York College Books

I'm a wood, metal and ceramics enthusiast, but if was the fly tying that really caught my eye with this book. Yousee, I've been an amateur fly tier for about six or seven years. It's mainly a weekend thing, but recently I've been bunking off work to tie the old fly or two, it's a blessed repsite from an otherwise painful and pointless existence.

I use a variety of different wires, strings and twines and I'm no slacker when it comes to using different sepcies of fly - blue bottle flies, Anthomyiid Flies, Root-Maggot Flies, leaf-miner flies, house flies - you name it, I'll tie it. My wife likes to joke that I'm like the beetles guy from "My Family and Othe Animals" but I wouldn't know because I can't read. Otherwise this would have been perfect for me.

Did I spell "drivel" right? I don't know. However, after only a few minutes in Chapter 5, the one where Johann ties the fly to the wood seat of the folding metal chair using ceramic thread, I just couldn't take it any more!!! I mean, like, well, who could? We all know that Johann couldn't catch a fly, nor could he cast one, certainly not in seventh grade. Heck, he didn't even know about the importance of ceramics until at least tenth grade. What was the author, Raymond W Kasold, thinking? And did you notice that he kept using the word "elm" every time he really meant "Ming"? How could you make such a mistake?!?

Of all the Industrial Arts research papers to come out of SUNY, this probably ranks in the lower 20th percentile for its elegance of sophistry, and the platitudes of existentialism revolving around the requisit chapter on "Bidets: Combining All of Man's Most Precious Materials; or Why the French Don't Fish"

If it weren't for Amazon's related suggestion for serious industrial arts types, Slurry Transport Using Centrifugal Pumps by K.C. Wilson, I could only give this book one star. Sorry, Friend Ray, maybe you should try publishing something on the equally interesting topic of Unrelated Information for College Professors in the Areas of Biorythms, Brouhahas, and Brahmians. At least you could have had some alliteration.

When I was nine, my parents gave me a beautifully illustrated, hard back copy of 'Alice In Wonderland' for Christmas. I still remember sitting by the tree, the log fire ablaze, the carollers singing, gazing at the cover of my new book. And do you know what I was thinking at the precise moment? Not "I cannot wait to start reading about Alice's adventures in Wonderland". Not "How generous of my parents to give me such a thoughtful gift". No, I was thinking "I wish they had listened to me and given me 'Related information for seventh and eighth grades in the areas of wood, metal, ceramics, and fly tying' by Raymond W Kasold liked I asked them to".

These feeling of sadness and resentment subsided after a few years and in time, I actually forgot about Mr Kasold (forgive me Raymond...)So imagine my surprise when, looking on amazon last month for a book on ceramics and fly tying to give my seventh grade daughter for Christmas, I stumbled upon it and for a moment sat, transfixed, as my recollections of that Christmas morning washed over me.

I notice from another reviewer that some consider the ceramics section of Kasold's work to be its "Achilles heel", but here I would have to disagree. Of course, I am aware that Related Information On Ceramics is an extremely controversial topic, second only to the great Peach vs Nectarine debate of 2003, but I feel sure that Kasold's handling of this most delicate material will be light of touch, witty, urbane and wholly delightful.

When I read it, as one day I surely will, I expect to be transported to a world where wood, metal, ceramics and fly tying receive the attention that they merit. For now, I shall simply sit and gaze at the front cover, at Raymond W Kasold's smiling face. I'm sorry it took me so long Raymond, at last I have found you...

From the moment I picked up this book to the moment I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Then I spent some time convulsed with apoplepsy. Still later, I was convulsed with Parkinsons.
I don't know about you, but I think fly tying is one of our great lost arts. My fingers are too big for it, but if they weren't, Ray's book would be the first I'd turn to.

1959 was a famously good year for the State University of New York College of Education as regards publications. It would therefore be reasonable to expect that "Related information for seventh and eighth grades in the areas of wood, metal, ceramics, and fly tying" would be at least rigorous enough to satisfy the curious layman.

However, "Related information for seventh and eighth grades in the areas of wood, metal, ceramics, and fly tying" does far more than just satisfy. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that this is the definitive text on the areas of wood, metal and fly tying for the seventh and eight grades. Its 73 pages fairly zip along and when you get to the end, you'll want to turn right back to the front and start again.

