2008 Book Descriptions

Appropriate for one-semester art history surveys or historically-focused art appreciation classes, this revised fourth edition of A History of Western Art focuses on the Western canon of art history in its chronological narrative of art from prehistory to the present. New features include images with improved architectural views; introductions to the methodologies of art history; context essays and technique commentaries; chapter-ending timelines; “Beyond the West” essays; and an online learning center that offers Internet-based resources for students and faculty. Digital images from the illustration program in The Image Vault, McGraw-Hill's new web-based presentation manager, are available to adopting instructors for presentations (no Internet access required), burning to a CD-ROM, or embedding in course Web pages. The eleven-chapter supplement, World Views: Topics in Non-Western Art, is a lavishly illustrated text that is available for only a few dollars more when packaged with A History of Western Art. Laurie Schneider Adams is a professor of art history at John Jay and the Graduate Center.

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Jonathan E. Adler and Lance Rips
Reasoning: Human Inference and its Foundations
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)

This interdisciplinary work is a collection of major essays on reasoning: deductive, inductive, abductive, belief revision, defeasible (non-monotonic), cross cultural, conversational, and argumentative. They are each oriented toward contemporary empirical studies. The book focuses on foundational issues, including paradoxes, fallacies, and debates about the nature of rationality, the traditional modes of reasoning, as well as counterfactual and causal reasoning. It also includes chapters on the interface between reasoning and other forms of thought. In general, this last set of essays represents growth points in reasoning research, drawing connections to pragmatics, cross-cultural studies, emotion, and evolution. Jonathan Adler is a professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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Meena Alexander
Quickly Changing River: poems
(Triquarterly, 2008)

In her poetry Meena Alexander uses bright colors, sounds, smells, and feelings to evoke a strong sensual experience; and she juxtaposes vivid imagery from the natural world—birds, lilies, horses—with images from the world of humans—oppression, slavery, and violence. The songs of a bird can become the voice of a girl in a café and the red juice of mulberries can be as shocking as blood. When she focuses her attention on the cloth of a girl's sari, the material of a woman's life, or the blood in her veins, she speaks to the particular experience of women in the world. The women are vividly present—although they are sometimes hidden or veiled. It is difficult not to come away from Quickly Changing River without a new sense of the power and frailty of being alive. Meena Alexander is a distinguished professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center.

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American Social History Project
Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's History, Vols. 2; 3d edition
(Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008)

Growing out of the effort to reinterpret American history from "the bottom up," these volumes focus on the fundamental social and economic conflicts in our history, integrating the history of community, family, gender roles, race, and ethnicity into the more familiar history of politics and economic development. This new edition has restructured chapters to make the book's information more manageable for students and contains more excerpts from primary sources. The editorial team, all on the staff of the Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project (ASHP/CML), consisted of visual editor Joshua Brown, executive director of ASHP/CML and an adjunct professor of history at the Graduate Center; visual editor David P. Jaffee, a professor of history at City College and the Graduate Center; supervising editor Pennee Bender, an adjunct professor of interactive technology and pedagogy at the Graduate Center; supervising editor Ellen Noonan; and executive editor Stephen Brier, a professor of urban education and vice president for Information Technology and External Programs at the Graduate Center.

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Jaqueline Braveboy-Wagner
Small States in Global Affairs: The Foreign Policies of the Carribbean Community (CARICOM)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

This book represents an update of a well-received volume published in 1989, Caribbean in World Affairs. Given the broad changes that have occurred in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and taking into account requests for a second edition from Caribbean scholars and policymakers in recent years, Jaqueline Braveboy-Wagner has written this new edition with the same aim as the original: to provide a comprehensive and theoretically-grounded account of diplomatic developments in these microstates. She provides a lasting analysis of small state behavior, noting the recent renewal of interest in small states in both the global north and south. The new material includes attention to the changed global setting, updated theoretical developments in foreign policy, and the inclusion of Haiti and Suriname, newer members of Caricom. Jaqueline Braveboy-Wagner is a professor of political science at City College and the Graduate Center.

