Columbia Ink: Summer 2016
Losing Helen: An Essay
By Carol Becker
Red Hen Press
In a slim, powerful memoir, Carol Becker, dean of The School of Arts, writes about the years and months leading up to the death of her 98-year-old mother and the mourning period that followed. Full of sadness, and laced with humor, the book is not structured chronologically, but by the four elements—fire, earth, water and air, each of which corresponds metaphorically to a different part of the end of her mother’s life. Faith plays a large role in Becker’s life and in her tribute to her mother, as she wrestles with the Judaism of her father and the lapsed Catholicism of her mother; invokes mysticism, Buddhism and Hinduism; and emphasizes the power of dreams and small miracles.
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space
By Janna Levin
Knopf
Astronomy Professor Janna Levin tells the story of the headline-making discovery of gravitational waves—the campaign to record the soundtrack of our universe. In 1916, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves. What began as an amusing thought experiment, a mad idea, gradually grew to an international team of hundreds, including a number of Columbians. As the book draws to a close, the team races to intercept a wisp of a sound with two colossal machines, hoping to succeed in time for the centenary of Einstein’s most radical idea. The surprises, disappointments, achievements, and risks in this unfolding story offer a unique portrait of modern science. Read more about Columbia’s contributions to this discovery.
Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures
By Eric Kandel
Columbia University Press
Drawing on his Nobel Prize-winning work on learning and memory, neuroscientist and University Professor Eric Kandel shows how reductionism—distillation of larger concepts into smaller, more manageable components—has been used by artists to refine their subjective world into color, form and light. Kandel demonstrates how science can explore the complexities of human perception. Reductionism, he shows, steered the transition from figurative to abstract art reflected in the works of Monet, Kandinsky and Mondrian. It allowed artists such as Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko to arrive at abstract expressionism and explains how Katz, Warhol and Close reimagined figurative and minimal art. The book features drawings of the brain alongside reproductions of modern art masterpieces, illustrating connections between science and art.
The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right
By Michael J. Graetz and Linda Greenhouse
Simon & Schuster
Michael J. Graetz, Columbia Alumni Professor of Tax Law, and his co-author, former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, show that Warren Burger’s Court was not moderate or transitional, as often portrayed, but a conservative one that still defines the constitutional landscape. With Richard Nixon’s four appointments, including Burger as chief justice, the Court veered well to the right in such areas as criminal law, race and corporate power. Even while declaring a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, it drew the line at government funding for poor women. The authors draw on the personal papers of the justices as well as other archives to reveal how the Court shaped its major decisions.
Family Poverty and Homelessness in New York City: The Poor Among Us
By Ralph da Costa Nunez and Ethan G. Sribnick
Palgrave Macmillan
Ralph da Costa Nunez is an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and president of the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness, a New York City-based think tank focused on the impact of public policies on poor and homeless children. With Ethan G. Sribnick, he explores the world of New York’s poor children and families, from the era of European settlements to the present day; their physical and social environments, the causes of their poverty, and the institutions and social movements that evolved to improve and regulate their lives. The book examines successes and failures of past efforts, providing historical context often lacking in contemporary policy debates.
How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks
By Irina Reyfman
University of Wisconsin Press
In the 18th century, as modern forms of literature began to emerge in Russia, most of the writers producing it were members of the nobility. But their literary pursuits competed with strictly enforced obligations to imperial state service. Aristocrats were expected to serve in the military, civil service or the court, and their status among peers depended on advancement in rank. A Table of Ranks was introduced by Emperor Peter the Great in 1722. Reyfman, professor of Slavic Languages, illuminates its effects on writers, their work and literary culture in Russia from Sumarokov and Derzhavin in the 18th century through Pushkin, Gogol and Dostoevsky in the 19th.
Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan
By Lynne B. Sagalyn
Oxford University Press
In Power at Ground Zero, Lynne Sagalyn, Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor Emerita of Real Estate, offers the definitive account of one of the greatest reconstruction projects in modern history. Epic in scope and granular in detail, the book brings together the parade of New York and New Jersey governors involved in the project, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, various Port Authority leaders, real estate magnate Larry Silverstein, and architectural superstars like Santiago Calatrava and Daniel Libeskind. Sagalyn shows that while modern city building is often dismissed as coldhearted and detached from meaning, the opposite was true at Ground Zero. The emotional dimension of 9/11 made this large-scale rebuilding effort unique, supercharged with both sanctity and politics.
Roman Power: A Thousand Years of Empire
By William V. Harris
Cambridge University Press
The Roman Empire was one of the largest and most enduring in world history. In his new book, William V. Harris, William R. Shepherd Professor of History, sets out to explain, within an eclectic theoretical framework, the waxing and eventual waning of Roman imperial power, along with the Roman community’s internal power structures— political power, social power, gender power and economic power. Integrating analysis with narrative, Harris considers both the gradual rise of the Roman Empire and its demise in the 5th and 7th centuries A.D. He contends that comparing the Romans of these diverse periods sharply illuminates both the growth and the shrinkage of Roman power as well as the Empire’s extraordinary durability.