You might have noticed that I avoided mention of ceramics in the above endorsement. This was no idle typo. As much as it pains me to say it, ceramics are the Achilles heel of "Related information for seventh and eighth grades in the areas of wood, metal, ceramics, and fly tying". Something about the sections dealing with ceramics just don't ring true. It's almost as if - and I hesitate to suggest it - the author was less interested in ceramics than he was in wood, metal and fly tying. There is a touch of listlessness about the writing when the subject of ceramics comes up; a strange ennui, if you will.

This is, however, a relatively minor blemish on an otherwise marvellous work. Like the asymmetrical nose of a beloved family dog, it is an imperfection which you will ultimately find endearing. Such is the charm, the urbane wit and the delightful insouciance of "Related information for seventh and eighth grades in the areas of wood, metal, ceramics, and fly tying", you will find yourself hard-pressed to dislike it or offer any criticism of it beyond an affectionate tut. I honestly cannot recommend this book highly enough. One day, I may even read it.

Not as in depth as I wanted, but I had high expectations. Good as a starting point only, tends to repeat "common knowledge."

As a NYC K-12 educational consultant, I frequently listen to parents' worries about entrusting their children to the New York City public schools. This is unfortunate, because some local public schools are excellent.

Hemphill's book is extremely valuable because she identifies top schools and demystifies the admissions process for zoned and out-of-zone students. She also explains admissions to gifted and other special programs...

This book has helped me to make up my mind to move back to NY--helped me understand the byzantine system, and highlights specific schools that I would never have heard or read about otherwise.

Hemphill is an argument for how one must look at specific schools under particular leadership in a finite time period, instead of generalizing. And instead of unproductive nostalgizing, "schools were better in earlier days..." Really, some schools can go downhill, but others have gone uphil, and there is a need to constantly reassess.

My only gripe is that the author didn't (couldn't?) review all schools, or more schools. If a school isn't mentioned, then is it totally hopeless? Or were there page number constraints?

There is no other book like this. Every city should have a Hemphill book.

I agree with both previous reviewers. I am so glad this book exists because there are many wonderful public elementary schools in NYC. (My son's at one!) But this book does not always contain the very latest information, such as a change in principals. (Principals are very important.) Use this book as a starting point and then talk with as many parents, teachers as you can for the latest developments in the schools you're considering.

I read this book in context of a college course, and I found that Cortes makes a clear statement about how media can affect our perceptions on race, culture, gender, etc. Cortes was good at keeping his personal beliefs out of the book, while still using personal stories about his grandchildren to make examples. This was a clear, concise, easy read.

During the fall of 2001 I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Cortes by telephone about his 30 years of experience in working with the issue of diversity. This book is a reflection of Dr. Cortes' commitment to proactive approaches to the inevitable conflict that results between groups that see/perceive the world differently.

He is an uncommon voice in the all-too-common world of media. His assessment is that diversity is 'informally' taught through popular media in an uncoordinated manner to the detriment of our children is accurate.

His advocacy is hardly limited to his own ethnic background, and his insistence that there must be limits to tolerance is refreshing in current times of political correctness.

This book should be read by educators, parents and media professionals.

Even though as a media literacy teacher of African descent I disagree with some of the conclusions Carlos Cortes makes in his book, I appreciate that he has written it. In a very lucid writing style, especially for an academic, Cortes demonstrates how multicultural issues do indeed exist in mainstream media. He provides in one chapter his example of a media journal he kept in which he records and comments on the multicultural content found in his day-by-day (for a month in this case) encounters with mostly mainstream media. He reads stories about immigration and naturalization, Dr. Laura Schlesinger's observance of Rosh Hashannah, a Latino columnist discussing "the importance of multiethnic role models," the Promise Keepers, Louis Farrahkhan and his call for a national day of atonement, the antibilingual initiative in California, the Million Woman March, Sports Illustrated stories on racism, etc. This is a useful strategy for helping students make conscious use of the media. So often students are led to believe there's nothing there except crime and politics.

Basically, Cortes contends that diversity issues are raised in the media. That media is a source of non-school multicultural learning. But what is needed is an analysis of how young people respond to such media content. He shares some of his grand daughter's responses to movies like The Lion King and Pocahontas. Despite the valid criticism these media presentations received, he sees them as occassions for multicultural awareness. For him, the media and the public school system play similiar roles in providing multicultural education, but they each do it slightly different ways.

