 | The cover for "Making an Exit," a memoir by School of Drama professor Elinor Fuchs about her experiences with a mother who had Alzheimer's disease. |
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.
In their new book, Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro analyze how the estate tax -- which has been on the books since 1916 and is paid by only the wealthiest 2% of Americans -- was repealed in 2001 with broad bipartisan support. The repeal was heralded as a signal achievement for Americans who are committed to the work ethic and the American Dream. The authors provide a portrait of American politics to illuminate the repeal campaign's many unexpected turns and the arguments that drove it, basing their analysis on interviews they conducted with relevant participants: members of Congress, senators, staff members from the key committees and the Bush White House, civil servants, think tank and interest group representatives, and others. The authors note that the repeal is slated to self-destruct a decade after its passage, and contend that the survival of the long-standing American consensus on progressive taxation is being threatened.
"Poetry, Signs, and Magic" brings together in a single volume 14 new and previously published essays by the late Thomas Greene, a renowned Renaissance scholar and literary critic. In this final collection, Greene asserts that certain poetic gestures draw their strengths by serving as vestiges of poetry's ancestral acts -- magic, prayer and invocation -- and that "the act of interpretation lies close to the core of our humanity." He explores texts by a range of writers -- from Pindar and Sappho to the Renaissance writers Petrarch, Ronsard, Montaigne, Shakespeare and Milton to Romantics such as Blake and Shelley to contemporary theorists -- uniting his analyses of lyric poetry with investigations of magic and ritual in the ceremonies of funeral marches, masques and courtly labyrinth dances, among others. The collection includes a new essay on Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" and the challenges of interpreting that work, and features Greene's examination of various theories explored by Plato and Aristotle, in debates on the sacraments by Catholic and Protestant thinkers, and in the works of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man.
"The Theory and Treatment of Depression" derives from a collaboration between faculty at the University of Leuven in Belgium and a research group in psychiatry at Yale. The book aims to facilitate the development of more encompassing theories and more effective treatments for depression, which the authors note was once believed to be relatively benign but is now thought to be highly recurrent and resistant to treatment. Each chapter of the book offers an overview of state-of-the-art research in a particular area: cognitive -- behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy, epidemiology, developmental psychopathology, neurobiology -- and explores both the applications of the latest hypotheses and findings for work in other areas as well as the barriers of constructive collaboration between those in the various fields. In their epilogue, the authors propose an etiologically-based, dynamic interactionism model of depression that emphasizes interactions among genetic and neurobiological factors, personality and life stress in etiology. Finally, they reflect on the potential of this model to guide future research on mood disorders and the formulation of treatment guidelines that are better informed by science and more congruent with complex clinical reality.
In this memoir, Elinor Fuchs describes her mother's final years of life with Alzheimer's disease and the new relationship that developed between mother and daughter in that period. Fuchs tells how, long before her illness, her career-driven mother, Lil, had divorced and left her to be raised by grandparents, rejoining her in adolescence as a mother who traveled the world selling automotive parts and military gear and gave big parties. Driven to be successful, her mother, Fuchs says, was someone who "in any given room, took up all the air there was." By the time she was in college, Fuchs felt resentful of her mother and determined to keep her distance. Years later, she finds herself her mother's caretaker as Alzheimer's disease progressively steals Lil's sanity. Fuchs recalls how she began to feel tenderness toward Lil as she took on the role of being her mother's mother during the disease, and she describes both the humorous and poignant mother-daughter interactions during the decade-long period during which her mother "makes her exit."
T H I S
Yale Books in Brief
Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth
Michael J. Graetz, the Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor of Law, and Ian Shapiro,
the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science and the Henry R. Luce Director of the Yale Center for International & Area Studies
(Princeton University Press)
Poetry, Signs, and Magic
The late Thomas M. Greene, former professor of English and comparative literature
(University of Delaware Press)
The Theory and Treatment of Depression: Towards a Dynamic Interactionism Model
Edited by Sidney J. Blatt, professor of psychiatry and psychology, Jozef Corveleyn and Patrick Luyten
(Leuven Press (Belgium) and Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (United States)
Making an Exit: A Mother-Daughter Drama of Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter
Elinor Fuchs, professor (adjunct) of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the School of Drama
(Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company)
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
Center renamed in honor of its founder
Study: Benefits of red wine due to more than just alcohol
STDs high even in teens who take virginity pledges
Health care providers can learn valuable lessons from TB . . .
Three physicists named to endowed postsMichel Devoret: Beinecke chair in applied physics
Steven Girvin: Higgins professorship in physics
A. Douglas Stone: Morse chair in applied physics
Economist appointed to Beinecke chair
SOM hosts government leaders from Kazakhstan
Yale-developed brace heading for market
New York Times columnist to give next Poynter Fellowship Lecture
International group of scholars to probe 'Why Literature Matters'
Conference will explore the global flow of information
Discussion will examine legal rights of victims of genocide, torture
Divinity School event to tackle the 'Sunday-Monday disconnect'
Software being developed by the Peabody's BioGeomancer project . . .
Study: High-risk treatments best for some breast cancer patients
Richard Siken is selected as new Yale Younger Poet
With short training program, ER workers can intervene with . . .
Yale Books in Brief
Jeffrey Kenney appointed chair of astronomy department
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