Christopher Lane's SHYNESS in Chicago Tribune

Psychiatric manual's update needs openness, not secrecy, critics say
Edition is being prepared with strict oversight, officials counter

By Ron Grossman | Tribune reporter
December 27, 2008

Whether revisions to the "bible" of mental illness should be carried out in secret might seem like an academic question.

But the issue carries real weight for parents desperate to address children's difficult behavior or people in distress over their mental state. It also speaks to citizens' concerns over news accounts of an overmedicated America and the troubling financial links between the pharmaceutical industry and some psychiatric researchers.

An update is under way for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM, which defines the emotional problems for which doctors prescribe drugs and insurance companies pay the bills. Psychiatrists working on the new manual were required to sign a strict confidentiality agreement.

For the rest of the article, click here.

Christopher Lane's SHYNESS reviewed in the New York Review of Books

Volume 56, Number 1 · January 15, 2009, The New York Review of Books
Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption
By Marcia Angell

Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial
by Alison Bass

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 260 pp., $24.95
Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs
by Melody Petersen

Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 432 pp., $26.00
Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness
by Christopher Lane

Yale University Press, 263 pp., $27.50; $18.00 (paper)

Recently Senator Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has been looking into financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the academic physicians who largely determine the market value of prescription drugs. He hasn't had to look very hard.

Take the case of Dr. Joseph L. Biederman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of pediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital. Thanks largely to him, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.

Legally, physicians may use drugs that have already been approved for a particular purpose for any other purpose they choose, but such use should be based on good published scientific evidence. That seems not to be the case here. Biederman's own studies of the drugs he advocates to treat childhood bipolar disorder were, as The New York Times summarized the opinions of its expert sources, "so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive."[1]

For the rest of the article, click here.

Marni Sandweiss, author of PASSING STRANGE, Q&A in PW

Passing Strange
by Parul Sehgal -- Publishers Weekly, 12/22/2008

In Passing Strange (Reviews, Dec. 1), Sandweiss uncovers the double life of Clarence King, the renowned geologist who mapped the American West—and crossed color lines, passing as a black Pullman porter, James Todd, to marry Ada Copeland, a black nursemaid.

How did you come across this story?

I read Thurman Wilkins's spectacular biography of Clarence King in graduate school. It haunted me. Reading Philip Roth's wonderful The Human Stain got me thinking again, as did the Clinton scandal: Clinton messed up for 30 minutes and the story was spread around the world. King sustained a secret life for 13 years. So I sat down one day to see if there was anything I could do with the story. In five minutes I found the census document of King reporting to be black.

King's life reads like a Who's Who of the time: Henry Adams, Henry James, John Hayes—

James Weldon Johnson! Who would have thought? And Frederick Douglass. It's like six degrees of Clarence King. In the 19th century, he would have been on the cover of [the equivalent of] People magazine, but when the story came out in the 1930s, he had dropped out of public consciousness.

For the rest of the article, click here.

Richard Ford's THE RACE CARD a Slate Best Book of '08

Pad Out Your Amazon Wish ListSlate picks the best books of 2008.
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008, at 7:40 AM ET

Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor
Amid a flock of excellent legal books this year, two are really outstanding in my view. The first is Jane Mayer's The Dark Side. The second is my former law professor Richard Ford's The Race Card. Ford asks a simple question: How can claims of racism—in the courtroom, the media, and casual conversation—be so pervasive in America if so few of us are racists? His answers are provocative: Much of what we call racism is the result of racist decisions made decades ago with respect to housing, education, or urban planning. Cab drivers who refuse to pick up black men may be motivated by factors beyond racial hate—like not wanting to drop someone off in a bad part of town. The Race Card advances a debate that has been mired in reductive thinking for decades. You won't agree with Ford on everything. But you may find yourself thinking differently about everything. And that's my definition of a great book.

NYTs Book Blog: "My advice: buy Galbraith."

The Return of John Kenneth Galbraith
By Barry Gewen
Papercuts, December 17, 2008

When Milton Friedman’s stock is high, John Kenneth Galbraith’s is low, and vice versa. These past few months, as the federal government has injected billions of dollars into the economy, with many billions more to come, Friedman’s free-market ideas have taken a beating. My advice: buy Galbraith.

The downfall of Friedmanism, I would say, came on the day Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke marched into the Oval Office and convinced President Bush that the financial crisis was so severe the government had no choice but to intervene, and in a massive way. Markets could not be allowed to clear, Friedman-style, without bringing the roof down on everyone’s head. And once the Republican party’s Wall Street establishment came on board, almost the only Friedmanites left — at least until the failure of the auto industry bailout — were rural outliers like Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, crying in the wilderness about “socialism.” (There were, of course, other critics of the Bush bailouts, but they were populists, not Friedmanites, distressed that all that taxpayer money was going to the top, not the middle and bottom. That’s a different story.)

For the rest of the article, click here.

Rachel Herz's THE SCENT OF DESIRE Recommended for Younger Readers by SCIENCE magazine

Science Books for Fun and Learning—Some Recommendations from 2008
Science, December 5, 2008

Far from a prissy survey of perfumes and odor—it starts with the suicide of a rock singer who had lost his sense of smell—this book explores how and why smell is such a central component of our lives. Explaining basic neurobiological principles in clear language, Herz intermixes them with stories and personal accounts of her research and experiences. She describes olfactory technologies, such as the development of electronic noses, that are already beginning to be used in the food industry and might even help diagnose diseases. She also dreams of a gel that would boost olfactory receptor function and restore sensation to older individuals. Her account will stimulate readers' interests in psychology and neuroscience.

The full list of recommended books is restricted to magazine subscribers, but to see a summary, click here.

Deborah Cramer's SMITHSONIAN OCEAN excerpted in SCIENCE NEWS magazine

Science Notebook: Scientific Observations
Science News, November 22, 2008

In a section excerpted from Smithsonian Ocean, Deborah Cramer observes how carbon—one of the building blocks of life—links us to the planet's past:

"Carbon is the foundation of life. It exists in every living organism, in every cell. While some is stilled, preserved in fossils over long stretches of time, most is continually recycled.... Humans are mostly water and, after that, carbon—carbon that has been passed down through the ages, from the flesh of a fish, the ear of an elephant, the leaves of a plant. Somewhere in each of us is a cell whose carbon elements may have nourished the planet's nascent life."

