Michigan Books

Yeah, it rocked

No, this book will not be of interest to anyone looking for something sexy--there's nothing like that in this book. Instead, this is a social history book, and a good one.

McGinn investigates the evidence we have regarding prostition in the Roman economy.

Prostitution was a perfectly legal institution in Rome. A brothel could be located next to a temple or the house of a wealthy person and cause no comment.

Although it was legal, the workers in a brothel had a very low status in society. That's probably because most of the workers were forced into it because they were slaves. Roman law proclaimed that a slave had no rights over his body; he could be used, abused, even killed, with no one to protest.

It became standard practice for wealthy people to earn money by forcing their young slaves into brothels. The amount raised from these slaves could be significant.

One other important feature of the brothels was that the workers were young by our standards. Children of both sexes were made to serve as protitutes. For boys, their years of prostitution were usually over once they started sprouting a beard. Then they would be returned to their owner and put to another use. Women might continue to live as prostitutes until they lost their looks.

The other common manner for brothel owners to obtain workers was to take in abandoned infants and children.

This book explores an aspect of Roman life rarely delved into in other history books and should be of interest to studying ancient cultures.

Ed Bullins is one of America's best playwrights. His work from the 1960s to the present has evolved. His work is as breathtaking as it is challenging. This University of Michigan volume is the most recent addition to his work and includes his newest play, "Harlem Diva" (2005) for the first time. It contains seven more plays, "How Do You Do," "Clara's Ole Man," "The Electronic N*gger," "In the Wine Time," "The Fabulous Miss Marie," "Malcolm: '71 Or Publishing Blackness," [short] and "JoAnne."

It was long a goal of mine to be able to direct a Bullins play. With the author's permission, we tweaked the title and presented "The Electronic Fool" in a program of one acts this summer. [Reference Magnolia Arts Center] Working with the playwright's words in production is a breathtaking experience. This is said to be Bullins' most humorous play, but the humor is cutting edge -- South Park. It must have been amazingly revolutionary in 1968 when it flew from his pen. The language he gives to Carpentier goes from the inane to the insane. In an effort to create the quintessential know-it-all, the Electronic N says, "With our present cybernetic generation it is psycho-politically relevant to engage our socio-philosophical existence on a quantitatum scale, which is, of course pertinent to the outer motivated migration of our inner-oriented social compact." How many times does an actor get to say something that completely bananas that sounds like it means something? Bullins was in high gear on this play and our production shined because of the great play.

Other pieces are meant to be read like 1970's "A Short Play for a Small Theatre" where Black Man polishes a hand gun in front of a white audience and to conclude the play assassinates each member of the audience. The violence of the racial struggle is also in evidence in Bullins' brilliant "JoAnne" that follows the real life North Carolina trial of Joan Little in the early 70s. Bullins pushes the piece to the limit with the mistreatment by the jailer silhouetted behind a scrim. It is a breathtaking drama that will find few stages able to handle the depth and power, probably decades ahead of its time.

The writings at the end of book are some of Bullins' published essays and letters on the state of Black Theatre and the need to find other models besides traditional European theatre. One of my favorite Bullins' plays, "In New England Winter," is not included here; so this is not a collected anthology. However, it is an excellent overview to the frequently difficult but exceptionally rewarding work of this master playwright! Bravo!

It's not often that an author has tackled a subject with such well thought out logic. Warning! If you start reading this book, you will not be able to put it down. Amazing!

Based on a true story, Candy Stevens' Eight O'clock Blues is an adroitly written novel, set in the 1970s, and centers on Sophia, a young, religious, middle-class woman who takes a job at an automotive giant and has her illusions of corporate benevolence shattered. Daring to challenge the authority of an entity governed by greed, Sophia becomes embroiled in a test of wills that threatens to crush her. Eight O'clock Blues is a gripping, involving saga of a white-collar worker pitted agains devious and endemic corporate mismangement.

Ever since the founding of our country, American scholars and political observers have commented on the bicameral experiment. The U.S. House and Senate share many constitutional responsibilities, but in other ways (district size, election cycle, size of the chamber), they are very different. But do we think that voters see these same differences when they walk in to the voting booth? Gronke's research show, in general, that the answer is "No." Voters apply a similar set of standards to American legislative candidates, regardless of the office being contested.

Gronke's study compares campaigning and voting behavior in the U.S. House and Senate over a two decade period, from 1980 through 1996. He covers such varied topics as media markets, campaign spending, candidate characteristics, voter evaluations of the House and Senate, and models of electoral choice. By use of a rich archive of contextual, campaign, and survey data collected over two decades, Gronke dismisses many of the conventional accounts of House and Senate differences. Instead, Gronke shows that common elements dominate. Except for the higher profile and higher spending rates in Senate races, U.S. House and Senate elections are marked less by differences than they are by similarities.

Paul Gronke's path-breaking study compares electoral contexts, campaigns, and voter decision-making in House and Senate elections. Gronke's book offers new insights into how differences - and similarities - across the U.S. House and Senate help us understand American elections, showing that congressional elections are united more by common elements than they are separated by an institutional gulf

Ross Baker calls Gronke's book "audacious" and "fresh", written with a "felicity of expression."

