No comments about Anne Sexton: Teacher of Weird Abundance (Suny Series, Feminist Theory in Education).

3 comments about My Path Leads to Tibet: The Inspiring Story of How One Young Blind Woman Brought Hope to the Blind Children of Tibet.

1. Sabriye Tenbergen is a young blind woman who has accomplished a great deal. Almost single-handedly, she developed a Braille script for Tibetan, then went to Tibet, where she traveled on horseback, looking for blind children to teach. Before then, blind children were hidden away or abandoned as cursed, with no future, but Sabriye was determined to give them one. So she founded a school where she taught blind children to read, as well as other life skills such as cane travel. She herself got around by cane by using landmarks in the city.

   This account is just one more example of how the best humanitarian work is often founded by determined individuals with a dream. Conversely, Sabriye was opposed at almost every turn by incompetent and apathetic bureaucrats in organizations both in her native Germany and in Tibet.

   She clearly loves the land and people, but is not "blind" to the reality either. The country is frightfully cold in winter as well as being prone to floods. And she noted many of the superstitions that harm the wellbeing of the people. But she noted the strengths as well, e.g. Tibetans designed houses to cope well with the cold, while the Chinese made concrete boxes that are hopeless. [Reminds me of the opposite in sub-tropical to tropical Queensland. The early settlers designed open-structured "Queenslanders" that caught the breezes very well, but later architects in New South Wales and Victoria designed houses that became convection ovens in Queensland]

   Sabriye has a way of writing that seems very visual, so sometimes it's easy to forget she's blind.




2. This book tells the story of a young woman with an impossible dream, and how she set about accomplishing it. Tenberken was born with vision problems that led to complete blindness by the time she was a teenager. Once while she was in middle school, she and her class visited a special museum exhibit about Tibet. From that point on, she was fascinated with Tibet, and when she started university, she decided to major in Asian languages with the goal of going to Tibet. Pursuing a major in Asian languages is quite difficult for any Westerner, but even more so for a blind Westerner, since Braille materials and computer software for language study in these languages are limited, if they exist at all. Indeed, Tenberken ended up creating her own Braille system for writing Tibetan script (which proved so useful in her studies that she was even able to use her class notes to tutor sighted students in her classes). Upon graduation from university, she set off for Tibet by herself to found a school for blind children and teach them how to read and write using her Tibetan Braille alphabet with the goal of allowing them to be integrated into regular schools once they became literate. The very thought of just picking up and moving to a country that happens to be occupied by a communist government and establishing an independent school for unschooled children, especially when you yourself do not have teaching experience, sounds positively ludicrous. Fortunately for the blind children of Tibet, Tenberken doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the phrase "you can't do that"- -perhaps a result of her upbringing, since her parents obviously supported her endeavors, or perhaps a simple character trait that drives her.

   In a few places in the book, Tenberken's style is a bit stilted, or she seems to gloss over details that beg to be explained. She carefully avoids any mention whatsoever of the political situation in Tibet, since any hint of criticism would no doubt result in the immediate closure of her school and the undoing of all of her efforts. In any case, she taught her students Tibetan language from the start, rather than only sticking to Chinese. The book is quite interesting for its story of how one determined person can have a tremendous impact on the lives of many, many others.




3. Sabriye Tenberken is a young woman from Germany who happens to be blind. She has written one of the most amazing and uplifting books I have read in years. MY PATH LEADS TO TIBET is an account, in her own words (translated from the original German), of how Sabriye fulfilled her dream of helping the blind children of Tibet achieve independence and attain a sense of dignity. She has done this by establishing a school for blind children in Lhasa against incredible odds -- all alone and before she reached her 30th birthday.

   There could be no better introduction than her own words: "Strange as it may seem, whenever I'm about to take a leap into the unknown, I always have the same dream. I'm standing at the top of a sand dune, looking down at the sea. The sky is clear and blue, the sea flat and dark. The sun is bright, the beach is filled with people. Then all of a sudden, on the horizon a huge towering wall of water is moving slowly toward us in total silence. Everyone is running in my direction. The wall of water, growing ever more menacing by the second, blots out most of the sky. Instead of running away, I walk toward it. And the wall of water crashes over me. To my surprise, however, instead of being crushed by its mass, I am in my dream left feeling tremendously light, filled with new energy. And I know that from now on nothing will be impossible." (pp.11-12)

   Sabriye was diagnosed with a serious eye disease in childhood and became completely blind at age 12. She uses a white cane when she walks and travels around the world without assistance. In a place where she has never been before, she relies on strangers to help her and trusts that they will. She is rarely disappointed. The faith she has in herself and in the best of human nature is extraordinary --- and extraordinarily rare to read about at a time when, more often than not, we are being bombarded with words of worldwide deceit and destruction.

   The book is written in a flowing, straightforward and easy-reading manner in first person, much like a journal. Yet Sabriye never forgets that we who are reading her book have never had the experience of being blind. She takes us into her world and shares with us her experiences in such a way that we gradually begin to realize what an extraordinary teacher she will be, when and if she is able to get her school started.

   On a previous trip to Nepal with her mother, Sabriye spent a brief time in Tibet and learned that blind people are viewed as having been cursed at birth and are treated very much like lepers, or worse. She developed a burning desire to teach Tibet's blind children that they can have full lives, that they do not need to be ashamed or handicapped and that they can live as Sabriye herself lives --- to the fullest.

