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• André Aciman
  False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory
• Abraham Ascher
  P. A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia
• Michael Fabricant and Robert Fisher
  Settlement Houses Under Siege
• Fernando Henrique Cardoso (intro. by Mauricio Font)
  Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation
• Joel I. Gersten and Frederick W. Smith
  The Physics and Chemistry of Materials
• Edouard Glissant
  The Fourth Century: A Novel
• Samuel C. Heilman
  When a Jew Dies
• Ellie M. Hisama
  Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon
• Kathleen D. McCarthy, editor
  Women, Philanthropy, & Civil Society
• Louis Menand
  The Metaphysical Club
• Judith Milhous, Gabriella Dideriksen, and Robert D. Hume
  Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London Volume II: The Pantheon Opera and its Aftermath 1789-1795
• Stanley E. Renson, editor
  One America? Political Leadership, National Identity, and the Dilemmas of Diversity
• Harriet F. Senie
  The Tilted Arc Controversy
• Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diane diZerenga Wall
  Unearthing Gotham: The Archeology of New York City
• Thomas G. Weiss and Don Hubert
  The Responsibility to Protect
• Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss
  Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Global Challenges
• E. Gordon Whatley, et al., editors
  Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, volume one

André Aciman
False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory
(Picador USA, 2001; 182 pp.)

This collection of 14 essays by Aciman—the "prince of nostalgia" (Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review)—dissects in fine-spun prose the experience of exile, as Aciman describes his forced departure from Alexandria as a teenager, his brief life in Europe, and his present location on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "To those who asked, I said I went back to touch and breathe the past again, to walk in shoes I hadn't worn in years," begins this evocative collection by a stylist some have compared to Proust. Aciman, an expert in seventeenth-century French literature, the contemporary Arab world, modern literature, and philosophy, is also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The New Republic, and Commentary. His book, Out of Egypt: A Memoir (1995), an account of his Jewish-Turkish-Italian family's life in Alexandria, was called a "a classic memoir of modern Jewish life" by The New York Times. Aciman is professor of comparative literature at The Graduate Center.

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Abraham Ascher
P. A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia
(Stanford University Press, 2001; 468 pp.)

Abraham Ascher, distinguished professor of history at The Graduate Center, has written the first comprehensive biography in any language of Russia's leading statesman in the period following the Revolution of 1905. Prime minister and minister of internal affairs from 1906 to 1911 (when he was assassinated), Stolypin aroused deep passions among his contemporaries as well as subsequent historians. His efforts to reform the socioeconomic and political system of the empire, and to restore the tsarist aristocracy, are covered in this balanced and complex portrait. "A book well worth waiting for...carefully researched, well-argued, and highly readable," said The Wall Street Journal.

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Michael Fabricant and Robert Fisher
Settlement Houses Under Siege
(Columbia University Press, 2001; 289 pp.)

Fabricant and Fisher assess the status of the community-based social service institution called the "settlement house"—viewed by some as an artifact from the Progressive era and by others as a vital instrument capable of strengthening the social capital of impoverished communities. Cutbacks in government aid during the late 90s along with the trend toward privatization left many nonprofit community organizations in untenable positions. Drawing on over a hundred interviews with house directors and staff members in New York City, the volume offers a holistic, ground-level assessment of the status of social service agencies in a conservative age, and asks frank, important questions about our broader civic life. Michael B. Fabricant is professor of social welfare at Hunter College and executive officer of The Graduate Center's social welfare program; Robert Fisher is director of urban studies and professor of social work at the University of Connecticut.

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Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Edited and Introduced by Mauricio Font
Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2001; 334 pp.)

This new book by the president of Brazil—a scholar long recognized as among the most influential of Latin American—is the first to incorporate writings from his tenure in the executive office. Cardoso's third book in English spans from his earlier theoretical writings to his pragmatic agenda for 21st-century Brazil. It traces the development of one of the world's leading intellectuals, the first sociologist to become president of a large country, as he considers subjects such as the liberalization of the economy in a globalized world system, "radicalizing" democracy, his own concept of "dependency theory," and his musings on the art of politics. The introductory essay, "To Craft a New Era," by Mauricio A. Font, provides an overview Cardoso's work, considering the nature of democracy and reform in Brazil and the problem of finding a "utopia" in a liberalized world market. Font is professor of sociology at Queens College and The Graduate Center, and Director of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies.

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Joel I. Gersten, Frederick W. Smith
The Physics and Chemistry of Materials
(Wiley-Interscience, 2001; 826 pp.)

This encyclopedic book provides the first unified and comprehensive treatment of the broad subject of materials. Appropriate for use in advanced materials courses, the book uses a fundamental approach to define the structure and properties of a wide range of solids, and includes sections on: the structure of materials, physical properties of materials and classes of materials. Another section covers surfaces, thin films, interfaces and multilayers, and the last deals with synthesis and processing. Joel I. Gersten and Frederick W. Smith are professors of physics at The City College and The Graduate Center.

