Successful Strategies for Teaching Undergraduate Research

The authors of this book, Marta Deyrup and Beth Bloom, are college librarians. Who else could be an expert at dealing with research? These women see hordes of college kids wandering into a library, trying to find information on “gun control,” and having no idea where to go. Do they go for the internet? For the stacks perhaps, trying to find an old book? Will the newspaper records be of any use?

    In chapter 2, the authors talk about “good research,” which seems to me like perfectly normal history work. The talk about primary and secondary sources, the importance of both, while stressing the differences. It is important, even for a high school student, to understand the difference; if the source is secondary, then the authenticity could be challenged. We are shown four points to ponder when considering the source, consisting of the origin, the reason it was created, the time period, and the significance. One example I can recall is the classic movie 55 Days at Peking, starring Charleton Heston. It has the typical “good old American boys won the war all by themselves” attitude, and shows all the foreign troops to be incompetent. However, a recent article in a military history magazine shows the opposite; most of the troops at Peking were Japanese, and they did a remarkable job at defending the embassy compound. 55 Days at Peking is a secondary source, made to stoke American ideals. The magazine article, on the other hand, while also a secondary source, was written to get the story straight.

    The authors cover research with media, archives, texts, and any other source that the average college student will need. In my day we started learning research in first grade, by going to the Encyclopedia. By fourth grade, we were at the public library, looking for books on the human. As the years went by, I learned to research not only the books, but also old periodicals. We had to look into the New York Times, old National Geographics, Time Magazine, and whatever publications we could get our hands on.

    We can blame the internet for students’ weaknesses today but blame alone will not cure the problem. Research may have to be taught to the student, and that is where this book comes in.

Strategic Diversity Leadership by Damon A. Williams

There’s a funny line in this book, in the chapter titled Towards a Twenty First Century Definition of Diversity. The author suggests that with ethnic and economic diversity, we must also deal with a diversity of ideas. You’re going to have many opinions on how to define the concept of diversity. Will it be ethnic? Religious? Social? Racial perhaps? A table is included where you have diversity on social levels and institutional levels, each one unique to the group. The difference is simple; identity drives the formation of groups, while the institution sets goals. Not surprising, when you look at how cliques form in an elementary school. A group of kids who live within a few blocks of each other and go to the same place of worship will likely exclude anyone who doesn’t. Athletic kids who are on the school teams will probably stick together as well. The average high school clique won’t set a goal of what it wants to accomplish.

Goal-oriented approaches appear to be a major part of Mr. Williams’ thinking. He uses the analogy of the wolf versus the cheetah to show why diversity efforts often fails. Cheetahs are small and light, and they rely on surprise, acting alone. Wolves, on the other hand, are pack animals, and they will spend days stalking their prey or tiring it out. Diversity plans do not work, according to the author, if they rely on one-time actions. He uses the 2005 protests at Harvard as an example of how college administrators must learn from sudden conflicts, rather than simply addressing them when they happen.

Gender diversity has been in the news lately, regarding the lack of women in college science faculties. Some blame it on sexism, others blame it on hostility from a mostly male industry, others blame the lack of encouragement women may face in pursuing careers in science. Diversity is discussed in this book not as a problem, but as an end result. The question is not the need for diversity, but how the school intends to encourage it in the long run.

Andrew Savulich: The City

    A bike messenger bleeds form the mouth after being punched by a cab driver. In another photo, a building doorman tackles a pickpocket on the hood of a cab. A subway passenger sits on the floor of the car, tended to by transit police after being stabbed. The other riders pay no attention. Andrew Savulich photographed the city for the Daily News since the 1980’s, mostly as a freelancer. Most of this photos from the time never got printed. The photos in this book display the sleazy, dangerous, and dirty side of New York life, most of which have never been seen before.

    One of the most controversial photos in this book from Steidl is of a woman, sitting in a crushed car, smiling. She looks like she’s nuts, given the destruction all around her. Is she drunk? On drugs? Knocked silly from the impact? Whatever the reason for her out of place levity, it’s the perfect example of the insanity of the city at the time. When I see these photos from the city’s bad old days, I can remember the combination of danger and excitement. It wasn’t a place for the dainty.

    Savulich isn’t much of a self-promoter, which is why I’d never heard of him until I saw this book. He was a Rutgers-trained architect, worked in Boston, then came to NYC to pursue a career in photography. He worked in construction while going to grad school for art, then began getting freelance assignments from tabloid papers. Nowadays the tabloids are on their way out thanks to the internet and the inability to shock people. As for Savulich’s photos, a whole lot of them had to be kept off the press because they were considered too edgy. But thanks to Steidl, we can see them in all their (dirty) glory.

    Seeing these photos takes me back 30 years, to a time when New York City was dangerous, dark, and filthy. However, under all the grime, people still went to work, ate out, came home, got their kids to school, and didn’t die. People lived here, some enjoyed the city, some hated it. The 80’s and early 90’s in New York are remembered with nostalgia, even though the city wasn’t as much fun as it is now. Then again, even in the most dangerous times, it was much more exciting than the Long Island suburbs. Perhaps that’s why I loved coming here so much? Perhaps that’s why I was dying to go to school in the city? Some people just love crowds, honking horns, shouting drivers, and the short walk to the grocery store. Those are the people you’re going to see in this book.

HERE by Richard McGuire

Richard McGuire’s book, aptly titled HERE, is classed as a comic, but it isn’t. No, it’s far more than a comic, this is a piece of artwork we’re talking about. It’s the kind of artwork that should be displayed in a museum, because it’s a great work of modern art. The first few pages are small panels of a family in a living room, floating on the backdrop of the ancient forest that was once their neighborhood. As the book progresses, the living room remembers every family that lived there, from the beginning of our nation to 2040.

The entire book takes place in the living room. Every 25 years a new family moves in, and the drawings show the good times, bad times, disappointments, hopes, and shattered dreams. In a way it reminds me of the Loretta Lynn song “If This Old House Could Talk.” Perhaps it’s a testament to the way Americans change addresses so often? Every time a new family moves into a home, they redecorate according to their needs and liking, and it will clearly reflect their personalities. As a construction worker I could always tell what kind of people lived in the home by the period décor, the elephants painted on the wall (a child’s bedroom, obviously) and the lines marked on the wall, month by month, every time the child grows another inch. In one apartment the last mark was at 2 feet, one year before they moved out. I later learned that the child had died.

I call Richard McGuire’s work modern art because I’m sensing a concept here. The same way Paul Delvaux’s work was all about Jules Verne, and DiChrico’s work was about a stagnant Italy, McGuire’s work follows a conceptual dynamic. The artwork always takes pace around a central theme, and every ten pictures should be grouped together because they follow non-linear time. While the family is showing home movies on a projector, another family is watching them on a flat screen TV 40 years later.

I’ve known McGuire’s work for years, and some of his work (included in this book) was included in the Graphic Fiction anthology. His work appeared 30 years ago in RAW magazine, and I expect to see more of his work in the New Yorker, and other magazines hopefully. Maybe he’ll be asked to direct the third installment of If These Walls Could Talk?

Unstoppable Learning by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey remind the readers that learning has to be goal oriented. Too often, the teacher’s curriculum doesn’t have a clear destination in mind, and that will obviously demoralize the students. When you teach children (or adults) there has to be a place where you want them to end up. What are the conclusions going to be? What will they come away with? Unstoppable Learning, another great book from Solution Tree Press, is a multi-chapter guide to teaching students with their abilities (or lack of them) in mind at all times.

Let’s start with the chapters called “managing Learning.” This one focuses on the teacher-student dynamic, and I stress the importance, because classroom management is the kiss of life or death. The chapter opens up with the famous “don’t smile until December” advice, which the authors make clear is not the best thing. They stress getting to know the students, finding out what’s going on in their lives, making time to speak to them one-on-one. That builds a sense of trust, and it prepares the students for the workplace.

Behavior in the classroom is discussed in the chapter as well. The authors break down the diagnosis into four categories; harmful, distracting, contagious, and testing the system. Dealing with the behavior does not need to be immediate, because the teacher can’t be expected to figure out the cure immediately. Afterward is where the teacher deals with it using the four categories. If the behavior is distracting, then who is distracted, the teacher or the students? Is the misbehaving student looking for attention? The authors give strict (and humorous) criteria for dealing with the behavior. One thing that is stressed throughout is that the teacher should not call out the student in front of others. It can make them defensive.

The book ends with sets of questions for the teachers and students. They include whether or not the students are ready to learn, whether the teacher is ready to teach, and if the students are using academic language. The best thing about this book, from beginning to end, is that it puts the accountability on the educator as a facilitator and manager, more than just a “boss.” Discipline is defined here as providing a safe classroom, not “getting the kids to follow instructions.” It’s certainly not classed as “making little children behave.”

