 | "Foot-Ball -- A Collision at the Ropes" by Frederic Remington is featured in "Yale Football" by Sam Rubin. |
In this new work, Robert Dahl explores the fundamental issue of equality and how governments have fallen short of their democratic ideals. Dahl acknowledges that complete equality is unattainable but argues that strides toward that ideal are both desirable and feasible. He shows the shift in recent centuries toward democracy and political equality all over the world and explores the growth of democratic institutions, the expansion of citizenship and the various obstacles that stand in the way of gains in political equality. Dahl also looks at the motives, particularly those of emotion and reason, that play a crucial role in the struggle for equality. He imagines the scenario of a cultural shift in which citizens reject what he calls "competitive consumerism" and begin investing time and energy in civic action, claiming that such active and engaged citizenship would move the country closer to "that distant and elusive goal" of political equality for all.
During the first part of life, when the brain has a high degree of neuroplasticity, the brain and mind shape themselves to the major recurring features of their environment, while by early adulthood, the individual attempts to make the environment conform to the established internal structures of the brain and mind. In "Brain and Culture," Bruce Wexler explores the social implications of the close and changing neurobiological relationship between the individual and the environment, with particular attention to the difficulties individuals face in adulthood when the environment changes beyond their ability to maintain the fit between existing internal structure and external reality. The difficulties, Wexler points out, are evident in bereavement, the meeting of different cultures, the experience of immigrants (in which children of immigrant families are more successful than their parents at the necessary internal transformations), and the phenomenon of inter-ethnic violence. Wexler integrates recent neurobiological research with major experimental findings in cognitive and development psychology -- with references to psychoanalysis, literature, anthropology, history and politics -- to reconceptualize the effect of cultural change on the brain and provide a new biological base from which to consider such social issues as "culture wars" and ethnic violence.
"Community in the Balance" examines the conflicts and tensions that permeate day-to-day interactions of a people in a remote region of the Eastern Indonesian province of Maluku. The Maneo openly tout the pleasures of living alone in the forests of Seram away from the demands of kith and kin and the scrutiny that comes from life in villages in close proximity. Yet, while the incessant social demands and low-level enmities they attribute to village life are felt most acutely in the peril of sorcery, the accounts of strife are exaggerated to help establish the mutuality of the terms on which people do associate -- as a collective sacrifice and virtue, Hagen contends. His book focuses on the strategies of negotiation and obfuscation Maneo employ to foster community life. He tells of a religious conflagration that swept the province between 1999 and 2002 to illuminate how fears and rumors of attack narrowed options that might otherwise have enabled enough people to opt out, condemn the violence and perhaps contain it. Hagen lived in Indonesia for four years, including 20 months of field work on the island of Seram.
"Yale Football" is the newest addition to Arcadia Publishing's "Images of Sports" series. Featuring more than 200 images, the book is a photographic journey through Bulldog history, from the first game against Columbia in 1872 to its years under the direction of former coach Carm Cozza to the present day. Among other topics, the book reminds readers of Yale's 26 national championships, 13 Ivy League championships, two Heisman trophy winners and famous rivalries, and discusses players that went on to success in other fields, including Stone Phillips, Archibald MacLeish and President Gerald Ford, a former assistant coach at Yale.
The Migration Age has been envisioned as an onrush of expansionary "Germans" pouring unwanted into the Roman Empire and subjecting it to pressures so great that its western parts collapsed. Further developing the themes set forth in his book "Barbarians and Romans," Walter Goffart dismantles this view in "Barbarian Tides," shaking the barbarians out of this Germanic setting and reimagining the role of foreigners in the Later Roman Empire. He uncovers the origins of this historical untruth and argues that any projection of a modern Germany out of an ancient one is illusory. Rather, he claims, the multiplicity of northern peoples once living on the edges of the Empire participated with the Romans in the larger stirrings of late antiquity. Most relevant among these was the long militarization that gripped late Roman society concurrently with its Christianization, Goffart claims. He asserts that the Empire's readiness to admit military talents of any social origin to positions of leadership opened the door of imperial service to immigrants from beyond its frontiers. Many barbarians were settled in the provinces without dislodging the Roman residents or destabilizing land ownership; some were even incorporated into the ruling families of the Empire. The outcome of this process, Goffart argues, was a society headed by elites of soldiers and Christian clergy -- one now come to be called medieval.
This research edition, the ninth volume in the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, features 121 letters that were exchanged between Boswell and 26 correspondents between 1760 and 1763. The letters, all but one written after Boswell's first brief escapade in London, concerned the period up to and including his second momentous visit there in 1763. During this period Boswell savors the delights of London's high life and low, first meets Samuel Johnson and publishes his first book-length work -- a collection of letters between him and fellow Scot Andrew Erskine that his dismayed father, Lord Auchinleck, considers embarrassing and ill-advised. Boswell's correspondents include Irish elocutionist Thomas Sheridan, father of the playwright and Boswell's most important mentor before Johnson; William McQuhae, later an eminent figure in the Scottish church; Alexander Montgomerie, the 10th Earl of Eglinton; and other nobables.
