1 comments about Studies on Modern Scholarship.

1. First, please note that Amazon has put in the wrong book descriptions here. This is *not* a book by Bowersock, about pagan fiction. [Perhaps that is Bowersock's "Fiction As History"]. What "Studies" is is a posthumous collection of academic articles about historians, written by Arnaldo Momigliano (and *edited* by Bowersock and Cornell).

   Momigliano was an eminent historian. He received the MacArthur "Genius" award in 1987, while a visting professor at the Univ. of Chicago. He died later that year. One of Momigliano's passions was writing biographical studies of historians, such as those collected here.

   The historians covered in each essay are: Creuzer, Grote, Rostovtzeff, Burckhardt, De Sanctis, Syme, Croce, Beloch, Bernays, Droysen, Coulanges, Reinhardt, Eduard Schwartz, E. A. Freeman, Eduard Meyer, Niebuhr, Dumezil, Muller, and Bachofen. The essays are presented in order in which they were written, from 1946 until Momigliano's death.

   I have in fact only read chapter 16 so far ("New Paths of Classicism in the Nineteenth Century"), and appreciated it greatly. I felt compelled to put in an accurate description of the book's contents because Amazon had so clearly made a mistake. When I can finish the whole book I hope to write a more complete review.

1 comments about My Name's Not Susie: A Life Transformed by Literacy.

1. Anyone who feels that literacy has changed their life should read this book. The author tells of her heart-wrenching, lonely existence as an abused child who was shuttled from one foster home to another until she was adopted by a woman who opened her eyes to the world of reading. The author was able to overcome her less than auspicious beginning to become a professor of English at IUPUI. This story could have been told with much melodrama, but the author tells it in an extremely honest manner and lets the drama of the story come through naturally. She does not beg for sympathy for the circumstances of her childhood. She simply tells the readers how literacy brought her out of a miserable existence and makes a connection with her readers that will, at least for this reader, last forever.

1 comments about Tolerating the Intolerable: DePauw University's war against Janis Price.

1. Diversity and Tolerance are terms thrown around by people who seek hate and discrimination. For years minorities have rightfully cried out against racial, sexual, and religious hate crimes. I do not mean to say that these atrocities no longer exist, but they surely have withered exponentially. What has arisen in their place is a new type of discrimination. Those who were hated against have turned their anger toward groups that have been respected throughout time for their genorosity, love, and compasion. Christianity has always been a respected religion, and has dominated culture for two thousand years. The fact is that lately Christianity has been shunned, covered and dismantled by institutions flying under the banner of acceptance and diversity.
   
   Shively's book outlines one of many cases where a person was discriminated against for being Christian. Culture today has found it difficult to grasp the concept of intolerance as it relates to old ideas and establishments. The fact that this teacher was repremanded for presenting a negative view of homosexuality in a uninteded and altogether un-threatening way is unbelievable.
   
   This is an important testimony to a new type of intolerance and hate crime. A discrimination that is the essence of retaliation and this is a story that must be told. Whether you agree with the professor or not, you must realize that the university clearly stepped over its bounds.
   
   In regards to the writing itself, the book was well crafted and intelligent. The author is creative, and his journalistic tequiniques are top notch. I look forward to Jeffrey Shiveley's next project (if there is one).

No comments about Benjamin S. Bloom: Portraits of an Educator.

No comments about Opened Up on Okinawa: An Overseas Teaching Experience.

No comments about The Intellectual Venture Capitalist: John H. McArthur and the Work of the Harvard Business School, 1980-1995.

3 comments about No Ordinary Move: A Memoir.

1. I read this book months ago and simply could not put it down. It is inspiring from Bidabes account of her encounter with a dyslexic boy whom she automatically feels the instinct to rescue, to her childhood home catching on fire, straight to how she came to form MOVE and greived every time she lost a child. Linda Bidabe is not only a leader but has so much compassion for those less fortunate than she is and this is what lead her to help chidren with severe physical disabilities, the children who were dismissed and forgotten by a system. She wanted to give these children a chance. I believe the most profound thing she said in her memoir is near the end of her story." What Good is MOVE and all our efforts to help children with disabilities learn to sit,stand and walk, if we use it to push aside a childs dream, and in its stead, impose our on so-called discernment? Our business is to discover the dream in each child, and to believe in it until it becomes a reality" What more can be said? No ordinary move is no ordinary memoir. I highly recommend it to those who want to be moved by a book.