After all, is the teacher’s job to punish, or to teach?

The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf

 Little boys are defecating in the street, throwing rocks at donkeys, and pitchforking stray dogs. Women sit by passively as their sons beat up their cousins. Psychotic children follow a family through the streets with sticks. Then another little boy sees men hanged in the street, their bodies swinging in the rain while shoppers nonchalantly walk by. As for the boy’s refined French mother, she puts up with it. It’s no wonder that the kids in Syria are all evil.

Riad Sattouf, a French-Syrian cartoonist, has drawn more than a graphic autobiography. It’s a crazy adventure through a bizarre land, leaving the travelers awed and bewildered. Throughout the story, his family treks through a land where education is neglected, animals are abused, and the people are accustomed to being abused by dictators. His French-educated parents are clearly a cut above the rest, in terms of the (rather saintly) way they treat others, but they’re powerless to make anything good happen. They each, according to their upbringing, have reasons for not criticizing it. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.

Before I go further, let me say that Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future is the opposite of a voyage of discovery. His life in Libya and Syria is all about the “new world” exploring the “old world,” and finding nothing. For starters, his Arab father and French mother, both educated at the Sorbonne, are opposites in their ideals. His father, Syrian-born, is a Pan-Arabist with a liking for the Ba’ath philosophy. He thinks that by aligning the nation with the Soviets and casting aside religion, the nation can become powerful. Riad’s French mother goes along, and she’s disgusted, but she doesn’t really protest much. I get the feeling that she’s been taught not to judge or criticize foreign ways. Racist? Maybe it is.

As for Riad, he’s a cute blonde kid who, like a typical French child, talks politely and behaves himself. That makes him a sitting duck for the nasty kids that he encounters in Syria. He clearly illustrates the contrast between two nations; French children are allowed to actually be children, while the Syrian kids are taught to be violent. Even the toys are violent; they have action figures of Israeli soldiers hiding knives behind their backs.

After reading The Arab of the Future, I realized why democracy, human rights, gender equality, and universal suffrage can never work in the Middle East. The ideals of democracy and human rights are based on Judeo-Christian ethics, where disputes are settled in court, and the husband can’t own the wife. In a place like Syria or Libya, that would clash with Sharia, or even the habits that predate Islam. Let’s face it, the Middle East is hopeless. If a country is collectively hostile to animals, and forces its anger on the children, why would they care about anyone’s rights?

Photograhers' Sketchbooks, Edited by Stephen McLaren and Bryan Formhals

The difference between the average photographer and fine art painter is that less space is needed to take photos. On the other hand, the photographer doesn’t “create” the way the painter and sculptor do, as he or she has to gain the trust of the subject before pointing the camera. Photographers’ Sketchbooks, another great book from Thames & Hudson, displays the works, and more importantly, the philosophies, or the photographer as an artist. The artist’s words are treated as the studio.

Let’s start with Kiana Hayeri of Iran. She documents women in her country, focusing on how the veil dominates (or benefits) their lives. Her series titled “Your Veil is a Battleground” follows the lives of young women at home, in the car, at parties, all with the subjects’ consent. One of her four-photo pieces shows a woman with and without her head covering, with different makeup and hairstyle, while another set (from the same series) shows the woman in recreation, like parties, movies, dates, museums. It’s interesting to see how Iran’s young people are accustomed to wearing black, perhaps as a result of colors attracting the religious police’s attention?

John Chervinsky, on the other hand, works around props and still life setups, particularly dull black backdrops. He admits he has a fascination with the old black chalkboards of Harvard’s lecture halls, and photographs black-painted apples and pears with white chalk patterns. While he doesn’t require the massive mess-and-clean setup of the average painter, his exploding fluorescent tubes required a bit more setup time!

Most of the photographers in this book, especially the ones who document people, discuss the issue of trust. Most photojournalists are more interested in the “other half” who are rarely seen, rather than the wealthy classes, but this requires greater effort. While the upper classes will probably be concerned with flattering imagery, the impoverished areas are wary of any outsider. However, as with Susan Meiselas, the subjects aren’t finicky about looking attractive. She gained the trust of locals in a poor neighborhood of Lisbon, where the people and buildings resemble the West Indies, and took photos of them going about their lives. They resemble Black Americans, only the clothing is not as colorful and the people are much slimmer. It reminded me of Ash Thayer’s book Kill City, where she photographs NYC squatters, or the book A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, about young hobos. The subjects clearly weren’t concerned about being “dolled up.”

Girls, Tets, and Cultures

Dawn Currie ponders the second-wave feminists’ ambivalence to “femininity.” On one hand, teen magazines only feature photos of attractive young girls, never “real” girls who have acne, bad hair, crooked teeth, and the slightly overweight figures typical of girls who are going through puberty. Kerry Mallon uses the book “Secrets” as an example of girls’ survival, dealing with an abusive stepfather. 

Other contributors to this text discuss 19^th century books for girls, designed to teach them manners and etiquette. The discussion here is not about the effectiveness of the books, but for whose benefit they were. Did girls read them to prepare themselves to please their husbands? Was it to prepare them for a male-dominated economy?

Whatever the girls are reading will reflect the norms and more of the time when they were written. There were times when there weren’t many careers for women, other than teacher, nurse, and secretary. The average “girl” book of the 1970’s probably didn’t encourage them to have serious careers. Others, like Go Ask Alice, considered independent girls to be “bad” and treated the protagonist’s drug use as bad behavior, not a health problem. It was anti-divorce as well.

Track Two Diplomacy to an Israeli-Palestinian Solution

The author cites the Camp David accords as a foundation for peace in the Middle East, but later effects would create problems. The Oslo accords, between Rabin and Arafat, centered heavily around left wing ideals of Rabin’s labor government, to the ire of Conservatives in Israel. When Likud won in 1996, Netanyahu didn’t like the deal, and deliberately stalled the process. But even without Netanyahu stalling the process, it was unravelling on its own.

The author recounts his personal dealings with Netanyahu, Abbas, and the European advisors, none of whom really had any understanding of Israeli attitudes. Perhaps the Oslo accords didn’t jive with the existing attitudes of the Israelis? While this book is one big firsthand account, the author leaves his opinion to himself, never really making his views clear. I have to wonder, therefore, if there was ever any real hope for peace in the Middle East. Could democracy work in Palestine? Can Judeo-Christian ideals work in a Muslim country? What did Arafat expect to gain by governing a state that had no farmland to produce food, and had no authority to negotiate deals with foreign countries? Even if other nations recognized Palestine, the Israelis controlled the airspace, and could refuse to allow planes to land in Palestine’s airports.

Perhaps the two-state solution was doomed from the start?

Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine

Summer Blonde collects four of Tomine’s comics, all centered around the theme of 20-something people with dysfunctional relationships. The Summer Blonde story is kind of a love triangle between a hot blonde, her lame boyfriend, a self-obsessed cad, and an obsessive stalker who probably has Asperger’s Syndrome (not commonly diagnosed at the time.) The blonde girl cheats on her boyfriend with a guy who thinks he’s an aspiring rock musician, though his only entry to fame is a monthly appearance at open mic night. Regardless, women are drawn to him like bees to honey (after all, who doesn’t want to sleep with a rock musician?) and the next character, a depressed uncool loner, listens through the wall with murderous envy.

What I love about Tomine’s characters is that it’s hard to feel sympathy for them thanks to their comical flaws. The “blonde” of the story seems to be cheating on her boyfriend because she feels like her looks entitle her to it. There’s another story, Hawaiian Getaway, where a lonely overweight Chinese American woman acts like a high schooler. Her life is stuck on pause, she and her mother hate each other, and she spends her time acting like a clingy child. Guys avoid her because she is, for lack of a better description, not much fun to have around.

The stories in this book were all written and drawn in the late 90’s, a time when computers were big and bulky, and email, though widely used, hadn’t become dominant. People went to Tower Records to buy CD’s, recordings were made on tapes, books were made of paper, and everyone talked on the telephone. Texting on your phone was rare at the time, and without cell phones, most of us made appointments over the phone and showed up on time. I suspect we were better at communicating in those days. The story Bomb Scare, about a bullied high schooler, involves nasty characters, but there’s no cyber bullying. That would come later.

750 Years of Paris by Vincent Mahe

 In a harrowing image, the Protestants of Paris are stabbed, run down and lanced by knights, thrown out of windows, and hanged from the roof. In a later scene, a procession marches past banners and flags. Then the building is torn down, a bigger one built in its place, massive holes mar the façade, larger windows are put in, people drink tea on the balcony and more. 750 years of history come and go in this book, told through the story of one particular building.

