Table of Contents
The Great Financial Aid Misconception
The Difference that Differnce Makes
Laurentian Reviews
Laurentian Reviews
Comments and notes on books by Laurentians for your reading pleasure and holiday gift-giving.
Assistant Professor of Global Studies John Collins and Visiting Instructor of Sociology Ross Glover, Collateral Language, New York University Press, 2002.
“Terrorism,” ”jihad,” “fundamentalism,” “blowback.” These and other highly charged terms have saturated news broadcasts and everyday conversation since September 11, 2001. But to keen ears their meanings change depending upon who’s doing the talking. So what do these words really mean? And what are people trying to say when they use them?
Collateral Language, edited by two St. Lawrence University professors, and with essays written by many others, is an effort to examine the meanings (literal and loaded) of the now commonplace terms. According to the publishers, “Each of the 13 essays in Collateral Language offers an informed perspective on a particular word or phrase that serves as a building block in the edifice of post-World Trade Center rhetoric. In some cases this involves a systematic examination of the term in question (such as “anthrax” or “unity”) - its historical roots, the development of its meaning and usage in the U.S. over time, and its employment in the current context. In other cases authors provide a set of more philosophical or autobiographical reflections on a particular idea (such as “vital interests” or “evil”), suggesting a need to consider the ethical and moral implications of using the concept uncritically. In every instance, however, the overriding goal is to give the reader a set of practical tools to analyze the political language that surrounds all of us at this critical point in our nation's history.”
Chapters and authors (St. Lawrence faculty unless noted) are “Anthrax,” Assistant Professor of Sociology R. Danielle Egan; “Blowback,” Trinity College Assistant Professor of Political Science Patricia M. and St. Lawrence Associate Professor of Global Studies Thomas F. Thornton; “Civilization vs. Barbarism,” Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures Marina Llorente; “Cowardice,” Egan; “Evil,” Assistant Professor of Philosophy Laura Rediehs; “Freedom,” Andrew Van Alstyne ’00, student at the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan; “Fundamentalism,” Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Leah Renold; “Jihad,” Assistant Professor of History Kenneth Church; “Justice,” Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy Erin McCarthy; “Targets,” SUNY Potsdam Associate Professor of Politics Phil Neisser; “Terrorism,” Collins; “Unity,” Professor of English Eve Stoddard and Dean and Professor of Philosophy Grant Cornwell; “Vital Interests,” St. Lawrence Associate Professor of English Natalia Rachel Singer; and “The War On ________,” Glover.
--Macreena Doyle
William Fox, View Finder: Mark Klett, Photography and the Reinvention of Landscape, University of New Mexico Press, 2001.
A has been published, and Klett has earned a prestigious nomination from Arizona State University, where he is professor of art.
According to the publishers of this new book about the photography of Mark Klett ’74, “Klett has been photographing the American West for nearly 25 years. He directed the Rephotographic Survey Project in the late 1970s, which located and rephotographed the sites of images made by William Henry Jackson, Timothy O’Sullivan, and other photographers surveying the West in the late 19th century.
“Klett has also published several books of his own work. Using his travels in the Nevada desert with Klett and his current rephotographic team as the starting point, William Fox offers an examination of the history of photography in the American West and of Klett’s role in documenting the landscape. Like the story of photography itself, this is a multilayered narrative. Part historical overview, part travel journal, part biographical study of Klett, View Finder explores the evolution of our view of the land from the mid-19th century to the present day. In focusing on the work of Klett in the last quarter-century, Fox reflects upon the meaning of the landscape at the beginning of the millennium. Because Klett’s work has been so closely connected to the great photographic surveys of the 1870s, and because he has been so influential to a new generation of photographers, his is the ideal viewpoint from which to measure our changing approach to the American space.”
Dennis McNally ’71, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of The Grateful Dead, Random House, 2002.
It is perhaps fitting that Dennis McNally ’71 has spent his career chronicling the life and times of the Grateful Dead -- he earned his degree in history. McNally, the official historian, publicist and archivist for the band for over 20 years, is what the publishers term “a comprehensive, colorful and complex look at the band and its surrounding culture.”
According to a recent feature story about McNally in the Los Angeles Times, McNally became involved with the Dead while researching his first book, Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation and America, which was also his doctoral dissertation at the University of Massachusetts.
The publishers state, “McNally packs this 600-pager full of intimate details otherwise unavailable, such as the time the group’s janitor vetoed a suggestion from multimillion-dollar promoter Bill Graham as too ‘commercial’...he manages to pen the most exhaustively researched book on the band to date.”McNally is now at work on a third book, tracing the cultural journey along the Mississippi River from the source in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.
--Macreena Doyle
William L. Fox ’75, ed., Valley of the Craftsmen, A Pictorial History: Scottish Rite Freemasonry in America’s Southern Jurisdiction, 1801-2001, University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Among early American civic associations, none was more important than the Freemasons, whose early lodges were organized before the American Revolution and whose origins could be traced to English and Scottish antecedents in the early 18th century. A durable and powerful association, the Freemasons have included among their members presidents from George Washington to both Roosevelts, as well as illustrious Americans from Benjamin Franklin to Charles Lindbergh.
William Fox’s stunning pictorial narrative of this association covers Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the South for 200 years. Fox, Goucher College’s acting vice president for enrollment management, has put together a history in pictures that is a visual delight. The book was selected as a 2002 winner in the best book (pictorial) category of the annual New England Book Show sponsored by the Bookbuilders of Boston.
