Baker, Randall, ed. Comparative Public Management: Putting U.S. Public Policy and
Implementation in Context. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1994, 282
pp., $25.00, paper.
A comparative text in public management, this work examines how, why, and to
what extent the public sector around the world has shared in the "management
revolution." It also considers what can be learned from other countries and what
the dangers are in trying to apply these approaches to American government. Baker
is a professor of public and environmental affairs and director of International
Programs in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUB.
Barwise, Jon, and John Etchemendy. Turing's World 3.0 for the Macintosh: An
Introduction to Computability Theory. Stanford, California: CSLI Publications, 1993,
123 pp., $19.95, paper.
This self-contained introduction to Turing machines, one of the fundamental
notions of logic and computer science, allows the user to design, debug, and run
sophisticated Turing machines in a graphical environment on the Macintosh. It
introduces users to the key concepts in computability theory through a sequence of
over one hundred exercises and projects. The exercises cover such topics as the
Halting problem, the Busy Beaver function, recursive functions, and undecidability.
A diskette is included. Barwise is College Professor of Computer Science,
Philosophy, and Mathematics at IUB.
Efron, John M. Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in
Fin-de-Siècle Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, 255 pp., $30.00, cloth.
By the late nineteenth century, physical anthropologists were engaged in debates
about the "Jewish Racial Question," asking whether there was a biological basis for
Jewish distinctiveness and social development. This book describes the response of
Jewish race scientists to these debates, demonstrating that in their participation, the
scientists were involved in a complex process of Jewish self-definition, one that was
impelled by two factors: the external threat of antisemitism and the internal need to
reassert a Jewish ethnic pride that had been battered by assimilation. Efron is an
assistant professor of history and Jewish studies at IUB.
Ferrell, Robert H., ed. Holding the Line: The Third Tennessee Infantry, 1861-1864, by
Flavel C. Barber. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1994, 281 pp., $28.00,
cloth.
Flavel C. Barber's memoir of his service with the Third Tennessee Infantry provides
a rare contemporary history of a Confederate regiment. Of special value for Civil
War scholars and buffs are Barber's vivid descriptions of battles, notably the siege of
Fort Donelson and the Confederate victory at Chicasaw Bayou, in which he
highlights the Third Tennessee's crucial role in defeating William T. Sherman. A
full regimental roster, a rarity among Confederate units, also is included. Ferrell is a
distinguished professor emeritus of history at IUB.
Gass, Glenn. A History of Rock Music: The Rock & Roll Era. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1994, 280 pp., $15.35, paper.
The vitality of American music, like America itself, has always reflected the rough
edges and incredible variety of its cultural melting pot, and nowhere have these
central tensions and undercurrents more fully confronted and transformed each
other than in that startling music called "rock & roll." Contents includes sections on
the roots of rock, rhythm & blues, Elvis Presley, rockabilly, New Orleans, Chicago
and Chess Records, vocal groups and doo-wop, and the early sixties pop. Gass is an
associate professor of music at IUB.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman
Writer in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press,
1994, 476 pp., $35.00, cloth.
How do writers and their readers imagine the future in a turbulent time of sex war
and sex change? And how have transformations of gender and genre affected
literary representations of "woman," "man," "family," and "society"? This volume
argues that throughout the twentieth century women of letters have found
themselves on a confusing cultural front and that most, increasingly aware of the
artifice of gender, have dispatched missives recording some form of the "future
shock" associated with profound changes in the roles and rules that govern
sexuality. The first section focuses on writers of the modernist period, including
Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Marianne
Moore. The second section is devoted to authors who came to prominence after
World War II, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, Toni
Morrison, and A. S. Byatt. Gubar is a distinguished professor of English at IUB.
Gray, Ralph D., and Michael A. Morrison, eds. New Perspectives on the Early
Republic, 1981Ð1991. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1994, 478 pp.,
$14.95, cloth.
The essays in this volume were culled from the first eleven years of the Journal of
the Early Republic. Diverse in scope, they explore a number of topics from the
adoption of the Bill of Rights to temperance reform, from working-class
development in Philadelphia to the annexation of Texas. Gray is a professor of
history at IUPUI.
Jackson, Michael. Pieces of Music. New Zealand: Vintage, 1994, 168 pp., $11.05, paper.
Is a person's life a seamless whole, a single story? Or do we lead several lives at
once--one experienced by ourselves or by our imaginations, others experienced by
those around us? When one considers all the experiences and encounters that shape
our lives, is there any constant, essential self that can be said to be the measure of
who we truly are? The author pursues these questions in a series of loosely
connected, autobiographical fictions. Set variously in France, New Zealand,
Australia, Singapore, the Congo (Zaire), and Sierra Leone, the book explores the
mystery of how lives overlap and destinies converge. Jackson is College Professor of
Anthropology at IUB.
Kane, Stephanie C. The Phantom Gringo Boat: Shamanic Discourse and
Development in Panama. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994,
241 pp., $19.95, paper.