My first reaction to this book was the illustration. It uses very simple imagery, in the form of faceless people and blocks of color. In some ways it reminded me of the 1950’s children’s books here in the USA. As for the story, there isn’t any text, but the chronology is shown using the building as an example. In each era, the view changes to reflect the times. 1950’s Paris has movie posters, cafes, and trucks passing by. The 1968 unrest has burned wood and barricades. Then the building gets a facelift, and a glass solarium added to the roof. A procession of demonstrators march past, in support of Charlie Hebdo.

Though I don’t want to take attention away from Vincent Mahe’s work, it does remind me even more of Will Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue series.  In that set of comics, Eisner gave us 120 years of a South Bronx neighborhood, shown through the changes to a building. New tenants came and went, new owners bought and sold it, good and bad things happened in there. In a lot of ways, Paris is like New York; it was built on history, saw major changes to the nation, was a hotbed of radical ideas, had an immigrant population, changed dramatically every time there was a war, and became a center of food, art, literature, music, and philosophy.

My research shows me that the author is a Paris-based illustrator, and his artwork looks a lot like Herge’s Tintin. Maybe Parisians like this style, with stark blocks of color? As for the publisher, the book came from Nowbrow press, which gave us an equally great book about Robert Moses.

Kill City: Lower East Side Squatters 1992-2000

Ash Thayer’s Kill City is almost a sequel to Ken Schles’ Invisible City. While Schles’ 1988 photo essay portrayed an empty neighborhood, Thayer’s photos portray the flowers that bloomed where a tree had died. She lived in and photographed the See Squat on Avenue C and 9^th Street, an area known as Alphabet City, one of several buildings in the area inhabited by squatters. The residents fought to stay in the buildings, going all the way to court to have their squatters’ rights made permanent. Some succeeded, others were evicted.

A little background on the author; Thayer came from Memphis Tennessee, didn’t get along with her southern peers, went to SVA, had no money for rent, and found the “See Squat” via word-of-mouth. The book has an intro by Reverend Fran Morales, where he tells us how the locals, themselves poor and marginalized, didn’t want the squatters there. Most of the squatters were young and white, while the “locals” were mostly Hispanic. Both groups, however, were really in the same dire circumstances, and if it weren’t a squat full of young whites, it would’ve been a squat full of junkies. Take your pick.

One of my favorite things about this book is that it documents the clothing styles of the time. There’s no city glamour here, green, brown, and navy blue predominate, lots of workmen’s clothes, no high heels or designer duds. The author points out that androgynous looks were popular among young people at the time, with Doc Martens being the norm for both genders. Perhaps it’s because the boots last a long time? Or maybe these kids came from rural towns where everyone worked in farms or industry? I also surmise that the 1990’s Alphabet City, not yet the “hipster” enclave it is now, wouldn’t have been a place to see socially competitive people in colorful clothing. You wouldn’t have seen NYU students walking down Avenue C in Tommy Hilfiger in 1993.

The characters are very original, and colorful, in the figurative sense. There’s a photo of a girl with dyed blonde hair and bushy armpits, and another who was pregnant at the time and raised the child in the squat. One of the kids I recognized, a 13 year old boy named Jean Paul Toulon from Madison Wisconsin, whose photo was in the book Neo-Punk and Tribal Body Art. Thayer says that he’s dead now.

As the years progress, the squatters get “cleaner” as they settle in, fixed up the buildings, found ingenious ways to get water and electricity, put in new stairs, and got evicted. Fashion styles go from green arm pants and black tee shirts to rock tee shirts. Perhaps the US Army was dumping surplus uniforms after the 1990’s cutbacks, which might account for the prevalence of green pants everywhere. I didn’t see any silkscreened tee shirts in the book, perhaps it wasn’t as prevalent at the time? There aren’t a lot of murals, and I’m going to guess that these squatters weren’t all artist, though the author was. Tattoos were few and sparing, with only one color ink. Tattoos weren’t yet all the rage like they would be by 1998, and they would probably have been too expensive for these people anyway. Some are clearly on drugs, like the ones with tattoos on their faces.

Kill City isn’t about art or hippies, but the primitive origins of bare-bones capitalism. The squatters aren’t using the building as a drug den; their time is spent fixing the buildings and looking for food. The cops called them spoiled rich kids, Giuliani thought they were frivolous, local minorities called them interlopers, but they were wrong. By fixing the buildings, they contributed to the city, and they didn’t steal from people or stores. New York City lost an opportunity when it ended the Homesteader program in the 1980’s, which is why the abandoned building was empty when the squatters moved in. I suspect that the city was holding onto the buildings, predicting (correctly) that the value would rise, allowing old debts to be paid off.

I’m surprised that this book is not widely circulated in New York City nowadays, it’s a great piece of history for the city, especially when you want to see how the city has changed. The buildings were abandoned, along with other inner-city neighborhoods, thanks to Levittown and white flight. In the 1970’s, fuel costs skyrocketed, and the landlords couldn’t raise rents to cover the heating costs. The landlords abandoned the buildings as a tax write-off, and they fell apart. Heating these uninsulated structures would’ve cost a fortune.

I am grateful that Thayer took the time to document the neighborhood, and her photos are top quality. In contrast to the technology obsession of today, there was more handwork going on in the 1990’s. Everything in the photo essay is done by hand. While some might say that the squatters were hippies, I see it as business. Doesn’t capitalism begin when someone tries to make something out of what they have? 

Rural Communities

Rural Communities

by Cornelia Butler, Jan Flora, and Stephen Gasteyer

Here’s an example of business butting heads with government; a rancher gets fed up with Colorado elk damaging his fences, but the state wildlife authorities always say the same thing; no shooting! He organizes a conference with the authorities, local hunters, ranchers, farmers, and whether they’re invited or not, the “tree huggers.” Both sides dislike each other; the ranchers think of environmentalists as a nuisance, and the environmentalists regard the ranchers as resource-raiders. They do have something in common, in that they both want the elk to live. Without the elk, there won’t be any hunting. But at the same time, without the rancher’s cows, there won’t be any burgers, and the meat industry will lose jobs.

The conflict between the rancher and the wildlife authorities is one of many examples that the author gives in his book. Rural Communities discusses how far flung and remote communities can collectively effect change, but it requires a great deal of grass-roots effort. Unenlightened about progressive ways, the locals, whether rich or poor, can have a tough time working together to achieve goals. If a town depends on a coal mine for jobs, and the people want something done about pollution, there will be conflict.

In the chapter Culture Capital and the Family, we see how the rural working class miners, loggers, and farmers clash with the educated residents. The working classes may view the more educated ones as an adversary, but at the same time, the farmers will suffer if mine tailings pollute the water. If the forest is logged down to stumps, there won’t be any deer hunting. If the water is silted from strip mining, you can forget about fishing.

Another issue in this book with regard to economics is the conflict between industry and education. Blue collar wages are often higher than those for teachers and office workers, so why go to school? If you can make $45,000 a year in a coal mine and much less as a teacher, then why would a kid want to go to school? The author discusses how some towns invest in technical education, which benefits the industry, but labor skills can just as easily be learned on the job.

There are links here to the world economy to world economy, such as tariffs on imported produce and coal. But even tariffs can’t save a company town, because the demand for cheap furniture outpaces the need for quality. A furniture factory in the USA, with regulations on waste disposal and work hours, can’t compete with a factory in China. For all we know, a Chinese factory could be using slave labor.

There weren’t a lot of surprises here, because I’ve seen country towns with municipal conflicts between all classes. Anyone who saw the 20/20 episode titled Hidden America: Children of the Mountains can see the problems with drugs, health, pollution, and crime that rural towns can have. But I thoroughly enjoyed the case studies that the author uses. He makes clear that when a town can’t reach a consensus, everything stalls and there’s no improvement.

Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky

Let me begin by saying that I’m no fan of Leon Trotsky, and I think a whole lot of his ideas would never have worked. I’m also no fan of Communism and I believe that it can’t work. However, this book is wonderful, because it shows how Trotsky and Stalin, both ruthless in their drive for power, had opposite ideas on the goal of the Soviet state. Published in England in the 1950’s by a Soviet exile, and now reissued by Verso Books, this biography of the Communist leader gives great insight into the origins of all the horrible things that happened in the Soviet Union.

Trotsky was not anti-capitalist in a way that would destroy the economy. On the contrary, he knew that business was necessary for the nation’s industry to survive. Lenin, who like most Communist leaders had never held down a job, bulldozed everything in his way. Stalin, who considered Trotsky a nuisance, set up a phony economy that was built on slavery and lies.

