Bryn Mawr Authors
Radicalization to Terrorism
by Clark McCauley
Soviet Films of the 1970s and Early 1980s
by Tim Harte, Professor, Department of Russian, and Marina Rojavin, Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian
This book explores a new character archetype that permeated Soviet film during what became known as the era of Stagnation, a stark period of loneliness, disappointment, and individual despair. This new type of character was neither negative nor positive, but nevertheless systematically undermined Soviet norms of behaviour, hairstyle, dress, lifestyle, and perspective, in stark contrast to Socialist Realism's traditional, positive hero who fought for Soviet values and who vanquished the enemies of socialism. The book discusses a wide range of films from the period, showing how the new antiheroic archetype of Stagnation resonated through a multitude of characters, mostly male, and vividly reflected the realities of Soviet life. The book thereby provides great insight into the lives, outlook, and psychology of citizens in the late Soviet period.
From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence
by Mindy Fullilove BMC '71
A public health approach to understanding and eliminating excessive police violence.
Excessive police violence and its disproportionate targeting of minority communities has existed in the United States since police forces first formed in the colonial period. A personal tragedy for its victims, for the people who love them, and for their broader communities, excessive police violence is also a profound violation of human and civil rights.
Most public discourse about excessive police violence focuses, understandably, on the horrors of civilian deaths. In From Enforcers to Guardians, Hannah L. F. Cooper and Mindy Thompson Fullilove approach the issue from a radically different angle: as a public health problem. By using a public health framing, this book challenges readers to recognize that the suffering created by excessive police violence extends far outside of death to include sexual, psychological, neglectful, and nonfatal physical violence as well.
Arguing that excessive police violence has been deliberately used to marginalize working-class and minority communities, Cooper and Fullilove describe what we know about the history, distribution, and health impacts of police violence, from slave patrols in colonial times to war on drugs policing in the present-day United States. Finally, the book surveys efforts, including Barack Obama's 2015 creation of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, to eliminate police violence, and proposes a multisystem, multilevel strategy to end marginality and police violence and to achieve guardian policing.
Aimed at anyone seeking to understand the causes and distributions of excessive police violence--and to develop interventions to end it--From Enforcers to Guardians frames excessive police violence so that it can be understood, researched, and taught about through a public health lens.
Lonely Spirit
by Anolic, Tamar
A B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree
The Lonely Spirit is also a winner for historical fiction in the Firebird Book Awards. It was Long Listed for the Historical Fiction Company's Book of the Year Awards, and received the "Highly Recommended" award of excellence from the Historical Fiction Company.
"This book is exemplary... A quick read with a huge plot that will leave the reader wanting more. Quinn is a great character. The time period of the mid 1800s in the West and the tensions between the Comanches and the Army is well described and adds a wonderful dimension to the story of Quinn.... What a nice read! I didn't know what to expect as I began to read and I enjoyed every aspect of it. The pacing, organization and structure were well executed. You bring the reader right into the heart of the story as Quinn begins his journey to find out who he truly is. His story is so compelling, I was literally turning the pages to find out what happens next. Great job! ... Quinn is a fantastic character. He doesn't fit into either world and must forge his own way to discover who he is and where he does belong. He's so well fleshed out and so compelling, I was actually sad when I came to the end. The secondary characters were also well fleshed out and believable. You do a good job creating another character in the Old West itself. You bring the location to life in a vivid way." Judge, 30th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards.
The Lonely Spirit is a short story collection sprawled across the Old West. As the only half-Comanche U.S. Marshal, L.S. Quinn straddles two worlds, searching for peace in both.
Quinn is one of the best Marshals, well-respected for finding criminals and bringing them to justice. His adventures pit him against criminals like Florence Finnegan, the famous brothel owner and gunslinger, and Jack Mattherson, whose attack on U.S. Senator William Quincy brings out Quinn's desire for revenge. But Quinn isn't always lucky: when one of his partners turns into his enemy on a lonely stretch of land, Quinn no longer knows whom to trust.
The fight between the Comanche and the United States Army is never far from Quinn's mind, either. When the Army kills his fiancée, Quinn must rebuild his life, even as he finds himself a lasting enemy in Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, a respected Civil War veteran.
But Quinn's journeys also bring him into contact with kindness he does not anticipate in such a wild land. To his surprise, sympathy comes in the form of Colonel Robert Graypool, whose level-headed command of the Comanche reservation at Fort Sill brings out Quinn's respect when he least expects it. Humanity also resides in Dr. Mary Newcomb, one of the few women physicians of the day. In both of them, Quinn finds some of the community for which he searches.
Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All
by Mindy Fullilove BMC '71
Traverses the central thoroughfares of our cities to uncover the ways they bring together our communities
How do Main Streets contribute to our mental health? This intriguing question took social psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove on an 11-year search through 178 cities in 14 countries. As Andy Merrifield notes in the foreword, "Mindy has drifted through a lot of Main Streets, walked them, observed, talked to people, ordinary people as well as professional practitioners. While she got to pace many miles of New York's Broadway, eat French patisseries as a flâneuse in Gay Paree, sip çay in Istanbul, and chill in Kyoto's dazzling Zen temples, her real concern is Main Street, USA, the more modest main stems of provincial America." From these visits Fullilove has discerned the larger architecture of Main Streets. She observes the ways that Main Streets are shaped for a vast array of social gatherings and processes, how they are a marker forthe integrity of civilization-and the marks aren't always good. She also looks at Main Streets as "an allée, a way that is part drama and part quotidian. While passing through, we get to look at one another, to sing, to recognize what we are, have been, might be." Her conclusion, that Main Streets are essential for gathering people and sharing information, emphasizes that tending our oft-neglected civic and commercial centers is a task worthy of us all.