To check out the rest of the issue, click here.

Richard Thompson Ford's THE RACE CARD a NY TIMES Notable Book of 2008

100 Notable Books of 2008
The New York Times, November 26, 2008

The New York Times selected Richard Thompson Ford's The Race Card, in which "Ford vivisects every sacred cow in 'post-racist' America", as one of their 100 Notable Books of 2008.

To see the full list, click here.

Anthony Lewis's FREEDOM FOR THE THOUGHT THAT WE HATE a Best Book of 2008 in THE ECONOMIST

Pick of the Pile
The Economist, December 2, 2008

In this year's selection of best books, The Economist chose Anthony Lewis's Freedom for the Thought that We Hate for providing a "concise and wise presentation of the history and scope of freedom of thought in the United States, with conclusions that are well worth pondering."

To see the full list, click here.

Benjamin Taylor's THE BOOK OF GETTING EVEN a LA TIMES Favorite Book for 2008

Favorite Books 2008: The Book of Getting Even
LA Times, December 7, 2008

Alongside Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and National Book Award-winner Peter Matthiessen, Benjamin Taylor's The Book of Getting Even was selected by the LA Times as a Favorite Book of 2008.

To see the full list, click here.

Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING Selected as Best Book by Bloomsbury Review

Editors' Favorites 2008: Snow Falling In Spring
The Bloomsbury Review

In this year's roundups of notable and favorite books, The Bloomsbury Review selected Moying Li's Snow Falling In Spring, an inspiring memoir of a girl's coming-of-age during China's Cultural Revolution, as a favorite book for 2008!

Deborah Cramer's SMITHSONIAN OCEAN a USA TODAY Critic's Pick

Critic's picks: Coffee-table books for the holidays
USA Today, December 3

Holiday shopping got you anxious?

USA Today comes to the rescue with a handy gift guide that will satisfy all your bookworm friends, from the fashionista to the animal lover. For the environmentalist in your life, this holiday season's "it" book is Deborah Cramer's Smithsonian Ocean.

To check out USA Today's review and the full list, click here.

RACHEL HERZ on NPR's Talk of the Nation

From Brain to Plate: Psychology of Holiday Meals
NPR, Talk of the Nation, November 28

Why is it so important to have turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving? A panel of psychologists, including Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire, discusses how mood, memory and sense of smell can influence what ends up on the dinner table.

To listen to the NPR clip, click here

Christopher Lane Op-Ed in the LA TIMES

Wrangling Over Psychiatry's Bible
Christopher Lane
LA Times, November 16, 2008

Over the summer, a wrangle between eminent psychiatrists that had been brewing for months erupted in print. Startled readers of Psychiatric News saw the spectacle unfold in the journal’s normally less-dramatic pages. The bone of contention: whether the next revision of America’s psychiatric bible, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” should be done openly and transparently so mental health professionals and the public could follow along, or whether the debates should be held in secret.

One of the psychiatrists (former editor Robert Spitzer) wanted transparency; several others, including the president of the American Psychiatric Assn. and the man charged with overseeing the revisions (Darrel Regier), held out for secrecy. Hanging in the balance is whether, four years from now, a set of questionable behaviors with names such as “Apathy Disorder,” “Parental Alienation Syndrome,” “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder,” “Compulsive Buying Disorder,” “Internet Addiction” and “Relational Disorder” will be considered full-fledged psychiatric illnesses.

This may sound like an arcane, insignificant spat about nomenclature. But the manual is in fact terribly important, and the debates taking place have far-reaching consequences. Published by the American Psychiatric Assn. (and better known as the DSM), the manual is meant to cover every mental health disorder that affects children and adults.

Not only do mental health professionals use it routinely when treating patients, but the DSM is also a bible of sorts for insurance companies deciding what disorders to cover, as well as for clinicians, courts, prisons, pharmaceutical companies and agencies that regulate drugs. Because large numbers of countries, including the United States, treat the DSM as gospel, it’s no exaggeration to say that minor changes and additions have powerful ripple effects on mental health diagnoses around the world.

Christopher Lane, a professor of English at Northwestern University, is the author of “Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.”

To read the full commentary, click here.

Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE in the New York Review

Trapped in the New 'You're On Your Own' World
Robert M. Solow
The New York Review of Books, November 20, 2008

When the Bush-Cheney administration proposed to replace Social Security with a system of individually accumulated, individually owned, and individually invested accounts, my first thought was that its goal was to take the Social out of Social Security. It took a few minutes longer to realize that it also intended to take the Security out of Social Security.

That attempt failed. In recent years, however, a mixture of public and private policy decisions and impersonal market developments has had the broad effect of shifting many financial risks from established institutions, including even society at large, to individuals who are unable to cope with them in an adequate way. Information may be impossibly difficult for citizens to process; or else the basic information may not be available to individuals or private groups. Sometimes the scale of the possible bad outcomes may be overwhelming. Sometimes the appropriate insurance market cannot function or just does not exist. The result is that individuals and families can be the casualties of situations that once would have been handled by a more centralized and more bearable allocation of risks.

The current turmoil in credit markets and the recession that is sure to follow are likely to drive this trend further. Banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions have seen too many risks go sour. They will be more determined than ever to push further risks onto those needy borrowers who are too weak and too ignorant to bargain hard. Families, small businesses, and other borrowers of last resort will be under great pressure.

Peter Gosselin's excellent and thoughtful book, High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families, is not the first to explore this territory. Two others that come to mind are Louis Uchitelle's The Disposable American and Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift. Gosselin is like Uchitelle in combining social criticism with substantial stories of recognizable people who have been trapped by bad luck or bad judgment in this new you're-on-your-own world; he differs in covering a much broader variety of risks and risk-bearers than Uchitelle's focus on workers and job-related risks. Hacker's book also ranges over many issues, but does not have Gosselin's expert journalistic use of recognizable cases. (Professor Hacker is currently engaged in a Rockefeller Foundation–sponsored effort to construct a general "Index of Economic Security"—to show empirically how economic security varies over time and across social groups.)

Gosselin, who works in the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times, does a fine job of connecting the stories he tells to general ideas and to economy- wide statistical markers, some developed for his particular purpose. He has produced a readable and valuable book...

To read the full review, click here.

