Random House balked when historian Michael Burlingame, a professor at
Americans love an anniversary, and so do librarians and the media. 2009 marks 200 years since
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Abraham Lincoln’s Life Outlined in 2,024 Pages
Saturday, January 3, 2009
"At Maxwell Street" featured in Chicago Journal
Often referred to as the largest open air market in the U.S., Maxwell Street was named after Dr. Philip Maxwell, an early settler, and first appeared on a map in 1847.
From 1880 to 1920, the area was a neighborhood of poor Eastern European Jews, a legacy that lingered as late as 1982 when Tom Palazzolo made his documentary. One black clerk in a store refers to the area as "Jew Town."
His Jewish boss, looking on, tells the filmmaker that at that time there were only 10 Jewish merchants left in the area and that he expected the area would soon be Korean.
But from all the photographic and film records of Maxwell Street, it is clear that the market was diverse, "a thriving marketplace with a vibrant and lively street culture" and as one historian has written, "the only color that mattered was green."
The Maxwell Street Market became official in 1912. It provided immigrants with an outlet for their entrepreneurial skills, a livelihood, a social network and a sense of community, as well as the goods and services needed for everyday living.
It ran until 1994. As buildings were gradually condemned, services and improvements were withheld. The decline to justify redevelopment of the area was assured.
After a stint on Canal Street, the Maxwell Street Market moved to Desplaines Street between Harrison and Roosevelt, and it is there you will find it today with space for more than 500 vendors every Sunday of the year, weather permitting.
Remembering Maxwell Street
New book includes DVD documentary of historic market
By CHRISTINE VERNON Contributing Reporter -- Chicago Journal
Tom Palazzolo's new book At Maxwell Street (cloth, $45, ISBN 978-0-9789676-1-1, Wicker Park Press) is described by his wife, Marcia, a contributor to the book, as a "memoir of place."
Over the years, Tom Palazzolo has filmed what has become, by the passage of time, historic and archival footage of the city of Chicago from as far back as his days as a student at the School of the Art Institute more than 40 years ago.
Growing up in St. Louis, he watched as many landmarks were torn down, and arrived in Chicago in 1960 enthusiastic to see that many landmarks still remained.
Included among the 50 or so films he has made is footage of Riverview, Clark Street, and the 1968 Democratic convention. But Palazzolo always had a particular love of and appreciation for Maxwell Street and its eponymous, now gone, market.
His book serves as a historic record about the phenomenon that was Maxwell Street. Along with the oral histories in the book, there is a DVD made with students from the School of the Art Institute in 1982. The book includes many still shots, images of the people, places and things where the market was in three layers-storefronts, tables on the street and small huts.
To see Maxwell Street through the eyes and lens of Tom Palazzolo with the help of photos and stories of his students, friends and wife, is to be transported back to a place that engages all the senses: images of the people, including merchants, shoppers and street performers, the products, and outsider art on a massive scale; the sounds of jazz and blues; the smells of street food, of Polish sausage sandwiches (of particular interest to Tom); and the feel of the market and the goods being sold by vendors, hawkers and pullers who drew people into the stores.
The documentary accompanying the book opens with Casey Jones, Chicken Man (aqua Chicken Charlie), a one-man band who was seen around Chicago and often at Maxwell Street, with his accordion and trained chicken.
There are no bad actors on this set; everyone contributes to the festivities which Palazzolo calls "more fun and more real than modern malls, sometimes dangerous, and often funny."
Accompanied by students, Palazzolo found the people he filmed more open and interested in talking to him. When asked if Maxwell Street should have been saved, Palazzolo responds, "Absolutely, it is an antidote to the slickness the city is becoming."
Palazzolo book combines his love of the sociology, culture and aesthetics. "Chicago soul" he calls it, "a distinctly American phenomenon."
At a public reception for Palazzolo's new book the week before Christmas, each person in the audience seemed to have a personal story to tell about their experiences at Maxwell Street.
William Cowhey, a West Sider, former real estate professional with Arthur Rubloff & Co. and former head of the Civic Federation of Chicago, remembers that at one time, the rents on Halsted Street were more than the rents per square foot on State Street.
Cowhey recalled that Maxwell Street was always the place to go on Sundays when the other stores were closed and how much fun it was to go there as a teen. He said the heyday of Maxwell was in the 1930s and late 1940s.
