Wendy Quoted in Boston Globe

Kennedy agrees to pen memoirs in lucrative deal
Senator's family life and political career to be focus of book
By Susan Milligan
Globe Staff / November 27, 2007

WASHINGTON - Senator Edward M. Kennedy has agreed to a multimillion dollar deal with Hachette Book Group USA to pen his memoirs, giving the veteran Massachusetts lawmaker a forum for his own perspective on a life and career that has been examined by others in countless books and articles, negotiators of the deal confirmed yesterday.

Neither Kennedy's office nor the publishing house would reveal the size of the package, but a publishing figure familiar with the deal said Kennedy's payment was one of the largest in history, eclipsing the $8 million given to New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Former President Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair each got a reported $10 million for their memoirs.

... Wendy Strothman, a Boston literary agent, said that while some publishers accept losses on autobiographies by famous people because they want the prestige of the deal, a Kennedy book would likely sell well.

"I'll go out and buy it," Strothman said.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Article on David Blight & A SLAVE NO MORE in Daily Press

Newly discovered memoirs open a closed chapter of a slave's life
By RUSTY DENNEN
The Free Lance-Star, November 25, 2007

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - In the spring of 1862, slave John Washington stood along the Fredericksburg shore of the Rappahannock River, about to embark on what he had yearned for all his life _ his journey to freedom.

Washington's granddaughter, Ruth Washington, and great-great-granddaughter, Maureen Ramos, stood at the same spot earlier this month, at what is now Old Mill Park. They came to pay their respects to a man they are just now beginning to know.

At dusk, under a crisp autumn sky, Ruth Washington, 89, looked out at the water.

"I can visualize my grandfather, trying to get across to freedom. For him to pursue and be persistent to become a free man," she said. "That's what he wanted. His story to be told."

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Rachel Herz, author of Scent of Desire Interviewed on Marketplace

How to make it smell like a sale
Marketplace, November 22, 2007

Retailers know consumers can't negotiate with their nose when it finds something it likes. Lisa Napoli talks to Rachel Herz, author of "The Scent of Desire," about how some stores are using smell to seal the deal.

Lisa Napoli: On this day dedicated to food, you're probably grateful for your sense of taste. What about your sense of smell? Rachel Herz has just written a book called "The Scent of Desire." She says smell is the retailer's dream.

Rachel Herz: Cinnabon is a classic example, which uses the scent of its fabulous cinnamon buns to lure passersby to want to have a cinnamon bun. Actually, KFC is another one who's recently gotten on this bandwagon, and Exxon On The Run, they have been adding a coffee scent to their brewing kiosks, and apparently sales have increased 55 percent for coffee. So this is the example or literal scent marketing -- where you've the scent that's obviously connected to what you're selling in order to augment sales.

Napoli: Back to the Cinnabon/KFC example, those places, they, they're enhancing the smell of their already existing smells that are coming out of the stores with the food they're making?

Herz: That's right. So they're either using their own real smells or they're actually using synthetics that are being pumped out into the environment where they're being sold. So you can kind of tell, depending upon if they're actually really cooking in the establishment or if it's in a place like a sterile mall, where they couldn't possibly doing any baking, and yet you're still getting this overwhelming aroma of Cinnabon, let's just say.

For the rest of the interview, or to listen to the audio, please click here.

Rachel Herz's THE SCENT OF DESIRE Reviewed in Seattle Times

"The Scent of Desire" | Intriguing analysis of smell
By Alan Moores,
Seattle Times, November 18, 2007

"The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell"
by Rachel Herz
Morrow, 288 pp., $24.95

What better praise to give a nonfiction book than to say it will transform the way its readers think about its subject. In Rachel Herz's case, the subject is our sense of smell.

Herz, a visiting professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, is one of the world's leading researchers in this young field, and one of the field's better explainers, variously turning up in The New Yorker or NPR or U.S. News & World Report to share her findings.

