News
Press releases about selected titles may be viewed below:
Why Do They Kill?
Can We Prevent Domestic Murder?
Yes, batterer-killers can be identified and stopped, says psychologist-researcher David Adams
(NASHVILLE, TN) “Wife murders are not, for the most part, ‘crimes of passion,’ ” says psychologist and leading expert on men who batter, David Adams. “This is a culmination of factors and many elements of their fatal crimes are foretold by their past behavior in intimate relationships.”
Adams’ new book, WHY DO THEY KILL? Men Who Murder Their Intimate Partners (Vanderbilt University Press, published September 21, 2007), is the first American study of domestic homicide to include in-depth interviews with killers, and it yields some important insights. Adams painstakingly examines the lives of men who kill their intimate partners—and finds strong indications that the murders they committed were neither random nor spontaneous. These killings were triggered as much by long-term factors in the men’s histories as they were by the immediate situation.
Adams identifies five different types of wife killers—the jealous partner, the substance abuser, the materially motivated, the suicidal man, and the career criminal—each with distinctive patterns of behavior within intimate relationships, including how they meet and woo women, what they expect of intimate partners, how they respond to resistance, and ultimately, what motivates them to kill. Detailed case examples are used to illustrate key patterns of abuse, escalation, and punishment.
The author also interviewed victims of attempted homicide, who “stood in” for the murder victims and offered a critical perspective as those who survived shootings, stabbings, and strangulations. He says, “I knew that the best sources of information were dead. And while it was impossible to talk to the deceased, we decided to do the next best thing: interview women who came closest to being killed, victims of attempted homicide.” One thing he found in these interviews was that these attempts were not the spontaneous crimes of passion most people believe them to be, but planned-out assaults complete with warning signs.
- “One woman said it seemed he had been “working himself up to it more and more.” Another said, “I could see he was kind of psyching himself up for whatever.” A third woman said, “I could tell he was hurting and just wanted to end it all. I should have known he wanted to end me!””
After his more than thirty years of research and working with men who batter, Adams believes that we could dramatically reduce domestic homicides by making it harder for men to get guns, vigorously enforcing batterer intervention programs, and making the criminal justice system more victim-friendly.
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence has observed October as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month since 1987, the same year the first national toll-free domestic violence hotline was begun. And 2007 marks the 30th anniversary of Emerge, the nation’s first batterer intervention project, co-founded by the author, David Adams.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
DAVID ADAMS, a licensed psychologist, is co-founder and co-director of Emerge, established in 1977, the first counseling program in the nation for men who abused women. He has conducted trainings for social service and criminal justice professionals in 38 states and ten countries. Adams is Director of the National Domestic Violence Danger Assessment Training Project.
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Want to Change the World?
Want to Change the World
Start in your own neighborhood and organize, urge change-makers in a new book that is an essential resource for community organizers—and would-be organizers
(Nashville, TN) Presidential contender Senator Barack Obama often mentions his public service origins as a community organizer in Chicago—leaving some people to wonder just what is it that community organizers do, how they do it, and what kind of person chooses organizing as a career.
A new book by Kristin Layng Szakos and Joe Szakos, WE MAKE CHANGE: Community Organizers Talk About What They Do—and Why (published June 29, 2007 by Vanderbilt University Press), explores the world of community organizing through the voices of real people working in the field, in small towns and city neighborhoods—women and men of different races and economic backgrounds, ranging in age from those in their twenties to those in their sixties. Fourteen in-depth profiles tell the life stories of a cross-section of the diverse people who choose the life of an organizer. Other chapters, focused on issues of organizing, are tapestries of experience woven from the 81 interviews the authors conducted.
Community organizers work at their jobs because they are passionate, because they believe that change is possible, and because they enjoy working with people. Although it's not an occupation that leads to great wealth, community organizers can make a living at it. They get salaries, pensions and health insurance. They raise families. They do well by doing good.
Here is a sampling of what these organizers have to say:
- “Something big and dramatic and powerful could happen.You could make it happen: not just see it or be a part of it, but make it happen. I think that was really part of becoming an organizer, not just being an activist.”
- “There’s no other feeling like seeing people actually create change. It’s amazing when people realize that they already have what they need to get what they want done. At the end of the day, it’s a really fun job.”
- “It’s about seeing that spark that happens in people’s eyes when you realize that something is possible, when you see someone just move from a place of ‘That’s just the way it is, what can we do about it?’ to ‘OK. Let’s do something.’ ”
As activist and social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich puts it: “Looking for a rewarding, meaningful career? . . . One of the most adventurous careers available [is] grassroots organizing for social change. The pay is lousy, the hours are long, but . . . you won’t find better company anywhere.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Kristin Layng Szakos is the former editor of The Appalachian Reader, a quarterly journal about citizen organizing in Appalachia. Joe Szakos has been the Executive Director of the Virginia Organizing Project since 1994. He was the founding coordinator of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (1981-1993), as well as one of the founders of the Southern Empowerment Project and the Hungarian Environmental Partnership.
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Another Mother
Fixing Foster Care
A Child Welfare Advocate—and a Foster Mother Herself—Tells of the Hurdles She Had to Surmount and Urges Change for the System
(NASHVILLE, TN) “Every child needs a parent who is capable and committed to caring for them,” says Sarah Gerstenzang. Unfortunately, urgently needed foster parents too often are caught up in a system that is confusing, discouraging, and frequently places the best interests of the foster child at the bottom of its priorities. Gerstenzang’s own dramatic story of becoming a foster mother and her advice to system professionals and prospective foster parents are detailed in a new book, ANOTHER MOTHER: Co-Parenting with the Foster Care System (published March 19, 2007 by Vanderbilt University Press).
One night after midnight social workers brought a baby girl to the author’s home, and Sarah Gerstenzang’s life as a foster mother began. A social worker herself, Gerstenzang discovered that raising Cecilia, despite all the personal joys, would be a complex and frustrating process of “co-parenting” with the foster care system in New York City. Foster parents are in great demand, but they are not necessarily treated well. The author takes the reader through the home visits, the Early Intervention evaluation, the WIC program that (with much bureaucratic hassle) provides free formula and cereal, and the mandatory parenting training sessions. She comments, “When Michael and I became foster parents, we learned how stigmatizing, demoralizing, and just plain inconvenient and time consuming being part of the ‘unentitled’ population can be. With the exception of Early Intervention, we often felt that the programs were more concerned with regulating our behavior than with providing services.”
Regular meetings with the birth family were also part of the process. Not only were they awkward for all concerned, but each visit involved a commute of several hours. One social worker admitted that she preferred a foster parent who didn’t work because that person could more easily comply with the time-consuming regulations.
Central to Another Mother is the issue of transracial placement. Sarah remembers, “That first day the contrast between my pale skin and Cecilia’s brown skin seemed glaring. Not only did I feel that I had someone else’s child, I felt that I had a child from another culture. Would I owe someone an explanation?” (Gerstenzang is recalling the 1972 opposition of the National Association of Black Social Workers.) Her account is full of anecdotes and reflections about race: acceptance and prejudice from others; the feelings of her two children about having a sibling of a different race; and efforts to maintain links to the culture of the child’s origin, beginning with skin and hair care.
 Sarah Gerstenzang is an Assistant Project Director of the Adoption Exchange Association, an organization dedicated to finding atopive families for the 119,000 chidren who wait in foster care. She was formerly a Senior Policy Analyst at Children’s Rights and holds a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. She and her husband live with their three children (including Cecilia, whom they adopted) in Brooklyn, New York. (Photo by Michael Gerstenzang)
As part of “National Adoption Month” (November 2006), Sarah Gerstenzang was a featured guest on the television show “The View” with other professionals and adoptive parents, including co-host Rosie O’Donnell.
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Perversion of Power
ANATOMY OF A COVER-UP
A psychotherapist who specializes in sexual abuse recovery reveals the dynamics of the scandal that has rocked the very foundations of the Catholic Church
( Nashville , TN ) There is no greater sadness than the sexual abuse of children, especially when the abuse is inflicted by those to whom the victims would normally turn for protection.
Yet as clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea will testify, sorrow knows no limit when its source is the Catholic Church, whose fall from moral authority, she says, is one of the tragedies of our time. Her new book, Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (published March 12, 2007, Vanderbilt University Press), which probes the growing crisis, is guaranteed to stir unprecedented debate.
Frawley-O'Dea asserts that despite the shocking headlines of recent years which have unmasked all manner of sexual predators from rural classrooms to Capitol Hill cloakrooms, this sordid behavior has been business-as-usual for decades within the Catholic Church.
Not only that, the author—who has specialized in sexual abuse recovery—charges that the structure of the Church, from the highest levels down to local parishes, tolerates and actually encourages this behavior, and punishes those who expose their transgressions.
Frawley-O'Dea goes beyond the most prominent deviants in the clergy to relate dozens of other stories, making it clear that these sex offenders may not deviate so far from the norm after all.
The author assembles their histories into a carefully constructed argument that drives toward an incendiary conclusion: “It is my contention,” Frawley-O'Dea writes, “that Catholic theological renderings . . . about bodies, gender, desire, sex, mandatory celibacy, and sexual orientation . . . are stultifying to human psychological and spiritual growth and are even unethical.”
This corruption, she contends, manifests in dozens of ways, from the perversion of Christ's celebration of life into a doctrine that emphasizes redemption through suffering to the “campy” cut of priestly vestments, the robes and frills and furry trims that suggest unresolved questions of masculinity.
