensive care unit operational factors. Full-Text PDF