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David C. Brotherton and Phil Kratsemenas, eds.
Keeping Out the Other: A Critical Introduction to Immigration Enforcement Today
(Columbia University Press, 2008)

America's reputation for open immigration has always been accompanied by a desire to remove or discourage the migration of "undesirables." But recent restrictions placed on immigrants, along with an increase in detentions and deportations, point to a more worrying trend. Immigration enforcement has become the fastest growing sector for spending over the past two decades, dwarfing the money spent on helping immigrants adjust to their new lives. Instead of finding effective ways of integrating newcomers into American society, the United States is focusing on making the process of citizenship more difficult, provoking major protests and unrest. David Brotherton is a professor of criminal justice, sociology, and urban education at John Jay College and the Graduate Center.

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David C. Brotherton and Michael Flynn, eds.
Globalizing the Streets: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Youth, Social Control and Empowerment
(Columbia University Press, 2008)

Not since the cultural and economic rebellions of the 1960s have the activities of resistance among lower- and working- class youth caused such anxiety in the international community. Adopting the vantage point of those whose struggle for dignity, social solidarity, self-respect, and survival takes place in the criminalized, or marginalized, spaces in which they live, the contributors to this volume examine the struggle for identity and interdependence of these youth; their clashes with law enforcement and criminal codes; their fight for social, political, and cultural capital; and their efforts to achieve recognition and empowerment. These essays contextualize and humanize the seemingly senseless actions of these youths, who make visible the class contradictions, social exclusion, and rituals of psychological humiliation that permeate their everyday lives. Michael Flynn is associate director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College and associate professor of psychology at York College, CUNY. David C. Brotherton is a professor of criminal justice, sociology, and urban education at the Graduate Center and John Jay College.

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Steven M. Cahn, ed.
Seven Masterpieces of Philosophy
(Pearson Education, 2008)

This highly anticipated anthology, compiled by noted author and scholar Steven Cahn, presents in their entirety the seven major works central to any introductory philosophy course: Plato, Meno; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Bks. I, II); Descartes, Meditations; Berkeley, Three Dialogues; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; Kant, Fundamental Principles; and Mill, Utilitarianism. Each work has had a profound influence on philosophical thought, and the authors are generally regarded as among the world’s greatest philosophers. The translations are among the most well-respected and admired translations of those works, including the Cottingham translation of Descartes and the Ostwald translation of Aristotle. Each work is introduced and annotated throughout by the editor. The book's brevity and low price allow instructors to easily build the course they want around it, assigning additional books that touch upon their personal favorites. Steven Cahn is a professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center.

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Mary Ann Caws
Salvador Dali
(Critical Lives Collection, REaktion Books, 2008)

“Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure—that of being Salvador Dalí.” A force unto himself, an icon of outrageousness, artistic brilliance, eccentricity, and unmistakable style, Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domènech, Marquis of Pubol, was one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century and, in this concise narrative, acclaimed art historian Mary Ann Caws provides a sharply written survey of his life and work, examining every twist and turn in Dalí’s long and multifaceted career and the pivotal artistic movements at whose center he stood. Caws also considers his relationships with his family, his lovers, and his friends; and his writings, drawings, photography, and painted works offer up new clues about the artist under Caws’s incisive eye, as she analyzes his lesser-known writings and creative works, as well as his Surrealist paintings and “hand-painted dream photographs” such as The Persistence of Memory. Mary Ann Caws is a distinguished professor of comparative literature, English, and French at the Graduate Center.

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Mary Ann Caws
To the Boathouse: A Memoir, paperback
(University of Alabama Press, 2008)

Caws tells us of her early life in North Carolina where she made her debut and began to struggle with accepted social values; of her educational experiences at Bryn Mawr, in Paris, and at Yale—where she weds a professor of philosophy; of the joys, small and large, of a complicated marriage that ends in divorce, after which she strives toward self-sufficiency and self-understanding; of her passion for writing, teaching, art, and poetry; of her friendships with the writers, artists, and intellectuals who provided sanctuary for her mind and heart; and of the many light-filled summers spent with her children at their house in Provence. Returning to visit the southern landscape and her hometown, she dwells on the steadying influence in her life of a singular place: the boathouse in New York's Central Park where for most of her adulthood she has retreated for peace and solace. Mary Ann Caws is a distinguished professor of comparative literature, English, and French at the Graduate Center.

