 | Millicent Marcus' new book "Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz" examines recent films that deal with Fascism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. |
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.
Authors of new books can forward publishers’ book descriptions to susan.gonzalez.
This revised and updated new edition reflects the most recent progress in
the understanding of autism and related conditions, and offers an international
perspective on the state of the discipline. Featuring contributions from leading
authorities in the clinical and social sciences, the book covers current approaches
to definition and diagnosis; prevalence and planning for service delivery;
cognitive, genetic and neurobiological features; and pathophysiological mechanisms.
There is a new chapter covering communication issues. Interventions — including
pharmacological, behavioral and educational — are also reviewed, and
the final chapter addresses the nature of the fundamental social disturbance
that characterizes autism. In a humorous way, Dr. Anish Sheth and Josh Richman reveal what one can learn
about health and well-being by studying what’s in the toilet bowl. A “floater,” they
point out, is probably due to a buildup of gas. Other descriptive phrases used
to describe human waste include “The Log Jam,” “The Glass
Shard,” “The Deja Poo” and “The Hanging Chad.” The
book includes over 60 euphemisms for “number 2,” as well as trivia
and unusual case histories. The book, notes the publisher, is “the ultimate
bathroom reader.” This volume offers a complete description of the curent state of biology concerning
the papillomavirus. It evaluates the carcinogenic risk to humans posed by infection
with human papillomaviruses (HPVs). To date, more than 70 HPV types have been
identified, of which over 15 have been reported in cervical cancer biopsies.
Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women: approximately
500,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. This book considers the possible
involvement of HPV infection in cancers at other sites of the human body. Conceived as an introduction to modernismo, Aníbal González’ book
examines the movement’s contribution to the various Spanish-American
literary genres, its main authors (from Martí and Nájera to Darío
and Rodó), its social and historical context, and its continuing relevance
to the work of Spanish-American authors such as Gabriel García Márquez,
Sergio Ramírez and Mario Vargas Lloso. Modernismo is a literary movement
that occurred at the turn of the 19th century (roughly from the 1880s to the
1920s). It is widely regarded as the first Spanish-language literary movement
that originated in the New World and became influential in Spain. It is characterized
by the appropriation of French Symbolist aesthetics into Spanish-language literature,
as well as its cultural cosmopolitanism, its philological concern with language,
literary history and literary technique, and its journalistic penchant for
novelty and fashion. The first book in English on Italian Holocaust writing as a whole, “Narrative
and Imperative” explores the work of eight representative authors, including
the internationally known Primo Levi, Giorgio Bassani and Elsa Morante, and
lesser-known writers such as Giacomo Debenedetti, Paolo Maurensig, Liana Millu,
Bruno Piazza and Giuliana Tedeschi. Risa Sodi examines issues of genre, language,
gender and facticity while situating the works studied within the fields of
European and Holocaust letters. A brief history of the Italian Jews — the
oldest Jewish community in Europe — opens the book, and the conclusion
brings the study up to recent times. A blend of reportage, fiction and historical fact, “Foreigners” tells
the stories of three black men whose lives speak to the place and role of the
foreigner in English society. The three are Francis Barber, who was “given” to
the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson, but whose depth of freedom made him
more companion than servant — a freedom which may have hastened his demise
after Johnson’s death; Randolph Turpin, who made history in 1951 by defeating
Sugar Ray Robinson, becoming Britain’s first black world champion boxer,
but whose life ended in debt and despair; and David Oluwale, a Nigerian stowaway
who arrived in Leeds in 1949, whose life called into question the reality of
English justice and whose death at the hands of police in 1969 served as a
wake-up call for the entire nation. Each story illuminates the complexity and
drama that lie behind the simple notions of haplessness that have been used
to explain the tragedy of their lives, and each explores Caryl Phillip’s
longstanding themes of belonging, identity and race. In “Day of Empire,” Amy Chua examines the phenomenon of “hyperpowers” — those
few societies that amassed such military and economic might that they essentially
dominated the world. She explains how hyperpowers rise and why they fail. She
looks at the reasons for the success of such hyperpowers as Persia, Rome, Tang
China, the Mongols, the Dutch, the British and the United States, as well as
the roots of their ultimate demise. Chua’s study reveals a historical
pattern: For all of their differences, every one of these world-dominant powers
was, at least by the standards of its time, extraordinarily pluralistic and
tolerant. Each one, Chua says, succeeded by harnessing the skills and energies
of individuals from very different backgrounds, and by attracting and exploiting
talented groups that were excluded in other societies. The historical irony,
Chua maintains, is that in every instance, multicultural tolerance eventually
sowed the seeds of decline. The United States, Chua contends, is the quintessential
example of a power that rose to global dominance through tolerance and diversity,
yet today, concerns about outsourcing and uncontrolled illegal immigration
are producing a backlash against the tradition of cultural openness. Chua discusses
why American power may have already exceeded its limits and why it may be in
American interest to retreat from a go-it-alone approach and promote a new
mulilateralism in both domestic and foreign affairs. “Sketches from a Secret War” tells the story of Henryk Józewski,
a man who aspired to be a Cubist painter in his native Kyïv but whose
professional life took a different path. Józewski directed Polish intelligence
in Ukraine; governed the borderland region of Volhynia in the years between
World War I and World War II; worked in the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet underground
during the Second World War; and conspired against Poland’s Stalinists
until his arrest in 1953. His personal story sheds light on the ideals of those
who resisted it, and Timothy Snyder’s book demonstrates that Józweski’s
tolerant policies toward Ukrainians in Volhynia were part of Poland’s
plans to roll back the communist threat. Many of the archival materials Snyder
used to produce his book became available only following the fall of communism.
