Columbia Books

great for therapy with eating disorders. adolescents enjoy reading the book for discussion in therapy

This is a book of extraordinary optimism and inspiration. The section on "Farming in the Z-Axis", a project by Andrew Kranis - an ingenious scheme for a vertical farm housed in a twleve-story building - is worth the price of the book alone!

This book is an important contribution to the analysis of how indigenous peoples and their environments have become central to the debate on how transnational and national governmental institutions, NGOs, corporations and the indigenous peoples themselves (particularly those of Colombia) are interacting in the emergent process of forming the means to govern the global environment. The great virtue of the book is its linkage of practical activities at the local, national and transnational levels to cultural imagery (pictorial, filmic, textual, etc.)in a manner that demonstrates the importance of the media or the imaginary at all those levels of practical activity. The book also makes good use recent and contemporary French and American social and anthropological theory, Foucault being put to particularly good use in the first chapter.

The focus is on the indigenous peoples' role in this emergent governmentality. The book is of particular interest to anthropologists, ecologists and those responsible for development programs. The book addresses the manner in which indigenous peoples have responded to the growing interest and concern of the West in those areas of cultural diversity and biodiversity that exist in Colombia--the Kogui people and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta being of central importance. Particular emphasis is given to the effects of colonial and post-colonial imagery that affects the power dynamic between indigenous peoples in their relationship with the West, both historically and with respect to contemporary events. The analysis is empirical with respect to recounting policies, social movements and historical developments, and it is theoretical with respect to western images of indigenous peoples and how they have impacted the indigenous as elements in the western imaginary. It addresses the development of both indigenous and western history in terms of social movements and institutional policies as well as the manner in which western imagery and desire regarding the indigenous has affected those practical arenas.

The basic focus is on the extent to which the indigenous and their environments have been subsumed under conceptions of western development and the needs and desires of western peoples. The book examines a variety of options to western development and eco-governmentality originating among the indigenous and their western supporters that may offer practical alternatives to current western models of development. The main point of the book is to emphasize how the status of indigenous peoples of Colombia serves as a focal point and microcosm of the larger issues surrounding the management of the environment on a global scale.

Although this book was published in 2004, I did not notice it until recently, and I must say, I find it more relevant than ever today, in 2008. It could have lost a star for not being sufficiently visionary or for not offering a specific implementable plan for overturning the broken global economic governance regimes that it so brilliantly dissects, but out of respect for the author's superior scholarship and my own limitations, I must go with five stars.

Indeed, I am astonished to not see another review. The author deserves reading and recognition.

Here are a few of my flyleaf notes:

+ Superb detailed examination of how the so-called global economic governance organizations are the last gasp of the pyramidal pathologies, lacking in democratic public dialog or deliberation.

+ author struck me as overly generous to the USA but he clearly points out the need to understand and respect the detailed reaons why others do not agree with US "designs" and the US insistence on treating each country alone, rather than in a regional context.

+ I was taken with the author's concise focus on the dangerous combinations of US subsidies, excessive borrowing (this was before the subprime mortage and credit crisis we are now experiencing).

+ Switzerland has reformed SLIGHTLY and is still the banker of choice for dictators and corrupt despots who are looting their countries, creating failed states and perpetual poverty. I have a side note: "time to invade Switzerland and demand open banking?"

+ The author points out that free flowing investment and rules against expropriation are diametrically opposed to sovereign governance and any attempt to provide for sustained development and financial stability.

+ Global institutions too easily manipuated by developed nations.

+ QUOTE pages 373-374: "The excess capacity visible on a global scale, downward pressure on prices, the threat of deflation, and the impact of desperate countries seeking to compete by ignoring labor rights and environmental concerns produce a shallow and uneven development.

I put this book down with considerable humility--like John McCain, economic (and methematics) are my weak zone. I did learn enough from this book to realize that this author is gifted and should be listened to and given an opportunity, along with C. K. Prahalad and Jeff Sachs and Paul Krugman, to restore the social aspects of political economy.

Other books that strike me as complementary to this one:
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Afterthought: the index is *very* disappointing (publisher's fault) but the bibliography by the author is itself another book and quite fascinating and comprehensive.

This insightful account offers a lively view of a turbulent time in United States economic history. Wells' book is informative, well-researched, and well-written.

...in my very biased opinion :)

-Jonathan Caspi

Assistant Professor Adrian Rodgers and Associate Professor Emily M. Rodgers present The Effective Literacy Coach: Using Inquiry To Support Teaching and Learning, a guide that goes a step beyond the nuts and bolts of day-to-day coaching in the search to understand how literacy coaching can breathe renewed life into instructional practice. Offering research-based strategies to improve the teacher-coach connection, The Effective Literacy Coach discusses how to guide group discussions, the art of asking the right question, how to get the most out of one-on-one coaching, and much more. Enthusiastically recommended for remedial reading teachers, whether they work with children, teens, or adults.

General Eisenhower's five year tour of duty as president of Columbia is told with great gusto and just the right amount of detail by historian Travis Jacobs. It's jammed with stories that make it fun to read from beginning to end. Plus you really get a sense of history about this nationally renown university. It starts with Murray Butler's 44 year reign--old, blind, and deaf--and the desparate search for a new dynamic replacement.

Was Ike anti-intellectual and anti-academic? Here you see both sides: He refused to honor John Dewey at a 1949 banquet; He was found sitting at his clean desk one day reading a Western novel; yet he spoke eloquently before a history class about the military books that influenced his decisions in Europe during WW2; he made surprise appearances in classes, including an economics course, although he was clearly more fond of Baker Field and the football games.