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Todd R. Clear, George F. Cole, Michael D. Reisig
American Corrections, 8th ed.
(Wadsworth, 2008)

Todd R. Clear, a leading expert in the study of U.S. corrections, George F. Cole, considered by many as a "founding father" of modern criminal justice study, and coauthor Michael D. Reisig combine their talents in the new eighth edition of American Corrections. Taking a sociological and historic approach to corrections, the text treats institutional and community sanctions evenhandedly, looking at the system from the perspectives of the corrections worker as well as the offender. It also presents the concept of corrections as a "system" of interconnected organizations and carries this theme throughout the book. High-profile corrections cases taken from recent headlines and integrated coverage of career options in the field demonstrate the real-world relevance of the theories, concepts, and policies presented in the text for students. Finally, many instructors consistently choose Clear/Cole/Reisig because it provides comprehensive coverage without overwhelming students. Todd R. Clear is a distinguished professor of criminal justice at John Jay College and the Graduate Center.

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Bruce Cronin and Ian Hurd, eds.
UN Security Council and the Politics of International Authority: Law, Politics and Power
(Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2008)

This book observes how the growth of the political authority of the U.N. Security Council challenges the basic idea that states have legal autonomy over their domestic affairs. The individual essays survey the implications that flow from these developments in the crucial policy areas of: terrorism; economic sanctions; the prosecution of war crimes; human rights; humanitarian intervention; and, the use of force. In each of these areas, the evidence shows a complex and fluid relationship between state sovereignty, the power of the U.N., and the politics of international legitimation. Demonstrating how world politics has come to accommodate the contradictory institutions of international authority and international anarchy, this book makes an important contribution to how we understand and study international organizations and international law. Written by leading experts in the field, this volume will be of strong interest to students and scholars of international relations, international organizations, international law, and global governance. Bruce Cronin is an associate professor of political science at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Mario DiGangi, ed.
The Winter’s Tale: Texts and Contexts
(Bedford—St. Martin’s, 2008)

The Winter's Tale was one of the very last plays Shakespeare wrote, a moving romance whose themes are sin, forgiveness, death, rebirth, and the power of Time and Nature to heal all wounds. This edition of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale reprints the Bevington edition of the play accompanied by five sets of thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations designed to facilitate many different approaches to Shakespeare. The text includes tracts on childbirth, jealousy, women’s speech, rural festivities, and bears; royal proclamations and statutes about vagabonds and peddlers; popular ballads on marriage and monsters; treatises about monarchy, Catholic and Protestant theological debates, farm labor, and art collecting; a transcription of the trial of Anne Boleyn; and accounts of performances of the statue scene since the 19th century. The primary documents contextualize the dramatic genres of romance and tragicomedy; gender and family relations; political authority and resistance; country work and play; and the social, religious, and erotic uses of art. Mario DiGangi is an associate professor of English at Lehman College and the Graduate Center.

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Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen
Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality, rev. paperback edition
(Seven Stories Press, 2008)

Typecasting chronicles the emergence of the “science of first impression” and reveals how the work of its creators—early social scientists—continues to shape how we see the world and to inform our most fundamental and unconscious judgments of beauty, humanity, and degeneracy. In this groundbreaking exploration of the growth of stereotyping amidst the rise of modern society, authors Ewen & Ewen demonstrate “typecasting” as a persistent cultural practice. Drawing on fields as diverse as history, pop culture, racial science, and film, and including over one hundred images, many published here for the first time, the authors present a vivid portrait of stereotyping as it was forged by colonialism, industrialization, mass media, urban life, and the global economy. This revised paperback edition of Typecasting contains a new prologue, a new opening section (Part I) entitled "The First Divide," and a new Coda. Stuart Ewen is a distinguished professor of history and sociology at the Graduate Center.

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Julio Cammarota and Michelle Fine, eds.
Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion
(Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2008)

Revolutionalizing Education makes unique contributions to the literature on young people by offering a broad framework for understanding a ground-breaking critical research methodology known as Youth-led Participatory Action Research. YPAR is a way to involve young people in defining the research questions and problems most relevant in their lives—and more importantly in acting upon them. Many scholars have turned to YPAR as a way to address both the political challenges and inherent power imbalances of conducting research with young people, while remaining sensitive to the methodological challenges of qualitative inquiry in recent years. This collection offers the first, definitive statement of YPAR as it relates to sites of education, in particular, drawing on a unique combination of theory and practice, and bringing together student writings alongside those of major scholars in the field. Michelle Fine is a distinguished professor of psychology, urban education, and liberal studies at the Graduate Center.

