Louisiana Books

This is an absolutely fabulous book that should be in every library (just like all of Choate's books). Of course, I am the proud son of the lead author, so what do you expect me to say.

To read Hans Morgenthau is to meet his sharp and fearless mind seeking `to speak truth to power'. During most of his carrier, his main public cause was to call forth responsibility from North-American policy-makers. His days were the days in which mankind finally found itself face to face with the prospect of the end; here was the setting of a unique era, superior in danger and complexity to all other previous ones; and Morgenthau was one of the few-too-few authors who could see its political problems.

At the end of his life, he wrote the following words: "While I may be best known for my contributions to foreign policy and more particularly to American foreign policy, it is a paradox that my major intellectual interest from the very outset of my academic career has not been foreign policy or even politics in general but philosophy. After WWII, I made a conscious choice in concentrating my efforts on foreign policy because I realized that the existence of the United States and even of mankind depended on a sound foreign policy. What good was it to speculate on philosophic topics if in a couple of years or decades the world would be reduced to a radioactive rubble? So ever since, for more than twenty years, I have been caught in this self-imposed public service which by no means coincides with my real intellectual interests".

Morgenthau died in 1980, shortly before the Cold War itself was over. His political thought will outlast not only the competition of superpowers, but also what was then taken as states and nations; as well as Aristotle survived the disappearance of the Greek polis and Machiavelli, the unification of Italy. These are political thinkers who make it through the surface of their objects and share a glimpse of the very essence of politics. In so doing, they expose truths about the human condition which remain, among the problems of the day, recognizable to eyes which may be very distant.

Of course, almost every man is a son of his era and expresses reality in terms hopefully understandable by his contemporaries. Thus, to point out the rediscovery of those recognizably human and tragically recurrent facts among one's present configurations is a most fortunate task in a biographical work. This is why Morgenthau's Intellectual Biography, written by Swiss professor Christoph Frei, is a special work for those who wish to understand the process of putting together the pieces of his line of reasoning which, in the early 1930's, started being dubbed 'political realism', but only effectively reached public in the late 1940's.

Before the Biography, those who went through Morgenthau's work in English had never had a contact with his early papers, which contain all the seeds of his later intellectual developments. Dr. Frei was the first to study these papers, along with other never seen documents, diaries and letters. Having conducted a trilingual research in English, German and French, he provides us with a reconstruction of the first decades of Morgenthau's life, points out to the first time when theory-relevant thoughts were put to paper and presents a lively account of the difficult context in which these thoughts began to flourish.

The book has two parts. The first part deals with Morgenthau's life story, his studies in different cities in Germany, his acquaintance and perceptions of its several ongoing schools of social sciences, and the beginning of his professional career. As the specter of totalitarianism approached the old continent with its somber colors, we watch his difficulties first in Europe as a Jew, as he tried to emigrate to America, and later on in America as a German and a Jew, struggling first for survival and next to retake his intellectual projects. This first part leads up to the success he achieved with the publication of Politics Among Nations in 1948 and deals, in smaller detail, with the second half of his life as a successful political scientist, trying to contribute to the North-American experience during the Cold War.

As the second part of the book unfolds, we go back to the early decades of the twentieth century and embark in a philosophical trip side by side with a young man's experience of disillusionment: his meditation of civilized life in a time of decay. Here we see the formation of Morgenthau's Weltanschauung and approach the central core of his view of man and society. Frei lets him speak out some of his frankest thoughts about the limits of science, the political sphere, the place and implications of power among human beings. Frei also strikes us with the clever insight of turning Immanuel Kant's four philosophical questions: "What is man?; What am I allowed to know? What should I expect?; and What should I do??" into the skeleton of his investigation. At its end, the book concludes that Morgenthau's realism is in fact a sober type of idealism; as it puts, "transcendent idealism".

The two greatest contributions of this biography are the following: firstly, it unveils Morgenthau's central formative reference in a surprising and unprecedented way: the chapter about his existential dialogue with Friedrich Nietzsche is, without a doubt, the most fascinating of all. Secondly, it swims against the epistemological and quantitative tides of contemporary political science so as to concentrate its work in Morgenthau's philosophical side - which is, when all is said and done, what truly matters for those who are attempting to think politics with their own heads.

