The Maker Cookbook: Recipes For Children’s and ‘Tween Library Programs

This book is full of crafts projects for kids not old enough to use tools. The first is a pneumatic car, made of a plastic bottle on wheels, and powered by a balloon.  The instructions are simple; tape the balloon to the straw, inflate it, and let the escaping gas drive the car. There’s also a Zen sand garden, made from a box, which could lead to something bigger. You could get a piece of wood the size of a knock hockey table and make it portable. The kids can take turns using it, and make the tools from scrap wood. The drum project is another simple activity using minimal materials. It uses oatmeal cartoons, string, and sticks to make a kiddie size drum corps. The kids can decorate the cartons, and then bang away until it drives you crazy.

Each project is divided like a cookbook recipe. You have the ingredients (materials,) then the “preheat” which is the prep section, and then the “bake” where you actually make the project. The drum project, which you can also do with old tomato and bean cans, is perfect for the rambunctious five year old. Even better than just the drums, let the kids compose a song about their favorite children’s book to the tune of Stars & Stripes.

I remember back in second grade, we made puppets out of socks and cardboard, then turned a shipping box into a stage set and did a puppet show. In an age of common core standards, it’s important for kids to have physical activities. These projects are great for kids, especially when you have a limited budget.

The Lost Notebook: Herman Schultheis and the Secret of Walt Disney’s Movie Magic

There’s history to American animation, and I don’t just mean the cutesy stuff. Behind every Disney classic were hundreds of artists, photographers, costume designers, cameramen, and cell painters, all laboring to make Technicolor fantasies come to life. If you’re a film student and you wonder if it might’ve been fun to work for Walt Disney in the 40’s, then you’re right, it would’ve been fun. But it wouldn’t have been rewarding. The pay was low, the hours were long, and deadlines were strict, and you’re name wouldn’t live on forever. That was where Herman Schultheis came in.

    Schultheis’ name is forgotten to history. He was just another guy hired by Disney, originally an electrical engineer and amateur photographer in German, who found work as a light and sound technician, moving through different departments in his career. He would photograph the production drawings for animated movies like Bambi, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and others. The drawings for the movies went through many changes, and different styles were explored for all the characters and backgrounds. The various stages would all be forgotten if not for the scrapbook that Schultheis kept; it’s a treasure trove of beautiful artwork.

    One of the most beautiful pieces in the collection is the concept art for the Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia. The drawings are simple, just colored pencil and watercolor, but the artwork is wonderful. Schultheis also saved the space photographs from local observatories which were used for the (scrapped) galaxy sequences in the movie. The drawings from Night On Bald Mountain are here as well, with the skeleton horses, demons, and flying witches. It’s both beautiful and creepy to see.

   One of the most unique things about the Disney studio is the type of work performed by the women there. While the drawings and production art were all done by men, the cell painters were all women. They colored in the animation cells, spending all day painting in the traced draw
ings. A lot of the model makers were women too. I wonder if they were paid the same as the men?

Art Studio America

    Art Studio America begins with essays by art historians about the word “studio.” It’s more of a “city” word, with New York and Paris coming to mind. Today, the artist studios are found in Brooklyn and Berlin, though Brooklyn’s position as the hub of the art studio may soon be over. Artist spaces were always in old factories, because they were the only way to get huge rooms at low cost. First it was Soho, then it was Chelsea, then it was Brooklyn, and it remains to be seen if the Bronx will be next. Artist studios eventually make the neighborhood more stylish, and the artists get priced out. But keep in mind that the Soho art scene began with a profit-making enterprise, such as 80 Wooster Street. If George Macuinas had not bought the building and sold the apartments to artists, then none of them would’ve had studio space.

    Not all of the artists in this book work out of a city. Donald Judd, for instance, has a studio in Marfa, Texas, a place where you’d least expect an art exhibit. On one hand it’s dirt cheap, but on the other hand, the art connoisseurs don’t live there. Some, like Ed Moses, work in “cool” places like Venice, California, but this is unusual for an artist. Venice is one of the priciest parts of Los Angeles, and it’s unlikely that an artist could find an affordable place there. Artis Lane lives and works in West LA, but she does her sculptures in her kitchen.

