Michigan Books

Libertarians today are often considered extreme conservatives. Their opposition to taxation and government regulation is widely regarded as a defense of "big business" and the popular press, to the extent they mention libertarians at all, tends to see them as a branch of the Republican Party. But liberarianism is actually a radical philosophy with deep roots in the history of American reform movements, most notably abolitionism and especially the labor movement. Detroit labor organizer Joseph Labadie was a radical printer and tradesman who helped found both the Knights of Labor and the later AFL, particularly its Michigan wing. But Labadie also came to realize that the state was no friend of organized labor. Unlike modern labor historians who try to wrestle America's labor movement into a Marxist paradigm (Philip Foner and his intellectual heirs come to mind here) Labadie came to believe that true socialism would find its best expression in free markets and anarchism. This fabulous biography by Carlotta Anderson covers Labadie's extensive career.

Joseph Labadie was a self educated printer who lived in Michigan and migrated to Detroit. The boom and bust cycle of the early 19th century caused tremendous economic hardship upon workers and Labadie quickly fell in with trade unionists and members of America's very diverse socialist party. He was a founding member of the Knights of Labor and remained throughout his life an advocate for the working poor. But Labadie also felt education was the key to any successful social reform and he practiced what he preached. A careful reader, he soon had mastered the works of Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, Thoreau, and especially the writings of Josiah Warren and Pierre Joseph Proudhon. Reading the latter, he came to realize that demanding workers receive their fair share of production was in fact a type of property right. (This was the basis of Proudhon's famous paradox, namely that property is both theft and liberty.) The way to insure that workers received their due was to destroy government privileges which allow businesses to skim value from their workers. Ever the idealist, Labadie was not content to simply end government established "monopolies." He also thought that government itself could be abolished once people realized their true interests.

Labadie continued his work for over 50 years. Beyond hs efforts to establish workers' equality he defended those who were victims of an unjust legal system, wrote prodigious amounts of poetry, protested US entry into World War II, and advocated alternative health care. But his greatest legacy was the collection of letters, newspapers, tracts and broadsides that he and his wife collected over the years. These became the basis for the justly famed Labadie collection at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Much of America's radical history would have been lost were it not for this gentleman anarchist who was widely respected by all of Detroit.

Labadie's influence, however, extended far beyond that of his collection. His son Laurence also became a prolific anarchist writer. Long after individualist anarchism had died out and trade unions had succumbed to begging the state for monopolistic privileges of their own, Laurence kept up the lonely fight for freedom from government and proper renumeration of workers. But the 20th century also saw a variety of different issues arise and the younger Labadie addressed these as they came up. Nuclear war, integration of schools, and agrarian reforms including the beginnings of the modern organic health movement all received his incisive commentary. In the process he created a body of work which went on to inspire modern libertarianism.

On the whole then, Anderson's volume is an excellent introduction to American labor history as seen from the perspective of one of its most prominent (but now largely forgotten) proponents. But it is much more than that. This book illustrates why American historians consistently fail to understand and appreciate America's labor movement. Instead of trying to explain how labor was co-opted by "capitalism," they should understand that for 19th century workers, true free market capitalism was their ideal. If anything, the movement was co-opted by an older economic system: merchatilism. Although not widely recognized, this is in fact the economic system that characterizes America today. Ms. Anderson has done an admirable job of presenting an historical alternative that was never tried. She is to be commended for this. All students of American history and especially labor history should read this book.

As a fan of historic architecture, this book not only gave me the visual pleasure of beautiful old Victorian-era houses through great photos, but also helped me to understand the important issues this community (and most likely others) face when fighting against industrial and commercial encroachment of historic neighborhoods. The story is a triumph for grass roots activism.

In Altruistically Inclined, Alex Field presents a superbly dense and provocative exploration of individual behavior and reasoning. From a background of economics, his deconstruction and reassembling of our understanding of what is rational is an ambitious challenge that Prof. Field manages to tackle and push forward without descending into the excess of intellectual obfuscation. Not that Prof. Field entirely avoids drilling so deep into subject matter that we find ourselves immersed in annotation and data such that we must occasionally come up for air before choking on the dust left by a speeding intellect. It's a delicate dance and Prof. Field is to be commended for offering his thesis not as a debunking but as a methodical enhancement to current and classical science. His map of what might be referred to as a behavioral genome is hugely detailed and while he doesn't seek to redraw the boundaries, he offers topography within those lines that suggest vastly different interpretations than prior snapshots of the surface revealed. The author succeeds in arguing his thesis from multiple perspectives and applying a command of interdisciplinary reasoning. The effect is an elegant and compelling essay that sketches a portrait of our brain that is both an x-ray into evolutionary development and a broader credible reflection that speaks to the puzzles of social and political intercourse . As Behavior sciences lean toward inexactness, Mr. Field has been able to apply formula and rigor in measuring and testing traits characterized by nuance. That Mr. Field is an economist is evidenced throughout this book - His presentation of the data leaves the reader with an audit trail and confidence that support his theory and anticipate challenges occurring to the engaged reader. Beware though, this book is not a summer breeze. Though not without humor this book is a serious tome, and not written for "the layman" . As prefaced remarks so often allude to an effort by the author to make content more accessible to the non-disciplined reader, it is refreshing that Prof. Field avoids this dumbing down pitfall and engages readers as fellow academicians. That being said, this "layman" found his way through the material and can recommend Altruistically Inclined to others inclined toward the informative.