Kathy Coleman English spoke of her great grandfather Katzen, a rabbi, who came to Maxwell Street from Georgia in Russia.
Palazzolo says he started out documenting Maxwell Street for a class at the School of the Art Institute. He would fill an assignment at the last minute by rushing to Maxwell Street on a Sunday and getting his prints ready for Monday class. Soon he found out that he loved the images.
Gradually, as he visited Maxwell Street with his girlfriend, Marcia Daehn, a photography student at IIT, he would pick up the tab for her "polish," a great investment for the woman who became his wife, collaborator and mother of his three children.
From 1880 to 1920, the area was a neighborhood of poor Eastern European Jews, a legacy that lingered as late as 1982 when Tom Palazzolo made his documentary. One black clerk in a store refers to the area as "Jew Town."
His Jewish boss, looking on, tells the filmmaker that at that time there were only 10 Jewish merchants left in the area and that he expected the area would soon be Korean.
But from all the photographic and film records of Maxwell Street, it is clear that the market was diverse, "a thriving marketplace with a vibrant and lively street culture" and as one historian has written, "the only color that mattered was green."
The Maxwell Street Market became official in 1912. It provided immigrants with an outlet for their entrepreneurial skills, a livelihood, a social network and a sense of community, as well as the goods and services needed for everyday living.
It ran until 1994. As buildings were gradually condemned, services and improvements were withheld. The decline to justify redevelopment of the area was assured.
After a stint on Canal Street, the Maxwell Street Market moved to Desplaines Street between Harrison and Roosevelt, and it is there you will find it today with space for more than 500 vendors every Sunday of the year, weather permitting.
Remembering Maxwell Street
New book includes DVD documentary of historic market
By CHRISTINE VERNON Contributing Reporter -- Chicago Journal
Tom Palazzolo's new book At Maxwell Street (cloth, $45, ISBN 978-0-9789676-1-1, Wicker Park Press) is described by his wife, Marcia, a contributor to the book, as a "memoir of place."
Over the years, Tom Palazzolo has filmed what has become, by the passage of time, historic and archival footage of the city of Chicago from as far back as his days as a student at the School of the Art Institute more than 40 years ago.
Growing up in St. Louis, he watched as many landmarks were torn down, and arrived in Chicago in 1960 enthusiastic to see that many landmarks still remained.
Included among the 50 or so films he has made is footage of Riverview, Clark Street, and the 1968 Democratic convention. But Palazzolo always had a particular love of and appreciation for Maxwell Street and its eponymous, now gone, market.
His book serves as a historic record about the phenomenon that was Maxwell Street. Along with the oral histories in the book, there is a DVD made with students from the School of the Art Institute in 1982. The book includes many still shots, images of the people, places and things where the market was in three layers-storefronts, tables on the street and small huts.
To see Maxwell Street through the eyes and lens of Tom Palazzolo with the help of photos and stories of his students, friends and wife, is to be transported back to a place that engages all the senses: images of the people, including merchants, shoppers and street performers, the products, and outsider art on a massive scale; the sounds of jazz and blues; the smells of street food, of Polish sausage sandwiches (of particular interest to Tom); and the feel of the market and the goods being sold by vendors, hawkers and pullers who drew people into the stores.
The documentary accompanying the book opens with Casey Jones, Chicken Man (aqua Chicken Charlie), a one-man band who was seen around Chicago and often at Maxwell Street, with his accordion and trained chicken.
There are no bad actors on this set; everyone contributes to the festivities which Palazzolo calls "more fun and more real than modern malls, sometimes dangerous, and often funny."
Accompanied by students, Palazzolo found the people he filmed more open and interested in talking to him. When asked if Maxwell Street should have been saved, Palazzolo responds, "Absolutely, it is an antidote to the slickness the city is becoming."
Palazzolo book combines his love of the sociology, culture and aesthetics. "Chicago soul" he calls it, "a distinctly American phenomenon."
At a public reception for Palazzolo's new book the week before Christmas, each person in the audience seemed to have a personal story to tell about their experiences at Maxwell Street.
William Cowhey, a West Sider, former real estate professional with Arthur Rubloff & Co. and former head of the Civic Federation of Chicago, remembers that at one time, the rents on Halsted Street were more than the rents per square foot on State Street.
