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In Print
April
2001
Brief
Reviews
Books Received
David
Kessler, Dean of the Yale School of Medicine
A Question
of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry
PublicAffairs/Perseus Books, $27.50
In October 1990 David
Kessler, then the medical director of Albert Einstein Hospital in
the Bronx, was offered a substantial promotion. U.S. president George
H.W. Bush '48 nominated him to head the Food and Drug Administration,
and when his appointment sailed through Congress, Kessler suddenly
found himself heading an organization in trouble that was, he said,
"underfunded, understaffed, and demoralized."
As he labored to put
the FDA's house in order, Kessler soon began attracting national
attention with his campaign to "clean up the anarchy in food labeling"
-- an effort that grabbed headlines when U.S. marshals surrounded
a food warehouse and seized 24,000 gallons of orange juice falsely
labeled as fresh. "It's wonderful to see the FDA metamorphosis from
a lapdog into a watchdog," said one commentator.
The agency was about
to become an attack dog. In this often riveting book, Kessler documents
his quixotic and, though he left the FDA in 1997 to head the Medical
School, ongoing crusade against the tobacco industry. The old saw
about never wanting to see how sausage and legislation -- add regulation
to the couplet -- are made is amply illustrated in these pages,
for as Kessler quickly learned when the FDA team he assembled began
to probe the industry, tobacco's influence in Washington was pervasive
and powerful. In protecting its interests, tobacco had never lost.
"The industry seemed
invincible," said Kessler, but the tobacco companies had clearly
never tangled with the likes of the FDA commissioner. "He's like
a revival preacher," said a Philip Morris executive.
Indeed, on these pages
Kessler writes with the single-minded intensity of the true believer,
and while the reader sometimes wonders whether Kessler ever relaxes,
or, for that matter, sleeps, it is clear that the battle demanded
self-sacrifice, nerves of steel, and an inordinately thick skin.
Kessler's tack was to demonstrate that the tobacco industry, despite
public comments to the contrary, had long known about the addictive
properties of nicotine. If the FDA could establish that there was
an intent to addict, it could exert regulatory control over the
industry.
After combing through
thousands of pages of documents, visiting tobacco companies, and
talking to a steady stream of informants with cloak-and-dagger code-names
such as "Critical," "PC," "Veritas," and, of course, "Cigarette,"
Kessler and his team painstakingly assembled the evidence to craft
tobacco-control regulations. No sooner were these adopted than they
were challenged as unconstitutional, and though the FDA would eventually
lose in the Supreme Court, "the world in which the tobacco companies
did their business had been fundamentally transformed," said Kessler.
"The FDA's investigation had changed popular thinking forever."
-- Reviewed by Bruce Fellman
Kim
Todd '92
Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotics in America
W.W. Norton, $26.95
When the first colonists
set foot on the North American continent, they found an unnerving
and alien landscape filled with unfamiliar plants and animals. The
prime motivation for many of these pilgrims was to recreate a religious
Eden, but at least a few of the travelers were imbued with a more
practical streak and a sense of what poet Wallace Stevens called
"the ultimate elegance -- the imagined land."
In their imagination,
America would be populated with the flora and fauna they grew up
with, and they quickly reached back overseas to import the organisms
that would make the fields and forests feel like home. "These men
had visions, and they wanted to build them out of cells rather than
stone," writes Kim Todd.
In this chronicle of
how and why such species as pigeons, honeybees, gypsy moths, brown
trout, and sea lamprey were -- sometimes deliberately, sometimes
by accident -- imported to the continent, Todd, an environmental
historian, presents tales that range from the remarkable to the
poignant. There's the story of the ubiquitous starling, an English
blackbird now found in huge flocks throughout North America. It
owes its presence here to a single reference in Henry IV, Part
One, and the desire of an eccentric named Eugene Schieffelin
to populate the country with every bird mentioned in the works of
Shakespeare. Then there's the depressing account of the decimation
of Hawaii's bird population by the mosquito. Until the 1820s, the
islands actually had no mosquitoes, but when whalemen left larvae
behind in water barrels, the noxious insects prospered and went
on to spread various avian plagues that wreaked havoc on birds that
had no natural immunities.