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Selcuk R. Sirin and Michelle Fine
Muslim American Youth : Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods
(New York University Press, 2008)

For those seeking to understand how Muslim youth and other groups of immigrant youth negotiate their identities as Americans, this book provides a much needed roadmap. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terror, growing up Muslim in the U.S. has become a far more challenging task for young people. They must contend with popular cultural representations of Muslim-men-as-terrorists and Muslim-women-as-oppressed, the suspicious gaze of peers, teachers, and strangers, and police, and the fierce embodiment of fears in their homes. With great attention to quantitative and qualitative detail, the authors provide heartbreaking and funny stories of discrimination and resistance, delivering hard to ignore statistical evidence of moral exclusion for young people whose lives have been situated on the intimate fault lines of global conflict, and who carry international crises in their backpacks and in their souls. Michelle Fine is a distinguished professor of psychology, urban education, and liberal studies at the Graduate Center.

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Édouard Glissant and Alexandre Leupin
Les Entretiens de Bâton Rouge
(Gallimard, 2008)

In 1990-91, while teaching at the University of Baton-Rouge, Louisiana, Édouard Glissant participated in a series of conversations with his medievalist colleague Alexandre Leupin. These conversations reveal his long-standing opposition to systems of thought and to fixed ideologies, as well as his interest in what philosophers generally scorn—landscapes, the blues, minorities. He envisages the collision between the European Middle-Ages and the reign of Louis XIV as a drama between two concepts of the world: the language of rationality at its height—a system of thought transmitted by Catholicism—versus Creolization—epitomized by Rabelais, Montaigne, and the Pléiade poets—which introduced and developed critical thought, secularism, the legal system, democracy, the abolition of slavery, the rights of man and woman. Throughout his personal story, Édouard Glissant exalts literature and particularly poetry which escapes the doctrine of determinism, develops the idea of “eccentric” thought, and seeks what is new and amazing in the story of human and cultural relationships today. Édouard Glissant is a distinguished professor of French at the Graduate Center.

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John D. Greenwood
A Conceptual History of Psychology
(McGraw-Hill, 2008)

This book explores in great depth the conceptual continuities and discontinuities that inform the history of thought about human psychology and behavior, from the speculations of the ancient Greeks to contemporary scientific psychology. Greenwood provides an engaging and stimulating analysis of the critical ideas and movements that have shaped the development of scientific psychology, including changing conceptions of the nature of science. Combining a clear and engaging writing style with a critically challenging account of the conceptual history of psychology, the author seamlessly weaves together complex ideas, movements and biographical detail to provide an exciting, detailed and comprehensive account of the historical development of psychological thought and science. The first history of psychology to stimulate students to think critically about the conceptual contours of the history of their discipline, the book also includes separate histories of the development of abnormal, clinical, social and developmental psychology. John Greenwood is professor of philosophy at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Marilyn Hacker, trans.
Venus Khoury-Ghata, Nettles
(Graywolf, 2008)

Masterfully translated by Marilyn Hacker, this new collection of original poetry is by Lebanese poet Vénus Khoury-Ghata, author of She Says, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this collection, Vénus Khoury-Ghata brings her impulses for lyric poetry and for stark narrative together into four enchanting sequences. Each confronts the realities of womanhood, immigration, and cultural conflict with an imagination and history born from both the Arabic and French languages. Marilyn Hacker is a professor of French at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Marilyn Hacker, ed.,
Wayne Miller, Kevin Prufer, eds. in chief
New European Poets
(Graywolf Press, 2008)

Marilyn Hacker was the editor of the French and Francophone section and also served as a translator for this landmark anthology, which is compiled from works by poets whose writing was first published after 1970—a new generation of poets who have come of age since Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, Federico García Lorca, Eugenio Montale, and Czeslaw Milosz. The 270 selected poets represent every country in Europe, and many of them are published here for the first time in English. The poetry is fiercely intelligent, often irreverent, and engaged with history and politics. The range of styles is exhilarating. Poetry translated from more than thirty languages is represented, including French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and more regional languages such as Basque, Irish Gaelic, and Sámi. Marilyn Hacker is a professor of French at City College and the Graduate Center.