Perversion of Power is based on years of meticulous research and is laid forth with passion and reason.
As Frawley-O'Dea recounts the Church's attempts to thwart those outside the community who investigate these activities and to suppress those who attempt reform from within, her spotlight shines even on the current pontiff: When a reporter asked Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger several years ago to comment on an investigation of alleged abuse, the future Pope Benedict XVI reportedly responded not with words but with action, slapping the journalist's hand.
Throughout Perversion of Power, Frawley-O'Dea reminds the reader that countless members of the clergy have served with piety and in a spirit of compassion. Some have literally fallen to their knees before their congregations, begging forgiveness for the sins of their Church. Others who have documented outrages they witnessed have been silenced as Vatican officials ordered their investigations destroyed.
Power, then, remains in the hands of those who have done the most evil. For sounding this message, Frawley-O'Dea will surely draw the ire of the Church and its defenders.
Even so, Perversion of Power cannot be ignored. For those who abuse and others who struggle to recover, whether within or beyond the reach of the Catholic Church, the rules of discussion—and possibly the perpetration of injustice—are about to change, forever and, Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea hopes, for the better.
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Old Age in a New Age
How Boomers Are Reinventing the Nursing Home
( Nashville , TN ) For the last 50 years, nursing homes have been the place of last resort, a warehouse for those who are old and disabled. Residents could spend months or years sitting in wheelchairs for hours on end, waiting for the call to dinner or bingo to break the tedium. “Promise you won't put me in a nursing home” was parents' heart-wrenching plea to their middle-aged children.
Today, 1.5 million frail elders live in these institutions, with another million in assisted living. Despite decades of reform efforts, we still dread long-term care for ourselves and our loved ones. But journalist Beth Baker documents that it doesn't have to be this way.
In her new book, OLD AGE IN A NEW AGE : The Promise of Transformative Nursing Homes (Vanderbilt University Press, May 2007), Baker tells the story of a new generation of visionary advocates and practitioners who are transforming both the culture of nursing homes and the way we view aging. She takes readers on a journey into some of the best places in America for elders to live. In these remarkable nursing homes, residents have a say in their everyday lives, enjoy an environment that looks and feels like an ordinary home, live with dignity and purpose, and find comfort in close relationships with caregivers.
Among her surprising discoveries:
• Better care doesn't have to cost more. Some of the best nursing homes in the nation serve primarily low-income people who are on Medicaid. For example, Traceway Retirement Community, in Tupelo , Mississippi , has abolished its traditional nursing home and replaced it with the nation's first “Green Houses,” group homes that holistically serve the elders who live there. By concentrating on relationships, person-centered care, and resident choice, such homes realize significant savings in reduced staff turnover, less wasted food, and fewer medications.
• Staff can be valued partners, not high-turnover, expendable cogs. Residents value close relationships with caregivers, family and friends more than any other quality of life concern, including their physical health, cleanliness of the facility, and activities. Nursing homes can have caring, consistent staff -- and reduce costly turnover, now averaging 70 percent nationally -- by changing the management structure from a topdown hierarchy that rewards efficiency to a collaborative team that enriches the lives of residents.“It's not as institutionalized as the others,” one aide says of her nursing home. “You get to have fun with the residents. You don't get in trouble for sitting down and talking to a resident.”
• Children, pets, and gardens can be a part of daily life. One hundred children attend day care at Providence Mount St. Vincent nursing home in Seattle , for example, sharing meals, art classes, and story-time with elderly residents. At Oatfield Estates in Portland , Oregon , more than two-thirds of residents, including those in wheelchairs or who have dementia, volunteer to work in the organic gardens on campus.
• Dementia symptoms are reduced in a home-like environment. A nursing home that feels like a family nome, not a hospital -- with a country kitchen, comfortable living room, and private bedrooms -- can reduce agitation and wandering in people with severe dementia. Administrator Rev. Garth Brokaw of Fairport Baptist Nursing Home in Rochester, New York, relates that after doing away with a large institutional dining room and creating small, residential-size dining rooms, “Overnight, I kid you not, overnight it changed the whole environment” of a dementia unit.
 While researching this new book, Beth Baker, a former hospital worker, visited two dozen nursing homes around the nation, conducting extensive interviews with employees, residents, family members, and administrators. In addition, she interviewed leading experts in gerontological research, advocacy, and government and reviewed the medical literature, to further ground her conclusions.
Beth Baker is a longtime freelance writer and a regular contributor to the Washington Post Health section, the AARP Bulletin , and many other publications. She has won two Gold National Mature Media Awards for her reporting on aging issues. (Photo by Ross Wells.)
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A Shot in the Dark
The Making of “MUSIC CITY USA”
NEW BOOK—WITH SOUNDTRACK CD—CELEBRATES THE RECORDS, ARTISTS, AND ENTREPRENEURS WHO TRANSFORMED NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
(NASHVILLE, TN) In 1945, Nashville had no Music Row, no recording companies, no record deals. Then, led by men such as Jim Bulleit, Owen Bradley, and Bill Beasley, an explosion of labels brought the business of music to the city of music. A new book documents that raucous time: A SHOT IN THE DARK: Making Records in Nashville, 1945-1955 by Martin Hawkins, one of “the finest researchers in the whole realm of American vernacular music” (No Depression) and co-author of Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll (with Colin Escott). (A Shot in the Dark will be published November 2006 by Vanderbilt University Press and the Country Music Foundation Press.)
Back before country music was synonymous with Nashville, a small group of intrepid entrepreneurs—local businessmen looking to make a buck and have some fun—were recording and selling all the local music they could find. From dance bands to gospel, from rhythm & blues to, yes, country music, these men inadvertently documented a wealth of local music as they struggled to run successful recording studios.
Hawkins goes beyond the music to tell the stories of the behind-the-scenes folks responsible for turning Nashville into Music City USA. From Jim Bulleit, who was there at the very beginning of the music industry, to Bill Beasley, who took on the emerging Music Row establishment and lost, Hawkins guides us through the careers of the folks who defined Nashville’s music scene for an exciting, unpredictable decade, and traces the rise and fall of local music labels like Bullet, Dot, Excello, World, Tennessee, Republic, and Speed.
Though the focus of the book is on the recording companies, studios, DJs and other music promoters, it also underlines the importance of some of the giants of Nashville music—like Francis Craig, who recorded an international hit by accident; Owen Bradley, who had a hand in many early labels; Del Wood, the surprise star of honky-tonk piano; the fabulous blues singer Christine Kittrell; the underrated R&B bandleader Louis Brooks; the ubiquitous gospel promoter, Wally Fowler; and the long-established gospel favorites the Fairfield Four.
This book builds on and develops more fully the pioneering research Hawkins did for the critically acclaimed Bear Family Records boxed collections of vintage Nashville recordings made during this same time. Hawkins has conducted primary research for nearly three decades. Many of the music industry principals he interviewed—Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley, Jim Bulleit, Christine Kittrell, Gene Nobles, and Ernie Young, among others—are no longer living. Some of the information presented by Hawkins has been explored piecemeal by other writers in ephemeral publications, but Hawkins has dug deeply into the history and armed himself with the insight to write a full-length book on the subject. Full of lush photographs, many published for the first time, and accompanied by a twenty-song CD highlighting the wide range of music made in Nashville during the era, the book immerses readers in the sights, sounds, and stories of this vibrant and influential decade in Nashville music making.
Martin Hawkins, co-author of Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll, is a historian by nature, a career manager in the British health service, and a nocturnal writer of books, articles, and CD booklets. He writes about the people who recorded and promoted regional and “roots” music in the days before rock & roll. He is married with two grown-up children, lives in Southern England, and probably plays too much golf and watches too much football (soccer).
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BOOK INFORMATION:
A Shot in the Dark Making Records in Nashville, 1945-1955
By Martin Hawkins
416 pages, 11 x 9 inches, 227 illustrations, includes 20-song CD
Publication Date: November 2006
Wheeling and Dealing
Wheelchair Monologues
32 MEN AND WOMEN FREELY DISCUSS HOW THEY LIVE, LOVE, AND WORK WITH SPINAL CORD INJURY
(NASHVILLE, TN) How do people with spinal cord injury manage the challenges of their physical impairment and social environment? A new book by Esther Isabelle Wilder, Wheeling and Dealing: Living with Spinal Cord Injury (to be published September 29, 2006 by Vanderbilt University Press), presents unusually frank answers to this question.
In a series of in-depth interviews, 32 men and women with spinal cord injury freely discuss their sex lives, their beliefs about God, how they want others to treat them, and their hopes of walking again. In each chapter, the author presents detailed narratives along with the latest research.
In Wheeling and Dealing, we learn that though disability activists tend to focus almost exclusively on the external, social aspects of disability, many individuals with spinal cord injury assert that their disabilities can be understood only as a combination of internal impairments and external circumstances. We hear, for instance, from Travis and Meghan:
Before his motorcycle accident, Travis saw himself becoming a pro football player. Now, paralyzed from the nipple down, he says, “At times it's a pain in the ass—literally and figuratively. But it allows me to not be as threatening to some people [the way I was when] I was still an athlete. Because a lot of times male interaction is done on the basis of pissing contests: I'm bigger, I'm tougher, I'm stronger, I'm smarter. When you're in a chair, they don't look at you like that.” At the same time, Travis complains that many people are uncomfortable interacting with him because of his disability. “I would rather you make a mistake and deal with me than not deal with me at all.”
