Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Laurent Dubois featured in NEW YORKER ROUNDTABLE

March 24, 2009; The New Yorker

Roundtable: Haitian Music

The idea for this roundtable started with Madison Smartt Bell, and a post he wrote about Haitian music for the New York Times’s Paper Cuts blog.

I knew Wyclef’s music and a few other names on Bell’s list, but I found myself feeling woefully short on context. I wanted to know what’s going on now in Haiti. What are the big struggles within and behind Haitian music? What should people be listening to? To answer these questions, and others, I enlisted the help of music scholar Garnette Cadogan and brought together Bell with:

Laurent Dubois, who is the author of “Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution,” and is working on a history of the banjo.

Elizabeth McAlister, who writes about Haitian music and religious culture. She is the author of “Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora,” and produced the Smithsonian Folkways CD “Rhythms of Rapture: Sacred Musics of Haitian Vodou.”

Ned Sublette, the author of “The World That Made New Orleans,” “Cuba and Its Music,” and the forthcoming “The Year Before the Flood.”

Edwidge Danticat, a novelist and author of the memoir “Brother, I’m Dying.”

Garnette Cadogan himself, who is at work on a book about rock-reggae superstar Bob Marley.

The conversation is theirs. I’m here only as student and moderator.

Laurent Dubois:

Last year, researching the history of music in Haiti, I came across a description of a big dinner organized on a plantation a decade before the Haitian Revolution. The M.C. was a plantation slave, the mistress of the white manager, and the invitees were slaves from neighboring plantations. The entertainment was provided by two men, described as “public singers,” playing banjos. One of them had a name I found startling: “Trois Feuilles” (“Twa Fey”), or “Three Leaves.” When I told Madison about this, he had the same sharp reaction I had—“Twa Fey” is an anthem in Haitian Vodou music, a kind of charter that describes exile, survival, and remembrance. I have no idea what to make of the fact that the singer took on this name, but I start here to suggest that part of the intensity of much Haitian music—and I share Madison’s feelings about many of the songs on his list—has to do with the way it offers up some very deep roots. Haitian music keeps reworking a long history of intense exchange even as it carries on and confronts cycles of exile.


To read the full article, click here.

Jessie Gruman featured on Martha Stewart

Dealing with a Devastating Medical Diagnosis
Martha Stewart.com, 31 March 2009

What would you do if you were diagnosed with a life-threatening illness? How would you handle this news? While shock, fear, and even hysteria might be normal reactions, it's helpful to have a guide for what's often a very tumultuous road ahead.

When you're given the news that you have cancer, HIV, or another serious diagnosis, it may feel as if your world has shattered and all of your plans for the future have vanished in a flash. You feel fear, despair, anger, sadness -- often all at once. It's understandable; a serious diagnosis is a crisis, and you should treat it as one. Don't force yourself to go to work or make big decisions while you're really upset. Give yourself time to pull it together: Spend time with loved ones; don't forget to eat; nap if you can; cry if you feel like it. There are no rewards for being tough. It's a tribute to human resilience that as you learn more and adjust to the shock, you'll find you regain some focus and are able to take the important next steps.

Finding a good doctor is really important -- begin by looking for a specialist who has extensive experience treating the exact disease you have. Finding that person can be a puzzle. There are many referral sources, and none of them will tell you everything you need to know. The tried and true way is to ask a physician you know and like to refer you to another physician that he or she has worked with before.

Guides such as "America's Top Doctors" and New York magazine's best doctors list are good sources as well. Also keep in mind that different people have different preferences: Some want doctors who are all business, or who do research, or who are really warm and personable. Once you find a doctor who has the technical competence, schedule to meet with him or her and use your own judgment -- can you trust this person to work with you and do his or her best for you?

It is also important to get a second and sometimes even a third opinion. This can be tough; after a serious diagnosis, it's common to feel a sense of urgency to get started on treatment immediately. This is not wise. Get at least one additional opinion before you proceed.


To read the rest of the article and watch the video, please click here.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

SHYNESS author Christopher Lane ask Psychology Today "Side Effects"




Should overuse of the Internet become a mental disorder?

