Riprap: The Academic Book Television Program

A Governor's Story: The Fight for Jobs and America's Economic Future

2011-11-18T14:42:00.001-05:00

Jennifer Grandholm, Michigan's former Governor, and Dan Mulhern have turned the autobiography genre on its head with this excellent, well-written book. Instead of a self-indulgent recitation of select remembrances, the two scholars chose to reflect on the challenges of leadership in a state that was hit hard and first by the struggles over devastating unemployment in a global economy, huge budget deficits, technological upheavals, and foreign competition. Yes, this narrative includes the drama that the state faced when the Big Three car companies nearly went bankrupt. Our recommendation is to buy this book because you will gain insights, with specific details, into the ways that Michigan successfully has worked to have the car companies posting new profits and to enjoy the most improved job creation rate of any state in the United States.
Rating: Five out of five stars.

Human Trafficking and Slavery in America

2010-01-04T23:26:00.001-05:00

It's often easier to point the accusing finger of wrongdoing at other people and other nations, but Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter have collecting damning evidence that slaves are hidden all around us in this country, in America! Their book, The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today, is a must read for all citizens, not just those who are counselors, experts, law enforcement officers, and rescue and support groups. We should also all heed its call for action to stop this horrific crime that can involve the dishwasher in a neighborhood restaurant, the man sweeping the floor of a local department store, and maids in the house next door.

On Russian Music

2009-01-14T20:16:00.000-05:00

Mention Richard Taruskin, and music lovers' eyes will roll and heads will nod approvingly in response to his over four decades of redefining the field of Russian music study. This volume gathers thirty-six essays on composers ranging from Bortnyansky in the eighteenth to Tarnpolsky in the twenty-first, as well as all the famous names in between. In addition, the reader is treated to Taruskin's thoughts on the history and historiography of Russian music. As Taruskin observes, this book picks up the banner from its namesake: Gerald Abraham's On Russian Music: Critical and Historical Studies of Glinka's Operas, Balakriev's Works, etc., with chapters dealing with Compositions by Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaiksky, Mussorgsky, Glazunov, and various other aspects of Russian Music (published in 1939). Impressive. Rating: five out of five stars.

Living with Fire

2009-01-14T20:07:00.000-05:00

Fires seem to to be raging around the United States all the time, with horrific consequences, so it's difficult, though necessary, to accept the premise that fire "plays a crucial role in North American forest ecosystems. Still, Sara E. Jensen and Guy R. McPherson, in their book, Living with Fire: Fire Ecology and Policy for the Twenty-First Century, support just that premise with "abundant and historical and analytic information. In sum, Jensen and McPherson argue that more research will enhance "increasingly nuanced and accurate" perceptions of fire ecology. This difficult and possibly bitter position (for those whose homes are burning up) is still helpful in understanding the wider context of these catastrophes. Rating: four of five stars.

When the Church Becomes Your Party

2009-01-14T19:56:00.000-05:00

As Horace Clarence Boyer, author of The Golden Age of Gospel, says, "There is no doubt that 'today's gospel is not your mother's gospel,' so we should be thankful that we have Deborah Smith Pollard's When the Church Becomes Your Party to serve as our interpreter." That is indeed true, although Pollard also says her goal is "to reflect the sacred yet celebratory intentions that exist throughout the gospel music community despite the wide variety of sounds, performance styles, and controversies that often surround them." Indeed, Pollard fulfills that goal as she explores "what's going on right under our (upturned) noses," with "muscle t-shirts, tight jeans, cleavage" and "preachers in disguise" (holy hip hop artists). Rating: four out of five stars.

Darkening Peaks and Retreating Glaciers

2008-05-23T15:45:00.000-04:00

As impact of global warming spreads around the world, scientists like Ben Orlove, Ellen Wiegandt, and Brian H. Luckman, are trying to help us understand just how bad it is in books like their edited anthology, Darkening Peaks: Glacier Retreat, Science, and Society. These three scholars are trying to tell us that the impressive and seemingly eternal glaciers we know ad love are trying to teach us a lesson at the beginning of the twenty-first century: just how vulnerable the earth is to the impact of human beings. The book shows the reader, through the extensive and complex observations, that clearly an environmental and cultural disaster is taking place. Rating: five out of five stars.

Bohemian Los Angeles and Identity Construction

2008-05-23T15:27:00.000-04:00

Daniel Hurewitz, in his book, Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics, raises an intriguing point: that even those who belong to bohemias and artistic movements have a political presence, even though they may position themselves in what Soja deemed a "thirdspace". These participants are "usually". he says, viewed more in terms of their "creative impulses and judged for their resistance to larger societal mores," but the space where they position themselves at the margins of society can "be adopted as a site for contesting power. . .[to construct] new identities, actions, and opportunities." Like Greenwich Village in New York, Edendale in Los Angeles served, from the 1910s to 1950s, as a place for identity construction for men and women like Harry Hay, Miriam Brooks Sherman, Dorothy Healey, Paul Landacre, and others whose efforts, Hurewitz argues, "altered American culture and changed precisely the perceptions people had of their own lives." rating: four out of five.

Robots in Space

2008-05-23T15:12:00.000-04:00

Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy think that it's "almost inevitable" that humankind will one day find a planet "that appears to be much like Earth." In their book, Robots in Space: Tecnology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel, they look at the underlying questions that interplanetary travel evokes. Will we be up to the task? How successful will expeditions be, given our limited resources, biological constraints, and the "general hostility of space"? This is a very provocative book based on rigorous scholarship that poses concepts like looking at human spaceflight as Utopia" and developing "closed-loop life support systems." Plus, what does the future hold for humans in a "postbioogical universe"? Stay tuned (or, should we say, zoned?), perhaps we'll know more in a million years, or so. Rating: four stars out of five (especially for an audacious imaginative approach).

When is a mother's work really done?

2008-04-26T18:59:00.000-04:00

Neil Gilbert, in his book, A Mother's Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Life, has joined a lively debate that comprises both lifestyle and policy issues. The previous discussions have addressed the psychological, social, and economic dimensions, but Gilbert questions the how and why these questions are framed--and who benefits from the answers. Furthermore, he asks how the choices women make are influenced by the culture of capitalism, feminist expectations, and the social policies of the welfare state. Does it "pay" to have children? What is the "cost" of the search for unprecedented material benefits and a higher standard of life? And if a woman select a pro-family, what happens then? A useful discussion on a difficult topic. Rating: four stars out of five.

Regardless of our ages, we'll owe our children

2008-04-26T18:48:00.000-04:00

Andrew L. Yarrow's book has a title that says it all: Forgive Us Our Debts: The Intergenerational Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility. Why? Because hopefully you've been totaling up the economic train wreck that's taking place in the United States. How bad is it? Yarrow claims that by Election Day this November, the U.S. national debt will be $10 trillion (yes, that's with a "t"). Worse yet, he says that if current trends persist, "that number will continue to grow at an alarming rate, compounded by an active to retired worker ratio for Social Security that is dropping from 44:1 to 2:1--and that's without factoring in the outrageous gas prices. Who's going to pay for this insanity? Our children, their children, and their children's children. A must-buy. A must-read. Rating: 5 stars out of 5.