Illinois Books

If you read one book on inproving your oral communication this year, make it this one! I recomend any Gerald M. Phillips book.

That Jean de La Fontaine problematized the fable genre is now well known, thanks to American, British, and German criticism of the late 20th century. Even the French have reluctantly admitted this and dropped the Fables from the baccalaureat program, which privileges what Roland Barthes called the "readable" text, free of ambiguity, unstable irony, allusive metaphor, and aggressive (but usually covert) dialogue with earlier literature. Basing their projects on critical editions and schoolbooks composed under the old dispensation, previous Anglo-American translators of the Fables have perpetuated the image of La Fontaine as the Gallic Aesop, more intricately melodic and stylistically adroit, to be sure, but ultimately slick, straightforward, and commonsensical. Only Marianne Moore - in a self-indulgent and finally useless caprice - wandered away from that dubious model, making the French poems over in the quirky image of her own, often zoological masterpieces. Comes now Norman Shapiro, whose La Fontaine not only coincides with current understanding of the original but also also succeeds as poetry in English: subtly nuanced, dense, resonant, and compellingly rereadable. More than a prize, this rendering deserves a place with Terence Cave's The Princesse of Cleves, John Cairncross's Phaedra, and Richard Wilbur's Misanthrope in the classical canon "made new" for Frenchless readers of our time and place.

If you haven't had the opportunity to check out this trail guide, then you are missing out! I had the opportunity to borrow a copy of this and being an avid outdoors girl and bike trailer, I was thrilled with a guide book regarding the trails of Northern Illinois, especially how they are linked and a map to help me find the areas of the trail I haven't been on yet. More than just this, I liked the tidbits of information about the local history of towns, etc near the trail. There's not enough written on all the local trails, let alone history. Pick up this book, grab your backpack & bike for an great weekend experience -- you'll be glad you did.

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.

"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.