"These tales of exotic
species are steeped in sadness. While they appear tales of addition,
subtraction is the underlying theme," writes Todd.
Still, the situation
could have been worse, she notes. As the buffalo was hunted almost
to extinction, one cattleman looked out over the near empty range
and proposed bringing in herds of kangaroos.
-- Reviewed by Bruce Fellman
William
H. MacLeish '50
Uphill with Archie: A Son's Journey
Simon and Schuster, $25.00
For some children,
having a famous parent is a blessing; for others, it is a curse.
For William MacLeish, son of the well-known poet, it was a bit of
both.
In a memoir that is
part homage and part apology, MacLeish, an environmental journalist,
attempts to come to terms with his father, who died at age 90 in
1982. It must have been a remarkable upbringing.
MacLeish tells how
"Archie," a graduate of the Class of 1915, came of artistic age
in France in the 1920s, a place where the likes of T.S. Eliot, e.e.
cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway were houseguests.
The family returned to the U.S. just ahead of the Depression and
bought "Uphill Farm" in Conway, Massachusetts. There, William was
born, and since poetry did not pay the bills, his father, then on
assignment for Fortune magazine, was often away from home.
"I was desperate for
Archie," says William. "I created an intimacy out of absence."
The family would be
reunited in Washington, D.C., where Archie became Franklin Roosevelt's
Librarian of Con- gress. There are charming recollections of FDR,
Dean Acheson, Felix Frankfurter, Carl Sandburg, and the folksinger
Leadbelly, and later there are stories about William's time at Yale
as a member of the Class of 1950 and his service in the Brewster
administration during the tension-filled 1960s and 1970s. In addition
to easing the University's passage into coeducation and and through
May Day, MacLeish was also instrumental in recruiting writer William
Zinsser to edit the Yale Alumni Magazine in the 1970s.
Throughout the book,
there is plenty of the father's poetry -- and the son's angst as
he grapples with Archie's question: "What are we to make of ourselves
in the presence of this incomprehensible cosmos?"
-- Reviewed by Bruce Fellman
Dana
Milbank '90
Smashmouth: Two Years in the Gutter with Al Gore and George W.
Bush -- Notes from the 2000 Campaign Trail
Basic Books, $26.00
Dana Milbank's travels
on the presidential campaign trail for the New Republic and
then for the Washington Post taught the reporter to savor
the low road. The experience also convinced him that "nasty, smashmouth
politics" has had a bum rap, says Milbank. "There's even reason
to believe that tough, negative campaigning helps strengthen new
leaders, boost creativity in policy-making, and bring reform to
government."
Many people wish it
were otherwise, but as Milbank shows in the presidential demise
of Bill Bradley and John McCain, as well as in the rollercoaster
polling wars between George W. Bush
and Al Gore, going negative seems to win votes.
Rather than examine
why this might be true, the author instead concentrates on "the
human comedy that unfolds behind the news." Milbank is a master
of campaign minutiae, recalling such largely forgotten incidents
as Orrin Hatch's presidential bid and his implicit invitation to
George W. Bush to run as his vice president; Gary Bauer's fall off
a stage, frying pan in hand; the orange-shirted teenage shock troops
of Steve Forbes; and the fact that Bush communications director
Karen Hughes bought her oversized shoes from a supplier for male
cross-dressers. In addition, the author covers campaign press food,
staff food fights, dirty linen (literally), and sleeping arrangements
for the economy- conscious Gore staff. He also probes campaign financing,
the art of groveling ("Bush is pandering smarter than Gore is pandering"),
and the candidates' backgrounds.