Perfect Copies
by Shiamin Kwa
Analyzing the way that recent works of graphic narrative use the comics form to engage with the "problem" of reproduction, Shiamin Kwa's Perfect Copies reminds us that the mode of production and the manner in which we perceive comics are often quite similar to the stories they tell. Perfect Copies considers the dual notions of reproduction, mechanical as well as biological, andexplores how comics are works of reproduction that embed questions about the nature of reproduction itself. Through close readings of the comics My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, The Black Project by Gareth Brookes, The Generous Bosom series by Conor Stechschulte, Sabrina by Nick Drnaso, and Panther by Brecht Evens, Perfect Copies shows how these comics makers push the limits of different ideas of "reproduction" in strikingly different ways. Kwa suggests that reading and thinking about books like these, that push us to engage with these complicated questions teaches us how to become better readers.
Primary Politics
by Elaine Kamarck BMC '72
The 2020 presidential primaries are on the horizon and this third edition of Elaine Kamarck's Primary Politics will be there to help make sense of them. Updated to include the 2016 election, it will once again be the guide to understanding the modern nominating system that gave the American electorate a choice between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton.
In Primary Politics, political insider Elaine Kamarck explains how the presidential nomination process became the often baffling system we have today, including the "robot rule." Her focus is the largely untold story of how presidential candidates since the early 1970s have sought to alter the rules in their favor and how their failures and successes have led to even more change. She describes how candidates have sought to manipulate the sequencing of primaries to their advantage and how Iowa and New Hampshire came to dominate the system. She analyzes the rules that are used to translate votes into delegates, paying special attention to the Democrats' twenty-year fight over proportional representation and some of its arcana.
Drawing on meticulous research, interviews with key figures in both parties, and years of experience, this book explores one of the most important questions in American politics--how we narrow the list of presidential candidates every four years.
Project Cost Recording and Reporting
by Alexia Nalewaik BMC '90
Communication is a vital part of project management, and reports are one of the preferred vehicles for transmitting information to an intended internal or external audience. Reports are also part of the system of control and governance on projects, used to bring attention to issues and prompt action to improve project outcomes.
There are countless ways of combining project information for consumption by stakeholders. This book discusses the purpose of project reports, and provides examples of the format, content, timing, and audience for various types. Using principles of stakeholders and risk management, it presents a rationale for communication plans, enabling appropriate reporting at the project, program, and portfolio level. The author also:
It is essential reading for practitioners and students of project management, cost control, and accountancy.
Project Performance Review
by Alexia Nalewaik BMC '90
Project Performance Review focuses on evaluating projects efficiently and in context, identifying important improvement opportunities and leading project and organizational management practices. It advises how these can be put in place to give stakeholders confidence in the control and delivery of their projects without waste.
The authors explain not just the mechanism and objective of project performance reviews but also the ideal environment in which they are intended to be implemented. The shaping of this environment, by the stakeholders and technical team, is key to achieving your intended outcomes. Without the professional cooperation of all interested and informed parties, the effectiveness of any review may be compromised. Topics addressed include: introducing the project review method, engaging project stakeholders, ensuring project governance, conducting project risk assessments, improving accountability, providing project assurance, organizing and managing projects, optimizing review scope and approach, avoiding review pitfalls, meeting existing audit standards, and proposing alternate approaches to project evaluation.
City of Blows
by Tim Blake Nelson
"A travelogue of purgatory. Brutal, but minutely rendered--a chronicle of small betrayals and vicissitudes in a ruthless world. Losers, hustlers and delusional artists, all trapped in their pretense and hollow lives; making deals with the devil at the crossroads of Tinseltown." --Guillermo del Toro
Tim Blake Nelson's debut novel is an epic group portrait of four men grappling for control of a script in a radically changing Hollywood, or the City of Blows.
It's early 2020, and legendary producer Jacob Rosenthal is eager to make his next film, Coal, adapted from the bestselling novel by the celebrated writer Rex Patterson. The project--which takes on the controversial topic of race in America--is Jacob's envisioned magnum opus, and likely his swan song. He selects David Levit to direct, a major opportunity for the classically trained actor/director whose own films, while garnering critical acclaim, have not resulted in box office success.
But the announcement of David's hiring doesn't sit well with a producer from David's past, Brad Shlansky, who channels the last remaining vestiges of his creativity into a revenge plot that could very well scupper the making of Coal, and ruin the lives of its producer and director in the process.
A sprawling, character-driven depiction of the modern film industry, City of Blows reaches back decades to the formative experiences of each of the novel's central figures to explore what first motivated them to become involved in the quixotic and often venal world of movie-making. Driven by their diverse backgrounds, each must navigate the same huckstering circus that puts films on screen.
From the start, Tim Blake Nelson's sharp and unsparing voice holds a mirror up to America itself, using Hollywood to investigate the cultural and economic fault lines that have come to dominate and confound us all. You will find yourself unable to turn away from the ruthlessness and despair, the hubris and sheer evil, as City of Blows accelerates to its unimaginable yet inevitable crescendo.