Yale Bulletin and Calendar

May 3, 2002

Volume 30, Number 28

Yale Books in Brief

The following is a list of books published recently by members of the Yale community. Descriptions are based on material provided by the publishers.

To submit information about books for this column, send e-mail to opa@yale.edu.

The Company I Kept, Autobiography of a Geologist
John Rodgers, the Silliman Professor Emeritus of Geology and Geophysics
(The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001)

To compare the Appalachian orogen, a belt of deformed metamorphic and plutonic rocks, with mountain ranges around the world, John Rodgers traveled widely using his linguistic skills to compare geologic ideas and his skill at the piano to entertain his friends. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, former president of the Geological Society of America and winner of the society's Penrose Medal, Rodgers's stature in geology also came from his 50 years as editor of the American Journal of Science and from his continued local interest as compiler of the latest version of the geologic map of Connecticut. His autobiography recounts a unique life during a more gentle and gracious era.

God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 14921945
Claude Rawson, Professor of English
(Oxford University Press, 2001)

"God, Gulliver, and Genocide" explores the range of aggressions which inhabit the space between figures of speech (they "ought to be shot," or exterminated from "the face of the earth") and their implementation, from the book of Genesis to the present day, but more especially in the period between the conquest of the Americas and the end of World War II. It examines a variety of authors and voices, chiefly Montaigne and Swift, but also Bartolome de las Casas and Jean de Lery, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, and travel-writers and ethnographers from Columbus and Vespucci to Bougainville and Cook. Behind all these stand those mass catastrophes in Genesis, the Deluge and the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, with their grim and quizzical relation to the mass slaughters of human history, culminating in the Second World War.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Yale creates Center for Genomics and Proteomics

NIH grant to support research on treatment of epilepsy

African American Studies Department examines its history and its future

Alumnus Bryan Rigg reveals untold story of 'Hitler's Jewish Soldiers'

Managing editor decries 'outrageous lies' in the media

See possibilities when job searching, editor advises

IN FOCUS: Resource Office on Disabilities

New website offers information on wheelchair access to campus facilities

Yale Engineering forum offers perspectives . . .

Abnormal neurons may play role in SIDS, study suggests

Stories, adventures, journeys -- festival offers them all

Restorative home care help elderly regain independence

In there a nurse in the house?

New Yale chapter offers support for Hispanic students

Study shows promising cocaine treatment is ineffective on humans

Update on YB&C survey

Local third-graders graduate from America Reads program

Yale affiliates awarded YUWO scholarships to continue studies

Yale Books in Brief

Campus Notes