By Christopher Lane, Ph.D.
March 25, 2009

The next time your son begs to continue playing Nintendo Wii over dinner, your daughter texts her friends for the umpteenth time that day, or you find yourself lost online, madly pursuing links to new websites, consider this: American psychiatrists are busy debating whether such activities should soon be known as "Internet addiction."

One year ago, the American Journal of Psychiatry published an editorial calling for recognition of internet addiction as a "common disorder." A crop of almost surreal newspaper articles followed, with titles such as "Net Addicts Mentally Ill, Top Psychiatrist Says."

But the response from our medical and mental-health communities was closer to a collective yawn. True, a skeptical reply came from the Harvard Mental Health Letter, whose editor, Michael Craig Miller, warned that it's "probably not helpful to invent new terms to describe problems as old as human nature." Other than him, few experts seemed to notice—much less mind—that the flagship journal of American psychiatry was arguing quite seriously that overuse of the internet might be a psychiatric illness, on a par with, say, schizophrenia.

The anniversary of the editorial seems like a good moment to revisit its controversial claims and see whether they have any merit.

Jerald J. Block, the Portland-based author of the piece, argued that the disorder presents three subtypes: "excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and email-text messaging." Given the opening scenario I described of mayhem at dinnertime, it's not a wild guess to say that the last one applies to quite a few teenagers. Nor is it a surprise to news junkies like me that the middle one turns out to apply to a sizable number of former senators, governors, and mayors.


For the rest of the article, click here.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Kathryn Miles, author of ADVENTURES WITH ARI shares "5 Lessons for Embracing Your Inner Techie" at Editor Unleashed



March 20, 2009; Editor Unleashed

When my agent suggested I build a digital platform to support my book, Adventures with Ari: A Puppy, a Leash, and Our Year Outdoors, my heart sank. The manuscript had recently made it to the final round of decision-making at two national presses. In both cases, editors liked the book, but their sales teams were reluctant: could the editors promise sales exceeding 50,000? No one knew for sure. As a result, both publishing houses passed on the manuscript.

These polite rejections got my agent thinking about a web presence for the monograph. Anything, I responded, but new media. I didn’t know the first thing about it. I didn’t even want to know about it. But she remained resolute. And, because I trust her, I eventually agreed. I built a blog and Wiki; I learned the difference between an icon and an avatar; I embraced the idea that ‘friending’ was not only a legitimate verb, but also a useful way to spend one’s time. And, in the end, our efforts paid off: Ari found a good home at a great publishing house, and I learned some valuable lessons about pitfalls and promise of new media.

Lesson #1: People really love their dogs. And their cars, spice racks, bowling balls, and Manolo Blahniks. Not only do they love their hobbies, but they are passionate about finding others who do, too. Facebook has groups for everything from Aristotle admirers to zookeeper support groups. You can also find discussion boards and blog circles for civil war aficionados, Francophiles, and Beatles buffs. All of these people are keen to hear from others who have an interest in their subject, and they make a powerful readership base.

Lesson #2: These people also spend a lot of time on the web. Take it from me. I spent an entire day watching clips of talking cats on Youtube. I spent weeks gawking at My Space and Twitter pages. And, after Ari lost her first battle on “Puppywars,” I became the kind of hovering stage mother I like to mock at parties. That scorn didn’t keep me from checking the website 15 times a day, however. Nor did it mitigate the outrage I felt whenever someone thought a schnauzer was cuter than my very perfect dog. None of these things helped with my writing or my platform. If you’re like me, you are going to need to create strict limits. Try 30 minutes a day. Or even less.



For the full article, click here.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE Book of the Week at Wonders & Marvels



Book of the Week: PASSING STRANGE

Wonders & Marvels most often profiles history and historical fiction on pre-1800 topics. But Martha A. Sandweiss' Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Decption Across the Color Line is just too good to pass up. And it's always a treat to help spread the word about well-written books by fellow academics. (Sandweiss is a Professor of History at Princeton.)