2. This is a very gratifying momoir of Linda Bidabe, an educator for children with severe disabilities and her corageous strive to implement a curriculum. She had me hooked at page one! Linda Bidabe was born a leader. She is a very determined individual and demonstrates this throughout her memoir. She has the strength to overcome obstacles during her life; obstacles I hope I never face.
   While reading this book, I developed a high level of respect and admiration for this woman. She not only gives credit for her accomplishments, but she does not hesistate to mention how she was not able to succeed with every student. She demonstrates skills of a servant leader as she willingly sets aside her aspirations to ensure that others fulfill their dreams. Linda finds great joy out of helping others reach their goals, a virtue which deserves applauding.
   I recommend this book to anyone looking for a well-written autobiography and who is ready to be inspired.



3. This is a very gratifying momoir of Linda Bidabe, an educator for children with severe disabilities and her corageous strive to implement a curriculum. She had me hooked at page one! Linda Bidabe was born a leader. She is a very determined individual and demonstrates this throughout her memoir. She has the strength to overcome obstacles during her life; obstacles I hope I never face.
   While reading this book, I developed a high level of respect and admiration for this woman. She not only gives credit for her accomplishments, but she does not hesistate to mention how she was not able to succeed with every student. She demonstrates skills of a servant leader as she willingly sets aside her aspirations to ensure that others fulfill their dreams. Linda finds great joy out of helping others reach their goals, a virtue which deserves applauding.
   I recommend this book to anyone looking for a well-written autobiography and who is ready to be inspired.

5 comments about Man Overboard: Confessions of a Novice Math Teacher in the Bronx.

1. We all must show respect for those who survive in schools of this kind. Education workers like Mr. Klass are to be commended for enduring an environment of their own choosing if not of their own making. Still, after all the hugs and congratulations, someone has to call out these "teach for America" volunteers and ask why they put up with all the crap instead of joining forces and refusing to proceed. Even the eighteen-year-old grunts in Iraq had the courage to protest being sent into battle without proper gear and protection. Year after year we read the same stories by earnest do-gooders who find happiness among the ruins. What is needed now is fewer acts of goodness and just one brave act of defiance. Let the education workers walk out and leave the asylums to the bureaucrats who thrive in them. If the parents so earnestly wish to be involved, let them take over the schools. They'll soon be using the soiled textbooks as toilet paper, but so be it. They can always apply for a grant from Bill Gates for free lap top computers.



2. 
   
   This author speaks for all of us teachers who are struggling every day in dealing with hoardes of unruly students. After only reading a few pages, I felt like I could have written the same book. The fact that it is in diary form makes it all the more real and frightening. Reading it is definitely helping me get through the end of this horrific school year. I have highly recommended it to my colleagues.



3. Man Overboard is a very witty and poignant autobiography about the experiences of a new second-career math teacher (actually ninth-career in his case) spending his first year teaching high school in the Bronx. On one level, it explores in an absorbing and meaningful way the various problems in the world of Bronx high school culture. On another level, Mr. Klass is also writing about his career aspirations, and how it feels to have frustrations meeting his goals of helping some people who need it. The book connects with the reader very well on both levels. I particularly liked how the drumbeat of daily problems is punctuated periodically with reflective essays, cast in italics, which are full of common sense and practical, logical analysis and suggestions. It is a very well written and enjoyable book, and I would highly recommend it to all.



4. Ric Klass, with humor and a clear, purposeful writing style, took me into his math classroom in an inner city high school in New York. I found myself empathizing with his desire to do someone some good; to make the world a better place. It was easy to understand his frustrations with all the barriers he had to get around to try to fulfill his dream, and just as easy to rejoyce in some small hint of success.
   As well as being a good read, this book has an important message for us. We must make some changes in the way our children are being taught, especially those students who need to escape from a seemingly hopeless environment. I recommend this book to anyone who cares about children and our future as a nation. I'm telling all of my friends about it. JL in SD



5. Ric Klass' tale of teaching in an inner city school in the Bronx is an open, honest account of his experience. It's humorous and sad at the same time. It's engaging and fun to read. Educators will recognize its truths; others should read it to find out just what goes on in public schools and not only in New York.

