Columbia University Press

Scott Esposito at the always worthwhile and interesting Conversational Reading has a very good review of J. J. Long’s W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity. Long’s book as you might have guessed from the subtitle views Sebald’s work in light of his efforts to understand and portray modernity in his work. Esposito writes:

A partial list of major topics [in Long’s book]  will bring more detail if not more cohesion: (post-)colonialism, photography, the gaze, maps, archives, police/nanny states, the Holocaust, passports/travel, taxonomies, World War II, memory, identity, Foucault. In other words, the raw material of Long’s book is the raw material of modernity itself, which, Long contends, is also the major ingredient in Sebald’s literature. And so, modernity being a difficult bag to grasp, it’s hard to get too tight a hold on what sits between the covers of Long’s book.

Perhaps the best way to sum it up is to say that Long discusses how Sebald’s books attempt to bring together the disparate aspects of modernity through the technology of the archive, much as the modern state tried to do. Long contends that Sebald’s books are archival in nature, and he attempts to show how Sebald’s archival books present aspects of modernity ranging from wonder and spectacle to migration and dislocation.

Esposito concludes, writing:

Long is the editor of a collection of Sebald criticism … and here he demonstrates the great familiarity with and sensitivity to his subject that his position of editor of a collection on Sebald would suggest. I’ve found this book to be greatly useful in developing a more thorough approach to Sebald (as well as a number of authors with whom Sebald shares several affinities), and I think this will be a book I’ll be returning to often.

As The Measure of America: American Human Development Report, 2008-2009 continues to garner attention for its truly eye-opening findings about the United States, the Social Science Research Council has decided to put you to the test.  The quiz they have assembled asks readers a series of questions to find out just how much they know about the nation’s well-being and the disparities and progress that characterize the country.

Also while you’re there, you can read the startling new article entitled, “Five Subway Stops, A Half-Century Difference.”  In it, Dr. Mary-Lea Cox examines two districts — New York’s 14th and 16th Congressional Districts — on opposite ends of the human development scale. Perhaps most notable, however, is the fact that the two districts are separated by less than 3 miles and only five stops on the #6 train.

Following up on yesterday’s post about James McWilliams’s American Pests: Losing the War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT, here is an excerpt from the book that was posted on Celsias, which was recently named one of the top environmental Web sites by the Times of London.

In the book’s final chapter, McWilliams argues that the decision to move away from locally derived solutions to insect and pest control to centralized federally controlled responses, buttressed by powerful industrial and agricultural interests, has been a recipe for “environmental disaster.” McWilliams writes:

The scale and scope of this government-industry conglomerate had no tolerance for the genuinely democratic debates that had characterized insect management under more decentralized circumstances. As a result, a number of possibly effective control tactics - many nonchemical - were pushed to the periphery, while a single, simplistic, and widely applicable approach culminating in the use of DDT became standardized as the only viable way to survive as a profit-minded commercial grower in the United States. Rachel Carson could change the way we think about ecology, but her work, for all its impact, had little infl uence on the perspective and practices of the federal agencies that continue to oversee and promote an influential and largely monolithic approach to insect control. . . . This behavior, seen from a benign angle, is consistent with the main currents of American history - a history of innovation, entrepreneurship, ambition, greed, and a belief that happiness comes through a better material standard of living (however superficially conceived). But, from a more ominous perspective, it also points to a discouraging and persistent view of the environment.

The solution, McWilliams suggest is a return to the methods developed in local contexts where innovation, civic involvement, and entrepreneurship are allowed to thrive.

It’s that time of year again, with the hot weather driving us all outdoors, Americans are encountering insects in their backyards, at the local park, and splattered on the windshield of their cars. In his new book, American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT, Jimmy McWilliams discusses the history of American attempts to eradicate insect life from their homes and farms, and the sometimes disastrous effects that followed. Catch McWilliams in person at three upcoming events as he discusses the fascinating history behind man vs. insect.

First McWilliams will appear at his hometown bookstore BookPeople in Austin, TX on July 22nd for the kickoff book launch event.