Meghan is a high-level quadriplegic, living alone, who uses a power wheelchair and requires daily attendant care. She laments, “There are so many people who think we're asexual, we're not pretty, and we're creeps and weirdoes.” To dispel this myth, she envisions a fashion show of women in wheelchairs parading down a runway. Meghan has been involved in a number of sexual relationships since sustaining her injury. While she doesn't think her disability has diminished her sexual pleasure, she feels that it has affected her sexual performance: “Well, you can't move it. You can't, like, bump and grind.”
Topics addressed in Wheeling and Dealing cover:
- physical health
- psychological adjustments
- sexual intimacy
- religion and spirituality
- social and political beliefs—everything from welfare services to physician-assisted suicide to embryonic stem cell research
- dating, marriage, and parenting
- friendship networks and social supports
- transportation and accessibility
- education, employment, and the economic consequences of spinal cord injury.
Wheeling and Dealing is the recipient of the 2004 Norman L. and Roselea J. Golderg Prize for the Best Project in the Area of Medicine.
Esther Isabelle Wilder teaches sociology at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Current research focuses on women’s reproductive health, the sociology of disability, and ethnic and religious differences in healthcare. Her work has appeared in more than a dozen journals. She is co-author of Voices from the Heartland: Needs and Rights of Individuals with Disabilities.
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BOOK INFORMATION:
Wheeling and Dealing: Living with Spinal Cord Injury
By Esther Isabelle Wilder
368 pages, 6 x 9
Publication Date: September 2006
What Happened to the Maya?
BASED ON DRAMATIC EXCAVATIONS OF MAYA SITES, NEW SERIES DOCUMENTS YEARS OF FIELDWORK AND ENGAGES MAJOR CONTROVERSIES CONCERNING THE NATURE OF MAYA SOCIETY AND ITS COLLAPSE
(NASHVILLE, TN) In 2005, a research team led by Vanderbilt University anthropologist Arthur Demarest discovered a gruesome scene: 31 executed and dismembered Maya nobles in the ancient city of Cancuén in the Petén rain forest of present-day Guatemala. This royal massacre suggests that the city was wiped out by an invading force around A.D. 800, a critical moment at the beginning of the mysterious collapse of the great Maya empire..
Stele 2, carving of the king, from Arroyo de Piedra.
Stipple rendering by Luis Fernando Luin.
“After this tragic and violent event, unlike any yet discovered at a Classic Maya site, the city of Cancuén was completely abandoned, as were many other cities downstream on this same river route,” Demarest said. “In the years preceding the royal massacre, warfare had spread across this western region of the ancient Maya world. It seems to have suddenly reached Cancuén at about A.D. 800.” As scientists continue to investigate the site, they hope to reveal more clues on the final days of the Maya.
Arthur Demarest, who has studied the collapse of the Maya civilization for 20 years, and whose research team has been featured in publications such as National Geographic and the New York Times, has just published the first book in the new Vanderbilt Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeology Series: The Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project: A Multidisciplinary Study of the Maya Collapse (July 28, 2006, Vanderbilt University Press). The anticipated twenty-volume series documents years of fieldwork and engages the major controversies concerning the nature of Maya society and its collapse. The books in this series argue for the importance of a regional, multidisciplinary approach.
The Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project is an overview and introduction to the series and describes the objectives, structure, personnel, and major findings of the seven-year multidisciplinary investigation. The previous research, issues, and problem-orientation of the project are reviewed, and an unusually frank history of the 1989–1996 field investigations is presented. Final results of the dozen Petexbatun subprojects are previewed, including summaries of site-specific studies of centers and subordinate kingdoms and the regional disciplinary subprojects exploring osteology, ecology, faunal studies, ceramics, epigraphic history, settlement patterns, defensive systems, caves, and other aspects of Classic period civilization and culture change.
Then, based on the project's findings, Demarest presents interpretive reconstructions of
the linked histories of the Pasión River kingdoms and correlates these interpretations with the variable evidence and culture-histories of other regions of the Classic Maya lowlands.
He points out that only through linking such accurate regional culture-histories can we begin to understand the eighth- through tenth-century changes in Classic Maya civilization. The volume describes how the Petexbatun project addressed this challenge in its research design, structure, and large, multicentered zone of study. Building on the previous twenty years of Harvard research in adjacent zones, the Vanderbilt projects succeeded in reconstructing events and processes through-out the Pasión River Valley, the largest single inland trade route of the ancient Maya world.
In its conclusions, this first of the Petexbatun volumes provides answers to some long-standing questions about the "Classic Maya collapse," as well as a new, preliminary culture-history of the abandonment, decline, or transformation of the Classic Maya kingdoms of the western Petén. It is an exciting preview and summary of a decade of evidence on the debate over
the fate of the Classic Maya civilization, one of the great controversies in the history of Pre- Columbian archaeology.
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About the Author:
The Vanderbilt Mesoamerican Archaeology (VIMA) Series
Edited by Arthur A. Demarest
Arthur A. Demarest is Ingram Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt. He has directed archaeological excavations in Central America for more than twenty-five years, and he is the author or co-author of more than twenty books and monographs on the ancient Maya, Olmec, Aztec, and Inca civilizations.
BOOK INFORMATION, THE FIRST BOOK IN THE SERIES:
The Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project
By Arthur A. Demarest
256 pages, 7.7 x 10.5 inches, 15 maps, 9 figures, 29 drawings, 12 photographs, references, index
Cloth $49.95s (ISBN 0-8265-1443-X)
VIMA SERIES #1
Publication Date: July 28, 2006
THE OTHER THREE INAUGURAL VOLUMES IN THE SERIES TO BE PUBLISHED IN SUMMER 2006:
Diet, Health, and Status Among the Pasión Maya
By Lori E. Wright
288 pages, 7.75 x 10.5 inches, 39 figures, 54 tables and graphs, 9 photographs, references, index
Cloth $69.95 (0-8265-1418-9)
VIMA SERIES #2
Publication Date: July 28, 2006
Warfare and the Fall of a Fortified Center
By Takeshi Inomata
368 pages, 7.75 x 10.5 inches, 122 figures and drawings, 94 tables and graphs, 26 photos, references, index
Cloth $69.95 (0-8265-1419-7)
VIMA SERIES #3
Publication Date: September 2006
Settlements and Fortifications of Aguateca
By Takeshi Inomata
7.75 x 10.5 inches, CD-ROM, 10 large-format maps, and 32-page booklet
Cloth $49.95s (0-8265-1529-0)
VIMA SERIES #4
Publication Date: September 2006
How To Prevent Your Stroke
Dr. Spence’s Stroke-Stopping Table Talk Campaign
Dr. J. David Spence wants to get Americans talking amongst ourselves about his favorite topic: stroke prevention. He offers a wealth of fascinating insights—excerpted from his new book,
How to Prevent Your Stroke—to get the conversation started..
Nashville, TN (June 2006)—Consider this fact: With the aging population, stroke is expected to increase 32 percent between 1996 and 2006. And double by 2016. Chances are you know someone who is at risk for stroke. You might even fall into that category yourself. But despite their relevance to your life, it’s a safe bet that you don’t talk about startling statistics or other medical matters at dinner parties or even over take-out pizza with your family. Dr. J. David Spence wants to change that.
“In Victorian days, people found scientific advances so scintillating that they made a point of discussing them not only in salons but at the dinner table,” points out Dr. Spence, author of How to Prevent Your Stroke (Vanderbilt University Press, October 2006, ISBN: 0-8265-1537-1, $19.95). “Today, Americans seem more inclined to analyze developments on the latest reality show. Yes, we’re overwhelmed by information these days, but I know we can do better than that!
“There are many exciting things going on in modern medicine,” he adds. “If people would just get interested in good health and research discoveries, they would naturally talk about these subjects. And if everyone were talking about them, people would be more inclined to practice what they preach.”
Of course, his particular area of expertise is stroke prevention. He hopes his new book will serve as the opening volley in a grassroots effort to get people talking about this very important and timely topic with their friends and family. Only slightly tongue-in-cheek, he calls it “Dr. Spence’s Stroke-Stopping Table Talk Campaign.”
Opening up the stroke discussion can be very easy, by the way. While your dinner guests are enjoying their banana-leaf vegetable curry, bring up the fact that it’s a recipe from Spence’s new book (pages 171-172, to be exact). You can segue into a discussion of advances in stroke prevention and everyone is sure to benefit.
Here, excerpted from his book, are a few more table talking tips that are easy for everyone to understand—tips that could very well save someone’s life:
- Take a cue from the Cretan Mediterraneans. There is no better time to discuss your diet than when you are at the dinner table. Take a good look at what you are eating. Could it be more healthful? Do your meals contain all the vitamins and nutrients that you need to stay healthy? In his book, Dr. Spence discusses a diet that can reduce stroke and heart attacks by about half within four years. Called the Cretan Mediterranean diet, it’s low in cholesterol and animal fat, high in beneficial oils such as olive and canola, and high in fruit, vegetables, and whole-grain fiber. Check out the recipes provided in the Guide to Healthy Meals section, and let everyone at the table choose a meal that they would like to try. “Tinker with the recipes until you have them just the way you like them,” advises Spence. “Tolerably good is not good enough; if you don’t like the result, you won’t make it.”