5 comments about On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language.

1. I read this book and I found that the author had been extremely careless in its writing. Even though it is an autobiography, the author makes reference to "historic facts" which are false. If this book reflects the author's cavalier attitude towards accuracy (in historic facts as well as in language accuracy) then this book casts a shadow on the author's intellectual integrity. Otherwise the book is an "easy read" and it is entertaining.



2. Ilan Stavans, Mexican/American Jewish writer, wrote a book about his experience as an insider/outsider. This is a condition shared by many in our times of high geographical mobility. It is a condition his/my people have known for at least two thousand years. The difference is that he, as many in the present, is not running away from persecution -- much as he might find himself in a somewhat more tolerant environment on an American campus than he did in his native Mexico City -- but one that moved from one culture to another by choice. The thing to note is that in both, the cultural context of his birth as well as his present cultural environment, he is still not quite mainstream. When it comes to language, this becomes a much more complex matter. It runs into the impossibility to render thoughts with mathematical precision in translation but it means more than that: translation has power over that which is translated, in a very active way.
   
   This multi layered predicament is liberating and a bonus for those who know how to take advantage of it.
   
   Ilan Stavans writes in a very readable and crisp and clear way. If you are a person with stakes in many cultures and languages, if you are a Jew at that, you will feel over and over again that you should have written this book. If you are not, you will come very close to understanding this predicament which will make so many things clear to you. In either case, read this book. It is so well written that you will be enriched by it and will enjoy the experience.



3. As an American Jew with insider knowledge of the Mexico City Jewish community, I was startled and later heartwarmed by this book, and in the end proud of Stavans' courageous autobiographical outpouring. He has expressed facts about the Mexico City Jewish community and its effect on how one grows up there and how one views the world from this shtetl within one of the largest cities in the world.

   I am enormously proud of how he has expressed himself in a language still somewhat foreign to him. He has given the reader some food for thought on how we all sometimes live on immigrant islands trying so ferociously to protect our languages and cultures while our offspring yearn to find a meaning in the country of their birth.

   I suppose I'm a bit prejudiced since there are family ties here, but this book is outstanding and worth your reading. It definitely deals with the great questions of the humanities. His "let it all hang out" style must have cost him dearly amongst the family and the community, but as a writer he is definitely true to himself. I admire him greatly. This is a must read.




4. Ilan Stavans' On Borrowed Words flows nicely. It is at once an autobiograpical account of Stavans' intellectual journey, a rich detail on the literary works that have shaped his worldview, and a commentary on the influence, power, and limitations of language. The reader will develop a greater awareness of the books and influences that form one's belief system after reading Stavans' memior.
   Credit Stavans for not unnecessarily dwelling on his past as a minority, but for developing (though his detail of language in his life) his own persona.



5. This book is a well-written, fascinating memoir of a childhood and young adulthood of a Jewish childhood in Mexico city. The characters are memorable - Bobbe Bela from Russia, the actor father, the talented and unstable brother, and the author himself seeking home and identity. A significant component of his seeking identity is found in language - Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, English. He compares multiple languages with masks of an actor, one of many elements in his tale that cause the reader to reflect. Another component is the author's finding his calling as an author - the influences (and absence of encouragement) that shape his writing, the language and the content. Another component is his searching for his Jewishness - in Israel, in Spain, in theology books (and classes), in Yiddish literature.

   This memoir is excellent reading on being human - the reader gains insight into human experience as a whole through the detailed exposition of what it means to be a specific human, Ilan Stavans.

1 comments about The Harvard Book, rev. ed: Selections fom Three Centuries.

1. THE HARVARD BOOK is awarded by the Harvard Alumni Association to High School juniors who combine excellence in scholarship with achievement in other fields. The book contains more than 100 short articles about Harvard experiences by a wide assortment of contributors - many of whom are famous writers. The essays cover almost the entire period of Harvard's existence since 1636. Some of my favorites are by Samuel Eliot Morison, William James, John P. Marquand, David McCord, John Reed, John Updike and David Halberstam. The book is easy to enjoy and praise. The quality of the writing is very high.