Columbia Books

Dr Christopher N Kendall's book, "Gay Male Pornography: An issue of Sex Discrimination" is the book that the pornography debate simply had to have. There is no doubt that this book will rate as one of the most important texts on gay male pornography this century. This book is also critically important for victims of incest and sexual assault whose voices are consistently berated and silenced by those who enjoy pornography and who benefit financially from the pornography industry. Dr Kendall tackles the evidence of the harms of pornography and his critics head on with his fierce logic, intelligence and honesty.

Bailey, a political scientist who until his untimely death in 2001 was one of the foremost authorities on gay politics and voting patterns in large cities, blends data with detailed studies of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Birmingham, Alabama, to illustrate the role gays and lesbians play as distinctive members of urban political communities, where they have traditionally been part of liberal coalitions. Bailey argues that the ends of urban-based gay political involvement have had more to do with the definition and assertion of identity than with influencing the levers of economic policy-making. At a time when "identity politics" as a mode of analysis has fallen out of fashion in academic gay studies, Bailey compiles an impressive array of evidence that identity politics, at least in the urban setting, actually is becoming more important as municipal politicians seek to build coalitions and consensus.

Once you get over reading the name "Abe Sada" as though it were "Abe Lincoln," you'll have a whale of a time reading Dr. Johnston's account of a famous modern Japanese geisha and killer. He is a professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, but don't let his distinguished credentials put you off, he is also a tip top storyteller. Many of us in the West heard about this case first from the shocking "art film" directed by Oshima called, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, and many guys who saw this movie back in the day will still not uncross their legs.

Johnston has won access to the original testimony and court transcriptions of Sada's arrest and trial. He quotes from memoirs of Sada provided by the man who interrogated her directly after the crime. "What really left an impression," said Adachi Umezo, "was when I asked her, 'Why did you cut him?' Immediately she became excited and her eyes sparkled in a strange way. At the time people were saying thaat she had cut off Ishida's thing because it was larger than average. But in reality, Ishida's was just average." Johnston asks the question, how did Udezo know rhat Ishida's penis was just average. Who can say, but as Johnston proves, Udezo must have seen a lot of men's genitals to make such a judgement.

As an appendix, the historian wins out over the storyteller, and Johnston's narrative voice slips discreetly away and we hear Abe Sada's own account of what happened, the way she saw it. For the first time, we see the whole murder slash castration story from the point of view of the woman who committed it, and we see that a society, like pre-war Japan, that had driven women to the point of insanity, their backs against the wall, monitored and legislated through rape and coerced brothel activity, might expect plenty more from any woman brave enough to strike back. If Abe Sada was a star, as Johnston foregrounds in his title, she became a star in much the same way that Valerie Solanas did, for political and economic reasons, however badly understood by both perpetrator and victim.

Joan Scott's "Gender and the Politics of History" is one of the landmark books in the field of gender history. What is gender history, you ask? To a large degree, that's a question this book is trying to answer. This book can be regarded as an explanation of *what* gender history is (as Scott defines it, at any rate), why it's important, and how it can be done.

Essentially, the book is a set of collected essays organized around the idea of "gender and the politics of history". The first few essays are polemical/theoretical-- and in them, Scott puts forth her argument as to what gender is and why it's an important category of historical analysis. In many ways, these are the most important essays in this volume-- and I *highly* recommend them as a primer to folks who are interested in learning more about why historians are now talking about "gender". In a nutshell, Scott argues that that one of the most fundamenal ways in which people, in all times and plaes, have organized their intellectual/cultural/political world has been through the use of gender-- and that historians should treat gender as a fundamental category of historical analysis-- along with class, nationality, etc. In making this argument, Scott carefully distinguishes between what she calls "gender" (i.e. by which she means the network of arbitrary and socially constructed meanings, ideas, and assumptions that are attributed to masculinity and feminity *and* the way in which these meanings are deployed in everyday life and discourse) and mere "sex" (mere biological/anatomical distinction between men and women). This is subtle point, but it's an essential one-- and it has many important implications for Scott's view of gender history. Of especial note, it means that she understands writing about the history of gender to be a specific kind of intellectual/cultural history-- she is *not* talking about merely writing the social history of women. For her, gender is an idea that gets used in discourse because it involves very basic, and highly value-laden assumptions-- and the task of the gender historian is to understand *how* and *why* it has been used and changed. Scott thus sharply distinguishes what she would call "gender history" from the so-called "women's history" that was pioneered back in the 70s (whose main emphasis was to recount how women had been dominated and abused in the past and to correct the errors of previous historians who had ignored the contributions and experiences of women).

The remainder of the essays fall into three groups. One pair of essays are historiographical-- they are methodological critiques of two of the most seminal works on English labor history: E.P. Thompson's "The Making of the English Working Class" and Gareth Stedman Jones' "Languages of Class". Though Scott recognizes-- and lauds-- the contributions of both of these works, she also notes that they ignore the role that notions of gender played in the formation of working class identities and politics. She also suggests how their descriptions of the 19th century English class would be different if they *had* considered gender as a factor.

The next set of essays are case studies in how gender can be used to explore different issues pertaining to 19th century French labor history. While the actual arguments here aren't probably going to be interesting to anyone but other labor historians, these essays are more valuable as illustrations of how Scott's methodology can actually be used in practice. The variety of sources she uses in these essays (including several whose use of gendered categories is subtle) shows just how powerful, and useful, a tool that gender analysis can be in the writing of history (labor history, at any rate), regardless of the source material.

