Reviews (1)

THE George Herbert Mead biography
I would not have found this book but for the fact that the author (Gary Cook) is my advisor, professor, and friend here at Beloit College. He introduced me to the works of Mead, as well as the other great American pragmatists (C.S. Peirce, William James, etc). A better professor than writer, but for any who interested in the life of Mead, this book is a must. ... Read more

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Not essential Levi-Strauss, but worthwhile
Didier Eribon's conversations with Claude Levi-Strauss, the father of Structural Anthropology and one of the leading intellectuals of 20th century France, are enlightening and occasionally entertaining. You get an immediate feel for Levi-Strauss's personality... and for his Gallic flair for words and ability to damn with faint praise. (His comment about how Sartre was a great mind... and proof that even great minds can talk nonsense ... comes to mind immediately).

As an interviewer, Eribon has obviously done his homework: he is familiar not only with Levi-Strauss's work but with the various reactions to same, positive and negative. He is able to quote names and dates (at times much to Levi-Strauss's chagrin...) and is conversant both in the language of Structuralism and Anthropology. He also manages to elicit many gems from Levi-Strauss, including some discussions of his early interactions with various Surrealists.

This is not an essential addition to a Levi-Strauss collection: if you want an introduction to his thought and work, you'd probably be better off reading his volumes on Mythology or his *Structural Anthropology.* If you already know something about the man ... or if you're interested in 20th century French intellectuals (and who isn't) ... you'll enjoy this book. I'd file this one under "nice to have" rather than "must have." ... Read more

Book Description

When individuals from working-class backgrounds seek entry into the upper-middle-class world of academia, they often encounter difficulties. Examining the professional and personal lives of a group of sociologists from working class backgrounds, this extensive study finds that despite their successes as Ph.D. recipients, these scholars have suffered structural, interpersonal, and personal consequences that are linked to that class background. Many are uncomfortable with the academic role and the authority structure of the university, and see themselves as outsiders both within the academy and its larger cultural environment. The authors' conclusion, is that upward social mobility is never complete and that these upwardly mobile professionals appear to be "caught in the middle" between the world of their childhoods and the very different world that they must confront daily as members of the academy. ... Read more

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Reviews (2)

Scholarship and Solidarity
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A fine study of the "philanthropologist" Verrier Elwin, who went from Oxford cleric to tribal scholar/activist, living among various groups of 'aboriginal' Indians and taking up their causes. Elwin was the first Englishman to gain Indian citizenship after independence, but constantly wrote against those in power (at a state or a national level) who attempted to destroy tribal ways of life. Extremely interesting discussion of the delicate negotiation of a suitable rhetoric in the overheated debates around such issues. Deftly illuminates the contradictions of nationalism and the postcolonial state, where hegemonic identity politics attempts to dominate those on the margins, all in the name of 'liberation'. Important and NECESSARY corrective to simple assumptions about what postcoloniality involves. I recommend it highly. A good read!

A Different World
This is a very well-written and sympathetic biography of a great human being who struggled through many of his human impulses yet he remained true to himself till the end, the courage to live with enormous integrity.

The author has taken pains to give us glimpses of an another world within India, and what possibly motivated (and continues to motivate)the citizens of that world. A world which even the "greats" of India's freedom movement did not care to emphatise with.

The book is all the more important as it tells us of the work of a man who respected the tribals of India, literally lived like them, and not as an outsider, and sang and danced with them.

And that at a time when tribal life style in India is either being show cased or relegated to the background by the dominant middle class culture.

The author's style is engaging, without ever being patronising, and the prose is very readable without ever being difficult. A brilliant tour de force.

Chinu ... Read more

Reviews (5)

I love that book!
this is my favorite book. if anyone has similar taste to me then i highly recommend them to read it. i was getting so into reading it that i never wanted it to end. to last forever. so i tried to do so by reading a limit of pages each day. i live in NYC and by reading the book i had grown a stronger love for the city and thats another reason i loved the book. the down fall of the book? well, it was and made me sad. it was kinda a depressing book. you now. like a heart-acher.

it was indeed a pleasure to read and in the future, if you do read it, i hope you injoy.

thats my review! i hope i helped!