This biography was originally in three volumes, which makes it a long book to read. However, even though it was written by a dissident, it isn’t overly biased. We get a good, clear view of Trotsky’s philosophies and his personal life. It shows you how the Soviet Union could’ve become a success, but was ruined when Stalin made himself into an emperor and ruined it.

The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory by Stacey Wakefield

Stacey Wakefield has crafted a novel of historical fiction, set in a Brooklyn Squat in the mid 1990’s. Our protagonist, Sid, is basically a 20-something rover hanging out with the punk-anarchist crowd, looking for a squat to live in. The problem is, the Manhattan squats are all full by this point, and since this is the era when the price of East Village real estate went up, there aren’t any more abandoned buildings to squat in. So she goes for the next available spot, in this case, Williamsburg.

If you expect a novel about booze, drugs, and partying, you won’t find it here. This novel is in the realm of Ash Thayer’s Kill City, and much of it is spent renovating, hauling debris, getting water, etc. Though most third-wave feminists probably won’t agree, this novel does more for women’s lib then a whole lot of activists. Think of it as a book about a woman doing everything on her own; no money from home, and no getting by on her looks. She’s not in the kind of life where looking pretty is an asset, and her part-time job doesn’t require a cute girl.

I consider this book a cross between Little House on the Prairie and Home Girl. As with the former, Sid is a homesteader, trying to make a home out on a frontier. As with Home Girl, Sid is a woman in a harsh part of town. But unlike Judith Maitloff’s book, Sid doesn’t have to contend with as much crime as she would in Hamilton Heights. For those of you that read Scenes From a Life, you’ll see that Williamsburg, an industrial area, had less crime because fewer people lived there. Soho was like that in its early days too. I guess it’s easier to live in an industrial area than a poor one.

Stacey Wakefield’s previous effort was Not For Rent, consisting of interviews with squatters in several cities, including London, England. Unfortunately, the days of the city squatters in New York are over. There are no more abandoned spaces, thanks to rising values. If you want to squat, you might as well try Philadelphia, Camden, and Detroit, all of which are full of abandoned blocks. But you’d have to contend with dangerous neighbors in those cities.

Antidote for a Stalker by Mike Proctor

Mike Proctor is a retired police detective who specialized in stalking and harassment cases. It was a difficult specialty for a long time, because as he stresses in the first chapter, the laws were very unclear. For all those of you who saw Cape Fear (the original and remake) you will know how a stalker can drive the victims crazy. Proctor doesn’t sensationalize anything, however. He gives lots of case studies and examples of how the stalker can be a stranger or someone close to the victim. But according to him, all stalkers obsess about their targets and they’re all capable of inflicting injury. Worse, the stalkers rarely know when to quit and they are almost impossible to scare off.

Proctor also discusses the type of victims that the stalkers target. If the stalker is an estranged husband, it’s a case of battered woman syndrome (like it was with OJ Simpson.) He’s not entirely sympathetic to all victims, as in the chapter on paparazzi, who use GPS to track their celebrity targets. “They are their own worst enemy,” he writes, since they use Twitter to tell everyone where they’ll be and when.

I’m surprised that Proctor had to self-publish this book through Createspace, because this is a great comprehensive study on stalking. He’s right in that the law is part of the problem when it comes to prosecution; the code is so unclear that the police aren’t sure what to do. Is the stalker just being funny? Are the obscene photos just a prank? Does a full year of annoying prank calls, each one a misdemeanor, amount to a felony? If the stalker places ads in your name listing your home for sale, your car for sale, or takes out a subscription to violent porno in your name, what crime does that constitute?

I applaud Detective Proctor for writing this book. In the end, the only way to keep yourself safe is to safeguard your privacy. Don’t put your address on your iPhone GPS, just use a nearby park to direct you home. Don’t put your personal schedule on your Facebook page, because that will
help your stalker follow you. If you’re a celebrity, safeguard your privacy (like Bob Dylan and Meg White), and don’t parade your kids in front of the media (at least not as much as Angelina Jolie does.)

This book may one day become a staple for detectives worldwide. I await Proctor’s next book, which I hope will focus more on social media bullying.

Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccine, and the Forgotten History

The world has always had a love-hate relationship with medicine. On one hand, some people will try any procedure to cure illnesses, but on the other, many are afraid of the doctors. I imagine that when Smallpox inoculation came about, a sizable number of men would’ve said “I’m not dumb enough to go looking to get Cowpox!” Physicians have always been respected in the USA, but the Tuskegee Experiment didn’t endear them to African Americans in the South. A recent book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks shows how the problem was even worse than it looked.

Humphries and Bystrianyk, a physician and a medical researcher, not only tell the story of the vaccine controversy, but also show that lack of ethics practiced by the doctors. Take the chapter on Smallpox vaccine; the doctors did all of their experiments on children, which today would be totally unacceptable. In some ways, the book makes vaccine look like a reckless-quack-cure-all to deal with the poor. In the chapter The Rebel Experiment, we see how the authorities in Leicester used hygiene as opposed to vaccine. The outbreaks of Smallpox were occurring in the slums, which were crowded, badly-ventilated and filthy. The best way to fight the disease was to move the infected to isolation wards, clean the apartments, and air them out.

The book continues to discuss the problems of “quick fixes” for health problems; DDT, questionable Polio treatments (and diagnosis), along with lack of proper diets. During the Polio epidemic, which often occurred in summer, DDT may have been responsible for damaging immune systems. There’s even a chapter on old remedies, many of which do in fact work. I remember how my grandfather used to make his kids (and grandkids) take cod liver oil every day in the 1950’s. It tasted horrible (even in pill form) but it worked. Cod liver oil contains essential vitamins, and is a known immune-booster.

I get the feeling, after reading this book, that Americans use medicine as a quick fix so they can avoid having to work at it. We give our kids vitamins to compensate because we can’t get them to eat greens. Then we give behaviorally-challenged kids Ritalin to keep them quiet, rather than use sports and outdoor recess. Just like in the 1800’s, when London’s authorities would rather use Cowpox-based vaccine rather than provide clean water, we tend to look for easy cures.

Invisible City: Photographs by Ken Schles

Originally published in 1988 by Twelvetrees Press, and now reissued by Steidl, these photographs capture the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the end of her life. When I say “end,” I mean that the buildings are vacant, the trees are bare ad stunted, the streets are empty, and the people look empty too. Schles captures them lying around in filthy apartments, hollow eyed, and depressed. One of them shows a woman on the toilet, crammed into a tiny bathroom, her dress hiked up to reveal her flabby legs. I remember the city in the Kotch-Dinkins-Giuliani days; most New Yorkers were averse to being photographed, and the subject here must’ve been pretty hopeless to let herself be compromised like this. Regardless, I was not turned on.

In another photo, the neighborhood comes out to celebrate the fireworks, everyone’s out dancing in the street. Other than that, there’s no sign of happiness in this book. Everyone’s just waiting for the place to die quickly so they can move on. Seen from a window on a hot summer day, weed-grown lots and empty tenements. I know it’s the summer because the tree have leaves and the sky is cloudless. But even the trees look sick. There are three cars on the street, their windows intact. Is it because nobody’s there to break them? Do the owners move the cars at night? One photo shows a bunch of tulips on a windowsill overlooking an alley. They say that when a tree des, a thousand flowers bloom.

Today, the Lower East Side has good things. Community gardens are well-maintained, streets are clean, kids can walk safely in the streets, and there are healthy things to do. Young people have moved in, and they proudly decorate their apartments. The neighborhood was once a dead tree, and it finally fell down. Flower bloomed in its wake.

The grainy pics capture every horrible sad detail of the old Lower East Side. Some might call it poor quality, but keep in mind that not all artists are well-financed with the best equipment. The photographer may have been too poor to afford a flashbulb, or maybe he bought some past-date film. I remember when I started taking pictured in that era; I used grainy 400dx black and white film. You couldn’t blow it up, but it was perfect for low light. Or a dark, unlit tenement.

New York's New Edge

My first encounter with Chelsea and the New York City Highline was back in 1996. The neighborhood was already one big gallery space, and the old factories and warehouses had all become artist studios. As for the Highline railway, it had not been used in nearly 20 years. Still, I was fascinated by this old relic of the past, an elevated railway that ran through buildings and stopped very abruptly in the middle of the street. Today it’s an expensive area, but what about the 80’s, when it wasn’t as desirable?