   Tibet, now a part of the People's Republic of China, is famous for its exotic isolation. Yet she set off with only a few pieces of luggage, her white cane and a promise of a small amount of financial backing from sources in her native Germany. She had to apply for permission to the Chinese government and faced bureaucratic obstacles that must have seemed as insurmountable as the mountains themselves. She doesn't give up. She makes friends. She buys a horse that knows its way through the mountain passes.

   Not only does Sabriye have to get permission to build a school, she must also go out among the people --- some of who are nomadic tribes --- and find the blind children who will become her pupils. Because their parents are ashamed of them, these children are often hidden away. Thus she travels on horseback and tells us of her travels, the hardships, the joys and the people she meets along the way. Even though you know she will achieve what she has set out to do, the fact that she was able to do it is so remarkable that you will read with your heart in your throat much of the time.

   The publisher has included a selection of color photographs that, for us sighted folks, add much to the book.

   Reading MY PATH LEADS TO TIBET is an unforgettable experience. Sabriye Tenberken has done us all a kindness by taking us with her on her incredible mission.

   --- Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day

5 comments about The Road to Home: My Life and Times.

1. Vartan Gregorian has written a thoroughly fascinating book about his remarkable life and accomplishments. In this day and age a great deal of attention is paid to the "common man", as it well should be. But we tend to overlook the fact that it is the uncommon man that leads the way to advances in our culture. Vartan Gregorian is an compelling example of the remarkable talent nature only rarely incorporates into a human body, enabling startling results to be achieved.
   
   From an unremarkable -- indeed, unpromising -- beginning, the child Vartan depended not on his family but on his grandmother and interested strangers to encourage his budding talents. His Armenian ancestors had fled to Iran from persecution and death in Turkey. His mother died when he was a young boy and his father and his stepmother were not close to him. But through a variety of fortuitous interventions he found his way from Iran to Stanford, where he earned his first academic degree.
   
   At Stanford he married a remarkable woman who evidently shared his ability to adjust to new and challenging conditions. She had her first baby in Iran as Gregorian traveled in Afghanistan on a research grant. Then Gregorian began a dizzying ascent of academic activity that took him first to San Francisco State College, then to the University of Texas, and ultimately to the University of Pennsylvania where he became provost. His descriptions of academic politics -- the confoundedly complex interactions of presidents, deans, chancellors, and trustees -- are as fascinating as they are gut-twisting.
   
   It was Gregorian's next move that put him on the public radar. He reluctantly became the head of New York City's Public Library. It was a decaying empire, having reached its peak in earlier decades but now floundering with insufficient scholastic vision and financial support. Gregorian proved to be just the man with the unusual abilities to turn things gloriously around. His vast scholarly knowledge, his enthusiasm and energy, his sense of humor, and his charisma brought in tens of millions of dollars from wealthy donors who were grateful that they had a cause to believe in, as well as a man in whom they could put their trust to use their money in a constructive way.
   
   Gregorian's accomplishments continued unabated as he then moved into the presidency of Brown University, ultimately becoming the head of the Carnegie Foundation.
   
   Here is a man of energy ("I was born energetic"), of vision, of knowledge, of acumen, of character, of superlative accomplishment. Here is a man to admire, to be inspired by. Here is the uncommon man who boosts culture upward.



2. Although Dr. Gregorian was a poor Armenian boy from Tabriz, Iran, he had a rich cultural heritage. Influential hometown people, who seemed captivated by his charm and intellectual brilliance, helped him, not only just to survive, but to get a good education, leading him, by way of Beirut, to the U.S. and Stanford University where, after graduating in only 2-1/2 years (while also learning English), he got a PhD in humanities and history. His teaching career began at San Francisco State College, where, 41 years ago, I had the privilege of being one of his students in modern European history. This was during the years of the student uprising that occurred during 1966 to 1968 at S.F. State. Since Dr. Gregorian is a historian, this memoir is made all the more richer by historical commentary that Dr. Gregorian provides vis-à-vis autobiographical events. His teaching career moves from S.F. State (where he took a year off to go to Afghanistan to study and write a classic book on Afghanistan) to the University of Texas at Austin, then to the University of Pennsylvania where he became Provost. This story makes the trials, tribulations and infighting that go on in universities actually interesting. When Dr. Gregorian took over the presidency of the New York Public Library in 1981, it was suffering from extreme neglect due to New York's financial crises in the late 1970's when NYC was on the edge of bankruptcy. Besides his talent for creative administration, his personal virtues attract the rich and famous (i.e., Brooke Astor, Barbara Walters) to help him achieve his financial objectives for restoring the library. He turned the New York Public Library from a dissipated, physically crumbling institution back to a vibrant educational center in New York City. If you live in New York City, you might have noticed the regeneration of Bryant Park; he was also mostly responsible for that. Following nine years as President of Brown University, Dr. Gregorian became President of the Carneige Corporation, where he is today. For American autobiographies, I can't recommend this book highly enough.



3. Education, street smart (partially due to his street friends of youth), networking ability, social skills, socializing selectively among the most influential, are contributors to this author's achievements in life thus far.
   
   It would be worth while for Mr. Gregorian to use his skills and experiences in helping today's independent Armenia.



