Dartmouth Authors
Notices of books by Dartmouth authors havenot appeared in the Alumni Magazine sincethe November 1985 issue. This hiatus has produced a large backlog of books to catch up with,a task we hope to complete in the September andOctober issues. For the time being, the spacegiven to each book necessarily will be brief.
Carl A. Gray '23 presents in The Bionic Octogenarian (Williams and Simpson, 1986, $14.95) the story of a remarkable life, characterized in a way by the book's cover photograph of him skiing at Sun Valley in his eighties with two brand-new artificial hips. Living life to the fullest was a philosophy he put into practice from his schoolboy days. Before entering Dartmouth, in a Model T Ford won in a Worcester newspaper circulation contest, he and a friend made a journey to the West Coast and back, overcoming dirt roads, mountains, and bears. After college he was off to Europe as a cattleboat worker, and the next year his adventure was a year-long trip around the world, during which he became a lifelong friend of the future King of Siam. Nothing he did could be called ordinary. Gray eventually settled into a successful business career, showing special talent for bringing ailing companies back to health. He formed his own Grenby Company, which began with machine tools, switched to electronics, and provided tracking equipment for the first atomic tests. In public service, his most celebrated achievement was the widely copied Gray Plan, devised to provide counseling, training, and jobs for thousands in Connecticut in the depression years.
Richard F. Babcock '40 and Charles L. Siemon are authors of The Zoning Game Revisited (Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hahn, 1985). Twenty years ago Babcock wrote The ZoningGame, a study of municipal land use policy and practice. This book brings the subject up to date by describing 11 case histories that illustrate what has been happening in the field. What transpires in a zoning contest makes interesting, sometimes amusing, reading for anyone, even though the details are of most use to city planners, developers, and municipal officials. Neither side has a monopoly on virtue or evil, the authors conclude. Babcock, former Chicago attorney, is professor of law at Duke University.
Charles B. McLane '41 is the author of BlueHill Bay: Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast (Kennebec River Press, 1985, $14.95), which is the first separate edition of his larger study of the islands of Penobscot and Blue Hill Bays published in 1982. Although drawn from the original study, this volume has been corrected and supplemented with new information. It also contains additional photographs, maps, and charts, as well as family histories connected with the various islands. McLane has sailed the Maine coast since 1960 and has an intimate knowledge of the islands and their maritime history.
Edward P. Stafford '42, Commander USN (Ret.), is the author of Little Ship, Big War which has been reissued as a paperback (Jove Books, $3.95). This is the wartime story of Destroyer Escort 343, the USS Abercrombie, named for a pilot who lost his life in the Battle of Midway. Stafford, who was her executive officer, gives a vivid account of the part the little ship played in the Pacific war from the laying of her keel, through the Battle of Leyte Gulf, to the invasion of Okinawa and final victory over the Japanese. The original book, published by Morrow in 1984, received high critical praise.
Everett T. Rattray '54 is the author of a novel, The Adventures of Jeremiah Dimon: ANovel of Old East Hampton (The Pushcart Press, Wainscott, N.Y., 1985, $17.95), published posthumously by his widow, Helen S. Rattray, who provides an afterword. Rattray, who died in 1980, was editor and publisher of The East Hampton Star until his untimely death. A 12th-generation native of East Hampton on Long Island, he makes evident his love of that region in this story of 16-year-old Jeremiah and the rovings that a century ago took him as far away as Cuba. Most of the adventures involve a derelict Bahamian sloop that Jeremiah salvaged and rebuilt. This gives the author the opportunity to bring his nautical experience into full play.
Lewis W. Wolfson '55 has written The Untapped Power of the Press (Praeger, 1985, $9.95 paper). A veteran Washington correspondent and currently professor of communications at American University, he examines the way the press covers government and politics and argues that neither the press nor public officials are using their great power effectively to inform and educate people about government. The areas covered range all the way from the Presidency and Congress to local governments. Wolfson advocates establishing in Washington an independent Center on the Media and Government that would monitor government coverage and promote ways to improve it.
Peter F. Klaren '60 and Thomas J. Bossert are editors of Promise of Development: Theoriesof Change in Latin America (Westview Press, 1986, $36, $16.95 paper). The book is a compilation of writings in the debate over development and dependency in Latin America. It takes up the origins, evolution, and historical context of the main theoretical schools: modernization, dependency and Marxism, corporatism, and bureaucratic authoritarianism. Klaren is professor of Latin American history at George Washington University.
William F. Roth Jr. '62 has written ProblemSolving for Managers (Praeger Publishers, 1985, $19.95), a guidebook to problem-solving strategies for business organizations large and small. Accepting problem solving as an integral part of everyday organizational life, Roth presents the thesis that solutions are found most effectively when a company-wide effort is made. He tells how to motivate employees to make their individual contributions and how to overcome the information shortfall that impedes such contributions. The book also surveys the evolution and present status of organizational problem-solving and looks ahead to the effect of new technology.
Allen V. Koop '65 is the author of AmericanEvangelical Missionaries in France, 1945-75 (University Press of America, 1986, $27.00, $13.50 paper). The book narrates the postwar experiences of the American evangelical missionaries who chose to work in France rather than in a non-Christian culture. It analyzes their search for a successful strategy, explains their growing consensus to concentrate on establishing new independent churches, and describes their difficulties in adapting to French society while trying to change it. Koop is an associate professor at Colby-Sawyer College.