Recommended to students of Jewish history & women's studies.
Streets: Memoir Of The Lower East Side was written in 1922 and published for the first time in 1955. This remarkable memoir of a young Jewish girl's coming of age in the tenement slums of New York's Lower East Side is gritty, candid, vivid, engaging, sensitive, and streetsmart. Bella Spewack overcame obstacles of gender, background, and religious discriminations to succeed as a celebrated journalist, playwright, and screenwriter. Streets is highly recommended, articulate reading and will prove of special interest to students of American Jewish history, Women's Studies, and biographies reflecting the triumph of the human spirit over social and cultural barriers.

The early life of an unusual woman, with comedy and sadness
This is a coming of age story depicting the harrowing early life of an extraordinary talent. Told with an amazing eye for detail and a highly developed sense of humor, this is one of the most moving autobiographies I have read. Bella Spewack writes of her thirst for knowledge and determination. In later life Bella invented the Girl Scout cookie, became a noted journalist and wrote successful plays and movies. Streets tells of the difficult circumstances of her childhood.

Fascinating, historical review
This book was written by a very eloquent author in 1922. At 23years of age, she carefully details her struggles of growing up inpoverty on the lower east side of Manhattan. This is one of a few books that deals with the difficulties faced by immigrants of to New York around the turn of the century. Her battles are those of a poor, Jewish girl growing up without a father in tenement housing. I thouroughly recommend this book to Jews, feminists and historians.

If you liked Angela's Ashes, try this
Gorgeous. I read it a few years ago, but when I recently read Angela's Ashes, I thought they'd make a great pairing for a book club. Streets is set a generation before, but it's New York is similar. Added to the hardships is the dimension of gender: Bella and her mother were alone with two babies, vulnerable in ways little Frank McCourt never knew. Bella's observations on how girls are friends, how Jewish and Gentile children understand one another, and on being the caretaking sister are dead-on and still apply. The story of Bella's little brother Herschey is so heartbreaking; it's good that this edition tells you what happened in the rest of Bella's life, because like Angela's Ashes, it ends with her in her late teens. Everyone I've recommended this book to has loved it. It's a quick, but lasting, read. ... Read more

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Reviews (26)

why all the hateful reviews?
I find the incredibly negative reviews of Ivy League Stripper interesting. I almost wonder if I read a different book than some of these people. Perhaps they were written by some of her rivals. Who knows?

Heidi does not "advocate" stripping anywhere in the book that I can tell, nor did she when I saw her on Real Personal with Bob Berkowitz. In fact, she made a point of saying she did not recommend it as a way of earning money. On TV and in the book she made it quite clear that it is not an easy or safe way to make money, however addictive that money might be. My sense of the book was that she came across as just about the only undamaged person in the business. She did discuss topics like drug use, prostitution, money addiction, and self-esteem, but since the book was about her personal journey, she didn't dwell on the problems of others. Perhaps it didn't appeal to people who wanted a more dramatic, negative, and victimized approach. She never said anything to give even the slightest impression that she was attempting a tour de force of sex work in the US. (I recommend Susie Bright or Carol Queen for that sort of thing.) This was a book about her personal journey, not yours. If your experience was different, then write your own book so we can read it, too.

I'll admit that my experience with "exotic dancers" is somewhat limited. I have only been to the clubs a half dozen or so times, and I don't know any dancers personally. I do hear by second and third hand stories that the scene does have a high rate of drug (including alcohol - it is a drug) use, prostitution, and other unsavory activities. There would probably be far less of such things if sex work were not forced into marginal areas of towns and the people involved treated like garbage by so-called "good citizens." The clubs I visited had full nudity.

The question of whether showing off one's body for money is degrading is largely a matter of semantics and personality. People who have an exhibitionistic bent are *not* degraded by such exposure, but exhilarated and empowered by it. Realize that there are different types of people in the world! Is it any less degrading for a coal miner to trade the health of his lungs for money, or a stock broker his/her ethics? Women in this society face degrading behavior all the time in every location and setting you care to name. (For that matter so do men.) If one looks beneath the thin veneer of common society here in the US, there is far more unsavory behavior going on than most will admit, and it happens in churches, boardrooms, and on Wall Street. This is a sick, sex-negative, anti-nature, and basically maladjusted society, and we all pay a price for that.

The discussion of nudity and appreciation of the human body and sexuality is a far too long and complex one to settle here. Read some history - When God Was A Woman, Ishtar Rising, or other material on how and why our current religious-based views of sex were created. Shame over nudity and sexual behavior is not universal, natural, "moral," or healthy by a long shot. Read Betty Dodson, Carol Queen, Susie Bright, Annie Sprinkle, Laura Kipnis, or some other of the intelligent, sex-positive writers.

