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In Print
May
2002
Brief
Reviews
Books Received
Leonard
Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser '64
The
News About the News: American Journalism in Peril
Alfred
A. Knopf, $25.00
For journalists
and journalism, these are, to quote Dickens, "the best of times
and the worst of times." There are new technologies for gathering
the news, new kinds of media in which to disseminate it, and better-trained
writers to make sense of events. However, arrayed against the prospect
of a brighter future are some disturbing trends, as giant multimedia
conglomerates, driven by investors to cut costs, trim their news-gathering
operations.
The intersection
of Wall Street and Main Street is of vital importance to more than
just the denizens of print, electronic, and Internet newsrooms,
say Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser, executive editor and
associate editor respectively of the Washington Post. "News
matters," say the authors. "Good journalism makes a difference somewhere every day . [and] gives every one of us the opportunity to be
real citizens of our own time."
Veteran
reporters Downie and Kaiser discuss how the news is gathered by
the various media outlets and how the integrity of the process can
be threatened by economic considerations. For example, in a chapter
on the networks, the authors present candid interviews with Dan
Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings in which the anchormen comment
on the differences between one of their recent newscasts and a show each anchor did in the early 1980s. Production quality might be
better now, but news values were higher then, says Rather. "Nobody
said, 'Well it costs too much and we can't afford that.' . Those
decisions were made on the basis of, Is it important? Is it interesting?.
That's changed quite a bit."
Covering
the globe can be expensive, and nowhere is this more true than in
investigative journalism, where reporters may need to travel many
miles over a period of weeks, even months, and where the story may,
as was the case with Watergate, endanger the financial health of
the news gathering operation, to say nothing of the safety of the
writers. Among journalists, Downie and Kaiser point out, there is
a fear that business pressures will undermine accountability reporting,
which the authors term journalism's "highest purpose" because it encourages "the honest and open use of power" and thus helps "make
America a fairer society."
But as
the events of September 11 and its aftermath demonstrate, Americans
are hungry for high-quality news. Satisfying that appetite could even be profitable. "This truly is an information age, and good
journalists are among society's most reliable and helpful guides
to it," say Downie and Kaiser.
-- Reviewed
by Bruce Fellman
Bradley
Graham '74
Hit
to Kill: The Battle Over Shielding America from Missile Attack
PublicAffairs/Perseus,
$27.50
In July
1979, Ronald Reagan, then a Republican candidate for U.S. president,
made a campaign stop at Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain, deep inside
of which is the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense
facility. NORAD's charge is to provide the nation with advance warning
about a nuclear attack, but, Reagan would learn, accurate tracking
of incoming missiles was all the facility could do.
The nation's
vulnerability had a powerful effect on the future president and,
not long after Reagan's inauguration in 1981, he became the chief evangelist for the Strategic Defense Initiative, an antimissile
"umbrella" then known as "Star Wars." Reagan was not the first U.S.
leader to propose a system for blasting hostile missiles from the
sky, nor was he the last to do so. But for a variety of reasons
-- some political, some technical -- NORAD can still only monitor
an attack.
However,
the dream of stopping one in its tracks remains strong, and with
the inauguration of George W. Bush
'68 last year, the missile defense issue, which had been on the
back burners during the Clinton administration, has resurfaced with
a vengeance. Bradley Graham, the military affairs correspondent
for the Washington Post, offers an in-depth and well-paced
account of the political and technological challenges that have
to be addressed for such a system to become a reality.
The book
is admirably nonpartisan, and in putting it together, Graham had
access to everyone, from current and past U.S. presidents to the
scientists attempting to figure out how, in the words of early skeptic
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the military could hit "a bullet with a bullet."
Despite the fact that this country would eventually put men on the
moon and "win" the space race, the U.S. remains, despite a success
or two, unable to reliably knock a missile out of the sky. There
are also, Graham points out, formidable hurdles, most notably the
ABM treaty, on the diplomatic front that must be resolved before
such a system could be implemented. Then too, with the end of the
Cold War, there are concerns about whether such an antimissile shield
is even needed.
Terrorism
has sharpened the arguments of detractors and proponents. "Critics
argued that the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington proved
Bush had been concentrating on the wrong threat," says Graham. But,
the author adds, the possibility that a rogue nation could develop
a long-range missile "also made a case for protecting American cities
by all available means, including missile defense."
