 | In "Deliberation Day," Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin propose a new way of drawing voters into a dialog about national issues. |
The following is a list of books recently or soon-to-be published 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.
In their new book, Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin propose a new national holiday -- "Deliberation Day"-- for each presidential election year. Held two weeks before presidential elections, this new holiday would replace President's Day on the national calendar. On Deliberation Day, registered voters throughout the country would meet in public spaces and engage in structured discussions about issues that divide the candidates in the upcoming presidential election. After watching a televised debate by the candidates, the groups of voters would divide into groups to discuss the central issues of the campaign. Through this process, citizens would move beyond the top-down debate and achieve a bottom-up understanding of the choices confronting the country. In turn, subsequent discussions would draw millions of other people into the escalating national dialog. Ackerman and Fishkin consider the economic, organizational and political questions raised by their proposal, which, they claim, would transform elections, change the way politicians exercise power and "break the cycle of media manipulation that is crippling public life."
Published since his death, "Investigative Pathways" represents the capstone book of Frederic Holmes' career. In the book, he works to reconstruct, from surviving laboratory notebooks and other documents, the detailed ways that scientists are led to historically significant discoveries. He shows how the daily interplay between thought and action lies at the heart of the creative processes through which scientific novelty emerges. Holmes examines the various stages of a scientific career -- from apprenticeship to scientific accomplishment -- and presents examples of six noted scientists whose work and careers shared similar themes. Throughout the book, Holmes uses the metaphor of the "research trail" or "investigative pathway" to describe the "personal trajectories of individual scientists within the larger investigative movements in which they take part."
First published in 1974, "The Synaptic Organization of the Brain" has served as a staple for neuroscientists. This new edition incorporates advances in brain research since the last edition was published in 1998. These include results of the mouse and human genome projects, as well as such advances as 2-photon confocal laser microsurgery of dendrites and dendritic spines, biochemical analyses, and dual patch and multielectrode recordings, along with the increasing range of behavioral and gene-targeting methods. In the book, leading experts give their accounts of the molecular, anatomical, functional and behavioral data in chapters that cover the neural elements, synaptic connections, basic circuits, physiology, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, membrane properties, dendritic properties, as well as in a final section on how the circuits mediate specific behaviors. The book also includes a combined reference list of over 3,000 entries.
In "Values, Objectivity, and the Good Society," Wendell Bell describes efforts to define the good society and analyzes the human values used to do so. Rejecting cultural relativism and embracing critical evaluation, he shows how value judgments can be objectively assessed. He sees the origins of human values in the similar nature of all humans as biopsychological beings, in the preconditions of social life that, he contends, are basically the same everywhere, and in universal features of the physical world. Bell demonstrates how the quantity and quality of individual human lives may change in the future and explores what human values need to be supported or suppressed to create a desirable future.
Both a writer of fiction and a practicing psychotherapist, Amy Bloom focuses her newest book, "Normal," on the lives of "people who reveal, or announce, that their gender is variegated rather than monochromatic": female-to-male transsexuals, heterosexual crossdressers and the intersexed. She tells of Lyle Monelle and his mother, Jessie, who recognized early on that her daughter was in fact a boy and used her life savings to help Lyle make the transition; and of Hale Hawbecker, whom she describes as "a regular, middle-of-the-road, white-bread guy" with a wife and children who has a medical condition -- the standard treatment for which would have changed his life and his gender. Bloom's book questions the very concept of "normal" and examines assumptions about sex, gender and identity.
T H I S
Yale Books in Brief
Deliberation Day
Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, and James Fishkin
(Yale University Press)
Investigative Pathways: Patterns
and Stages in the Careers of
Experimental Scientists
Frederic Lawrence Holmes, formerly the Avalon Professor of History of Medicine and chair of history of medicine
(Yale University Press)
The Synaptic Organization
of the Brain (Fifth edition)
Edited by Gordon M. Shepherd,
professor of neuroscience
(Oxford University Press)
Values, Objectivity, and the
Good Society
Wendell Bell, professor emeritus of sociology and senior research scientist, Center for Comparative Research
(Transaction Publishers)
Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude
Amy Bloom, lecturer in English
(spring term)
(Random House)
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
Trachtenberg wins inaugural Mellon Emeritus Fellowship
'Whatever slack Nature cut us, we used up,' declares Speth
Director named for new center for writing instruction
Students awarded scholarships for achievement in science ruling
ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPSRobert F. Thompson will serve another term . . .
Reed honored for commitment to undergraduate art education
Show features miniature portraits of wee ones
Campus talk features architect Zaha Hadid
Brzezinski: U.S. foreign policy guided by 'fundamental misdiagnosis'
Sterling Library exhibit explores subject of love, Mesopotamian style
The relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in today's India is topic of event
Yale Books in Brief
Campus Notes
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