Illinois Books

Most readers will probably be aware of McKay's 1919 poem "If We Must Die," accurately recognized in anthologies of African American literature as the first openly defiant black insurgent lyric during the racial violence of the post-Great War period. Edited and introduced by William Maxwell, author of New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism between the Wars (1999), this new collection of more than three hundred of McKay's poems-including nearly a hundred published for the first time-provides an entirely new understanding of the diaspora-trotting author's verse, from his "dialect" poetry published in Jamaica during the early teens to McKay's somewhat misleadingly titled "Right Turn To Catholicism" writings during the mid-forties.

Most striking are "The Years Between," as Maxwell describes McKay's verse from the twenties to the mid-thirties. During this fifteen-year stretch, McKay's lyrics versify the historical intersections between the Harlem Renaissance, modernist period leftism, anticolonial transnationalist negritude, and bohemian queer (...) ardor. Critics have regularly portrayed McKay as the first black intellectual to recant his Communism-and his repudiation is supposed to have taken place during the early 1920s. One startling fact that Maxwell's impressive scholarship illustrates is McKay's lyrical dedication to the international proletariat and Soviet State throughout not only the twenties but even into the thirties. Readers should find it illuminating, moreover, that McKay's praises to Communism are tangled up with an emergent African liberation struggle poetry and the advent of a black same-(...) love lyricism.

What's more, this edition annotates McKay's fascinating, generally unknown poetry clusters: the verse chronicle of his hospitalization during the early twenties that he referred to as "The Clinic"; the thirties' paeans to the "Cities" he inhabited; and the Catholic-inspired poems of the forties he called "The Cycle." To say that Maxwell's one-hundred-and-ten pages of annotations is thorough does not begin to express how valuable this collection is to various reading communities, including readers of poetry by black diaspora authors, verse by writers of the Left, writings by progressive-minded Catholic authors, and poetry by (...)queer voices. The appearance of Claude McKay's Complete Poems is indeed a historic event.

This isn't a review, merely an attempt to make the "Book Description" more readable. Since this was put together by two of his closest associates, John Nicolay & John Hay, in the years after his death, it seems like a valuable resource. I just want to make it a bit more desirable by trying to decipher the mess that currently appears as the "Book Description". I've taken liberties since much was indistinguishable & I don't have a copy of the book in my hands. This is what I came up with, [which is obviously a description of the work as it was when published over a century ago]:

COMPLETE WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay
With a general introduction by Richard Watson Gilder and special articles by other eminent persons
New and Enlarged Edition Volume I New York Francis D. Tandy Company.
Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg Edition This Edition De Luxe is limited to seven hundred, numbered and registered.
Department Of State, Washington
Dear sir- I have your letter, of the 11th of February... the portrait of the younger man of the group is of myself. The other is a Mr. Nicolay. The photograph... I think, in the year 1863. Yours very truly, Judd Stewart, Esquire, 71 Broadway, New York.
Preface edition of the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, hoping and trusting that it will be received as a welcome addition to American historical literature. John G. Nicolay, John Hay.
Something more than a decade has elapsed since the preceding words were written, and during that period the assiduity of a multitude of Lincoln collectors has brought to light a large amount of manuscript material which inevitably escaped even such conscientious workers as Nicolay and Hay. The collectors have been so diligent during this period it is hardly probable that any of Lincolns writings of importance can be any longer undiscovered. The aim has been to collect this material, add it to the work of the two great biographers, and so make a complete and definitive edition. The chronological arrangement of the original edition has been followed and all new additions to the text inserted in their respective places and marked with an asterisk. Explanatory and biographical notes have been added where deemed necessary to explain obscure allusions or to preserve the continuity of the narrative. These notes are mostly new

A very compelling angle on a fascinating subject. You don't have to be an acedemic to enjoy this book. This is not only a must read for anyone interested in this period of American history, but also for anyone interested in the history of American women.

Few scholars can write with ease; and even fewer write without verbosity and pomposity. Professor Bluestone's book on Chicago's development is a source of invaluable information presented in a literary fashion. His scope is wide ranging, but not shallow in any respect. He deals with philosophy, history, personalities, the influence of men and movements upon each other in the city where 20th century architecture was born. Whether you are a scholar, an architect or just a buff, this is a book that offers information, knowledge and wisdom.

Contesting Identities: Sports In American Film by Aaron Baker (Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University) is an in-depth study of the films that had as their primary focus or theme sports and athletic competition. Guiding readers through a complete understanding of the film industry's sports movies from the era of silent movies through the blockbuster productions of today, Contesting Identities provides an informative review of sports films elements and issues such as race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and more. A seminal contribution to Film & Cinema Studies supplemental reading lists and academic library reference collections, Contesting Identities is very strongly recommended for film students and sports enthusiasts searching for a comprehensive and intelligible grasp of the historical progression, identity, ideals, and production of sports-oriented films.

If you are at all interested in the lives of rodeo women and the history behind the Women's Professional Rodeo Association, this is a great book. I enjoyed it very much and have used it as a resource when writing articles for western related articles.

