No comments about Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology).

No comments about Georg Simmel and Avant-Garde Sociology.

2 comments about American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture and Life).

1. Dr. Fermaglich was my professor on American Jewish History when I was in college. To this day I consider her class to be one of my favorites. I was very glad to see her book on amazon and purchased it right away. I am not at all surprised of the fine quality of this book. Dr. Fermaglich really knows her subject and with every page, you do discover something new about Holocaust survivors in America. As always, strong and concise points throughout the book; very thorough research.
   
   Thank you, professor, for sharing with us your knowledge again!



2. In four brief, well-researched chapters, Fermaglich shows how Stanley Elkins on slave personality, Betty Friedan on oppressed women, Stanley Milgram on obedience to authority, and Robert Jay Lifton on the psychology of survivors, drew an analogy between the Nazi experience and aspects of American society. Moreover, she demonstrates how these analogies, such as Freidan's between the concentration camp and the suburban home, proved to be extremely productive for other thinkers, in a host of ways and disciplines. Important conclusions are that these thinkers were part of a liberal moment that stressed universal values and the human condition. Even if they did not stress Jewish issues, Fermaglich intelligently indicates how these four thinkers were influenced by tensions in American Judaism, and how their work belies the now common view that thinking seriously about the Holocaust did not arrive until the late 1960s and early 1970s. A book full of intriguing connections between thinkers and ideas, ideas and social contexts.

No comments about Jurgen Habermas (Key Sociologists Series).

2 comments about I'm Going to Have a Little House: The Second Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (Engendering Latin America).

1. This is the second book of Carolina Maria De Jesus's life. She was a black woman writer living in the slums of Brazil in the 1950's. A reporter discovered her & made her famous. You really need to read the first book, "Child of the Dark" to enjoy & understand this one. The book is written like a diary; I devoured the pages in this book, eager to learn more about her life. After Carolina becomes famous & moves out of the slums she encounters different problems but all & all she's much happier. It was great to read about her eating in restaurants, buying & cooking food for her children, not having to be hungry anymore. I cheered for her as she took her first shower, her first car ride, plane ride, her first stay in a hotel. She buys clothes & jewelry for herself & I'm so happy for her I could burst. This woman went from being a scavenger to being a guest at governor's mansions, appearing on TV shows, and doing tons of book signings all across Brazil and many other South American countries. The relationship between Carolina & Audolio Dantes (the reporter who discovered her & made her famous) is also explored and adds interesting aspects to the story. For example, she can't cash checks or withdraw money without him. This diary only covers one year of her life so be sure to read the "Afterword". It explains what happened to Carolina after this book was written. She is an amazing, amazing woman who deserves much admiration.



2. Many readers know Carolina de Jesus's memior "Child of the Dark" but few knew that she wrote a second book about her bitter journey from her favela shack to the brick house of her dreams. There, she was treated just as badly as she had been when she was a scavenger for garbage in the favela. As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil (too many years ago!!) I loved this book. It is riveting, unexpected, and filled with insights about how Carolina de Jesus saw the world. The editor's background description and analysis is excellent, too.

No comments about Technology, Literacy, and the Evolution of Society: Implications of the Work of Jack Goody.

4 comments about My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message.

1. Amitai Etzioni calls himself the father of the communitarian movement. When you reduce his philosophy to its kernel, it can be stated thusly: Serving the community is the highest good, but self interest is evil. What he is really saying is that individual freedom is evil. The truth is that self-interest propels a free society. Productivity is motivated by self-interest. Socialism robs people of the desire to produce. Why should anyone work harder than the next when they all get paid the same? That is why socialist countries are poor. You ban self-interest (individual freedom) and you kill productivity. Then the elite ruling class have to threaten the people to produce. When that happens you get a bare minimum effort, just enough to get by. The society is not free. If the individual is not free, the community is not free.
   In fact, a critical thinker realizes that in a Global Governance under this ideal of Socialism or Communism or Collectivism or Communitarianism (whatever you want to call it), the sheer logistics of ruling the world demands very tight controls, and that means totalitarianism with a bureaucratic network. Nazi Germany was that way. So was the USSR. The ideal always sounds great, but the reality of it always leads to dictatorship. Under this system, we are not allowed to benefit personally from our labors. We only benefit collectively. The individual ceases to have value intrinsically. The individual only has value as he is valuable to the community. Under communitarianism all individual rights cease. All creeds must be approved. No dissension allowed.
   Amitai Etzioni is very influential, and very commited to making communitarianism accepted. He has succeeded. Our politicians and rulers of the free world have bought into his philosophy. This is the New World Order.