From the reproduced color of the lithographs of Scottish Rite Freemasons in their traditional early 19th-century garb to the photographs of the imposing architecture of marbled buildings that outsiders associate with freemasonry, the composition of this volume should serve as a model for similar books celebrating American associations. Fox, who has written an earlier volume on the history of Freemasons, organizes the story chronologically through the leadership of the organization, but along the way he also pays tribute to the moral and philanthropic intentions of the Freemasons as well as their rich iconography and ritual. He does not overlook the challenges to an organization that has been criticized by the Anti-Masonic party of the 1830s, by the Catholic Church and most recently by civil rights groups.
--Jean Baker, professor of history, Goucher College
(Adapted with permission from a review in The Goucher Quarterly.)
Christopher Angus ’72, The Extraordinary Adirondack Journey of Clarence Petty: Wilderness Guide, Pilot, and Conservationist (Syracuse University Press, 2002).
Clarence Petty has lived a Horatio Alger-like life, from humble beginnings in the heart of the Adirondack Park, where a 16-mile walk through four feet of snow to school was not a fib (although he did the round trip only once a week, boarding in Saranac Lake while school was in session), to an influential role in the crafting of state policy for management of the Adirondacks and specifically preservation of its wilderness.
Along the way, Petty, who lives in the house where he was born and at age 96 in 2001 could still cut up a stack of logs with a chainsaw, was a Civilian Conservation Corps crew leader, a wilderness guide, a pioneer aviator, a Navy flight instructor and pilot in the Pacific Theatre during World War II, a New York State forest ranger who bucked conventional wisdom, and a tireless consultant to officials out of Albany. Never has he shied away from controversy, continuing to champion strict controls on development in the Adirondacks, a position few who live in the region hold or dare articulate. Angus’ biography is the story of a man who has lived nearly 100 years of life his way.
--NSB
Gerald Benjamin ’65 and Richard P. Nathan, Regionalism and Realism, Brookings Institution Press, 2001.
The New York Times perked up its ears when Regionalism and Realism, by SUNY at New Paltz Dean and New York State government scholar Gerald Benjamin ’65 and Richard P. Nathan came out. Why? The book is an argument for decentralization, and one of its “more provocative thoughts,” as the Times put it, is to abolish the five New York City boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, etc.)—and their powerful presidencies—and replace them with approximately 80 towns of about 100,000 people each, each with its own community-based school board and other government agencies. Why not? There are probably 80 “towns” in New York City now—Chinatown, Harlem, Brooklyn Heights, etc.—but, the authors point out, there is also a deeply entrenched political system.
The authors admit that such a radical deconstruction is not likely to happen anytime soon. But, said Benjamin’s coauthor in an interview with the Times six weeks before the World Trade Center attack, perhaps one day the City will face “some new crisis” that will prompt attention to the idea.
Shari Supernault Worthington ’80 and Walt Boyes, E-Business in Manufacturing: Putting the Internet to Work in the Industrial Enterprise, ISA Press, 2001.
Now that all the Internet hype is sorting itself out, the industry is embarking on a sea change of monumental proportions. The manufacturing enterprise of the 21st century will blend sound business practices with the power and reach of the Internet's networked conversations. Manufacturing companies will learn to put the Internet's myriad communication tools to work for them, allowing them to participate fully in the global networked market. E-Business in Manufacturing: Putting the Internet to Work in the Industrial Enterprise is about the creation of "extended enterprise." It looks at everything from sales and marketing to manufacturing and logistics and shows how enabling real-time interaction can result in a significant increase in revenue while producing a leaner, more efficient organization.
Worthington is president of Telesian Technology Inc., which provides industrial marketing and Web development services to the manufacturing sector. She founded MacSciTech, an international association of scientists and engineers who use Apple Macinotsh computers, and launched "Science & Engineering Network News" (SENN), one of the first publications to track and analyze developments on the Internet. She is an international speaker on the topics of e-business, guerilla marketing, and e-marketing.
End Notes*A new paperback edition of a novel set in the North Country - and considered to be the first "best-seller" of the 20th century - has been published by Glover Publishing, operated by Piskor Professor of English Albert Glover. Eben Holden, A Tale of the North Country, by Irving Bacheller, Class of 1882, was originally published in 1900.
*Professor of Government Alan L. Draper is the co-author of the newest edition of the textbook The Politics of Power (Wadsworth, 2002). The book has been updated to include information about the 2000 elections, and highlights major changes such as the more ideological partisan and confrontational nature of American politics and the growing acceptance of the virtue of markets.
*Associate Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of the First Year Steven Horwitz's book, Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective (Routledge, 2001), is the co-winner of the Smith Prize, given annually to the best book and best journal article in Austrian economics over the previous three years.
*Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures Steven F. White is the editor and translator of the poetry anthology Fuego Que Engendra Fuego - Fire That Engenders Fire (Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2000) and co-editor, with Eduardo Luna, who received an honorary degree from St. Lawrence this year, of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters With the Amazon's Sacred Vine (Synergetic Press, 2000). White's translations of poetry from Latin America have been widely published, and he recently published a compact disc of original poetry and translations, called “Transversions.”
*Susan Peterson ’83, associate professor of government at The College of William & Mary, is the co-editor of Altered States: International Relations, Domestic Politics, and Institutional Change (Lexington Books, 2002). Contributed chapters address such issues as lack of institutional change in Cuba, post-Vietnam changes in U. S. foreign policy, and the transition to civilian control in former Communist states.
*Mary Beth Forton ’84 is the principal writer of Classroom Spaces That Work (Northeast Foundation for Children, 2001), a new book for K-6 teachers on how to create a physical environment that fosters social and academic success. A teacher in Greenfield, Mass., for 19 years, she is the editorial director the Northeast Foundation for Children.
*Syracuse University Press is now distributing Photographs at St. Lawrence University. The coffee-table book, which was featured on the back cover of the Winter 2001 St. Lawrence, extols the Brush Gallery’s 1,000-photograph teaching collection.