Cowhey recalled that Maxwell Street was always the place to go on Sundays when the other stores were closed and how much fun it was to go there as a teen. He said the heyday of Maxwell was in the 1930s and late 1940s.
Kathy Coleman English spoke of her great grandfather Katzen, a rabbi, who came to Maxwell Street from Georgia in Russia.
Palazzolo says he started out documenting Maxwell Street for a class at the School of the Art Institute. He would fill an assignment at the last minute by rushing to Maxwell Street on a Sunday and getting his prints ready for Monday class. Soon he found out that he loved the images.
Gradually, as he visited Maxwell Street with his girlfriend, Marcia Daehn, a photography student at IIT, he would pick up the tab for her "polish," a great investment for the woman who became his wife, collaborator and mother of his three children.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Usagi Yojimbo Rabbit Dynamite
The thing that prompted my interest in this series of manga books was a request from my 7-year-old nephew for volumes 6 and 7 of the series. I’d never heard of it before, and I quickly discovered that there are some 22 books in the series and bookstores didn’t carry the whole series, even ones with a concentration on comics. For the most part they had the most recent books on their shelves and that was it. Through searching online, and consulting specialty stores I figured out that volumes 6 and 7 were still in print. I ended up ordering them from a comic book bookstore in Chicago called Challengers Comics and Conversation. The staff there was super nice, and they even suggested some other books my young nephew would like that were related to Stan Sakai’s samurai rabbit.
I went to a superstore and they had this huge manga section – two entire walls and a double-sided kiosk of books – and it seemed this was the only section in the store where buyers were actually seriously shopping. They didn’t carry one Usagi Yojimbo book! That didn’t seem to bode well. It amazes me how far comic books have come since the days we sold them with LPC Group. LPC was the distributor for Marvel, Dark Horse, Image Comics, Tokyo Pop, and a host of other publishers before they went out of business as a distributor. Bookstores at the time were just getting hip to the idea of comics as a real goldmine, and we were on the cutting edge of a comic book revolution.
Comics are also used more by teachers to encourage reading, especially with reluctant boys and late readers across the spectrum. I remember sitting in a parent-teacher group session and the teacher telling parents how she was going to utilize comics to engage the kids to read in a 7th grade class. One parent raised her hand and said, I think the new term for comics is graphic novels. The teacher got really excited and said, wow, graphic novels - I’m going to have to remember that! I almost fell out my chair trying to repress my laughter. I had sit in so many sales meetings with publishers in this genre, and pitched the books to bookstores countless times, that it amused me to no end to see the teacher’s epiphany with graphic novels.
We do still sell some cutting edge books about comics, and they are published by University Press of Mississippi. Every season they have new and interesting books about comics and the art of comics, or graphic novels as they are called in the trade – see this link http://upmississippi.blogspot.com/2007/08/journey-into-comics.html for more detailed information about their books. It seems to me every self-respecting comic bookshop should carry their stuff.
Comic book readers and specialists in popular culture always seem to be looking for the latest thing or trend in comics. One of the things that came out of the Japanese comic book craze was producing books that read from right to left, which is Asian style. That was a big thing at one point. Then it was comics from places like Korea that were all the rage, and whatever was being shown on Cartoon Network that could be turned into a book series. A new book from University of Texas Press seems to be exploring new territory, and is worth noting here: -- Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez, by Frederick Luis Aldama. Aldama is professor of English and Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He’s also the director of their Latino Studies Department. He seems well-qualified to write a book such as this. He’s the author of a previous book called Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Artists and Writers. The book explores Latino representations in comics, from Marvel superheroes, and the likely suspects, to Latino masters such as Richard Dominguez. Shedding a much-needed spotlight on a vibrant segment of comics, Your Brian on Latino Comics illuminates the world of such superheroes as Firebird, Vibe, and the Blue Beetle, as well as profiling creative artists actively working in the genre, such as Laura Molina, Frank Espinosa, and Rafael Navarro. There are twenty-one interviews in the book and readers will get a real sense of the evolution of Latino expression in this format, as well as the influences, innovations, and many Latino transcendences of mainstream techniques. The amazing creativity of the people involved will inspire as well as entertain readers of comics and graphic literature.