Critics said he vacationed too much, played too much golf and bridge with his buddies, made too many off-campus appearances, and was seldom available to Columbia professors and administrators. But some of that was due to his staff handlers, who shielded him from his Columbia colleagues. Jacobs tells a delightful story of how history professor Robert Livingston Schuyler got around his handlers and met up with the General on his way home for lunch (pp. 125-26).

After reading Jacobs' biography, I'm amazed how much Eisenhower accomplished, given his constant interruptions--trips to Washington, NATO leader, and running for President in 1952. Yet he gave a lot of good publicity to Columbia, which was hurting financially after the war, and got involved in many university projects (although he hated fundraising).

Jacobs is even handed in reporting on Ike's supporters and detractors. His conclusion is that Ike was ultimately good for Columbia, and Columbia good for Ike even into his presidency; a surprise ending. My only complaint is that you learn very little about his wife Mamie in the book. She's around, but you never know what she's thinking. Otherwise, a mighty enjoyable reading of a little-remembered part of Eisenhower's career.

Gerald Curtis introduces his classical study of election campaigning in Japan as follows: "For nearly a year and a half I was privileged to examine in microscopic detail the campaign of a candidate for the Japanese Diet. Living in the candidate's home, participating in campaign strategy meetings, visiting innumerable farms and mountain villages, talking for long and enjoyable hours with local politicians, newspaper reporters, and voters, I gradually saw emerge the pattern of campaign strategy and organization documented here."

The politician was Sato Bunsei, a non-incumbent candidate of the ruling Liberal Demoratic Party (LDP), and the district where he campaigned was clustered around the city of Beppu in Oita Prefecture, in the northeastern corner of Kyushu. Sato is what Curtis labels a locally-oriented politician, having served for sixteen years in the Prefectural Assembly and failed once in the national election of 1963. In 1967, the enterprising Sato faced formidable rivals: not from the socialist opposition, whose electorate didn't overlap with the LDP's base, but from his own party's two incumbents, an ex-bureaucrat with ministerial experience and an old politician, temporarily purged after World War II, who at that time held the position of Speaker of the Lower House. As Curtis notes, "the combination of multimember districts with single entry ballots has a divisive effect on any party that runs two or more candidates in any one district. The intensity of intra-party rivalry may be best compared to that of a hotly contested Democratic primary in a one-party American southern state."

Titled "The Birth of a Diet Member" for its Japanese edition, the book follows the candidate on his campaign trail, beginning with the politics of party endorsement and progressing through a detailed description of campaign organisation in rural and urban areas, analysing the structure and function of the koenkai or local support group, then showing how the candidate tried to gain the support of organized groups and moving to the climax of the short official campaign ending in victory for Sato, who defeated a more experienced incumbent by a large margin

The book contains many gems. For instance, a series of graphics illustrate the "benefit of locality" by showing how each candidate obtained the bulk of his votes in areas surrounding his home town, with little overlap in areas of major support. In describing Sato's efforts to gather the women's vote, Curtis shows the pivotal role played by a Mrs. Kawamura, the president of the LDP's women division in Beppu, who designated a core group of women campaigners in each school district to support Sato's campaign. He hints at the role played by the underworld in passing the word for Sato among bar hostesses and resort employees in Beppu. He insists on the fundamental difference between pre-war political patronage in which landlords and community leaders gathered the vote, and the modern koenkai that organizes support horizontally among the electorate. And he offers a classic distinction between the "hard vote" and the floating vote, explaining Sato's success by his ability to gather the latter.

Curtis' book was a landmark study, setting the terms in which Japanese politics was to be discussed and raising the bar on how political scientists should approach their subject. Curtis brought to Japan the best tools that American social science had to offer, combining an ethnographic approach based on participatory observation with quantitative analysis of voters behaviour and structural analysis of the social and legal constraints in which Japanese politicians operated. He was well aware of the peculiarities of the Japanese way of politics, but he didn't verse into particularism nor advocated an irreducible singularity of Japan.

At that time, some observers raised doubts that Japan had really turned into a full-fledged democracy, pointing toward ongoing political patronage and traditional networks of allegiance. To these critics, Curtis replied that the distinctive style of election campaigning ("rice-roots democracy") as well as the hotly contested nature of elections at the local level were the best guarantees that democracy had really taken hold in Japan. Similarly, in his following book, he rebuked critics of "one-party democracy" by showing that, even within the framework of LDP dominance, fierce rivalry between party factions as well as contestation from the socialist opposition ensured that the system remained competitive. In other terms, intra-party competition and fiercely contested elections played the role fulfilled elsewhere by inter-party rivalry and alternation in power.

The lesson for Japan was a revigorating one. Japanese should not be ashamed of their political system or look elsewhere for an ideal model to substitute their own. They should take pride in the vigour of their democracy. Thirty-seven years after its publication, this book hasn't aged a bit.

ELECTRIC SOUNDS: TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND THE RISE OF CORPORATE MASS MEDIA discusses the changing atmosphere of social interaction brought about by a revolution in sound and delivery, which changed not only the radio world but the cinema and more. The 1920s and 30s represented some of the most important developments in American mass media, offering new roles for those who saw in it opportunity for education and cultural expression, and bringing with it fears for changes in public standards and social mores. ELECTRIC SOUNDS is a top pick for any college-level holding strong in American culture.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch