York College Books

I have read some of the theories surrounding post-colonialism, identity and the like, but this book stuck me as something different. Claire Kim refuses to be draw into the binary mode of thinking surrounding identity (specifically racial identity) whilst clearing a path with her clearly defined view of racial conflict in America as part of of a wider culture and psychological war in modern society. For many Korean immigrants to go to America to fullfill their 'dream' this experience of race, identity and politics is a new cultural experience. However, maintaining the status-quo is easier than rocking-the-boat - thus the conflict begins with the other cultural groups contesting the space for their 'dream'. Her style is open and concise, which makes this a great book for those who don't know anything about identity and culture. In summary, I am very pleased with this book which I would recommend to anyone who has an interest in the source of these news stories from the 1990's in America. I would especially recommend this book for Korean-American's as well.

The usual perplexities of how to survive as a smart girl from a west-coast working class family in the late 50s/early 60s who wants to go to college in the East is complicated by our heroine's realization during college that, well, she likes girls. No, I mean, Really Likes Girls. A well drawn portrait of coming out as a "gay girl" in New York City, pre-Stonewall... maybe semi-autobiographical? At any rate, it's well written. The author is better known for her writing as Catherine Stimpson, a literature professor and feminist scholar.

Whenever I pick up a Cathy Kelly book I have high expectations for it. This one does not disappoint. It covers the lives of two interesting women and it grabs you from the first moment you start reading. Dee has a problem with her image. She can't see what everyone else can and that she has a curvy va va voom body, instead she feels fat and unatractive. Isabel's marriage has just ended and she is finding it hard going with a useless soon to be ex husband. Do yourself a favour and read this one.

Quite a few errors were found.
However, the book appears to give a thorough review of NY State Regents material for Chemistry: The Physical Setting.

The Nuremberg Mind gives detailed accounts of a series of Rorschach tests given to the imprisoned Nazi leaders while they awaited trial at Nuremberg. The ink blot tests were administered by Dr. G. M. Gilbert (author of the excellent book Nuremberg Diary) and Florence Miale. All comments given by each defendant while he was examining the cards (including a running talley of the time that had past between each comment) is included in the study. The book also includes color images of the 10 ink blot cards used (I was surprised to find out that several of the ink blots included designs in red, blue, green, yellow, and orange).

I admit that I am skeptical about such psychological studies, and I did find certain weakness in this book. First, previous knowledge of the grim deeds of the Nazi leaders can certainly have an influence on the final analyses of their Rorschach tests. Gilbert was a Jewish American and, understandably, may have had some biases when conducting the examinations. After obtaining responses to Card X from Reichsbank President Walther Funk, for example, Gilbert suggested "that last picture might have been a concentration camp" (p. 79). Another example is exhibited in Miale's analysis of Hermann Goering's interpretation of Card VI as a bedroom rug: "[Goering's] capacity for warmth and understanding is used by him for obtaining sensuous pleasure rather than for developing real human relationships" (p. 92). In another case, Hans Fritzsche (a radio propagandist and hardly a big-time Nazi who would later denounce the regime) was labeled a "blind, torn psychopath" by Miale because the radio broadcaster saw a torn map in Card VII. Preconceived notions about the personalities they were analyzing probably had some influence on such responses.

More revealing are the patterns of responses by the subjects Hans Frank, Funk, Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Frank (the "Butcher of Poland") made several references to alcohol in his responses. Funk made startling sexual references during his tests. Goering made quick and confident responses to the cards and became impatient when certain areas of the cards did not fit his designs "snapping his forefinger at the three red spots [on Card III] as though to brush them off" (p. 87). Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner gave the least number of responses to the cards. The former quickly gave one response to each card or would simply reject them, the latter took a very long time on each card and, in some cases, would contradict his own responses (quite understandable from a man conditioned to follow orders). Such patterns revealed a great deal about the subjects' personalities, much more than did Miale's or Gilbert's isolated comments.