Then he’ll be traveling to Atlanta, GA on July 31st when he discusses the book at Wordsmiths in Decatur.

Lastly, he’ll appear at Powell’s Books in Portland, OR on September 12th

Can’t make it to an event? You can watch a video of McWilliams discussing the book, or take a quiz.

Earlier this week, the Columbia University website posted an interview with Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science on what the upcoming Beijing Olympics means for China. Nathan is a co-editor of How East Asians View Democracy, which is being published in August. You can see the video and read the transcript of the interview here.

Also forthcoming in January is Victor Cha’s assessment of the history of sports in Asia, Beyond the Final Score, which includes a chapter on the Beijing Olympics. You can read some of Victor’s recent posts about the upcoming Olympics here and here.

Look for more commentary to come on our site about the Olympics from these two notable experts on Asia…..

In separate articles, New York’s Daily News and the Huffington Post look at findings from The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009 that determine the best and worst Congressional Districts in the United States in terms of such factors as health, education, and income. The highest ranking Congressional District is New York’s 14th, which encompasses New York City’s Upper East Side while the worst is California’s 20th Congressional District located in the San Joaquin Valley.

Here’s a comparison between the two districts looking at some key indicators:

Life expectancy at birth: CD 14, New York (81.6); CD 20, California (77.1)

At least a High School Diploma:  CD 14, New York (90.4%); CD 20, California (52.6%)

At least a Bachelor’s Degree: CD 14, New York (62.6%); CD 20, California (6.5%)

Median Earnings (2005 Dollars): CD 14, New York ($51, 139); CD 14, California ($16,767)

The Measure of America also highlights the difference between the 14th Congressional District and the New York’s 16th Congressional district which are separated by only five stops on the #6 train. Looking at a range of data the report concludes that “These two districts have a fifty-six year gap in human development. Separated by more than 2 miles, they might just as easily be located in different hemispheres.”

Yesterday, at a press conference in Washington D.C., the authors of The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009 discussed the results of their groundbreaking study on the health and well-being of the United States.The report reveals some of the huge disparities in health, income, education, and living standards that exist in the United States.

You can find out much more about the report at the very impressive Web site, www.measureofamerica.org. The site lists key findings from the report (some of which are below), a Well-O-Meter which allows you to approximate your own human development index by answering a series of question, interactive maps, and tables.

Finally, you can also download a podcast interview with the authors Sarah Burd-Sharps and Kristen Lewis.

Some key findings from the The Measure of America:

* The U.S. ranks #24 among the 30 most affluent countries in life expectancy - yet spends more on health care than any other nation.

* One American dies every 90 seconds from obesity-related health problems.

* Fourteen percent of the population - some 30 million Americans - lacks the literacy skills to perform simple, everyday tasks like understanding newspaper articles and instruction manuals.

* Educational expenditures vary significantly by state; New Jersey and New York spend around $14,000 per pupil, Utah spends less than $6,000 per pupil.

* African American students are three times more likely than whites to be placed in special education programs, and only half as likely to be placed in gifted programs.

* The top 1 percent of U.S. households possesses a full third of America’s wealth.

* Nearly one in five American children lives in poverty, with more than one in thirteen living in extreme poverty.

* In every racial/ethnic group, men earn more than their female counterparts.

* Over the course of a year, at least 1.35 million children are at some point homeless.

* The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s people - but 24 percent of the world’s prisoners.

* African Americans are imprisoned at six to eight times the rate of whites; the rate is much higher for African Americans who do not graduate high school; by age thirty-five, 60 percent of African American high school dropouts will have spent time in prison.

* In 98 countries, new mothers have 14 or more weeks of paid maternity leave. The U.S. has no federally mandated paid maternity leave.

* The U.S. ranks forty-second in global life expectancy and first among the world’s twenty-five richest countries in the percentage of children living in poverty.

The Los Angeles Times just ran a very favorable review of Christopher Davidson’s Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success.

