Michigan Today Online . . . June 1996

B O O K S Suggested Reading: Michigan Today takes notice of or reviews books by U-M faculty, graduates and students, and works published by the University of Michigan Press. We regret that we do not have space to publicize all of the unsolicited books we receive, nor to answer all inquiries and correspondence.

Before Our Time: A Theory of the Sixties From a Religious, Social and Psychoanalytic Perspective
By Henry Idema III '69, University Press of America, Lanham MD, $36.
Philosophy, theology, psychology, music and film criticism, sociology and autobiography combine in this fascinating meditation on the 1960s. Idema's depiction of his high school years in East Grand Rapids and college days in Ann Arbor offer a species of decidedly unsentimental nostalgia. He argues that his generation lost its grip on the moral tradition in which it was reared, and in so doing, lost the energy to pursue its own declared goals of civil rights, peace and the elimination of poverty. Seeing the best of religious traditions as sources of moral guidance, he suggests ways in which his generation might regain its promise by resisting narcissism and materialism.---JW.

Women in Medicine and Management: A Mentoring Guide
Edited by Dr. Deborah M. Shlian '68, American College of Physician Executives, Tampa, 1995, $38.
"After many hours of reading my boyfriend's premed books and notes, I could formulate study questions and explanations in response to his wrong answers. It gradually dawned on me that I was learning the material more quickly than he and retaining it at least as well." That was among many paths to a career in medicine and management described in this short, practical and inspiring volume.---J.W.

Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ
By William A. Christian Jr. '71 PhD, U. of California Press, 1996, $35.
Christian attempts to reconstitute an episode and its consequences: the report by two children in the Basque region of Northern Spain that they saw the Virgin Mary on June 29, 1931. By the end of that year, about one million persons had visited the hillside at Ezkioga. It was the early days of the Spanish Republic, thus the event drew the attention of clericalists and their republican foes, of hustlers, believers, mystics, soldiers and aristocrats, and many, many children.---JW.

The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis
By Herbert Kitchelt in collaboration with Anthony J. McGann, University of Michigan Press, 1995, $49.50.
Based on a wide array of comparative survey data, The Radical Right gives the reader an overview on why rightist parties are electorally powerful in some countries but not in others. The extreme right's "winning formula," they say, includes "a resolutely market-liberal stance on economic issues and an authoritarian and particulist stance on political questions of participatory democracy, of individual autonomy of lifestyles and cultural expressions, and of citizenship status." The parties can appeal "to primarily young and insecure workers based on the themes of authority, nation and race."---M. Pierson.

America Unequal
By Sheldon Danziger, Harvard U. Press, 1995, $26.
Although the national debate on domestic priorities has focused mostly on welfare reform and cutting social spending, Danziger, a U-M professor of social work, believes that policymakers should focus instead on economic decisions and practices that have lowered the standard of living for millions of families who do not receive welfare.

Danziger and co-author Peter Gottschalk, an economics professor at Boston College, say that the "main issue is not that more people have chosen not to work, but rather that demand by employers for less-skilled workers, even those who are willing to work at low wages, has declined." They propose that a family with at least one full-time worker earning the minimum wage should receive subsidies that raise their income above the poverty line after taxes and child care expenses.

Danziger and Gottschalk also recommend increasing federal subsidies for child care, providing more state income tax relief and child-support benefits for the working poor. In addition, for those who want to work but cannot find regular jobs, they advocate transitional public service employment, such as expanding summer job programs for inner-city youth and offering sub-minimum wage jobs of last resort to applicants from all poor families, regardless of welfare status.---Bernie DeGroat.

Vibrant Ann Arbor: A Color Portrait
Edited by Rosalie Savarino Edwards, photographs by Doris Kays Kraushaar and University Photographer Bob Kalmbach, Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, $10.
A 36-page panoptic view of Ann Arbor, this book harmoniously blends the town and gown as well as the old and the new. All proceeds to to the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds civic and social projects.---JW.

The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915
By Martin S. Pernick, Oxford U. Press, 1996, $29.70.
This bizarre account of medicine gone mad provides a strong warning to those who would add killing to the physician's goal of curing. Eugenics and euthanasia combined in a deadly prescription in 1915 when Chicago's Dr. Harry Haiselden, the "Black Stork," withheld treatment from defective newborns. Pernick, a U-M professor of history, examines Haiselden's campaign to protect society from "lives of no value," as the doctor put it. Pernick traces the eugenics/euthanasia "movement" in its American and Nazi German manifestations and notes the "important substantive and stylistic similarities between Haiselden and modern euthanasia advocates, especially Kevorkian."---JW.

Proposal Savvy: Creating Successful Proposals for Media Projects
By Elise K. Parsigian '86 PhD, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, California, 1996; $19.95 (p), $45 (hc).
Parsigian, who is also associate director of the Armenian Research Studies and Publications Center at U-M Dearborn, has filled a void in the literature of proposal preparation and presentation. Proposal Savvy is the first publication that addresses proposal writing in mass media. Her book is designed for novices and professionals in all forms of mass media, and offers a detailed and comprehensive guide to the conception, definition, planning, design and delivery of oral or written proposals in print, broadcast, public relations and advertising media. Prof. Roy Moore of the University of Kentucky journalism school predicts Proposal Savvy will have a "major impact on the art of proposal writing for years to come."---JW.

The Finch
There, then not there.
But yellow, yellow, yellow
and black. The small
swoop, the density of small needs,
the severe but tangent song
of one doomed to a short life
and small. Finch: like a bright
cipher at the feeder,
eating its weight in thistle seed
daily, a blip, a no-account
glitch in the garden.
Save us all, bird. Be the spark
that is the next moment,
would we have it.

"The Finch" is by Danny Rendleman '74, a creative writing instructor at U-M-Flint. From his collection of poems, The Middle West (Ridgeway Press, Roseville, MI, 1995, $10 softcover).

Choosing the Chief: Presidential Elections in France and the United States
By Roy Pierce, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1995, $45.
Pierce, a professor emeritus of political science at U-M, describes and compares the US and French electoral systems---the range of candidates over the past three decades, the structure of political parties, the social composition and behavior of voting blocks and other major variables. He then presents an overall evaluation of each country's system, examining the many facets of democracy and studding his analysis with insights like the following: "[T]he roster of presidential contenders in the United States in recent decades is impressive in its diversity. The main sources of this are the country's continental size and consequent regional variety, its characteristic patterns of population mix, and its sometimes exaggerated conception of its role in world affairs."---JW.

The Piano in Chamber Ensemble: An Annotated Guide
By Maurice Hinson '55 MM, '59 DMA, Indiana U. Press, 1996, $22.50.
The Piano In Chamber Ensemble describes over 3,200 compositions, from duos to octets, by more than 1,600 composers. This book is an easy-to-use reference book for courses in chamber music and an invaluable resource for players of chamber instruments.---MP.

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