Ruth Butler's HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER in The Wilson Quarterly

Married to the Muse
Kate Christensen
The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 2008

The library of art history is rife with biographies of The ­Artist—­whomever he might ­be—­as a young, ­middle-­aged, old, and immortal man. But rarely does a book deal primarily with the woman he painted over and over, the ordin­ary ­model-­wife whose face an artist immortalized in paint or bronze. Rarer still is the book that focuses on three such women and reveals them as biographical subjects in their own ­right.

Hidden in the Shadow of the Master is Ruth Butler’s masterfully researched examination of the lives of Hortense Fiquet, Camille Doncieux, and Rose Beuret, the three women who mod­eled for, bore sons to, lived in poverty with, and eventually married three of the towering artistic geniuses of their time: Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and Auguste Rodin, respec­tively. All were ordinary girls plucked from the streets of Paris by their future husbands, ­hand­picked, apparently, with an eye toward muse­dom. Though they figure prominently in their husbands’ paintings and sculptures, beyond these evocations of their changing expressions, modes of dress, settings, and periods of life, little of substance was known about any of them before ­now.

Butler argues convincingly that her subjects are impor­tant to the history of art, and not for their faces and figures alone. At the turn of the 20th century, traditional artistic subjects, taken from myth, the Bible, and history, were giving way to a more quotidian, social, realistic mode. That Cézanne, Monet, and Rodin chose as their models the women they lived with was a revolutionary shift: The domestic and aes­thetic became connected in an entirely new way. “These women,” Butler writes, “weren’t just models; they brought a whole spectrum of feelings with them, giving their husbands’ art emotional texture and substance, contributing elements for art as im­portant as the light in which a scene is bathed, the space where an object sits, or movements that provide real character in a scene or to a figure.”

To read the full review, click here.

Documentary based on Ronald Florence's THE PERFECT MACHINE to air on PBS

"The Journey to Palomar," a documentary based on Florence's book The Perfect Machine (HarperCollins), will be broadcast nationally on PBS stations on Monday, November 10, 2008 at 10 pm. Be sure to check your local PBS station listings! To view a trailer, visit www.JourneyToPalomar.org.

BU Panelists Debate the Future of Publishing

The theme for the afternoon session of BU's conference on non-fiction book publishing was the impact of the digital revolution. Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs Books, championed newer technologies that faciliate smart inventorying and distribution, which prompted a spirited discussion with Helene Atwan, director of Beacon Press, and Wendy Strothman on the current state and direction of publishing. For an excerpt of the day's discussions, click here.

James Galbraith discusses THE PREDATOR STATE with The New York Times Magazine

The Populist
Deborah Solomon
The New York Times Magazine, October 31

The progressive economist talks about why economics is useless, why Henry Paulson’s bailout fell short and how the Bush administration replaced free markets with a “predator state.”

To read the interview, click here.

Forrest Church's LOVE AND DEATH on NPR's Fresh Air

The Rev. Forrest Church, Living 'Love and Death'
Fresh Air from WHYY, October 27, 2008

Unitarian minister Forrest Church was diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer last February. He has written and edited over 20 books since 1985. His latest, Love and Death, is a memoir that confronts the prospect of death and, in the process, offers readers a meditation on the end of life...

To listen to the interview, click here.

Wendy Strothman to Moderate Nonfiction Panel at BU

The conference, which is free and open to the public, will be held at the Howard Thurman Center, in BU’s George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Avenue. For more information click here.

Susan Fox Rogers' ANTARCTICA: LIFE ON THE ICE honored by the Society of American Travel Writers

Antarctica: Life on the Ice awarded Silver medal for Best Travel Book
Houston, October 18, 2008

Founded in 1985, the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation seeks to improve and reward excellence in the field of travel journalism. In its 24th annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, the SATW Foundation honored Susan Fox Rogers' Antarctica: Life on the Ice with a silver medal in the Best Travel Book category.

A "well-edited collection of Antarctica tales," said judges, the best part of Antarctica is that the stories—that range from "harrowing" to "goofy"—are not "written by travelers looking for adventure but by the people who live in this most remote spot."

For a full list of the winners, click here.

To read the judges' comments, click here.

Deborah Cramer's SMITHSONIAN OCEAN: OUR WATER, OUR WORLD in the Library Journal

"Recommended for high school and public libraries."
Margaret Rioux
Library Journal, October 15, 2008

Commissioned as a companion to the National Museum of Natural History's new, permanent Ocean Hall, this book is much more than a souvenir. Beautifully and copiously illustrated and featuring extensive easy-to-understand, well-written text, it tells the full story of Earth's oceans, within which life developed and upon which all life still ultimately depends. Cramer (Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage) follows a time line from the beginnings of the earth to the present day and explains what we must do to preserve the ocean's resources. Twenty-eight ocean and themed maps (including coral reefs and hydrothermal vents) are included; the bibliography lists both journal articles and books and is extensive enough to keep an interested reader busy for years.

For the full review, click here and look under the "Science" heading.

Philip and Alice Shabecoff's POISONED PROFITS in the San Francisco Chronicle

'Body Toxic' and 'Poisoned Profits'
Steve Heilig
San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 2008

In "Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children," veteran journalists Philip and Alice Shabecoff focus on a particularly troubling biological fact: that the younger we are, the more vulnerable we can be to chemical impacts. "Developmental" exposures of fetuses and young children can influence their health for a lifetime. "As we looked around, we found that a surprisingly large number of children were suffering from chronic illnesses," they begin, and then proceed to marshal moving examples of tragic impacts and to summarize the vast scientific evidence that chemicals are contributing to many illnesses. Although thorough and detailed in their writing, the Shabecoffs don't mince words about how they feel about their story: Chemically affected kids "are victims of a crime."...

Most helpful to the average concerned reader might be the appendices here, which include practical tips on reducing children's exposures and extensive resources for learning more about this complex arena. Regarding broader preventive efforts, they also explore the emerging field of "green chemistry" and the concept of other preventive approaches. Their exploration of the missing but emerging voice of religion in environmental protection is also very welcome.

To read the full article, click here.

David Blight's A SLAVE NO MORE wins 2008 Connecticut Book Award for Non-Fiction!

Hartford, CT September 25

Held up against compelling works by the likes of Susan Eaton, David Blight's A Slave No More was selected by the judges as this year's winner of the Connecticut Book Award for Non-Fiction.