As the review points out, Dubai’s wealth and booming economy does not come from oil but from trade, luxury tourism, high technology, and real estate investments. As Davidson’s title suggests there is another side to Dubai’s recent success. Dubai remains a closed political system and its patronage system often encourages complacency among the future leaders of the country. It also has a growing underground economy and has become a hub for gunrunning, money laundering, and human trafficking. Finally, questions continue to linger about the government’s possible ties to Al Qaeda.
Here is an excerpt from the review:

The book defines Dubai as a new breed of political and urban animal, equal parts Las Vegas and Singapore. Nominally Islamic but increasingly Western on its public face, Dubai combines laissez-faire economic policies with an unapologetically closed political system. As a place to run an international business, Dubai has few peers, as was demonstrated last year when defense contractor Halliburton, to Washington’s chagrin, relocated its corporate headquarters there from Houston. As a political entity, Davidson writes, “Dubai is still an autocracy, where real evidence of an opening for true democracy proves hard to find, and where far less political reform has occurred than in neighboring Gulf states, including even Saudi Arabia.”

While the New Yorker Obama cover has been dominating the news cycle for the past 24 hours, disputes and controversies regarding editorial cartoons are hardly new. Here are a couple of books that offer some historical perspective:

In her forthcoming book, All the News That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t): Inside the New York Times Op-Ed Page, Jerelle Kraus offers a first-hand account of the many debates among the editorial board at the paper about whether or not to publish a potentially offensive cartoon.

In Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons, Chris Lamb explores the long and frequently tumultuous history of editorial cartoons in the United States. Lamb argues that editorial cartoonists have used irony and ire to reveal the naked truths about presidents, business leaders, and other public figures. Since the founding of the republic, cartoonists have both made an important contribution to and offered a critical commentary on our society.

In describing the work of editorial cartoonists, Lamb writes, “Editorial cartoonists must point out what is wrong, often by making it look ridiculous. They must challenge the government or whatever need changing, whether the reader agrees or even cares. This sometimes requires producing an image so startling that it reaches up from the newspaper and grabs the reader by the collar and shakes them out of their slumber.”

Of course whether the New Yorker went too far will surely be discussed in the coming days and Lamb writes that some cartoonists see controversy as a sign that their work might have missed the mark:

“Some editorial cartoonists believe that any cartoon that upsets its readers is automatically a good cartoon. But this is not necessarily true. ‘If outrage inspired by a cartoon is based on its misinterpretation, then the cartoonist did not do his or her job,’ [cartoonist] Bennett said. ‘Is controversy a sign of a good cartoon? Not always. Sometimes it’s a just a sign of poor communication.’”

There is an interesting article by Phil Kretsedemas, co-editor of Keeping Out the Other: A Critical Introduction to Immigration Enforcement Today, on History News Network which looks at the history of immigration policy and how the United States has defined the concept of “illegal alien.” The article also offers suggestions for creating a more realistic and effective policy toward undocumented migrants that considers changes in migration patterns and the changing demands of the global economy.

Part of the problem, Kretsedemas suggests, is that current policies and the national conversation surrounding undocumented migrants relies on an older understanding of migration patterns that “still seems to be lodged in a paradigm that is organized around border control.” What this misses is the massive increase in temporary visitors who enter the United States every year. These visitors, include tourists, workers and students with visas, and undocumented workers, most of whom are vital participants in the U.S. global economy and are found in almost every employment sector, including health services, child care, manufacturing, and agriculture.

At the end of the article, Kretsedemas offers a multi-pronged strategy for reducing the undocumented population. He cites four areas that require special focus:

* Tracking and decriminalizing legal status violations

* Revisiting current immigration quotas

* Eliminating exploitative hiring practices

* Cross-national planning

Now that you are ready to crack open one of the newest titles from Columbia University Press, you’ll need a light to read to read it under and it just so happens that we have a great suggestion for where to find stylish, imaginative, and well-crafted lamps. Two Columbia University Press employees, Kirsten Olson and John Babcock, have been creating lamps from found materials such as a crock pot from the 1970s, an ice bucket, a Saarinen Tulip chair, and other detritus from all corners of New York City and Europe.