    Artis Lane should have a book or movie all about herself, because her story is fascinating.  She was born in a Canadian town called North Buxton, a stop on the Underground Railroad, and taught herself to sculpt with local river clay. Then she went to art school in Michigan, and paid her rent by doing portraits of oil company executives.  If you think her use of her kitchen as a studio is strange, wait till you hear this; she was invited to Switzerland to paint Yeslam Bin Laden and his wife and kids! Unlike many artists discussed in this book, Lane was trained as a commercial portraitist, not as a fine artist. This would be unusual for someone under 40 today, but in the 1960’s, this was the norm. A lot of pop artists, like Andy Warhol, began as commercial artists, moving on to gallery shows and acclaim. It’s a shame she didn’t get included in the exhibitions of other 1970’s photorealist painters like Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, and Audrey Flack. But Artis Lane credits her Christian Science belief with making her avoid hypocrisy.

    Richard Prince, also trained in commercial arts, lives and works upstate in the Catskills. It was no unusual for NYC based artists to move upstate in the 1980’s, thanks to the abundant space and low living costs. Others, like Mickalene Thomas, still live and work in either New York, City or Brooklyn. She has a large studio that she calls her “garage,” and paints comic-book images of Black women, decorated with rhinestones. Others, like Deana Lawson, share studio space.

    Art Studio America begins with an upfront purpose, and that is to interview the artists in their studios. Along the way, you end up learning a lot more about the artists themselves, and the locality, size, and content of the studio tells you a lot about them. Today’s artists, like Deana Lawson, aren’t commercially trained. Artis Lane, who has commercial training, does very small sculptures that are easy to fit in a small studio. Mickalene Thomas, with her massive paintings, raises an important question, and that is how she stores all her work.  I often wonder why large paintings are sought after, when most New Yorkers have small apartments. Even the Chelsea art galleries aren’t that big, so I wonder how they can display the artworks. 

    Van Gogh’s paintings, which sell for upwards of $20 million, weren’t that big, usually 18x24. He could never have transported huge canvases, or bought enough paint to do a major piece. His rooms were always small, so there would’ve been no room for a painting that was 25 square feet. His famous portraits of Dr. Gachet and the local postman aren’t especially large, and since he paid his rent (and doctor bills) with his portraits, there would be an incentive to keep them small. Most of the Frenchmen he gave them to didn’t have huge homes, and while Van Gogh was mentally unstable, he wasn’t crazy enough to give anyone a painting that wouldn’t fit through their tiny front door!

    Perhaps Art Studio America is something of a prediction. The art world has gone through massive changes in the past decade. The digital revolution has altered art photography, eliminating the need to develop pictures. The credit crunch has limited the buying power of the patrons of the arts as well, and according to the book Dark Matter, art today is used more for social improvement than profit. Some artists don’t use studios as all, like the guy in Union Square who does sand paintings on the pavement. Artists who paint, draw, or sculpt small pieces don’t need much studio space either, but that means they’re less likely to show it.

Maybe small works will become the new wave of the future? 

Handbook For Student Affairs At Community Colleges

    Community colleges play and important part in American life, not merely in education, but in public services. They’re the colleges most often selected by older or working-class students, for two reasons; firstly the tuition is affordable, and secondly, they offer an easy commute from home. NYC’s junior and four-year colleges train nurses, paralegals, bookkeepers, and criminal justice graduates who go into law enforcement.

    Because the community colleges are publicly funded, tuition in usually lower than others, but students may still have trouble paying. After that, you’ll have to deal with remedial needs for special needs students, liabilities, nutrition, and more. HSACC is broken into chapters regarding all issues for students in community colleges, such as Legal and Policy Issues, regarding things like free speech. Where do we draw the line on free speech in a school? What about racist or hateful language? There’s been a Supreme Court case involving Saxe Community College, where Judge Alito wrote “no exemption from free speech, it protects offensive language.” Anybody remember CUNY and the Leonard Jeffries affair in the mid 1990’s? What about the Brooklyn student center named after Assata Shakur? There were many in the city who objected to having a criminal’s name in a city-funded school room. Then we have 4^th amendment issues, like searching student bags, or checking their personal laptops for evidence of cheating. Due process has to be observed for all disciplinary actions.

    There’s almost nothing here about fraternities, athletics, or housing, because those are not the kind of issued you deal with in a community college. The issues in this book are the ones that you deal with in colleges where the students commute, and where the learning is often specific to a career. Each chapter is written by an experienced college administrator, so you can expect to read advice from men and women with industry experience.