The Connecticut Book Awards are an annual event for the Connecticut Center for the Book, which is paneled by 35 judges distinguished in the fields of writing, librarianship, book arts, academics, journalism and publishing. All finalists are current or former state residents or authors whose work had a Connecticut setting.

Other award recipients include Philip Roth in Fiction for his book Exit Ghost.

To see all of this year's winners, click here

Deborah Cramer's SMITHSONIAN OCEAN: OUR WATER, OUR WORLD in the New York Times

Diving Into a New World
Edward Rothstein
New York Times, September 26

The Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, which opens on Saturday, isn’t just about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. It is the largest renovation in the museum’s century-long history and a transformation of its largest exhibition space, making it as much about the museum’s future as about the ocean’s.

Yes, of course, water takes center stage. When you enter the new hall off the Beaux Arts rotunda, the dimmed, atmospheric lighting is meant to suggest the sea; an illuminated blue panel coaxes: “Dive in. Discover it with us.” And well above floor level are eight giant video screens showing schools of fish and sea creatures near Belize, the Galápagos Islands and other aquatic utopias pulsing with oceanic life. It is as if the entire 23,000-square-foot exhibition space were submerged in a giant natural aquarium...

There is room for improvement, of course. In some galleries explanations could be clearer. And the museum could have been more imaginative in some expositions, the way Deborah Cramer so often is in her inspiring companion volume to the hall, “Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water, Our World.”

But so much can be learned here, and the new model of the museum is so well integrated with the valuable parts of the old that the Ocean Hall makes the sea change in museum life look promising.

For the full article, click here.

Ben Taylor Interviews Philip Roth

Featured September 19 as PW Daily's "Picture of the Day," Ben Taylor, author of The Book of Getting Even and Tales Out of School, relaxes with Philip Roth and his publicist before a live broadcast interview of Roth and his new novel, Indignation.

James Galbraith and THE PREDATOR STATE on NPR's On Point

The Super-Bailout
NPR, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, September 22

George W. Bush pushed what he and others called the “ownership society,” the privatization of nearly everything.

Now, instead, what the country is getting may be the biggest public bailout of private industry in American history.

Seven hundred billion dollars would be on the line, says Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. It may be a trillion. Public money. To staunch private losses.

It may save the economy, but the economy — and financial facts of life — will be different on the other side. And what should taxpayers get for stepping up?

This hour, On Point: The mother of all bailouts for Wall Street — and what comes with it...

Guests:
Dennis Berman, editor and reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He also writes for the paper’s Deal Journal blog.

James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government and Business Relations and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His new book is “The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals should Too.”

Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University. He was chief economist and director of research at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003.

To listen to the clip, click here.

Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE on NPR's Talk of the Nation

U.S. Finances Precariously Perched On A "High Wire"
NPR, Talk of the Nation, September 18

American families are nervous about the stability of their finances — and Peter Gosselin says that they should be. In his new book, High Wire, he writes that an increasing number of families are only one mortgage-, doctor-, or emergency- payment away from financial ruin.

To listen to the NPR clip and read an excerpt of High Wire, click here.

Benjamin Taylor's TALES OUT OF SCHOOL on KUHF FM's The Front Row

Tales Out of Ike
St. John Flynn
KUHF FM 88.7 Houston, September 13

Holed up at the station as KUHF deals with Hurricane Ike and we work to get as much information about what's happening where out to our listeners, I've got some down time and want to put it to good use.

Ike has been my first experience of a hurricane, and obviously in such a situation our regular concerns get swept away with the first elevated winds of the storm. But now that the eye has passed us by and left its indelible mark, I can write a blog entry that has some cultural relevance.

It occurred to me as the winds reached hurricane force last night and prepared to make landfall at Galveston that about 10 years ago I read an excellent novel set against the backdrop of the infamous hurricane of 1900 that completely devastated the coastal city.

Galveston, Texas, was struck on September 8th, 1900, by a Category 4 storm that packed winds of 135 mph. Official reports state that 8,000 people lost their lives making the "Great Storm" (this was before authorities began assigning alphabetical names to tropical storms) the U.S.'s deadliest natural disaster to date.

At the end of the 19th century, Galveston was a boomtown with a population of 42,000. It was the biggest city in Texas, and it's trade center. The Great Storm put paid to Galveston's pre-eminence, and Houston grew to fill the void.

The hurricane significantly changed the course of Texas history.

Benjamin Taylor's debut novel, Tales Out of School (Grand Central Publishing, 1997) is set against the Great Storm and the havoc it wreaks on the Mehmel family. The year is 1907, and Felix Mehmel, whose father died in the hurricane, is coming of age in Galveston among the members of his German-Jewish family, a family that seems to be disintegrating.

For the full post, click here.

To hear the interview with Benjamin Taylor, check out KUHF's website.

James Galbraith's THE PREDATOR STATE in USA Today

'Predator' Urges Change in Definition of 'Free Market'
Steve Weinberg
USA Today, September 8, 2008

James Galbraith used to work inside Congress, as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. Then he settled in as a professor at the University of Texas.

Like his renowned father, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, James is an iconoclast. In previous books, polemics for national magazines and research studies for academic journals, he questions the central tenets of economic policy and the underpinnings of waging imperialistic wars on behalf of capitalism and democracy.

In a book published two years ago, Galbraith showed what he considered the intellectual dishonesty of Republican Party — and supposedly, "conservative" — economic policy. That book, Unbearable Cost: Bush, Greenspan and the Economics of Empire, sought to demonstrate the devotion of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and then-Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan to helping the wealthy (including themselves) at the expense of equity (or at least a semblance of fairness) in American society.

Galbraith's new book, The Predator State, takes plenty of well-aimed, well-deserved shots at Republicans and conservatives, Democrats and liberals. Mostly, though, as the subtitle suggests, it is a denuding of an idea — the idea of how vital "free markets" are to a capitalistic, democratic nation.

For the full article, click here.

Philip and Alice Shabecoff's POISONED PROFITS in Rocky Mountain News

Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children
Verna Noel Jones
Rocky Mountain News, August 21 2008

Nonfiction. By Philip Shabecoff and Alice Shabecoff. Random House, $26. Grade: A

Book in a nutshell: Rachel Carson first warned of the harmful assault of pesticides on the environment in her 1962 book Silent Spring. At that time, about 200 pesticide products were on the market. Now some 900 pesticide ingredients formulated into 18,000 different pesticide products are actively being used nationwide, causing disease, disability and dysfunction to one of every three of America's 73 million children, warn authors Philip and Alice Shabecoff.