- It’s okay to be a quitter. In fact, when “quitting” means that you are going to stop smoking, it’s more than okay. Consider that smoking increases the risk of stroke sixfold; even living or working with smokers nearly doubles the risk. That is an easy statistic to understand, and one you should share with your family and friends. The smokers in your life may look at quitting as being an uphill battle. Present them with “the parable of the cold lake” from Dr. Spence’s book. In this parable, you are walking along the shore of a cold lake and see one of your grandchildren drowning. It takes no will power to go into the lake and save the child because it just has to be done. “If you have vascular disease, think of quitting smoking as something that has to be done,” says Dr. Spence. “It doesn’t take will power to do something that must be done.”
- Determine how “at risk” you are. Knowing the risk factors for someone likely to have a stroke is key in stroke prevention. Age, male gender, race, smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, artery disease, and thickening of the heart are all risk factors. The risk of having a stroke or heart attack is much more likely in men and women over sixty-five, and African Americans are ten times more likely to have a particular cause of high blood pressure, which can be diagnosed with two simple blood tests. Because you can’t control your age, gender, or race, it is important to work on the risk factors you can control. First, it is imperative that you quit smoking. Second, see a doctor who can help you control your high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and/or diabetes. Third, start eating a healthy, Mediterranean diet. “These risk factors interact strongly,” warns Dr. Spence. “Having more than one increases the risk in a way that is more than additive; the risk factors multiply each other. If you qualify for more than one risk, see a doctor immediately.”
- Be the first to know. It is always fun being the first to know something, whether it is a juicy piece of gossip or a cool fact about an advancement in medicine. If you stay informed on the latest developments in stroke prevention, you can be the first to present the information in conversation. You’ll wow everyone around you and be more likely to help other people improve their health. Dr. Spence’s book is a great place to start. In it, he provides information about the latest developments in arterial surgery, using vitamins B6, B12, and folic acid to treat artery blockage caused by the amino acid homocysteine, and developments in fat-lowering drugs. He also discusses the research he is doing to discover new risk factors. One example is “unexplained atherosclerosis.” Dr. Spence is researching why some people have excess atherosclerosis (blockage in the arteries) not explained by traditional risk factors. “I wanted to present the information so that it was easy for everyone to understand,” he explains. “You don’t have to have a medical degree to be able to understand the strides we are making in stroke prevention.”
- You’ve waited long enough. You want to bring up this subject after dessert has been served, but keeping off those extra pounds is an important part of stroke prevention. Dieting is not the answer to weight control; in fact there is evidence that cycle dieting may aggravate obesity. The only realistic way to lose weight and keep it off is to permanently reduce calorie intake below energy expended. Thus, the key to success in this difficult arena is to stop thinking in terms of a temporary change in your eating pattern—a “diet”—and to permanently change your approach to meal planning. A great way to do this is by using the Price Tag Approach. “Set your allowance at the number of calories per day that you need to lose a pound a week, and stick to that many calories per day,” says Dr. Spence. “To stay on a calorie budget, you have to look at the price tag, the number of calories in each food you eat.”
- Embrace those five dreaded words: There is good evidence that exercise, besides enhancing well-being and quality of life, improves a number of the risk factors for heart attack and stroke: high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol. So . . . exercise! Start with something easy and work up gradually. Don’t overdo it, pull a tendon, and end up quitting. Never increase both the intensity and duration of exercise at the same time. Look for ways to make exercise fun or do something else at the same time, such as watching TV. “You will find that getting in shape gives you more energy and general well-being,” promises Dr. Spence. “Even if you aren’t very enthusiastic at first, you will get to a place where you miss your exercise if you have to stop for some reason. Once that happens, you will be well on your way.”
“Seventy-five percent of strokes can be prevented in high-risk patients,” asserts Dr. Spence. “Many strokes occur needlessly because patients and doctors do not apply what we already know about preventing them. My dream is for everyone in America to start talking at dinner, or at parties, or at a ball game, about the fascinating discoveries in stroke prevention. If everyone took advantage of this wealth of knowledge, we would all lead healthier lives.”
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About the Author:
Dr. J. David Spence is a Professor of Neurology and Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Western Ontario, a leading center for research in stroke prevention, and director of the Stroke Prevention and Atherosclerosis Research Centre at the Robarts Research Institute in London, Canada.
During his training at The University of Western Ontario in Neurology, in London, Canada, Dr. Spence saw over 1,000 patients with stroke, of which half were due to hypertension. Determined to improve the prevention of stroke, he went on to complete training in Internal Medicine in London, Canada, and then in Clinical Pharmacology at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California at San Francisco.
He is internationally recognized as a leading expert on prevention of stroke and has seen more than 16,000 patients with threatened stroke. He opened his Hypertension Clinic in 1977, and because the Department of Family Medicine also mounted a study to improve detection and treatment of hypertension at the same time, within seven years strokes in London were reduced by half. His research now focuses on measurement of atherosclerosis by ultrasound. His new book is based on the advice he gives his patients.
BOOK INFORMATION:
How To Prevent Your Stroke
By J. David Spence , MD
200 pages, 6 x 9
Publication Date: October 2006
The Human Drama of Abortion
Seeking Consensus in the Abortion Debate:
"Like Tap-Dancing in a Minefield"
(NASHVILLE, TN) It may be easier to choreograph a Broadway show in the middle of a minefield than it is to reach a global consensus on abortion. Yet physician-authors Aníbal Faúndes and José Barzelatto try to do just that in their extraordinary book, THE HUMAN DRAMA OF ABORTION: A Global Search for Consensus (published July 28, 2006 by Vanderbilt University Press). Whether they achieve their goal will be hotly contested by readers. But one thing is sure: Their endeavor is long overdue.
Writing from decades of experience as physicians in Chile, at a time when abortion there was illegal, risky, yet widely practiced, the authors put their cards on the table at the outset: They have witnessed too many tragedies, particularly among women too poor and powerless to assert their rights, to pose as neutrals. And, more than any other issue, abortion has been inhospitable toward neutrality; as it has played out in the media and in the lives of all whom it has touched personally, it is the most polarizing topic of our time.
The genius of this book is that it accepts this premise, presents its survey of global practices, and then, having examined medical, legal, religious, and ethical perspectives in detail, leads the reader to an improbable resolution. Rather than simply add another voice to the pro-choice chorus, The Human Drama makes a dramatic turn. The tone becomes pragmatic, in chapters with titles like “How to Reduce the Number of Abortions” and “How to Reduce the Human, Social, and Economic Costs of Abortion,” as evidenced by the account of how advocates, and sometimes enemies, in this debate found a way to begin a dialogue, away from the agitation of their allies and the intrusions of media voyeurs.
When an anti-abortion extremist killed two receptionists and wounded five others in attacks on two Planned Parenthood clinics in 1994, stricken members of the community, drawn from across the ideological divide, gathered to begin talking through their grief and looking for common ground. Apparently little was found initially, and yet their conversations were not in vain,as “they came to see the dignity, the goodness in one another,” as Faúndes and Barzelatto note, and to agree that the bridge they’d built would eventually "contribute to a more civil and compassionate society."
The Human Drama, then, is a contradictory work, especially since its authors don’t shy away from presenting stories of women they’d treated or counseled, whose lives were profoundly changed—and even brought to their premature ends—by the effects of abortion, or its absence as an option. It stands foursquare in the swirl of controversy. It draws from Aristotle and Pope John Paul II, from Muslim law and the Napoleonic Code, from ancient history and today’s headlines. It examines how complex the idea of “abortion” actually is, when measured against questions of fetal viability, birth control, infanticide, and the interests of the unborn, health care practitioners, and pregnant women.
In the end, as it presents a plan for moving ahead toward tolerance and resolution, The Human Drama of Abortion becomes a model for communication between those who disagree on any major issue and yet are united by their passion and their hope for justice. However, no one who finishes this book can believe that these differences will be resolved tomorrow, whether by the church, the state, or one-on-one civility.
Aníbal Faúndes is Professor of Obstetrics at the University of Campinas, SP, Brazil, and Senior Researcher at Cemicamp, an internationally renowned center for research in reproductive health. He is currently Chair of the Committee on Sexual and Reproductive Rights of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
José S. Barzelatto was, until his death in March 2006, Vice President of the Center for Health and Social Policy. He served from 1985 to 1989 as Director of the UNDP/WHO/World Bank Special Program for Research and Training in Human Reproduction and from 1989 to 1997 as Director of the Reproductive Health and Population Program of the Ford Foundation.
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BOOK INFORMATION:
The Human Drama of Abortion
A Global Search for Consensus
By Aníbal Faúndes and José S. Barzelatto
216 pages, 6 x 9
trade paper $24.95 (0-8265-1526-6) - also available in hardback
Publication Date: July 28, 2006
Reproductive Rights in a Global Context
"How Much Control Do Women Really Have Over Their Bodies?"
At age 17, this activist launched her own around-the-world investigation to answer that question.
(NASHVILLE, TN) A new book, REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: South Africa, Uganda, Peru, Denmark, United States, Vietnam, Jordan (to be published June 30, 2006 by Vanderbilt University Press), is the culmination of five years of traveling, interviewing, reading, and writing by author Lara M. Knudsen in the hope of gaining an understanding of what women’s sexual and reproductive rights are like in seven diverse countries.
Traveling alone when she was between 17 and 22, with no institutional affiliation and no financial assistance, the author visited five developing countries and two developed ones on five continents. Her goal was to extend her own experience in an abortion clinic in Portland, Oregon. Lara Knudsen interviewed over 90 women's rights activists, health professionals, NGO workers, and government officials, gaining a sense of both official policies and the actual delivery of services in local clinics.
