Duke Books

"A Date Which Will Live" is both a stimulating and accessible history of how the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has been remembered and a sterling example of the employment of the theory of memory in history and postmodern analysis. The author, now a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, had fashioned a compelling narrative of how Americans have related to the experience of Pearl Harbor in the latter half of the twentieth century. She divides her narrative into two parts, the first dealing with the memory of the experience from December 7, 1941, until the end of the cold war. Her second part discusses the difficult battles over recollections of the World War II experience that took place in the 1990s, largely at the time of their fiftieth anniversaries.

Twin themes inform this narrative. The first is one of "infamy," the immediate reaction to the attack in 1941--President Franklin D. Roosevelt used that terminology in announcing the attack to the American public--and it has been a critical component of the memory of the event ever since. This has been a dominant strain in the recollection, and both popular and scholarly accounts point to duplicity on the part of the Japanese to undertake a surprise attack, demolish the American Pacific fleet, and conquer the bulk of the Asian-Pacific region. Rosenberg does an outstanding job of tracing the charges and recriminations on both sides over who was responsible for the war, and who was rthe bad actor both in causing and in conducting it.

A second theme is one of "deceit," not so much on the part of the Japanese although it is sometimes invoked there as well but on the part of FDR and other key strategists in the U.S. government who sought to maneuver the U.S. into a war with Hitler's Germany. This "back door to war" argument arose soon after the Pearl Harbor attack and has shown remarkable staying power. It suggests that FDR wanted to enter the war in Europe on the side of Great Britain but American isolationists prevented his doing so. He goaded the Japanese into an attack, and considerable circumstantial evidence has been assembled to argue that he even knew in advance that the attack was coming but chose not to warn the Pacific Fleet so that U.S. entry into the war would be assured. Despite overwhelming contrary evidence, and a preponderance of historical analysis debunking this conspiracy theory, it continues to have adherents, even arising in the 1990s as a congressional mandate for the Naval Historical Center to investigate the issue one more time. Rosenberg does an excellent job of telling this story, noting the point/counterpoint of the arguments, and offering sober judgment on the current state of the controversy. This aspect of the book is one of the most satisfying in the work as a whole.

Rosenberg also traces the manner in which the attack has been depicted in a succession of important feature films that have influence popular ideas about Hearl Harbor. These include such works as the wartime documentary made about the attack, in which the striking imagery known to all who have watched even a handful of documentaries on the subject were not actually of the attack itself, but a recreation undertaken in Hollywood. It also includes powerful films such as the 1950s film "From Here to Eternity," the 1960s film "In Harm's Way," the 1970s "Tora, Tora, Tora," and the recent "Pearl Harbor." All have affects on public conceptions of the attack in ways much more significant than most historians like to admit.

Finally, "A Date Which Will Live" offers a complex portrait of an event and its recollection in modern America. Rosenberg writes about the manner in which the recollection of Pearl Harbor fit into the larger history wars of the 1990s. She argued that "the most heated debates generally pitted the country's associations of academic historians against groups of political and cultural conservatives..." (p. 132). As she concluded, "At heart was the question of who had the right (and the power) to claim privileged knowledge of the past. Pro-military lobbying groups, cultural conservatives, and congressional critics railed that historians were `revising' history to suit current agendas; many historians railed back that partisan groups were seeking to `revise' history into popular oversimplifications" (pp. 132-33). So much of this effort was oriented toward what Rosenberg called a "final judgment" of the event in American history. Of course, such an ultimate statement is impossible in any historical debate.

"A Date Which Will Live" is a most welcome addition to the literature of the memory of World War II. One could make the case, and Rosenberg does, that perception and memory of an historic event might be more important than what actually occurred. It is the perception and memory that provoke response in the endless dialogue between the past and the present. Enjoy this well-written and provocative book on an important subject in twentieth century history.

Kenneth Baxter Wolf has made Malaterra's Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of His Brother the Duke Robert Guiscard (De rebus gestis roberti et rogerii) accessible to a wide audience. Students interested in this period, even as freshmen in college, will find Wolf's translation readable and useful. Other scholars, even those with the ability to consult the Latin source, will find Wolf's translation useful because of his wonderful introduction, translation and numerous annotations. Wolf has the skill to be faithful to the source while crafting something that isn't incredibly obscure (which certainly happens with translators of lesser ability). The text lends itself to an examination of the Normans, who brought Italy and Sicily under their rules and initiated campaigns against Byzantium. Malaterra's account is one of the principal sources for historians of Norman Italy; therefore, anyone with an interest in this fascinating period should consult it.

This collection of essays on Deleuze is noteworthy for its scope and readability, as well as its range of perspectives. The Marxian take by John Mullarkey, the send-up of Deleuze's Anti-Oedipus by Jerry Aline Flieger, and Fredrik Jameson's keystone piece are highlights. Essential for students of poststructuralist and cultural theory.