Smashmouth deals
more with the primaries than the election, more with handlers and
aides than the elusive presidential hopefuls themselves. Serious
themes gradually take shape, nevertheless, as the candidates' tortoise-and-hare
debating story comes to reflect a larger contrast between Gore's
wavering inspirations and the Bush campaign's hard-nosed management.
-- Reviewed by David J. Baker, '78 PhD
Paul
Kane '84
Drowned Lands
University of South Carolina Press, $15.95
A haunting world emerges
from the poems of Drowned Lands, the latest winner in the
James Dickey Contemporary Poetry Series. Paul Kane writes of experiences
in which differences between body and landscape, life and afterlife,
and real and mythical are nearly indiscernible. Typical is "At the
Terminus," which shows people disembarking from trains that run
along "the third rail of mortality."
The poem is, at first,
a glimpse of everyday life -- that is, until Kane writes, "If this
is the afterlife, why hurry along the platforms?" The terminus of
life is shown to be an extension of the civilization that people
have constructed for themselves. The division between life and death
is so small that "Everyone's face here shines with an eclipse of
memory in which nothing's quite recalled and yet everything's familiar,"
says Kane.
The stream of disquiet
that flows gently through this book comes not from the events depicted,
but from the understated (and nearly nonexistent) emotion with which
the people react to the events. It is as if, in Drowned Lands, life is to be merely endured, rather than loved . . .
-- Reviewed by Jennifer L. Holley
Brief Reviews
Thurston Clarke
'68
Searching for Crusoe: A Journey among the Last Real Islands
Ballantine/Random House, $24.95
The author, a self-confessed "islomane," travels around
the world from Franklin Roosevelt's Campobello to George Orwell's
Jura to understand the allure that islands have exerted throughout
human history.
Georgina Dopico
Black '95PhD
Perfect Wives, Other Women:Adultery and Inquisition in Early
Modern Spain
Duke University Press, $19.95
Dopico Black, a scholar of Spanish and Portuguese culture, examines
how the bodies and souls of married women became associated with
categories separate from anatomy.
Paul Lussier '81
Last Refuge of Scoundrels: A Revolutionary War Novel
Warner Books, $26.95
Lussier's debut novel features an unflattering view of the Revolution's
icons as a world-wise hooker and her naive lover team up with a
band of unlikely guerrillas to lead America's bumbling leaders to
victory.
Karla Gottlieb '88
The Mother of Us All: A History of Queen Nanny, Leader of the
Windward Jamaican Maroons
African World Press, $16.95
Although outmanned and outgunned, an 18th-century black leader helped
a ragtag army of rebellious slaves resist some of the best-equipped
soldiers of the British empire. Historian Gottlieb profiles a nearly
forgotten hero.
Caitland Macy '92
The Fundamentals of Play
Random House, $24.95
There are echoes of Faulkner and The Great Gatsby in this loss-of-innocence
novel that traces the post-college fortunes of several friends as each tries to negotiate the gilded world of New York City in the
1990s.
Tom
Wolfe '57PhD
Hooking Up
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $14.95
In this collection of essays, many of them previously published,
and a novella, "America's maestro reporter/novelist" tackles everything from the sexual behavior of teenagers to the literary
feud Wolfe has had with Updike, Mailer, and Irving.
