Pitt Books

In this book, a must-read for anyone interested in the sea, Robert Jay Wilder gives us a new and rational slant on the problems and stewardship of the oceans. Rather than painting scapegoats, he gives the reader an unbiased history of current maritime dangers (from overfishing to competing maritime bureaucracies), and then presents sensible solutions.'Listening to the Sea' doesn't blame, it heals.

Along the way, there are many pearls to keep things interesting - from cannon range leading to the three-mile limit to how fuel cells work. The meat of the book lies in its clear outlining of the precautionary principle, the philosophy underlying sensible reform of our relationship to the oceans. Wilder makes a compelling claim that combining this with an integrated management plan that includes marine reserves, something akin to Australia's approach to the Great Barrier Reef, offers the best chance to save our oceans.

In this book, a must-read for anyone interested in the sea, Robert Jay Wilder gives us a new and rational slant on the problems and stewardship of the oceans. Rather than painting scapegoats, he gives the reader an unbiased history of current maritime dangers ( from overfishing to competing maritime bureaucracies), and then presents sensible solutions.'Listening to the Sea' doesn't blame, it heals.

Along the way, there are many pearls to keep things interesting - from cannon range leading to the three-mile limit to how fuel cells work. The meat of the book lies in its clear outlining of the precautionary principle, the philosophy underlying sensible reform of our relationship to the oceans. Wilder makes a compelling claim that combining this with an integrated management plan that uses marine reserves, something akin to Australia's approach to the Great Barrier Reef, offers the best chance to save our oceans.

"Listening to the Sea" describes the gradual development of territorial sea limits that grew outof military, then fishery protection, concerns that have no relevance whatever to the proper governance of the sea and its resources but which continue to this day to create boundaries where none really exist. Wilder presents a wealth of historical information in a way that is easy to read and retain. He traces the history of federal-state struggles concerning authority over the exploitation of offshore oil and other resources which underpin current issues about the proper uses of the outer continental shelf and how to allocate federal funds related to OCS. Wilder follows the development of US environmental legislation and the inernational agreements that increasingly are required to find solutions to problems that extend across the "notional" borders nations have created at sea, arguing for an emphasis on prevention rather than cure, the extension of the precautionary principle to all national and international rule-making, and the development of a "holistic" approach to all questions involving the seas and the wildlife that live in them. This covers the substance to be found in the book, but not its effect. It is beautifully written. It's hard to avoid a sense that Wilder may be overoptimistic about the potential for the development of a more "enlightened self interest" to prevail in the governance of the oceans. But "Listening to the Seas" does leave you feeling better about the future and possibilities for scientists and policymakers to work together and for international agreements that might begin to turn around some of the awful trends we've seen in the last 20 years. While things have changed for the worse environmentally, they have changed greatly for the better in terms of the public's recognition of those facts and issues.

After reading a few poems by Jim Daniels, I became curious as to his motivation and if the poems reflected his personal experiences. My interpretive writing teacher, Boyd C. Allen, was able to have him speak to my class. After he read a few of his digger poems, someone asked if digger was a real person. Jim Daniels replied, "mostly." He told us that he composed digger from many people he knew and from many personal experiences, but where it sounds really good, that is where Jim Daniels would improvise and exaggerate his story a bit to make it sound better. For the most part, his poems were written from personal experiences, or at least what he remembers from them. That is what makes his poems so real and great. He is showing that he is just one of us.

Actually, reading this book of poems has me asking the question; Is Mr Daniels using his personal experience about his black life in Pittsburg?

(note to "a reader" from April '99: Daniels, judging by a picture on Michigan Poetry Collective's site, is white.)

Jim Daniels, M-80 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993)

I've been mulling this book over in my head for a couple of days now, figuring out what to write about it. I honestly still have no idea. Daniels obviously knows the ins and outs of the craft, and he's certainly capable of writing good, solid poems, which these are. Moreover, they (for the most part) get their messages out of the way and let the images do the talking, like all good poems do.

Thus the reason for my confusion. It's a technically fine book of poems, but nothing about it really fired me up, the way a book by someone like Charles Simic or Elizabeth Willis does. The only thing I can really think of to say about it is "it's good." But not great. Thus, it would seem, my problem; it doesn't merit effusive praise, nor does it merit disparagement. It's just... good. ***

Daisy Fried, My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again (University of Pittsburgh, 2006)

The most impressive thing about Daisy Fried's My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again is the plethora of voices she takes on-- convincingly-- in these seventy-two pages of poems. By the end of the book, it's likely you'll have no idea what race or religion she is (and I'm only guessing at the sex because of the name, to be honest). The washed-out author photo on the back doesn't help much, which I assume was the intent. What I could glean was that Daisy Fried is from Philadelphia, and that she can write.