In each setting she asked, “How much control do women have over their bodies and fertility-related decisions?” To begin to answer this vast question, the book examines women's access to sex education, maternity care, family planning, and abortion, and analyzes how much power women in diverse contexts have to negotiate sexual practices. The book places the experiences of women within the global context of how international population control agendas have influenced women's reproductive rights in the past, and how the changing international discourse on reproductive health continues to influence those rights today.
LARA M. KNUDSEN, from Portland, OR, graduated from Marlboro College in Vermont in 2003. She is currently a student of medicine and public health at George Washington University in Washington, DC and plans to pursue a career in women’s health.
# # #
A BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH LARA M. KNUDSEN
Was there a single incident that crystallized the idea to go out on your own and collect this data and if so, what was it?
One day I stumbled upon the website for the Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa. Not knowing that Planned Parenthood was an international organization, it triggered a flood of questions in my mind: Is abortion legal in South Africa? Is it accessible? I did not have the faintest idea about the answers to those and other questions and decided I would try to find them. From there the idea for this book evolved, giving me the chance to interview women’s health workers in other countries.
What was the person, place, or event during your travels that left the most lasting impression on you?
I was amazed by how quickly people confided in me about their personal experiences in the intimate realm of reproduction. A woman in Peru told me about her own clandestine abortion and the absolute terror she felt going through it. Such stories illustrate the great need to continue fighting for reproductive rights.
What would you like the readers of your book to come away with?
I would like readers to come away with a broader sense of the phrase “reproductive rights.” I tried to emphasize the holistic nature of women’s reproductive rights, which include not only the right to safe abortion, but also the right to sex education, contraception, sterilization, and equally importantly, safe childbearing. Achieving reproductive freedom is beneficial not only for the individual woman, but also for the entire community.
FROM THE BOOK:
“With an average of 6.9 children per woman, Uganda has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Though women have about seven children on average . . . nearly half of all births are unwanted or mistimed. . . . Family planning programs are often treated as the end-all solution to women’s high morbidity and high fertility, despite the myriad factors that play equally, or even more, crucial roles in women’s state of health. . . . Women’s reproductive health remains poor in Uganda, and complications from unsafe abortion are a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality.”
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BOOK INFORMATION:
Reproductive Rights in a Global Context
South Africa, Uganda, Peru, Denmark, United States, Vietnam, Jordan
By Lara M. Knudsen
312 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 7 b & w photos, index, references, appendix
Cloth $69.95 (0-8265-1527-4)
Paper $29.95 (0-8265-1528-2)
Publication Date: June 30, 2006
That Inferno
"The women in this book inhabited a surreal hell . . .
...never sure that the knock on the door at midnight meant they were to be taken to the torture table or out for a steak. . . . This is a book about a hallucinatory form of torture—unique in the annals of repression—that took place in the 1970s in the Mechanics School of the Argentine Navy. . . . How this could happen is now, after Abu Ghraib, somewhat easier for U.S. society to understand."
—from the Foreword by Tina Rosenberg
(NASHVILLE, TN) While humanity's capacity for cruelty is beyond comprehension for most, it is all too normal for others.
The evidence that what at first appears ordinary can instead be horrific begins with the photos in a new book to be published April 17th by Vanderbilt University Press: THAT INFERNO: Conversations with Five Women Survivors of an Argentine Torture Camp by Munú Actis, Cristina Aldini, Liliana Gardella, Miriam Lewin, and Elisa Tokar, five women "disappeared" in Argentina's "dirty war." Here are pictures of nondescript men, some in coats and ties, others in uniform. One face stands out, that of Jorge Eduardo Acosta. Elderly, gray-haired, he’s leaning back and smiling toward the camera, as if savoring a private joke..
Yet Lieutenant Commander Acosta, feared and hated by the female prisoners he simultaneously courted and tortured, was known as the Tiger, a beast of unfathomable evil who had ascended to a position of authority during the years of military dictatorship in Argentina, from 1976 to 1983, and maintained his power afterward despite sporadic campaigns for reform.
His story . . . their story . . . the stories of all the dissidents who simply disappeared or, in their own terminology, “fell” to agents of the state, ring true yet seem too bizarre to accept at first.
The women who produced this book still bear the scars of abuse orchestrated by the Tiger and carried out by the officers and guards with whom he associated. Each has returned to (so-called) normal life; Nilda Actis Goretta works as a painter, Cristina Inés Aldini as a teacher, Liliana Gardella as a social policy researcher, and Elisa Tokar as a psychologist. One among them, Miriam Lewin, is an award-winning investigative journalist—but all five agreed that if they were to finally tell their stories, it would have to be done collectively.
And so That Inferno arises through conversation. It consists almost entirely of their words, recorded as they stirred one another’s recollections. Comparisons to the atrocities of the Holocaust are inevitable and not inappropriate, but something surreal in the Argentine nightmare seemed beyond even the Nazi imagination.
There’s an Alice in Wonderland quality to accounts of thugs shocking prisoners with electric prods deep within the offices of ESMA—the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armeda, or Navy
Mechanics School, an unremarkable building in Buenos Aires. And then, after being locked into a dank, rat-infested cell, any one of the women might be awakened in the dead of night and taken away, perhaps to another round of abuse, or to her execution...
... or to a night of dining and dancing at the city’s most elegant nightspots. During these festive hours they wore gorgeous outfits and were treated to any delicacies they wanted. The same men who had pushed them nearly to suicide or insanity now flattered them with Old World courtesy and shared intimate confidences, before escorting them back to their house of horrors.
On other occasions, a prisoner might be dropped off for the weekend at her parents’ home. These visits were more hallucinations than homecomings, with the women free to do whatever they want except to speak of their sufferings; candor would hasten death for themselves as well as their loved ones. Sometimes the torturers would invite themselves along to enjoy the hospitality of their victim’s family. Stranger still, the parents often knew the truth, having been tipped off by a message from a sympathetic guard at ESMA—a “green”—and could only join in the charade, as long as it was allowed to last.
Laughter and tears, and bursts of anger, punctuate the narratives of these five women. Ultimately, though, their words alone, bare on the printed page, remind us that even though this regime has been toppled in Argentina, its legacy of psychological violence as a weapon against enemies, real and perceived, remains relevant to us today.
# # #
NOTE: March 2006 marks the 30th anniversary of the military coup in Argentina. Miriam Lewin (2nd from right) will be coming to New York later this spring, in a visit sponsored by the Argentine Consulate. We will send out more detailed information closer to the date of her visit.
BOOK INFORMATION:
That Inferno
Conversations of Five Women Survivors of an Argentine Torture Camp
By Munú Actis, Cristina Aldini, Liliana Gardella, Miriam Lewin, and Elisa Tokar
Translated by Gretta Siebentritt
Foreword by Tina Rosenberg
320 pages, 6 x 9 inches, trade paper $27.95 (0-8265-1514-2)
Publication Date: APRIL 17, 2006
Threads from the Web of Life
Natural World, Evolutionary History Come to Life in "You Are There" Nonfiction Stories
Animals, plants, birds, insects, marine creatures, and evolutionary events come vividly to life in the sixteen stories of Threads from the Web of Life: Stories in Natural History, to be published by Vanderbilt University Press in February 2006. The stories flow from what has been scientifically observed—from the microscopic to the tectonic in scale—into an imaginative portrayal of key moments in the lives of creatures and of the Earth itself.
“We have not sailed at thirty miles per hour thirty feet above the Tasman Sea at midnight along with the Neon Flying Squid. Nevertheless, we have enough information to envision that flight,” writes author Stephen Daubert, a scientist drawn to a holistic understanding of nature.
His brother Chris Daubert, an artist attracted to the elegance of scientific thought and the empirical process, also began with known phenomena—among them specific ocean wave patterns and twenty different views of hadrosaur skulls—to create illustrations using his computer that are technically accurate and beautifully evocative.
In the story “The Neon Flying Squid Vanish,” a school of luminescent squid leaps into the air and glides for seventy-five feet out of the water to escape a swordfish’s slashing bill. In this nighttime ocean world, even microscopic creatures at the base of the food chain can play
pivotal roles in the constant life-and-death struggle. A phosphorescent alga eaten by a tiny shrimp lights up the transparent body of the predator—advertising the shrimp’s position to its
enemies with a beacon from within. “The last contribution of an algal victim may be to take one attacker with it, a sacrifice for the benefit of the greater algal community.”
The impressive array of stories in Threads from the Web of Life includes:
- In “Forbidden Fruit,” three young mice feast on hallucinogenic mushrooms and then become easy prey. But the owl, the snake, and the martin that devour the rodents find themselves disoriented, staring with fascination and terror at objects changing into unfamiliar shapes before their eyes.
- In “Living on the Edge of Springtime,” hummingbirds migrate almost constantly, their hearts beating at a thousand times per minute. With a metabolic rate the highest of any creature, “They live every minute of their lives a few hours from starvation, so they are constrained to migrate along a route that offers nectar every hour of every day.”
- In “The Secret of the Cenotés,” dinosaurs in the Yucatan peninsula witness a giant meteor strike. A light flash with the fury of a thousand suns blinds the creatures. Darkness and wild temperature extremes follow; a cycle of ice ages begins. “When the timid fur-bearing animals of the underground eventually emerged from their burrows, they found themselves the undisputed rulers of the world. They would now be free to evolve to fill the niches emptied by the catastrophe.”