4. Vartan Gregorian's autobiographic tract, "A Road to Home," tells an extraordinary story. It is the quintessential American Success Story. Here is an Armenian immigrant who comes from a village in Northern Iran, with his high school education completed in Jemaran, the Armenian School of considerable note in Beirut, who earns a BA and a PhD from Stanford (in history, specialty: Afghanistan), teaches at San Francisco State and UT, Austin, ends up being Dean, Provost and almost the President of U. Penn., rescues and forges the renaissance of the New York City public library system from imminent disaster by taking over as president for eight years, becomes the president of Brown University for the next nine years and along the way, turns down the Chancellorship of UC Berkeley, the Presidency of Columbia Univ., Univ. of Miami, Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Rochester and many others, before becoming president of the Carnegie Corporation.
   
   That pinnacle of academic positions of leadership, the presidency of a university, is not a chance given to very many people. That privilege of being the visionary leader of an institution of higher learning (as well as its chief fund raiser) is reserved to the best of the best and Vartan Gregorian has been one of the most sought after candidates for that post over the last twenty years being on almost everyone's short list! To say that he went from humble beginnings to the very top of the intellectual and academic life in America is to considerably understate the miracles that have paved the way of this deserving and gifted man's life journey. The perilous road that has lead him to the zenith of what America has to offer a scholar is depicted with great humility and panache in the pages of "The Road to Home," a Simon and Schuster 2003 publication. Everyone interested in how fate outstrips logic and predictability ought to read this book. Here is the chronicle of how the brilliance of a kid is first noted and appreciated enough somehow (by a French consular Attache' who happens to be Armenian) and then rewarded and protected by a long chain of benefactors and friends in the middle East (mostly Armenians) and in America (Armenians and many more non Armenians) both, catapulting a strange boy in great need for love and acceptance to shine as an intellectual and scholar, to conquer the toughest of tasks as an administrator, mediator, moderator, visionary, fund raiser, diplomat, keeper of the faith, lighter of the torch of knowledge and learning in Philadelphia, in New York City, in Providence, Rhode Island and in New York City again where, since 1997, he has been the president of the Carnegie Corporation which is a philanthropic organization of great weight and import in the cultural life of America and indeed the world. There are many immigrant stories that make America's spinning roulette wheel of success seem impossible to believe. Here is another such spectacular tale told by the master communicator himself, the staunch believer in education, the power of books, the beauty of scholarship and a man who has found his niche in high society and academe in America against impossible odds.
   
   Imagine a young boy in Tabriz, Iran, born in 1934 to Armenian parents in this Northern Province of Persia known as Azerbaijan. His mother, Shoushig, dies when he is six and a half years old. Together with his little sister Ojik, he is raised by their maternal grandmother, Voski Mirzaian. Her's is the strongest and most lasting influence on this poor boy's life. She is mother and father and grandmother to them since their father is never around, working elsewhere, such as near oil fields, to make ends meet, and is never a warm father anyway, even when he is around. In fact, he is a strange, cold, distant, remarried man who never encourages little Vartanig, never teaches him anything (even though he gives private English lessons to others), never gives him any sort of advice or love of any sort! These circumstances alone ought to be enough to scar a man for life and make it hard for him to have sufficient self-confidence to make it in this cruel world. Add to that the changing of hands of their province between Persia and Soviet Russia, the Second World War, depravity, being part of a Christian Minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim city and country, poverty, lack of food, clothing, proper shelter, constant peril and it is a miracle indeed that this boy grew up to amount to anything at all. The details of these harrowing times are depicted with great care and meticulous detail in the first fifth of the book, The Road to Home. Here we have the familiar positive influence of the Armenian Church, becoming an acolyte and developing a very warm relationship with the steady, ancient tradition of the liturgy and faith that is the hallmark of the Armenian Apostolic tradition. The solace Vartanig derives from these experiences acts as a counterweight to the lack of love and nourishment at home under his father's roof with his younger wife who cares very little for him or his sister. Vartan has his grandmother who teaches him wisdom, myth, faith, morality, history and traditional Armenian tall tails all brewed in one living magic cauldron. Stars and winds and ghosts and other mythological figures intermingle and fire up this precocious boy's imagination as a steady nightly diet administered by his grandmother and her tender loving care. It is remarkable how much of this he reproduces more than fifty years later in the pages of his autobiography. His is a genuine and profound love for his grandmother. Plus, he is far too intelligent not to absorb all he can learn from her about life and this world naturally. Vartan grows and observes the changing world around him. Soviet communists come and go, muslem extremism is always suspected to be a palpable threat to the Armenians and to all Christian boys and girls in particular. Pedophiliacs must be avoided and are rumored to be all around. Street fights with Muslim boys are routine. Vartan reaches his teen years, attending school with worn out shoes, without money to buy books but able to read everything written in Armenian he can get his hands on at the library of the Armenian church and community center. He then starts to write for the Armenian newspaper "Alik" as well about daily affairs and even deliver eulogies at the funeral of important Armenian citizens of Tabriz. From these surroundings, he is somehow able to extricate himself at the age of fifteen at the bold suggestion of the French Vice-consul, Edgar Maloyan, who instructs him he go to Beirut and attend high school at Jemaran. The first turning point or plot point of this story is his grandmother authorizing his departure knowing that it is best for him and his future to leave their village and embrace the larger world. The crown jewel of Armenian schools in Beirut in the fifties with an emphasis on French (and Arabic) instruction and a thorough Armenian education including classical Armenian and Armenian history and culture beyond a normal high school degree was Nshan Palanjian Jemaran. But such a school was simply unreachable for a poor boy from Tabriz whose father would not be of any help and who spoke no Arabic or French to begin with! But he did manage to go to Beirut on his own with just $50 to his name, find people to sponsor him, to take him under their wings, nurture him, find money for him, donate food, arrange make shift dwelling at some sort of "Hotel Luxe" until boarding school facilities were inaugurated a few years hence, and even teach him French on the side so that he could catch up and graduate a few years behind schedule but brilliantly. This unlikely passage to Beirut and an institution of higher learning, makes Vartan think of the words of Graham Greene who once said and he quotes: " There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." That was Vartan's moment.
   