DOLL RITUAL
Spanking the bad, kissing the good ones, that's a thrill,
poor things. Mornings I lay out all the teds and dollies
with their bald spots, coy looks, rag bodies, hysterical eyes.
Some with chewed off noses. Some, patches where snot,
pee, has dried. The one I name Ti-Anne, my favorite, my doll
afraid of all the others, with broken eyelids supposed to flip up
stuck shut? Her I sit to one side to watch the whippings.
Her namesake, Ti-Anne (don't ask), my best enemy (I have
lots of enemies, she's the only one I name a doll for) has eyes
those same types of hysterical colors, changes them daily.
She licks her fingers before she tries to stick them in my eyes.
No one yells but someone sings ha ha. "Ti-Anne, Ti-Anne,"
I call, "you stink!" and you know the bad girl smashes my lunchbox
thinking it's my face. I'm thinking about this, I see my pattern:
incitement, paralysis, incitement, paralysis. Why can't you
ever handle what you start, little girl? See, I have never
been poor at all, except just an indigence, also
a mendacity, of heart; and the way I think it's otherwise.


This is good stuff. Give it a shot, see what you think. ***

Daisy Fried has a trick to writing poetry. You could
do it yourself and be a famous poet. Here it is:
all you have to do is lyrically and econmomically
take the reader into the heart of a situation. A bar
on New Year's Day for instance. You have to put us there
with such magical authority that we can smell the beer
and the lime-scented cologne. Then when you've got us
there (remember the part about being lyrical) you have
someone or something speak out with heart-breaking honesty
that brings us to our knees.

Got it? First, the lyricism-rely on your youth. Then the
illusionless honesty-rely on your wisdom. Nothing to it
really, you should give it a try. I'll buy your book
as soon as it comes out.

In the meantime, I'll just read more of Daisy Fried.




--Lynn Hoffman, author of New Short Course in Wine,The and
bang BANG: A Novel ISBN 9781601640005

I should preface: I don't go out of my way to read poetry. I appreciate the greats (Hughes, Neruda, Eliot) but wouldn't consider myself a Poetry Person. Generally, though, I'm mad for great writing.

That said, this book rocks the f*** out. The poems are deftly lyrical, so you're not put off. They feel fresh and rich at the same time. My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again makes me think that maybe one day, I will consider myself a Poetry Person.

Robin Moore's work is an important contribution to cuban studies. Combining archival research and interviews, Moore traces the arc of afrocuban cultural expression in the early 20th century from dispised cultural form to national symbol, a process, moore notes, which has interesting parallels to the United States. Scholarly but readable, this book is destined to become a standard work in cuban musicology and contributes to cultural, ethnic, and popular music studies.

An important work that sheds light and understanding of the struggles and triumphs of Afrocubans and their culture. Robin D. Moore takes you into a fascinating journey, with scholarly research and in depth analysis, of the racial experience during a period of tremendous changes and unrest in Cuba. This work is an enormous contribution to our understanding of this period between 1920 through 1940...Bravo!

This book needed to be written. It is the story of Afro-Cuban musicians in the pre-revolutionary atmosphere of commercialism and imperialism from the US. Part of the story revolves around the racism of that era, which existed as well in the genres of big band and jazz. And part of the story revolves around the music of that time period--some of the richest and most complex in Latin American history. If you want to understand the use of African cultural identifications in popular music, this is a good place to start. It fills in some of the history which led up to the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon today.

The book titled `The New Capitalists: How Citizen Investors are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda' by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson is progressive read in terms of explaining the rise of a new civil economy. It explains the Circle of Accountability to the new capitalists drawing parallels to a civil society. One thing is clear, that this book is published, that there are instances that have triggered this thinking, that there are rules, regulations, standards that are being rewritten, are all signs of progress.

That capital fuels reform is undeniable. Only now, the capital belongs to the working class as opposed to the individually rich. That corporate governance has a direct correlation to higher valuations of the company, other related benefits namely creation of more jobs is undeniable but what I found most interesting was that "momentum" of corporate governance reform at a company is a key influence on equity price performance.

I think the new civil economy affords new ways for investors to be engaged with a company but in the end it could come down to a matter of how many people can you actually have in the driver's seat as opposed to it being a matter of fair and complete disclosure and even then it might be open to interpretation.