Vivian Shipley, editor of Connecticut Review, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of numerous poetry prizes such as the Hart Crane Poetry Prize, has produced another worthy addition to her canon of bare-bone honest poetry. Shipley's word choice within "Hardboot" is impeccable; the poems inherent raw power of truth draws the reader in like a black hole, but there is a glimmer of light as one inhales this new collection of poems that ache like a bruised heart.

Rereading ought to be par for the course in order to truly appreciate the richness of details and feel the deep emotional effects that occur upon the closer second and even third read.

"Our eyes close,
last night's six o'clock news, twisted lips intrude.

In a day or two, when we pause, we probably won't think
of that mouth, of the mother in New Haven with
no son, no morning bacon to fry for him to smell."
("Action News, Channel Eight")

Thankfully humor does roam freely through many of the poems. Shipley is not afraid to take jabs at her own foibles or the creative writing universe in which she inhabits. The poet's use of deadpan humor in "The Answer: A Winning Number" strips away the notion of an answer being readily available to writer's block. A writer's workshop held in Prague

"is the answer
to your writer's block. Just imagine
lying on your back in a long stretch
of green, a glass of Merlot or-if
you prefer-Perrier cooling at your side."
("The Answer: A Winning Number")

"Hardboot" could have easily been weighed down by the numerous darker issues tackled: illness; being Adolph Hitler's sister; the under-achievers of New Haven, Connecticut; and the relatives Shipley left behind in the mountains of Kentucky.

"Like ham
curing on a hook, my heart still swings from

Connecticut to Kentucky. Writing poems about barns
holding wood shavings from my father's knife,
stains of tobacco he spit on the floor will be like
spitting cherry stones out to breadcrumb my way
home to hills of Howe Valley."
("Why An Aging Poet Signs Up For Yet Another Summer Poetry Workshop")

But in the end one is filled with a redemptive joy for having taken this arduous journey with Shipley. Bitterness among this collection is absent; "Hardboot" will kick the most hardened of hearts alive to the beauty of forgiveness and love.

Bohdan Kot

Ed Bearss is both one of the most knowledgeable Civil War historians of the present day AND one of the men who found the gunboat Cairo. "Hardluck Ironclad" is both Civil War history and modern archaeology... it details the history of the first warship in the world to be sunk by a mine and the story of the people who worked to raise her and display her at Vicksburg. Outstanding.

Chris Tusa is a true artist, allowing us into the strongholds of what he sees as Haunted Bones. At times there are themes of Gothic, Realism and Dark Humor, we are never ok, plagued by what haunts us: facets of fear, cancer, Alzheimer's, betrayal, fantasy, sickness (inside and out), our personalized gifts from previous generations. This is poetry that Generations X and Y can relate to; waiting for a pill such as, Prozac that can numb what haunts our bones, "the way you dissolve on my tongue, like a peppermint, like a host- the way you bury my grief". In The Disappearing Act, Tusa recalls our nostalgia for innocence, in a trend of the broken family, he paints us memories like a photo album before dad (the magician) leaves the pictures, "...the final secret trick none of us knew tucked up his shiny tuxedo sleeve". On a lighter note, the poem Habit lets us reminisce about what we gave up along with smoking, "...the slow drag of conversation, the cold November evenings... fireflies blinking in the trees like thousands of lit cigarettes." What's haunting your mind, paralyzing parts of your life or your bones? Chris Tusa's poetry in Haunted Bones is a gem.

I own this book and found it very inspirational and would recommend to anybody especially to young boys and girls in athlectics overcoming lifes hurdles.

As is evident in this collection,
Kelly Cherry gifts us with her always luminous,
distinctive language, and memorable content.
Julie Suk, poet

Increasingly since the early 1980's, standardized testing has been appropriated not as a general measure of institutional comparision, but punnitative measures towards students who can't quite measure up.

Using a case study in Lousianna, Johnson and Johnson demonstrate standardized testing sounds great in political propaganda (what individual wants to be against academic excellence?) but implementation is sharply at odds with the complex reality of learning styles and economic limitations.

