Book of the Week (November 22, 2010)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby

Call Number: F 582 .C66 2010

Wisconsin's Own: Twenty Remarkable Homes

By M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman. Photographs by Zane Williams

Publisher's Description: "Wisconsin's Own" tells the story of the considerable contribution Wisconsin's historic homes have made to American residential architecture. It also answers questions you've likely asked when you've seen a notable historic home: Who built this house? What brought them here? Why did they select that particular style? How is it that this historic home still stands today, despite development pressures?

The houses profiled in "Wisconsin's Own" are a mix of public ones you may have visited and private homes you've been hoping for an invitation to explore. These homes are representative of the varied architectural styles in Wisconsin, from an Italianate along the Mississippi and an interpretation of a sixteenth-century northern Italian villa overlooking Lake Michigan to an Adirondack-style camp in the North Woods and a fourteen-bedroom Georgian Revival mansion on Lake Geneva. The Prairie School is represented, with examples by Frank Lloyd Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan.

Richly illustrated with the photography of Zane Williams complemented by historical images and watercolors and line drawings by the authors, "Wisconsin's Own" offers an intimate tour of residential treasures - built for captains of industry, a beer baron, Broadway stars, and more - that have endured the test of time.

Book of the Week (November 15, 2010)

On the New Book shelf in the Library
Call Number: E 184 .A1 P29 2010

The History of White People
By Nell Irvin Painter

Publisher's Description: A mind-expanding and myth-destroying exploration of notions of white race—not merely a skin color but also a signal of power, prestige, and beauty to be withheld and granted selectively

Ever since the Enlightenment, race theory and its inevitable partner, racism, have followed a crooked road, constructed by dominant peoples to justify their domination of others. Filling a huge gap in historical literature that long focused on the non-white, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, tracing not only the invention of the idea of race but also the frequent worship of “whiteness” for economic, social, scientific, and political ends.

Our story begins in Greek and Roman antiquity, where the concept of race did not exist, only geography and the opportunity to conquer and enslave others. Not until the eighteenth century did an obsession with whiteness flourish, with the German invention of the notion of Caucasian beauty. This theory made northern Europeans into “Saxons,” “Anglo-Saxons,” and “Teutons,” envisioned as uniquely handsome natural rulers.

Here was a worldview congenial to northern Europeans bent on empire. There followed an explosion of theories of race, now focusing on racial temperament as well as skin color. Spread by such intellectuals as Madame de Stael and Thomas Carlyle, white race theory soon reached North America with a vengeance. Its chief spokesman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, did the most to label Anglo-Saxons—icons of beauty and virtue—as the only true Americans. It was an ideal that excluded not only blacks but also all ethnic groups not of Protestant, northern European background. The Irish and Native Americans were out and, later, so were the Chinese, Jews, Italians, Slavs, and Greeks—all deemed racially alien. Did immigrations threaten the very existence of America? Americans were assumed to be white, but who among poor immigrants could become truly American? A tortured and convoluted series of scientific explorations developed—theories intended to keep Anglo-Saxons at the top: the ever-popular measurement of skulls, the powerful eugenics movement, and highly biased intelligence tests—all designed to keep working people out and down.

As Painter reveals, power—supported by economics, science, and politics—continued to drive exclusionary notions of whiteness until, deep into the twentieth century, political realities enlarged the category of truly American.

A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People forcefully reminds us that the concept of one white race is a recent invention. The meaning, importance, and realty of this all-too-human thesis of race have buckled under the weight of a long and rich unfolding of events.

Read a NY Times review of the book

Book of the Week (November 1, 2010)

Be sure to stop by the Library to see our display on the Greenspans' work in educating students with special needs!

The Learning Tree: Overcoming Learning Disabilities From the Ground Up
By Stanley J. Greenspan, MD and Nancy Thorndike Greenspan

Call Number: LC 4704 .G735 2010

Publisher's Description: Pre-eminent psychiatrist and early childhood expert Stanley Greenspan collaborated with his wife, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, in their fourth book together, the culmination of many years of research. The authors employ the metaphor of a tree to illustrate how children learn; the roots take in information and plan actions, the trunk represents thinking skills, and the branches stand for academic areas such as reading, writing, and math.

Maintaining that labels serve limited purpose, the Greenspans encourage educators and parents to treat each child according to his or her unique learning profile. Instead of focusing on a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD, the goal is to give attention to the origin of a problem, providing exercises and support as children work through their difficulties. Identifying nine levels of thinking, the authors show parents how to recognize problem areas and then use such methods as their signature Floortime --in which the parent follows the child's lead, challenges her to be creative, expands the action and interaction, and includes sense and motor skills as well as various emotions.

The Learning Tree offers a new understanding of learning problems. Rather than looking just at symptoms, this new approach describes how to find the missing developmental steps that cause these symptoms. The best solution to the problem comes from knowing what essential skills to strengthen.Both parents and early learning professionals will especially welcome the sections on finding and solving learning problems early. With Dr. Greenspan’s characteristic wise optimism, this book “raises the ceiling” for all children who learn differently or with difficulty.

With their developmental approach, the Greenspans focus on practical ways to enhance thinking-based rather than memory-based learning. Several chapters contributed by Richard Lodish, an educator at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., demonstrate how Greenspan's methods are used in the classroom and will be of particular interest to teachers.