I went to a superstore and they had this huge manga section – two entire walls and a double-sided kiosk of books – and it seemed this was the only section in the store where buyers were actually seriously shopping. They didn’t carry one Usagi Yojimbo book! That didn’t seem to bode well. It amazes me how far comic books have come since the days we sold them with LPC Group. LPC was the distributor for Marvel, Dark Horse, Image Comics, Tokyo Pop, and a host of other publishers before they went out of business as a distributor. Bookstores at the time were just getting hip to the idea of comics as a real goldmine, and we were on the cutting edge of a comic book revolution.
Comics are also used more by teachers to encourage reading, especially with reluctant boys and late readers across the spectrum. I remember sitting in a parent-teacher group session and the teacher telling parents how she was going to utilize comics to engage the kids to read in a 7th grade class. One parent raised her hand and said, I think the new term for comics is graphic novels. The teacher got really excited and said, wow, graphic novels - I’m going to have to remember that! I almost fell out my chair trying to repress my laughter. I had sit in so many sales meetings with publishers in this genre, and pitched the books to bookstores countless times, that it amused me to no end to see the teacher’s epiphany with graphic novels.
We do still sell some cutting edge books about comics, and they are published by University Press of Mississippi. Every season they have new and interesting books about comics and the art of comics, or graphic novels as they are called in the trade – see this link http://upmississippi.blogspot.com/2007/08/journey-into-comics.html for more detailed information about their books. It seems to me every self-respecting comic bookshop should carry their stuff.
Comic book readers and specialists in popular culture always seem to be looking for the latest thing or trend in comics. One of the things that came out of the Japanese comic book craze was producing books that read from right to left, which is Asian style. That was a big thing at one point. Then it was comics from places like Korea that were all the rage, and whatever was being shown on Cartoon Network that could be turned into a book series. A new book from University of Texas Press seems to be exploring new territory, and is worth noting here: -- Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez, by Frederick Luis Aldama. Aldama is professor of English and Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He’s also the director of their Latino Studies Department. He seems well-qualified to write a book such as this. He’s the author of a previous book called Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Artists and Writers. The book explores Latino representations in comics, from Marvel superheroes, and the likely suspects, to Latino masters such as Richard Dominguez. Shedding a much-needed spotlight on a vibrant segment of comics, Your Brian on Latino Comics illuminates the world of such superheroes as Firebird, Vibe, and the Blue Beetle, as well as profiling creative artists actively working in the genre, such as Laura Molina, Frank Espinosa, and Rafael Navarro. There are twenty-one interviews in the book and readers will get a real sense of the evolution of Latino expression in this format, as well as the influences, innovations, and many Latino transcendences of mainstream techniques. The amazing creativity of the people involved will inspire as well as entertain readers of comics and graphic literature.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
The cultural dynamics of speed outlined in new book from Duke
Egg-headed car lovers are lumped together with scholars of modernism, historians of technology, and “materialist critics” as the audience for The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism, by Enda Duffy. We’ll see if this book crosses over from an academic readership to say, readers of Car and Driver Magazine. Duffy illuminates speed as a logic for and genuine pleasure of modernity. That would be pedal-to-the-metal all the way. He draws on what he calls “adrenaline aesthetics” in such works as Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Ballard’s Crash, and even the cautionary consumerism of Ralph Nader. He doesn’t stop there. As a cutting edge social theorist and professor of English at UC - Santa Barbara, Duffy takes news stories, photography (think of the old-fashioned racecar images of Lartigue, and the classic Robert Frank picture of a couple speeding along in a convertible), advertising, movies, and safety media to provide a breakneck tour of speed and how it continues to define American culture.
Duffy looks at the marketing of cars and how their mass-production enabled masses of people to experience speed, and by extension know modernity: -- to feel modernity in their very bones. Speed became the chief thrill of leisure. Duke did a recent book called Mobility without Mayhem, by Jeremy Packer, and that book looked at America’s fear and fascination with driving in general, a cool cultural history of a phenomenon. Duffy’s book is different and equally valuable in that it takes on speed all by itself, and eloquently explains its political as well as cultural connotations. Speed explains who we are, where we are going (getting there fast), and the whys and wherefores of the sometimes reckless impulse to get a move on.