   It is at Jemaran that his knack for being noticed, appreciated, aided and nurtured takes root in earnest. In Beirut, in the early and middle nineteen fifties, around the intellectual community of Jemaran, many notable Armenians take on his cause. Chief among them is Simon Vratsian, the principal of the school. Vartan becomes one of the unofficial secretaries of this honorable Armenian intellectual who was the last prime minister of the first Armenian Republic before Armenia fell into the clutches of the Soviet empire in 1920. Vartan reads and learns all he can get his hands on at Jemaran. In addition, he writes many of Vratsian's letters since Simon is almost blind by then. Vartan, through this experience, if nothing else, becomes groomed for academic administration since he is exposed to it at a very early age and in all its multiple facets of fund raising and community affairs and public relations and vision and rigor and all other aspects of pedagogy. Vartan, in need of a father figure, in need of people to believe in him and encourage him, finds many in Beirut and in Jemaran, all of which is delicately and precisely depicted in The Road to Home. He completes the entire venerable "Hayakidagan" (Armenology) course, reads voraciously, learns about life in the fast and wild town which Beirut was in the 1950s and graduates with honors ready to be shipped out to the West coast where he is accepted in Stanford. Le Petit Paris, as Beirut is referred to, makes a man out of him and a man hungry for knowledge.
   
   The next fifth of the book is about his spectacular career at Stanford both as an undergraduate and graduate student. Again, his brilliance and remarkable attributes are detected by professors who become his champions for life! He is helped by these historians and scholars throughout his academic journey. They see a future for him he cannot even imagine and take it upon themselves to walk him through the steps to achieve greatness! Vartan is appreciated and guided by giants in his field who pave the way for him and are always rewarded by how well he does, given these opportunities. Instead of being supported by Jemaran throughout his stay at Stanford, he receives University support at the end of two years, finishes his BA that quickly and starts his graduate program right then and there. He has a rich life at Stanford, which molds him further as a man and as a scholar. He meets his future wife there and marries her in such spectacular fashion that I do not want to spoil it by paraphrasing the story here. You will have to read pages 132-135 to see for yourself. Clare Russell learns Armenian and becomes his mate for life from that time on. Theirs is a happy marriage and one where the journey is shared and burdens distributed and hardships met with equal courage and valor on both their parts.
   
   And its not that Vartan does not put Clare in harm's way! For starters, he receives a substantial travel and research grant to spend time in London, Paris, Beirut, Kabul and Karachi. His aim is to gather the raw data for his thesis on Afghanistan's transition to becoming a modern state. He takes Clare along for this trip but she is already pregnant so by the time they arrive in Beirut, she gives birth and stays there while Vartan goes to Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and back on his own. This remarkable woman now has to fend for herself in a hotel room (where the giant cockroaches are described in vivid detail in the book) with a newborn son! She does so with the help of all the same cast of characters associated with Jemaran and the thriving Armenian community in Beirut when Vartan was there alone 6 years earlier. History repeats itself, Vartan avails himself of the generosity and friendship of old acquaintances and his research makes very good progress.
   
   Back to California they come and a job as a history instructor at San Francisco State University. Why? Because there are no jobs that can be arranged at AUB or Jemaran in Beirut! Vartan would have loved staying in Beirut. He tries and his meteoric rise to the top of US academic circles is because there are no suitable teaching jobs for him in Beirut! Lucky for us, one could say. Vartan faces the middle to late sixties in San Francisco. A less than ideal choice given the turmoil at the local Universities then, the hippy movement, the sit ins, the Black Panthers, the anti-war movement... It is a mess and a new assistant professor has to face it all in a hot seat that was SF State. Not as bad as Berkeley, as the book explains, but close.
   