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Dagmar Herzog
Sex in Crisis
(Basic Books, 2008)

Only three decades after the legalization of abortion, the broad gains of the feminist movement, and the emergence of the gay rights movement, America has gone frigid. They are not anti-sex, but they’re increasingly anxious about it—largely due to the tactics of the Religious Right. How has the Religious Right achieved this ascendancy? Surprisingly, argues Dagmar Herzog, evangelicals have appropriated the lessons of the first sexual revolution far more effectively than liberals. With the support of a billion-dollar Christian sex industry, evangelicals have crafted an astonishingly graphic and effective pitch for the pleasures of “hot monogamy”—for married, heterosexual couples only, of course. This potent message has enabled them to win elections and seduce souls, with disastrous political consequences. Sex in Crisis wittily and fiercely forces America to confront its national sexual dysfunction and demand a more sophisticated national conversation about the facts of life. Dagmar Herzog is Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar and professor of history at the Graduate Center.

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Hildegard Hoeller, ed.
Horatio Alger Jr.'s Ragged Dick
(W.W. Norton, 2008)

Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is arguably the best known of Horatio Alger's American rags-to-riches stories. It is canonical as a cultural text, rather than a purely literary one, as this Norton Critical Edition reflects. An extensive “Contexts" section includes maps, photographs, and documents showing how and why Alger used the backdrop of New York City to highlight problems of urban poverty, immigration, and child labor in mid-nineteenth century America. "Criticism" is thematically organized around contemporary reviews and responses, the heated public debate about whether Alger should be available in American public libraries, parodies of and related responses to Alger, and four recent critical essays by Mary Wroth Walsh, Glenn Hendler, Michael Moon, and Hildegard Hoeller. Hildegard Hoeller is a professor of English at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center.

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Fred Kaplan
Coffee with Mark Twain
(New York: Sterling; London: Duncan Baird, 2008)

Mark Twain shaped our view of childhood, the frontier spirit, slavery, and humankind’s follies and pretensions. Revel now in his caustic wit, tall tales, and colorfully expressed opinions, all told to a distinguished professor and biographer. This master of repartee regales us with stories about his many different guises, from humorist to riverboat pilot to inventor of the self-pasting photograph album. Fred Kaplan is a distinguished professor emeritus of English at the Graduate Center.

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William Kornblum and Joseph Julien
Social Problems, 13th edition
(Prentice Hall, 2008)

Written by a respected scholar in the field, this authoritative and very accessible text offers students a contemporary introduction to social problems by introducing the major trends and future outlook for each social problem. Social policies devised to address social problems—and their consequences—are examined in depth by presenting the key research conducted to examine, explain, and alleviate today’s social problems. The text takes the discussion of social problems one step further by looking at each problem from a global perspective. New features of this revised and updated thirteenth edition include a discussion of the “culture war”; a current controversies box on the Virginia Tech massacre; expanded discussions of the effects of crowding and military duty on mental health; and sections on identity theft, political discrimination—including felony disenfranchisement and anti-voter fraud campaigns, shelter poverty and homelessness, abstinence-only programs, modes of entry for illegal immigrants, immigration reform, and patterns of global terrorism. William Kornblum is a professor of psychology and sociology at the Graduate Center.

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Rachel Meredith Kousser
Hellenistic and Roman Ideal Sculpture: The Allure of the Classical
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Rachel Kousser draws on contemporary reception theory to present a new approach to Hellenistic and Roman ideal sculpture. She analyzes the Romans’ preference for retrospective, classicizing statuary based on Greek models over the innovative creations prized by modern scholars. Using a case study of a particular sculptural type, a forceful yet erotic image of Venus, Kousser argues that the Romans self-consciously employed such sculptures to represent their ties to the past in a rapidly evolving world. At the same time, the Romans’ flexible and opportunistic use of past forms had important implications for the future: it constituted the origins of classicism in Western art. The book includes a re-evaluation of major monuments such as the Venus de Milo, the Column of Trajan, and the Arch of Constantine; and covers major topics of contemporary interest, such as the transformation of Greek art in Rome, metropolitan art in the provinces, and pagan art in the newly Christian Roman Empire. Rachel Kousser is an assistant professor of art history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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Richard Kramer
Unfinished Music
(Oxford University Press, 2008)

Unfinished Music draws its inspiration from the riddling aphorism by Walter Benjamin that serves as its epigraph: “the work is the death mask of its conception.” The work in its finished, perfected state conceals the enlivening process engaged in its creation. An opening chapter examines some explosive ideas from the mind of J. G. Hamann, eccentric figure of the anti-rationalist Enlightenment, on the place of language at the seat of thought. These ideas are pursued as an entry into the no less radical mind of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose bold idiosyncrasies, like Hamann's, disrupted the discourse of Enlightenment aesthetics. Bach is a central player here, his late music the subject of fresh inquiry; but there are others whose unfinished works are addressed—among them, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert—as the author explores the uneasy relationship between the finished work and the elusive traces of profound labors buried in its past. Richard Kramer is a distinguished professor of music at the Graduate Center.