He also argues that students need to be taught how to examine media texts in a critical way--not in terms of bashing media, but in making a critical analysis of its presentations. This means that teachers need to bring media into the classroom and not allow it to be the main teacher of diversity issues. For in many ways, he argues, students learn more about diversity issues from the media and society than they do from the classroom.

While I think it's important that he brings this somewhat positive view of mainstream media, I think he should have provided an analysis of what ethnically focused and genered-focused media are doing. In publications like Ms.Magazine, Emerge, Hispanic, ColorLines, and the new Asian American magazines diversity issues and representations are very much present and often provide a very different analysis than mainstream media.

Lastly, I was disappointed that he didn't address the role of corporate media and mergers and how it marginalizes and makes difficult for a true diversity of voices to get heard. While yes diversity issues are addressed, they are often presented in sterotypical ways or from very limited viewpoints. While mainstream media, for example, has covered issues on immigration or bilinqual education, it is usually from a White mainstream point of view. Progressive writers, reporters, and actors in these issues don't get their own shows and columns in mainstream media to express their views.

I'm sure Cortes has read the such critics as Robert W. McChesney (__Rich Media, Poor Democracy__) who show how corporate media and its commercial driven interests help to essentially erode democracy and diversity in this country. I can't understand why he doesn't address this problem in his otherwise useful book.

I nevertheless recommend this book. It's very useful for media literacy teachers K-College. Not too many works on this subject exist and this one is sure to help lead to future research and analysis.

P.S. I also would recommend another work similiar to this one: The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America, by Robert Entman and Andrew and Rojecki.

The question is simple. What does one do about the fact that many minority students simply are not qualified to go to college? As I see it, there are three solutions. One is to simply say "too bad." The second is to admit severely unqualified students and try to provide them with remedial education and get them to a point where they have accomplished something. The third choice, which I favor, is to help these students before they get to college, in grades 1 through 12, so that they can qualify legitimately. Of course, one can do a little of all three.

The City College of New York took the second choice in 1970, and not surprisingly, standards dropped. About half the students were either taking English as a second language or were in SEEK, a program which gave admission to otherwise unqualified students whose family incomes were below a poverty threshold. The graduation rate of the SEEK students was somewhere below 15%.

Hopefully, standards are going up again now. As a person with a love of academia, I sure hope so. We'll see what happens.

The author spent a year at the campus, attending classes, interviewing students, and interviewing faculty. We see a class teaching English as a second language. We see a few SEEK students who struggled and survived. But still, that means just getting by, maybe on track to graduate from college with the equivalent of a tenth-grade education in most fields (although having been trained to write papers that at least looked academic in form).

I don't know what has happened on the campus since this book was written ten years ago. But one hopeful sign was a proposal requiring incoming students to have college preparatory training in high school. The lack of high school college prep courses was making it too difficult for many students to accomplish anything in college.

The alternative would be to lower standards to nothing, but then one's degree would eventually be worthless.

Still, standards were high in some fields. More than one quarter of the school's graduates were in engineering. Engineering schools need to meet national standards, and this one does. Any student could enroll in engineering, but classes were difficult and had serious prerequisites. And many students were weeded out.

I think the most intriguing part of the book was the question of the teaching of racist ideologies on campus. And that meant dealing with the issue of Leonard Jeffries, a notorious teacher at the school, "who often implied, though rarely said outright, that blacks were superior to whites not only culturally and morally but biologically."

I agree with the implication by the author that the success of Jeffries at the school ought to be thought of not merely in political terms but also as one more instance of failure to meet academic standards.

This was an interesting book, and I recommend it.

James's Traub "A City of a Hill Testing the American Dream at City College" has sadly gone out-of-print but you can find it an second-hand outlets or even here at amazon.com. Perhaps one reason for this is that it's theme, that affirmative action served to undermine a great institution, has gained a wide following and affirmative action is being knocked down all across the country. (Traub claims that his book takes no position on this debate but I believe it does.)

If for no other reason this book is great to read because it chronicles the City College of New York from it's heyday to it's decline. (The current mayor of New York, Rudolph Gulianni, has reversed the policies of City College and embraced meritocracy once again.) But before I describe that I need to say in all fairness that only the humanities part of the college suffered under affirmative action. The medical and engineering schools continue to be strong. After all, as Traub points out, you cannot relax standards in, say, civil engineering. If you did we would have bridges falling down.

