Indiana Books

This book is a Must Read for any coach, athletic department administrator or other person looking to find the "secrets" for building and sustaining a lasting National Powerhouse Program in any sport or any business organization.

IU has had it share of great coaches and great sports programs, such as Swimming & Diving, Track and even the sport of Basketball (of which some of you might have read about over the years).

Here, Kathryn L. Knapp captures the essence of the IU Soccer team and its success over the past 41 years. Woven into the fabric of her story are the essential elements needed to achieve organizational success. It is about leadership, motivation and hard work from a "top down" and "bottom up" perspective.

Her story is about IU Soccer Coach Jerry Yeagley, who built the program from a mere local club sport to national prominence and, along the way, captured 6 NCAA Championships. Incredibly, every varsity-era player who came to IU and stayed 4 years enjoyed a trip to the College Cup (the Final Four of College Soccer). These teams made Yeagley the winningest coach in NCAA history and, in a fairy tale ending, won him a national championship in his final game as coach.

How did Yeagley do it? Read the book and hear about the challenges and obstacles that he had to overcome and choices that he made. What you will find is that the program was never about one man; it was always about people, at all levels of the organization. Players, parents, assistant coaches, trainers, equipment managers, students, sports campers, fans, alumni, coaching mentors, administrators, faculty, friends, media and neighbors: all drawn together by Marilyn and Jerry Yeagley and their children. Learn about the IU Soccer Family; it teaches life lessons.

If you are looking for a guide to leadership, then pattern your efforts after the principles of team-building, integrity and community shown by Kathryn L. Knapp. Success will follow you.

Kirmmse's book is an attempt to place Kierkegaard in the Politcal, social and religious context of early 19th century Danish Society. There are chapters on the major characters constantly referred to in SK's book. There are chapters on Gruntvig, Martinsen, Heiberg and, of course, Mynster. The major emphasis in the his discussion of SK, himself is: why was Concluding Unscientific Postscript not his last book as he planned it to be? The second half of the book is a wonderful exploration of the "second authorship." a great read.

This is destined to become an extremely important work in Kierkegaard studies. Kierkegaard is often treated as a completely solitary philosophical figure. By focusing his analysis on the issue of temporality, Kangas is able to bring to light some of the philosophical and historical interlocutors invloved in Kierkegaard's dialectic with himself. This approach helps to not only understand Kierkegaard's difficult writings on temporality, but it also helps unlock some of the mysterious treasures found in all of his works.

This is one of the most insightful books ever written on language and culture. It shows how Iranians create the context for the interpretation of their own language through language use. The dynamics of status, politeness and social relations in Iran are all revealed in this astonishingly insightful work. If you ever wanted one book that would reveal the mysteries of Iran in depth, this is the one! It has stayed in print for over 15 years. No surprise here! Why isn't this required reading for the U.S. State Department?

This is an exhaustive dictionary of haitian creole. Have used the book in an intensive creole course. Found this dictionary to be the best of several offered. Gives definition as well as usage guidelines. This make the book an excellent resourse for those new to the language as well as to all who need or want to use creole.

Legacy of a Governor is the life of Indiana's forty-seventh governor, Frank O'Bannon (1930-2003); and the author, Andrew E. Stoner, is the right person to share the legacy. This is the story of a gentleman's life journey from Corydon, a small town in Southern Indiana and the first state capital, to his rise to influence, power, and service in Indiana's capital city, Indianapolis.

After receiving baccalaureate and law degrees at Indiana University, O'Bannon returned to his hometown of Corydon to establish a county seat law practice and help manage the family newspaper. When in 1970 his father Robert P. O'Bannon, a Democrat, decided to retire from the State Senate, where he had served two decades, Frank O'Bannon, a lifelong, loyal Democrat, ran for the office and easily won. During the next eighteen years, he rose to positions of leadership in the Senate, most of the time, unfortunately, in minority leadership, a leadership often more challenging than that of the majority.

In 1988, O'Bannon yielded his own ambition to become governor to political reality and accepted the lieutenant governor slot on a Democratic ticket headed by Evan Bayh for governor. The Democrats won comfortably, ending the Republican's twenty-year control of the Governor's office. As Lieutenant Governor, O'Bannon presided over the Senate, where he had served many years, but, more importantly, used his experience to help move legislation of the Bayh-O'Bannon team, a crucial role because Bayh lacked legislative experience, had only two years in as Secretary of State, but had a lot of dynamism.