Using the theme of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the transition of East Germany from a Communist state to part of the Federal Republic of Germany, the contributors to this book draw a comprehensive picture of life course transformation and demonstrate how the combination of life course dynamics coupled with an extraordinary pace of system change affect individual lives. They explore such questions as: How much turbulence was created by the transition and how much stability was preserved? How did the qualifications and resources acquired before 1989 influence the fortunes in the restructured economy? How did the privatization and reorganization of firms impact on individuals? How stable were social networks at work and in the family? Were personality characteristics important mediators of post-1989 success or failure or rather were they changed by them? The book analyzes the unusual turbulences and unexpected continuities in the transformation of life courses under conditions of sudden system change.
In this collection of essays, 17 writers -- including Sven Birkerts, Allegra Goodman, Vivian Gormick, Patricia Hampl, Phillip Lopate and Luc Sante -- revisit books, poems, stories or, in one case, song lyrics -- that made a deep impression on them in their youth, and explore how their impressions have changed in the interim. Each essay is a miniature memoir that focuses on the protean topic of love, in this case with such stories as "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sue Barton, Student Nurse," or the words to a song on the Beatles' album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
In "The Parliament of Man," Paul Kennedy presents a history of the United Nations (U.N.) that explains the institution's roots and functions while also examining the effectiveness of the U.N. as a body and on its prospects for success in meeting future challenges. Building on expertise he gained in drafting official reports for the U.N.'s 50th anniversary on how to improve the organization's performance, Kennedy explains the many commissions and committees and how the six main bodies -- the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, Secretariat and International Court -- operate and interact. He shows how on numerous occasions the five permanent members of the Security Council overcame political antagonisms to spearhead military supervision of aid in humanitarian crises, and, conversely, how lack of cooperation among the great powers has hamstrung such initiatives as the control of greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbated the deleterious effects of globalization on developing nations' economies. Kennedy concludes that while fallible and oftentimes dependent on the whims of powerful national governments or the foibles of individual senior U.N. administrators, the organization is indispensable.
In 2005, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies convened 110 leaders and thinkers in Aspen, Colorado, and asked them how to diagnose the reasons for the gap between climate science and action, and to generate recommendations to address it. This book is a report of the findings from that conference. The authors note that stressing the urgency of the problem of climate change might be counterproductive, as people often discount "urgency" as unreasoned alarmism. The authors suggest that adaptation may help people focus on the reality of what is coming, and thus to cut emissions to limit the bigger changes to come. Potential actions could range from developing drought-resistant crops to eliminating federal insurance and other subsidies that have encouraged coastal development, the contributors say.
T H I S
Yale Books in Brief
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.
On Political Equality
Robert A. Dahl, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science
(Yale University Press)
Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology and Social Change
Bruce Wexler, professor of psychiatry
(MIT Press)
Community in the Balance: Morality and Change in an Indonesian Society
James Hagen, development associate in the Office of Development
(Paradigm Publishers)
Yale Football: Images of Sports
Sam Rubin, editor of Yale Football News, Department of Athletics
(Arcadia Publishing)
Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire
Walter Goffart, senior research scholar and lecturer in history
(University of Pennsylvania Press)
The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1757-1763
Edited by James J. Caudle, associate editor of the Yale Boswell Editions, and David Hankins
(Yale University Press)
After the Fall of the Wall: Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany
Edited by Karl Ulrich Mayer, professor and chair of sociology, professor at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and director of the Center for Research on Inequalities and Life Course; and Martin Diewald and Anne Goedicke
(Stanford University Press)
Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love
Edited by Anne Fadiman, the Francis Writer in Residence at Yale
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present and Future of the United Nations
Paul Kennedy, the J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and director of
International Security Studies
(Random House Inc.)
Americans and Climate Change: A Synthesis of Insights and Recommendations
Edited by Daniel R. Abbasi, associate dean of the School of Forestry & Enviornmental Studies (F&ES), with a foreword by James Gustave Speth, dean of F&ES
(F&ES)
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
Medical School receives $57.3 million NIH grant
Medical School receives $11.5 million to improve cancer diagnosis . . .
Museum technicians to show their own artworks at Open Studios
Student designs creative alternative to traditional construction fencing
MORE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE NEWS
Grant supports work predicting outcomes in cancer patients
High testosterone kills nerve cells, says study
Team learns why leptin has powerful effect on appetite
New biomarker predicts survival in colorectal cancer
Proteins shown to have surprising effects on autoimmune disease
Relationship between stress and disease to be explored
Conference looks at literature's power to ease children's fears
Study: Myo1f has key role in mobilizing immune system
Study explores cost-effectiveness of using prizes in drug therapy
Heart studies often don't include kidney patients at high riskLevin, Zedillo discuss the role of UNESCO at Paris event
'Women and Globalization' will be the topic of discussion . . .
Marketing executives and scholars to discuss latest trends
Australia's history and people are focus of film
Exhibit features paintings of England by Venetian artist 'Canaletto'
Lecture will examine the U.N. and 21st-century challenges
Lab talk
Play reading and talk will explore the romantic life of Benjamin Franklin
Tanner Lectures and related discussion to focus on humanities
'Crafting a Life' is the theme of this year's Law School reunions
Student research on early French songs culminates in . . .
Mutual interests
ALL gallery after-party celebrates artists in its newest exhibit and in CWOS
Campus Notes
Yale Books in Brief
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