2. This is the story of a professor and his passionate sense of calling to serve others. It is a window into a life that combines academics, public affairs and service to society. A still humble man, he has risen to the status of advisor to several national leaders, advocating a vision of public policy that is guided by intense intellectual energy, personal responsibility and compassion. His "third way" perspective may be the the right solution to many pressing question facing democracies in our time.



3. My Brother's Keeper. A Memoir and a Message by Amitai Etzioni is an exciting intellectual biography. It may also be entitled: "An Active Intellectual as a Young and as a Mature Man". But this book is much more than an interesting personal memoir. In addition to a fascinating life story and an intellectual biography, it leads us along the pitfalls and dilemmas of modern society during the second half of the 20th century and points out the directions of a moral life in a "good society". Etzioni's ideas as expressed in this book, and in his previous ones, are not unrealizable utopian longings. They are firmly based on contemporary reality. He piercingly analyzes present dangerous trends and forces in social, political and economic developments on one hand and the values and morality of the communitarian movement, which he founded, on the other.
   Born in Germany, fleeing from the Nazi regime, raised in Israel and taking part in its War of Independence, educated and maturing in the United States, Prof. Etzioni was influence by the richness of his three cultural backgrounds. Yet, the dominant features of his personality were present from an early age, opposing his disciplinary mother, posing difficult questions to his teachers, daring to express new ideas and criticize accepted norms, despite the high price he sometime had to pay. His inclination towared activism, to shape social policies, and the strong inner feeling of a mission, a calling, as he labeled it, are present in his life from the very beginning. Etzioni applies the same rules towards himself too and does not shy from criticizing himself and expressing his frustrations and mistakes. He feels strongly committed and ready to pay the price for voicing his mind and being an active intellectual in order to bring about a moral regeneration.
   I strongly recommend this book.
   Rachel Elboim-Dror (author of CLEAN DEATH IN TEL AVIV, 2003)
   The Hebrew University of Jerusalem



4. Amitai Etzioni is the founder of the communitarian movement in the US today. He has lead one really interesting life. In his memoirs he reveals himself to be a reflective and honest man who is able to put his own life into perspective and put the interests of others before his own. At the same time he is painfully self-critical. From the days when he was growing up in Israel before it became a state in 1947, to his years at Columbia University during the student protests of the 1960's, to his role as an advisor to the President, he tells it as it happened. Included are some never told stories of his conflicts with the FBI. "My Brother's Keeper" does far more however: it is also about how an academic finds his way from the culture of books to a life of activism and civic responsibility. It offers the history of his intellectual evolution along with his personal development. I found it absolutely fascinating.

1 comments about Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax, 1867-1948 (Folklore and Society).

1. I just finished LAST CAVALIER and without question consider it the best biography I've read in years. This book may well signal John Lomax's overdue emergence as a national treasure for his collecting and preserving of thousands of cowboy songs including "Home on the Range"--as well as for bringing musical artists like Leadbelly to national attention. Lomax already is a treasure in his home state of Texas. If you're a reading Texan and/or have any interest whatsoever in country or black music, the roots of American folklore, the ambiance of the Texas mileau in the first half of this century, or a profound character study of one of the country's great promoters of native culture, this uncompromising biography was written for you. However, the book transcends regionalism both in the writing and its universal perspective and message. One practically has to go to Flaubert's rendering of Emma Bovary to find such an incisive pyschological study of someone so well-meaning and successful, and yet so flawed, as John Lomax. Porterfield makes his character so relatable and understandable that we can love and hate him at the same time--and even identify with this American original, if only from a distance. The author also renders his impeccably researched material with all the skill and technique of a first-rate novelist. He is as authoratative and compelling in his treatment of Lomax as James Boswell was with Samuel Johnson.

5 comments about Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa's Natural Treasures.

1. No one should dispute Leakey's dedication to the wildlife and people of his native Kenya. This book, however, is a rather dull account of the political intrigue and manouvering Leakey faced from 1989 to 1994 when he was involved with Kenya's various wildlife services. Those in the field may value his insights and perseverance, but the average reader may find his grandstanding and, at times, painstaking defensiveness a bit hard to stomach. I'd much rather read a book by those out in the field (such as rangers) who saw the elephants every day and who would have many a tale to tell about fighting off poachers and dealing with tourists and natives. Leave this book for the bureaucrats in world wildlife agencies.



