University of Missouri Books

I had the good fortune to have Professor Sullivan as instructor in two English classes at Vanderbilt. He was one of the kindest and wisest professors I have ever known.

His autobiography reveals how much Walter Sullivan enjoyed his profession. The picture he gives of his academic career is one of fun and hearty good fellowship with most of his colleagues. I had not been aware how much southern English professors enjoyed their cocktails, but it appears it was rather a lot.

The sad part of this autobiography is the chronicling of a decline in humanistic learning at Vanderbilt which the author observed during the last decades of his career. The study of literature based around close reading of the text was replaced by the ideological rantings of the post moderns. Aristotelian logic gave way to the studied illogicalities of the Frankfurt School and all those who sailed in it. The Department of English at Vanderbilt was one of the humanistic glories of the nation. No longer.

I entered the university teaching profession long after the hires had already been made which would transform departments of History, English and foreign literatures into the hopeless morass of twisted ideologies we currently enjoy. Accordingly, I have spent a fair amount of time building levees against a tide already set in motion in the heyday of people like Walter Sullivan.

Like the nobility of the early eighteenth century, Professor Sullivan and southern academics of his viewpoint, had a jolly good time without noticing or wanting to notice that there was a concerted gathering of barbarians not simply circling around the city but actually passing through the gates into the city. How I wish that some of the energy spent in innocent enjoyment of the academic life had been spent by Sullivan and his colleagues in identifying and stopping the incursion. It is clear from this autobiography that Walter Sullivan felt that it was all due to a random change of fashion. It never occurred to Sullivan and his associates that there was any planning in the sea change which would ultimately swamp humanistic learning in the American academy. With such a careless inattention to what was going on, how could the post moderns not have won?

We mourn the passing of Walter Sullivan. We shall not see his like in the younger generation of "humanities" professors, for people with his views are no longer hireable.

Collected Works Of Langston Hughes V. 4 is a college-level critical examination presenting Hughes' novels Not Without Laughter and Tambourines To Glory, and is recommended reading for any studying the body of Hughes' works. Dolan Hubbard edits these two short novels, which are recommended reading for any in-depth study of Hughes' achievements.

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.

The world is a fortunate place when there are two people alive -- at the same time -- who understand Plato. Eric Voegelin was clearly one of those people in the twentieth century. This material was originally published as Volume 3 of Order and History, the core of the magnus opus that Voegelin chose to publish during his life time.

I met Eric Voegelin once as a graduate student, and asked him, "why'd you publish all this stuff?" I've been digesting his answer ever since. It was "to resist totality and totalitarianism."

Particularly, seen from this standpoint, a clear core of this book is his articulation of the Platonic concept of "metaxy," or the in-between character of life. In philosophical terms, this refers most directly and fully to "in-between" the Agathon (e.g., see myth of the cave and the Divided Line in the Republic) and the apeiron (explored most directly and deeply in the Timaeus). For the philosophically uninitiated, it is possible to speak of this in more mundane terms.

An unstated corollary of Plato's notion of the "metaxy" is that life is always larger than our categories. From a Socratic/Platonic perspective, this may include but will entail more than the epistemological recognition that every way of seeing is a way of not seeing. The notion of the "metaxy" is most fundamentally a linguistic indice pointing to ontological plenty as the ground of life, albeit lived within bounds of existential scarcity. This is a notion commonly shared by the great civilizations of East and West. The notion of the "metaxy" underscores that life is lived within a tension between the "transcendent" and "immanent" dimensions of being.

When we lose track of this tension, as we have to a great extent in the modern world, and subscribe to reductive ideological notions/understandings of life -- and most particularly, when we imagine that we can encapsulate life within the pride of our own "enlightened" categories -- on a political plane, there may be little to constrain the prideful actions of ideologies, irrespective of whether their clothing is Red or Black, or whether it is "left" or "right." Irrespective of the political stripe, repression and murder become "justified" in the pursuit of an ideological aim -- which in Voegelin's philosophical terms is to dissolve the "metaxy" in the usual modernist mode, through immanetizing the transcendent "eschaton."

Voegelin's philosophical terms may sound remarkably abstract to the modern ear (recall Robert Dahl's silly review of Voegelin's The New Science of Politics for the American Political Science journal). Facile critiques such as Dahl's typically focus on the unfamiliar language while overlooking the elementary fact that what Voegelin is asking us to do in every aspect of his work is to take a journey that precisely allows us to see the world in terms other than that of our inherited climate of opinion. For those willing to be thorough scholars rather than merely play at it within the context of given suppositions, Voegelin's scholarship offers new vistas and incredibly rich fields of study. His scholarship offers the capacity to reflect upon and act in the world in a substantively grounded mode with implications for every discipline (see e.g., A.G. Ramos' New Science of Organizations).

I submit that a key to understanding this text and the greater body of his work at large is to grasp the central significance of the "metaxy" -- not as a concept within the history of ideas -- but as a life referent of perennial relevance to the recurring challenge of resisting sophistic pretensions and the inherited or emergent ideologies of any time and place.

This text demands a great deal. You'll develop insights into Plato and Aristotle available no where else. But for Voegelin, such studies were never a matter of antiquarian interest. They were a matter of developing meaningful referents for life. The value in this text is precisely in its yield, capable of resonating throughout your life and offering far more than the initial effort it will require of you.