Kenneth E. Sharpe '66 is the author, with Douglas C. Bennett, of Transnational Cor-porations Versus the State: The Political Econ-omy of the Mexican Auto Industry (Princeton University Press, 1985, $42, $9.95 paper). The authors deal with three bargaining con- flicts, in the period 1959 to the early 80s, between Mexico and seven transnational companies active in the country's auto in- dustry. Their account deals with Mexico's efforts to protect its fledgling domestic com- panies, the handicap of the country's eco- nomic dependency, and the eventual ascendancy of the TPCs. Mexico has had some limited success in controlling TPC practices and policies, but not in sight, for political and economic reasons, is the strong domestic auto industry the state desires and once thought it was on the way to achiev- ing. Kenneth Sharpe is associate professor of political science at Swarthmore.
William M. Todd 111 '66 is the author of Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin (Har- vard University Press, 1986, $2O), an ex- amination of the literature and the social milieu of the early decades of the 19th century in Imperial Russia, a period which many call the literary golden age of that nation. Todd uses Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, and Gogol's Dead Souls as the bases of his study, But before taking up each of these masterpieces he describes the ideology of Russian polite society and the literary institutions with which Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol had to contend. While all three writers provided the beauty and order that polite society cherished, they were at the same time agents of change in the perception of literature's place in secular culture and of the society itself. Todd is professor of Russian and comparative literature at Stanford.
Julian A. Miller '67 and Don E. Miller '68, with Sigmund S. Miller, are the authors of Life Span Plus (Macmillan, 1986, $24.95), subtitled "The' Definitive Guide to Health and Weil-Being for the Rest of Your Life." This 790-page book is a compendium of practical information about extending one's natural life span, especially in the older years, to which the book devotes most of its contents. The authors' central point is that advanced age need not bring a decline in health, mental acuity, or energy. In Part I, entitled "Optimal Aging," they spell out ways to forestall a decline. Part II lists symptoms common to old age, classified in two ways, by type and by body location. Part III discusses the diseases and disorders themselves, and Part IV deals with drugs and medication. All in all, Life Span Plus is a very complete and informative summary of health concerns in old age and of the things to do to keep them from ever happening.
Charles A. Monagan '72 in The ReluctantNaturalist (Atheneum, 1984) offers a "field guide to the perils of the natural world. With tongue in cheek and insect repellant in hand, he leads his readers through the brambles and briars, the mold and the mildew that infest our fields, streams, and basements. After detailing indoor dangers, Monagan ventures, reluctantly, outdoors where he catalogues perils and possible remedies, including cyanide capsules in case you get into very deep trouble. The book contains a certain amount of debunking of nature's myths, such as the groundhog's ability to predict the end of winter. Monagan claims to have achieved just as good results with a box of Cheerios.
Jeffrey R. Weeks '78 is the author of TheShape of Space (Marcel Dekker, 1985) which has the subtitle "How to Visualize Surfaces and Three-Dimensional Manifolds. Weeks, who was visiting assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Ithaca College when the book was written, has sought to provide an introduction to topology for the general reader as well as students of advanced mathematics. The use of pictorial exposition is a feature of the book, and more than 170 illustrations are provided.
Jim Schley '79 is the editor of Writing in aNuclear Age (University Press of New England, 1985, $9.95), a paperback reprint of a special issue of the New England Reviewand Bread Loaf Quarterly. It is a collection of poems (one by Schley) and prose writings by 48 men and women who express their thoughts and feelings about living in this time of unprecedented global peril. In his preface Schley says: "My choices as editor have been personal, perhaps idiosyncratic. I've made my judgments on the basis both of thematic pertinence and literary merit
... in the hope of avoiding a merely polemic atmosphere." He concludes: "Ours is a civilization at a decisive juncture. Here is a chorus for the time being, words from the lovers of words for life on this blue planet."
Michael Fowler 'B2 is the author of WinstonS. Churchill: Philosopher and Statesman (University Press of America, 1985) which is Volume 19 in the series on Credibility of Institutions, Policies, and Leadership funded by the Hewlett Foundation. The section on Churchill's political philosophy deals primarily with his internationalism. The discussion of Churchill as Cold War statesman covers his early distrust of Russia and his positions concerning the second front, destroying German power, the occupation of Germany, and Poland.
FACULTY
Walter Arndt, professor of Russian literature, is the editor and translator of AlexanderPushkin: Collected Narrative and Lyrical Poetry (Ardis, Ann Arbor, 1984). Arndt has spent much of his life bringing Russia's greatest poet to the English-speaking world. This collection, much larger than his 1972 book, covers the entire span of Pushkin's career. It contains some 15,000 lines, translated metrically and rhymed, following the forms of the originals. More than half of the 100 lyric poems appear here for the first time. A general introduction and separate introductions to the longer poems are a valuable part of this definitive volume. Professor Arndt won the Bollingen Prize in 1963 for his translation of Eugene Onegin, selected stanzas of which are printed in this collection.
Kevin Brownlee, associate professor of French and Italian, and Stephen G. Nichols '58 are coeditors of Images of Power: MedievalHistory/ Discourse/ Literature (Yale University Press, 1986, $12.95) which is No. 70 of Yale French Studies. The 10 scholars represented in the volume gathered at Dartmouth's Minary Conference Center on Squam Lake in September 1983, and their essays are expanded versions of the proceedings. JohnD. Lyons, professor of French and Italian at Dartmouth, is a contributor, and so are editors Brownlee and Nichols, who formerly taught at Dartmouth and now is at the University of Pennsylvania.
