Scholarship Bound

	The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators and Postwar Germans (Indiana University Press, 2005) by Dagmar Barnouw In her previous book, Dagmar Barnouw, professor of German and comparative literature, examined photographs of postwar Germany showing how the victors sought to impose the burden of responsibility for World War II and the Holocaust on the German people. Now, Barnouw demonstrates how deeply that narrative took hold — and the silence it imposed — as she seeks a more complete historical remembrance through examination of the validity and importance of the memories of the defeated Germans.
Tooth and Claw (Viking, 2005) by T.C. Boyle Novelist T.C. Boyle, Distinguished Professor of English, offers a collection of 14 previously published short stories — some surrealistic, others grim. With characters such as a destitute and an unstable drunk, a Mexican rancher, a “ghetto school” teacher and a woman who runs on all fours with a pack of dogs, it’s civilization squaring off against wildness in the form of an African predator, ravenous alligators, war, substance abuse, a woman in 1702 and more. The San Francisco Chronicle recently named Tooth and Claw one of the best books of 2005. The Chronicle said that Boyle’s latest collection of stories — which have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Playboy and others — boil down to two themes: animals and losers. The themes unite in the title piece about a lonely loser who wins a wild cat, an African serval, in a barroom dice roll, the Chronicle said. “Even though you may have heard these folktales and down-and-out fables before, Boyle has the voice to make you smile, make you care and make you hate yourself in the morning for being taken in by such a smooth storyteller,” the reviewer wrote.
	On the Waterfront (BFI Film Classics, 2005) by Leo Braudy University Professor Leo Braudy examines the story behind the award-winning 1954 film “On the Waterfront,” and revisits the facts behind the controversy of director Elia Kazan’s testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952. Above all, Braudy analyzes the elements that contribute to the film’s enduring appeal: the method-inspired acting, the music and cinematography, the use of authentic locations, and its powerfully symbolic depiction of postwar American values. (See Leo Braudy, "Ways of Seeing")
Reading Benedict / Reading Mead: Feminism, Race and Imperial Visions (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) by Dolores Janiewski and Lois Banner This collection of essays on the scholarly and personal partnership between anthropologists Ruth Fulton Benedict and Margaret Mead provides diverse analyses of the women’s complicated 25-year relationship. Lois Banner, professor of history and gender studies, and her co-editor present 16 essays that reveal different responses to the couple’s interpretations and revelations about their emotional, intellectual and sexual intimacy. Banner writes about “The Bo-Cu Plant,” an unpublished novel by Benedict; Nancy Lutkehaus, associate professor of anthropology and gender studies, contributes a chapter on Mead.
	Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (Penguin Books, 2005) by Antonio Damasio In a 10th anniversary edition of Antonio Damasio’s classic exploration of the neurochemical basis of feelings, the USC neuroscientist argues that emotions are central to reasoning and decision-making. The human brain, he contends, has a specialized region in the frontal lobes for making personal and social decisions, and this region works in concert with deeper brain centers that store emotional memories. To support his claim, Damasio draws on research with brain-injured patients and also cites the case of Phineas Gage, a railway foreman who lost his ethical faculties after an explosion in 1848 drove a metal rod through his skull.
Willful Creatures: Stories (Doubleday, 2005) by Aimee Bender Aimee Bender, assistant professor of English, has received stellar reviews for her new book, a story collection called a “most unlikely page-turner,” by the Wall Street Journal. Described as surreal and unconventional, her prose brings to life potato children, a family with pumpkin and clothes-iron heads, and a boy with keys for fingers. The New York Times reported that Bender’s “twinkling, chatty prose style carries the reader effortlessly over the road bumps of implausibility.” Still, the Washington Post opined, “Insofar as short narratives can be new, exciting, hard rugged and unyielding, these are.” The online bookseller Powells.com highlighted the book as a “Staff Pick,” writing: “On the surface, most of the stories shouldn’t ring true at all…. A lonely man keeps a tiny man for a pet; a woman makes sculptures out of words and noble gases — yet each delivers an emotional impact rarely matched in short fiction.”
	Wounded (Graywolf Press, 2005) by Percival Everett Novelist Percival Everett, professor of English and author of 15 books, tells the story of art lover and horse trainer John Hunt, a black, Berkeley-educated rancher in rural Wyoming. The town seems tolerant enough until the body of a murdered gay man is found, racial slurs are written in blood in the snow and the cows owned by Hunt’s Native American neighbor are shot. Hunt hesitates to get involved, even when his own hired hand is arrested for the murder. It all boils down to a struggle for justice, tolerance and friendship amid self-doubt, homophobia and the moral and political choices good people must make.
Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy: Liberty and Power in the Early American Republic (New York University Press, 2005) by Mark Kann Political scientist Mark Kann discusses how first-generation Americans coupled their legacy of liberty with a penal philosophy that promoted patriarchy. Although American patriots fought a revolution in the name of freedom, their leadership feared that immigrants, minorities and the lower classes were prone to disorder and crime. This spurred the creation of the penitentiary. The book explores the question of how classical liberalism aided in the development of such expansive penal practices in the wake of the War of Independence.