In "The Scent of Desire," she starts with the notion of inherently "bad" smells. They don't exist, she argues, offering as evidence, among other things, her own love of skunk essence, or infants' acceptance — even love? — of the smell of feces, or our military's failure to develop an all-purpose stink bomb, even in using "U.S. Army issue latrine scent."

Likewise, she debunks the notion of any inherently "healthful" smells in, say, aromatherapy. She doesn't discount its use in a relaxing environment — say, in a hot bath or on a massage table — but adds: "there is no scientific evidence in humans that by inhaling sandalwood aroma the essence of sandalwood is detectable in the bloodstream — which it would have to be if it were producing a pharmacological effect."

For the rest of the review, please click here.

David Blight's A SLAVE NO MORE in Washington Post

Who really freed America's slaves?
By Jonathan Yardley
Washington Post, Sunday, November 18, 2007; BW15

A SLAVE NO MORE
Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation
By David W. Blight
Harcourt. 307 pp. $25

In American mythology, the freeing of the slaves is a top-to-bottom affair: Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, and after that it was up to government to ensure their rights, though for about a century government didn't exactly do a good job of it. David W. Blight makes plain that it never was as simple as that. After careful study of two recently discovered memoirs by former slaves, John M. Washington and Wallace Turnage, Blight writes:

"American emancipation was always a complex interplay between at least four factors: the geographical course of the war; the size of the slave population in any given region; the policies enforced at any given time by the Union and Confederate governments through their military forces; and the volition of slaves themselves in seizing their moments to embrace a reasonable chance for freedom. Turnage's and Washington's narratives throw into bold relief and confirm the significance of each of these factors. To the perennial question -- who freed the slaves, Lincoln or blacks themselves? -- the Turnage and Washington stories answer conclusively that it was both. Without the Union armies and navies, neither man would have achieved freedom when he did. But they never would have gained their freedom without their own courageous initiative, either."

This is somewhat slippery ground, for inherent in it is the danger of generalizing from the particular -- and in this case, an exceedingly small and selective particular. At the time of emancipation, only about 10 percent of freed slaves could read and write; Washington and Turnage were in that 10 percent. Though reliable documentation of the slaves' response to the Emancipation Proclamation is sparse, we know that if their general reaction was jubilation, some also expressed caution and uncertainty. And, of course, in the places where the proclamation was intended to take effect -- the states of the Confederacy -- emancipation was nothing more than Union rhetoric unless and until federal forces arrived. By no means was it guaranteed even then, as the racial views of many Union soldiers were not discernibly different from those of Rebel soldiers, and their enthusiasm for enforcing emancipation was decidedly limited.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Blogged: David Blight and A SLAVE NO MORE Event

Walking the Road from Slavery to Freedom With John Washington
From Civil War Memory Blog by Kevin Levin

I don't really know how to begin this post about my experience yesterday in Fredericksburg other than to say that it reminded me of just why I find the study of history and the Civil War in particular to be so important. It was a whirlwind day that began in the afternoon with a tour of John Washington's Fredericksburg through his own words and memories. Michaela and I were honored to be included in the afternoon tour which included Ruth A. Washington, granddaughter of John Washington and his great-great granddaughter, Maureen F. Ramos. I was conscious throughout the tour that they were hearing the story of their ancestor for the first time. For me it was a meaningful and entertaining way to broaden my own understanding of the past through the words of an actual participant. However, as much as I was moved by Washington's own words for Ruth and Maureen it was a much more personal and profound experience.

For the rest of the blog entry as well as a picture, please click here.