   It is no surprise then that the newly minted PhD who is barely able to make ends meet with an academic salary at a state school (living with a wife and son) and teaching part time here and there including Stanford and other colleges, welcomes the chance to go to the university of Texas, after a short stint at UCLA and teach at a research university with a graduate program and be a historian. His book "The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946" was just then accepted for publication by Stanford University press. In the meantime, He visits Beirut again and Armenia and hopes to write a book on the modern history of that country. Instead, he gets involved in University politics down in Austin. He is asked to help the dean and that work eventually lands him in the middle of political infighting within factions of the faculty and the administration. The Road to Home describes this in great detail in chapter 10. Vartan Gregorian, learns to be an active player in University politics at UT. He then takes an endowed chair in Armenian studies at U Penn. and escapes the firings and turmoil that leave no friendly faces down in Texas. He also joins the history department of this prestigious ivy league school and embarks on the fast track career to high level university administration. He first becomes the founding dean of the college of arts and sciences at the age of thirty five! This is followed by heroic efforts at organizing the university for the bicentennial of our nation in 1976, a major fund raising campaign, and the attainment of the top academic post of Provost. Dr. Gregorian learns what its like to deal with the board of Trustees of a university and all the internal politics and machinations that would make the chatter at the Tower of Babel sound like a Gregorian Chant. He perseveres, helps solve many of U Penn's problems and sets a very good course for the university. Alas, there is opposition to his ascension to the post of President. In the meantime, he agonizes over the offer of being Berkeley's Chancellor, a lifelong dream of his and ultimate goal throughout his early academic career. He decides to stay at Penn because he is told he should finish what he started. He is told that he is a shoe in for the presidency. He should just wait and assume the helm. Alas, he is blocked at the end and many of the fat cats who are trustees of the university who do not like him are, let us say, blue bloods, who do not believe he would have the "social graces" (or the looks, perhaps) for such a job... Hmm... racism? You bet! Discrimination against a darker skinned, curly haired, short Armenian man whose brilliance and dedication and virtues they could not see? Surely! Philadelphia is well depicted in this book as being full of "Mayflower" syndrome suffering WASPs. Poor Vartan falls victim to their ingrate state.
   
   But, the star of this story ascends far beyond a stuffy old school's board room antics and lands as the savior of the New York City Public Library system. This eighty nine distinct branch or property system which was at the verge of collapse and irreversible decay is resurrected under the able leadership of Dr. Gregorian for eight long years of fourteen hour days and double lunches and double dinners and fund raising and consciousness raising activities and innovations and vision setting leadership. At the completion of that renovation campaign he finally accepts the presidency of an Ivy League School, Brown University, in Providence Rhode Island. His nine years there reorient that school towards a far more successful path and improve its minority and gender distribution and hiring practices and many other modern innovations that take Brown to a far higher ground of success than it was in 1989 when Dr. Gregorian took over its helm.
   
   The latest chapter in the career of this tireless and remarkable man dedicated to academia, scholarship, libraries, books, teaching and a life of the mind is to head up the Carnegie Corporation, which is a charitable organization of the first caliber dedicated to the betterment of the world through the dissemination of knowledge. Dr. Gregorian is a happy man from all appearances. He is a tireless advocate for causes he believes in with a passion. His enthusiasm is contagious. He sets courses for action and follows through with them till the end. He is a no nonsense achiever who has aided many a worthwhile cause with absolute dedication and imperturbable resolve. He has never rested on his laurels nor has he taken the easy way out.
   
   One could imagine that being an Armenian and an immigrant gave Dr. Gregorian the advantage over more traditional local talent. He sure had something to prove and he was hungry throughout the journey. He appreciated all that was done for him and he took none of it for granted. He wanted to make his life mean something. He knew of the Armenian genocide and the displacement of his people. He knew that an Armenian owes his being alive to divine fate and that squandering his life away and the opportunities so many had sacrificed so much to make possible for him would be cruelly wasted if it were not his task to make them all proud. As this book shows, one can not praise this dedicated administrator enough for all the potential he has unleashed in New York, Philadelphia and Rhode Island by untiring dedication and a principled approach to the betterment of this land of freedom he has adopted as his own.
   
   My only criticism of the book is that it leaves so much out! There is so much more one would have liked to hear him describe and discuss. For instance, and this is just the tip of the iceberg, how did he perceive the differences between the Armenians he met in Beirut from the Iranian Armenians he knew back in Tabriz and Teheran? How about the Armenian communities in the SF bay area and Philadelphia, NY and Providence? Any differences and similarities there, he would care to dissect for us? What happened to his book on Armenia? Are there notes left of that work? His research and plans? Is that water under the bridge now? Did he ever produce any graduate students of his own in Texas or U Penn? What are his PhD students up to, if he has had any? That is, what is his intellectual legacy as a scholar? And another thing, what does he think of Afghanistan today? The book makes reference to 9-11 and to unrelated speeches he has given in 2002. How about Afghanistan? He was, after all, a world expert in this arena at one point not so long ago. Similarly, what efforts has he made on behalf of the Armenian cause or for free and independent Armenia since 1991? What are his views on how Armenia's intellectual capital can be preserved or augmented? What can we do and what course of action would he suggest given his vast experience at administering universities and charitable organizations? It would help a lot if he would write publicly and let everyone know what he sees as a best coarse of action. Dr. Gregorian is an asset of immeasurable proportions to a community that can only be awed and proud to call him one of their own. In short, read The Road to Home. Its message to all Armenians and Americans seems to be, you can find a home (after all) if you keep your eyes wide open in this land of vast opportunity.



5. I first learned of Vartan Gregorian when he became provost of the University of Pennsylvania while I was attending grad school there. He was a colorful figure who seemed to be as much at odds with the university as the contentious students during the turbulent late 70's. Later, he went on to head the New York Public Library and then Brown University. He seemed to have a magical way to become influential and well-liked. After reading this book, I liked him a lot and wished I'd had a chance to know him while I was at Penn. Gregorian is a man of letters and great charisma.
   