Passing Strange tells the story of Clarence King who is best known for his work as a geologist and writer. But King had a secret--a big one. In order to marry the woman he loved, he lived a double life as a black man. Sandweiss' book presents King's work, love, and life, in the context of racial politics from the late 19th century into the 1960s. An extraordinary story told by a writer with a keen historical eye and deep respect for her subjects.



For the full post, click here.

To read Wonders and Marvels' brief interview with the author, click here.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Gary Reback, author of FREE THE MARKET, featured in the San Francisco Chronicle




Author favors stronger antitrust enforcement

By Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
March 8, 2009; San Francisco Chronicle

Antitrust attorney Gary Reback stirred up Silicon Valley in the 1990s when he asked the Justice Department to protect Netscape and its Web browser from the machinations of mighty Microsoft Corp.
Netscape has since disappeared and the browser wars have been forgotten. But Reback has returned with a book, "Free the Market," in which he argues that government must do more to protect innovation and fair play.

"The hardest thing to get across to my libertarian and conservative friends in the tech industry is that we owe a lot of what we've got to the government," said Reback, 59.

"In earlier decades when government was more vigilant about antitrust, it created the openings that allowed Silicon Valley to exist," he said, citing one anecdote from his book.
Reback writes that, long before its breakup, AT&T settled one in a series of government antitrust cases with a deal that included licensing its transistor technology. One licensee was scientist William Shockley, a co-inventor of the transistor. Shockley opened a chipmaking laboratory in Mountain View. It failed, but several of his employees later founded famous Silicon Valley firms, including Intel Corp.

"And that's why we're sitting here today," Reback said.

In "Free the Market," Reback quickly sketches the activist period of antitrust law from the 1911 break-up of Standard Oil to the 1984 break up of AT&T.

"The rules were populist, they were set up to aid small businesses," he said.

Since the 1980s, however, he says antitrust policy has taken the hands-off, free market approach identified with Ronald Reagan.

Reback says former federal judge Robert Bork laid the intellectual groundwork for weaker antitrust enforcement. Bork is best remembered because his 1987 appointment to the Supreme Court was rejected in a controversy involving his views on abortion.

Bork's 1978 book, "The Antitrust Paradox," said big companies could be efficient in ways that benefited consumers and that market forces protected competition better than government regulators.

"For 20 years starting in the late 1970s, the Supreme Court took one chapter after another of Bork's book and made it into law," said Jonathan Baker, a law professor and antitrust expert at American University.




For the full article, click here.

Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING nominated for IRA Children's and Young Adult's Book Award



Moying Li's Snow Falling in Spring has been nominated for the International Reading Association's 2009 Children's and Young Adult's Book Award. Last year's winners include Constance Leeds and Lita Judge. Children’s and Young Adult’s Book Awards are given for an author’s first or second published book written for children or young adults (ages birth to 17 years). Awards are given for fiction and nonfiction in each of three categories: primary, intermediate, and young adult. Books from any country and in any language published for the first time during the 2008 calendar year will be considered. Each award carries a monetary stipend.

To get the latest updates or learn more about the IRA, click here.

Kathryn Miles' ADVENTURES WITH ARI: A PUPPY, A LEASH, & OUR YEAR OUTDOORS reviewed in Library Journal



March 15, 2009; Library Journal

At last, a canine memoir that is unique and irresistible; more reminiscent of Ted Kerasote's Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog than John Grogan's Marley & Me, this book goes beyond telling the familiar story of a dog and its owner. Allowing her shelter puppy Ari (labeled a husky and Jindo mix) to be her "green" guide, Miles (writing, Unity Coll.) and her husband cast Ari's leash aside and learn to see the world through the eyes of a shy puppy as they explore the outdoors surrounding their Maine town. Lest any reader think Miles an irresponsible dog owner, much to her credit she read extensively and set ground rules for acceptable canine behavior both in and out of the home. A sizable chapter-by-chapter bibliography is included. Written in a clear and vivid prose style, this is strongly recommended for all public libraries.—Edell M. Schaefer, Brookfield P.L., WI

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE reviewed in the Seattle Times



"Passing Strange:" racial deception in the name of love

"Passing Strange" is historian Martha Sandweiss' strange but true tale of an accomplished 19th-century white man who "passed" for black so he could marry his true love, a black woman.