His epilogue connects Józewski’s legacy to the disintegration
of the Soviet Union and the democratic revolution in Ukraine in 2004. This book examines Soviet cultural politics from the revolution to Stalin’s
death in 1953. Drawing on newly released documents from the archives of the
former Soviet Union, the book provides insight on relations between Gorky,
Pasternak, Babel, Meyerhold, Shostakovich, Eisenstein, and many other intellectuals,
and the Soviet leadership. “Soviet Culture and Power” also explores
Stalin’s role in directing these relations. The documents presented reflect
the progression of Communist Party control of the arts and include decisions
of the Politburo, Stalin’s correspondence with intellectuals and his
responses to particular plays, novels and movie scripts, as well as petitions
to leaders from intellectuals and secret police reports. George Nelson was a young architect when he wrote a series of articles in
1935 and 1936 that introduced buildings and personalities from across the Atlantic
to wider American audiences. “Building a New Europe” presents this
collection of writings together for the first time. The subjects of Nelson’s
essays include such figures as Mies van Der Rohe and Le Corbusier, as well
as minor characters. All of the architects would soon be affected by World
War II, and Nelson’s essays spark questions about how the circumstances
of the pre-war years caused some architects to rise and others to fall. Millicent Marcus explores the surge of recent Italian films dealing with Fascism,
anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in her new book. This trend, she says, marks
a departure from the postwar reluctance to represent these sensitive subjects
in film. Marcus attributes the new acceptance not only to international influences,
but also to a domestic audience that is increasingly willing to face its collective
past and a cultural industry ready to produce its own forms of historic testimony.
She brings a variety of critical perspectives to bear on the question of how
Italiam filmmakers such as Ricky Tognazzi, Ettore Scola, Antonio Frazzi and
Ferzan Ozpetek are now confronting the Holocaust. The book includes a DVD of
Scola’s short film “’43-’97,” which has previously
been unavailable outside of Italy.
T H I S
Yale Books In Brief
Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders (second edition)
Edited by Dr. Fred Volkmar, director of the Yale Child Study Center, the Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry and
professor of pediatrics, psychology and psychiatry
(Cambridge University Press)
What’s Your Poo Telling You?
Dr. Anish Sheth, clinical fellow in internal medicine (digestive diseases) and Josh Richman
(Chronicle Books)
The Papillomaviruses
Edited by Daniel DiMaio, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Genetics and Robert Garcea
(Springer)
A Companion to Spanish American Modernismo
Aníbal González, professor and director of graduate studies in
Spanish and Portuguese
(Tamesis/Boydell & Brewer)
Narrative and Imperative: The First Fifty Years of Italian Holocaust Writing
(1944-1994)
Risa Sodi, senior lector and director of undergraduate study in Italian and director of the Italian Language Program
(Peter Lang New York)
Foreigners
Caryl Phillips, professor of English
(Alfred A. Knopf)
Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance — and Why They Fail
Amy Chua, the John M. Duff Jr. Professor of Law
(Doubleday Books)
Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission To Liberate Soviet
Ukraine
Timothy Snyder, professor of history
(Yale University Press)
Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917-1953
Katrina Clark, professor of comparative literature and of Slavic languages
and literatures, and Evgeny Dobrenko,
with Andrei Artizov and Oleg Naumov; translated by Marian Schwartz
(Yale University Press)
Building a New Europe: Portraits of Modern Architects; Essays by George Nelson (1935-1936)
Introduction by Kurt W. Forster, the Vincent Scully Professor of Architectural
History; with a foreword by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the School of Architecture
and the J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture
(Yale University Press)
Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz
Millicent Marcus, professor and chair of Italian, director of graduate studies n Italian
(Univeristy of Toronto Press Inc.)
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
Alumnus makes major gift to new cancer care facility
New Yale ALERT system to allow instant communications . . .
Microsoft-Yale project will provide worldwide access to . . .
NIH honors chemist for innovative work on antibodies
NIH-funded study to explore how damaged cancer cells mend
Study: New brain cells listen before they talk
Study shows tiny RNAs play big role in controlling genes
Yale geologist honored for research on climate variations
New Yale opera group will debut with a performance of . . .
Yale singing groups come together for a concert to benefit United Way
‘The Future of Energy’ conference to assess issues of next 25 years
Ten Yale scientists are honored with election as fellows of the AAAS
Funding cuts have created a ‘crisis’ in the battle against cancer, says panel
OCR chief testifies before Congress
Memorial service for Kitty Lustman-Findling to be held on Nov. 10
Frederick Douglass Prize awarded for book exploring . . .
Autumn’s paintbrush
Yale Books in Brief
Campus Notes
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