In the 1930's through the 1960's the City College of New York was where young white Jews aspired to go to school Woody Allen went there. The student body became mainly Jewish. The main City College campus is located in Harlem which is, of course, neither Jewish nor white. It's geographical location is one reason that progressive educators and the community clamored for lowering standards. The result was the school accepted students who were not prepared so they start remedial education courses.

Anyway important Jewish scholars went to school there. Getrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol, and I believe Alfed Kazim and Irvin Howe are all alumni. Traub's book describes how these budding scholars gathered at a certain table in the cafeteria to discuss rarefied topics. Socialism was what these students believed. (Of course Himmelfarb and Kristol, husband and wife, later broke with the socialists and started the Neo-conservative movement.) The intellectual excitement described there is endearing and reminiscent of the movie "Yentel". O to be a part of a community that loved learning so.

I think this book says a lot about the Jewish community that I admire. In New York and in Easter Europe, they saw their means to advancement and a way to avoid persecution as education. Their rabbis were learned mean who often did not physical work but sat and pondered all day long. Their own Torah is a work of great intellectual import. Isn't that wonderful?

I read this for an important reason. I am a graduate of City College of New York. I attended in the years 1975-1979, right after Open Enrollment began. I remember then how shocked I was when I found out I was among a minority of students who would not need remedial help. My father attended CCNY as well, so he read the book too. Mr. Traub's portrayal was extremely accurate. I reread passages to see if there were areas I thought he was mistaken. There were none. It helps to have grown up in New York and have attended CCNY, for much of the book to have meaning, but for other parts of the book, the issues are important throughout the United States in examining education, and the American Dream.

Schools are in crisis, even more so since No Child Left Behind. Like Noguera writes, it's not all about poor kids and bad teachers. The problems are systemic and structural, the vestiges of a 100-year-old system of education that wheezes and puffs just to get the school door open. No other industrialized nation struggles with "tradition" and outmoded legislative mandates, or new mandates that exacerbate an already bad situation. Further, education needs to be given back to eduators, and educators should be held totally responsible for outcomes. And our kids deserve the best!

If you liked Noguera's work, I would recommend "The Kids Are The Easy Part - An Insider's Perspective on School Reform" by Ben Baglio. It's written in plain language that's easy to digest.

City Schools and the American Dream by Pedro Noguera is one of the most excellent books in the field of education. He articulately writes about how we can improve urban schools as well as help the poorest, neediest students. He insists that there are models of successful schools who have common characteristics. He writes about such subjects as the achievement gap, safety in schools and inequality in schools. This is a must read for any educator who wants to know what is really going on in our inner city schools. This is also a good book for anyone interested in the future of our children. Dr. Noguera is right on. What a blessing he is to the world.

I personally had this book signed by Mr. Noguera after hearing him talk, and found him to be a great speaker, if I had to grade him on being a smart guy, I would give him a 5. However his book honestly wasn't that great. He does a wondeful job of pointing out the problems with many schools, (for once, not blaiming teachers or the kids), but I don't see anything new in his analysis. If you would like a concise view of why many urban schools just aren't that great, then by this book. If you want to read a book describing a new, well thought out idea to change the system and turn the lives of children around, do not buy this book. When I was done reading it, I feel like I could have heard the same thing from listening to the regular complaints of parents and teachers.

In this time and age when selecting a middle school can be very complicated this book is a godsend. Ms. Hemphill is very knowledgeable and is quite on point with her views and reviews. Totally trust her advice.

If you brought one already, don't buy the following year, I noticed majority of it was just reprinted. They really need to go back and review the schools because some phone number and information of the school has changed.

You simply don't have time to go around to all the schools your kid might be planning to attend. And if you did, it isn't ckear that you'd know just what questions to ask. Clara Hemphill does know. As the director of Insideschools.org she has spent years analyzing the public school system in NYC. She looks at the schools academically (of course) but also in other aspects such as friendliness, willingness of the teaching staff to work with the kids individually, social development and many more.

Note the title, this book discusses the BEST schools. And New York's best are very good indeed. These are not the warehouses where the kids are just putting in time. These are the places you would want your kid to go.

The imagery and unusual juxtaposition of time is what made this novel an exiting read. Of course there were times that things went over the edge but when dealing with these types of concepts that's to be expected. If you don't want to read the whole book read the last 30 pages - incredible imagery regarding the most interesting historical figures of ancient history.