New Capitalism in Turkey by Ayse Bugra and Osman Savaskan

In the 1970’s, a Turkish film director made Seytan, a campy, micro-budget movie about a little girl possessed by the devil. Do you think it was based on the Exorcist? Well you’re wrong, it was an outright ripoff of The Exorcist! Ismael Metin Erksan, creator of Suzuz Yaz (Dry Summer) made this cardboard piece of junk, using a copy of the script, smuggled from the USA. Turkey’s government had this insane program to bar American movies from the country, then make their own plagiarized version in Turkey, so that 100% of the revenue would stay domestic. There was a Turkish Exorcist, a Turkish Superman, and I’m told there was a Turkish Jaws. How they filmed the shark scene, I don’t know, and the Superman ripoff features four different stuntmen holding on to a (slowly) speeding car. The bad guys run so slowly that Superman has time to grab them and throw them through the cardboard wall of their hangout.

This is essentially what Turkey’s economy was until the 80’s; low-quality domestic products, protected by tariffs. Years earlier, Ataturk started a policy of government intervention in the economy, mainly to increase industry and agriculture. The problem was, it made the economy dependent on the government. I guess Turkey was a lot like Britain and Argentina, with lots of state-owned enterprises, rather than a free market. At the same time, it wasn’t easy to get loans to start businesses, nor were there a lot of people willing to buy bonds or buy shares. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that a lot of modern economies would take off running.

In the second chapter, the authors credit the removal of protectionism with bringing the economic transformation. I shouldn’t say they blame the old tariffs for the problem, because a lot of small countries like Britain and Italy had tariffs. It was their only way to keep their farms in business and prevent the country from becoming dependent on cheap produce from the USA. However, there’s a point when a country needs to make the farmers compete, so I guess 50 years should’ve been long enough. The chapter also brings Islam into the argument, particularly the religious political parties. How they changed the economy isn’t clear, but I suspect that by having a multiparty state, the “old guard” loses power and becomes more receptive to new thinking.

One thing that isn’t discussed much in this book is the diaspora funding. How much of Turkey’s money comes from Turks living abroad, I have to wonder? There are sizeable Turkish communities in Germany and Australia; do they send money home? Prior to the 1980’s, did money sent home by Turks living abroad contribute to the economy? Bugra and Osman make it clear that foreign investment, heavy tourism, and bond sales would come around much later, so once again we see that funding was scarce in pre-1980’s Turkey. Also, there was a high level of socialism to the economy, similar to the John Maynard Keynes model. The country wasn’t exactly mineral-rich, so there wasn’t much to export, and they didn’t get into light manufacturing the way Japan did. Would that have strengthened their economy earlier?

I guess the main point of the book is that a government can’t prop up the economy forever, and at some point you need to get rid of the tariffs and make the business “leave the nest.” Britain did it in the 80’s, and so did Israel, South Korea, and many other small nations. From reading this book, I think Turkey made a great decision not to go on the Euro. It would’ve left the economy worse than that of Greece. Now that the Eurozone is a shambles, maybe Turkey’s currency will rise in value? I wonder.

Hotel Chelsea: Photographs by Victoria Cohen

No two rooms in the Chelsea Hotel look anything alike. The furniture is a far-flung collection of different era, and each bed, table, dresser, and rug looks old enough to have been made right here in the USA, no particle board desks to be seen. We might as well call it “Garage Sale Gothic” and if the furniture were in better condition, they would be museum pieces.

Hotel Chelsea is one of many books on the Chelsea Hotel, but it focuses on the décor rather than the people. This is not going to be a typical Martha Stewart style book, because the furniture is randomly placed and the paint schemes are random. What makes this book great is that it isn’t stylish at all; this is exactly how the average New Yorker would decorate an apartment. Few of us can afford fancy furniture and rugs, so we have to buy what we can. My father, for instance, used to take old furniture right off the street, sand it down, and refinish it. He’s told me hilarious stories about bringing home an old bureau in the mid 1970’s, full of dead cockroaches, and vacuuming them all out. The only thing louder than the vacuum was my mother’s screams.