Michael Kodas' HIGH CRIMES in Publisher's Weekly

High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed
Michael Kodas. Hyperion, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-1-4013-0273-3
Publishers Weekly, Nov. 19, 2007

Journalist Kodas has written a disturbing account of stupidity and greed on the slopes of Mount Everest. On assignment for the Hartford Courant in 2004, Kodas joined an expedition led by a couple who had summited the mountain more than a dozen times between them. As he moved up Everest, Kodas watched his expedition disintegrate in a mess of recriminations, thefts, lies and violence. At the same time, a sociopathic guide was leading a 69-year-old doctor to his death on the unforgiving slopes. The twin disasters led Kodas to delve into the commercialization of Mount Everest, and to discover that such experiences were becoming a depressing norm. A thorough reporter, Kodas does an excellent job exposing the ways in which money and ego have corrupted the traditional cultures of both mountaineers and their Sherpa guides. He also brings a painful focus to the delusions, misunderstandings and indifference that allow climbers to literally step over the bodies of dying people on their way to the top. Oddly enough, Kodas writes less ably about himself, and the reasons for his own expedition's collapse remain unclear; the sequencing of story lines is confusing as well. Nevertheless, his narrative is as hard to turn away from as a slow-motion train wreck. (Feb.)

For other reviews in this article, please click here.

Freada Kapor Klein's GIVING NOTICE mentioned in Boston Globe

Our bittersweet 16
By Anita F. Hill
November 19, 2007, Boston Globe

...Despite high-profile suits, a woman's chance of winning a valid sexual harassment case is by no means certain. My letters confirm that most women can't afford or don't care to file a lawsuit. In her book, "Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest Leave the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay," Freada Kapor Klein recommends structural and institutional changes to eliminate the entrenched discrimination that permeates corporate settings so that fewer suits are needed.

"Self empowerment," a natural response to loss of faith in systems, is a theme repeated in many of the letters. And new ways of achieving that goal have emerged. Elisabeth Babcock of Boston's Crittenton Women's Union uses technology and research to help low-income women achieve "personal and economic independence," which will lessen their vulnerability to workplace abuses. Her online forum invites women to give voice to their concerns and triumphs....

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Lou Ureneck's Backcast wins the National Outdoor Book Award

Outdoor Literature Category
Winner. Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-fishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska. By Lou Ureneck. St. Martins Press, New York. ISBN 9780312371517.

Backcast plays out like the long and splendid arc of a fly line, unfurling on an Alaskan river trip that Lou Ureneck has arranged to re-connect with his son. As the trip progresses, Ureneck reflects back on his own life while adroitly capturing the sometimes hilarious and sometimes serious interactions between himself and his son. The result is a realistic and heartwarming story of a father and his son -- and a work of outdoor literature of the highest order.

For the other winners, please click here.

Lour Ureneck's Backcast in the Star-Ledger

A fisherman's catch: The son who got away
BY PETER GENOVESE
Star-Ledger, Wednesday, November 14, 2007

A river has always run through Lou Ureneck's life. In his childhood, there was the little river that flowed in a broad curve behind Gorski's Hardware in Spotswood. There, he would catch catfish, bluegills, yellow perch and once a 34-inch chain pickerel that won him the local fishing derby.

Later, after his family moved to Toms River, it was the Metedeconk River, where he would put out traps for blue-claw crabs and swim in the muddy water. After that, it was a brook that ran under a railroad trestle in Keyport, where he would use bloodworms to catch flounder.

Seven years ago, it was the Kanektok River in western Alaska, where Ureneck, then 49, hoped to close the rift that had developed between the newspaper editor and his son, Adam, then 18. Ureneck had been divorced from Adam's mother for a year, and his son was angry and bitter.

"I have to admit the trip was a little desperate," Ureneck writes in "Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-fishing and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska" (St. Martin's Press, $24.95).

"My life was in a ditch," Ureneck continues. "I was broke from lawyers, therapists and alimony payments and fearful that my son's anger was hardening into lifelong permanence. I wanted to pull him back into my life. I feared losing him. Alaska was my answer."

It was almost their undoing; the trip was challenging and harrowing. There was an encounter with a 9-foot-tall brown bear, and a scary, surreal trip through a twisty, varicose-veined section of the Kanektok called the Braids.

"I'm a furious rewriter," Ureneck said by phone from his office at Boston University, where he is chairman of the Department of Journalism. "I must have rewritten the opening section 30-40 times."

"Backcast" is a compelling read, part true adventure, part commentary on fatherhood and life's twists and turns.