Philip, chief environmental correspondent for The New York Times for 14 years, and Alice, a freelance journalist, present detailed evidence showing that children are 10 times more vulnerable than adults to cancer-causing chemicals and accumulate half of their lifetime risk of cancer by age two.

Since the 1970s, brain cancer in kids is up about 35 percent and acute lymphocytic leukemia is up 47 percent. Long-term studies, they say, have shown that the five most popular varieties of weed and seed garden herbicides are associated with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Pollutants also have been linked to many birth defects.

The authors name names in providing evidence of harm to our children, and show how the U.S. president, Congress and scientists-for- hire (who create "purposely flawed studies") aid and abet the polluters.

For the full article, click here.

Ruth Butler's Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cézanne, Monet and Rodin in NYT

Author Gives Voice to Artists’ Silent Muses, Their Wives
By PATRICIA COHEN
New York Times, September 3, 2008

Years ago Ruth Butler was walking through the Musée Rodin in Paris when she glimpsed a small oil painting of a woman with short brown hair, intense eyes and pursed lips. It was labeled a portrait of Rodin’s mother.

“I said, ‘That’s ridiculous,’ ” recalled Ms. Butler, who was on the museum’s board and is now professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and the author of a Rodin biography. She recognized the portrait as that of Rose Beuret, Rodin’s model and later his wife.

“I thought that if even the Musée Rodin doesn’t care about Rose, then I should write about this,” Ms. Butler said as she sat sipping a cappuccino in the Petrie Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gazing out at Central Park.

The book is “Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cézanne, Monet and Rodin,” recently published by Yale University Press. In it Ms. Butler tries to rescue from obscurity the women who she argues were so much a part of the triumphs of these visionaries.

“These artists would find people whose body and face make a statement that they could not otherwise make,” Ms. Butler said, arguing that the models have never been given their due. The women “made a contribution,” she added. “They deserve to be seen, not just visually but biographically.”

As artists in the second half of the 19th century shifted from painting historical, mythological and religious subjects to everyday life, they looked for a new kind of model. For the first time, Ms. Butler said, artists used the same model — often a wife or lover — over and over and over again in different paintings and in different scenes.

The switch was related in part to the end of official patronage, which centuries of artists had depended upon for support. The collapse of this system of sponsorship and the beginnings of an art market set off a series of changes for artists, not the least of which was often poverty.

The three artists that Ms. Butler focuses on — Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne — all spotted their models on the streets of Paris, drawn to something unique in a face or manner. All later married and had sons. But the women were often treated badly.

Ms. Butler “provides good reason to look at these artists’ work again,” a reviewer in the British magazine The Spectator wrote, because “each look brings a lost soul back to life.”

Very little is known about Hortense Fiquet, Cézanne’s model and wife, who sat for 27 oil portraits and numerous drawings. Ms. Butler said she tried to get information from their descendants, but they either snubbed or misled her. The feeling in the family, she said, was that Hortense “was a lowlife, that she spent his money.”

“They didn’t like her,” she added.

For the rest of the article, and an excerpt of the book, please click here.

Marlene Zuk's RIDDLED WITH LIFE reviewed on Bitter Grace Notes blog

Book Rec
Monday, August 11, 2008.

Seems like ages since I've posted here about a book I didn't review for money, but this one deserves all the readers it can get. Riddled with Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites that Make Us Who We Are is the best kind of popular science writing. It's witty, Marlene Zuk's prose is graceful, and it's perfectly accessible without seeming a bit dumbed down.

Zuk's basic message is "Stop worrying and learn to love pathogens." Or at least accept that they are an inescapable fact of our existence. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad, sometimes they're both--kinda like every lover you ever had, right? In fact, you could read this book as a sort of human-microbe relationship manual. Chapter headings include "When Sex Makes You Sick" and "Parasites and Picking the Perfect Partner." There's a danger here of excess drollery, but the science is substantial enough to keep the jokes from getting tiresome. When Zuk lets herself get a little poetic, the book really soars. Here's a great passage from the introduction:

Life is naturally tattered, infested, bitten off, bitten into. The stem with a broken leaf, like an animal with lesions on its internal organs or less-than-glossy feathers, is more normal than its unscarred counterpart. An unblemished animal--or person--is idealized and fictional, like the advertisements showing a solitary traveler at the Eiffel Tower. It doesn't really exist except in our imaginations. Disease is part and parcel of how we are supposed to look, of how we are supposed to live.

Beautiful stuff. The whole book is like that, only funnier, and occasionally creepier--especially when she writes about how pathogens may actually guide our behavior. The book came out last year, but it was just released in paperback this spring. It's well worth the $14 investment. Plus, it may save you a fortune in hand sanitizer.

For the full blog entry, click here.

A SLAVE NO MORE, David Blight, and Julian Houston in the Boston Globe

An ex-slave in Cohasset
Town largely unaware of late resident's memoir

A family photo taken between 1913 and 1918, in Cohasset. From left: Annie Washington, John Washington, their son James (standing), and his wife, Catherine. (Courtesy of The Alice Jackson Stuart Family Trust)

By Megan Woolhouse
Globe Staff / August 25, 2008

COHASSET - John Washington may be one of the most illustrious residents of this swank seaside town, albeit one few people have heard of.

At the Cohasset Farmers Market last week, Charlie Field had his own guess as to Washington's claim to fame.

"Is he George's brother?" he asked as he pushed his granddaughter in a stroller.

No. John Washington lived in Cohasset as a retired sign painter, a life far removed from his younger years as a Virginia slave. Washington fled Virginia in the chaos of the Civil War, helped the Union Army, and later migrated to Washington, D.C., and ultimately Cohasset, where he died and was buried 90 years ago this year. But what makes Washington's emancipation story unique is that - unlike the millions who endured slavery - he wrote it down.

The manuscript, one of only 120 that have surfaced since the Civil War, was the subject of the 2007 book "A Slave No More" by Yale University professor David Blight. The original manuscript, extremely rare and penned on loose-leaf paper, sits in a locked vault at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston alongside the papers of Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Yet in Cohasset, once a rich haven for the Yankee elite, where a replica water spigot in the town center gets special historic recognition, Washington's story is a historical footnote, if that. The Cohasset Historical Society does not keep a copy of Blight's book, which examines narratives by Washington and another former slave.