Victoria Cohen photographs the many rooms, some with beautiful furniture, some with cheap-looking 80’s accessories. Most of the rooms are well-maintained, however, so I can assure you this is not a welfare hotel. The owners tried to match the furniture to the look of the room, such as a red leather armchair in front of a red wall. Room 617 has old nasty wallpaper, contrasting with the recently repainted white molding. One room has a flowery old divan next to a lace curtain, while another has a small scratched-up desk and ugly red curtains. When I saw this room, I was reminded of Joe Buck’s fleabag room in Midnight Cowboy, before he gets locked out for not paying rent. I wonder if the average out-of-town transient would’ve been put off by the curtains, or felt right at home? Depending on his situation, it would probably not have been much different from mom & dad’s tract house.

Cohen is a New York based photographer, and like anyone enamored with the city, had a fascination with the Chelsea Hotel (or Hotel Chelsea, if you prefer.) She was not happy to hear the sad new in 2011, that it was closing down to be renovated, and all the charm and history would be gone. This was the same place where Arthur C. Clarke began 2001 A Space Odyssey, where William S. Buroughs wrote Naked Lunch, where Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin, and where Sid Vicious murdered his girlfriend. The last one we could do without, but what about the rest? Doesn’t this hotel anchor a lot of the city’s history? It certainly took in a lot of the people that were not especially welcome among the Eloise crowd at the Plaza Hotel. You wouldn’t see a lot of kids in this hotel, except for Gabby Hoffman, who lived here until age 11. In describing the hotel where she grew up, she says it was a great place to be, like every day was an adventure. Like most of us, she wasn’t happy to see it closed off and full of construction dust.

Maybe this book about the Chelsea’s décor is the antithesis to the hotel business? It was never a choice lodging for affluent people visitors, mostly popular with writers, artists, people with less money to spend. After WWII, the owner took artwork in place of rent, so his art collection was probably worth as much as the hotel. My fault with this book is that it leaves out the artwork; the hotel’s walls were festooned with art from all the people that lived there, and the hallways were like one great big gallery. I wish the photographer had included some in the book, but you can still see it in other books about the hotel. Cohen does make it clear, however, that she was interested in the individual hotel rooms, not the residential apartments. The long-term residents could decorate how they liked and throw parties, but the short-term renters weren’t there for fame; they came to “drop off the radar” and be anonymous. Kind of like E.B. White describes in his book Here Is New York, it’s a city of anonymity.

Oscar Wilde, on the last night of his life, wrote “either the wallpaper goes, or I go.” He was referring to the hideous wall paper of his room in Paris, where he retreated as an anonymous expatriate. While Oscar Wilde’s widely-celebrated last words are seen as those of a genius critic, I’d rather see old décor celebrated. The average bohemian, living in austere circumstances, should celebrate the cheap décor as part of the adventure.

A good title for this book would be “Chelsea Hotel: Ode to An Old Dresser.”

A Young Man's Journey by Floyd Godfrey

Floyd Godfrey’s story is about a man “curing” himself of his attraction to other men. This is a controversial topic, because of the debate on whether conversion therapy is legitimate or quackery. I’m going to base my review on the quality of the writing, not on the actual content or the opinions of the author. Say what you like, but I have to respect free speech.

Godfrey describes his experiences in middle and high school with his female classmates, and needless to say, they weren’t very good. He saw the girls as friends, not as people he was attracted too, and since the girls often tried to seduce him, it was even more difficult. From his aunts, he was told that men were detached, didn’t want to listen. From his father he learned that flirting with girls was sinful, as shown where his father deliberately sat between him and a girl in church so they wouldn’t look at each other. Then he attended a Christian camp, where the boys are only interested in doing things that are forbidden by the church. From that he learned about hypocracy.

Each chapter ends with a list of questions. In the chapter on sexual abuse, there’s a checklist for all the things that might be going through a young man’s mind while he’s being abused; does he think it was his fault, was he looking for a mentor, did he know deep down that this was wrong?

Godfrey also touches on the issue of pornography, which he sees not as a perversion but as a kind of addiction. He says that viewing it doesn’t make you a pervert, but you do need to recognize that it’s not something you can control. I don’t necessarily agree that porn is evil, but I don’t think it helps young men improve their sex lives either. Seeing women with large round breasts, big brown nipples, perfectly round butt cheeks, big beautiful lips, long blond hair, and “come hither” looks can make you expect too much when you finally get laid. The average woman looks nothing like that. Just like the famous writer John Ruskin was horrified to discover that his wife had pubic hair, the average young man will have a hard time with the fact that women aren’t all Vogue models.