In this first full-length ethnography of the Emberá Indians of Panama, the author
investigates the Emberá use of myth and magic to interpret the changes that
occurred in the mid-1980s after Manual Noriega assumed command of the Panama
Defense Forces. Exploring the rhythms of everyday activities, Kane reveals how
magical discourse, founded on the ancient global practice of shamanism, is the
language of argument and interpretation used to cross the gap between the known
and the unknown, between Emberá traditions and the outside world. Approaching
local history with shamanic logic and organizing each chapter around a set of
interpretive dilemmas, the author highlights the ways in which myth and magic
relate integrally to Emberá life, including ecology, economy, politics, health,
constructs of race and gender, and memory. Kane is an assistant professor of
criminal justice at IUB.
McDowell, John Holmes. "So Wise Were Our Elders": Mythic Narratives from the
Kamsá. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994, 285 pp., $45.00,
cloth.
The author collected thirty-two mythic narratives of the Kamsá Indians, who live in
Sibundoy Valley in the Columbian Andes, from several renowned Kams‡
storytellers. Each myth is given in the native language with parallel English
translations that seek to capture the flavor of the original performances. Textual
annotations and commentary assess the grounding of the myth in the language and
culture of the Kams‡ indigenous community. McDowell is a professor of folklore
and chairperson of the Folklore Institute at IUB.
Ram, Ashwin, and David B. Leake, eds. Goal-Driven Learning. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995, 572 pp., $45.00, cloth.
In cognitive science, artificial intelligence, psychology, and education, a growing
body of research supports the view that the learning process is strongly influenced
by the learner's goals. The fundamental tenet of goal-driven learning is that
learning is largely an active and strategic process in which the learner, human or
machine, attempts to identify and satisfy its information needs in the context of its
tasks and goals, its prior knowledge, its capabilities, and environmental
opportunities for learning. This book brings together a diversity of research on
goal-driven learning to establish a broad interdisciplinary framework that describes
the goal-driven learning process. It also presents a theoretical framework for future
investigations. Leake is an assistant professor of computer science at IUB.
Seiter, Ellen. Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture. New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993, 256 pp., $24.95, cloth.
Children's interest in consumer culture involves much more than greed,
hedonism, or laziness--rather, it is profoundly social, even utopian, in the sense that
it permits them to communicate with a larger group. As a mass culture, toys and
television give children access to others through a language of trade that changes
with use and is inflected by children with surprising originality in everyday life. The
blanket condemnation of commercial children's television and cheap,
mass-produced toys places an unreasonable burden on parents and serves to
disadvantage children whose parents do not have the means to acquire the costlier
alternative playthings and videos approved by teachers. The author argues that toys
and television are culture and must be understood as cultures of childhood and of
women's domestic labor, and as intersections of media and consumer goods. Seiter
is a professor of telecommunications and film studies at IUB.
Shupe, Anson. In the Name of All That's Holy: A Theory of Clergy Malfeasance.
Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1995, 173 pp., $52.95, cloth.
The problem of deviant religionists (i.e., predatory, corrupt, exploitive clergy) which
constitutes the subject matter of this book, has generally been treated by both
sociologists and religious studies experts in sotto voce--the way one would speak at a
gathering about a disgraced relative, a personal failure, or a professional colleague
caught in flagrante delicto with a client. The study focuses on clergy malfeasance, by
which the author means the exploitation and abuse of a religious group's believers
by the elites of that religion in whom the former trust. Shupe is a professor of
sociology at IPFW.
Thorelli, Hans B., and others. INTOPIA Executive Guide and Compendium for the
Administrator. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1995, 176 pp., $38.67,
paper.
The International Operations Simulation/Mark 2000 (INTOPIA) is a computer
simulation of international business strategy in the management game form.
INTOPIA has both educational and research applications. The simulation industries
are microchips and personal computers. Companies may be active in any or all of
these regions: European Union, United States, and Brazil. Four currencies and 800
other parameters are freely variable by the administrator. In June, 1995, the
simulation was adopted by thirty institutions in fifteen different countries. Thorelli
is a distinguished professor emeritus of business administration at IUB.
Weiner, Marc A. Undertones of Insurrection: Music, Politics, and the Social Sphere
in the Modern German Narrative. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press,
1993, 314 pp., $35.00, cloth.
Ranging from 1900 to Doctor Faustus (1947), this study sets the stage by examining
debates that conflated such issues as national identity, racism, populism, the role of
the sexes, and xenophobia with musical texts. In the literary analyses that follow, the
author discusses both obvious connections between music and sociopolitical issues--
Hesse's equation of jazz and insurrection in Steppenwolf--and covert ones--the
suppression of music in Death in Venice and the use of politically charged musical
subtexts in Werfel's Verdi and Schnitzler's Rhapsody. Weiner is an associate
professor of Germanic studies and film studies at IUB.