The Graywolf Annual Ten: Changing Community - Softcover

Collected from a diverse range of sources, including Parabola and The New Yorker, these essays offer some insight and grace, but the organizing principle of community is a bit diffuse. Some of the more abstruse essays are academic, like Tim Luke's analysis of liberal theory and ecology. Only a few essays offer strong reporting, like Jane Kramer's look at how the Salman Rushdie affair galvanized England's Muslims, whom she calls "a constituency waiting to be exploited." Most essays are personal accounts: Los Angeles Crip warlord "Monster Kody" recalls his initiation into gang violence at the age of 11; journalist Phil Catalfo reports on finding friends and advice on a computer network; and former inmate/reformer Jean Harris observes how prison provides more companionship than some women have seen on the streets. Some of the most resonant essays have a spiritual component: Czech leader Vaclav Havel asserts that "politics as the practice of morality is possible." Theologian Stanley Hauerwas, in a tonic critique of platitudes about rebellion against authority, maintains that students must be trained to think before they are allowed to think for themselves. Walker is Graywolf's publisher.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reminiscent of Frances Fitzgerald's Cities on a Hill ( LJ 1/87), this anthology presents 21 essays by prominent social and political voices about the metamorphosis of communities worldwide. The book challenges familiar notions of the melting pot, Jeffersonian agricultural democrary, and F.J. Turner's thesis of the American West as a "safety valve." In "Politics, Morality, and Civility," for example, Vaclav Havel writes about the need to cultivate a moral awareness in all political spheres. Lewis Lapham, in "Who and What America?" explores the American fascination with movement and the redefinition of our national identity. The book's fascinating cross section of essays, most of which have appeared in Harper's or The New Yorker , includes portraits of unstable alliances in Eastern Europe, Islamic London, and Paterson, N.J., among others. The writing is varied in tone, crisp, and clear. Unconditionally recommended.
- J. Thorndike, Lakeland Coll., Sheboygan, Wis.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.