2. Dr. Richard Leakey has authored a compelling account of his time at the helm of Kenya Wildlife Services. The book recounts the bush war against poaching, and contains a very vivid description of Kenyan political life. Sadly - and ironically - the success of Dr. Leakey's management of KWS created a long list of political adversaries that eventually forced Leaky to resign from the post.

   There can be no doubt that Dr. Leakey has been the chief architect behind the saving of the African elephant from extinction by the hands of poachers. Dr. Leakey's work stands as one of the most important wildlife conservation achievements of all time. Finally, I believe Dr. Leakey is one of the - perhaps last? - great Kenyan patriots. This story inspires. If there were ever a Nobel Prize for bravery and commitment, surely it would be his.




3. Anyone who has ever been to Kenya's extraordinary game parks to see the elephants, or dreamed of doing so, will be fascinated by this story of how these parks came to be the refuges they are and not the corrals for government-sanctioned poaching that they were. When paleontologist Richard Leakey took over the Department of Wildlife and Conservation in 1989, rampant corruption, theft, absenteeism, and a don't-care attitude were hallmarks within the department.
   
   The Kenyan government lacked a real commitment to conservation, and the burgeoning population exerted pressure on national park borders, clearing land for farming and threatening wildlife, unimpeded. Poaching, patronage, a general ripoff mentality, and collusion between park rangers, politicians, blackmarketeers, and smugglers, were so interconnected and seemingly so ineradicable that the department resembled a many-headed hydra. Tribal rivalries within Kenya, a porous border through which Somalian thieves made forays, and a lack of agreement between Kenya and neighboring African countries about the best way to conserve animals made this one of the most daunting management challenges imaginable.
   
   In prose that is as direct and to the point (and sometimes as self-congratulatory) as he is, Leakey tells how he managed a multimilliondollar corporation in a country in which everyone wants a piece of the pie, usually under the table. As Leakey tells of cleaning up the department and conserving the elephants, the reader also learns about the economics of the ivory trade, the tug-of-war between immediate political realities and long-term goals, the role of the World Bank in African development, and the politicking involved in deciding what is an endangered species under the U.N.'s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). It's a fascinating tale, equally intriguing to the lover of wildlife, the student of management, and the East African history buff. Mary Whipple



4. Anything with the names Richard Leakey and Virginia Morell on the cover is guaranteed to be a worthwhile read. Like his equally brilliant and famous father Louis, Richard Leakey is not without controversial opinion. Though generally in agreement with the authors, I found this book challenging some of my basic assumptions about conservation. To that end the book provides an excellent point of departure for classroom discussions on major conservation issues of the day such as community roles in conservation, the effectiveness of National Parks in protecting wildlife and biodiversity, and the interplay between international, national and local needs and strategies. The book is an exhilarating, easy read and will appeal to a broad range of ages and cultural backgrounds.



5. The text of the book,the determinatoin of the writer in combating poarching,the fight against corrupt elements within the industry i.e tourism and wildlife and above all the success of bringing this fight to the attention of the world all gives me the pleasure of praising this book.

1 comments about Conversations with Claude Levi-Strauss.

1. Didier Eribon's conversations with Claude Levi-Strauss, the father of Structural Anthropology and one of the leading intellectuals of 20th century France, are enlightening and occasionally entertaining. You get an immediate feel for Levi-Strauss's personality... and for his Gallic flair for words and ability to damn with faint praise. (His comment about how Sartre was a great mind... and proof that even great minds can talk nonsense ... comes to mind immediately).

   As an interviewer, Eribon has obviously done his homework: he is familiar not only with Levi-Strauss's work but with the various reactions to same, positive and negative. He is able to quote names and dates (at times much to Levi-Strauss's chagrin...) and is conversant both in the language of Structuralism and Anthropology. He also manages to elicit many gems from Levi-Strauss, including some discussions of his early interactions with various Surrealists.

   This is not an essential addition to a Levi-Strauss collection: if you want an introduction to his thought and work, you'd probably be better off reading his volumes on Mythology or his *Structural Anthropology.* If you already know something about the man ... or if you're interested in 20th century French intellectuals (and who isn't) ... you'll enjoy this book. I'd file this one under "nice to have" rather than "must have."