Books
Received
Jonathan Barnett
1958, 1963MArch, Editor
Planning for a New Century: The Regional Agenda
Island Press, $29.95
David E. Bernstein
1991JD
Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations,
and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal
Duke University Press, $39.95
Christiane Bird
1977
Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey through the Islamic
Republic of Iran
Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster, $26.95
Georgina M. Dopico
Black 1995PhD
Perfect Wives, Other Women: Adultery and Inquisition in Early
Modern Spain
Duke University Press, $19.95
Guillermo A. Calvo
1974PhD, Rudi Dornbusch, and Maurice Obstfeld, Editors
Money, Capital Mobility, and Trade: Essays in Honor of Robert
Mundell
MIT Press, $55.00
Jim Childress, Chad
Floyd, William Grover 1969MArch, Jeffrey Riley 1972BArch, and Mark
Simon 1972MArch
The Enthusiasms of Centerbrook
Images Publishing Group, $60.00
Tom Conner 1985PhD,
Editor
Andre Gides's Politics
Palgrave/St. Martin's Press, $55.00
John W. Danford
1976PhD
Roots of Freedom: A Primer on Modern Liberty
ISI Books, $19.95
Thomas M. Daniel
1951
Pioneers in Medicine and Their Impact on Tuberculosis
University of Rochester Press, $65.00
Randy Charles Epping
1983MA
A Beginner's Guide to the World Economy: Third Edition
Vintage Books, $12.00
Daniel Esty 1986JD,
Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies, and Damien Gerardin, Editors
Regulatory Competition and Economic Integration: Comparative
Integration
Oxford University Press, $95.00
Bruce Feiler 1987
Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land through the Five Books of
Moses
William Morrow/HarperCollins, $25.00
Richard Foster 1963BE,
1966PhD, and Sarah Kaplan
Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform
the Market -- and How to Successfully Transform Them
Doubleday, $27.50
Arthur Galston,
Eaton Professor Emeritus of
Botany, and Emily Shurr, Editors
New Dimension in Bioethics: Science, Ethics, and the Formation
of Public Policy
Kluwer Academic Publishers, $110.00
Jeffrey Garten,
Dean, Yale School of Management
The Mind of the CEO
Perseus Press/Basic Books, $25.00
James Gollin 1953,
1956MA
Pied Piper: The Many Lives of Noah Greenberg
Pendragon Press, $46.00
Arthur Gordon 1934,
Bill Hartfiel 1951, and Don Klassen
Diamonds: Eight Key Qualities That Open the Door to the Splendor
of Living
Century Communications, $19.95
Christopher Hoenig
1980
The Problem Solving Journey: Your Guide for Making Decisions
and Getting Results
Perseus Publishing, $20.00
Heyward Isham 1947,
Editor
Russia's Fate Through Russian Eyes
Westview Press, $30.00
Karl Jacoby 1997PhD
Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the
Hidden History of American Conservation
University of California Press, $39.95
Charles E. Lindblom,
Sterling Professor Emeritus
of Economics and Political Science
The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What to Make
of It
Yale University Press, $26.00
Paul MacAvoy 1960PhD,
Williams Brothers Professor of Management
The Natural Gas Market: Sixty Years of Regulation and Deregulation
Yale University Press, $35.00
J.D. McClatchey
1974PhD, Editor
Bright Pages: Yale Writers, 1701-2001
Yale University Press, $50.00
Jeffrey Merrick
1979PhD and Bryant T. Ragan, Editors
Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection
Oxford University Press, $29.95
Louis Putterman
1980PhD
Dollars and Change: Economics in Context
Yale University Press, $40.00
Gabriella Safran
1990
Rewriting the Jew: Assimilation Narratives in the Russian Empire
Stanford University Press, $45.00
Katrin Schultheiss
1984
Bodies and Souls: Politics and the Professionalization of Nursing
in France, 1880-1922
Harvard University Press, $49.95
Richard Selzer,
Professor of Surgery (retired), School of Medicine
The Exact Location of the Soul
Picador USA, $25.00
Jonathan Spence
1965PhD, Sterling Professor
of History
Treason By the Book
Viking Press, $24.95
Harold H. Tittmann
1951, 1954LLB
The Waldheim Affair: Democracy Subverted
Olin Frederick Publishing, $22.95
Connie Voisin 1986
Cathedral of the North: Poems
University of Pittsburgh Press, $12.95
Jay Winik 1980,
1993PhD
April 1865: The Month That Saved America
HarperCollins, $30.00 |
