Books-Fall-2006
Book List for Classes
The links above will take you to the book selections for each course
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Ancient Mesoamerican Cultures
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Required reading: Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, Coe, Michael & Rex Koontz. The complexities of Mexico's ancient cultures are perceptively presented and interpreted. Coe and Koontz have done an excellent job of synthesizing a wealth of material and provide a comprehensive introduction to Mexico's prehistory that is both enjoyable to read and highly informative. This beautifully illustrated update belongs in the archaeology and anthropology collections of all academic libraries.
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Recommended reading:
An Illustrated Dictionary of The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico & the Maya, Miller, Mary & Karl Taube. The myths and beliefs of the great pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica have baffled and fascinated outsiders ever since the Spanish Conquest. Yet, until now, no single-volume introduction has existed to act as a guide to this labyrinthine symbolic world. The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya is the first-ever English-language dictionary of Mesoamerican mythology and religion.
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Art & Artists of the Italian High Renaissance
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Recommended reading:
The Panorama of the Renaissance, Aston, Margaret, Editor. This lavishly illustrated survey of Renaissance art provides a clear framework for understanding the diversity of what was achieved as the modern world emerged from the Dark Ages.
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Recommended reading:
Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, King, Ross. Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling unveils the story behind the art's making, a story rife with all the drama of a modern-day soap opera.
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Recommended reading:
Raphael (Basic Art), Christoph Thoenes, Petra Lamers-schuetze (Editor).
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Recommended reading: Michelangelo 1475-1564 (Basic Art), Neret, Gilles. |
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Recommended reading: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) (Basic Art), Zollner, Frank. |
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Recommended reading:
Brunelleschi’s Dome, King, Ross. Filippo Brunelleschi's design for the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence remains one of the most towering achievements of Renaissance architecture. The story of its creation and its brilliant but "hot-tempered" creator is told in Ross King's delightful Brunelleschi's Dome. |
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Recommended reading: Boticelli, Santi, Bruno.
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Ballet 101
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Recommended reading:
Bram Stoker's Dracula, Stoker, Bram. Can there be a more terrifying tale than this? The story of the notorious vampire Count Dracula, lord of the undead, who rises from his coffin at night to suck the blood of the living is, undoubtedly, the stuff of nightmares.
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Recommended viewing:
Bram Stoker's Dracula (DVD), With dizzying cinematic tricks and astonishing performances, Francis Coppola's 1992 version of the oft-filmed Dracula story is one of the most exuberant, extravagant films of the 1990s. There's a little bit of everything in this version of Dracula: gore, high-speed horseback chases, passion, and longing.
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Recommended reading: 101 Stories of the Great Ballets, Balanchine. Authored by one of the ballet's most respected experts, this volume includes scene-by-scene retellings of the most popular classic and contemporary ballets, as performed by the world's leading dance companies. Certain to delight long-time fans as well as those just discovering the beauty and drama of ballet.
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Recommended reading: Ballet for Dummies, Cisneros. Wiley. As you fine-tune your classical ballet technique – or even if you just like to read about it – you'll become better equipped to fully appreciate the great choreography and many styles of the dance. Ballet For Dummies raises the curtain on a world of beauty, grace, poise, and possibility!
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Can Money Buy Happiness?
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Recommended reading:
Authentic Happiness, Seligman, Martin. Skeptics will wonder whether it's possible to learn happiness from a book. Their point may be valid, but Seligman certainly provides the attitude adjustment and practical tools (including self-tests and exercises) for charting the course.
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Recommended reading:
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. You have heard about how a musician loses herself in her music, how a painter becomes one with the process of painting. In work, sport, conversation or hobby, you have experienced, yourself, the suspension of time, the freedom of complete absorption in activity. This is "flow," an experience that is at once demanding and rewarding--an experience that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates is one of the most enjoyable and valuable experiences a person can have.
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Recommended reading: Toward a Psychology of Being, Maslow, Abraham. "If we wish to help humans to become more fully human, we must realize not only that they try to realize themselves, but that they are also reluctant or afraid or unable to do so. Only by fully appreciating this dialectic between sickness and health can we help to tip the balance in favor of health." -Abraham Maslow
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Recommended reading:
Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, Johnson, Steven. Given the opportunity to watch the inner workings of his own brain, Steven Johnson jumps at the chance. He reveals the results in Mind Wide Open, an engaging and personal account of his foray into edgy brain science.
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Recommended reading:
Money and the Meaning of Life, Needleman, Jacob. Needleman, a philosophy professor, argues that while we have countless books on making and managing money, there is little published on the relationship between the quest for money and the quest for the meaning of life. While that is often seen as humanity's main weakness, it is Needleman's thesis that in our time the principle of personal gain is embodied in the quest for money.
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The Dilemma of Immigration
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Recommended reading:
Migrations and Cultures: A world view, Sowell, Thomas. Sowell takes a sweeping look at major world migrations, his aim being to "provide revealing glimpses of the enormous role of cultural heritages and their far-reaching implications." Focusing on the Germans, Japanese, Italians, Chinese, Jews and Indians, he traces the migratory pattern of each group and examines how it has affected the countries where its members settled.
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Recommended reading:
Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border, Laufer, Peter. The author argues the case for the extreme position of essentially opening the border between Mexico and America to the free flow of workers. For some good humor, check out the volatile reviews on Amazon.
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Recommended reading:
Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What it Means to be an American, Jacoby, Tamar. Essayists include: Alba, Barone, Borjas, Crouch, Etzioni, Gans, Glazer, Hamill, Kotkin, Massey, WcWhorter, Nee, Portes, Rodriguez, Salins, Shteyngart, Skerry, Steinberg, Waldinger, and Zhou.
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Recommended reading:
Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration, Alba, Richard and Nee, Victor. Alba and Nee have written a carefully theorized, thoughtfully argued, and empirically well-grounded book. They demonstrate persuasively that the so-called "new" immigration is not terribly different from previous ones, and that most of the descendants of today's Hispanic, Asian, and other newcomers are assimilating in much the same way as the children and grandchildren of the European immigration.
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Economic Growth, Egalitarianism & Inequality
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Required reading:
The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity, Sperling, Gene. Even if you have never completed an economics course, this hugely readable book charts a comprehensible and balanced course between doctrinaire policies of both right and left. No misty theoretician, Sperling espouses specific and practical responses to economic and societal problems that too many have thought innsoluble.
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Recommended reading:
Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies?, Heckman, James, and Krueger, Alan. The surge of inequality in income and wealth in the United States over the past twenty-five years has reversed the steady progress toward greater equality that had been underway throughout most of the twentieth century. This economic development has defied historical patterns and surprised many economists, producing vigorous debate. Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? examines the ways in which human capital policies can address this important problem. Heckman, a Nobel prize winner from the University of Chicago, debates Krueger, a professor of economics at Princeton, on which human capital policies generate the best outcomes for society.
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Recommended reading:
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Friedman, Benjamin. This probing study argues that, far from fostering rapacious materialism, economic growth is a prerequisite for the creation of a liberal, open society.
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Genocide & the Psychology of Hatred, Part 2
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Required reading:
Annihilating Difference, The Anthropology of Genocide, Hinton, Alexander Laban. Because of their intimate experience in the communities where genocide takes place, anthropologists are uniquely positioned to explain how and why this mass annihilation occurs and the types of devastation genocide causes. This ground breaking book, the first collection of original essays on genocide to be published in anthropology, explores a wide range of cases, including Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia.
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Required reading:
Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World, Post, Jerrold M. What are the psychological foundations of man’s inhumanity to man, ethnic cleansing, and genocide? Jerrold M. Post contends that such questions can be answered only through an understanding of the psychological foundations of leader personality and political behavior.
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Recommended reading:
A Problem From Hell, Power, Samantha. Debunking the notion that U.S. leaders were unaware of the horrors as they were occurring against Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds, Rwandan Tutsis, and Bosnians during the past century, Power discusses how much was known and when, and argues that much human suffering could have been alleviated through a greater effort by the U.S.
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Gettysburg & the Civil War
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Recommended reading:
The Civil War, Ward, Geoffrey C. This is an extraordinary collection of photos, engravings and paintings, many published for the first time, conveying military and political events of the Civil War, accompanied by a pungent text that avoids sentimentality in depicting "the most horrible, necessary, intimate, acrimonious, mean-spirited, and heroic" war in our history.
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Mahler: His Life & Music, Part 1
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Recommended reading:
Mahler, Kennedy, Michael. An account of Mahler's childhood and youth, and of his years as an opera conductor in Cassel, Prague, Leipzig, Budapest, Hamburg, and Vienna. All Mahler's works are discussed.
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Recommended reading:
The Mahler Symphonies: an Owner’s Manual, Hurwitz, David. The latest research on the Eighth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde has been incorporated. Focusing on the nine completed symphonies and The Song of the Earth, David Hurwitz addresses his readers directly in an informal, conversational tone.
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Recommended reading:
Alma Mahler: or the Art of Being Loved, Giroud. This is a recent biography that shows the influence on Mahler exercised by his tempestuous wife. The story of Alma's marriages and liaisons is set against the social and cultural background of the Vienna of her day.
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Recommended reading:
The Lives of the Great Composers, Schonberg, Harold. A smooth, closely woven sequence of brief biographies . . . set in a surrounding continuum of depth and breadth which reflects the author's solid musical culture, his erudition, his command of socio-historic background, and his long experience in every kind and degree of performance. Pages 437-452 cover Mahler's life.
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Recommended reading:
The Artist's Wife, Phillips, Max. Alma Mahler Gropius, the "wild brat" of fin-de-siecle Vienna, is the graceless subject of Phillips's (Snakebite Sonnet) bitingly sarcastic historical novel. The fetching and full-figured daughter of a celebrated landscape painter and a self-sacrificing lieder singer, Alma Shindler had little education, undeveloped musical talent dulled by a hearing defect and lifelong laziness, but a lot of spunk when it came to attracting admirers. This novel is based on the letters and diaries of Alma Mahler and is more readable than her biography.
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Recommended viewing:
What the Universe Tells Me: Unraveling the mysteries of Mahler's Third Symphony, Channing, Stockard. Magnificent! What the Universe Tells Me is probably the deepest, most painstakingly detailed but also approachable attempt to decipher the inner dynamics of a complex work of art ever entrusted to any recording medium. And Mahler's Third Symphony deserves such careful. loving attention. One of the many commentators in this production calls it an attempt "to capture the human condition in a work of music." All the commentators contribute precious insights from their specialized disciplines to help viewers see this masterpiece whole. We will view excerpts in class. |
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Recommended viewing:
Conducting Mahler: I have Lost Touch with the World. Conducting Mahler features long segments showing several eminent Mahler conductors -- Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink and Simon Rattle -- rehearsing the likes of the Royal Concertgebouw, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, in long, lovely passages from all the Mahler symphonies (plus some of 'Das Lied von der Erde') interspersed with interviews (with the noted music writer, Donald Mitchell) with all five of the conductors. Not only is the music-making first class, but the insights that the conductors bring to the process, both in their conducting and in their thoughts about Mahler and his music, are exceedingly stimulating. |
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The Hero in Literature
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Required reading:
The Odyssey, Homer. Homer's tale of love, adventure, food and drink, sensual pleasure, and mortal danger reaches the English-language reader in all its glory. |
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Recommended reading:
Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell, Joseph. Campbell's unique perspectives examine the world's complex and interwoven mythology, folklore and religion, providing an understanding of the essence and genesis of humanness. |
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Recommended reading:
Huckleberry Finn, Twain, Mark. A seminal work of American Literature that still commands deep praise and still elicits controversy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. |
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Recommended reading:
Mythology, Hamilton, Edith. "The tales of Greek mythology do not throw any clear light upon what early mankind was like," Hamilton explains in her introduction. "They do throw an abundance of light upon what early Greeks were like--a matter, it would seem, of more importance to us, who are their descendents intellectually, artistically, and politically. Nothing we learn about them is alien to ourselves." |