The book’s stories are divided into four sections (Strands from the Ocean; Tendrils in the Forest; Lines of Migration; and Perspective of the Eyewitness). Each story is followed by “Science Notes,” which explain the scientific basis for the story, give additional information, and explore competing theories and controversies.
This unusual collaboration between an “artistic scientist” and a “scientific artist”
fuses the power, precision, and understanding of science with aesthetics and imagination. In the tradition of Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Bernd Heinrich, Threads from the Web of Life: Stories in Natural History unites realms of knowledge from many disciplines to give readers emotional resonance and the satisfaction of seeing a whole picture. Like other classics of nature writing, this book appeals deeply to readers of all ages.
STEPHEN DAUBERT has pursued science on a molecular level for thirty years at the University of California, Davis. His brother Chris Daubert is professor of art at Sacramento City College.
STEPHEN DAUBERT may be reached for interviews at 530-753-3316 or Stephen.Daubert@gmail.com.
# # #
BOOK INFORMATION:
THREADS FROM THE WEB OF LIFE: Stories in Natural History
By Stephen Daubert with illustrations by Chris Daubert
154 pages, 7 x 10 inches, 20 b&w illustrations, research notes, suggested readings, bibliography, index
Cloth $24.95 (0-8265-1509-6)
Publication Date: FEBRUARY 13, 2006
New Orleans, Race, and the Catholic Church
AS ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM SWIRL IN KATRINA'S AFTERMATH, NEW BOOK CHRONICLES EARLY STRUGGLES FOR DESEGREGATION IN THE CITY
New Orleans has been on our minds and in our hearts in recent weeks. But as R. Bentley Anderson’s new book, BLACK, WHITE, AND CATHOLIC: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956, reminds us, its stories of struggle and redemption date back further than today’s headlines.
Anderson, a history professor, Jesuit priest, and military veteran, concentrates on a turbulent era in the city’s history. From the end of World War II through the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, the people of New Orleans strove to adapt to – or resist – changes in race relations. Their efforts predated what would happen throughout the country in years to come, partly because of the close proximity in which blacks and whites had been living for generations in New Orleans.
Another factor distinguished this unique society: More than most of America, and certainly more than in the rest of the Deep South, the Catholic Church played a dominant role in religious and temporal life. Inevitably, as Anderson demonstrates, it therefore stood at the center of these storms. Within its institutions, and particularly in the sometimes tense relations of the archdiocese of New Orleans and the administration of Loyola University of the South, prejudice and enlightenment wrestled each other, with the future of the faith and its adherents at stake.
The battlefield was vast, encompassing interpretation of Scripture and patterns of life throughout the city. It was dignified too, often centered in offices and classrooms. Yet passions raged beneath these sober surfaces; before they would play out, a cross would burn on the Archbishop’s grounds, efforts were made for the state of Louisiana to seize control of all its Catholic schools, and both sides would accuse the other of Communist complicity.
Without losing focus on the big issues, Anderson brings the key figures in this drama to life. Father Joseph H. Fichter’s courageous campaign to integrate Loyola inspired free thinkers but also threatened his safety and eventually hastened his departure for the north. Archbishop Joseph Rummel evolved from a neutral position on segregation to bring the full weight of his authority against its adherents. Opposing them were Emile Wagner, a lay parishioner who defied Rummel and his allies up to the point of excommunication, and Sam Hill Ray, director of student counseling at Loyola, who argued that segregation ultimately worked “for the good of the blacks."
Between these factions are the most compelling of all the characters in Black, White, and Catholic: Harry Alexander, Richard Gumbel, and the other black students whose applications to Loyola’s law school triggered much of this controversy. The first among them were rejected; others, a few years later, were admitted. All had to suffer along the way for their efforts. Gumbel, whose sons Bryant and Greg would make their mark as television journalists, even admitted, in a letter to Loyola, that he had “cried on my knees" in pain over his ordeal.
Black, White, and Catholic doesn’t have a neat and clean ending. The book takes us to the rise of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and then comes to an end. But as current events suggest, the concerns that Anderson examines have not in fact been settled. The hurricane of 2005 has ripped the cover from wounds that still bleed in New Orleans. The case made today, that Katrina ravaged blacks disproportionately, suggests strongly that the saga of Black, White, and Catholic has yet to play out.
Understanding this, and learning from Anderson’s vivid, detailed narrative, adds up to a lesson: There is more than wreckage to clear from the streets of New Orleans – and from the conscience of a nation still in transition.
R. BENTLEY ANDERSON, S.J., is Assistant Professor of history at Saint Louis University and is available for interviews; please phone 314-977-7146 or 314-633-4438 or email andersb@slu.edu.
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BOOK INFORMATION:
BLACK, WHITE, AND CATHOLIC: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956
By R. Bentley Anderson, S.J.
320 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 12 b&w illustrations, index, bibliography
Cloth $45.00 (0-8265-1483-9)
Publication Date: OCTOBER 17, 2005
Career War Resister Chronicles Life of Nonviolent Protest
OFFERS LESSONS IN PEACE FOR TODAY
On the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a frank memoir of two decades of nonviolent protest speaks to those who lived through that time of national turmoil —and to those who are pursuing peace today, another age of dissent and violent conflict.
The book, FELON FOR PEACE: The Memoir of a Vietnam-Era Draft Resister (to be published September 9, 2005 by Vanderbilt University Press), is the engrossing, fast-paced memoir of Jerry Elmer, a career war resister who attended his first anti-war rally at age 14 and organized his first demonstration at age 15. When he was 18, Elmer refused to register for the draft, marking him a felon for life. He then forged a 20-year career in the peace movement engaging in active nonviolence: demonstrations, sit-ins and raiding 14 draft boards in three cities and destroying files of men registered for the draft. (Elmer graduated from Harvard Law School in 1990 as the only convicted felon in his class.)
In the book, Elmer speaks frankly about the successes and failures of the peace movement, and unflinchingly describes its leaders, including Phil Berrigan and Mitch Snyder—some of whom were idealists, others simply egotists. He contrasts radical pacifism with the violent acts espoused and practiced by the Weather Underground and skillfully compares his activities with draft resistance movements dating to World War I.
 Jerry Elmer addressing an anti-nuclear protest Felon for Peace is also being published later this year in a Vietnamese edition—the first time that a book by an American peace activist has ever been published in Vietnam.
Jerry Elmer, who now practices commercial litigation in Rhode Island, is a compelling interview and also is available as a news source on peace and anti-war movements. He may be reached at JHE@Goldenberg-muri.com or 401-421-7300.
# # #
BOOK INFORMATION:
FELON FOR PEACE: The Memoir of a Vietnam-Era Draft Resister
By Jerry Elmer
299 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 20 b&w illustrations, index
Hardcover $54.95s (0-8265-1494-4)
Paperback $22.95 trade (0-8265-1495-2)
Publication Date: SEPTEMBER 9, 2005
How America’s Long-Term Care System Fails Us
ONLY 11% OF CAREGIVERS ARE IN SUPPORT GROUPS.* NEED FOR HELP IS GREAT.
Long-term care is all around us. It is the country’s best-kept embarrassing secret. Almost every adult in this country will either enter a nursing home or have to deal with a parent or other relative who does. Demographic studies suggest that 40% of all adults who live to age 65 will enter a nursing home before they die. Even more will use some other form of long-term care.
Some people believe that the key to dealing with long-term care is adequate preparation. Insurance and planning should suffice. Alas, even such steps are not sufficient. You simply cannot rehearse the trials that long-term care subjects you too. That is why the system has to change. It is not enough (or it is much too facile) to simply leave it up to each of us to be better prepared. Why should we gird up to battle a bad system?
It Shouldn’t Be This Way: The Failure of Long-Term Care, the new book by Robert L. Kane, M.D. and Joan C. West (Vanderbilt University Press, pub date May 16, 2005) tells the story of how one very experienced professional and his sister dealt with the multiple frustrations and impediments that long-term care and the long-term care system imposed. Even knowing what should be done was not enough.
It Shouldn’t Be This Way is written for the adult children and other family members of those who must be part of that terrible ordeal called long-term care. Most of the people who confront this situation do so for the first time. Few people rehearse for this challenge. Few emerge unscarred. The book is designed to prepare them for what they will likely face and to provide practical suggestions and cautions on how to approach the problems. It alerts people to what to look out for. Each chapter ends with a set of formal lessons that are derived from each element of our experience.
Robert Kane, MD is a graduate of Harvard Medical School. Formerly the Dean of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, he currently holds an endowed chair in Long-Term Care and Aging there, where he directs the University of Minnesota's Center on Aging, the Minnesota Area Geriatric Education Center, the Clinical Outcomes Research Center, and an AHRQ-funded Evidence-based Practice Center. He has conducted numerous research studies on both the clinical care and the organization of care for older persons, especially those needing long-term care. He is the author or editor of more than 25 books and 300 journal articles and book chapters on geriatrics and health services research. He has analyzed long-term systems both in this country and abroad.
To interview Dr. Robert Kane, email: kanex001@umn.edu
Joan C. West has been an educator for over 35 years. She received her bachelors and masters degrees from Queens College, CUNY. During her career, she has been an elementary school classroom teacher, mentor, staff developer, facilitator, and workshop leader. Her many areas of expertise include literacy education and teaching others to use the writing process more effectively. She is currently an adjunct professor at St. Joseph's College in Patchogue, New York, where she supervises student teachers in their field placements. She was the principal caregiver for Ruth Kane during the long-term care episode described herein.