David Halle and Elisabeth Tiso collect the stories of people who lived there through the years. In the first chapter, Silas Seandel describes his move to Chelsea in 1978. He needed a concrete space, SoHo was already taken, so he found a spot west of 9^th. The area had lots of S&M bars (well-known from the movie Cruising with Al Pacino) and since nobody lived there, muggers didn’t bother with it. The city didn’t want to lose industry by allowing Chelsea to become residential, but they didn’t realize that industry in the city was practically dead. Kind of reminds me of an earlier book, In Love With Art (about Francois Mouly and Art Spiegelman) where the artists acquire a cheap printing machine, thanks to all the local print shops shutting down.

SoHo was residentially zoned b 1995 and had long-term leases, so all the galleries were priced out by the Giuliani era. The Dia Art Center, started by the DeMenil family, is portrayed by the author as being an anchor for the neighborhood. My problem with this book is that the Westbeth building is barely discussed. The apartments-located in the old Bell Telephone factory-were founded as residences for artists. Don’t the longtime residents of the Westbeth have stories to tell? They loved down on Bethune Street when it was barely safe to go at night. The authors also ignore the transportation issue, which would have been a major factor in the area. SoHo had connections to all subway lines on the east side, but Chelsea had only the west side lines, and 11^th avenue is almost half a mile from the nearest subway stop.

The great thing about this book is that it give an insight into the way the artists were the pioneers of the city in the earlier days. They lived and worked in an area that was not glamorous, not fun, not vibrant, and didn’t have all the great restaurants and fun bars. They had to be tough enough to handle seed streets, which were probably pitch black at night from unrepaired streetlights. My hat will always be of to these people for toughing it out.

Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth Century American Writers

I’m not a fan of Saul Bellow, but this book is probably the best study of the writer that I’ve read so far. In fact, Edward Mandelson’s portrait of him is greater than anything Bellow ever wrote himself. He portrays Bellow as maturing from a liberal parent to a seriously non-liberal old patriarch, browbeating his kids. Strange, how he went from practicing what he preached to being one of the mean old cranks he’d write about in his books.

Mandelson’s portrayal of Norman Mailer is not flattering, probably because there isn’t much about Mailer to flatter. Okay, Bellow was a bit of an Archie Bunker type in his later life, but Mailer just comes off as nasty. Never mind the incident where he attacked his wife; Mandelson portrays Mailer as being so overindulged by his mother that he grew to expect indulgence throughout his lie. If you expect the author of this book to trash Mailer over the issue of Jack Henry Abbott, you will find that he doesn’t. However, he doesn’t forgive either. Mandelson argues that mailer was conned; Abbott was ratting out the other prisoners, and it was the warden and US Attorney who pushed for the release in order to be rid of him. The “radical chic” element comes into play too, as Mailer was a hypocrite, easily conned by Abbott’s eloquent rhetoric.

I have to wonder if maybe Mandelson has picked a poor example. These writers are all from an earlier era, and there have been more great American writers making their debut in the decades since. What about Steven King, Amy Tan, and Toni Morrison? What about David Sedaris, Mary Karr, and Sandra Cisneros? The writers from the Baby Boom generation had their own unique contributions, and it doesn’t seem fair to leave them out.

Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing

A little background; I knew that the LAPD used be known for brutality, and I knew about the Watts riots, the 1992 LA riots, the Rampart scandal, and that Daryl Gates was a racist. I knew Tom Bradley and Daryl Gates didn’t like each other. After reading this book, I learned that LA’s problems with crime, drugs, and police abuses were a combination of race, geography, economics, and that nasty thing we call tenure.

Joe Domanick begins with history, and how the LAPD was known for extreme fitness standards, which helped cover up any discussion of abuses. The LA Times was the most conservative newspaper on the West Coast, and had no sympathies for Blacks or liberals. But the author discusses how that changed in the 1970’s, as the 60’s left-wingers grew up and wanted changes. However, he also discusses how tenure kept the mayor from firing police chief Daryl Gates. It was Gates who turned the LAPD into a paramilitary force, famous for smashing into drug houses with blue tanks. This hard-charging program was enough to bully people into cooperating, but it failed to stop the looting in 1992.

Domanick details the difference between Daryl Gates, the much hated racist LAPD chief, and Bill Bratton, who showed up in 2001. Both were college-educated, but Bratton was less heavy-handed; he believed in working with the community to find out what was going on. He also succeeded in building consensus between people by making his ideas clear. In what is probably the most dynamic story in the book, Bratton wiped out crime in MacArthur Park by turning it into a legitimately-used venue; lights were installed, bushes were trimmed, a soccer field was built, and shopping carts were banned. To get the city to do their bit, he simply spoke out. It wouldn’t look good for the city council members if they got blamed for underfunding public safety.

What’s missing from this book is any discussion of why the Rampart cop were so quick to take payoffs. There had to have been more than the fact that they had no oversight. He also doesn’t discuss the 20 cops who were on Suge Night’s payroll, the case of Kevin Gaines, and devotes only a few lines to Russel Poole. What about Bernard Parks’ cover up of this? Also, why does the author spend ¾ of the book on the pre-Bratton days, and so little on Bratton’s years?

The Intentional School Psychologist

What Harry Wong did for teachers, Dr. Jerry Turner does for school psychologists. He discusses how a school counselor can structure an office for concentration, using the right décor, artwork, furniture, and paint scheme. You’ll want to have both a professional and pleasant appearance in your office, one that shows that you are ready to do your job. He also discusses writing I.E.P’s, scheduling meetings with parents, dealing with parents who do not speak English. He stresses throughout the book that you must, at all times, be ready for when things don’t turn out the way they’re supposed to.

Biology of Heart Disease

This is an absolutely thorough book about heart disease. The chapter on Heat Fields and Cardiac Morphogenesis discusses the role of progenitor cells and embryonic myocardium. Accompanied by excellent diagrams, we learn about genome editing, and then how bioengineering can create replacement heart valves. Genetic heart muscle disorders, aneurisms, and obstructions are all covered here. Once again, we have a great book from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories Press.

Armies of the War of the Triple Alliance

Those of you who read Richard Marcinko’s Rogue Warrior are probably familiar with the problem of third world armies; peasant soldiers and playboy officers. Whether you’re in Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East, you’ll see that the officers get their jobs through patronage and are treated like princes, while the soldiers are from poor families and they get treated like slaves. In this book, the writers and illustrators pull no punches; they don’t attempt to flatter.

Armies of the War of the Triple Alliance is all about the uniforms of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil during Latin America’s wars of the mid-1800’s. As with all Osprey books, the illustrations are perfect and well-researched, but in this one they’re comical. They make the officers look like an overdressed parade crew, while the soldiers look like a biker gang. The “troopers,” if you prefer, were probably from the Indian classes, and their uniforms are really peasant clothes, and I’d wager they were better for the climate and the terrane. Some of the lower-ranking troops had fancy uniforms, like the French Zuaves, with baggy red trousers and green jackets. You wonder how the army paid for fancy uniforms, but it doesn’t say.

Another issue covered in the book is the regular soldier versus the tribal fighter. The Gauchos, for instance, came into the service already trained in horsemanship, so they’d be in demand for an army that can’t afford the time and money to train cavalry. Here we have a funny illustration of a Gaucho splashing two grandly-attired men as he rides through the mud, rightly oblivious to the men shaking their fists at him. I say, why wouldn’t he be oblivious? Cavalry are in big demand, so the lazy officers probably have to give him whatever he wants.

This book says that more soldiers died of disease than in combat, thanks to malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, food poisoning, typhoid, dysentery, and a host of other diseases. They’d be dead from the filthy water before they could fire a shot, and unless they’d lived in the swamps all their lives, they’d have no immunity to mosquito-borne diseases. The uniforms also reflect some of the incompetence surrounding the armies’ failure, with regard to practicality. If the clothing followed the fancy Spanish styles, what use would they be in the tropics? If they were not meant for rugged work, wouldn’t they wear out quickly? Who would pay for them to be replaced?

I would have high school students read Armies of the Triple Alliance if they’re studying Global History. Along with this book, they should read Modern African Wars and The Chaco War (also from Osprey Publishing) to get a good feel for the military problems of non-western nations. The problem of having soldiers trained to march in parades versus soldiers who are trained to fight would factor again when Pancho Villa fought the Mexican army, and again when Israel fought her Arab neighbors.

Getting Your Sh*t Together: The Ultimate Manual For Every Practicing Artist

Though nobody wants to acknowledge it, a working artist (performing or other) ends up with as much work as they do their “art.” You have workspace, material costs, and exhibitions to organize, and if you want to show your work in galleries, you’ll have to get past the picky and snotty gallery owners. If you want to market your own art, you’ll need a business plan and forms. It can be aggravating.