Shakespeare and the afterlife figure in a novel by playwright Marsigli that asks the question: Are our lives scripted ahead of time or is there truly a possibility of free will? Marsigli's answer is a formal but surprisingly engaging novel of ideas in the grand European tradition of Goethe and Mann. A kind of aristocratic everyman, Columbia University classics professor Ivain La Baille finds his life cut short, at age 30, when he is caught in a crossfire of terrorists at the airport. Yet 10 years later he reappears, as a Shakespearean actor no less, offered an other chance to run through the script of his life - which is actually a floppy disk he is to carry around with him at all times. Has it already been programmed and is he merely providing "new material" for the Great Playwright himself, the so-called Father Godlet? Or is there a chance to alter events, (such as when La Baille plays Caesar on Broadway and refuses to allow the hero of his former life to die?) In exploring La Bailles's life between his ancestral country estate in France and his apartment in New York City, between his beloved well-bred wife, France, who hastily remarried after his death, and Allegra, the beautiful temptress and fellow "dead soul" who has been sent to be his guide, Marsigli handles her weighty matters with a surprisingly light touch, patiently letting her tale unfold at its own speed. Despite unmemorable prose and rather cardboard characterization (the too-virtuous wife, the rejected "bad" woman, the sly, toothless fortuneteller), there is much here to delight the thinking reader, and the scenes of country-house life in a French village alone will ensure a work-of -month readership among savvy Francophiles.

There is a forbidding coldness in the idea of a determined universe, but it is there, by contrast, that the human spirit shines brightest. Marsigli's tragic hero, Ivain La Baille, awakes to a sadistic plot that is to be his life after death. Its authors, two puppeteer gods, recall the arbitrary tempers of the gods of ancient Greece and with a theatricality allowable only to gods call themselves a production company and cast Ivain as protagonist in their playful tinkering with destiny. Ivain must defy the gods to free himself; this ancient theme underscores the movement of the story; it is played with a light touch and wry references to the tradition of epic defiance. Despite the mean spirited and portentous Kirkus review (above) this is a fascinating novel with various original touches. The French countryside is written of lovingly as an idyll; a scene where birds are trapped and starved in a cage echoes Virgil's eclogues and symbolises the deepest fears expressed in this story: arbitrary suffering and lack of control. But it is the brilliant theatre at the novels end that impresses most; the historical and theatrical interests of the novel and the protagonist reach a denoument both funny and philosophical. It is a startling idea the like of which only Stoppard has hit on before and deserves to be kept for the reader to discover. Since reading Marsigili's book I have seen The Truman Show (a film) attempt the same questions as the Writen Script but it did so with such crude devices that I was happy to return to this spirited and well structured novel.

In this book osofsky managed to present detailed and well documented research regarding the afro-american migration to and settlement of Harlem during the early 20th century. By first laying the groundwork of presenting a parallel examination of Harlem before this period and the black migration to New York he manages to create a fascinating and very readable historical document. The economic forces in play at the time are presented as being equally important to the development of Harlem as the social and political climate of the day. Real Estate speculations and a boom and subsequent bust coincided with the building of mass transit that made the upper reaches of Manhattan more accessable.
The book would benefit from the inclusion of some historical photos. However as a pure historical treatise it is extremely informative and readable. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in the history of New York City or Afro- American history. I was traveling down 125th street just yesterday while reading this and the buildings that date from this period held new signifcance for me.

Osofsky really gets into the subject of ghetto creation. Unlike the European immigrants who ghettoized themselves and then were able to climb up society's ladder, Osofsky argues that this possibility was inaccessible to Harlem's black population, with minor exceptions.. As a student of Chicago's housing issues, this is as true today as it was in the beginning of the last century. As a result of this moving book, I feel like I have lived in the squalor of Harlem's ghettos and slums, and I have never been to NYC.

This first-rate scholarly study of the relationship between Marc Szeftel and Vladimir Nabokov has been endorsed by such heavyweight academics as Brian Boyd and Robert Alter, and I can only add that if there is such a thing as required reading for non-specialists in Nabokovopolis, this should be at the top of the list.
Galya Diment provides a fairly conclusive argument that Mark Szeftel was an important model for the Russian Master's third novel written in English, the second in America (if it had ever been in doubt, a matter on which I'm not clear).