This is a fascinating read, both as a primer on the nearly forgotten scourge that polio was up until fifty years ago, and also as a look into a tumultuous and difficult life. Anne Finger wasn't just coping with being a polio victim from early childhood, she also had to deal with a violently abusive parent in her father, who may well have been an undiagnosed bipolar/schizophrenic. Finger describes in frightening detail her long-suppressed memories of being choked and beaten by her father, behavior which was ignored or rationalized by her "enabler" mother. She also notes that her own clinical depression and suicidal tendencies as a young adult may have been inevitable, given her upbringing. In spite of all this, she continued to struggle for understanding of her parents' behavior, linking it often to her "imperfection" of being a polio from early childhood. There is much critically important information on polio - its history and near-eradication - here too, making it an important document in the literature of the disease. Finger has obviously done her homework, making numerous references to other talented polio memoirists and historians such as Leonard Kriegel, Charles Mee, Tony Gould, Peg Kehret, Daniel Wilson, John Paul and Wilfred Sheed, as well as other lesser known writers. This is an important and eminently readable book. - Tim Bazzett, author of Love, War & Polio

This is Gen. H. W. Halleck's instructional textbook on the art and science of war -- used in military institutions in the Nineteenth Century including West Point. Don't be alarmed about the cover title -- the misspellings were due to a mis-scan of the title page. I've alerted the Univ. of Michigan to the problem.

Halleck (1815-1872) was a lawyer, publisher, businessman -- and soldier. He was sometimes called "Old Brains" for his scholarly pursuits. See the www.Wikipedia.org article to get more information on Halleck.

I was looking for a book that went beyond "maxims" and sayings of famous commanders -- and this was it. It thoroughly covers all the aspects of waging war in an introductory level. It covers the reasons for waging war, strategy (on a grand and operational level), tactics, logistics, fortifications, infantry, artillery, engineers. Everything is here for training would-be commanders of war. Again, it's the introductory course on war, so the author doesn't get into any detailed "prescriptive" analysis of any of these topics. Other courses would have taken the student into the detailed aspects of each trade.

Halleck doesn't hesitate to vent his spleen against a sluggish government that wouldn't fortify its coasts and keep a standing professional cadre on hand -- he goes to great length to describe what existed in his day and what ought to be done. The book is terribly dated for that reason; we don't rely on coastal fortifications any more. It may not be necessary for us to read whole chapters on the details of the problem in Halleck's day. But the idea is still sound: we don't need brick and mortar forts to protect us now (except in Arizona!), but we do need flying "super-fortresses" doing the same job against incoming invaders. That's an aspect of war that makes books like Halleck's old textbook so valuable -- there are ideas in the art and science of war that never change, though the technology will.

For this reason, Halleck's book would be a better read for the initiate than the current Army Field Manuals just to get an overall sense of the problem of war. Here you get it all in one volume in a conceptual framework; with modern works, you must use many volumes to get the same scope of the problem and must also delve deeply into the technical aspects. In fact, though de Jomini's book was also a standard work at West Point and justifiably more famous than Halleck's work, Halleck covers all the bases whereas de Jomini likes to hover around strategy and tactics.

Gen. U.S. Grant and Halleck didn't get along very well -- Halleck (rising to General-in-chief) was the old-school type, the "grand marshall" of the US Army and he knew it. (You can tell by his portrait on Wikipedia!) He expected others to know it too. He was thorough, by the book, and slow to move on the offense. Grant, however, was one of the newer generation - he didn't much care for doing things "by the book" (he threw away Hardee's "Tactics" when he saw it was just common-sense maneuvering). And when he saw an opportunity to grab the enemy he was gung-ho for jumping on it before it dissolved away. (His brilliant and certainly unconventional Vicksburg campaign was a case of "it's easier to say I'm sorry than to ask permission!") Hence Grant felt sure that Halleck let some opportunities to attack the Rebs slip away for no good reason, and he felt that these incidents needlessly extended the war (see Grant's Memoirs). I mention this only to show that even in his day, Halleck's textbook approach to war was not always appreciated by newer commanders who were more resilient to the changing face of war in modern culture.

But there are basic aspects of war that never change from age to age -- strategy, the commander's mind and character, the need for tactics, the work of engineers, the vital aspect of logistics. And to someone who hasn't had any more exposure to the ideas of war than movies and picture books, Halleck's textbook is a welcome relief for the rational mind. It takes most of the mystique out of the subject, reduces it to manageable scientific principles, and trains the mind for a workable approach to dealing with battlefield realities. But Halleck also points out, as he should, there will always be that last 5% about the art of war that will depend on the character and creativitiy of the commander, which no textbook can train for. Not even his.

I wish they could all be this good. Didn't have to wait for supplier to find book. thank you

AS the editor of this book, I'd like readers to know that it not only includes major essays by leading American critics like Helen Vendler, Robert Pinsky, and David Lehman, but that it also contains previously uncollected material by Bishop herself, work not available in any other book. This was a landmark book on Bishop and remains the most thorough collection of material on her work: critical essays, reviews, and even poetry about her (by James Merrill and Robert Lowell).