"Creating A Year-Long Theme: A Teacher's Journey" is a unique and exciting adventure into using a unified concept for an entire year of teaching. Ms. Coyne, a teacher who developed and implemented her own theme-based teaching methods, provides valuable insights into using themes to improve education. This book does not focus on the value of theme-based for education. We all know instinctively that children appreciate this approach - they will never forget their year of learning with a "circus," "space," "castles" or "continents." And, per Ms. Coyne, theme-based teaching unifies the classroom, engages students in learning and provides meaning to studying diverse topics. "Creating A Year-Long Theme: A Teacher's Journey" focuses on providing plenty of suggestions and concrete guidance, including worksheets and step-by-step instructions, for implementing theme-based teaching. Ms. Coyne's practical approach ensures that the theme is integrated across all subjects. This book is recommended for all new and experienced teachers plus school administrators who wish to refresh their teaching approach...From The Science Spiders

Nicole Hahn Rafter's latest historical study of criminology and penology, Creating Born Criminals, traces the convoluted development of a category of persons known as "defective delinquents." As the name implies, this category combined criminality with a state of arrested development, which today we would call "mental retardation" or "developmental disability," but over the course of the period Rafter covers was known variously as "imbecility," "feeble-mindedness," or "psychopathy." Rafter traces the origins of what she calls "eugenic custodialism" to the founding of the Newark Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women in New York in 1878. "The Custodial," as it was called, was explicitly designed to confine "feeble-minded" women of child-bearing age in order to protect society against "bad heredity." Though some of these women would be called mentally retarded today, many were simply poor and/or guilty of sexual indiscretions. The founding of this unabashedly eugenic institution, Rafter argues, marked "the first time in U.S. history that the body itself was criminalized." Focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on New York State, Rafter goes on to describe how, in the 1910s, criminologists transformed the feebleminded criminal into the "defective delinquent." Criminologists "reconceptualized dangerousness as not violent behavior but a condition, an invisible hereditary defect carried by even minor offenders." Again, women preceded men into the realm of eugenic criminology. In 1920, New York passed its first defective delinquent law. "For the first time in the United States, prisoners deemed feebleminded" were given indefinite sentences. Although defective delinquent theory fell out of favor soon after the founding of the institutions inspired by it, Rafter found that some inmates spent virtually their entire adult lives at in prison under these laws. Inevitably, these unfortunates tended to be the truly mentally retarded, the prisoners least able to negotiate the administrative hurdles that would lead to release. In an age where incapacitative sentences appear to be making a comeback under various guises, ranging from "three-strikes" laws to the civil commitment of sex offenders, Creating Born Criminals ought to be required reading for everyone interested in criminal justice issues.

"The Creation of American Team Sports," a volume in the "Sport and Society" series of the University of Illinois Press, is an outstanding contribution to the emerging specialty of sports history. George B. Kirsch, professor of history at Manhattan College, offers a fascinating glimpse into the development of both baseball and cricket as important team sports in the mid-nineteenth century.

Kirsch describes baseball's movement from amateur to professional status after the Civil War, as well as providing an analysis of why the sport was so popular and how it eventually eclipsed cricket as a sport. In the process, he offers considerable insight into the nature of these two sports, who played them, the demographics of supporters, geographical strongholds such as Brooklyn (no wonder the Dodgers were one of the most beloved of professional baseball clubs and the most missed when they moved to Los Angeles), and the nature of clubs.

Kirsch concentrates on the well-organized amateur clubs, finding that they were more than groups of loosely-organized men who played the games. They were voluntary associations with organization and structure and dedicated to specific ideals. They held meetings beyond practices and games, and for many the club became the center of social life. They were dedicated to physical fitness and sold their sports to the greater society on that basis, but were also involved in other activities. Kirsch also documents that most of the members of the various clubs in the early era were at least in the middle classes with sufficient time and money to contribute to the sport. It was not until it was commercialized that baseball became the sport of the masses, and cricket never did so.

Baseball also cut across racial lines, there were black clubs, but these were also largely made up of members who were somewhat better off financially than average members of the race. The author also documents, and it is no surprise, that the cricket clubs had a much higher proportion of foreign born members, especially Englishmen, than did the baseball clubs. Indeed, Kirsch makes the argument that cricket's demise was tied to feelings of nationalism. Although he does not hold to the theory that cricket died out immediately after the Civil War, it was a decided backwater that did not have the enthusiasm surrounding it that baseball enjoyed. Cricket was popular among eastern elites until World War I when, Kirsch writes, "Country clubs adopted new British sports such as tennis and golf, which became more popular then cricket because of their greater appeal to participants and spectators" (p. 264).

One of the most interesting aspects of "The Creation of American Team Sports" the transition of baseball from an amateur, participatory sport to one that was professional and oriented toward spectators. The commercialization of baseball was caught up in the urbanization of America that took place in the Gilded Age. It was, perhaps, a logical outgrowth of the rising economic status of American workers, the increased amount of leisure time, and the rampant nationalism that celebrated the sport as the epitome of all that was virtuous in the nation. It was also a team sport, representative of the whole of the nation, with a decidedly individualistic aspect, in recognition of each person's uniqueness. Kirsch fully explains the many fits and starts of baseball's commercialization, highlighting difficulties with gambling, drunkenness, and other vices.

In all, Kirsch has produced a fine book that will be permanently useful to scholars, analyzing in one volume the personalities and core themes of the development of American baseball and its rivalry with cricket. An important addition to the scholarship of the American nineteenth century society, it will be a standard work for years.

Pulitzer Price winner Richard Rhodes has written a new book, "Why They Kill," as a biography of Lonnie Athens and an explication of his book and work on the origins of violence in individuals. He clearly wants to lift perceptions of the research value of Athens' work to a level that will give it the credibility it deserves in the face of opposition from vested but less-well-researched interests in the fields of criminology and sociology.