Wow! Despite some small qualms with the author regarding deleuze and popular music this book is right on. The ability of Mr. Buchanan to read deleuze outside current trends is amazing and breaths some much needed fresh air into deleuzian studies as a whole. Please do not be turned off by his claim of deleuze being in some respects a dialectitian since it is not the same dialectic that deleuze condemns throughout his work. Again if you are into deleuzian studies and are looking for a fresh interp. of how to read this amazing and insightful philosopher, this book should point you in the right direction.

In this book, (his 1924 Ph.D. thesis), Nobel laureate Ivo Andric observes, that Europe's Turkish conquerors brought their Christian subjects "no cultural content or sense of higher historic mission, even to those South Slavs who accepted Islam." Rather, they delivered a "hegemony" that "brutalized custom, and meant a step to the rear in every respect."

From this non-fiction, Andric draws the history infused in his fictional Bridge over the Drina, which won him the Nobel prize for literature. Here, he provides considerable evidence of Islam's institutional enslavement of children under the Seljuks and Ottomans, over 500 years, in Greece and Serbia.

Unfortunately, this history seems very much alive in the Islamic wars against non-Muslim dhimmis ongoing from Indonesia and Malaysia to the Philippines and southern Sudan. In any case, this book provides evidence that while the vast majority of Muslims may indeed be peaceful, their tolerance is less apparent in Islamic tradition and laws, as recorded by jurists from al-Mawardi to our own time, or by the historical record.

Andric's history of classical Islam's European actions should give one pause, particularly since, as Robert Spencer explains in Onward Muslim Soldiers, classical Islam remains very much in vogue among radicals today.

This book provides a much-needed snapshot of classical Islam's historical effects.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

I read the book because I am currently working on my MA thesis on new reproductive technologies (in the Czech republic). It really was a fascinating reading! This interdisciplinary collection of essays shows how (Western) medicine treats human bodies, works with laboratory tests or medical protocols. Authors (for example M. Berg, V. Singleton, M. J. Casper, Ch. Cussins, S. Hirschauer, S. Timmermans...), who are being classified among the representatives of the so called „second wave of science studies", turned their attention to „purely medical" or „just technical tasks" which have been until a few year ago regarded as unproblematical, and not pertaining to the field of social sciences. All essays are extremely well written and I think that their strength lie in the combination of detailed ethnographic accounts of life in laboratories and/or clinics and careful interpretative work. The topics of essays are of wide range - from medical protocols, creation of nursing intervention system or treatment of asthma to changes of sexes, re/construction of identity in infertility clinic or booming field of fetal surgery etc. - and studying any of them can be a great adventure. Medical work is characterized by the ongoing articulation of heterogenous elements - humans as well as nonhumans - and it is this making of science, making of medicine, that the authors focus on. The myth of one stable and coherent medicine, one patient-body, or one science has crumbled and fallen, for there are differences in this apparent unity - there is stability and instability, continuity and discontinuity, local and universal, humanity, identity and alienation or objetification. I think that no reader will be disappointed.

"Using an elastic definition of degeneracy, white Brazilian elites did not see blackness and whiteness as mutually exclusive. Poor whites could be degenerate, and some Brazilians of color could escape degeneracy by whitening through social ascension. It is this crucial detail that infused Brazilian public education with its special significance." -Jerry Davila

In his book, "Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945", Dr. Jerry Davila communicates effectively how the educational experiences of millions of Brazilians was created by a small faction of elites with a deliberate sense of the significance of race in mind, more implicitly, with their scientific ideology of eugenics in mind. The author argues that the way the practice of eugenics submerged the management of racial hierarchy within social scientific language that "deracialized" and depoliticized the image of Brazilian society allows us to understand how both Brazilians and foreigners accepted this paradoxical myth of a racial democracy in the twentieth century. Davila provides analyses to this thesis through six intriguing chapters with the Rio de Janeiro school system as the model. With the most extensive school system in Brazil at the time, Rio serves as an outstanding model for illustrating "the reformist tendencies in education and the ways reforms contended with race, class, and gender." Davila also states that "Rio's schools provide a way to see how the educational system related to its city and responded to the particular circumstances created by rapid growth and industrialization."
Davila first evidences his thesis through this model of the Rio school system, but in detail, through expounding upon the role of the MES (Brazil's Ministry of Education and Public Health) and the IPE (Institution for Educational Research): Brazil's programs of combined psychological and anthropological studies of race, presenting the case for what Davila calls "the elasticity of disciplinary boundaries in the context of eugenics." He breaks down the role of the IPE and shows its significance through elaboration on its Orthophrenology and Mental Hygiene sector, a pundit of perpetuating these mythical ideas of cultural inferiority and the possibility of a racial utopia of former degenerates with their `diplomas of whiteness.'
Although I find Dr. Davila's research and analyses of the history of eugenic thought in Brazil and the institutions that harbored it to be the foundations for this work, it would not be complete without a critical analysis and evidence through primary sources, which Davila abundantly supplies. In his chapter: "What Happened to Rio's Teachers of Color?," Davila is able to prove his case that the dictators of social policy in education used their theories of degeneration when they began to use white educated women as the model for teaching with not only documented sources and first-hand conversations but also the use of an archived photo collection (used throughout the book) from Augusto Malta, which truly adds another dimension to the ability to grasp this Brazilian concept of "whitening." With Malta's collection, you see the transition from an early 1900's male afro-descendant teaching staff to the masses of middle-aged white female "clones" at the Institute of Education in 1943. From here, Davila breaks down the reforms in elementary education, secondary schools, and what he calls the "Escola Nova no Esatdo Nova": The New School in the New State; Brazil's school system under Vargas and militarism. Again employing an abundant number of sources compiled alongside Malta's photo collection, Davila is able to effectively demonstrate the effects and extent of policy reform on literally millions of young Brazilians.
Overall the authors conclusion on Brazil's "whitening through social ascension," this earning of a `diploma of whiteness,' is very effectively evidenced throughout the course of the book and is broken-down successfully in each succeeding chapter beginning from the first: "Building the Brazilian Man." The book is very well laid-out and it is easy to follow Davila's ideas as they transition well from one to the other, especially with the Malta collection available. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Latin American Studies or more specifically how race can influence social policy, not just in Brazil, but anywhere in the world. This book added significant insight and value to my History of Brazil course, presenting many analyses on race I had yet to ponder. According to Freyre, and evidenced by Davila, Brazil is truly the "laboratory of races." Everyone in Brazil has a `grandmother captured by lasso' or a `foot in the kitchen' so to speak.