In 1996, O'Bannon felt his time to be governor had come; and the people agreed. In a hard-fought campaign with Stephen Goldsmith, Republican mayor of Indianapolis, O'Bannon came from behind to win solidly. O'Bannon easily won a second term in 2000. Unfortunately, because of a national economic recession State finances were at a low ebb; and, just as State finances seemed to be turning around, Hoosiers were shocked and saddened to hear on September 8, 2003 that their Governor had suffered a massive stroke while at a trade conference in Chicago. He died a few days later. The overall impression of Frank O'Bannon on this reviewer is that of a successful politician, a great man, and a good man, who did not feel the need to wear his faith on his sleeve.

Andrew Stoner, the biographer, a deputy press secretary to the Governor, has thoroughly researched his subject in library and archival sources such as books, documents, and particularly newspaper files. The extensive use of personal interviews adds validation and a sense of intimacy to the text. The volume appropriately opens with a foreword by the Governor's widow, Judy O'Bannon, who truly was an active, working partner in creating this Legacy of a Governor.

Almost every legal philosopher of note who is writing today has expressed an opinion about the nature and value of the philosophical school known as pragmatism. With Legal Pragmatism, Professor Michael Sullivan becomes one of the few current legal philosophers - possibly the only one - who has actually studied and come to understand pragmatism, its place in American philosophy, and its potential contributions to contemporary legal problems. Because the historically grounded and forward-looking philosophies of pragmatists like Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey have so much of critical value to offer contemporary jurisprudence, it is a pleasure, and a relief, to read a book like this that sweeps aside the caricatures and half-baked formulations of pragmatism that litter the field. In legal theory, the importance of pragmatism has long been recognized, but rarely understood. Sullivan provides what has been sorely lacking: an explanation of the role pragmatism can play in developing a progressive philosophy of law.

Legal Pragmatism seeks to imbue our legal practices with intelligence through the work of reconstructing the legal and moral values that make up what Sullivan refers to as our "American democratic subjectivity" - a concept that encompasses our historical and cultural commitment to freedom, individualism, and community. This is a radical agenda, which acknowledges (and requires) the legal theorist's direct participation in contemporary legal controversies, with the goal of building a better, more democratic community:

"Historically self-conscious and politically engaged, the pragmatist insists that legal theory needs to understand itself as a participant in democratic dialogue about who we have been, who we are, and who we should become. On the one hand, the legal pragmatist does not make authoritative announcements concerning her version of the good life, then seek to enforce that account through legislation. On the contrary, she understands herself as trying to empower intelligent decisionmaking within the present community by rendering the legal past explicit while laying out possible futures."

Sullivan's writing brings these possible futures to mind as he develops a pragmatic theory of individual rights, judicial review, and democracy that moves beyond the tired, traditional dichotomies of individual versus community and minority rights versus democratic legitimacy. His book offers fruitful insights into the concrete problems our democracy faces. It is a major contribution to the philosophy of law, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in either jurisprudence or the vital role philosophy has to play in our democracy.

It is a crime that most of George Sand's novels are out of print. Why are all of the boring male authors still not only in print but taught in literature courses, while Sand, the most celebrated author of her day, is impossible to find?!

Lelia was Sand's third novel, and her most controversial when published. It is quite difficult to read -- more like a series of prose poems than a novel, really. But it is certainly worth the effort. Not only is Sand a true artist and poet, but she is a sharp proto-feminist critic; in fact, many of her critiques of marriage and the treatment of women are still completely relevent today.

Lelia tells the story of a woman of towering intellect who is unable to feel physical passion (she refers to herself as "impotent"). She feels great passion for art, poetry, and Nature, but she is unable to consummate her relationship with the young poet Stenio. Much of the novel consists of the letter written between Lelia and Stenio, so we see Lelia both through the lens of the male gaze (the men constantly dichotomize her into angel/demon, mother/whore) and through her own eyes. The center of the novel deals with Lelia's relationship to her sister, the courtesan Pulcherie (based on Sand's romantic relationship with the actress Marie Dorval). At the heart of the novel is a description of Pulcherie looking upon the sleeping Lelia as a young girl and learning for the first time the power of love and life. It is, in my opinion, one of Sand's finest passages and absolutely not to be missed by anyone interested in Sand, women's European literature, or lesbian literature.

Lelia is an emotially turbulant novel; nowhere do we find the harmonious, transcendant union between man and woman that characterizes much of Sand's other work. Lelia stands out as a Sandian oddity because of the time in Sand's life in which it was written. Although it's difficult to find a copy, I highly recommend getting it any way you can. It is the job of feminist readers and critics to get Sand back into the canon.