The Other Missouri History: Populists, Prostitutes, And Regular Folk explores Missouri history and its effects on all levels of society. A variety of essays by learned authors include "Race, Citizenship, and the Origins of Organized Labor in Antebellum St. Louis", "Survival Strategies of Farm Laborers in the Missouri Bootheel, 1900-1958", and "Prostitution and Reform in Kansas City, 1880-1930". Written with a keen knack for detail and explaining complex socio-economic fluctuations in plain terms, The Other Missouri History is a welcome contribution to state history collections especially for its revelation of the side of Missouri most traditional historical accounts overlook.

Outside Shooter: A Memoir is the personal autobiography of professional basketball player Philip Raisor. The pressure of serving in a team sport in the 1950's is aptly recalled (especially since this was an era when American society first took steps toward integration in professional team sports), steps as hotly resisted in the area of athletic competition as anywhere else. Both Philip's physical struggles and difficulties of conscience are astutely and honestly detailed in superbly insightful work which is especially recommended to the attention of anyone interested in the history of basketball as seen through the eyes of a player on the front lines.

I just finished reading Childress's new book this afternoon. I should have been doing other things for most of the past two days, but I just couldn't put the book down for very long. I've liked Childress's poetry from the time I first started reading it back in about 1997, and I've enjoyed articles of his that I've read, but this memoir is just wonderful. So well written, by turns folksy, wise, self-deprecating, insightful, touching. Childress has lived a hell of a life, and it is a measure of a great heart that he has come through it without letting the hardscrabble harshness get the better of him. This is a book very much worth finding and reading.

Coming from an english professor, this book is a masterpeice. Hawkins writes short stories beautifully. I highly recommend this book. If you are familiar with some of his other works, such as "Wedding Night," you will not be disappointed. In "Wedding Night," Hawkins creates a character that can be related to all people. He uses symbolizes remarkably.

Peacekeeping On The Plains: Army Operations In Bleeding Kansas by Tony R. Mullis (Assistant Professor of History, United States Air Force/Air Command and Staff College, Montgomery, Alabama) examines a violent microcosm of American history that served as a precursor to the civil war. Examining the useage of the army to conduct police and peacekeeping duties in the newly formed Kansas and Nebraska territories, Peacekeeping On The Plains offers a meticulous analysis of facts and records, regarding the true story of human greed, desperation, ruthlessness, and military efforts to contain potential riots with a strictly scholarly tone. Highly recommended, especially for American history and reference shelves.

The good news is that this 1948 book has just been republished by the South Dakota State Historical Press and my signed copy, that arrived today, from author Gilbert Fite (87) now accompanies the 1948 original that this fine historian also sent me two years ago.

This publication on Senator Norbeck has been virtually unobtainable which is why I tracked the author down after reading his excellent 1952 book 'Mount Rushmore' - still the best on the politics and history of the great memorial and fortunately still available via Amazon's used book service.

Norbeck was a most unusual Republican, supporting state enterprises, but one who suited the times and Fite shows how he successfully prevented the Nonpartisan League enjoying the same success in South Dakota that they had enjoyed in North Dakota by capturing their political ground.

While attacking them as radical socialists and disloyal to the Great War effort, the then state governor denied he was a socialist and that entrance by the state into certain lines of business was not socialism, particularly when it prevented exorbitant profits being made by monopolists. Shades of Teddy Roosevelt.

Whether it was progressivism or socialism Norbeck certainly promoted things like rural credit programs, a state coal mine and cement plant (the latter lasting for three-quarters of a century) while his sponsorship of good roads, railways free text book schemes, assistance to war veterans, grain-marketing acts are all detailed.

Given all this it is perhaps not surprising that Norbeck was one of the few GOP survivors in the era of FDR and the New Deal. Fite describes vividly the tensions in Republican ranks in SD between the prairie populist and conservatives in the leadup to the 1932 watershed election that obviously pointed to the end of Republican rule, under the impact of the Great Depression.

After an easy primary win Norbeck was returned for a third term when he beat his Democratic rival by 26,000 votes, despite the fact that in the presidential contest FDR carried the state by 84,000 votes. By the 1936 election the ailing SD Republican senator was positively endorsing FDR against GOP challenger Alf Landon!

Like the earlier Roosevelt (TR), Norbeck was also a great conservationist and as Fite points out Mt Rusmore, Custer State Park, the Badlands National Park, the Migratory Bird Act are all testimonials to his efforts as both a state and federal legislator. Norbeck's wish, "I would rather be remembered as an artist than as US senator," would certainly earn favour with all those, (including this Australian reviewer), who have travelled along the aesthetically pleasing Needles Highway in the Black Hills,as part of the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway, artistic proof of his insistence for the road to blend in with the environment rather than disturb the beauty of this wonderful area.

Norbeck's capacity to understand the importance of harmonising roads and tourism with the environment has helped make the Mount Rushmore and Black Hills area such an enduring attraction.

As an agricultural historian and a native of South Dakota, Professor Fite, is clearly at home with his subject and his works have continually survived the test of time. The re-publication of this fine biography is long overdue and hopefully it will be well received by American readers and, like his 'Mount Rushmore,' is well worth reading by anyone with a passion for western or Great Plains history.

On a personal note I wish the author, now in Florida, a long and healthy retirement and thank him for his contribution to making South Dakotan and American history such a pleasurable experience to the reader.