Books of the Week – 3/9/09

“Teenage: the prehistory of youth culture 1875-1945″ by Jon Savage

Reviews: “The definitive history of youth in revolt, from the gaslight age to the dawn of rock.”
-David Fricke, Rolling Stone

“Compulsive reading . . . Teenage is a rich, rewarding book that makes an important contribution to cultural history.”  -Camille Paglia, The New York Times Book Review

“Resonant . . . Savage explores . . . [an] array of teenager types, from the wild, sensational precursors to juvenile delinquency to the straight-laced good-citizen proto-preppie. It’s Savage’s claim to being a great historian, and it’s mighty convincing.”  -The Onion

“The Hip Hop Wars: what we talk about when we talk about hip-hop, and why it matters” by Tricia Rose

Amazon.com Product Description:

Hip-hop is in crisis. For the past dozen years, the most commercially successful hip-hop has become increasingly saturated with caricatures of black gangstas, thugs, pimps, and ’hos. The controversy surrounding hip-hop is worth attending to and examining with a critical eye because, as scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip-hop has become a primary means by which we talk about race in the United States.

In The Hip-Hop Wars, Rose explores the most crucial issues underlying the polarized claims on each side of the debate: Does hip-hop cause violence, or merely reflect a violent ghetto culture? Is hip-hop sexist, or are its detractors simply anti-sex? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop undermine black advancement?

A potent exploration of a divisive and important subject, The Hip-Hop Wars concludes with a call for the regalvanization of the progressive and creative heart of hip-hop. What Rose calls for is not a sanitized vision of the form, but one that more accurately reflects a much richer space of culture, politics, anger, and yes, sex, than the current ubiquitous images in sound and video currently provide.

“The Ten-Cent Plague: the great comic book scare and how it changed America” by David Hajdu

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. After writing about the folk scene of the early 1960s in Positively 4th Street, Hajdu goes back a decade to examine the censorship debate over comic books, casting the controversy as a prelude to the cultural battle over rock music. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, the centerpiece of the movement, has been reduced in public memory to a joke—particularly the attack on Batman for its homoeroticism—but Hajdu brings a more nuanced telling of Wertham’s background and shows how his arguments were preceded by others. Yet he comes down hard on the unsound research techniques and sweeping generalizations that led Wertham to conclude that nearly all comic books would inspire antisocial behavior in young readers. There are no real heroes here, only villains and victims; Hajdu turns to the writers and artists whose careers were ruined when censorship and other legal restrictions gutted the comics industry, and young kids who were coerced into participating in book burnings by overzealous parents and teachers. With such a meticulous setup, the history builds slowly but the main attraction—EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines’s attempt to explain in a Senate committee hearing how an illustration of a man holding a severed head could be in good taste—holds all the dramatic power it has acquired as it’s been told among fans over the past half-century. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Books of the Week – 2/16/09

“Boxing: a cultural history” by Kasia Boddy

“Boddy intelligently takes up-via art, literature, film, and the media-the many issues that have historically veined the sport: ”nationality, class, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, and different versions of masculinity,” plus dialectics like ”brawn versus brains, boastfulness versus modesty, youth versus experience.” Her reach is considerable, but so is her grasp. The result is a sweeping critical history and a perfect power-to-weight ratio.”–Atlantic Monthly

“Books” by Larry McMurtry

Amazon.com Review
It wasn’t enough for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry to become one of the most prolific, bestselling, and beloved of American writers. Besides writing nearly forty books, including the Pultizer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, he has emerged as one this nation’s greatest bookmen. In Books: A Memoir, McMurtry shares with readers his lifelong passion and dogged pursuit of books. In short, gem-like chapters, he paints a fascinating picture of the landscape of American book culture and book selling over a 50-year period. The story is as dusty, musty and crusty as any of McMurtry’s fictionalized Westerns, and filled with characters who seem like they stepped out of central casting. Whether you love McMurtry, books, bookstores or a combination thereof, you’ll find something to love in Books: A Memoir. Settle in with a cuppa coffee and let McMurtry kindle your passion for physical books. –Lauren Nemroff

Books of the Week – 2/9/09

“Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus” by Kathleen A. Bogle

“Hooking Up is a welcome, empirical addition that informs all readers of the collegiate state of affairssexual and otherwise. It will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of gender, sexuality, family, relationships, and higher education.”
—Rachel Kalish, Gender & Society

For additionl press and reviews please see the NYU Press website found here.