Since the society and shareholder are one and the same, it follows that companies should act in the interests of society at large. These universal owners expect companies to perform a certain way, which is no different from what we know as common sense. For example, creation of value is not a new principle. It still is the appropriate way to behave. That there are myriad of standards to follow is itself a huge deterrent for a company. A possible solution might be the Global Compact, which is but slowly emerging as a standard.

In essence, the individuals who own stock in the biggest corporations of the world have a majority over the individual rich. However, to simplify the concept, I am gong to use an example. An individual A owns 2% GE vs. individuals B through Z who combined own more than 30% of GE. For the B-Z group to make a difference they have to work together and the way they do that is through institutional investors, web collaborative tools such as, Wikis, rating services, investor advocacy tools, independent auditors, audit certifying agencies and the like. These collectively are the new 'information moguls'.

The book nicely ends with a memo to the various players in the new economic ecosystem. Whether it is sustained, is to be seen in the future. For now, this book offers a lot of hope to someone who believes business does a lot of good for economies and societies.

The New Capitalists: How Citizen Investors Are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda tells of how smaller, grassroots business owners are blending the concept of value into their business, differing markedly from traditional Wall Street approaches and influencing the course of business ideas of achievement as a whole. Civil Ownership is powering a new idea of corporate structure and responsibility, and THE NEW CAPITALISTS documents this evolving change, making it an important acquisition for college-level business holdings seeking more than idealistic vision. Practical business applications that work well with value-added ideas make for a powerful coupling of philosophy, ideal and business savvy.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I will admit to thinking that pension funds like CalPERS were a bunch of meddlesome activists who were throwing their weight around. But after reading The New Capitalists: How Citizen Investors Are Reshaping The Corporate Agenda by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik, and David Pitt-Watson, my views have been significantly altered. The true owners of corporations are now stepping up and demanding accountability.

Contents:
Part 1 - The New Capitalists: The Civil Economy - The Democratization of Ownership; Business Past - The Uncivil Economy
Part 2 - The New Capitalist Circle of Accountability: The Future Corporation - A Capitalist Manifesto; Institutional Investors - Mobilizing Ownership; Boards of Directors - A New Accountability
Part 3 - The New Capitalist Ecosystem: Monitoring the Market - The Information Moguls; Accounting Standards - Escaping Brother Luca's Boxes; NGOs and Capital - Civil Society Meets the Civil Economy
Part 4 - The New Capitalist Agenda: Action Memos - The New Capitalist Agenda; Epilogue
Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index; About the Authors

The authors start out by making the point that corporations are no longer held solely by rich individuals and families. The largest investors in many cases are mutual and pension funds that represent millions of individuals. The capital they provide are the savings and retirement dollars of the man on the street, therefore making people like you and I the real owners in corporate America. And rather than just being share"holders" looking for a quick trade, these large funds are becoming share"owners". They are demanding accountability from company management and the board of directors, and they will bring about change if it doesn't happen. The recognition of this ownership role (as well as the use of it) is leading to partnerships between groups that were formerly antagonistic towards each other. The new Capitalist Agenda that the authors advance is the roadmap for how both of these groups can work with each other and mutually benefit from the partnership.

I used to think that corporations should be relatively free to do what they thought was necessary to conduct business. But the abuses of Enron, WorldCom, and many others cured me of that misconceptions. Instead of viewing these funds as drains on corporate America, I now see them as a vital balance of power. The New Capitalists helped me to solidify those thoughts and clarify my viewpoints. An interesting read...

In this book, I'm talking back the rhythms that were stolen from my people. Our society has suppressed the spirit of African Americans, yet when I look around me and in the media, everybody is walking, talking and singing like black people. ~Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman's poems are wildly complex in form and I will admit to only understanding about a third of the hidden meanings. As I read her poems I am walking down dark streets when suddenly I turn a page and I am suddenly at home with a series of words. Then, I am thrown into a word maze again where words like odalisque, pandemic and narcoleptic pull my eyes hungrily across the pages of hurricane thoughts.

Wanda is known as an Urban Poet who has a love for unvarnished truth. She comments on everything from politics to hot love. Her poems dance with their own rhythm and are especially beautiful when she lets her goddess out to play. She is known for being one of the nation's best poet-performers.

While the complexity is inspiring and Wanda's use of words, stunning...I was so happy to find my way to the humor in "The History of My Body." Deep emotions dance between her words and sometimes she blatantly expresses inner torments like when she writes: "I have wrung my heart/in secret silence." At times her words seem to roll in hot lust or spring from the page in a mind jolting punch.