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Édouard Glissant
The Fourth Century: A Novel
(Bison Books: University of Nebraska Press, 2001; 294 pp.)

This novel by one of the foundational figures of Francophone literature tells of the quest of its young hero, Mathieu Béluse, to learn the true—and unofficial—history of his homeland, the island of Martinique. He turns to an "old man of the forest," the healer, seer and storyteller Papa Longoué, who reconnects the tradition of oral history to the powers of the land the forces of nature. What the reader discovers is a long history of interaction between the Longoué family and the Béluse family—a love-hate relationship that is also marked by the fact that the Longoués were able to escape slavery and the Béluses not. This attractive reprint of a hardback edition of the translation by Betsy Wing, originally released in 1997, is sure to create new readers for Dr. Glissant, distinguished professor of French at The Graduate Center.

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Samuel C. Heilman
When a Jew Dies: The Ethnography of a Bereaved Son
(University of California Press, 2001; 271 pp.)

Samuel C. Heilman, professor of sociology and Harold M. Proshansky Chair in Jewish Studies, has created a unique account of the traditional customs put into practice when a Jewish person dies in what is both an informative anthropological study of Jewish rites of mourning and a moving chronicle of the loss of his own father. Heilman's eloquent narrative—a rare event of first-person ethnography—crosses and re-crosses the boundary between the academic and the religious, the personal and the general, reflecting the author's changing roles as social scientist, bereaved son, and observant Jew. Winner of a Koret Jewish Book Award.
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Ellie M. Hisama
Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon
(Cambridge, 2001; 198 pp.)

Weaving history and musical analysis, Hisama explores the work of three significant and fascinating American women composers of the twentieth century by employing a form of analysis that links musical characteristics with elements of the composers' identities. Written in a way that the general reader will find compelling but which will fully satisfy the specialist, Gendering Musical Modernism answers many questions about the relationship of music to gender, and contributes to those analytical works attempting to explain musical language itself. Ellie M. Hisama is associate professor of music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center and is director of the Institute for Studies in American Music at Brooklyn College.

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Kathleen D. McCarthy, editor
Women, Philanthropy, & Civil Society
(Indiana University Press, 2001; 314 pp.)

Female benificence—as Islamic activism in Egypt, as religious charities in nineteenth-century Ireland, as secular and non-secular philanthropy in places as diverse as Norway, Brazil, Korea, Israel, and India—has shaped non-governmental political organizations (NGOs), civil society, and women's political culture worldwide. Women, Philanthropy, & Civil Society grew out of a research project by the Center for the Study of Philanthropy at The Graduate Center, of which McCarthy is the director. The study's aims were to "elucidate the role of women in building civil society through their gifts of money and time in a variety of countries," with research focusing on religion, on the "maternalist" form of female philanthropy, and on the role of women-started NGOs in weak, decentralized states. Kathleen D. McCarthy is professor of history at The Graduate Center.

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Louis Menand
The Metaphysical Club
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001, 560pp.)

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History, this book begins with the Civil War and ends in 1919 with the Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Abrams, the basis for the modern law of free speech. Menand tells the story of the creation of ideas and values that changed the way Americans think and the way they live by tracing the lives of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Civil War hero who became the dominant legal thinker of his time; his best friend as a young man, William James, son of an eccentric moral philosopher, brother of a great novelist, and the father of modern psychology in America; and the brilliant and troubled logician, scientist, and founder of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce. All three belonged to an informal short-lived discussion group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, that called itself the Metaphysical Club. Menand shows how they, together with John Dewey—student of Peirce, friend and ally of James, admirer of Holmes—were responsible for the birth of a new American pragmatism, which grew out of the intellectual climate after the Civil War. Louis Menand is distinguished professor of English at The Graduate Center.

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Judith Milhous, Gabriella Dideriksen, and Robert D. Hume
Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London. Volume II: The Pantheon Opera and its Aftermath 1789-1795
(Oxford University Press, 2001; 883 pp.)

Judith Milhous, distinguished professor of theatre at The Graduate Center, has co-authored a second volume on Italian opera in London, covering the period of the Pantheon Opera and its aftermath. The discovery of six cartons of previously unknown manuscripts made it possible to re-write a little understood chapter in the musical and cultural life of London. The result is both the dramatic tale of a theatrical venture—featuring characters such as Mozart and Haydn and tales of intrigue, blackmail, and arson—as well as a detailed analysis of the opera and ballet repertoire, personnel records, staging practices, and the finances of the company.

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Stanley E. Renson, editor
One America? Political Leadership, National Identity, and the Dilemmas of Diversity
(Georgetown University Press, 2001; 406 pp.)