"I don't think the town knows anything about John Washington," said Cohasset Historical Society curator David H. Wadsworth, 78. "There isn't much when it comes to black history in Cohasset."

For decades, the craggy, majestic shoreline of Cohasset drew Boston's wealthy leather barons, who built mansions overlooking the water. And the Bancroft family, former owners of the Wall Street Journal and Barron's Weekly, has deep roots in the community.

Historically, the South Shore town has been so exclusive that it shunned the likes of Joseph P. Kennedy, who unsuccessfully sought membership at Cohasset Golf Club before his son became president. Today, the community remains nearly exclusively white. In the 2000 census, 13 of the town's 7,200 residents were African-American. All of which makes Washington's life there that much more remarkable.

For the full article, click here.

Marlene Zuk's RIDDLED WITH LIFE in Nature

Nature, the international weekly journal of science, recently included Riddled With Life in their Summer Books Opinion section.

Riddled with Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are
by Marlene Zuk
(Harvest, $14, £8.99)

An evolutionary biologist enthusiastically argues
that parasites are a driving force behind evolution
and that their effects still mould us today. Parasites
have shaped us physically and culturally, and affect
our minds on a daily basis.

Anthony Kronman on C-Span

ANTHONY KRONMAN'S C-SPAN AFTER WORDS INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES MURRAY

Monday, August 18th, 2008.

In Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, Yale Law Professor Anthony Kronman writes that universities no longer emphasize educating students about what the great thinkers have written about the meaning of life, instead concentrating on a curriculum fueled by political correctness. Charles Murray was the guest interviewer.

Anthony Kronman is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is a former Dean of the Law School and currently teaches in the university's Directed Studies Program.

Charles Murray is the author of Read Education.

To watch the video, click here.

Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING reviewed in the New York Times

Mao’s Little Helper

By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: August 15, 2008

Life in Mao Zedong’s China is so exciting for little Moying Li. The grown-ups talk of a Great Leap Forward that will allow China to overtake Britain. Her family even gives over their lovely courtyard to a belching, smoky furnace so that the neighborhood can supply steel for the Great Leap. Neighbors contribute their cooking pots and cutlery for the cause. When Li’s grandmother asks if anyone has seen her cleaver, the little girl proudly responds, “Yes, I helped our country with it.” The family retrieves the big kettle and some spoons from the pile, but the cleaver, as she recalls, “had joined its comrades in the burning fire, doing its share for China.” Everyone has a good laugh over that one.

Then there is the war on the sparrows, a crusade to eliminate the accused scourge of crops. Li and her brother, Di Di, cheer lustily as her father’s pellet gun fells one feathered threat after another.

But things do not go as hoped. Making good steel, it turns out, is more difficult than it looks, and the government rejects the lot, leaving the neighbors downhearted and decidedly less well equipped in their kitchens.

As for the sparrows, well, the government had not considered the fact that sparrows eat insects. Crops are ravaged. In coming years, as a result of natural and man-made disasters, millions die.

And then things really begin to get bad.

Small tragedies are the prelude to great ones in “Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution,” a memoir of the wrenching years of Mao. With the Olympics bringing renewed attention to China, it can be easy to forget the pain that went before, pain that occurred in living memory. But this memoir makes those times unforgettable. Simply and hauntingly told, the book is written for young readers, but adults can learn a great deal from it as well.

For the full article, click here.

Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE in the Washington Post

Risky Business -
Two books map the economic perils facing American families.

Reviewed by Martha M. Hamilton
Sunday, August 17, 2008.

HIGH WIRE: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families
By Peter Gosselin

THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND: Reports from a Divided Nation
By Barbara Ehrenreich

The recent economic downturn, with the collapse of the housing bubble and the tightening of credit, has revealed a world of financial risk that had been there all along, unnoticed by most of us. Two new books examine other financial perils and inequities that put us further at risk.

You might not expect a book on economic policy to be a page-turner, but Peter Gosselin's High Wire is just that. Gosselin, a national economics reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has written a systematic investigation of the many ways financial risk has been transferred from employers, the federal government and insurance companies to individuals and families. Gosselin shows, in frightening detail, how our lives as Americans have become riskier over the last few decades. Instead of believing that we are mutually responsible for each other, we now rely on markets that have repeatedly demonstrated that they are distorted by greed, corruption and irrationality.

Gosselin makes his case using statistics and stories of real people, such as Debra Potter. Potter was a stay-at-home mother until the late 1980s, when she became an insurance agent to supplement the modest income of her husband, a Presbyterian pastor. In 2001, she earned more than $250,000. But by the end of May 2002, she had become so disabled by symptoms of what was later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis that she had to give up her job. Her insurer, whose policies she had previously sold, tried to reclassify her disability to reduce her benefits substantially.

Despite continued appeals, the insurance company stood by its decision, and Potter's condition worsened. As a result, the Potters spent almost all of their savings on Debra's treatment and living expenses and were forced to pull their son out of college. In August 2003, her diagnosis was definitive, and Social Security began disability payments. Nearly two years after the definite diagnosis, Potter's insurer finally began paying benefits. A check for the benefits previously denied arrived three years later, but the damage was done.

For the full article, click here.

Paul Goldstein's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY reviewed in the Law Library Journal

Goldstein, Paul. Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business.
Reviewed by Ryan Saltz

Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business offers a thorough analysis of intellectual property issues for the nonlegal professional. Author Paul Goldstein, who is also responsible for giving us Goldstein on Copyright,2 has done a good job of presenting exceptionally dry material in an easy-to-read format. Each topic within the intellectual property (IP) realm has been broken down into its own chapter, which makes the book’s legal concepts easy to follow for even novice readers.

Intellectual Property is divided into seven chapters plus an introduction, and separate acknowledgments, sources, and index sections. In the first chapter, Goldstein presents the case of Polaroid Corp. v. Eastman Kodak Co.3 to illustrate the importance patents hold for companies. The case also illustrates what Goldstein frequently refers to as the “intellectual property paradox,” which is that “without property rights [intellectual] assets will be under produced, but with property rights they will be under used” (p. 36).