Readers
who would like to be brought up-to-date on this contentious matter
will find no better resource than this book.
-- Reviewed
by Bruce Fellman
Julia
Glass '78
Three
Junes
Pantheon
Books, $25.00
"Some
of us get love just. exactly. right -- as right as it can be
-- and others get everything else right but," says Fenno McLeod,
one of the characters searching for elusive happiness in Three
Junes, the debut novel of Julia Glass. Fenno considers himself
part of the "right but" group, and in this story about three generations
of the McLeod family, Glass chronicles attempts at joie de vivre
that are constantly threatened by the remembrance of things past.
The story
begins with the recently widowed patriarch's tour of Greece. His
gay son, Fenno, narrates the second part from his life of cautious
abandon in New York City. Finally, the book concludes with a surprising
melange of lives that converge at a house in the Hamptons.
The novel
un-folds by way of constant fluctuation between the present moment
and old memories, as if with an unwillingness to let things go.
These are characters haunted by infidelity, departed loved ones,
and a familial distance marked by a literal and figurative oceanic
divide. Fenno once refers to change as "a car hitting an icy patch
and whipping me in a vicious circle to face the same direction but
with a fearful new perspective." To accept change as simply new
-- and not fearful -- is the challenge that Glass's characters face.
--Reviewed by Jennifer L. Holley
Ann
Satterthwaite '60MCP
Going
Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences
Yale
University Press, $39.95
A city
planner by trade, the author is more interested in social and community
issues than in the psychology or deconstruction of individual consumer
behavior. Her study of the $3 trillion retailing business analyzes
trends all too familiar to any shopper today -- the growth of giant
chains at the expense of small businesses, homogenization of product
lines and stores, and the loss of social contact in the shopping experience thanks to malls and e-commerce.
Satterthwaite
offers her own perspective, partly by delving into history as far
back as the shopkeepers of Mesopotamia and the consumer protection
regulators of ancient Egypt. In her search, she finds proto-malls
in ancient Rome and recalls a struggle to save "Mom and Pop" retailers
from megastores in the work of Emile Zola. Retailing, tainted by
Victorian contempt for haggling, was a stigmatized part of the economy
and not even represented in the Fortune 500 until May 1995. Above
all, it has been left -- for too long, she argues -- to the vicissitudes
of laissez-faire economics.
What
appeals most in her laborious survey is the firsthand knowledge
and deep-felt appreciation of specific shopping institutions. The
century-old outdoor ethnic market in Chicago banished to a remote
suburb; the demise of an authentic French emporium in Georgetown;
the destruction of pharmacies by managed care; our large urban market
arcades -- the reader senses the flavor of shopping in these places
and can only applaud the author's appeal for safeguards to preserve
such human interactions in planning our future.
-- Reviewed
by David J. Baker '78PhD
Brief Reviews
Alita
Anderson '01MD
On the Other Side: African Americans Tell of Healing
Westminster
John Knox Press, $19.95
In the middle of medical school, the author left to pursue a spiritual
journey in which she collected the stories of African American healers.
Anderson's moving account, illustrated with her paintings, tells
of a different kind of medical education.
Stephen
Raleigh Byler '98MAR
Searching for Intruders: A Novel in Stories
William
Morrow, $21.95
From coping with cockroaches
(badly) to befriending a starving puppy, Wilson Hues, the hero in
this often brilliant debut novel, is an intriguing and exasperating
mix of masculine tenderness and other modern contrasts.
David
L. Goodrich '52
The Real Nick and Nora: Frances Gilbert and Albert Hackett, Writers
of Stage and Screen Classics
Southern
Illinois University Press, $30.00
The authors of such classic
screenplays as It's A Wonderful Life and The Diary of
Anne Frank come to life in the definitive biography, written
by their nephew.
Elizabeth
Hartmann '74
The Truth about Fire
Carroll
and Graf, $24.00
When history professor
Gillian Grace moves to northern Michigan, she yearns for a measure
of peace. Instead, the protagonist of this nail-biter of a novel
finds herself drawn into a murderous plot by local and international
white supremacists to unleash a biological weapon.