John and Kirsten explain the thinking behind their company ilampe:

It’s a sin to waste. Also we recognize the need for imaginative, well-crafted pieces that function as charismatic, unique lighting. We achieve our end result with chair bases, rolls of wire, dress forms (well, parts of), discarded lamps, fire engine plates, and other reusable scraps. Why let a perfectly good piece of garbage end up in a landfill when it can be repurposed?

Below are a couple of examples but you can find out more at www.ilampe.com and John and Kirsten were also recently featured in Time Out New York. As for myself, I’ve already put in an order for a hanging lamp!

In a marvelous moment of navel-gazing we’d like to draw your attention to a recent article at the Chronicle of Higher Education that reports on the new trend of University Press publishers producing videos to promote their books. We’re proud to say our video of James McWilliams’s American Pests is discussed in the article along with recent videos produced at some of our fellow university presses.

This ran a few days ago but we forgot to mention that the second part of Gary Francione’s interview with Vegan Freak is now available. (Click here for the first part.)

The book has received a lot of notice from animal rights and animal studies blogs and sites. The following is a selected list of sites thatreviewed or mentioned the book and are also definitely worth exploring if you are interested in animal rights or the burgeoning scholarly field of animal studies: An Animal Friendly Life, Animalblog.co.uk, Animal Inventory, Animal Person, Animal Rights Malta, Practical Ethics, and Theoria: Blog.

You can read excerpts from James McWilliams’s American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT and Alan Schroeder’s Presidential Debates: Fifty Years of High-Risk TV but you can also listen to them thanks to NPR.

In addition to a certain ex-president, the Aspen Ideas Festival also invited James McWilliams (see picture above), who spoke about the history of insect control and his new book American Pests. You can listen to his talk courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio and of course you can also see him speak about the book in this video.

Alan Schroeder was recently interviewed by both All Things Considered and On the Media. During his appearance on All Things Considered, Schroeder was asked if he was a consultant to McCain and Obama what advice would he offer. According to Schroeder, McCain needs to watch his temper and allow his sense of humor to come through. While Obama should try and rattle McCain but also emphasize his own ability to empathize.

The following post is by Alan Schroeder author of the recently published Presidential Debates: Fifty Years of High-Risk TV. You can also read Schroeder’s description of the Nixon-Kennedy debate from Presidential Debates.

To the chagrin of political junkies everywhere, the Fourth of July holiday weekend passed without a precedent-setting summer presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. The Obama campaign had proposed the event as a counteroffer to McCain’s call for a series of ten joint town meetings over the summer months. Like many a front-runner before him, Obama has sought to limit his debate schedule, agreeing to an Independence Day town hall; an August forum on foreign policy; and the three traditional fall debates in September and October. McCain’s high command dismissed the July 4th idea as a “joke,” claiming that few Americans would be watching TV that night. Thus the debate fell apart before it ever advanced beyond the talking stage.

By traditional metrics, the McCain camp was probably accurate in its assumption of low viewership on the Fourth of July. But the unorthodox nature of this year’s presidential campaign challenges that expectation. A holiday debate would undoubtedly have generated a high degree of media hype, drawing an audience unable to resist the lure of live political theater. Press coverage of the debate would have reverberated for days to come, providing endless replays for interested parties who missed the original program. And with few other major stories competing for the media’s attention, the debate would have dominated the news agenda both in the run-up and the aftermath, making the Obama-McCain confrontation unavoidable even to those not paying attention to the election.

Will the rejection of an Independence Day debate go down as a tactical error by McCain’s campaign brain trust? Clearly it is their side that has clamored the loudest for early debates, and Obama’s that has reacted with coyness and diffidence. With a July town hall now off the table, an August meeting between the two candidates also appears doubtful. As long as Obama maintains a solid lead over his rival, the Democratic contender will be reluctant to debate any more than he has to. McCain may therefore have lost his last chance before Labor Day to lure his opponent into the ring. Read the rest of this entry »