Washington University Books

What an amazing and fascinating family! This is a great look at some important individuals, what they contributed to our history, and how they grew up in this country. The author weaves in great details of family relationships and their public lives, along with the local and national picture. It told me a lot about America's experience in race relations on a personal level. I really enjoyed the human side of their story, nicely captured in the straight forward prose.

Donnelly's work is based on years of work among Hmong immigrants in Seattle, and covers women's lives in terms of economic role and family role and position. Through analysis of two needlework cooperatives' history (and dissolution), and through the analysis of several marriage ceremonies (and stories of the subsequent marriages' success or failure), Donnelly shows how women's actions are grounded in Hmong cultural values and options, even as they make use of the cultural options and interpretations of American society. While traditional Hmong society could be characterized as male-centered-marriage negotiations, for example, were arranged by the male elders of the clans involved, even if the young men had taken the initiative to find their brides-the transplanting of thousands of Hmong to the U.S. has led to the development of more egalitarian and romantic notions of marriage, and to the possibility of greater assertiveness on the part of Hmong women. Yet Donnelly is able to point to folktales in which women do act assertively, so a model for this kind of behavior is available within the Hmong tradition. All cultures contain such seeming contradictions, Donnelly asserts, and indeed, the presence of alternative models of behavior within a traditional culture gives that culture "resiliency that may let that culture survive even traumatic shifts of circumstance." (191) Thus, even with changing circumstances, language, economic opportunities, education, and religion, Hmong culture contains within it the possibility of continued Hmong cultural identity in the U.S. This is an excellent example of enlightening and sensitive ethnography.

Charles Sheeler in Doylestown: American Modernism and the Pennsylvania Tradition investigates one artist's lifelong engagement with the rich, distinctive traditions of rural Buck's County. It charts Sheeler's discovery of the region's architechture and artifacts beginning about 1910, when he and fellow artist Morton Livingston Schamberg rented an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Doylestown. It assesses what impact this seminal event had on Sheeler's early career, and how his cyclical return to Bucks County themes in later life reveals poignant attachments and emotional depths not usually ascribed to this twentieth-century painter and photographer - known primarily as an iconographer of the machine. By analyzing Sheeler's core attachment to the preindustrial vernacular, this exhibition and its catalovue reconstruct his attempt to reconcile part and present in a series of powerful complex pictures that resulted from his enduring fascination with the Pennsylvanian tradition.
--- excerpt from book's Preface

This thorough collection of Charles Webster Hawthorne's paintings demonstrates his accomplishments in figure, portrait, and landscape painting. Drawing early inspiration from 17th century Dutch genre painting, then from his studies of Manet and the early impressionists, he achieved a stunning freedom of technique and sponaneity in his watercolor landscapes. Painter and teacher, Hawthorne maintains the tension between abstracton and realism, evidenced in the wonderful color photographs in this book. His art and teachings influenced many American 20th century painters, including the abstract expressionists. His teachings about artistic vision and method are presented in his notes on painting, included in this volume. (They are also published separately in "Hawthorne on Painting.") Most readers will benefit from their inclusion here as they offer an opportunity to judge his words and aesthetic principles against his paintings, rather than in a vacuum. In addition to illuminating essays by Richard Muhlberger, formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Janet Flint, the text lists more than 50 museums that have Hawthorne's work in their collections. As many are small regional museums, this is a most valuable guide for further research, travel, and enjoyment of this unique master's work.

For individuals interested in learning the fundamental of the art of Chinese painting should read this book. Of hundred some pages, almost half is comprised of color plates and b/w exhibits, which reinforce the written words.

Author offers an incisive analysis of issues in so-called community policing. Great read for anyone wondering how this concept works or doesn't work.

Anyone who has done research on the Civil War approaches veteran's memoirs with a degree of caution. Memoirs are always self serving to some extent and often take too much advantage of hindsight. This work is remarkably free of such justifications. Rather it is the honest work of a soldier coming to terms with his war experiences. Philip Stephenson was a mere boy from St. Louis, age 15, when he followed his brother, Hammett, to Memphis to join the Confederat army. Hammett enlisted in the 13th Ark. and the underage Philip tagged along. He served as something of a mascot to his brother's company until he enlisted in the 5th Co. Washington Artillery. Until then he seemed to be free to come and go. Stephenson was present at or near most of the actions of the Army of Tennessee. He relates what he observed in great detail particularly in the last year of the war. Through his memoirs we see what he saw on the march, on the field and in camp. His descriptions of various Arkansans from officers to enlisted men offer rare insights to the boys which can be found in no other place. His observations on the men of the 13th Ark. are somewhat condescending, but he says, "All of them made as fine fighting material as the world could produce." The first one-third of his text covers the years 61-63. The greatest part of his memoirs discuss affairs that took place from 64 to the end of the war. From the Atlanta campaign until the war ends, his writing seems much more personal, more expressive of his emotions at the time. This coincides with the period when he served in the 5th Co. of the Washington Artillery and marked the first period of the war that he was not under his older brother's wing. From the moment Sherman attacked the Rebs at Dalton in early May until the Battle of Jonesboro on Sept. 1st, the men were in constant danger. Stephenson notes the horrors of trench warfare and the stress that it put on the men. The pressure became too great for some and he describes some of those who cracked. One member of his battery horrified the other members by taking his bayonet and jabbing out the eys of a dead yankee. Another deliberately walked between the lines to relieve himself as everyone watched in disbelief and the man was killed by a sharpshooter. Clearly this campaign had pushed many of the men to the breaking point. Perhaps no other participant has been as effective and honest in telling this story. Stephenson's account of the Battle of Franklin is very moving. His unit had been guarding a bridge some 30 miles away from Franklin and by forced march had arrived on the field between 9 o'clock at night just as the battle was dying down. Stephenson's one thought was the welfare of his brother and friends in the 13th Ark and he went among the wounded crying out "Where's Govan's Brigade." He finds his 3 best friends badly wounded and there on the battlefield they break into tears to find each other still alive. If there had been any thought of winning the war, it ended there. After Franklin, surviving would replace winning as the ultimate goal. Stephenson's memoirs are very personal. Through them we see how one survivor deals with his memories of both the best times and the worst times of his life.

Written by John C. Putman (associate professor of history, San Diego State University), Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle is a scholarly look at he changing social order in early twentieth century Seattle. Examining the intersection of radical-labor movements, feminist movements, suffrage campaigns, Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle reveals how the alliances and conflicts between these movements contributed to Seattle's regional identity. "Unlike most eastern labor struggles, class conflict out west was more localized. The lack of large-scale national industrial firms meant that Seattle workers had to battle locally entrenched economic and political elites rather than national corporate leaders." An astute socio-historical analysis, particularly recommended for college library collections.

This book contains a collection of fascinating essays exploring the links between classical antiquity and modern American politics. It is accessible to both the scholar and general reader.

Ms. Schlick is the uncontested expert on native American basketry of the Columbia Plateau (eastern Washington and Oregon) and she knows and has the admiration of many--perhaps all--of the current weavers. Her book finally puts a face and name on the creators of the baskets and sees them as individual artists. I can't believe this book has been allowed to go out of print--get it while you can.