My experience in strip clubs was transformative. I felt liberated and freed from centuries of lies. I experienced more spiritual release in those few short hours than in decades of Christian beliefs. I literally felt transported back to a time when women were proud of being sexual beings who owned, celebrated, and were masters of, their own sexual energy. I felt a deep sense of gratitude, wonder, awe, respect, devotion, and something so deeply spiritual that it sent me researching the goddess religions for understanding. Few women comprehend the tremendous power their body holds for men. (And there are forces in this society who don't want you to learn that, either.)

The complaints that she didn't seek "honest" work are humorous - maybe something honest like politics or working at Enron or pushing denatured foodlike toxins at a fast-food restaurant? I consider the no-strings, cash-for-a-look-at-my-body transaction in the strip clubs to be one of the most honest transactions in this society!

Of course, I realize that Heidi's real error was in writing what she really experienced and how she really felt, not what was expected or "politically correct." I find it interesting when women who respond to being sexually assualted/harassed by ramping up their self-esteem, owning and wielding their sexual power instead of becoming whimpering little victims who need someone to protect them, are attacked for it. Interesting how little is said in the reviews of the behavior of the people at Brown.

But then again, maybe some of the reviews are from folks at Brown............

I feel it is really a three star, but I gave it four in an attempt to create some balance. Her writing is okay, but not as insightful or powerful as Susie Bright, Carol Queen, Betty Dodson, or Laura Kipnis. Read them if you are looking for deep discussions of sexual issues. Read this book if you want to read one person's story.

Only part of the truth
This book does a service in that it brings out the harsh reality of college tuition and what far more young women than this country will admit will do to pay for a college beyond their means. Mattson however does not discuss the relationship of prostitution to stripping, pervasive influence of government and/or organized crime nor the long term effects such exploitive use of her beauty may have had on her relationships since.

If you look around colleges you will see prospering escort services and the like catering to women who need large amounts of cash for relatively few hours' work. This is a dimension Mattson only briefly touches on: that young women can legitimately earn money for college but the hard work and necessary hours for most available jobs will affect their performance in school. It is hard to judge in this case, because college tuition ,especially at an Ivy league school equals the price of a modest home or a nice condo paid in after tax income.

What Mattson does do here is raise awareness of what such costs will encourage women to do. She obviously had the achievement and intelligence to make it into Brown but not the financial aid necessary to make work and attending the school all that feasible. In some ways you can say the educational system as such can work against promising students who come from less affluent families. Should someone with a good head and shallow pockets be prevented from realizing their potential? Should there be a halfway point where the student can work and get enough aid such that stripping and/or prostitution is not so attractive a way out?

We might also ask reading this book if there is anything in Mattson's past that could have influenced her towards the stripping/sex/fantasy for money business even hadshe not attended Brown? Was she abused? Had she had bad experiences in the past with men?

ALL WRONG.
Although, I respect Heidi Mattson's tenacity...she wrote a book and got it published -- that is about it. As a woman who has been in and around this business for many years -- I can honestly say that Mattson is still hiding the truth from mom. Her fragmented stories are so "sugar coated" it is laughable to anyone who knows the truth about this dark world. I don't care if you graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School or if you have no education and grew up in foster homes -- if you have worked as a stripper for more than one night, undoubtably -- you have experienced moments of extreme degradation -- no one girl (dancer) is different in the eyes of a customer than the next in a strip club -- As a writer, if you are going to step up and write a book about this "taboo" subject -- TELL IT LIKE IT IS -- TAKE THE LEAP. This book is NOT an accurate account by any means of the real world of stripping....

pictures alone are worth the price
i enjoyed this book as it is easy to hold in one hand. A+++

Thought Provoking...Sort of
The book prompted great discusions with me and my mother. Good or bad writing, we both felt she presented a descent argument for acquiring money by stripping. And good or bad, the book has started a vivid discussion of this occupation.

I went to high school with Heidi. I am from the small town America she left. I was on the cross country team with her. In writing about how she kept in shape, she talks about being one of the best runners on the team which is true. But a note about there only being four girls on the (girls') team might have added a bit more perspective.