“Landscape of Slavery: the Plantation in American Art” edited by Angela D. Mack and Stephen G. Hoffus

From the Inside Flap:

“Landscape of Slavery is a landmark study that shows how the plantation has endured in the American consciousness as a nostalgic memory for whites and as an open wound for blacks. For more than three centuries, artists have captured the plantation in works that are both profoundly moving and deeply disturbing. Through their art, this Janus-faced memory of the American South and its black and white people touches our heart, as if three centuries were only a moment past. The images in this collection and the eloquent essays that accompany them remind us that our memory of the plantation is contested along racial lines that continue to divide our nation.”–William R. Ferris, senior associate director, Center for the Study of the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Books of the Week – 2/2/09

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser – Born Digital

From Publishers Weekly:

In this critical but optimistic overview, academics Palfrey (of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet &        Society) and Gasser (of the Swiss U. of St. Gallen) share their concern about the legal and social ramifications of the Internet with regard to the generation of “Digital Natives” born after 1980. In a wide-ranging examination of “the future opportunities and challenges associated with the Internet as a social space,” Palfrey and Gasser find most young people fail to recognize the vulnerability of their information-that internet posts are never really private-and suggest tactful parental and school oversight. They find a more serious problem in the failure of the U.S. to regulate data mining by search engines, which even now have the potential to create cradle-to-grave dossiers on individuals, including online medical and financial records; they compare the U.S. system with Europe’s policies, which have put in place much more effective data protection. Parents and educators will benefit from Palfrey and Gasser’s discussion of issues like safety, content control and illegal file sharing; with proper attention from them, the authors see a bright future for the Internet that should foster “global citizens” with a “spirit of innovation, entrepreneurship and caring for society at large.”
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Marc Bauerlein – The Dumbest Generation: how the digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future (or, don’t trust anyone under 30)

From Amazon.com. product description:

This shocking, lively exposure of the intellectual vacuity of today’s under thirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a nation of know-nothings.

Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up?

For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. At the dawn of the digital age, many believed they saw a hopeful answer: The Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.

That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map. The Dumbest Generation is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its consequences for American culture and democracy.

Drawing upon exhaustive research, personal anecdotes, and historical and social analysis, Mark Bauerline presents an uncompromisingly realistic portrait of the young American mind at this critical juncture, and lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies.

About the Author
Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and has worked as a director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversaw studies about culture and American life.

Books of the Week – 1/26/09

For 2009 every week Saffell Library will high light two new titles recently added to our collection.  These items  may consist of novels, memoirs, collected essays, poetry, biographies, DVDs, or any manner of academic monographs.  Whatever they may be, we hope these titles will trigger at least one person’s curiosity, will maybe entice you to try out something new, something unexpected.  Who knows, you might just like it.

David Sedaris – When You Are Engulfed in Flames

From Amazon.Com:  “David Sedaris’s ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art,” (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book.  Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers    using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris’s sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from “a writer worth treasuring” (Seattle Times).

David Crystal – Txtng: The Gr8 Db8

From Amazon.Com: “Reports of the demise of the English langauge have been gr8tly exaggerated, according to David Crystal. In his new book, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, the British linguist dismisses reports that text messaging is bad for the brain, literacy, for language itself. He taps history, technology, and new research to create his counter-argument, a highly cnsumable work of pop linguistics.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review