Duffy looks at the marketing of cars and how their mass-production enabled masses of people to experience speed, and by extension know modernity: -- to feel modernity in their very bones. Speed became the chief thrill of leisure. Duke did a recent book called Mobility without Mayhem, by Jeremy Packer, and that book looked at America’s fear and fascination with driving in general, a cool cultural history of a phenomenon. Duffy’s book is different and equally valuable in that it takes on speed all by itself, and eloquently explains its political as well as cultural connotations. Speed explains who we are, where we are going (getting there fast), and the whys and wherefores of the sometimes reckless impulse to get a move on.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Gastronomy deconstructed through the naughty Victorians in quirky literary study coming from Ohio
Leave it to a gourmet chef, food writer, and general woman-about-town to write an unpredictable and fascinating study of Victorians and their alimentary behaviors as displayed in their literature. Here we have food, drink, drugs, and whatever they could stuff into their mouths. The book is Making a Man: Gentlemanly Appetites in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel, by Gwen Hyman, an assistant professor of humanities at Cooper Union in New York, and the co-author of a recent cookbook, Urban Italian: Simple Recipes and True Stories from a Life in Food. And it seems that those appetites were voracious indeed. The very act of eating, drinking and getting high, along with whatever else is left to the imagination, seems to be the very thing itself that makes a man a man in this world. And boys will be boys. Drawing on food history, theory, literary criticism, anthropology, economics, and social criticism, along with close readings of novels of the time, especially those of Jane Austen, Professor Hyman breaks it all down for endlessly uptight, gorging, anxious, and generally hot-and-bothered Victorian culture. In this world you really are what you eat.
You also have the monster metaphor, Count Dracula and his uncontrollable thirst for blood, and the men who obsessively hunt him down. There is the drawing room, the dining room, the opium den, and the cocaine lab as manifest sets where Victorian males act out their power and uneasiness. The act of consuming, or even starving himself, can be the hinges that make or break the nation. This is an innovative, thought-provoking, and meaningful social study of what it means to be Victorian, and offers an original thesis about the embodiment of power and how alimental behavior can make, unmake and even remake the man.
You also have the monster metaphor, Count Dracula and his uncontrollable thirst for blood, and the men who obsessively hunt him down. There is the drawing room, the dining room, the opium den, and the cocaine lab as manifest sets where Victorian males act out their power and uneasiness. The act of consuming, or even starving himself, can be the hinges that make or break the nation. This is an innovative, thought-provoking, and meaningful social study of what it means to be Victorian, and offers an original thesis about the embodiment of power and how alimental behavior can make, unmake and even remake the man.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Harry Potter Lexicon to finally see the light of day
January 12, 2008 will be a faithful day for all champions of fair use in copyright law. This is the day RDR Books of Muskegon, MI will publish The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials, by Steve Vander Ark ($24.95, paperback, ISBN 978-1-57143-174-5). RDR has been embroiled in a lawsuit over intellectual property rights with author J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. Entertainment since October 2007. The Lexicon is an encyclopedic reference work that covers all seven novels in the Harry Potter series, and is based on a web site that was heavily used by Rowling and her publishers concerning all manner of things from the fictitious world of Harry Potter – http://www.hp-lexicon.org/
The decision by Judge Robert P. Patterson, Jr. to allow the book to press, with some minor changes and stipulations, is a triumph for the doctrine of fair use. It’s clear that over-zealous copyright holders can reek havoc on well-meaning chroniclers, as is the case outlined eloquently in the book Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain, a comic book primer on fair use doctrine for documentary filmmakers, by Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins. RDR also enlisted the lawyers at Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project to testify in their favor. The Patterson ruling will most certainly help authors of similar books in the future.
The decision by Judge Robert P. Patterson, Jr. to allow the book to press, with some minor changes and stipulations, is a triumph for the doctrine of fair use. It’s clear that over-zealous copyright holders can reek havoc on well-meaning chroniclers, as is the case outlined eloquently in the book Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain, a comic book primer on fair use doctrine for documentary filmmakers, by Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins. RDR also enlisted the lawyers at Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project to testify in their favor. The Patterson ruling will most certainly help authors of similar books in the future.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Brookings Institution Press chimes in creatively to help guide a new Obama administration and congress
Brookings is taking its place as a creative nerve center in Washington, with several important books coming out by key authors on issues of critical importance to the new leaders in Washington. Acting in Time on Energy Policy, edited by Kelly Sims Gallagher of the Harvard Kennedy School, comes out in May 2009. Gallagher gathers together her colleagues from the Kennedy School and they tackle important issues that pertain to energy policy – climate change, oil and security - and explain why acting in time, and not waiting until politics demands action, would make a huge positive difference. Obama made energy policy a cornerstone of his Presidential campaign, so this book will be a welcome addition to the ongoing debate about energy.