For the rest of the article, click here.

David Blight's A SLAVE NO MORE is a November “Significant 7” title on Amazon!

From Amazon's Significant Seven

Spotlight Title: A SLAVE NO MORE by David Blight

Most Americans have learned about the history of slavery and emancipation in the United States through a haphazard combination of grade-school textbooks, Hollywood films, and one of the most-watched TV miniseries of all time. Of the more than four million enslaved before the Civil War, only a handful of their first-person narratives have survived. Needless to say, the rediscovery of two narratives of self-emancipation is both a major historic and a literary event. In A Slave No More, esteemed historian David Blight has faithfully transcribed the unique manuscripts of John Washington (1838-1918) and Wallace Turnage (1846-1916), which were both recently brought to light from family archives. Washington and Turnage's accounts of their early lives in bondage and daring flights to freedom--through the chaotic Union army lines and perilous Alabama swamps respectively--are nothing less than riveting. In their capacity to express their authors' profound humanity in the face of the worst brutality, their words rise off the page as resilient and relevant as when they were first written. Blight devotes the first half of the book to four short essays in which he masterfully reconstructs the men's biographies and larger family histories, taking great care to bring the detail and drama of their individual lives into focus against the larger canvas of American history. But to feel the full impact of Washington and Turnage's stories, readers are urged to begin with their own words on page 162 before returning to Blight's excellent histories. --Lauren

For the other Amazon Significant Seven Books, please click here.

Lou Ureneck's Backcast Book of the Month for National Geographic Traveler

Trip Lit: New Books that Transport Us
By Don George, National Geographic Traveler

Book of the Month:
Backcast, by Lou Ureneck

This deeply moving memoir explores two uncharted territories: the wilderness of Alaska, specifically the Kanektok River in the southwestern part of the state, and the wilderness of Parenthood, specifically the region where a recently divorced father and his teenage son try to find new ways to understand each other. I have never been to Alaska, but I've been wandering the land of Parenthood for two decades now, and Ureneck presents a clear-eyed portrait of its tundras and torrents, valleys and peaks. This makes me trust and appreciate all the more his keenly detailed evocations of Alaska.

Like the Kanektok River, Ureneck's narrative races along, braiding memories of his own fatherless upbringing and failed attempts to become the father he never had with his account of a poorly planned one-week post-graduation rafting trip with his son in the unforgiving wild. Ureneck's powers of perception and analysis have been stripped raw by life, and his writing is spare and sinewy; the prose resonates with authenticity on every page, whether he is talking about the misery of awaking in a soaking-wet sleeping bag or in a disintegrating marriage.

The Alaskan wilderness leaps to life in its gritty reality—fast-rushing rivers, misty rolling hills, bears "the size of church doors," relentless rainfalls, eddies roiling with fat salmon and char—just as the tenuous terrain between father and son leaps to life too. Anger and hurt thread through this book—but so do taut stretches of beauty, wonder, and redemption in the riches of life in the wild.

By the end of the journey, this fraying camping and fishing pilgrimage has become a metaphor for something far greater: a desperate attempt to fix the heart of this father-son relationship in the larger heart of Alaska. To Ureneck's credit, his humble, honest odyssey touches and transforms the Alaska in us all.

To see the other books reviewed in this article, please click here.

Raymond Arsenault Wins Southern History Prize

Raymond Arsenault, the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, is the recipient of the 2007 Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Award. Announced at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Richmond, Virginia, on November 1, the award recognizes Arsenault’s book, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, as the most important book published in the field of Southern history in 2006. A critically acclaimed study of the 1961 nonviolent movement that challenged the Jim Crow tradition of racially segregated buses, trains, and terminals, Freedom Riders was published as part the Pivotal Moments in American History series issued by Oxford University Press and co-edited by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historians David Hackett Fischer and James McPherson. Previously the book was selected as an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review, as one of the Best Books of 2006 by the Washington Post Bookworld, as a featured choice of the History Book Club, and as a 2006 Honorable Mention Outstanding Book by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. Freedom Riders has also been selected for documentary film adaptation by WGBH-Boston’s “American Experience” public television series, with an expected release in May 2011, the fiftieth anniversary of the first Freedom Ride.