Influxes of immigrants constantly change America's demographic makeup, and as new arrivals from various locations have flooded in, the diversity of co-existing cultures has expanded dramatically. This shifting of the racial map is forcing America to question some of its centuries-old beliefs, with the result that individual and group rights are changing—sometimes being attacked—while political leaders generally refuse to bring this issue to the forefront of their agendas. The contributors to One America? focus on the role of American political leadership in an increasingly fragmented, and frictional, society. Renshon writes in his introduction that this moment in our history is the most challenging in terms of national identity since the Civil War, but rather than pitting "commerce against agriculture, urban centers against rural traditions, and North against South," the "new danger lies in conflicts between people of different racial, cultural and ethnic heritages." Stanley A. Renshon is professor of political science at The Graduate Center.

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Harriet F. Senie
The Tilted Arc Controversy
(University of Minnesota Press, 2001; 224 pp.)

Senie discusses, in a rich, journalistic style free of art-world jargon, Richard Serra's controversial public sculpture "Tilted Arc," a 10-foot-high, 120-foot long curved wall of self-rusting steel that was installed in New York's Federal Plaza in 1981 and removed, after a lengthy public debate, in 1989. While one part of the nation's arts funding debate was focused on censorship in the performance arts and photography (Karen Finley and Robert Mapplethorpe most notably), another was asking whether the removal of the government-commissioned abstract sculpture—called the city's worst public sculpture by the New York Times and the Village Voice—was poetic justice or a dangerous precedent that would scare commissioned artists from doing serious, engaging work. Senie is a professor of art history at City College and The Graduate Center.

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Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerenga Wall
Unearthing Gotham: The Archeology of New York City
(Yale University Press, 2001; 374 pp.)

Cantwell and Wall treat the five boroughs of New York City—known for its teeming skyscrapers, bustling nightlife, celebrities and economic clout—as a window onto several layers of the city's past, going through the gaslit, Victorian nineteenth century, the seventeenth-century Dutch and English colonists and the Africans they enslaved, right back to the presence of Native Americans who first arrived eleven thousand years ago. The result is a breathtaking book of archeology and urban history, a fascinating tour of the sedimentary roots of this concrete jungle which takes on added poignancy as the city seeks to recover from the recent shock of attack and its human toll. Publisher's Weekly notes that this attractive illustrated volume "balances the book's academic underpinnings with [an] obvious desire to entertain and illumine the past." Anne-Marie Cantwell is associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, and Diana DiZerenga Wall is associate professor of anthropology at the City College of New York and The Graduate Center.

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Thomas G. Weiss and Don Hubert, editors
The Responsibility to Protect
(International Development Research Center, 2001; 350 pp.)

In his report to the 2000 Millennium Assembly, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged the intellectual community to forge a consensus about when international humanitarian intervention—such as in Rwanda, when it was much too late, and Kosovo where it was effective—should and should not occur. The Responsibility To Protect is the result of this challenge, and forms a watershed moment for this issue that has taken center-stage in the past months. The first volume, the report proper, is a succinct 70-page outline of the committee's findings, covering such issues as when to act, what part nations take in rebuilding, and the question of authority. The second volume, edited by Thomas G. Weiss (Presidential Professor, The Graduate Center) and Don Hubert (Senior Policy Advisor, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa) is a comprehensive account of the report's research and background including bibliography.

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Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss
Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Global Challenges

Foreword by Kofi A. Annan
(Watson-Guptill Publications, 2001; 256 pp.)

"With the publication of the first volume in the United Nations Intellectual History Project, a significant lacuna in twentieth-century scholarship and international relations begins to be filled," writes UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the book's foreword. In Ahead of the Curve?, authors Emmerij, Jolly, and Weiss (Presidential Professor in political science and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies) analyze the evolution of key ideas and concepts about international economic and social development under UN auspices since 1945.

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Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas D. Hill, Paul E. Szarmach, and E. Gordon Whatley, editors.
Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, volume one
(Western Michigan University, 2001; 600 pp.)

This is the first volume of an encyclopedic collection of source material on Anglo-Saxon literature, including scholarship regarding how it was disseminated, read, adapted and utilized in the years between ca. 600 and ca. 1100. Its 600 pages cover only three alphabetical entries—Abbo of Fleury, Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Acta Sanctorum—but with a comprehensiveness that supercedes predecessor volumes which concentrated solely on books (such as the pioneering Books Known To English, 597-1066 by J.D.A. Oglivy). As the introduction states: "[W]e are more interested in 'sources,' including oral traditional literature as well as written texts, and in written texts such as charters, medical recipes, and charms, which can only be loosely described as books." Graduate Center professor of English E. Gordon Whatley worked as co-editor and writer for the majority of this volume, over 500 pages covering the Acta Sanctorum, or lives of the saints.

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