Karen Atkinson begins her book Getting Your Sh*t Together by creating a checklist for personal goals. She advises the reader to make a diagram showing all the possibilities, including galleries, freelancing, agencies, etc. Then she advises choosing which ones are the most feasible, giving your economic and personal situation. Further chapters cover resumes, portfolios, photographing your artwork, and shipping artwork.

I recall a gallery in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, where the director advised me on painting sizes. Her customers wanted nothing bigger than 18x24 inches, because most New Yorkers don’t have room for a bus-size painting. If you read Art Studio America, you can see how sculptor Artis Lane does her small statues in her kitchen, and her pieces are rarely more than 2 feet tall. If large works were her intention, she’d need a larger studio space, and that would incur rent, transportation costs, assistants, etc. Atkinson advises going through all these factors before you even start a project.

Studio space gets a full chapter in this book, and as usual, it begins with a questionnaire about the pros and cons. How much can you afford to spend on a studio? What kind of electricity will you need? What about sharing a studio? After going over all the possibilities, I wondered if it’s worth bothering about. Why not just make small drawings at home? If nobody buys your paintings, storing them will be a b*tch. Unless you’re painting with oils or using spray paint, you should be able to do your art in the kitchen.

This is a great book for a working artists, or anyone who’s considering making some money on the side from their art. It treats art professions as serious business, and expects the artist to behave in a businesslike way. However, there is one thing missing, and that is the case study. There were few, if any, examples of real-life artists making a living from their art, and I think that they can help drive the point across. I thought of Lucy Knisley, the cartoonist responsible for the wonderful autobiography Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, and how she does all her art at home. She would’ve made a great profile to illustrate the home studio.

Secret Paris

Paris is an old city that follows an ancient street plan. Unlike New York City, it’s not plotted in a grid, so you’ll have lots of sharp turns, narrow alleys, and odd shaped buildings. While Paris does have wide boulevards and avenues, there are still many areas that follow the old map. Parts of the Rue Saint-Denis are higher than others, and according to this book, it’s because the street used to be the rampart of a fortress. The church of Saint Joseph Des Carmes contains the bones of Catholic Bishop who were murdered in the revolution. They were buried, but the Paris building boom of the 1800’s cut through the cemetery, so the bones were moved into a crypt. It’s creepy, but then again so is most of Paris, since everything is so cramped.

The Rue de Blanche gets its name from the plaster that used to be quarried nearby and blanch the street as it fell from the carts. The plaster from that quarry was heat-resistant, and that’s why Paris rarely suffered from huge fires. There’s a firehouse on the street, with a climbing grape vine on the property, and every year there’s a wine-making festival on the site, but a non-alcoholic wine, so you won’t see any statues of Bacchus. As for the plaster, that’s where the term “plaster of Paris” comes from.

Perhaps some of the charm of Paris has to do with the fact that the old streets still exist. The wide boulevards were plowed through the city during the time of Louis Napoleon, but he did manage to leave some old bits behind. The Paris of The Red Balloon is mostly gone now, because those old buildings were old and collapsing, but much of the city still stands as it did 100 years ago. One funny thing not mentioned in this book; when Barefoot In The Park was staged in Paris, the setting had to be changed from a 4^th floor to 9^th floor walkup. Old Parisian buildings were built before elevators, and for the Parisians, four flights of stairs was NOT an inconvenience!

Scottish Pewter 1600-1850

The churches in Scotland were some of the biggest consumers of pewter cups and pots in the late 1600’s. Piles of cups and pots were needed to accommodate the hordes that descended on the churches for baptisms, communions, and other sacraments, and since the nobility were sometimes prohibited from using private chapels for baptism, the crowds would be in the local church. Once it was silver cups that were used for communions, but after the Reformation reached Scotland, and smaller churches sprang up, you had congregations that couldn’t afford silver. The market for pewter increased.

For merchants of wine, beer, and other liquids, mass-produced pewter cups and lavers became essential. Since alcohol was often taxed, they needed a standardized cup that would always have the same measurement inside. There were standard pewter cups for ale, wine, and other alcoholic drinks common in Scotland, and some were custom made with a particular enameled emblem of the city or the merchant.

Pewter was always a cheap alternative to silver. It has a low melting point, so it’s easier to smelt, and it’s an alloy. So it can be made of several different metals, never reliant on anything in particular. Since it was cheaper than silver and stronger than ceramic, it was great for anything that required rough wear (like rowdy pubs.) The author, Peter Spencer Davies, is not an art historian, but a collector. He writes this book from the perspective of someone who appreciates fine antiquities.

Languages In Africa

The premise of this book is that Africa’s numerous languages make education cumbersome. In this well-researched study, the authors discuss how the many tongues of the continent create a need for a common language, yet there’s apprehension over whether to use it. The Muslims above the equator want Arabic, but that takes longer to learn to speak and write. English seems like the best choice for language, as it’s already used in much of Africa, yet Senegal, Niger, Ivory Coast, Benin, and other still use French. As for Francophone Africa, the people haven’t benefited much from French or Belgium in the last 30 years. Which one will they use?

A statistical study was done on children in Cameroon, and some small African nations, along with Belize and the Philippines. The results were that the highest math scores occurred when the teacher was highly proficient either in English or French. When his/her mastery of that language was weak, the students’ scores were weak. Cameroon had high scores, because the teachers in that country are expected to be proficient. Ghana, which has had government funded education for the last 20 years, has seen success in teaching the students bilingually. Each school teaches the students in their local language, with English taught separately. The students are broken up into small classes for English, then grouped together for everything else. This allows them to get more attention in English class, while the math instruction is easier because the teacher and students have no trouble communicating. Think of it in terms of any language; if you were teaching English speaking kids to learn French, you would make French a separate class. You would not expect them to learn math, science, and history in the foreign language.

Further chapters discuss the subject of advertisements in Kenya, which are different depending on the region. It means that different posters have to be processed for each language area, which can make things costly, but at the same time the advertisements don’t work if people can’t understand them. The Latin alphabet is always used, because aside from Latin and Arabic script, Africa has no writing system. In a funny twist, a Paypoint advertisement appeared in two languages, but the product name had to come at the end of one ad and at the beginning of the other. As with the French-English difference, adjectives will come in the beginning in one language, or at the end in the other.

There are, however, some pieces missing from this book. It doesn’t have any case studies of Africans who move to NY, London, Paris, or Israel. I’m keen to know what they do about the language, and whether they benefit from knowing English or French once they arrive. The 2009 book Dead Aid by Dambissa Moyo (an economist from Zambia) was all about how “helping” Africa doesn’t work, and I would love to know her opinion on the continent’s language issue. There are many other great African writers who’ve spent time in Europe and the Americas, and I bet they’d have a unique perspective on this topic.

Ecclesiastical Knights: The Military Orders of Castile, 1150-1330

Sam Zeno Conedera tries to answer long-pondered questions about the religious based military orders. Firstly, how effective were they in military and government affairs? Secondly, how sincere were they in their religious belief? While there were many such orders, most famously the Templars and the Knights of Rhodes, the author focuses on the Iberian orders only. These “fighting monks,” as they are often known, existed in Spain before the country unified, so we might start by saying that they were the origin of Spain as we know it. As discussed in the book, they provided heavily for Spain’s defense, as well as economy.

In the chapter Interior Castle, we learn that the Iberian order weren’t all combatants; they had levels of knights, sergeants, clerics, and sister. The knights were nobles who took vows, while the sergeants were the more numerous commoners. There were clerics who acted as chaplains, and women members who served in the medical field. Thought history books ignore them, the nuns had greater medical knowledge than the doctors of the era, as attested by their surviving journals. After all, it was the nuns who ran the hospitals and cared for the sick, though the men get the credit (not with killing their patients.) The knight-sergeant arrangement was probably the same as that of the modern officer and enlisted man; the sergeant would lead common fighters, while the knight was involved in the planning, equipping, and overall decision making.

As far as religion goes, it was a kind of synergy, where the combatants and the clergy needed each other in several ways. The nation needed an army for defense, and the monasteries needed the knights to defend their vast property. Since the various Iberian states could easily get into conflict, the Catholic church was something of a unifying factor. If it could keep the Iberian knights from fighting each other, then they’d be less distracted when it came to fighting the Muslims. If they had charters from the Pope in Rome, then it would protect them from being attacked by the French and/or English.

I do remember a similar argument in the book Women of Faith, about Catholic sisters in Chicago, where the author promotes the nuns’ contribution. According to that book, the convents, with their schools and hospitals, provided a service to a land that was not well served by the government. They also provided a place for women who wanted education and work, but didn’t want to get married and by owned by a man. Similarly, a free-born peasant boy, uninterested in farming, and lacking any skill, could join one of the Iberian orders, learn to fight, and would no longer be subservient in the way a tenant farmer was.