Chapters 2–5 are devoted individually and respectively to patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets, and provide a concise, easy-to-understand overview of each topic. Chapter 6, “Intellectual Assets on the Internet,” examines IP law as it applies to Internet technologies. Comparisons are drawn between the freedom of access provided by the Internet and the dilemmas faced by the motion picture studios when the VCR was introduced, illustrating that “once habits of free use become entrenched, they cannot be reversed by legislation” (p.152). The Internet’s rapid evolution has created the need for IP law to evolve at a similarly rapid pace.

This discussion of Internet issues provides a perfect segue into the final chapter, “Intellectual Assets in International Markets.” The Internet opened the floodgates to globalization. The fact that different countries developed different laws governing IP rights necessitated treaty agreements to iron out these issues. This chapter follows the evolution of various treaties, including the Berne Convention4 and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement.

This book would be a perfect addition to any legal or business academic collection. It provides for the enthusiastic novice a great introduction to the IP field, presenting legal case analysis in plain English and providing just enough information to assist business owners with protecting and managing their own intellectual assets. With a price of only $27.95, Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business is a must read.

Rachel Herz's SCENT OF DESIRE in the New York Times

The Nose, an Emotional Time Machine

By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: August 5, 2008.

Here is a fun and easy experiment that Rachel Herz of Brown University suggests you try at home, but only if you promise to eat your vegetables first, floss afterward, and are not at risk of a diabetic coma. Buy a bag of assorted jelly beans of sufficiently high quality to qualify, however oxymoronically, as “gourmet.” Then, sample all the flavors in the bag systematically until you are sure you appreciate just how distinctive each one is, because expertise is important and you may never get another excuse this good.

Now for the meat of our matter: pinch your nostrils shut and do the sampling routine again. Notice the differences? That’s right — now there are none. Every bean still tastes sweet, but absent a sense of smell you might as well be eating sugared pencil erasers. And if in midchew you unbind your nose, what then? At once the candy’s candid charms return, and you can tell your orange sherbet from a buttered popcorn.

We’ve all heard about the mysterious powers of smell and its importance in love, friendship and food. Yet a simple game like What’s My Bean, and our consistent surprise at the impact of shutting down our smell circuits, shows that we don’t really grasp just how deep the nose goes. At the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste held in San Francisco late last month, Dr. Herz and other researchers discussed the many ways our sense of smell stands alone. Olfaction is an ancient sense, the key by which our earliest forebears learned to approach or slink off. Yet the right aroma can evoke such vivid, whole body sensations that we feel life’s permanent newness, the grounding of now.

On the one hand, said Jay A. Gottfried of Northwestern University, olfaction is our slow sense, for it depends on messages carried not at the speed of light or of sound, but at the far statelier pace of a bypassing breeze, a pocket of air enriched with the sort of small, volatile molecules that our nasal-based odor receptors can read. Yet olfaction is our quickest sense. Whereas new signals detected by our eyes and our ears must first be assimilated by a structural way station called the thalamus before reaching the brain’s interpretive regions, odiferous messages barrel along dedicated pathways straight from the nose and right into the brain’s olfactory cortex, for instant processing.

Importantly, the olfactory cortex is embedded within the brain’s limbic system and amygdala, where emotions are born and emotional memories stored. That’s why smells, feelings and memories become so easily and intimately entangled, and why the simple act of washing dishes recently made Dr. Herz’s cousin break down and cry. “The smell of the dish soap reminded her of her grandmother,” said Dr. Herz, author of “The Scent of Desire.”

For the full article, click here.

Benjamin Taylor's THE BOOK OF GETTING EVEN and Steerforth Press in the Boston Globe

Sitting back from publisher's role, his eye for talent's still true
By Kathleen Burge / August 3, 2008

Early this summer, a little-known novel ("DeNiro's Game") published by a little-known publishing house (New Hampshire's Steerforth Press) won one of the world's largest literary awards.

Roland Pease, fiction editor for Steerforth Press in New Hampshire, has been instrumental in discovering new writing talent, such as Rawi Hage, author of 'DeNiro's Game.'

HE READS 'EM BEFORE WE DO
It was a coup for a Cambridge man, Roland Pease, who edited the US version of Rawi Hage's book, which was first published in Canada. But it was not his first.

Pease, who ran his independent literary publishing house Zoland Books for 15 years, has a knack for finding talented but undiscovered writers among the hundreds who slog through manuscripts that will never become the pages of a book.

At Zoland, Pease was the first publisher of Ha Jin, who later won a National Book Award for his novel "Waiting." Pease also published the first book of poems by Anne Porter; her work became a finalist for a National Book Award for poetry. Porter, the widow of artist Fairfield Porter, was 83 when Pease put out her first book.

At Steerforth, where Pease, 61, has been fiction editor for the past few years, he chooses only a few books each year for publication. But several have won acclaim. Four of his past five titles, including Castle Freeman's "Go With Me," were named to Barnes & Noble's "Discover Great New Writers" series, said Chip Fleischer, Steerforth's publisher.

"His track record has been unbelievable," he said.

For the full article, click here.

James Galbraith's PREDATOR STATE reviewed in the Austin American Statesman

James Galbraith's 'Predator State': damning, incisive
The UT professor and son of a famous economist denounces the 'free market' that has created a vulture-like capitalist culture

By Roger Gathman
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, August 03, 2008

Since John Stuart Mill wrote "The Principles of Political Economy" in 1848, economists have generally believed that free trade and free markets arise universally from the principle that supply and demand eventually meet in an equilibrium, which is why markets are self-correcting, and government action is self-defeating.

But there have been brilliant dissenters. For instance, Thorstein Veblen, in "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899), observed the robber barons of his time, who flaunted their art collections and stripped their workers and their companies of wealth, and was reminded of the warriors, kings and priests of the "barbaric" ages who spent their time competing for prestige and preying on the artisans and peasants who made up the productive classes.

Decades later, there was John Kenneth Galbraith, who, in his 1952 book "American Capitalism," coined the term "countervailing power," which he defined as a concentration of power that allows an agent to influence prices over and above the "market." Wal-Mart, for instance, has countervailing power over its suppliers.

Galbraith passed away in 2006. Before he died, he challenged his son James, himself a prominent economist and a professor at the University of Texas, to write a book on "predatory" capitalism. The word "predatory" is taken here from Veblen's classic book. It was long thought that Veblen's predatory capitalists and the system of laissez faire that made them possible disappeared after the New Deal was created in the 1930s. But the predatory capitalist culture emerged, again, at the end of the 1980s. The narrative Galbraith lays out in "The Predator State" is an explanation of why it resurfaced and how it has mutated.