   Gregorian's story of his life is as charming as his public persona. From the opening lines about his life in Tabriz, Iran as a member of the Armenian minority community there, to his wise grandmother who raised him, his life is exciting and fraught with tragedy and pitfalls. His mother dies in childbirth and his father essentially abandons the family. Somehow, Vartan manages to find an education despite great difficulties and he is sponsored finally to go to the Armenian University in Beirut. From there, his career as a professor and man of letters takes off and he soars, always helped by friends of influence who provide that wind under his wings. And he's grateful. He moves some thirty times (not thirty jobs, as he points out) and goes from Stanford to Texas to Penn, to New York and places in between. All along he meets luminaries like Jackie Kennedy Onassis, the Queen of England, makes friends with former BU president John Silber and yet seems to stay folksy and unaffected by all the glitter.
   
   The book is highly readable and a fine memoir--whether you've heard of Gregorian or not, this is a wonderful tale about a man who overcame ridiculously bad odds to become one of America's most influential public figures in education. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

No comments about Alma Mater.

1 comments about When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Fadiman, Barzun, Trilling (Personal Takes).

1. Since I took a graduate seminar course in women's memoirs in American literature, I have read several books by Heilbrun. As I was not going to specialize in autobiography/memoirs or in feminist theory, I read her more as a writer than a scholar or theorist, focusing more on how she says things than on what. In this regard, I enjoyed every book I read because her language was something unique. It is clear and concise, without being simple, authoratitive without being pedantic, seemingly aloof yet strangely persuasive. If passion is another name for talent, she is very, very passionate, but that passion is moderated with a unique kind of resignation (or perhaps, wisdom).
   
   This book is not my favorite, and compared to other titles such as Writing Women's Lives, it does indeed gets slow and heavy here and there. There are parts where even those in the same line of work as Heilbrun's would go, "Who cares?" or "Why bother?" Yet, largely, it is accessible and *fun*. Read as an intellectual memoir, it is a story about how Heilbrun was gratefully influenced by three men, how she resisted and embraced their influence, and how she finally grew out of it. There are many interesting anecdotes coming from her encounters with these men (Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling) and her life as a graduate student in the 50s at one of the most highly regarded universities in the US. Students of today would gasp at the nightmarish inconvinience of having only two copies of their papers, and painfully taking turns in reading other student's papers due to the lack of copies.
   
   Heilbrun devoted a chapter to Diana Trilling, which wasn't her plan when he planned on the book. She was fascinated and gained admiration for her in the process of research for the book, and readers would clearly see why in the chapter on her. In sum, according to Heilbrun, Diana Trilling is a woman whose insights on her life come largely from feminism ("the most successful revolution of our century," Trilling herself called it), yet who was not herself a feminist. She accepted a life of belittlements from others, while having penetrating understanding of those belittlements.
   
   Early in the book, Heilbrun notes that perhaps one of the most palpable influences she got from Lionel Trilling would be the notion that "tragedy is what most marks us if we are thinkers." This is what Trilling shares with Freud, and this is what Heilbrun shares with Trilling, despite her distrust of Freud, and to some extent, of Trilling as well. This comment comes after an anecdote about Trilling's inspiring lecture on Henry James, from which young Heilbrun took the idea that "the essence of literature was in the tensions of the thinking life." This part of the book is strangely moving, and makes me think hard about the interplay among "tension," "thinking life," "tragedy," and "literature." A small and not really an ambitious book, but contains much fun and insights.

5 comments about Paul A. Samuelson: On Being an Economist.

1. 
   The forward by Stiglitz is not very astounding. It doesn't help us to recognize Samuelson as a person beyond what we know him through his numerous contributions. I have started reading the subsequent chapters and hope to have a better idea of the man..particulalry his thought process - conception, clarity of thinking though a problem and taking it to a solution...