The Iberian orders were one of the few options for upward mobility in the days when Spain wasn’t unified. They would eventually go into a decline as the nation consolidated.

The Complete Book of Pickling by Jennifer MacKenzie

What Julia Child did for French cooking, Jennifer McKenzie does for pickling. She has crafted a great book to teach inhibited cooks about preserving fruits, vegetables, and sauces, using ingredients you can buy anywhere. She starts with basic scientific information about preserving foods, and the benefits of pickling. When I say benefits, I mean she provides reasons to pickle cucumbers, onions, and peaches, not only for the great taste, but also for the health benefits.

Take for instance her recipe for pickled figs, using marsala and vinegar. You can make the figs last longer, without having to dry them, and they will have a sweet or sour taste. Dried figs have an excessively sweet taste, but when you pickle them, you can control the taste and texture. There are recipes for pickled cucumbers, tomatoes, and plums, and she gives instructions for pickling them in the refrigerator, or hot-water pickling, which means you can leave the jars in the pantry.

The benefits of home pickling are many. Firstly, you can preserve the fruits and vegetables for a long time, which is great if you haven’t got room in the fridge. If you grow your own vegetables, and end up with more than you can store, pickling may be the best way to see that they don’t go to waste. Secondly, there are health benefits, because fruit and vegetables that are preserved in vinegar can have great effects on your heart. Lastly, when you buy pickled cucumbers or tomatoes in the store, they’re made with dyes, sodium, and all kinds of preservatives, but home-made pickles won’t have any of these harmful additives.

If you’re looking to start pickling your own foods at home, this book is a great help. It gives easy to follow instructions, and the ingredients are affordable.

The Jews of Iran

Iran’s Jews have an interesting history. They arrived by force during the Babylonian captivity, survived the conquest by the Persians, the empire’s conversion to Islam, persecution, constant resettlement, and humorously, conflict with Ashkenazi Jews in Queens! Their customs were a mix of ancient Jewish practices couples with Persian traditions, some of which they retained, others they lost after leaving the country.

This wonderful book discusses the customs and history or Iran’s Jews, with historical scholars contributing essays in each chapter. One of the biggest issues is the Jewish community’s place in Muslim society, mainly whether they were tolerated or distrusted. Haideh Sahim, a professor of literature at Hofstra, gives an interesting background to the persecutions, using the Mashadi community as an example. The Jews of Mashad were caught in the middle of a conflict between opposing armies, one of which was anti-clergy, and since Mashad is home to a Shiite shrine, this put them into a dangerous situation. Some converted to Islam to survive, but practiced Judaism in secret. There was some benefit to the Jews’ presence in Mashad, however; the British traders, wary of being robbed by Turkumen tribesmen, needed the Jews to act as go-betweens and make loans (so they wouldn’t have to carry cash.) The British couldn’t trust the Armenians, because they had ties to Russia, who wanted to sabotage the British trade efforts. When Britain attacked Iran in the 1830’s, the Jews were blamed for it and their quarters were attacked.

Shalom Sabar, professor at Hebrew University in Israel, discusses a more positive aspect of Iranian Jewish life, namely the decorated Ketubah. For Ashkenazi Jews in Europe, and even Sephardic Jews in Italy, the fancy artistic marriage documents were for the wealthy. In Iran however, all people had them decorated. He points out that the decorate Ketubahs of Europe used the square calligraphy of the sofer, but in Iran, the writing was done in common cursive script. Calligraphy was used only for the brachot, or anything that had the name of the creator. In Iranian Ketubahs, there is also, according to him, a lack of imagery. Islam prohibits human faces, so an Iranian Ketubah would not show the bride and groom, or images of Jerusalem, or any biblical imagery. It’s only going to have vines, flowers, or decorative motifs.

I went to Yeshiva until I was 18 years old, but I never had a really well-rounded education on Judaism like I got from reading this book. If you’re studying Jewish history, this book will make you an expert, because each chapter is written by a different scholar, offering diverse theories and opinions.

From Abortion to Pederasty: Addressing Difficult Topics in the Classics Classroom

In the book of Genesis, Lot faces a mob of Sodomites intent on harming the men in his home. His offer is surprising by today’s standards; “I have two daughters who have known no man, I will give them to you to do with as you please, but do not harm the men who took shelter under my roof.” Most would be horrified at this offer, as this would mean throwing two twelve year old girls to a frenzied mob, who would not protect them from something as trivial to them as a gang-rape. However, to the people of the time, it was of no consequence to them. Women were nothing but property.

From Abortion to Pederasty is a wonderful collection of essays by today’s scholars on controversial topics in the classics. Sexual violence, child abuse, and rape often figure in the bible, mythology, and other forms of classical literature, and we often wonder how we can reconcile that against today’s codes of conduct. Sharon James, for instance, writes how many students and female coworkers confided in her that they were the victim of sexual assault, which she finds rife on today’s college campuses. For her, it’s difficult to hear this when the classics in her curriculum often have instances of rape, just not blatantly stated.

James, like other writers in this book, looks at this from the standpoint of the scholar, not a prosecutor. She welcomes the opportunity to have open dialogue on this topic, and have the students compare the treatment of women in the classics to the norms of today. Whether it’s the story of the Sabine women, Lucretia, these issues can’t be ignored in the classroom.

The Deerholme Foraging Book

The mushrooms, onions, and berries that we buy for a fortune at the farmer’s market can be had for nothing out in the woods, if you know where to look. Thanks to the Deerholme Foraging Book, you can learn how to recognize edible plants and wild fruits, and reap the bounties of nature as our ancestors did centuries ago.

For starters, chantrelle mushrooms, white and globby looking, grow wild. You also have lobster mushrooms, named for their orange color, and black morels, which are cone shaped. If you want free seafood, you can harvest manila clams, geoduck, and crabs. The geoduck are harder to find now that they’re a delicacy, and they take years to mature, but smaller clams and mussels are available. This book comes with cooking instructions for the crabs, so you’ll get the most out of your harvest.

Recipes are included, such as seaweed pesto, which is absolutely wonderful. Jams made of wild berries can be preserved if they are jarred using the hot-water process, only problem is that they require a lot of sugar. However, it’s better to make them yourself, because they store-bought preserves will be full of dyes and preservatives. Wild rose seedpods can be eaten, but they have “hairs” that need to be strained out, or they irritate the digestive system.

This book is full of excellent photos for identifying edible mushrooms and herbs, and has great recipes. Unfortunately, most of the plants identified in this book grow in the Pacific Northwest, not on the East Coast, but it’s still a great asset for anyone interested in forest foraging. I would definitely buy it if I were going to live in Washington State.

Origins of the National Security State and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman

This book is a collection of essays on the origins of the US concept of national security, particularly in terms of Truman’s presidency. Beginning with the first chapter, by Douglas Stewart, we see how WWII brought about the need for a government agency devoted to being the “eyes and ears” for what was going on overseas. We had the FBI for internal security, and J. Edgar Hoover concentrated on rooting out subversives, but until WWII, there was no overseas branch of US intelligence. It wasn’t until after Pearl Harbor that Congress saw the need for this, and what we started with was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which would eventually become the CIA.

One of the problems that Stewart points out is that the military has always had the upper hand when it comes to foreign intelligence. This is a problem, as a lot of the threats today, from terrorism to drug cartels, require closer surveillance than the military is ready for. The US military can guard the borders, but how are they at spying? What about phone tapping, close observation, and undercover work? As far back as the 1980’s, Columbia’s drug cartels were experts at evading armies, navies, and coast guards, so how effective would the military be at fighting them? In the post 9/11 world, the threat isn’t from national armies like the Soviet Union, but fighters who answer to no government. What this country developed under Truman’s Cold War policy doesn’t work well now.

A later chapter by Benjamin O. Fordham tackles the changes in military spending. He notes that Woodrow Wilson wanted to increase the role of the USA in foreign affairs, but it didn’t happen. You can’t really blame the president for it; Congress had always been in favor of neutrality, and the wealthiest men in the country wanted it too. They didn’t want the USA to have a bigger military budget because then the government would have to raise taxes, which no American wants. He writes that the huge military expenditures began in the Truman administration and continues to this day. In some ways I wonder if maybe it began because he could get away with it? While the USA had huge war debts to pay, we also had a monopoly on shipping, air travel, manufacturing, and agriculture, with low gas prices and a much smaller prison system budget. Workers were paid less, insurance was low, and we weren’t paranoid about drug dealing and terrorism. Perhaps we spent more on the military because there was less debate on how to pay for it?

These scholars all give good insights on the involvement of the USA in foreign affairs after WWII ended. Compared to the War on Terror of today, it makes me wonder how much of this fear is based on paranoia.