Jules
David Prown, Paul Mellon Professor Emeritus
of the History of Art
Art As Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture
Yale
University Press, $30.00
A collection of 18 essays
bookends Prown's distinguished career as teacher, historian of American
art, and pioneer in the study of material culture.
Carol
Weston '78
Melanie Martin Goes Dutch: The Private Diary of My Almost Bummer
Summer with Cecily, Matt the Brat, and Vincent van Go Go Go
Alfred
A. Knopf, $15.95
A favorite writer of
preteen girls, Weston offers the latest installment in the ongoing
adventures of a spunky young globetrotter.
Books
Received
Kelly
Askew 1988 and Richard R. Wilk, Editors
The Anthropology of Media: A Reader
Blackwell
Publishing, $29.95
Roberta Baker 1979
No Ordinary Olive
Little,
Brown, $14.95
Stuart Banner 1985
The Death Penalty: An American History
Harvard
University Press, $29.95
Paul Bloom, Professor
of Psychology and Linguistics; Karen Wynn, Professor of Psychology;
and Ray Jackendorf, Editors
Language, Logic, and Concepts
MIT
Press, $35.00
Frank Clifford 1967
The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of the Vanishing West Along
the Continental Divide
Broadway
Books/Bantam Doubleday Dell, $24.95
Donald J. Cohen,
MD, 1966MD, and Linda C. Mayes, MD, Arnold Gesell Associate Professor
of Child Development, Yale Child Study
The Yale Child Study Center Guide to Understanding Your Child
Little,
Brown, $40.00
Elisha Cooper 1993,
Writer and Illustrator
Ice Cream
Greenwillow
Books/HarperCollins, $15.95
Nora Ellen Groce,
Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health; Josiah David
Kaplan; and Lawrence C. Kaplan, MD
Accessible Connecticut: A Guide to Recreation for Children with
Disabilities and Their Families
Yale
University Press, $12.95
John W. Harper 1945W
Tent Pegs and 2nd Lieutenants: Memoirs and Stories of the Korean
War
Conversation
Press, $19.95
Dwight Heath 1959
Drinking Occasions: Comparative Perspectives on Alcohol and Culture
Brunner/Mazel,
$49.95
Jonathan Scott Holloway
1995PhD
Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris Jr., E. Franklin Frazier,
and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941
University
of North Carolina Press, $18.95
John Jagger 1949BS,
1954PhD
Cove Days: The Seaside Childhood of a Scientist
Photon
Publications, $20.00
Alvin Kernan 1954PhD
The Fruited Plain: Fables for a Postmodern Democracy
Yale
University Press, $24.95
Kate Manning 1979
Whitegirl
Dial
Press/Random House, $23.95
Brian Massumi 1987PhD
Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation
Duke
University Press, $19.95
Max McCalman and
David Gibbons 1979
The Cheese Plate
Clarkson
Potter/Crown/Random House, $32.50
Maria E. Montoya
1986
Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict
over Land in the American West, 1840-1900
University
of California Press, $50.00
Anthony C. Moore
1959
No Second Eden
Vantage Press, $19.95
James A. Ogilvy
1968PhD
Creating Better Futures: Scenario Planning as a Tool for a Better
Tomorrow
Oxford
University Press, $35.00
Steve Olson 1978
Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes
Houghton
Mifflin, $25.00
Ann Packer 1981
The Dive from Clausen's Pier
Alfred
A. Knopf, $24.00
S. (Ja'far) Reiss
1956
The Alternative: A novel concerning the sweetness & sublimity
of essential Islam
iUniverse,
$31.95
Bryan Mark Rigg
1996
Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws
and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military
University
Press of Kansas, $29.95
Shawn W. Rosenberg
1972
The Not So Common Sense
Yale
University Press, $40.00
Barnett R. Rubin
1972
The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse
in the International System, Second Edition
Yale
University Press, $18.95
Stephen Sandy 1955
Surface Impressions: A Poem
Louisiana
State University Press, $24.95
Peter Sheras 1970
Your Child: Bully or Victim? Understanding and Ending School
Yard Tyranny
Fireside/Simon
and Schuster, $13.00
Robert J. Smith
1957
The Bouchayers of Grenoble and French Industrial Enterprise,
1850-1970
Johns
Hopkins University Press, $42.50
Alexander Stille
1978
The Future of the Past
Farrar,
Straus, and Giroux, $25.00 |