Which is what this book lacks. She eagely wanted to cover so many 'scandelous' and not so naughty topics: A chapter on organized crime? A night with a customer? Some social discorse on feminism with cited references and all? The pros and cons of breast enlargements? And, of course, her counting the money. If she had whittled down some of these topics, delved deeper on selected issues, gone outside herself and looked more at the other women and their lives and not counted her money every other chapter, she might have eeked up a bit in the ratings.

There were times I was hooked. I kept reading the book because I was genuinely interested in her going home to Bucksport, Maine and telling her parents the truth. That's brave...I think. I can see her father's face and his silence as she tells him in the kitchen. To me, her anticipation of this moment was where the writing was.

I would recommend this book to only a selected few. ... Read more

Book Description

This biography of John Mann Goggin recounts the story of Florida archaeology from its 19th-century beginnings to the present through the life of its most influential pioneer, a charismatic personality who, more than any other individual, shaped and reshaped Florida archaeology. It is a story of a time and place long vanished, when Florida fieldwork was always on adventure.

Florida archaeology has been influencing the development of archaeological content and theory on a national level for more than a century and Goggin has been a major participant in this evolution. This account reveals the person as well as the archaeologist and examines how Goggin's personal life influenced his way of working and thinking. Weisman critically evaluates Goggin's contributions to the field and also the impact of his work on major themes and trends in Florida archaeology, among them the strong culture-area approach that continues to serve as a foundation for current applications.

Until now, Goggin has remained an enigma to most professional archaeologists, even to many who knew him. This biography explores his intellectual development and the context of his ideas and accomplishments: he established the state's first academic Department of Anthropology (at the University of Florida), pioneered scientific underwater archaeology and historical archaeology, and spearheaded the first major archaeological studies of Spanish colonial material culture in Florida and the Caribbean.

Weisman integrates interviews with Goggin's friends, colleagues, and former students with personal and academic papers and his own retracing of Goggin's footsteps. Supplemented with 23 b&w illustrations, Pioneer in Space and Time is a vivid portrait of Goggin's singular motivation and the influence of his vision on the modern practice of Florida archaeology. ... Read more

Book Description

"Experimental text exploring relationship between literary writing and ethnogrpahic writing through conversations between an experienced ethnographer and a novelist, also spouses, over their joint travels." ... Read more

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Book Description

This third set of Critical Assessments on the foremost French Sociologist takes as its main focus writings since 1990. A broad, authoritative selection of articles which detail changes in interpreting Durkheim since the 1920s. ... Read more

Book Description

In this explosive book, Adolph Reed covers for the first time the full sweep and totality of W. E. B. Du Bois's political thought. Departing from existing scholarship, Reed locates the sources of Du Bois's thought in the cauldron of reform-minded intellectual life at the turn of the century, demonstrating that a commitment to liberal collectivism, an essentially Fabian socialism, remained pivotal in Du Bois's thought even as he embraced a range of political programs over time, including radical Marxism. He remaps the history of twentieth-century progressive thought and sharply criticizing recent trends in Afro-American, literary, and cultural studies. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Reconceptualizes African American Political Thought
When most think about Dubois, one of the first theoretical formulations that come to mind is the oft-quoted "double-consciousness." In this work, Reed's central task is to situate African American political thought squarely within the material context in which it occurs using W.E.B. Dubois as the focus for this project. Along the way Reed slices and dices Henry Louis Gates and the new black intellectuals, as well as the troublesome concept of "double consciousness" that Reed shows to be overstudied at best. Clearly among the best works of its kind to come to light in some years. ... Read more

Book Description

A biography of the influential but now-forgotten 19th-century American social reformer who preached equality in marriage, free love, and the cold-water cure.

Though little known today, Mary Gove Nichols (1810-84) was once one of the most infamous and influential women in America, a radical social reformer and pioneering feminist who preached equality in marriage, free love, spiritualism, the health risks of corsets and masturbation, the benefits of the cold-water cure, and, above all, the importance of happiness.A victim of emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her first husband, she made it her life's work to ensure that other women were better informed about their bodies and their opportunities than she had been.After leaving her first husband, she became a national figure in the 1840s and '50s by giving anatomy lectures around the country, attended by thousands of women, in which she openly discussed the needs, details, and desires of the female body.With her second husband, medical writer and social reformer Thomas Low Nichols, she embarked on an unprecedented intellectual and professional collaboration, and together they challenged the inequities of conventional marriage, demanded the right of every woman to have control over her body, and advocated universal good health.