2. I recommend that this book be purchased.It gives an above average to very good overview of the life and times of Paul Samuelson,starting from his days as an undergraduate majoring in economics at the University of Chicago.It does an admirable job in covering the importance of Samuelson's unmatched textbook,Economics,as well as the surrounding historical and political conditions and controversies that occurred during the writing of the book.However,Samuelson's consistent core position concerning the interface between macroeconomics,microeconomics and the economics of Keynes, as expressed by Keynes in the General Theory(1936),in general and,specifically, in section III of chapter 24,is not covered at all.The reader,who finishs this book,will come away without grasping exactly what it was that Samuelson took away from his reading of the GT.It certainly was not Keynes's mathematical model of chapters 19,20, and 21.Samuelson had been convinced by the misleading claims of Richard Kahn,Joan Robinson and Austin Robinson that,while Keynes's new ideas and approach were fundamentally correct,he had made a technical mess of the formal,mathematical expression and exposition of his theory.Nevertheless,Samuelson did have a very deep understanding and appreciation for Keynes's approach,if not his technique. Samuelson viewed the study of economics and macroeconomics as the study of an economy as a whole.An economy is made up of a private sector and a public sector.There are micro-theoretical underpinnings to the decision making calculus in both sectors.Both sectors are vital to realizing the goal of economic growth and prosperity at full employment,non inflationary levels of gross domestic product.Both public goods and private goods are absolutely necessary.The concept of a completely private economy,operating under conditions of laissez faire,is a myth that was completely rejected by the founding fathers of the United States of America in 1787.The standard reference is The Federalist Papers ,written by Hamilton,Madison,and Jay.The economic system,AS A WHOLE,can be made to function as if it were an ergodic system IF,AND ONLY IF, the following policies are followed.These policies will create a stable,full employment level of output.First,an activist and interventionist monetary and fiscal policy is implemented.Second,a progressive taxation system is implemented.Third, continuous government spending on investment on infrastructure projects,public goods,and public works is implemented.These three policies will counterbalance and negate the highly variable,unstable,volatile,insufficient,unpredictable private sector spending on investment in fixed ,durable capital goods(plants,factories,machinery,computer hardware and software,etc.)that occurs due to the uncertainty(D. Ellsberg's ambiguity)of the future in all capitalist economies.Fourth,money wages and prices are sticky.Sticky does not mean rigid or inflexible.Fifth,introduction of more interest,wage,and price flexibility,combined with policies 1,2 and 3,will result in attaining the goal of full employment.The expansion of government to include activist,interventionist monetary and fiscal policy,and increased public sector spending on public goods and infrastructure,necessary to counter the shortfalls in required private sector spending on investment ,will mean that"...if our central controls succeed in establishing an aggregate volume of output corresponding to full employment as nearly as is practicable,the classical theory comes into its own again from this point onwards."(Keynes,1936,p.378).Samuelson has digested this point.His detractors have not.The authors of this book only discuss the strange and incomprehensible objections made by the authors of a two volume book called the Anti-Samuelson(1977)and libertarian anarchists believers in Laissez Faire,like Murray Rothbard and Mark Skousen ,who assume that there is no difference between consumption goods and investment goods or between fixed capital and circulating capital(inventories).Supposedly,investment is a completely stable,predictable function of the long run real rate of interest only.All of the empirical evidence shows that long run investment is not a stable,predictable or nonvolatile function of the real rate of interest.Another strange critic of Samuelson,not mentioned in this book, is Paul Davidson,one of the founders of the Post Keynesian School of economics.Davidson makes the unsupportable charge that Samuelson is not a Keynesian of any type.The reader of this review will discover that Davidson never cites or mentions Keynes's analysis in section III of chapter 24 of the GT whenever he criticizes Samuelson for not being a "true" Keynesian.In fact ,nowhere in the corpus of Davidson's published work ,going back to 1960 ,has Davidson ever dealt with this section of the GT except in dismissive one liners.Finally,none of the other schools of economic thought,such as rational expectations,monetarist,austrian,supply side,or real business cycles,have a clue to the fundamental problem of capitalism.Samuelson,following Keynes,realized that it is the shortfall in investment spending that is the crucial problem in introducing involuntary unemployment into a capitalist economy.Samuelson said it best:"When it comes to investment,the laissez faire system has no good thermostat".No good thermostat means that such an economic system is not self regulating or correcting.The Laissez Faire approach does not lead to full employment unless "we're lucky" .No economist has ever demonstrated theoretically or empirically that the laissez faire system has a good thermostat.



3. This is an engaging and readable encomium to Samuelson, a selective history of economic theory and an introduction to economics. Quite an accomplishment in 160 pages!
   I particularly enjoyed its informal conversational style and use of personal anecdotes. These really brought the reader to feel privy to important people and events. The text also successfully conveyed the Stiglitz' love of Samuelson - his excellence as a human being, over and above his accomplishments as a theoretician.
   Chapters 2 and 3 were quite informative to me, successful introductions to key aspects of the science of economics. In just a couple of pages Stiglitz succeeds in conveying the changes from feudalism to mercantilism to free market in a way which showed why a new understanding of economics was needed. He then goes on to show shortcomings in classical theory which called for Samuelson's contributions. The author's presentation of Samuelson's incorporation of mathematical modeling in economics and the revolution that brought was also clear and interesting.
   The sections at the end of each chapter "Additional Notes and Sources" are
   very helpful to this reader who is not a professional in economics.



4. Paul A. Samuelson: "On Being an Economist" offers the ability for a reader to embark on the life chronicles of PAS with bifocals; a broad view is offered of the influences contributing to Samuelson's master of prose, wit and thrilling ability to connect with an audience while powerfully maintaining focus on the extraordinaire responsible for the revitalization of economics as a discipline. The work projects a well supported analytical approach to the achievements of PAS while successfully encrypted with celebratory views of a legendary career. Furthermore, the narrative's current personifies a conversation with a broad audience of sophisticated, yet non-economist spectators fruitfully ignited by the importance of economic deliberation throughout the 20th Century. Without doubt, this work is a tribute to Samuelson; Praise is offered through an anthological retelling of education, achievement and tribulations ultimately filtering through to the doctrinaire contributing immensely to the study of economics. However, without avail, the style holds constant the ability to flicker economic theory and undoubted utile function in a comprehensible fashion avoiding the typical stray to technical and mathematical models for evidentiary purposes. The meat of the storyline is functionally outlined through Chapters 2 through 4 carrying the reader from Samuelson's philosophy, extrapolating the "mathematical language" of his methodology, and through to the kaleidoscope of Samuelson's celebrity (presenting both praise and criticism). A well captured account of the history behind the history made by Paul A. Samuelson.