I’m going to give Floyd Godfrey credit for the effort. He touches on a lot of issues with regard to how young people are taught about sex dating. It’s definitely something that has to be dealt with through sex ed.

Gordon Parks: Segregation Story

Life Magazine, 1956; Gordon Parks was sent down south to document the lives of segregated communities. The text, by Robert Wallace, mentions the most poignant disadvantage of segregation, and that was the lack of mobility. The states with segregation had as many poor whites as poor blacks, because poverty can ruin all colors the same way. The whites, however, were free to move anywhere they wanted, but the blacks could only live where they were allowed. If the only area open to them was near the town dump, then that was where they had to live. If it was on a street that flooded when it rained, that was that.

One of the people in this photo essay was a woodcutter, financially sound enough to eat well, but he had to be wary of outdoing white competitors. He was not allowed to vote, because the county had a literacy requirement that he couldn’t pass. Illiterate white voters were probably overlooked, but the average black man in the south wasn’t dumb enough to complain. If the whites attacked, the police would  probably look on, and the courts would take the side of the whites.

On a positive note, the community were mostly self-supporting. They did their own repair work, mended their own clothes. The school for black children was cramped and Spartan, but it was maintained. The children, however, were not getting a good education, and even the teacher’s kids could not read well. There was one teacher for 120 kids, and she had to use the old-style method where one group reads, while the teacher listens to the other group recite. On top of that she would’ve had to handle all the discipline and custodial chores.

Economically, the community was in a bind, because most stores would not sell to them, and they were at the mercy of the stores that did. A sack of flour that would cost a white customer a nickel probably cost a black customer a lot more. The kids were seeing and hearing the same news and advertisements as white children, but they had to watch the county fair through the fence, not allowed to attend.

The cover has a photo of a black governess with a white baby, the well-dressed mother looking on as if she disdains the very notion of having to have her kid in her lap. I feel sorry for that white baby as much as I do for the low-paid black woman caring for him. Perhaps this goes to show that the nasty attitudes behind segregation can harm both colors equally.

Jesuit mapmaking in China: D’Anville’s Nouvelle Atlas De La Chine (1737)

Scrap whatever you learned about Marco Polo, because whatever he did pales in comparison to these men. Some of the greatest explorers in the world were not soldiers or fortune seekers, but Christian missionaries. The Jesuits went on dangerous and uncharted journeys to spread Christianity, but they ended up becoming the great adventurers, introducing unknown lands to the Europeans.

Matteo Ricci can be credited with being the first European to explore China. Portuguese sailors knew it was there, but Ricci took efforts to learn the language, explore the land, learn the customs, translate the books, and bring all this knowledge back to Europe. He translated the works of Greek mathematicians into Chinese, and brought back translations of Kun Fu Tsu, known in Europe as Confuscius. Based on his work, Italian mapmakers returned 44 years later and created Novus Atlas Sinensis, the first map of China.

The maps are remarkable, not just for the details, but for how extensive they are. The maps show the entire coastline, including Japan, Korea, and Formosa, with accuracy. Next come the rivers and the mountains, which would have been no easy feat for the Italians. These mapmakers were in a land they knew nothing about, cut off from anyone they knew, dependent on their guides, exposed to the elements, and god help them if they got caught near the Yangtzee river when it flooded. Even with the emperor’s men guarding them, they would still have been in danger of attack by bandits.

According to this book, the Italian and German Jesuits were well received in China. There’s a funny story about Johan Adam Schall, the Jesuit mathematician in charge of the mission’s astronomy department. The emperor Shunzhi had lost his father, and saw the white-bearded patriarch as a surrogate parent. The Jesuit’s astronomy skills were in big demand, because accurate calendars were needed, perhaps for the crop planting times. I bet they needed to predict the seasons as well, because rainy seasons would’ve brought China’s infamous floods.