This novel although certainly different nevertheless it is exciting in its own peculiar way, very dramatic, intensely poetic, soft, charming and inviting; and yet by all means the heroine is despairing, terribly gloomy sort of character, suicidal and dark, but mostly she is out of this world, alike a visionary. The book is gentle, romantic in tragic sense of the word, Leilia is kind-hearted and yet doomed, reader grasps by own choice certainly. It is a finely written book, belonging perfectly to its Romantic 19th century era. It is dark, tragic, sentimental. But simply breath-taking. Can't be put down easily. Quite haunting.

Leo Ornstein (1893? -- 2002)remains one of the most obscurely fascinating figures in American music. Born in Russia in about 1893, he was a child prodigy who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In about 1905, his family fled Russia to escape the pogroms and emigrated to the lower east side of New York City. Ornstein studied music at a predecessor to the Juilliard School of Music and toured Europe in the early 1910s with his teacher, Bertha Fiering Tapper. During this time, Ornstein received a compositional "epiphany" and wrote some wildly dissonant, percussive piano pieces which established his reputation as the "bad boy of American music."

Upon returning to the United States, Ornstein, young and handsome, all of 5'4" with a mane of long black hair, became a charismatic pianist (With the outbreak of WW I, he never again toured Europe.) who played the standard repertoire together with his own and other modernist compositions. Ornstein had a successful career as a concert pianist until 1925. In the interim, he married Pauline-Mallet-Prevost, who was a fellow student at the conservatory, and the daughter of a wealthy family, highly different from Ornstein's own background. The marriage lasted over 60 years.

Suddenly, in 1926, Ornstein abandoned the life of a concert pianist for reasons that remain obscure. He taught at a conservatory in Philadelphia and ultimately opened his own studio. He did no more concertizing and ultimately became forgotten. In the 1950s, the Ornsteins retired from their studio and wandered around the United States, finally settling in a trailer in Brownsville, Texas and then moving to Wisconsin.

Ornstein was "rediscovered" in the 1970s, and was the subject of news features and a number of recordings. During this time, he continued to compose. Pianists Marc Hamelin and Janice Weber are among the artists who have recorded Ornstein's solo piano compositions, from the radical early works to the more conservative, virtually unknown pieces he composed late in life.

It is fortunate that there is a recent thoughtful biography of Ornstein, the man and the musician, "Leo Ornstein:Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices" (2007) by the musicologists Michael Broyles and Denise von Glahn. Their work is the product of eight years of research, including interviews with Ornstein's family, and study of his large output of music.
The book proceeds on many levels. It is a study of the composer's childhood in Russia and the immigration of his family to the United States, in company with many Russian Jews. It is also a study, in Ornstein's case, of assimilation and Americanization, and its consequences. We learn a great deal about the United States, up through WW I, and about musical life of the time. Finally, Broyles and von Glahn give an overview of Ornstein's music and detailed descriptions of some major pieces, especially the "Quintette" and the early radical piano works.

Underlying any consideration of Leo Ornstein is the question why he abrubtly abandoned his concert career in the mid-1920s for a life of obscurity. The authors offer a variety of answers, including Ornstein's aversion to risk-taking, and his desire for a peaceful mainstream life in America. They are critical of his marriage to Mallet-Prevost, for wanting to keep Ornstein to herself and to hinder the development of his career - a decision in which Ornstein at the least obviously acquiesced. It remains unclear to me whether the authors' criticism of Mallet-Prevost is well-founded.

The authors take a similar approach to the change in Ornstein's music from its early anarchy to its latter approach which Ornstein described as "expressivist". Ornstein became disenchanted with the development of modern music which he characterised as overintellectualized, experimental and formalist. His own music, in contrast, was emotive and spontaneous, wearing its heart on its sleeve. The authors are somewhat critical of Ornstein's technical skills as a composer and his difficulty in handling complex forms. They also raise questions, as they do in considering Ornstein's life, about the composer's abandonment of his Jewish-Russian roots, including his relative lack of contact with his family after he became successful, his desire to be mainstreamed into America, his isolation from other composers and intellectuals following the end of his career as a performer, and his aversion to risk-taking as factors that contributed to his obscurity.

Following my reading of this book, I listened to the Naxos recording of Ornstein's piano music by Janice Weber with renewed interest and appreciation. Broyles and von Glahn have written a meditative, troubling biography of a composer who deserves to be remembered and, more generally, of the changes and challenges faced by Jewish immigrants to the United States early in the 20th Century.

Robin Friedman