Wanda's poems inspire me to write and write. I write my own poems after reading her poems and I am amazed at how such complexity inspires my own awakening to myself. I understand her musings on some primal level where poets sometimes live but at times her language flies above me and I can't grasp at the meaning no matter how much I try. Sometimes I am so pleased to understand an entire poem and then I can wander through pages before enlightenment strikes again.

By the time I arrived at "Soul Traveler" I was writing my own poems. That is how much this book inspired me.

The poems are challenging and interesting and the vocabulary and visual images are just stunning:

...in rainbow-colored moss. There she thrived in volcanic
radiance & iridescent splendor yet she pined for
another world made steel by her false imaginings & in
the pitch of her moonless golden-apple grove she danced
her dissatisfactions amongst ghosts...

To write this way! What a dream.

~The Rebecca Review

OSTINATO VAMPS is a gloriously ambitious book. Taken together, its poems form a visionary history of black, white, brown, and beige. Similar to the speaker in Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," the "I" in these poems is a conduit for voices from the ancient past, the 19th century, the noir 40s of big band swing, the 50s of hipster bebop, and contemporary America. This is art as history redeemed: "aesthetics is the science of vulnerability/ bruises transformed, wounds immortalized..." Coleman is a virtuoso of many styles, laying down Thelonious Monk or Miles Davis, Robert Johnson or Billie Holiday, and sometimes rap or gospel. In a gorgeous poem called "Plum Hunger," she manages to merge W. C. Williams and Duke Ellington. There are people who still think Renaissance music should cue the rhythm of our poems. Coleman demonstrates that true American prosody is based on our native music. This is an important book. Do not miss it.

[ostinato]: a musical figure repeated persistently at the same pitch throughout a composition. -- Webster

Wanda Coleman has been dubbed the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles and with OSTINATO VAMPS she continues the traits that have been her hallmark for more than three decades. Her style is lyrically breathtaking as she repeatedly weaves voices and snippets of blues lyrics into poetic expressions that focus on the human struggle. Her words do both, explore familiar territory and shatter stereotypes, but her fidelity to the truth is buffered by the syncopated way she delivers. The poetry and prose possess a soaring openness and a biting wit, where socially imposed fate begins to burn in the reader's mind at the indifference of humankind. The empty sadness in the title 'Olio Intaglio', where a mother is left to suffer alone over the loss of her son, touches on how family and friends can be the cruelest of them all.

One caption refers to her as the poet with a warrior voice because of her inclination to peel away polite veneer and verbally dissect the heart of issues. She artfully reminds us that life is unfair, but it still belongs to the living. If you have a penchant for poetry that is rhythmic but not rhyming, that reaches to the core of a psycho-social America, I recommend OSTINATO VAMPS. It invites the mind to venture beyond its comfort zone.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

The female child of a white female outcast and a black freeman, the author gives a detailed account of what it was like being raised by a white family in the pre-Civil War North of the United States (a household where she was abandoned by her mother at 3). This biography gives a general idea of what a Negro's life in the North was like -- and it was not much different from that life of a slave in the South. The mistress of the house was brutal beyond measure, but many of the other family members were reasonably kind (though not kind of enough to put a stop to the abuse), and it makes one shudder to think of what could have happened in a family who had nothing but Negro-haters in it. Still, she recounts how she got a small measure of schooling, and how she eventually became a Christian (something which the lady of the house -- a Christian herself -- opposed) and her eventual marriage. An upsetting story, it is nevertheless of much more value than "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as it was told from the point of view of the victim and not a sympathetic white.

This book was written by a woman who was supposed to be a free Black woman. In fact she was treated like a slave, a Black wage slave. She was oppressed by a family of who were Northern Abolitionists. Yet, she was treated like a slave. Succeeding generations of whites studying the book denied her and her class the ability to write such a book: they claimed the book had to have been written by a white person and that it was a novel, not real.

Millions of Black women who have slaved in white kitchens and cleaning white homes during and since slavery have a spokesperson in Harriet E. Wilson. This book helps us understand not just to pity them, but to understanding their ability to fight back with their minds.

Though I currently have the 1983 edition with the introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr (whose name is in the introduction for almost every important Af-Am text in circulation, it seems), I plan on getting this latest edition.

Until recently, biographical details on Wilson were limited. Indeed, they seemed to trail off soon after the publication of her book (a death certificate for her son six months after its printing has suggested to some that her call for support went unheard). This introduciton offers new and happier information, showing that Wilson lived a long life--in part as a successful lecturer on the Spiritualist circuit.