Weird Ghastly Horror

The horror comics of the 1950’s are an interesting media in United States history. They came in an era when the country was unusually stable, both economically and mentally, and they were a counterpoint to the conservative attitudes of the time. The stories were often lurid, full of sleazy cops, private eyes, crazy scientists, and political themes. In the 1988 documentary Comic Book Confidential, publisher William Gaines says that they were based on the pulp paperbacks of earlier eras, with material that would not have been allowed in the movies under the Hayes Code, and certainly not on television. Then the Congress got the idea that horror comics were causing juvenile delinquency, and the Comics Code Authority began, and the horror comics were no longer accepted by newsstands. Just about everything that was good in the comics industry was instantly wiped out.

Weird Ghastly Horror is a collection of these 1950’s horror comics, all of which came from public domain. Let me begin by saying that these are NOT the EC comics of the 1950’s. The comics in this book were more of a low-budget type that obviously tried to out-gore the EC comics with even more insane and lurid stories. Stiff artwork predominates, images are often repeated, and the titles seem to have been chosen with a bit of good natured self-mockery in mind; The Ant Master, Fleshless Horror, and Terror Town. These comics also try to out-sex the EC comics, with lots of shady broads, exposed skin, and see-through dresses. As for imagery, it’s pretty nasty, with blood, skeletons, and rotting flesh.

Let me give you an example of just how violent and lurid these comics were. The story Beyond the Past is only four pages long, and not at all dynamic; a professor takes home The Necronomicon, makes his daughter nervous, he says the spell, a creature shows up, and soon he’s eaten down to his skeleton. As for his sexy, well-figured daughter, she puts on a robe that might as well be made of cellophane. I don’t know if women in the 1950’s slept naked, but I can’t imagine that this young lady, frightened by noise, would go downstairs wearing a see-through garment and nothing underneath. The amount of skin shown here would’ve been a no-no even for EC’s most lurid pieces.

As for the artists, they’re rarely even mentioned in the comics. Unlike EC, where the artists and writers’ names were listed, you don’t see who was involved in these. Only two names could be seen, Tim Kirk and Lou Morales, and there’s almost no information on either of these guys on the web. When I think of the sexy imagery, I have to wonder who the target audience was. I can’t see grownups, or even teens, buying these in the 50’s, if they had money for the EC’s. Were they meant for 10 year olds? If so, why bother showing all that skin? When I was 10 years old, my chief interest weren’t creamy thighs and 38-DD bustlines! But the naughty bits? My friends and I probably would have enjoyed looking at them down in the rec room when my parents thought we were playing Scrabble.

There is one story here that could’ve been extended. A little girl, raised as a foster child, kills every grownup that gets in her way. Not the police, judges, or lawyers believe her foster parents’ insistence that she’s really a circus midget who just looks like a kid. For those of you who saw The Orphan, you might remember the theme of the homicidal dwarf masquerading as a child, and it was scary. 

Joel Meyerowitz Retrospective

I’m ashamed to say that after 20 years in New York I hadn’t heard of Joel Meyerowitz until I found this book. He is one of the founders of what we call “street photography,” long before it was fashionable. He was an employee of an advertising company, he saw Robert Frank’s photo book, The Americans, and figured he’d give it a try. Using a small camera, he started documenting the people on New York City streets, following that with a year in France and Spain, experiments with color and black and white photography, returns to New York City, and stays in Mexico.

This book is a retrospective, so you’re going to see a little of everything here. What fascinated me the most were his pictures of New York City in the 60’s, because I’m always keep to study the clothes and other norms of the time. Most of the people in his New York images look perfectly happy to be there, but then again, he wasn’t taking pictures in the Lower East Side, where things were lousy. I also noticed that almost all the photos contained no children, and that, I believe, is due to the old New York life. This city has always been popular with single adults, but it was never a good place to raise children. Until  around 2000, once the families started growing, they’d move out to the suburbs. New York City kids always had a reputation of being spoiled. Meyerowitz’ photos include the World Trade Center Site, which I didn’t find that interesting. I would rather have seen more about the people working there, and I bet they’d have stories to tell. But his photos pf Mexico don’t get much attention here. I bet they show a lot of sleaze.

Street photography has gotten a lot of attention in the last decade. Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York documents the improvised fashions of the city’s people, many of them children, so we can see how the average age of a New Yorker has changed.  Jamal Shabaz’ A Time Before Crack documents the style of Black Americans in the city in the early 80’s, though he didn’t publish it until 2005. I suspect that someone out there has a pile of photos they took in the city, way back when it was rough, and it’ll become a bestseller.

Into the Heart of Meetings

The great economist Thomas Sowell once said “people who enjoy meetings shouldn’t be in charge of anything,” and I tend to agree. When you go into the average meeting, people end up discussing every inane nuance of what paper to put in the printer, while you’re barely willing to give it five minutes. This book shows you how to structure a meeting, so that you don’t waste time or annoy the members present.

There’s a wonderful chapter here on international meetings, where you have different attitudes on what to expect. The authors tell me something I never thought of; Italians will not stop just because their time is up. They will keep on going, and tempters will flair. To Scandinavians, however, this is grossly unacceptable. Another example of a culture clash is a meeting where the mayor is late, then calls to say she’ll be later, then calls to say she probably won’t make it. This might not seem like problem; after all, just start anyway, and the mayor can speak at the end. The problem is that in some countries, they can’t start until they get a “greeting from the authorities.” In Korea and Japan, showing up late is not acceptable at all. It’s the equivalent of picking your nose in public.

The authors give advice on how to arrange the seats, the tables, and the schedule. Some meetings do well as round table discussions, and others, especially when you have visual presentations, need a long table where everyone can see ahead. Then we get to the role of the host (or facilitator) who’s in charge of making sure everyone has their turn to speak. You don’t want a meeting turning into a free-for-all or a shouting match, especially when you’re on a deadline.

The funniest thing in this book was in the chapter on international meetings. A conference goes overtime, and everything’s late, but Italian attendants all walk out when it’s time for their free pasta lunch. You can waste time, cheat, and be rude in Italy, but the mealtimes are sacrosanct!

This book is more than a guide to structuring a meeting. It’s a funny book on the way different peoples communicate.

Nashville Food Trucks: Stories and Recipes From the Road

Julie Festa and Brooke Stevens interview food truck operators in Nashville, Tennessee, about the foods they serve and how they got into the business. Each chapter tells us about the food they serve, the trucks they use, and a favorite recipe. Some of them serve Mexican street food, some serve burgers, one of them even serves pies. They got the idea in Australia, where pies are sold on the street.

Riffs Fine Street Food was founded by some chefs who merged a bunch of food truck companies. Hoss Burgers was founded by an MBA grad with a passion for food. I wonder if perhaps the more successful food truck companies are the ones started by professional restauranteurs or business people? Not all food trucks are good, as NYC, my hometown, has many serving terrible food.

The book was published by The History Press, and it seems that food trucks have become a new phenomena in the years since the economic downturn. Perhaps it’s cheaper to run a food truck than a café? You don’t need to have tables, waiters, or rent a store. At the same time, however, the food is no cheaper than most takeout stores. Maybe they’re successful in areas where there aren’t a lot of places to eat?

I’ll give the writer and photographer a thumbs up for good writing and photography. However, I think that the book itself is unnecessary. It would have done better as a series of articles in a magazine, because in its book form, fewer people will read it.

If I Can Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, Why Can’t I Brush My Teeth?

Nan Little describes herself as leading an active life before she had problems with her arm. Biking, hiking in the Pacific Northwest, lots of social activity, and excellent health, with all these things combined, she couldn’t understand why her arm became rigid. Unlike most books about Parkinson’s Disease, this one doesn’t focus on the disease itself, but the person coping with it.

She first notices her symptoms while fly fishing; whereas once she could bring in the fish with graceful dexterity, now it took longer. She describes going through different diagnoses, then different medications, some work, some do not. All the while she continues to enjoy her physical activities, but has to adapt with one arm being unavailable, or one hand having uncontrolled movement.

One of the main themes of this book is that despite having uncontrolled tics and spasms, the personality doesn’t need to change. Not being able to do the things you did before doesn’t mean that the “essential you” is gone for good. She quotes a speaker at a conference as saying that it was a change from what he was used to; people in his community had once looked up to him, and that all changed when he fell off a letter, got a head injury, and woke up with Parkinson’s.

Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, and other degenerative illnesses are going to be a greater problem in this country in the next decades. People are living longer than ever before, and someone with Parkinson’s, especially if they live alone, may require more care than others. This means that long-term health insurance is more important now than ever before,  along with disabled-accessible housing, adaptive technology.