The heart of the book consists of five chapters and a conclusion, and also contains appendixes from Marc Szeftel's archive and own writings. The latter includes of selections from his diaries, which make it pretty obvious that Szeftel wasn't nearly as comfortable a solipsist as the alter ego fate appears to have dealt him. And man, did he ever know it. Some of the passages included in Diment's study read like outtakes from a rough draft of Kinbote's, without the miniscule amount of self-awareness the fictive scholar was able to muster. They certainly exhibit nothing like the former king's rather heady imagination, in which readers have taken so much delight. What is there, and what Diment makes all to clear, is a great deal of sadness. The sadness of an émigré, the sadness of a scholar, and perhaps even the sadness of a century.

Szeftel seems to have toiled long and hard in the academic vineyards, at times with scholars as notable as Roman Jacobsen, and for reasons that perhaps only Nabokov himself knows never really achieved his due regard as an academic. More to the point, he seems to have settled just outside the realm of humiliation and some grand joke at the hands of everyone from the great writer to colleagues and even his students. The operative paradox here is that Szeftel would have remained one of life's unknown little tragedies had it not been for his immortalization as the Russian specialist at Waindell, but as Diment evinces he may well have never felt himself to be quite so tragic a character at all if he hadn't crossed paths with the accomplished poet-lepodiatrist-teacher-scholar-writer from St. Petersberg. One of Szeftel's books was praised by Nabokov, he was once on the verge of actually working with Nabokov, and he long contemplated scholarly studies of Lolita even after he became one of the models for Pnin. In the end he produced a few anecdotes about exchanges with Nabokov during the time they shared together at Cornell.

Along the way, Diment notes that a case has been made for considering Pnin an even greater work than the now monolithic Lolita, and by no less a scholar than Michael Wood in `The Magician's Doubts.' The reason for this originates in the rather more organically developed theme of the Double, a theme Szeftel himself consciously noted and, like several others (to Nabokov's own consternation) tied to Doeseovsky. She expertly employs the work of other scholars to illuminate what is particularly special, if not unique, about Pnin's relation to the novel he inhabits:

"The most dramatic declaration of Pnin's independence and VN's [the self-identified narrator of the novel] "just deserts" comes from Charles Nicol... Nicol actually goes as far as to describe the two men as atgonists and their relationship as a struggle between the "devilish" narrator and the innocent protagonist, in which Pnin "has confronted Nabokov and won." (p.56)

It seems to me that Nicol overstates his case a little here, but I do think that Diment's account of the narratological ambiguity that grew as the novel progressed and its roots in the brief conjunction of the fates of Szeftel and Nabokov is illuminating.

Diment is entirely evenhanded in her treatment of everyone involved, and the only particular bias consistently shown is her high regard for the Northwest, Szeftel's final home and where she herself teaches (at the University of Washington, sponsors of the press that published this book). She notes that Szeftel never much enjoyed the region himself, and perhaps even saw it as the true boondocks, one of the many injuries to be suffered in a long and yet disappointing life. In its way, this is one of the saddest books ever written. But it is gracefully written, and, as she says in the conclusion, a real tribute to the model, to the author, and to our ability to transform life through fiction. Marc Szeftel certainly did his best to partake of that transformation.

Professor Diment's book moves from biography to literary intrigue quickly and delightfully. The intrigue itself, of course, has been out in the open for quite a while---that Pnin, the stodgy and stumbling professor, was inspired by one of Vladimir Nabokov's colleagues at Cornell, Marc Szeftel.

There's plenty of material on that in the book, but the real treat are the stories on university politics, the strange and shimmering links between art and the "real", the compassionate sketches of very odd characters (including Szeftel himself, as well as Nabokov's first biographer, a Kinbote-like figure), and some seriously funny endnotes. _Pnin_ ends triumphantly, and so does Diment's _Pniniad_, with the reader discovering the life-story of a man who would otherwise be an interesting side-note---what the reader gets is a sort of roman a clef written on the margins of fiction.

The book was new and in perfect condition and was shipped before it was expected! Great!

Since this book is part of a series, I think you get the full effect of the Michigan debates if you read all three. With all three you gain a better understanding of the existing stands on urbanism today. If you're familiar with Eisenman and Peterson/Littengurg, they tend to say what they usually say and of course disagree with each other at times. But for some reason Eisenman doesn't put in all the effective vocabulary that he usually does in other debates. In fact he barely describes his project. Petterson/Littenburg on the other hand go on extensively, and in detail. The merit of the book lies in that it documents what the schools of urbanism argure for today. However, it would have been nice if the whole series went more in depth.