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Recommended reading:
Lord of the Rings, 3 vol., Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien was a distinguished linguist and Oxford scholar of dead languages, with strong ideas about the importance of myth and story and a deep appreciation of nature. His epic, 10 years in the making, recounts the Great War of the Ring and the closing of Middle-Earth's Third Age, a time when magic begins to fade from the world and men rise to dominance. |
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Recommended reading: Harry Potter books, Rowling, J.K. Harry's first six years of magic, mystery, and adventure at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Includes books one through five: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. |
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The Supreme Court for Non-Lawyers, Part 1
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Recommended reading:
John Marshall, Definer of a Nation, Smith, Jean Edward. It's taken for granted today that the Supreme Court has final say on how the Constitution is interpreted, but this principle--hotly debated in the republic's early years -- was established by John Marshall (1755-1835), the fourth Chief Justice. Historian Smith's definitive biography, detailed and lucid, is a model of scholarly writing for the general public. |
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Recommended reading:
Lazy B, Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, O'Connor, Sandra Day. Deep in the granite hills of eastern Arizona in 1880, H.C. Day founded the Lazy B ranch, where U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her brother Alan spent their youth, a time they recall in this affectionate joint memoir. |
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Recommended reading:
The Magesty of the Law, Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice, O'Connor, Sandra Day. Divisive (and provocative) issues such as abortion, the death penalty or affirmative action are addressed only in the broadest possible generalities. Purged of controversy, O'Connor's book is an engagingly written civics lesson, delivering a warm appreciation of legal history and principles but little light on the issues the Supreme Court confronts today. |
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Recommended reading:
The Supreme Court, How It Was, How It Is, Rehnquist, William H. As the Chief Justice notes, this is not a treatise on constitutional law. Rather, it is a genial, reader-friendly account of the least understood of the three branches of government. Rehnquist begins with a recollection of his service as a clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson, follows with a succinct and highly readable history of the Court from the time of John Marshall to the mid-20th century and closes with a detailed explanation of how the present Court goes about its business. |
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Recommended reading:
The Least Dangerous Branch, The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics, Bickel, Alexander M. The least dangerous branch of the American government is the most extraordinarily powerful court of law the world has ever known. |
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Recommended reading:
Gideon's Trumpet, Lewis, Anthony. A history of the landmark case of James Earl Gideon's fight for the right to legal counsel. Notes, table of cases, index. The classic backlist bestseller. More than 800,000 sold since its first pub date of 1964. |
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Recommended reading:
Unequal Justice, Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America, Auerbach, Jerold S., focuses on the elite nature of the profession, with its emphasis on serving business interests and its attempt to exclude participation by minorities. |
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Recommended reading:
May It Please the Court, Transcripts of 25 Live Recordings of Landmark Cases As Argued Before the Supreme Court, Irons, Peter and Guitton, Stephanie. Listeners are allowed a glimpse of modern history as never before; the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Watergate, and various other seminal social/moral/ethical disputes are played out in succinct, precise arguments. The sound of the actual history-making cases is thrilling. The accompanying hardcover book contains the text of each argument. |
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Recommended reading: The Supreme Court at Work, de Lesseps, Suzanne. This volume, drawing from and updating material from Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court (Congressional Quarterly, 1979), should be of interest to both scholars and the general public. |
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The World is Flat
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Required reading:
The World is Flat, Friedman, Tom. April 18, 2006—The Second Edition is expanded and revised—important! Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. |
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Recommended reading:
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Kennedy, Paul. "Kennedy, a history professor at Yale, here assesses the interaction between economics and strategy over the past five centuries," reported PW , concluding that "the book is a vigorous entry in the debate over the extent to which national wealth should be used for military purposes." |
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