5. Paul Samuelson has personified mainstream economics and is undeniably a great economist. In the book Paul A. Samuelson: On Being an Economist, I find very relevant parallels between his theories in microeconomics and the financial industry today. For someone like me who holds an advanced degree in Economics and then having branched out to a MBA in Finance and now working in the hedge fund industry, Samuelson's works have been a constant factor all through my educational and professional life. This book is a magnificent tribute to his contribution in the field. To have a book dedicated to the guru of Economics and authored by Joseph Stiglitz another leading authority in Economics, is a very rare and dynamic combination. I would recommend this book to all professionals in Wall Street today who deal with finance & economics as well as to individuals who have an interest in the field to expand their horizons. Once again... A MUST READ!

5 comments about In Plato's Cave.

1. If anyone wants to know what life was like in the literary world in the second half of the twentieth century, this is the book to read. It makes the intellectual struggles of those years come vividly alive for readers. _In Plato's Cave strikes me and several of my friends, English Professors all, as the best book we have ever read about our profession.



2. This was an excellent book. This is one of the only books that someone should read to learn something. This book teaches about how the world can and sometimes will react. Through a livid writing process, Kernan describes his amazing career. This is probably the last great book of the 20th Century.



3. Oh, come now, DC from California, don't be a curmudgeon. Anyone who dislikes students, critics, and the 1960s can't be all bad. Although I must admit that any writer so hackneyed as to title a moderately interesting memoir "In Plato's Cave" tends to put one off one's feed rather early on.



4. Enjoyed this! Kernan depicts the literary and academic influences of his life in great detail, inspiring one to get a hold of the greats in the Classics and Criticism (again). The book would be of special interest to professors or English scholars, as the phases of Literary criticism over the last part of the 1900's is elaborated (I found this very interesting although I know I still don't understand what existentialism, deconstruction, etc REALLY mean...). One understands how his love for literature and humanity outweigh the Machievallian nature and silly politics inherent in academic institutions.Lastly, the author's way of writing is masterful, as one would expect of a life steeped in the literary tradition.



5. Kernan recounts his career (Yale and Princeton)from undergraduate to emeritus. He is a passionate advocate of his school of LitCrit (New Criticism of the Brooks and Leavis varieties)and makes animadversions on all other views. His book contains some delightful anecdotes, and is worth reading for those alone, but his book lacks a central theme. If he wishes to show that somehow critical standards have decayed, he fails completely. A lifelong teacher, he has nothing but contempt for all students, whom he refers to as Smithers: stupid, ungrateful, altogether unworthy of Prof. Kernan's genius. He mentions his most famous pupils only to attack them (viz Greenblatt). Although other reviewers praise Kernan's "elegiac" view of a better time, I am hard pressed to see when that time was. The 1950's, I suppose. Kernan himself was the product of lowered standards: until the G.I. Bill, people like Kernan couldn't get into Williams or Yale, and many an old academic bemoaned the decline of standards. One might think that Kernan would have welcomed the greatest change to Yale and Princeton during his tenure, namely the opening of those schools to women, minorities, and the middle classes generally, with a corresponding increase in standards to match the increase in the applicant pool. Kernan regards such changes with distaste, without ever analyzing why he finds such things distasteful. There is room for a passionate defense of the Old School Tie, but one does not find it here. Before I read this book I thought of Kernan as an academic success story. Now I am not so sure.

   Another reviewer mentions plagiarism and such things. From Kernan's account, there was more plagiarism in the 40's and 50's than in the last 30 years. Likewise more drunkeness and hooliganism. Trust me to miss the fun. Some good comments on this book have appeared at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Certainly a type of liberal education was easier when GPAs and SATs were of little importance, and books have been written , by Hutchins and McNeil and others describing what is possible and what is not. If modern education has become too narrowly focussed on vocationalism, that is not the fault of the students, but of the (upper) middle class world they are obliged to join, and the idealists of the '60's would seem to Kernan's allies, not his enemies. In the final analysis, it is the students who maintain the quality of a university, not the faculty.

2 comments about Over Hill And Dale.

1. I enjoyed this book from the first word. It moves along with a very upbeat approach to life, pointing out the lovely, the poignant, and the humorous as the author goes about his interesting job inspecting village schools. As a teacher, I can verify the truth of his experiences, and he tells them in an engaging manner.
   
   The book does compare with James Herriot. If you enjoy Jan Karon,or Miss Read, Gervase Phinn will be pleasant reading, too.



2. This book will be enjoyed by anyone who has a love of children. In particular anyone with any contact with the teaching profession will recognise immediately the situations recounted in great depth by the author.

   As an HMI inspector visiting countless schools, Mr Phinn's perfectly captured descriptions of the children, their teachers and the everyday school activities were a joy to read. His exquisite perceptions of the children put the reader into the classroom observing the joys, laughter and at times touching moments which managed to put a lump into my throat. I was there stifling my laughter as a young boy covers him with paint, I was embarrassed as a harrassed young teacher mistaking him for a care worker asks if he has seen the inspectors yet? and I was reaching for my handkerchief as a young blind child recounts a touching version of her understanding of sight.

   A thoroughly charming read, which you won't want to put down.

No comments about The Research University Presidency in the Late Twentieth Century: A Life Cycle/Case History Approach (ACE/Praeger Series on Higher Education).

No comments about Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School,1970 (Sightline Books).