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Marnia Lazreg
Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad
(Princeton University Press, 2008)

This book looks at the intimate relationship between torture and colonial domination through an examination of the French army's coercive tactics during the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962. Drawing extensively from archives, confessions by former torturers, interviews with former soldiers, and war diaries, as well as writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others, Lazreg argues that occupying nations justify their use of torture as a regrettable but necessary means of saving Western civilization from those who challenge their rule. She shows how torture was central to guerre révolutionnaire, a French theory of modern warfare that called for total war against the subject population and which informed a pacification strategy founded on brutal psychological techniques borrowed from totalitarian movements. Lazreg also seeks to understand torture's impact on the Algerian population and on the French troops who became their torturers and explores the roles Christianity and Islam played in rationalizing these acts. Marnia Lazreg is a professor of sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center.

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Gerald P. Mallon, ed.
Social Work Practice with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People, 2nd rev. edition
(Routledge, 2008)

Although the vast majority of LGBT persons are healthy, resilient, and hardy individuals who do not seek social work intervention, some have been or will be clients in social work agencies. Social Work Practice with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People, second edition, is the updated classic text that has expanded its scope to include new content on practice with bisexual and transgender populations—and incorporated this content throughout. This informative book provides a knowledge base of practice that will better prepare students and practitioners for working sensitively, competently, and effectively with LGBT individuals. Gerald Mallon is an associate professor of social welfare at the Hunter School of Social Work and the Graduate Center, and executive director of the National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning.

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Pyong Gap Min
Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City
(Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 2008)

Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival is at once a sophisticated empirical analysis and a riveting collection of stories —about immigration, race, work, and the American dream. Pyong Gap Min takes Korean produce retailers as a case study to explore how involvement in ethnic businesses—especially where it collides with the economic interests of other ethnic groups—powerfully shapes the social, cultural, and economic unity of immigrant groups. Pyong Gap Min returns to the racially charged events surrounding black boycotts of Korean stores in the 1990s, which were fueled by frustration among African Americans at a perceived economic invasion of their neighborhoods. The Korean community responded with rallies, political negotiations, and publicity campaigns of their own. The disappearance of such disputes in recent years suggests that ethnic unity is not inevitable but rather emerges, often as a form of self-defense, under certain contentious conditions. Solidarity, Min argues, is situational. Pyong Gap Min is a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center.

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Kevin D. Murphy, with photographs by Paul Rocheleau
The Houses of Greenwich Village
(Abrams, 2008)

With its patchwork of secluded courtyards, gardens and narrow tree-lined streets, New York’s Greenwich Village is one of the very few neighborhoods that still retains the charm and timelessness of old New York. In this overview of houses from the early nineteenth century to contemporary Modernist examples, Kevin Murphy explores the architecture and interiors of eighteen houses and two gardens located in what has become one of New York City’s most exclusive and desirable residential communities. Beginning with the Robert Blum House (1827), he traces the history behind each home and delves into the biographies of its original owners and architects, revealing the evolution of structure, design, and style in the neighborhood throughout the nineteenth century, as well as its vibrant and at times eccentric character into the twentieth century. The photographs by Paul Rocheleau, specially commissioned for this book, give readers unprecedented access to some of the most beautiful homes in New York. Kevin Murphy is a professor of art history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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Kevin D. Murphy, ed.
Folk Art in Maine: Uncommon Treasures, 1750–1925
(Down East Books, 2008)

Folk art fascinates, perhaps because it proves that producing utilitarian objects can provide the opportunity for self-expression by generally self-taught artists. From decoys to doll houses, from scrimshaw to sea chests, from weathervanes to whirligigs, folk artists find wonderment in the workaday, transforming the mundane to the marvelous. This volume serves as an introduction for the novice, a treasure for the collector, and as a companion piece to the 2008 Maine Folk Art Trail, with exhibits in eleven of the state’s museums. The book features a general introduction by Stacy C. Hollander, senior curator of the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, and commentary from curators of Maine’s folk art collections. Kevin Murphy is a professor of art history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.

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