Because standardized tests rely on rote memorization and repition of facts in a multiple choice format, they are not the best format for people who have other learning styles. Additionally, different groups of students are educationally tracked (advanced placement, special education) but this system and it's real effects on the individual student are too convienently downplayed during test administration time.

The tests real function is to ultimately provide quickie reassurance to elected officials and parents alike that their communities are 'smart' while continuing to avoid and/or underaddress the curricular and economic issues which would actually enable these students to succed on the same programs.

Eric Voegelin's monumental historical masterpiece encompass a series of 5 volumes of a new vision of a theoretical history. Voegelin's Israel and Revelation approached the question of revelation from a highly sophisticated view of revelation as part of a historical context. The traditional theological analysis imparts only a limited dimension to the historical reality of revelation. Voegelin's theoretical conception takes us to the heart of revelation as a human activity that created a discontinuity from the the secular world view. He carefully used the Biblical account of revelation against a scholarly approach to revelation that is grounded in the order of being, i.e., the order that reflected the symbolism of revelation. He pointed out the inherent limitations of confusing the order of revelation with the pragmatic dimensions of the human existence couple with confusing revelation as a "second reality" experience. Voegelin investigation in the historical figures of revelation and the complex relationship that must be mastered to keep the religious tension with the order of being and pragmatic structure of human existence. A very absorbing book and a great understanding of revelation in a historical context.

Being a student of the War of 1812 and of the Battle of New Orelans in particular I eagerly awaited the delivery of this book. The book has four main parts; firstly, the atlas; second, Gene Smith's introduction; third, the extensive appendices; fourth, the narrative or memoir.

The atlas (actually a series of maps in a seperate docket showing the contemporary battlefields and approaches used by the US and British forces)is worth the cost of the book alone. Coming as it does from Latour's hand, Jackson's principal military engineer, it is, put simply, priceless to the serious student. Not only does it help visualise the struggle but much can be deduced by a simple comparison of Latour's battlefield and environs maps with, say, John Peddie's equally contemporary print for the British forces. Also the maps illustrate a host of detail not covered in the general histories (i.e. the correct anchorages and approach points for the British fleet - these I checked with the original ship logs that survive in England).

Mr Smith gives a very interesting introduction. His detail of Latour's life before, during and after the Battle is informative and really helps underpin the memoir by putting it in its proper place (i.e. he highlights the 'blurring' around Latour's actual location on the 8th January itself - was he with Jackson or Morgan? If so did he actually see the battle?) As good as the introduction is, however, I must point out that it is imperfect. The Commander of the British forces was EDWARD and not EDWIN Pakenham and I wish he had said more about Latours relationship with the Jean Lafitte and why Latour latter became an agent for Spain.

The appendix table is extensive and full of that incidental detail that brings history to life. It gives an added dimension to the memoir. Most students will be familar with the key documents repeated here but hidden in the despatches, letters and orders are nuggets of pure gold (i.e. the exchange of letters between opposing commanders - many not always in the official archives). Some of the items appear direct transpositions from already published sources particularly on the British side (i.e. from the London Gazette). This is unfortunate as Lambert's despatch of the battle was censored and an important paragraph excluded which, is turn, is likewise excluded from the tables.

Turning to the narrative itself it is surprisingly short. Of some 400 pages Latours memoir accounts for only 160 pages plus some notes. Of these not all are of real use to the student (i.e. Latour's preface and the war's origins I found superficial and vague). However, Latour more than makes up for this in his specialist areas such as his description of New Orleans and its defences and his descriptions of the Battles of Lake Borgne and New Orleans (not to be read without the appropriate maps) are vivid and substantial. Latour obviously conducted a lot of far ranging research (i.e. with bearly concealed contempt he provides tantalizing details of the fishing village and inhabitants and a number of Pensacola inhabitants who helped the British in their approach. He lists names and places and these too are borne out by the surving records (i.e. Guillemard p.71 received a large some of money from General Keane for his services).

All in all I found Latour's memoir to be an excellent and rewarding read. However, to get the maximum benefit from this book it is suggested that it is read in conjunction with a more modern work on the subject perhaps Frank Oswley's 'Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands' or Robin Reilly's 'The British at the Gates'.