By Bruce Ramsey
Special to The Seattle Times
Thursday, March 12, 2009; Seattle Times

In the late 1800s, Clarence King was a figure of public renown. He was a mining consultant with jobs all over North America. He had founded the U.S. Geological Survey, mapped part of the Sierra Nevada, argued in journals of geology about the age of the Earth, hobnobbed with the secretary of state and dined in the White House. He was also a white man who had a secret life in which he pretended to be black.

In "Passing Strange," Martha Sandweiss, professor of history at Princeton University, undertakes to tell the story of King's secret marriage to an African-American woman.

A modern reader will ask how a white man with light hair and blue eyes could pass as "colored" for 13 years. A reader of Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson," written in 1894, will know: Anyone with one drop of "African blood," no matter what he looked like, was considered colored. Such a person might pass as white, but he was breaking the "one-drop rule."

King undertook to pass as black. At 47, he met Ada Copeland, 28, a nursemaid, telling her he was a Pullman porter named James Todd. He married her and they became Mr. and Mrs. Todd, while his associates continued to know him as the famed geologist Clarence King, resident of a Manhattan hotel.

In an age with no TV, few published photographs and no worry about driver's licenses, bank cards or computer databases, he could get away with it. The America of that time offered less racial tolerance but more privacy.



For the full review, click here.

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE reviewed in the Brooklyn Rail




A Different Sort of Romeo, Sandweiss's Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

By Nicholas DeRenzo
March 8, 2009; Brooklyn Rail

Clarence King (1842-1901) was a well-to-do, Newport-born, Yale-educated geologist famous for mapping the Western United States after the Civil War. He drank tea with Queen Victoria, collected fine art, and counted the novelist Henry James as a close personal friend. But these worldly details function as a mere backdrop for Martha A. Sandweiss’s engrossing biography Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, which follows King’s extreme measures to attain true happiness.

For thirteen years, King led a double life as James Todd, a black Pullman porter. Under this assumed identity, he married a former slave from Georgia named Ada Copeland, avoiding the stigma of interracial marriage by inventing a life that placed husband and wife on the same side of the racial divide. And strangely enough, despite his blue eyes and fair complexion, his secret life was left undiscovered by everyone, including Ada, until his death-bed confession. It is a classic Romeo and Juliet tale of love overcoming all obstacles and bridging all divides—that is, if Romeo forgot to tell Juliet he was actually born a Montague.

The logistics of such deception are mind-blowing. The fact that King appeared unambiguously white only exacerbates an already labyrinthine tale of racial politics. How could a man with blue eyes and fair skin convince his wife that he was actually African American? As Sandweiss explains, the “one drop rule”—which stated that even one black great-grandparent defined someone as black—meant that the color line was surprisingly porous. By simply identifying himself as a Pullman porter, which was then an all-black career, “James Todd” could lead others to believe he was black without ever saying so directly. Though Passing Strange is essentially the legend of a world-class con-man, Sandweiss imbues the tale with so much pathos that we forgive King’s indiscretions. He is forced into the lie not for his own gain or self-interest but to avoid scorn for himself and the woman he loved.



For the full review, click here.

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE reviewed in the Providence Journal




‘Passing Strange’: A Victorian love that crossed the color line


By MARK DUNKELMAN
Sunday, March 8, 2009; Providence Journal

Clarence King (1842-1901) was a distinguished geologist, famous as the leader of an exploration of the 40th parallel, “the man who mapped the West,” the first director of the U. S. Geological Survey. A son of Newport society (he is buried in Island Cemetery), he returned from his frequent rambles around the continent to lodgings in private clubs and residential hotels in New York City, where he charmed a wide circle of admirers and led the high life of a celebrity. With his intimate friends, John Hay and Henry Adams and their spouses, he bonded to form the Five of Hearts, and he wrote a classic account of mountaineering in California that earned him a reputation as a man of letters.