I believe that the Rorschach test can be useful in an analysis on one's personality. The test, however, is useless if the impartiality of the examiner is in question. It is possible for the Rorschach analysis to reveal more about the person conducting the test than about the subject himself. There are no universal guidelines for interpreting a subject's response and thus an examiner may--however unintentionally--introduce his own thoughts and preconceptions to the study. What saves the usefulness of this study is that the defendant's comments are printed verbatim which allows the reader to do his own analysis and come to his own conclusions about the top personalities in the Third Reich.

I couldn't resist reading this book, captured by its wonderful title. Hats off, and three cheers, to the publisher for agreeing to issue this title.

Professor Amenta is a bi-coastal university sociologist, trained at the University of Chicago. And this book is framed -- to his great credit with some subtlety -- in the century-plus scholarship of the so-called "Chicago School." Scratch beneath the surface and you'll surely discover that many a professor -- sociologist or otherwise -- enthralled with baseball aspired to write such a book.

This is an ethnography, written in the tradition of the participant-observer (e.g., Herbert J. Gans, or more recently, Mitchell Dunier), associated with Chicago sociology).

Professor Amenta, a failed Little League player from suburban Chicago, pursued redemption by playing in organized recreational soft-ball leagues in Manhattan. I won't reveal the outcome. Read it for yourself!

We learn a great deal about the author's softball career ("Eddy ball"), academic career, and private life (the latter including a considerable amount of detail about infertility). Perhaps some will deem this overboiled, although mostly I found the whole thing tasteful, insightful, and even inspired.

I especially appreciated the author's concluding observations about the real meaning of life -- professional as well as personal -- as well as his rich experiences on the field of softball dreams. Professor Amenta provides readers with a great deal to contemplate about what happens when culture and society reach an intersection.

Professor Baseball may not be for every armchair baseball reader. But I certainly found it memorable and suspect that many others will subscribe to this sentiment.

Bias warning! My son is one of the authors.
Some years ago David Eggers founded "826 Valencia" to help students ages 8-18 with their writing skills, in the realm of creative writing, expository writing, or English as a second language. The publisher of Sonny Paine is 826NYC one of 5 national chapters of the 826 group. As noted by the editor, authors were not only from NYC but other cities and several were already in college at the time of publication.
The book has 8 short stories varying in style from prose/poem to English ghost story to gritty urban angst. The stories are of remarkably quality and entertaining and I was never thinking "pretty good for a high schooler". Amazon's "Reading level: Ages 9-12" is not correct. These are adult stories with adult themes. Strewn in-between the stories are some tongue-in-cheek college application essays (thus the "Sonny Applies to College" in the title).
Certainly worth 8 bucks (or free if you buy 3 other items on Amazons promo list)

I read and enjoyed this book, though at times I felt I was having my hand held as I wandered blind through the world of writing. Seeing as this is a book for those interested in writing and learning how to write better, I would have chosen a style that is directed slightly higher than the lowest common denominator. I must admit at time I felt overwhelmed and appreciated the tone, but for the most part I found myself skimming over the "See Jane Dance, Dance Jane Dance" sections to get a broader look at the material. Overall, a good book.

The working lives of garment workers in NYC in the early 20th century were horrendous: working conditions were miserable, unsafe, and unhealthful with autocratic employers subjecting employees to abuses and arbitrary rules, like having to pay for needles and thread, which was a not subtle way of cheating workers out of their already meager pay. This book is about the Progressive era reaction and solution to that workplace regime involving the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), middle class reformers and experts, the Factory Investigating Commission (FIC), an arm of the NY legislature, and the garment workers themselves. The fire at the Triangle Company, located in the upper floors of the Asch Building in NYC and devoid of fire safety measures, where 146 shirtwaist-making women were trapped in a fire either burning or leaping to their death on March 25, 1911, served as a catalyst for the solidification of reform measures.

The book begins with the Uprising of Twenty Thousand, an industry-wide strike coordinated by the shirtwaist makers' union (a division of the ILGWU) in 1909. The owners and other forces of reaction overplayed their hands, as middle class society of NYC was aghast at the abuse that young striking women were subjected to on picket lines by thugs and policemen and by officers of the legal system. That public focus facilitated settlements with some improved working conditions, although Triangle workers returned to work with no new settlement with fatal consequences.