Christopher Lane, Author of Shyness, Article in Washington Post

Shy? Or Something More Serious?

By Christopher Lane
Special to The Washington Post, Tuesday, November 6, 2007; Page HE01

If anyone in my parents' generation had argued that shyness and other run-of-the-mill behaviors might one day be called mental disorders, most people would probably have laughed or stared in disbelief. At the time, wallflowers were often admired as modest and geeks considered bookish. Those who were shy might sometimes have been thought awkward -- my musically gifted mother certainly was -- but their reticence fell within the range of normal behavior. When their discomfort was pronounced, the American Psychiatric Association called it "anxiety neurosis," a psychoanalytic term that encouraged talk-related treatment.

All that changed in February 1980, when the APA classified the broadly defined "avoidant personality disorder" and "social phobia" (later dubbed "social anxiety disorder") as diseases. The professional group also listed 110 other new disorders in its revised diagnostic manual, with the result that the total number of mental illnesses on the books almost doubled overnight. It was a dramatic example of the modern medicalization of behavior.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Christopher Lane's Shyness Mentioned in LA Times

Are we too quick to medicate children?
Parents who seek help for behavioral problems are increasingly likely to walk away with a prescription for powerful drugs. But some experts counsel caution.
By Melissa Healy
Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2007

Northwestern University's Christopher Lane, author of a new book, "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness," calls psychiatry's growing focus on children "the perfect storm" for overdiagnosis.

"You've got a constituency -- children -- who cannot make informed medical decisions for themselves," Lane says. In a fast-moving culture that heaps stress and high expectations on children, "parents are in many cases under great pressure to ensure their child succeeds and is socially proficient. A child that doesn't negotiate rapidly those hurdles can look very quickly as if he or she is falling behind, or displaying behavior that warrants medical concern."

Some mental-health professionals are wary, too, of the implied promise of early intervention. In fact, whether, how or in how many cases a child's problematic behavior leads to full-blown mental illness -- what health professionals call the "progression" of the disease -- is in many cases not well understood, especially when the patient is not even a teenager yet.

As to the claim that early treatment will lessen symptoms or prevent mental illness later, there is growing evidence, but it is hardly a slam-dunk. And it doesn't address which kids will benefit from pharmacological treatment and which won't.

As the mental-health profession begins debate over how to update its diagnostic manual, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, which is set for reissue in 2012, it is debating whether it has gone too far. The recent publication of two books critical of the expansion of psychiatric diagnoses -- Lane's "Shyness" and "The Loss of Sadness," by Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield -- have touched off a flurry of discussion.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Freada Kapor Klein, Author of Giving Notice, Article in San Francisco Chronicle

Early admissions policies give children of the rich an edge
Mitch Kapor,Freada Kapor Klein
San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, November 4, 2007

This week the College Board released its annual report on college pricing - and as many feared, tuitions continue to rise, while the average Pell Grant, the cornerstone of federal funding for higher education, failed for the fourth year in a row to keep pace with inflation.

For the wealthy, however, their own affirmative action is just heating up. Early admissions - the first round of college admissions deadlines - are upon us. The lucky few who are chosen are exempted from the agony of completing dozens of applications and the daily ritual of anxiously checking the mail or the Internet next spring once colleges have decided.

Early admission provides an opportunity for students who are ready to commit to a college or university to know whether the feelings are mutual. For colleges, it is their chance to lock in a portion of their freshman class with high GPAs or excellent test scores or unique talents.