Libby Schweber writes a history of statistics, specifically a history of different methods of statistical analysis and what information, if any, can be inferred from statistics. What can we learn about a population from a segment of its parts?

Imagine a presidential election. A magazine sends surveys to its readers, and from the hundreds of thousands of surveys returned, predicts a winner. A polling organization surveys a few hundred people. They predict the winner, and the magazine does not. What happened? The magazine sent its survey to its readership, which skewed toward the rich and the right. So did their votes. But the organization that understood statistics achieved what is called a random sample of the entire U.S. population; the sample did not skew rich or poor, right or left. It was a true representation of the whole. So even though many fewer were surveyed, the results were predictive. (This is how Gallup polling works.)

This anecdote, popular in statistics classes, is the best way I can think of to describe the excitement of this book. There are different methods of gathering and using statistics. This book concerns the French, who wanted knowledge of individuals. They wanted to apply general statistics to individuals. They sought statistical knowledge for knowledge's sake. The English, on the other hand, saw statistics as general numbers - and they used the numbers to influence the public and to effect legislation. Statistics was invented, after all. Its purpose was by no means determined by the 1800s.

What should the purpose and extent of statistics be? For people interested by the classic The Bell Curve, this book delves deeper into the history, use and possible misuse of statistics. It's a great read, with plenty of charts and graphs to help those whose statistics is rusty. And remember: skimming is allowed.

I just read George Butorac's book, "Discover The Joys Of Living " for the second time. Mr. Butorac is an excellent and descriptive writer. He is a natural born story teller. The first reading of the book provided me with quite a few laughs. The short vignettes about people he met in his life used as examples to make points were very entertaining and were right on the mark in providing lucid clarification of his theories. Though you may not agree with all his views the majority do provide individual insight on how to improve one's appreciation of "La Dolce Vita". Since Mr. Butorac's writing is so clear and vivid one tends to read it quite fast and therefore fail to absorb all of the material from a wide variety of scientific disciplines. He presents theories based on biology for examples, the evolution of the brain through three stages, and the voluntary and involuntary servo mechanisms of the body. He shows how we react to different kinds of stress and stimulation and combines all of this information in an easily digestible format for the average reader. Generally I found the book to be entertaining, provocative, and informative. I highly recommend it to anyone how would like to get more fun out of life and become more successful in dealing with making lemon aide out of the lemons we all get . This book is truly an oil change for the mind.

Stanley Hauerwas belongs to that minority,{along with Will D. Campbell, Clarence Jordan, Daniel Berrigan, S.J., William Stringfellow, and a few others} who shake the rafters of conventional christianity. The literal,fundementalist's who have dominated the media for the past 20 years would be sent into shivers by much of what Hauerwas writes. Essays such as Why Gays{as a group} are morally superior to Christians{as a group} are brilliant, though I'm certain would disturb many{which ,is one of the reasons Mr Hauerwas writes.} Mr. Hauerwas has been on a crusade about the mentally handicapped, and how we can LEARN FROM THEM,and how we can better serve them and become better ourselves{much of this has been covered by henri Nouwen and the living saint, J`ean vanier]Still, with essay's on Karl Barth and William Stringfellow, My Hauerwas once again is challenging in his views of what it means to be a christian in America. Challenging, thought provoking. What better compliment to afford a theologian?