However the Great Revolt the next year involving 75 thousand cloak-makers (also a division of the ILGWU) finally achieved what Progressive reformers wanted: the clipping of the wings of unfettered business with tri-partite oversight involving the public, business, and workers represented by a union. The Protocols of Peace was a private agreement between the cloak-makers business association and the ILGWU that sought to define nearly all facets of the cloak-making business involving labor. No longer could workers simply walk off the job over a dispute. Instead all grievances had to be tendered to a multi-step grievance process while work continued. Union workers also gained the right of preferential hiring. Piece rates were now subject to joint consultation via shop committees. While the Protocols was a private agreement, designated neutral public members sat on boards at the highest levels.

Industrial democracy is a concept that gets considerable attention in this book and apparently had some resonance in that era. But its meaning is disputed. For many, industrial democracy may conjure a direct role for workers, perhaps through worker bodies, of defining and controlling most all aspects of work and directly negotiating compensation. Yet that is hardly what the "peacemakers,' that is the reformers, had in mind. The ILGWU's role was more to discipline workers and enforce the agreement than empower workers. Those different perspectives did clash. Workers became unhappy with such issues as the slow process of grievance settlement, the setting of piece rates, and employers ignoring union preferential hiring. Workers inevitably engaged in wildcat strikes to force resolutions, which were violations of the no-strike provisions of the Protocol.

Both the shortcomings of Protocolism and the tragic, yet highly preventable, deaths of over one-hundred workers in the Triangle fire spurred the formation of the FIC in June, 1911. In addition, Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine in NY and dependent on working class voters, realized the necessity and opportunity to be pro-active concerning working conditions for their supporters. Two Tammany politicians, Al Smith and Robert Wagner, later of national stature, led the efforts to create the FIC to propose and enact pro-worker legislation. The FIC paralleled the Protocols in many ways as many reformers, intellectuals, etc worked with both bodies and addressed many of the same issues. Frances Perkins, a social worker later to become FDR's labor secretary, was a key figure in both bodies. The actions of the FIC advanced notions initiated by the Protocols with the difference being that legislation applied to all targeted citizens of the legislation with at least the possibility of state-led enforcement. Fire safety and sanitation issues were first on the FIC agenda followed by gender- and age-based legislation designed to protect the health of the targeted workers by limiting hours and night work. Non-gendered legislation, like minimum wage laws, proved to be fatally divisive to the FIC.

Both the Protocols and the FIC had either dissolved or lost effectiveness by 1916, though most of the FIC legislation remained in place. The idea of tripartite regulation of business had lost credence by the early 1920s, only to be revived in the New Deal by many of those individuals involved in the NYC garment wars. The book only covers a few years in one state - mostly one city, though the largest in the US - in an experiment in a nebulously defined industrial democracy. One is struck by the difficulty that workers had then and now in establishing humane and just workplaces and the fragility in maintaining any gains.

The book is definitely an insider labor relations book with assumptions being made about labor movement organization and labor terminology. The book proceeds first on the Protocol track and then secondly on the FIC track. Though occurring during the same time frame, the interactions and cross-impacts between the two are barely described. So many individuals and formal organizations, like boards, are named that at times maintaining continuity is difficult. For example, what "Board" is being discussed? Secondly, the author declines to offer much in the greater significance of the events and actions discussed. For example, where do garment workers of today stand? Is there the equivalent of the Protocols? How is industrial democracy viewed today by workers? By business? By the state? However, the book is a worthwhile contribution to the history of labor in America. It provides better context than most books that are concerned only with the Triangle fire.

Ralph is a dynamic speaker and writer. This book helps teachersof all ages and subjects to tackle the complicated issues ofwriting. He is able to engage the reader with humor and wit, something technical books ever do. I read this book in a day! Another wonderful piece by him is: What A Writer Needs.