* * *
IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS WAY
The Failure of Long-Term Care
By Robert L. Kane, M.D. and Joan C. West
200 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, index, bibliography
Hardcover $39.95s (0-8265-1487-1)
Paperback $18.95 trade (0-8265-1488-X)
Publication Date: May 16, 2005
Those Who Care for Alzheimer’s or Other Dementia Patients Need Help, Too
BUT ONLY 11% OF CAREGIVERS ACROSS THE NATION IN SUPPORT GROUPS.* NEED IS GREAT.
There comes a time when those caring for a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's or another form of dementia know they can't do it alone. If they are lucky enough to be in a neighborhood or a city with good access to professional support groups, or can afford to hire caregiving assistants, they are lucky.
Most people are not in that position—DEMENTIA CAREGIVERS SHARE THEIR STORIES: A Support Group in a Book is for them. The book, written by Lynda A Markut and Anatole Crane, will be published June 10, 2005 by Vanderbilt University Press (278 oages, trade paperback $24.95 ISBN 0-9265-1480-4; also available in a library hardcover edition).
Markut and Crane, who have both been caregivers themselves, bring together the voices of those in caregiver support groups; national and community resource guides and help-lines; and their own commentary and personal stories to create this “support group in a book."
The voices heard in these pages are the helping hands, the advice-givers, the friends you need when you think you just don't know how to handle it anymore. A useful resource section is included to refer readers to associations and help-lines. Among the issues addressed are:
- Becoming a caregiver, whether for a spouse or parent
- Dealing with the personality changes caused by dementia, from anxiety and paranoia to hallucinations and impulsive behavior
- Keeping dementia sufferers meaningfully involved in life
- Handling the emotions and stresses of caregiving
- Seeking help through support groups and other sources, including medical professionals, clergy, and other family members
A caregiver shares: I would never suggest taking a life, but on the other hand, what redeeming value is there in keeping a person alive in a bed where you have to feed them with a tube forever? Those things go through your head and I used to think, “Am I wrong to be thinking these kinds of thoughts?"
A caregiver admits: I used to think I didn’t need any help. And you do need help. You don’t like to admit it, but you do.
A caregiver understands: Whenever she loses something she’ll blame it on someone coming in and stealing it, but I know now that it’s the illness and I don’t argue with her.
Lynda A. Markut (shown with her mother) is the clinical director at Family Alliance, Inc., a not-for-profit comprehensive social service agency in Woodstock, Illinois. She conducts several support groups and was the caregiver for her parents, who both had vascular dementia.
Anatole Crane (with his wife), a retired microbiologist, co-facilitates a spouse dementia support group and is president of the board of directors of Family Alliance. For fifteen years, he was the caregiver for his wife, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
* * *
“Families Care: Alzheimer’s Caregiving in the United States," conducted in collaboration with the National Alliance for Caregiving.
DEMENTIA CAREGIVERS SHARE THEIR STORIES: A Support Group in a Book
By Lynda A. Markut and Anatole Crane
288 pages, 6 x 9 inches, index, bibliography, appendix
Hardcover $69.95s (0-8265-1479-0)
Paperback $24.95 trade (0-8265-1480-4)
Publication Date: JUNE 10, 2005
Regressive Financial Aid Policies Widen Class Inequities in Higher Education
NEW BOOK RECOUNTS AID HISTORY AND OFFERS LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE
America's student-aid system needs new ideas and major reform. At a time when the financial payoffs of a college education have risen, widening the economic gulf between college graduates and others, many qualified young people are not going to college due to lack of money and fear of debt. So concludes historian Rupert Wilkinson in his new history of student aid—and its issues of access and inequities—in U.S. colleges.
Wilkinson's book, AIDING STUDENTS, BUYING STUDENTS: Financial Aid in America (to be published October 28, 2005 by Vanderbilt University Press), combines lively narrative with economic analysis—and offers proposals for the future.
According to Wilkinson, "More than half of all undergraduates in America today get some form of financial aid: grants and scholarships, student loans, and work-study jobs. Yet unmet need—the gap between a student's resources plus aid and the cost of college—is generally greater for lower-income students, even though they tend to go to less expensive colleges."
While access to a college education does not depend solely on access to financial aid (other barriers include substandard elementary and secondary schooling and disruptive family circumstances), this does not excuse regressive trends in financial aid. Wilkinson recommends several steps to reverse these trends, among them these, sure to provoke discussion and controversy:
- Colleges themselves can re-assess their budgetary priorities and make equitable, broad access to financial aid as important as salaries, facilities, and programs.
- The federal government can reform student aid programs to include more direct grants and cut interest rates on loans to the rate of general inflation (thus making these loans interest-free in real terms).
- The federal government can publish annual lists of the 50 richest colleges and universities as measured by endowment per students, along with their percentages of students with low incomes—and what those institutions did to broaden their access to students of all classes.
This is not only the first full-scale history of U.S. student aid but it also puts a human face on this public policy issue. In the words of Joe Paul Case, Director of Financial Aid at Amherst College, "By drawing on scores of personal interviews and exchanges of correspondence with aid practitioners, Wilkinson fleshes out recent decades, helping the reader to understand new trends in the provision of aid."
AIDING STUDENTS, BUYING STUDENTS is necessary reading for educational historians, of course, but also for policy makers, journalists, college administrators, and anyone who cares about the issues of unequal access to higher education.
RUPERT WILKINSON, former Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Sussex, England, has taught at Brandeis, Smith, and Wesleyan. Author or editor of eight other books on elites and on American culture, he has published articles on student aid in The Chronicle of Higher Education, College Board Review, and the Journal of Student Financial Aid. Rupert Wilkinson is available for interviews; please phone 011-44-20-7622-6757 or email Wilkinson.ballcottage@virgin.net.
# # #
BOOK INFORMATION:
AIDING STUDENTS, BUYING STUDENTS: Financial Aid in America
By Rupert Wilkinson
336 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 13 b&w illustrations, index, bibliography
Cloth $39.95 (0-8265-1502-9)
Publication Date:OCTOBER 28, 2005
Parenting and Professing: Balancing Family Work with an Academic Career
Vivid personal reflections on the problems and rewards of combining academic work and parenting
Edited by Rachel Hile Bassett
So you think academics have ideal work schedules? That the ivory tower allows plenty of time for scholarly pursuits and raising a family?
In this collection, essayists from academia disabuse us of that notion as they confront situations that complicate individuals' efforts to succeed at both parenting and professorial work, such as the difficulties of finding faculty positions, unusual family configurations, and biases against mothers. The essays in "Possibilities" recount the positives-for research and teaching, for families and the professors themselves-of finding ways to honor both family and professional commitments. "Change," the third section, explores ideas for making it easier to combine parenting with an academic career-changes at the individual, interpersonal, policy, and system levels.
About the Author: Rachel Hile Bassett received her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on early modern English literature, in particular the poetry of Edmund Spenser. She and her husband live in Lawrence, Kansas, with their two children.
Lost Delta Found Shines New Light On Historic Blues Field Recordings: New Book Offers Long Lost Perspective By African American Scholars
Nashville, Tenn. Drama. Intrigue. Power plays. Missing documents. It sounds like another corporate scandal unfolding. But no, this story takes place in that other high-stakes field where reputations and fortunes are made and lost - academia. Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library Of Congress Coahoma Study, 1941-1942 peels back layers of time and gives exciting new perspectives on the music and culture of the Mississippi Delta.
It also brings to light the often-tumultuous process by which research papers are published. Vanderbilt University Press will publish the book in August 2005.
It presents long lost research from three noted Fisk University scholars - John W. Work, Lewis Wade Jones and Samuel C. Adams, Jr. - who journeyed with folklorist Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress to Coahoma County, Mississippi. Their purpose was to document the musical habits and history of the black community there.
It was a historic trip that led to the earliest recordings of Muddy Waters and the discovery of Son House. The field notes, interviews, and musical transcriptions of the Fisk researches were a major component of the study and were to be published jointly by Fisk and the Library of Congress. The Fisk material, however, disappeared in Washington D.C., before the findings could be published.
Lost for more than a half-century, the work from Work, Jones, and Adams, was recently uncovered by noted filmmaker and author, Robert Gordon. Gordon, who directed the PBS documentary Muddy Waters Can't Be Satisfied and the Memphis episode of Martin Scorsese's The Blues series, edited the book with Bruce Nemerov, Audio Specialist for the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University.
While not anti-Lomax, Lost Delta Found provides an important corrective of Lomax's historical record of the Coahoma Country research. Now, for the first time, the perspective of the other contributors of the project - three African American scholars - is seeing the light of day.
Their work adds a new dimension and brings to life a richer, more detailed and ultimately more accurate view of the life of the black Delta community and the music that ran through it.
Lost Delta Found contains essays from Nemerov and Gordon on the careers and contributions of Work, Jones and Adams and 160 song transcriptions.
Photos of Post-Atomic Japan To Be Published in U.S. for First Time
Nashville, Tenn. -- Three weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, 23-year-old Marine Sergeant Joe O’Donnell was sent to Japan with Occupation forces to photograph the devastation. For seven months, he traveled across western Japan with an interpreter, documenting the aftermath of both atomic and traditional bombing campaigns in 50 cities. Thousands of photographs O’Donnell shot in an official capacity disappeared into military archives, but O’Donnell came out of Japan with 300 photos taken with his personal camera. Seventy-four of them appear in Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine’s Photos from Ground Zero .