Galbraith makes the most of his material in the first section of the book, which criticizes the many shibboleths of economics, including the slipperiness of the concept of the "market." The reader might, however, find it difficult to see these self-contained chapters in terms of the larger narrative, which comes into focus only in the second section. That narrative takes its bearing not just from Veblen, but from Galbraith's father's 1969 best-seller "The New Industrial State," which argued that the postwar era was defined by a three-way alliance between big business, the government and labor. During that era, the Fortune 500 corporations accepted and exploited government regulation and tax rates that supported a growing social net. The government passed back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, but both parties shared a modestly progressive agenda and a sense of good governance. Unions, the wild card, had settled down, demanding better wages and benefits, rather than the public takeover of major industries.

For the full article, click here!

Moying Li at the Boston Athenaem

Moying Li: Snow Falling in Spring
WGBH Forum Network

In 1966 Moying Li, a student at a prestigious language school in Beijing, seems destined for a promising future. Everything changes when student Red Guards begin to orchestrate brutal assaults, violent public humiliations, and forced confessions. After watching her teachers and headmasters beaten in public, Moying flees school for the safety of home, only to witness her beloved grandmother denounced, her home ransacked, and her father's precious books flung onto the back of a truck while he himself is taken away. From labor camp, her father smuggles a reading list of banned books to Moying so that she can continue to learn. Then, with so much of her life at risk, she finds sanctuary in the world of imagination and learning. This inspiring memoir follows Moying Li from age twelve to twenty-two, illuminating a complex, dark time in China's history as it tells the compelling story of one girl's difficult but determined coming-of-age during the Cultural Revolution.

Boston Boston Athenaeum member Moying Li, one of the first students to leave China for study abroad after the Cultural Revolution, came to the United States in 1980 on a full scholarship from Swarthmore College. Li's first book, Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of a Neighborhood, was published in 2002.

For the full article and video, click here.

James Galbraith's THE PREDATOR STATE in Reuters

Galbraith takes on the predator
Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:59am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Like father, Like son. In his new book, "The Predator State," James Galbraith does justice to the late John Kenneth Galbraith's tradition of flipping conventional wisdom on its head -- and offering bold prescriptions for a more socially just economy.

He attempts to do so, in large part, by revisiting key moments in U.S. economic history and casting them in a radically new light: one that gets away from an inherent faith in the market and allows for some measure of planning on the part of government.

James Galbraith acknowledges the intellectual appeal of the conservative notion that unfettered markets produce optimal economic results. But he argues theory has failed to find any grounding in practice.

Yet while conservatives have long discarded their own ideology in the real world, its principles still imprison liberal economists and policy-makers, preventing them from offering constructive alternatives, he says.

In one fell swoop Galbraith questions the effectiveness of monetary policy, derides strict adherence to balanced budgets and sets out to debunk what he sees as the myth that America's economic might has its roots in free trade.

"My aim, in this exercise, is to free up the liberal mind," writes Galbraith, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Galbraith traces the success of the American economy over the years to public institutions like Social Security, Medicare and public education, which date back to the New Deal of the 1930s.

"In a properly designed system," he says, "planning and markets do not contradict each other."

For the full article, click here.

Ruth Butler's HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER in PW Online

Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 7/28/2008
-- Publishers Weekly, 7/28/2008

Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cezanne, Monet, and Rodin
Ruth Butler. Yale Univ., $32.50 (368p) ISBN 9780300126242

Had they been literate, any of this book’s three subjects—wives to the founders of French Impressionism—could have penned fascinating memoirs; as professor and author Butler (Rodin: The Shape of Genius) explains in her introduction, “we know almost nothing in a direct way from Hortense, Camille, or Rose,” and that therefore her book “depends both on fact and imagination.” Providing a sketch of their lives, Butler takes readers to Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, where the women lived on extremely limited means, married to men whose only true love was their art. Hortense Fiquet and Camille Doncieux, the wives of Cezanne and Monet respectively, modeled for some of the artists’ most well-known paintings and bore their first children, yet receive little mention in most biographies. Rose Beuret is more well-known, but only because Rodin was slightly more open about their relationship. Beuret acted as Rodin’s model and his assistant, and watched over a studio “full of sculpture” in his absence, “mostly works of clay needing constant attention.” Looking beyond their work, Butler considers the human side of these artistic giants through the foggy lens of their most dedicated subjects. (June)

For the full article, click here.

Paul Goldstein's A PATENT LIE on NPR's All Things Considered

A Patently Thrilling Legal Drama

by Alan Cheuse
All Things Considered, July 16, 2008

A Patent Lie, the new novel by Paul Goldstein, trumps John Grisham's work in every way — character, setting, plot and the prose — and gives readers interested in the drama of a high-value legal case a great reward for their attention.

The protagonist is an intellectual property lawyer named Michael Seeley, a former alcoholic who has retreated from high-powered corporate law in New York City to his native Buffalo. When his only sibling, a medical adviser to a Northern California biotech firm, shows up at his office to hire him as main counsel for a federal patent law case — the former lead counsel has somewhat inconveniently committed suicide — Seeley puts his solitude and his doubts about the case behind him and flies West.

The case is timely and fascinating; it's all about patent infringement on an American company's AIDS vaccine by a huge European conglomerate. Seeley's preparation for the trial — and the trial itself — form the heart of the story. Goldstein narrates all this so skillfully — from jury selection to final judgment — that even novices at the law can understand it without the author having to sacrifice any of the complex chemistry of the case.

But this is more than just a story about procedure. Attorney Seeley is hardly cold-blooded; he fights back his thirst for alcohol and allows his sympathy to go to work when the former counsel's widow asks him to help prove that her husband was actually murdered. Seeley also succumbs to the attractions of a somewhat-reluctant potential witness, a beautiful Chinese scientist whose work on the AIDS vaccine eventually takes center stage in the development of the plot.

There's no stopping Seeley when it comes to following his passion for this case's intricate truths, and there's no stopping the reader either. I read the book in nearly one sitting on a recent cross-country flight. I wished the flight had been longer.

For the full article and an excerpt from the novel, click here.