Considered too radical and mercurial even by their fellow reformers, especially after their conversion to Catholicism, Mary and her husband were often excluded from the very social causes they had helped to found–just as they have been from the histories of their era. In Shameless, Jean Silver-Isenstadt offers the first biography of this remarkable woman who paved the way for such activists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Sanger.Drawing on the extensive public and private writings of the Nicholses and their peers, Silver-Isenstadt vividly portrays Mary Gove Nichols' courageous life and visionary intellect, revealing the rich diversity of opinion within nineteenth-century America's social reform movements and uncovering the inspiring story of a woman who dared to live by the utopian principles she advocated. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

A captivating biography, rich in cultural history
Jean Silver-Isenstadt's book is an exhaustively researched and beautifully-written biography of this prominent nineteenth-century reformer, Mary Gove Nichols, and her husband, Thomas Low Nichols. In addition to the captivating life story of Nichols, Silver-Isenstadt inlcudes rich detail of American cultural history in the narrative, and in many enjoyable detours, she rounds out the picture of Nichols and her historical context by including information about subjects as wide-ranging as other health reformers, water cure therapy, and transcendentalist writers. All of this helps us understand Nichols' central and at times path-breaking role in several intersecting reform movements of her time.
A fine historical text, this book is a very readable and engaging book for non-academics and academics alike. Great for professional and armchair historians.

Beautifully Written; Carefully Researched
Too little is known of the advances of women in antebellum America. Mary Gove Nichols was an important and fascinating part of this scene, and she is brought to life in this interesting and well-researched biography. Nichols' personal quest for independence from a tragic marriage is agonizing, but only when she achieves such freedom does her real story begin. A writer and teacher, her move to New York City in 1845 led to her knowing some of the era's most important literary people---Poe, Bryant, N. P. Willis, Margaret Fuller, Frances Osgood, and others---and to her association with important social and scientific movements of the day---mesmerism, phrenology, Fouierism, Swedenborgianism, and especially water-cure. Criticized as an advocate for free love, Nichols toured the country, lecturing to women on such taboo subjects as female anatomy and masturbation. Her story is remarkable as is Jean Silver-Isenstadt's telling of it.

Lovely, lively writing on a fascinating subject
This book is that rarest of works--a wonderful read on an important, thought-provoking subject. As a biographer, Jean Silver-Isenstadt shows us how an individual life can reflect and reveal the ideas and ideals of a particular time and place, but she never reduces Mary Gove Nichols to a mere product of her era. Instead, the author deftly intertwines her subject's story with cogent and relvant insights into the history of health care and women's history, with the result that Mary Gove Nichols seems more--and not less--real.

When Medicine and Health Care were still interesting
The mental health care system today fills one with dread. Physicians with ties to the pharmaceutical industry, with some interest in curing you but with an eye on body materials, tissues, blood, and organs that can be harvested and sold at great profit confront us all. Reading this extremely well-written book provides a perspective at a very different moment in the history of medicine. Mary Gove Nichols advocated a wide variety of alternatives to standard medical care which, if one thinks about it, were not all that bad. They were undoubtedly far superior to what orthodox physicians prescribed at the time: blood-letting, mercury, leeches, purgatives, emetics, and the like. Individuals surviving that kind of treatment could truly be proud of their superior health! Mary Gove Nichols, feminist and physician, was one of the very first women to lecture on medicine to whoever would come and listen. She advocated a healthy diet, the water cure, proper exercise, and rest; ideas that have well stood up the test of time.
The book is very well written; the illustrations are wonderful. It is a true treasure!! And, for a book from an academic publisher, remarkably affordable.

Amazing pre-Civil War activist
All my life, I've thought of 18th and 19th century women as uneducated homemakers, good at making quilts or helping clear the land. Mary Gove Nichols and her second husband Thomas Nichols seem so absolutely current. She was out there, giving lectures to women on their anatomy and physiology, teaching publicly about healthy sexuality and about equality in marriage. For people who just know about spa history from the novel and movie, Road to Wellville, this book will win your respect and even awe.
And this book is a great read! It will spark up any women's studies, or 19th Century American studies, or history of medicine reading list. You'll pass this one along to your friends for a great summer read as well, especially if you are going to Upstate New York, or to Antioch and Yellow Springs. Her life was filled with adventures. This really does read like a novel. ... Read more