Everyone wins, right? Not exactly. As it turns out, applicants for early admissions slots are not just lucky and not just the most qualified. They have better odds of getting in than do regular applicants, but only wealthy students who don't need financial aid can afford to make their choice based solely on the school they think they'd like to attend. Recognizing the inherent unfairness, Harvard and Princeton have ended this practice.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Freada Kapor Klein's Giving Notice in Miami Herald

To retain workers, keep them engaged
Three books offer ideas on how companies can help workers feel valued and respected, which will then enhance their productivity and reduce employee turnover.
BY RICHARD PACHTER
rap@WordsonWords.com
Miami Herald, Monday, November 5, 2007

Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest are Leaving the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay. Freada Kapor Klein. Jossey-Bass. 240 pages.

Klein looks at the problem from the angle of diversity. It's an extremely worthwhile approach, since not taking individuals' needs and backgrounds into consideration is a sure way to communicate to them that they do not matter. I once visited a firm that had a Christmas display featuring stockings with names for each employee in that office, with one exception: a non-Christian. They chose to just not include her, which was possibly well intended, but sent a message of exclusion, nonetheless. Considering that they had gone to great lengths to recruit this person for the position, a bit more thought should have been given to the matter. Kapor cites similar instances in which ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation issues impeded the career development of individuals and affected firms' abilities to retain talented and productive workers. She proposes a number of common-sense remedies, most of which involve consideration and communication.

For the other books reviewed in this article, please click here.

Christopher Lane's Shyness Reviewed in Wall Street Journal

Diagnosis: Diffident
Why psychiatry's field-guide approach sometimes mistakes temperament for illness
By PAUL MCHUGH
Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2007; Page W8

If you were anxious about speaking in public, would you prefer to be called (1) a "social phobic" needing a pill; (2) a "neurotic" needing psychoanalysis; or (3) a shy person needing practice and coaching? I'd opt for No. 3, but not everyone agrees. Certainly some people have been helped by pills for social phobia and would swear by No. 1. In "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness," Christopher Lane seems to favor No. 2 -- but that might have been expected, since he appears to have brought an affection for Freudian psychoanalysis to his investigations.

To his credit, Mr. Lane, a professor of literature at Northwestern University, notes that when psychiatrists diagnose the shy as suffering from social phobia, they mistake a variation in human temperament for a mental disorder; if anything, the diagnosis only adds to the sense of unease felt by shy people. He is also right in observing that the psychiatrists' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the profession's standard 900-page reference work, errs by designating other kinds of normal human variation as mental disorders and so exaggerates the incidence of mental illness.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Lou Ureneck's Backcast Slide Show

An audio slide show about Backcast produced by BU Today, Boston University's daily magazine.

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/news/index.php?dept=4&id=47447&template=7&

Ronald Florence's Lawrence and Aaronsohn Reviewed in Harvard Magazine

Off the Shelf
Recent books with Harvard connections
From Harvard Magazine, September/October 2007

Lawrence and Aaronsohn: T.E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Ronald Florence, Ph.D. ’69 (Viking, $27.95). Two colleagues in British intelligence had conflicting obsessions that presaged the Arab-Israeli conflict. As the Ottoman empire faltered, one of the two (an archaeologist from Oxfordshire, later Lawrence of Arabia) promoted Arab nationalism. The other (a Jewish agronomist from Palestine) hoped for a new Jewish state. Each was cocksure. Historian and novelist Florence tells their story well.

For the other books reviewed in this article, please click here.

Rachel Herz, Scent of Desire in USA Today Books

Roundup: Non-fiction, in brief
By Deirdre Donahue, Bob Minzesheimer, Jacqueline Blais and Jocelyn McClurg
USA TODAY, November 1

The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell
By Rachel Herz
William Morrow, 266 pp., $24.95

You'll never take your nose for granted again once you've read The Scent of Desire. Rachel Herz explores what is considered our most mysterious sense, and the one often dismissed as the least important. But as Herz points out, you don't know what you've got till it's gone. (People who have lost their sense of smell often become dangerously depressed.) Herz examines the connection between taste and odor and the role smell plays in sexual attraction, as well as its power to evoke long-suppressed memories. But best are the weird facts. "Clean baby" is one of the very few smells every culture agrees is delightful.

For the rest of the books in this article, click here.