Plug-In Vehicles: What Role for Washington is edited by David B. Sandalow, an experienced expert on energy policy at Brookings, and comes out in February 2009. With the big three automakers scrambling for a bailout from lawmakers in Washington, the contributors to this timely volume discuss what can and should be done to advance the role of plug-in electric vehicles. It would seem that this book could be very influential, especially since it gathers experts from government, business, and academia. The other thing is that Obama comes from Illinois, a state with a powerful coal lobby. Obama talked about investing in clean coal technology in his Presidential campaign, and while it’s not clear just what clean coal involves beyond the flashy advertisements, it would seem that electric cars are the wave of the future, riding a wave of replacing electricity for oil products in the future.
Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform is edited by Benjamin Wittes of Brookings, and will be published in July 09, at a critical time for new leaders in Washington: -- it is being published in cooperation with Hoover Institution and Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law. This book shows that the US desperately needs a new legal framework to fight terrorists. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the many controversial laws that were enacted as a reaction to that event under Bush, it’s clear that an entirely new statutory law is needed to govern this fight. Contributors to this essential book look to balance the need for security with the rule of law and constitutional rights of freedom. Restoring the Writ of Habeas Corpus for accused terrorists would be a good start. There are a whole host of issues discussed here, from improving interrogation laws to immigration to modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Act. Congress will have its hands full trying to sort out these challenging dilemmas as it tries to set new ground rules for the war on terrorists, and this thoughtful book should be a big help to them.
Finally, there is an eloquent book called Repairing Paradise: The Restoration of Nature in America’s National Parks, coming out in July 09 by William R Lowry, a prolific author and professor of political science at Washington University in St Louis. This book is a departure for Brookings because Lowry writes a highly personal and persuasive account about reversing the mistakes of the last eight years to preserve four National Parks: -- Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades, and the Grand Canyon. Lowry has spent considerable time in these iconic American parks, in addition to making concrete and sensible policy recommendations for the good of nature and animals there, he also is a master prose stylist and makes a poetic case to restore the natural health and glory to some of the world’s most wondrous places.
Plug-In Vehicles: What Role for Washington is edited by David B. Sandalow, an experienced expert on energy policy at Brookings, and comes out in February 2009. With the big three automakers scrambling for a bailout from lawmakers in Washington, the contributors to this timely volume discuss what can and should be done to advance the role of plug-in electric vehicles. It would seem that this book could be very influential, especially since it gathers experts from government, business, and academia. The other thing is that Obama comes from Illinois, a state with a powerful coal lobby. Obama talked about investing in clean coal technology in his Presidential campaign, and while it’s not clear just what clean coal involves beyond the flashy advertisements, it would seem that electric cars are the wave of the future, riding a wave of replacing electricity for oil products in the future.
Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform is edited by Benjamin Wittes of Brookings, and will be published in July 09, at a critical time for new leaders in Washington: -- it is being published in cooperation with Hoover Institution and Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law. This book shows that the US desperately needs a new legal framework to fight terrorists. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the many controversial laws that were enacted as a reaction to that event under Bush, it’s clear that an entirely new statutory law is needed to govern this fight. Contributors to this essential book look to balance the need for security with the rule of law and constitutional rights of freedom. Restoring the Writ of Habeas Corpus for accused terrorists would be a good start. There are a whole host of issues discussed here, from improving interrogation laws to immigration to modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Act. Congress will have its hands full trying to sort out these challenging dilemmas as it tries to set new ground rules for the war on terrorists, and this thoughtful book should be a big help to them.
Finally, there is an eloquent book called Repairing Paradise: The Restoration of Nature in America’s National Parks, coming out in July 09 by William R Lowry, a prolific author and professor of political science at Washington University in St Louis. This book is a departure for Brookings because Lowry writes a highly personal and persuasive account about reversing the mistakes of the last eight years to preserve four National Parks: -- Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades, and the Grand Canyon. Lowry has spent considerable time in these iconic American parks, in addition to making concrete and sensible policy recommendations for the good of nature and animals there, he also is a master prose stylist and makes a poetic case to restore the natural health and glory to some of the world’s most wondrous places.
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