Whereas the Spaniards and the Mexicans aimed to control the Native Americans of California by converting them to Catholicism, the Americans when they took over the territory in the 1840s after the Mexican War and the Gold Rush aimed to control them by cynical use of the law and related means of incrimination and enforcement. Gunther sees the lighter sentences Native Americans were frequently given in the numerous legal cases she reviewed (cited both in the notes and the bibliography) as an indication that the law was used primarily as a means of harassment of the Native Americans. The other side of this practice of using the law as an instrument of coercion of the Native American population and advancement of the desires of the newcoming Anglos with respect to acquisition of land and finding manual labor, for example, was that Anglos implicitly and explicitly got preferential treatment. It wasn't until 1875 that a Native American could give testimony against an Anglo; though the Indians could file complaints as is evident from the author's extensive documentary research. Yet before and even after this date, patent crimes committed by Anglos usually went unpunished. In such circumstances, laws enacted to remove Indians to reservations seem altruistic and enlightened; when in fact, they were devised to clear the Native Americans out of an area more quickly and easily than the relatively slow-acting discriminatory legal means. Gunther--with a Ph.D. in Native American history--shows how the law especially was a tool used intentionally and systematically by Anglos with the cooperation of the courts at different levels as a hegemonic tool against the Native Americans to further the Anglos' designs while at the same time, as surely as the violence, disease, and alcoholism, it worked to disintegrate the traditional indigenous cultures.

In American Artifacts: Essays In Material Culture, Jules Prown and Ken Haltman have assembled thirteen superb commentaries by men and women who articulately explore the cultural and social meanings ascribed to a variety of common objects ranging from teapots, cart tables, and quilts, to cigarette lighters, telephones, and lava lamps. Here is an impressive and "reader friendly" collection of essays that are as informative and thought-provoking as they are erudite and challenging. American Artifacts is highly recommended reading for students of American popular culture and art.

I bought this book three years ago and haven't found a better book to teach business writing with. Ms. Bartell covers everything from from from pre-writing to writing long reports. The writing is clear and concise, as good writing should be, and presents old information in new and interesting ways. When I have grammar questions, I look here before I pull out my Strunk and White's, because Ms. Bartell's explantions are more reader friendly. I recommend it to all of my business English students. Not only can this book be used for business writing, it would benefit any student of English writing.

The title of the book is a little misleading. It doesn't deal with other business English topics, such as telephoning, meetings(except for minutes and agendas), negotiations, or social English. But it is The Best Book I've seen on business writing. If I could have given it more than five stars, I would have.

This is one of the finest ESP books I have used. The book provides not only a basic introduction to the American legal system but also a large number of advanced language exercises based on real cases and legal texts. The exercises are intellectually engaging and the presentation of language problems is thorough and honorable.

In the book "Painting the Black", Ryan Ward is a senior in high school. he had a love to play baseball until he broke his ankle. That all changed when Josh Daniels moved in the street. Ryan found that love for basball again. They started playing around down at the Community Center on the baseball diamonds. Then football season came around and Josh was going to try out for the team. Josh made the team and didn't want to throw the baseball around. He wanted to throw the football around cince he was the back up Quarterback. That was bad for Ryan because Ryan had just decided to tryout for the baseball team as a cather. Ryan needed all the practice he could get if he wanted to make the team. Josh was the star, when the starting Quater back was injured in the first game. Then, josh got in trouble at school for lifting a girls shirt up. His ponisment was he wasn't allowed to play in the next football game. That was the game that would allow them to go to state.I think this is one of the best books i have ever read. I recomend this book to any body that likes any kind of sport. Anybody would like this book.

This volume with its companion are a joy to behold and invaluable It is so wonderful to have these great works of American Art available to us and all together. I have been so moved by the great works created by American artists and have been collecting volume after volume of these paintings. This is among the finest.

Quality of the reproductions are excellent.

Crase, highly touted for his poetry book "The Revisionist", has given us what amounts to highlighted and underlined passages from authors "who have claimed" him. These include Emerson, Stevens, Gertrude Stein, Rachel Carson, W.E.B DuBois, William James, Thoreau, Whitman, Langston Hughes, Aldo Leopold, John Ashbery, etc. Most are poets. He has said that placing the passages side by side, arranging them, involves "choice and commitment" which he finds more interesting than reading one man's opinions.

He has arranged these selections under headings which are commentaries in themselves: Under the heading "Doing Your Thing" you find Emerson, Stein, and Ashbery, but then as a footnote, quotations from politicians, Bush and Reagan (and their wives), that set the prior, more profound reflections into greater relief.

Under "Majority Rule" Emily Dickinson: "Dear friends--we cannot believe for each other."

Under "Immortality" Emerson: "I think we may be sure that, whatever may come after death, no one will be disappointed."

Wallace Stevens under "Home": "Life is an affair of people not of places. But for me life is an affair of places and that is the trouble."

A particular favorite entry under "Comparative Literature": Gertrude Stein, b. 1874 Rainer Maria Rilke, b. 1875

There is so much here to return to again and again--and much of it is unknown as Crase chose to select passages from these authors' lesser known works--much to encourage a return to these American originals. Much to encourage rumination.