The book touches on the issue of Christian rivalry as well. Ricci began his mission at a time when Catholic and Protestant kings were at war over Europe, and the Jesuit mission to China may have been a way of expanding the influence of Catholic nations, like Portugal and Spain. There is, however, an economic reason for the expedition; the missionaries made the trip on Portuguese boats, and this might have been a way for them to gain a foothold on trade in Asia. By ferrying men and goods to and from China, they could establish a rapport with the empire, gain a monopoly, and outdo their competitors. They could outdo Britain, with her West Indian sugar, and Spain, with her gold from Latin America.

The maps are beautifully reproduced, the writing and research are excellent. Han Qi, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Science, writes how the Kangxi emperor made trips to the west of China, and brought along Jesuit astronomers who taught him how to measure distance. It reminds me of an earlier book I reviewed, titled “How The West Won,” in that it shows how much China learned from Europe. I don’t know how the emperor’s army and tax collectors found their way around, given that all the best mapmakers were Italian. Did they navigate visually? If a road was washed out, how would they identify the landmarks?

I suspect that China’s unique terrain, with its famous mountains, would have had more landmarks with which to navigate. The Italian mapmakers plied their craft for sea captains, who had absolutely no landmarks to tell them where they were. By the time Matteo Ricci came to China,  Europe’s Age of Discovery was already 200 years old, and that was plenty of time for the Italians to become experts in maps and navigation. China, however, had no such industry. Their kings weren’t like Henry the Navigator, who used his royal money to finance exploration. The last great Chinese explorer, Zhang He, was long dead and his ships burned. A great opportunity had been wasted, and China would be isolated.

Perhaps this book is really a way to explain why European’s were so successful at colonizing other lands? When “enlightened” rulers make an effort to learn all that is learnable, they can dominate those that do not.

Dessert Mashups

Whenever a kid misspells  the word “dessert,” I tell them to remember it this way; dessert has two “s,” and that’s because you want seconds. Dessert Mashups gives exactly the kind of recipes that a kid will want seconds of, and even better, that the kid will want to make herself. Most of the recipes involve minimal ingredients and almost no cooking, like the s’more cookies, which rely on candy bars and other store-bought stuff. There’s the Milky Way brownie pie, the “Elvis hand-pie” made of peanut butter and bananas, with a store-bought crust.

The benefits of this book are that the recipes are easy for a child to make, and it’s great for party food, especially if you’re serving the type of people who don’t want fancy desserts, like wine-poached pears in chocolate sauce.  The problem with this book is twofold; first, the desserts like the death by chocolate brownies might be too rich for kids, and second, these recipes are not only meant for kids, but they’re only good for kids. These desserts will not appeal to adults, especially the health-conscious ones.

It makes sense, however, to have some things that the kids can make, seeing as most children aren’t ready to handle the oven. As for the over-sweetened desserts made of store-bought candy, why take the risk of your friend’s picky-eater son whining that the chocolate mousse looks weird? Stick a brownie in his mouth, and keep everything cheerful.

The Social Studies Curriculum

Social studies began as civic education, says the author of this book. That makes sense, as in 1916 the USA didn’t have much of a history, at least not a history that was seriously written. Most education in this country was geared to vocational skills, so having a history lesson, aside from classics, would probably have seemed impractical. Even “American literature” didn’t exist as an academic discipline; it would not be until the 1920’s that Melville, Twain, Poe, Hawthorne, and Whitman were catalogued as “literature” for colleges.

This book isn’t a guide for teachers, but a discussion on the controversies. For example, the chapter 

Dangerous Citizenship shows how much censorship there is when it comes to social studies. In Texas, there is a massive push to rewrite history, eliminating all traces of feminism, socialism, and “equality” from the curriculum. Efforts to make it pro Confederacy and remove the Seneca Falls convention are gaining ground, with the goal of making the woman’s role in society look more submissive. Harriet Tubman would be included as a form of “good citizenship,” but there would be no mention of women’s rights. For economics, students would learn about Milton Friedman and his free market capitalism, but learn none of the negative traits.

The chapter Class Struggle In The Classroom is about how you can teach high school students about labor in the USA. By using the book Class Matters (NY Times) one you show the kids how the workers, capitalists, and unions all have competing goals. There’s a funny description of a cartoon where the capitalist is questioned over how much he pays the worker, how much the worker makes (in products) and what the capitalist did to get where he is. Finally he says “shut up, the workers and media might hear you.”