The book appears at a time when the media’s publication of graphic photographs from Iraq has reopened questions about the role of photography in depicting the realities of war. O’Donnell himself was strongly affected by what he saw and photographed: “The people I met, the suffering and struggles I witnessed, and the scenes of incredible devastation . . . caused me to question every belief previously held about my so-called enemies.”
O’Donnell would continue his career as a photographer, most famously recording a blood-soaked Jacqueline Kennedy on the plane after her husband’s assassination and the salute of John F. Kennedy Jr. at his father’s funeral. But his photos from Japan stayed locked in away for 45 years. “[They were] so devastating—the faces of people with no ears, no eyebrows, no hairs, no lips—it was pretty hard to look at. . . . And so I just locked that trunk.”
Only two photos in the book show the ravages of the bombing upon its victims. One teenage boy’s wounds were so horrifying that O’Donnell says, “I was almost glad he lay in a coma. . . . I decided then that I would not take other pictures of burned victims unless ordered to do so.” O’Donnell was surprised and elated to meet the man 48 years later in Nagasaki.
Even without closeups of horrendous injuries, the remaining photos convey the war’s devastation: wide-angle shots of completely obliterated cityscapes; a boy delivering his infant sibling to a cremation site; a crowd of spectators at a children’s athletic event consisting mostly of women, children and a handful of elderly—no adult men.
more . . .
But they also depict quieter scenes of life returning to normal: children cadging candy from U.S. soldiers; families moving their belongings to undamaged houses; children in a classroom surrounded by piles of rubble; Geishas performing their traditional, graceful dances.
In 1995 O’Donnell’s photos were published in Japan, and some of them were to have appeared in a Smithsonian exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombings in Japan, but after protests from veterans and others that Americans would be portrayed as aggressors, the photos and other materials were dropped from the exhibit.
So their appearance in Japan 1945 will provide the first opportunity ever for Americans to see these powerful images.
by Jamison Green
From his earliest days, Jamison Green felt that he was male—even though his body was that of a female. For almost 40 years, until he underwent sex reassignment, he experienced confusion, loneliness, and prejudice as a result of the disparity between his physical appear-ance and what he knew himself to be.
Even while possessed of a female body, Green’s maleness was recognized not only by himself but by others: the adolescent male classmates with whom he lusted after a neighborhood girl; his first girlfriend, a heterosexual who was attracted to Green’s masculine qualities; strangers who seemed puzzled over whether he was male or female. Green sought refuge in the homosexual community in San Francisco, where he was able to maintain a long-term relationship with a lesbian woman until his decision to undergo sex reassignment drove her to leave him. Their daughter, born to his partner via artificial insemination, thought of him as a father, not as her “other mother,” and Green felt the same way. While not all transgender people seek sex reassignment, Green ultimately decided to have his body match his male identity.
This book combines memoir with analysis to offer unique insights into the multiple challenges of the female-to-male transsexual experience. Green, who has become a leading activist and educator on transgender issues, draws from his personal experience to offer insights to transgender people and their families, friends, and colleagues. He:
* explores the surprises, challenges, and shocks he experienced upon becoming “visible” as a male.
* describes why the stories and issues of female-to-male (FTM) transpeople do not parallel those of their male-to-female (MTF) counterparts.
* candidly describes “top” and “bottom” surgical options for FTM sex reassignment; outlines the costs associated with these surgeries as well as with lifelong hormone treatment and transitional psychological care.
* explains the difference between transgender (a grassroots term) and transsexual (a medical term), and discusses the boundaries and relationships between the transgender and gay-lesbian communities.
* discusses the legal implications of sex reassignment; for instance, in the U.S. it is possible to obtain a corrected birth certificate, although not all countries permit this.
about the author
Green is currently board chair of Gender Educational and Advocacy and a board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute and the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association. He has been featured in eight documentary films and numerous articles and books. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Oregon.
contact
Sue Havlish, Vanderbilt University Press
615-343-2446
sue.havlish@vanderbilt.edu
HERMAN MELVILLE: CALL HIM ISHMAEL
New Book Provides Definitive Account of Melville the Whaler, Melville the Adventurer
For anyone who has ever wondered how Herman Melville came up with Captain Ahab and his great White Whale, Herman Melville’s Whaling Years by Wilson Heflin is a must read. Vanderbilt University Press will publish this first comprehensive study of Melville’s years on whaleships and how those experiences influenced his writing on April 12, 2004.
Wilson Heflin made the study of Herman Melville’s whaling experiences his life’s work, combing through every available contemporary record of the vessels, individuals, and surroundings of Melville’s years aboard whaleships in the Pacific (1841-1844).
This stimulating period provided the background from which Melville repeatedly drew— from his first novel Typee, through his masterpiece Moby-Dick, to the poetry he wrote later in life. Those experiences included:
- Service aboard a man-of-war in the American Navy
- Desertion from a whaleship
- Living with the cannibals of Nukahiva in the Marquesas
- Imprisonment in a Tahiti calaboose
- Hunting giant tortoises in the Galápagos
Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Thomas Farel Heffernan meticulously edited the work of this leading Melville expert and turned it into a book. The end result is itself a magnificent literary adventure.
Wilson Heflin (1913-1985) was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and attended Birmingham-Southern College and Vanderbilt University where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. While doing research for his dissertation in Nantucket, he had the good fortune to discover an abstract log of Melville’s maiden voyage on the “Acushnet,” leading to this magnificent study.
“HELP!” The Quandary of Home Health Caregivers
"I don't want to be in a nursing home." That plea from an elderly relative has become almost cliché today, a punchline for late night comedians and "Saturday Night Live" skits. The reality is, modern advancements in home health care technology have allowed millions of elderly, ill and disabled patients to remain at home with their families at a degree unthinkable even 10 years ago.
But this progress has come at a price. Over 27 million Americans provide vital long-term home healthcare for relatives and loved ones -- everything from dispensing medication and operating medical equipment, to assisting with physical therapy and personal hygiene, to making sure the electric bill is paid. They receive no pay for this work, little training and virtually no respect or support from the health care system.
Caregivers and their stories are the focus of Carol Levine's important book, ALWAYS ON CALL: When Illness Turns Families into Caregivers -- the second edition will be published September __, 2004 by Vanderbilt University Press. This collection of personal essays and professional articles has been newly expanded and updated to reflect the changing climate of home health care. Called "bold and compassionate" by Publisher's Weekly, ALWAYS ON CALL puts the spotlight on one of the most important issues facing our society today.
"Only Medicaid pays for long-term care, and to be eligible for Medicaid you have to be very poor. Our health care insurance system and our political priorities have not yet caught up with reality," says Levine, a medical ethicist and director of the United Hospital Fund's Families and Health Care Project.
Levine knows the topic well: in January 1990, her husband was permanently injured in a devastating car accident that left him a quadriplegic and brain-injured. With her husband unable to perform the most basic life-functions, Levine found herself caring for him round-the-clock -- and without support or even respect from the health care community we often assume is there for us when we need it.
After her husband's accident, "I was unceremoniously transformed into a ‘caregiver’," Levine recalls. "I had total responsibility but no voice or power. A social worker told me I was a 'selfish wife' when I refused to take Howard home from the rehab center without home care. But help was not forthcoming from his insurance company."
Stories like Levine's make up the backbone of ALWAYS ON CALL. One reads of the wife who suddenly finds herself not only caregiver to a chronically-ill husband but family breadwinner -- and then patient, as a stroke puts her in the care of her son. Or the brother caring for his AIDs-ravaged sibling, stumbling his way through a confusing array of catheters and beeping electronic devices, and navigating the even more treacherous waters of health insurance claims and Medicaid forms.
These stories have only become more timely since ALWAYS ON CALL was first published in 2000. Since then, another 2.3 million Americans have joined the ranks of family caregivers. The economic value of their work (the amount they would earn if treated as employees) has swelled from $196 billion to $257 billion. The issue has huge relevance since, Levine points, out, the reality is, "at some point in our lives, each of us will be a caregiver, or know someone who is."
In addition to personal narratives, ALWAYS ON CALL offers a professional perspective. Chapters on public policy initiatives, resources for caregivers, and success stories offer hope and guidance, both to caregivers and the health care community. Not just a plea for help, ALWAYS ON CALL serves to effect change, as well.
For family caregivers, health care professionals and policy makers, ALWAYS ON CALL offers crucial information, support, and concrete suggestions for improving the care received, and the plight of caregivers.
ABOUT CAROL LEVINE
Carol Levine is the director of the United Hospital Fund's Families and Health Care Project. She also directs The Orphan Project: Families and Children in the HIV Epidemic, which she founded in 1991. She was director of the Citizens Commission on AIDs in New York City from 1987-1991. As a senior staff associate of The Hastings Center, she edited the Hastings center Report. In 1993 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her work in AIDs policy and ethics. She lives in New York City and serve as a caregiver to her husband, Howard.
ABOUT THE UNITED HOSPITAL FUND
The United Hospital Fund is a health services research and philanthropic organization that addresses issues affecting hospitals an health care in New York City and the nation. The Fund's Families and Health Care Project aims to advance public and professional understanding of the crucial role of family caregivers in the health care system, and to stimulate the development of sound polices and programs that support their needs for education and training, emotional support and information communication.
To schedule an interview with Carol Levine, contact:
Colleen Roche croche@lakpr.com
Christina Carper ccarper@lakpr.com
212-575-4545, fax 212-575-0519
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Phone: (615) 322-3585