Ada Copeland (1860-1964), born a slave in western Georgia, emigrated to New York circa 1884 and took a job as a nursemaid in the downtown home of a white family. At some point, under unknown circumstances, the black domestic worker and the celebrated white scientist met and fell in love.

King had long lauded the attraction of dark-skinned women to his friends. But he knew that his relationship with Copeland would destroy his career and alienate his family if it became known. So he adopted an alternate persona. Presenting himself as James Todd, a black Pullman porter from Baltimore, he wed Ada in 1888. Todd installed his wife in a succession of homes in Brooklyn and Queens, far from King’s Manhattan haunts, and the couple had five children, four of whom lived to adulthood.



For the full review, click here.

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE featured in the Ottawa Citizen



A strange double life

Famed 19th-century author and explorer Clarence King secretly passed himself off as a black Pullman porter -- even to his wife



By James Macgowan
March 8, 2009; Ottawa Citizen


When Martha Sandweiss sat down to research the life and times of Clarence King, it took her 10 minutes to find out she had struck gold. She knew going in that King, a prominent 19th-century Ivy League-educated geologist, author and explorer, who counted U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and the writer Henry Adams among his friends, had an enormous secret he was keeping from his high-society friends.

What she didn't know, but quickly found out, was that this secret prompted him to live two lives: the first, as the first director of the United States Geological Survey, a gregarious friend of powerful people, who occasionally dined at the White House; the second, as a black Pullman porter named James Todd who was married to a black woman named Ada Copeland.

"I'm the first person to figure that piece of it out," Sandweiss says from her Amherst, Massachusetts home. "What people knew before was only that the famous Clarence King had a 13-year relationship -- whether it was a marriage or not -- with this African-American woman and that they had several children together."

Sandweiss, a professor of American studies and history at Amherst College, had been urging her students to look into the story of King's secret marriage, propelled by the indignity she felt upon reading a 1958 biography of King that barely mentioned Ada, or dismissed her as an undignified aberration. None of her students took her up on it, and this aspect of King's life kept gnawing at her. When she finally sat down and discovered his dual identity -- thanks to the recent digitization of American census records -- she decided this was a story she would write herself.

The result, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line , is a staggeringly researched, absorbing and page-turning account of a stunning deception carried out by a complex man who believed that miscegenation was where the future of the white race lay. As Sandweiss writes, King believed mixing the races "would improve the vitality of the human race and create a distinctly American people."



For the full article, click here.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

James Galbraith, author of THE PREDATOR STATE, featured in the New York Times



Ivory Tower Unswayed by Crashing Economy
By PATRICIA COHEN
New York Times, March 4, 2009

For years economists who have challenged free market theory have been the Rodney Dangerfields of the profession. Often ignored or belittled because they questioned the orthodoxy, they say, they have been shut out of many economics departments and the most prestigious economics journals. They got no respect.

That was before last fall’s crash took the economics establishment by surprise. Since then the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has admitted that he was shocked to discover a flaw in the free market model and has even begun talking about temporarily nationalizing some banks. A Newsweek cover last month declared, “We Are All Socialists Now.” And at the latest annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said, “The new enthusiasm for fiscal stimulus, and particularly government spending, represents a huge evolution in mainstream thinking.”

Yet prominent economics professors say their academic discipline isn’t shifting nearly as much as some people might think. Free market theory, mathematical models and hostility to government regulation still reign in most economics departments at colleges and universities around the country. True, some new approaches have been explored in recent years, particularly by behavioral economists who argue that human psychology is a crucial element in economic decision making. But the belief that people make rational economic decisions and the market automatically adjusts to respond to them still prevails.

The financial crash happened very quickly while “things in academia change very, very slowly,” said David Card, a leading labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley. During the 1960s, he recalled, nearly all economists believed in what was known as the Phillips curve, which posited that unemployment and inflation were like the two ends of a seesaw: as one went up, the other went down. Then in the 1970s stagflation — high unemployment and high inflation — hit. But it took 10 years before academia let go of the Phillips curve.

James K. Galbraith, an economist at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, who has frequently been at odds with free marketers, said, “I don’t detect any change at all.” Academic economists are “like an ostrich with its head in the sand.”