In any edition this is a great book. Really, "great" isn't superlative enough to cover how important and interesting it is. But if you're going to buy it, get this edition.

This book gives excellent examples of what you will face during the real test. It is a good guideline to show how you are doing in terms of preparation. It gave me great confidence which I desperately needed to do well on this test

its a fair source of basic concepts, but lacks the true reflection of standard of difficulty of boards.if you are a foreign medical graduate and have time it's much better to use NMS BOARD SIMULATOR SERIES.

I thought this book was a great review of Step 1 material. Has 1,000 questions with pretty good answer explanations.

I would not recommend using this as your only source of questions. However, it is a good question source for rapid review of a lot of information. You can get through the questions rather quickly. Offers a nice change of pace from the NMS series or Board Review Series (which tend to bog you down with long, very detailed answers requiring intense attention).

Highly recommend as an additional source of questions.

P.S. Remember, the best way to score high on Step 1 is QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS!!!

Ted Kooser's poetry is lovely. "Sparklers" on page 79 is a beautifully spare poem that really spoke to me.

After reading Weather Central it is easy to understand why Ted Kooser is sometimes called the poet laureate of Nebraska. He writes with eloquence of barn owls, potatoes, spider eggs, sparklers, baseball and the prairie so that they matter to the reader wherever they might live. These poems do not rely on obscure references, contorted images, or pretension. They are powerful because we see that our own lives are poems that are being created each day. With 20/20 vision Kooser puts them on the page for us.

Although I didn't think this collection was quite as good as Delights & Shadows or his Selected Poems, Weather Central is a fine collection of poems. I recommend "Four Secretaries", "In Passing", "A Statue of the Unknown Soldier", and "Weather Central." The poems seem to be a bit longer than what he usually writes, though the rest of Kooser's characteristics are here. He still is plainspoken. He is still a simple poet. He's still a poet everyone can love.

Readers of Maggie Anderson's work won't be surprised to note that the same grace with character and story flows throughout these selections. These poems are stately and intimate but with a kind of tender interior voice that maintains dignity and poise. Here is a voice that knows what it knows and tells it in a tone that makes readers want to bend closer to hear. For teachers, this is a good book to show how one can manage place and the way that someone who knows a place really well can move through the expository or posturing and into the kind of giving of a landscape to a reader like the best kind of gift--one that shows a sensitive knowing of what is needed and what will delight. A gorgeous offering--a true windfall.

Maggie Anderson's poems collected in Windfall are a masterful collection. I had the honor of hearing her read several of the poems, and her flat-toned, Appalachian voice really changes the more lyrical verse itself into something strikingly real. Ms. Anderson is amazing, and this collection will leave its impact.

In a couple of poems in Windfall: New and Selected Poems, Maggie Anderson uses the analogy of pearls to describe objects in those poems. As I thought about her collection of poetry, the analogy of gems and precious stones on a gold chain was the first thing that came to mind.

The poems aren't like pearls because they vary in subject and style. The jewel that hangs prominently on the center of the chain is "Heart Fire". The poem, written in memory of a young man who took his life, vividly tells how everything Ms. Anderson sees reminds her of his physical attributes. It is an amethyst because of its richness in color. "Knife" and other poems in which Ms. Anderson discusses her fear of her father are marquise-cut diamonds that have points to pierce the bubble of a peaceful world. The Black Dog poems, especially "Black Dog Goes to Art Colony", are black onyx stones that counter the sharp diamonds with their smoothness and warmth.

But "Literary" aptly described my overall feelings as I read this book. Ms Anderson said that when she read poems as a young woman, she struggled to understand what they meant. Some of the poems in Windfall seemed beyond my mental grasp because I don't have an academic background in poetry. Since I also am unfamiliar with many of the plants Ms. Anderson mentions in her nature poetry, I saw holes in the landscapes that she was painting with her words. Instead of giving up on understanding the poems that were perplexing, I reread many of them. I was glad I made that effort because I picked up on the links of the gold chain that thread through the gems and stones. Although a poem early in the book told of her father's death, the fear of him still lives inside of Ms. Anderson. Connected to that chain of thought are the poems that deal with her mother and other relatives., who are painted as reticent individuals. Blackberries stimulate all of Ms. Anderson's senses, and she is highly conscious of boundaries of every sort.

Although I felt Windfall was sometimes challenging, I felt it was worth the struggle. "Heart Fire" is one of the best poems I've ever read, and I feel my knowledge of poetry has grown as a result of reading this book.