The final pair of essays are more concered with "historians" today than with the past. In one, Scott address the famed sexual discrimination trial against Sears in which both sides hired femal labor historians to testify about the history of sexual discrimination. In this, Scott shows how their own claims were shaped by notions of gender-- notions that they did not consciously articulate, but which seemed to lay in the background as unstated assumptions. The final essay has to do with how one might try to deconstruct the "false opposition" that our own contemporary value system has established between the notions of equality and difference-- particularly in the field of legal rights and opportunities.

Overall, this is an important, thoughtful, and extremely influential book. I *highly* recommend it to all historians or would-be historians-- and I'd especially recommend it to anyone who's really not sure what gender history is supposed to be or why anyone would want to do it. I could make a few criticisms of some small details (e.g. pointing out the title probably should be "Gender, Class, and the Politics of History" or "Gender, Labor, and the Politics of History" to reflect the fact that's Scott's primary interest is in applying gender theory to the field of labor history-- or that a lot of her criticisms of straw-men like "conventional labor history" and "traditional intellectual history" are unfair), but those really are minor nitpicks in an otherwise eye-opening and profoundly important work.

My dad has always been kind of an amateur naturalist, and he has recently been reading several of the various books by Richard Dawkins. As a biochemist working in the biotech industry, I have always encouraged him to read a little bit about molecular biology and genetics, field which I believe are important to learn about in order to gain a more complete understanding of how life really works. Recently, he asked me if I could recomend a good book on the subject of genetics. I found this quest not particularly easy. There are many excellent textbooks on genetics out there, but these are not really what I would call "armchair reading." Of course any college general biology textbook will have an excellent discussion of genetics and molecular biology - but again, too hard-core. One excellent book on genetics is the "Cartoon Guide to Genetics" by Larry Gonick and Mark Wheelis, but this book was written in 1991 and is now hopelessly out of date for this rapidly advancing field. Then there is "Genetics for Dummies," but I thought the title of this book would be a bit insulting potentially.

Anyway - I came across this book by Charlotte Omoto and Paul F. Lurquin. I would encourage anyone interesting in biology and genetics to pick up a copy of this extremely well-written little book. I think this book is absolutely perfect. It starts out with a short introduction on the history of the discovery of DNA, then goes into an introduction to basic genetics concepts, such as the use of the Punnett square predict genetic outcomes, recessive vs. dominant traits, sex-linked traits, etc. It gives lots of very nice examples of Mendalian traits in humans. In chapter 4, there is a very nice discussion of the molecular biology of genetics - which is such a beautiful theory that it is a shame that most people don't know much about it. Chapter 5 goes into the use of bacteria to make human proteins - an extremely important part of modern molecular biology research. Chapter 6 has a discussion about genetically modified foods. Chapters 7,8, and 9 discuss chromosomal abnormalities, mutations, and recombination - which is all very important for an understanding of human (and non-human) genetics. Chapter 10 is my favorite - it gives a very well written description of the Hardy-Weinberg theory of how genes propogate in a population. This is all tied in with the theory of evolution in chapter 11. Chapters 12 and 13 then go into newsworthy topics such as nature-vs-nurture and human cloning.

All in all, it is a very well written book which everyone should read. My only criticism is that the figures are not as good as they could be. The authors need to hire a good artist to help them with the next edition! I think they're clear enough, but they could have been made a lot nicer. Still - I give the book a five star rating.

Dave

In recent years it has becomm possible to use DNA to trace human development. For instance the people of iceland believed themselves to be of Viking descent. DNA testing has shown that yes, the men of Iceland are of Viking descent. But the women came from England and Scotland. Apparently the Vikings stopped off to capture a few women on their way west.

This little tidbit of knowledge is a mixture of multiple sciences and fields of study. The beliefs of the Icelanders has to come from a humanities perspective. The DNA evidence has to come from the hard science in the laboratory. (The supposition at the end is my own.)

Dr. Cavalli-Sforza, as the title of this book says, has spent a lifetime of study spanning across many fields of study in the hard sciences and in many different areas of the humanities. This is a book that spans the globe from his offices in California and Italy to field studies in Africa and elsewhere.

Written by an anthropologist and a geneticist, this book is also a good combination of crossing the fields of science and humanity.

This book is a complete review of Geochemical pathways. The book is well organized and full of examples that you can review. Unfortunately some questions do not have answers in the book, so it's better to review the full solved examples on each chapter.
I recommend this book extensively, because is part of the bibliography that was reviewed in my Geochemistry class during my time at the University.

Norbert Elias gives us with this fantastic piece of work the BEST interpretation on the question of nacionalism(s). His text is so clear and yet so full of ideas that it keeps you reading until the very end.And it is not a very "friendly" theme. This one is for anybody who ever asked how and why nacionalism works as a powerful bond and wonders about the development of ideas in Germany until World War II. Definetly, a masterpiece

Vigilante movements and ideologies are spreading around the world, and GLOBAL VIGILANTES is the first book to provide a detailed overview of this movement, considering elements of modern vigilantism and its relationship to society and authority structures alike. College-level sociology students in particular will appreciate the blend of history and social insights, and chapters that offer plenty of footnoted source material references to back up facts.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This little book is a series of reflections on the broblems of all of us getting along in the world as the world shrinks because of communications, transport, international companies -- i.e. Globalization. It is an excellent analysis of the seemingly unending religious friction goin on in the world.

Rupp concentrates on problems that are immense: religion, refugees, education, medical care. Then in a surprising turn he asks a series of other thinkers to comment on his views. They are likewise concerned withese big issues, but have somewhat differing views on the problems and on his proposed solutions.

One very interesting point, it has appeared to me that the Christians have become more tolerant of other religions. That is to say, we don't see Methodists killing Baptists. Rupp points out that this is an American view, and Christians against whatever in other parts of the world are not difficult to find.

The downside I see in the book is that it does not look at the future enough. For instance there is no entry for any of these words in the index: AIDS, Energy, Oil, Malaria, TB.