This book is a great eye opener to what social studies has become. However, a lot of the negative news regarding censorship didn’t arouse any sympathy from me. Even if subjects are removed from the curriculum, there’s nothing to stop the teacher from sneaking it in. For instance, let’s say the state of Texas removes the Seneca Convention from the curriculum. A student could use that for a project, and the teacher can let her (or him) be “teacher for a day” and teach the class. Whatever you achieve in the classroom is all on the head of the teacher, not the curriculum.

Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City

The cover illustration for this comic makes Robert Moses look demonic, which given his reputation, doesn’t shock me. It chronicles his upper-class boyhood to his metamorphosis into the city’s biggest vampire, sucking the blood from neck of New York. The book tries to create a balanced image of Robert Moses, including his great contributions and his catastrophic destructive habits. In the end, his mega-callousness wins out. Try as you might, you can’t make this guy look good.

Despite making Robert Moses look like the domineering bulldozer that he was, the book is unbiased and even in its portrayal. He did care about the health of the city, which is why he pushed for the creation of the city’s beaches. It was better to have a decent beach, he thought, than to have kids jump off the docks and into the river. He also built swimming pools, which for the average working class New Yorker had previously been out of reach. That alone is wonderful. He built bridges to connect the boroughs, and went under-budget. That’s great. He emptied several decaying square blocks, on both the Upper West Side and the East 14’s, to build co-op complexes. That’s sort of good. He put in restrictive covenants to keep African Americans out. That’s not good. Then he plowed up whole neighborhoods to build a highway through the Bronx. I’m sorry, but that’s bad.

Olivier Balez, a French comics artist, creates artwork is brilliant, with realistic drawings and bright colors. When necessary, the artist uses slightly muted colors to evoke the mood of the era. Great artwork, great writing, I’ll call this a great book about a horrible guy. If you’re interested in learning more about Robert Moses, I would also recommend watching the Channel 13 documentary The World That Moses Built. It has interviews with the people who lived in the neighborhoods that he bulldozed for the Cross Bronx Expressway.

There is one thing missing from this book, and that is an explanation of the financing. Moses’ bridges, tunnels, pools, and beaches were often financed with bonds, and the profits financed his other efforts. An illustration of this process would’ve been welcome

Racial Formation in the United States

First published in 1986, and updated for the Obama age, this book discusses how the fight for racial equality led to women’s rights, gay rights, and other efforts for equality and acceptance. Michael Omi and Howard Winant craft a long and detailed book of racial history in the USA, with regard to ethnicity, economics, migration, and politics. Beginning with a chapter on ethnicity, they write how the US ideal of race was based on white skin as being superior, while others were beneath them. However, by the early 20^th century, the ideal had turned more to those of Anglo Saxon versus foreigner, as the country was now teaming with immigrants.

For example, Chicago in the early 20^th century experienced racism, as the Irish, Italian, and Jewish populations fought for their hold on the job market. On the other hand, Hawaii didn’t have a whites versus blacks mentality; there’s was a case of Anglo Hawaiians against the natives and Asians. In Europe, there wasn’t racism, but anti-Semitism. In WWI the USA had anti-German sentiments, and in WWII, it was against Japanese Americans. Now the target ethnicity is Arabs and Muslim Americans. Who knows what the next feared minority will be?

This book continues with treatises on religious based prejudice, scientific racism, and class conflict. Though not specifically mentioned in this book, there was once a conflict between the Puritans and Quakers in New England, but it ended after the English Civil War in the mid-1600’s. With the Puritans no longer the majority, their powers ebbed. A lot of it was economic too; the Puritans weren’t the only industrious people in Massachusetts, so they lost their economic dominance too.

In the last chapter, on neoliberalism and Obama, the authors discuss economics. It seems that the problem today involves class and economics more than color alone. For instance, Obama didn’t create the financial meltdown, but he didn’t do much for the people who suffered from it. He agreed to bail out the auto industry, but not the foreclosed homeowners, nor has he done much for the traumatized war veterans who can’t afford therapy. He did nothing about the Mormon polygamists who kidnap and traffic underage girls, nor any other issue involving sex trafficking. Will he do anything about ISIS recruiting Americans?