“It’s business as usual,” he said. “I’m not conscious that there is a fundamental re-examination going on in journals.”


For the full article, click here.

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE featured in The New Yorker



Thursday, March 5, 2009; The New Yorker

By Martha A. Sandweiss
(The Penguin Press; 370 pages; $27.95)


This post-Civil War history examines the boundaries of race through the remarkable story of Clarence King, a celebrated scientist of the Gilded Age who crossed the color line in reverse. Shortly after becoming famous for surveying the Western frontier, King fell in love with a former slave named Ada Copeland. For thirteen years, until his death, in 1901, King lived a double life—as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Copeland, and as a prominent society man and a mining consultant. Sandweiss is a gifted historian, but there is a dearth of reliable documentation about Copeland, and, sadly, because King destroyed all of Copeland’s letters (urging her to do the same with his), his voice weighs heavier in the retelling.

Kathryn Miles' ADVENTURES WITH ARI: A PUPPY, A LEASH, & OUR YEAR OUTDOORS reviewed in E Magazine




By Jessica Rae Patton
Thursday, March 5, 2009; E Magazine

Kathryn Miles is a great writer. From page one, this sets Adventures with Ari: A Puppy, a Leash, & Our Year Outdoors (Skyhorse Publishing, $24.95) above the pack of everything-I-know-about-life-I-learned-from-my-dog memoirs out there. Her premise is to see her world anew through the light-blue eyes of her shelter mutt adoptee, Ari, during their daily walks. This may seem a mundane proposal, and some of the scenarios are well known (and well worn) to anyone who has welcomed a dog (especially a puppy) into their home—books are chewed, floors are soiled, dead creatures are ecstatically rolled upon, dogs reeking of death are bathed, and bathed, and bathed, the peace of other animal companions is disrupted. The twist is that Miles is a naturalist by trade, a professor of environmental writing at Unity College in Maine, or as it bills itself, “America’s Environmental College.”




For the full review, click here.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle




By Roger K. Miller
Tuesday, February 24, 2009; San Francisco Chronicle

Passing Strange
A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
By Martha A. Sandweiss
(The Penguin Press; 370 pages; $27.95)


For a book on a serious subject, Martha A. Sandweiss could hardly have chosen a more appropriately clever title than the slightly archaic phrase "Passing Strange." Its story of a white man strangely choosing, in our race-riven society, to pass as a black man is passing - that is, exceedingly - strange from beginning to end.

Clarence King, born in Newport, R.I., in 1842, was a Western explorer, a geologist of wide renown, a tremendous wit and an accomplished writer who moved in the highest societies of his day. Secretary of State John Hay and historian Henry Adams were among his closest friends; Hay called King "the best and brightest man of his generation."

But King, a bachelor, lived a secret double life as the husband of a black woman. His wife, Ada, was probably born into slavery, most likely in 1860, somewhere near West Point, Ga. Her last name, if she had one, might have been Copeland. Somehow she migrated to New York City, possibly in 1884, where she might have gotten work as a domestic.

As the previous paragraph indicates, much about their lives remains unknown and unknowable, mostly because of King's herculean efforts at secrecy, but in part due to Ada's humble origins. No stories or records of her early years survive. What her life might have been like can only be guessed at from research into others in similar situations.

The author's effort is well done and well worth it, and not simply because the story is compelling in itself. King, though no longer a high-profile historical figure, nevertheless has been the subject of several biographies, and all of them have ignored or given short shrift to this central aspect of his life. Sandweiss, a professor of history at Amherst College and author of other histories, has brought a lot to light through diligent digging.




For the full review, click here.

Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE featured in USA Today



By Bob Minzesheimer
Monday, February 23, 2009; USA Today

In February, Black History Month, publishers release a flood of books about or by African Americans. USA TODAY recommends a dozen new titles for all ages.

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin, $27.95) by Martha Sandweiss is a fascinating slice of history: the double life of a socially prominent white geologist and explorer, Clarence King, who worked as a black Pullman porter so he could marry the black woman he loved.



For the full article, click here.