Racial Formation in the United States pulls no punches. The authors are clear that talking about race can backfire, and contrary to what Eric Holder says, we can’t have a dialogue on race. In the book’s discussion on 80’s and 90’s racial politics, reverse discrimination was a big deal at the time, and conservative politicians were using code words like “welfare” and “low income.” In the so-called “post racial era,” where liberals thought a black president would cure our troubles, this book is more important than ever. We need to look at race frankly and honestly, without worrying about whether or not it offends.

Confederate Odyssey: The George W. Wray Civil War Collection

George Wray was a collector of antiques known as Americana, which generally means anything old and made here in the USA. His specialty of Americana, however, was from the American Civil War. He collected uniforms, weapons, and documents, but the weapons comprise most of this book. One of the most sentimental pieces in his collection is a blood-stained coat, worn by a young soldier in the Southern army. Wray took pains not only to acquire it, but also to find out who the soldier was, so I guess you can call George Wray the original battlefield detective.

Wray was an employee of a silver company, and his work took him throughout the country, giving him time to go to military collector fairs. The network of antiques dealers on the Confederate memorabilia circuit would keep him posted of any new pieces they had. As for the purchases, he often knew more about them than the dealers. He would discover the particular weapon, go from one antiques fair to another until he found it, and then seek out the gunsmith’s story. During a 30 year hunt for the elusive Thomas Morse, he found that the gunsmith was a Copperhead; a Yankee who took the Confederate side. Morse’s life went from New Hampshire, to Richmond, and back to his hometown again. Not surprising, if you consider that Richmond was a “burned house” at the end of the war, while the Northern industries, especially the gun factories, were bigger than ever.

One of the main points of this book is that the South was unready when it came to industry. As we see with Wray’s discovery of Thomas Morse, it was Northern gunsmiths that took care of the weapons. The South was weak in terms of arms manufacturing, so they really had to improvise. For instance, one of the first (and wisest) things the Confederacy did was raid the arms factory at Harper’s Ferry, then move everything to Richmond. Still, it wasn’t enough, because the South lacked iron to make the guns, railroads to transport them, and food to feed the soldiers. They did however, have a greater number of marksmen, and their best rifles were all designed for sport. Still, it couldn’t win the war for the South. Rifled barrels were more accurate than smoothbores, but they took more effort to manufacture. Breach-loading weapons were easier to load than the old muzzle-loaders, but they were also harder to make. A breech-loading rifled musket would’ve been a great weapon, but even the North didn’t outfit the troops with those. For the South, great fighters were in great supply. Great weapons were not.

Thomas Morse guns were as good in quality as those today. In the Wray collection is a Morse rifle set in a wooden carrying case, containing the usual ammo and cleaning kit, but there’s another important feature; the interchangeable barrels. You could make this firearm into a long-range rifle, short barreled rifle, or shotgun, all in the change of a tube. But this was an expensive weapon, and supplying it to an entire regiment was more than the Confederate government could afford.

Years ago, I had an eighth grade student who’d done a project on the Civil War, and knew the names of all the generals, and how/why the armies won or lost. He shocked the more liberal teachers by writing that he’d rather fight for the Confederacy; as he saw it, the Confederates were fighting with honor. General Lee was a great leader, he said, while (in his opinion) Grant was an alcoholic and Sherman was a bully. Maybe so, after all we have to respect the opinion of the scholar, but it does seem as though the Southerners were willing to put up with hardship. When the war was over, their Yankee allies turned their backs on them and went home, like Thomas Morse. He could’ve taken advantage of cheap land and labor, and a job-generating gun factory would’ve been welcome in Richmond. Instead he went home, now that he had less to gain financially. Wray found that he’d moved right back to his hometown of Lancaster, and bragged that he made sure he didn’t shoot the guys he recognized. Whether anybody believed it, I don’t know. Did they suspect he actually spent the war feted in a Southern mansion, being waited on by slaves, while young boys got killed?

Perhaps this book is about Southern resilience. The guns, though old and used, are in great condition, as are the uniforms. These people took good care of their things, and they’re still intact after 150 years. Thanks to George W. Wray, these guns are all ready to view at the Atlanta History Center, and I’m definitely heading that way if I ever visit that city.

There is one minor thing I find missing here, and that is the documents. I would love to see the letters that the soldiers wrote, if there are any. Wray’s sleuthing in search of the gunsmiths should have unearthed some more documents about these guys. They would tell us one important detail; were the Southern troops optimistic until the end, or were they ware that they were losing the war?