A Quest for Life: An Autobiography (Wiley Series in Sustainable Design)

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"Show me any civilization that believes that reality exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos was erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man is exclusively divine, and then I will predict the nature of his cities and its landscapes, the hot dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, the sterile core, the mined and ravaged countryside. This is the image of anthropocentric man. He seeks not unity with nature but conquest, yet unity he finds, when his arrogance and ignorance are stilled and he lies dead under the greensward." Ian L. McHarg Multiply and Subdue the Earth, 1969

"No living American has done more to usher the gentle science of ecology out of oblivion and into mainstream thought than Ian McHarg � a teacher, philosopher, designer, and activist who changed the way we view and shape our environment." From the foreword by Stewart L. Udall

Published in cooperation with the Center for American Places, Harrisonburg, Virginia

A Quest for Life is the autobiography of a man who stands alongside Rachel Carson, Lewis Mumford, and Aldo Leopold as one of the giants of the environmental movement. In a robust and singular voice, Ian McHarg recounts the story of a life that has foreshadowed and eventually shaped environmental consciousness in the twentieth century. Along the way we meet prominent figures in the environmental movement, the design fields, and the government, from Walter Gropius to Lady Bird Johnson, all presented in rich and telling anecdotes.

Early in A Quest for Life McHarg presents us with an arresting image. Describing the view from his boyhood home on the outskirts of Glasgow, he tells us that in one direction he could see the industrial miasma of smokestacks, tenements, and treeless streets, and, in another, the glories of the Scottish countryside. "I was born and bred," he writes, "on a fulcrum with two poles, city and countryside." Confronted with such a stark contrast, the man who was to become "the founder of ecological planning" began at an early age to turn literally from inhumane urban development and toward the beauty and power of Nature.

Each chapter of this book illuminates key stages in McHarg's life and in the evolution of his environmental awareness. We see him as a youth standing on a hillside beside the impressive Donald Wintersgill who, with the wave of his cane, lays out an entire village complete with lakes and forests, and thus introduces the astonished McHarg to the profession of landscape architecture.

In some of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War he witnesses the magnitude of human destructive capability. Later, when he faces a crisis of conscience over his religious training and its exhortation to gain dominion over life and subdue the earth, he begins to develop a deep spiritual appreciation for the sanctity of Nature itself. His training as a designer and planner in the Modernist Bauhaus tradition, with its neglect of the environment; his bouts with tuberculosis that showed him the link between public health and city planning; his famous "Man� �The Planetary Disease" speech before powerful industrialists� all stand as emblematic of battles that are still being fought today.

A Quest for Life also chronicles the many triumphs in McHarg's career. It offers fresh insight into the revolutionary design method behind his groundbreaking book, Design with Nature, and explores the development of geographical information systems. We learn firsthand about his work on the celebrated regional plans for Denver and the Twin Cities, as well as the Woodlands new town project. His most enduring contribution, however, may prove to be his four decades of teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Through the generations of landscape architects, designers, and planners he taught there, his influence has spread around the world and into the future.

As the compelling, first-person story of a remarkable individual who not only manned the barricades against environmental destruction, but helped lay the foundation for the barricades themselves, A Quest for Life is must reading for landscape architects, designers, conservationists, planners, and others concerned with the preservation of our communities and the natural environment.

A Quest for Life: An Autobiography (Wiley Series in Sustainable Design) Review

Ian McHarg has written an autobiography that informs while successfully capturing his bold character. Ian McHarg minces no words. He recalls the incident where he gave public testimony claiming that highway engineers seem to "have a deep insecurity as to their masculinity which can only be appeased by mutilating nature", among other similar ventures.
This autobiography informs us how a person of such outspokenness has emerged and gained respect. His childhood outside Glasgow, Scotland at the city's edge where homes met nature made him realize, at an early age, the advantages of an environment outside of blocks of treeless tenement homes. Possessing neither an undergraduate degree nor a high school diploma, he entered Harvard's graduate program in Landscape Architecture by telegraphing them and requesting that arrangements be made for his arrival and entrance into their school. He repaid his department by becoming Student Council Chairman and pushing through a resolution of no confidence in his department. Upset that the Landscape Architect faculty focused on designing gardens for the wealthy, Ian McHarg became an advocate that landscape architecture is for all. Further, he would argue, we all should respect nature.
People familiar with projects where Ian McHarg had a hand will appreciate learning about his eventful life. Among the projects where Ian McHarg was involved include Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the creation of 110 more acres in Manhattan through landfill, the first Earth Day, and his milestone book "Design with Nature". Many credit "Design with Nature" as a major force in creating legislation requiring ecological considerations when planning construction.
People unfamiliar with Ian McHarg's work will appreciate reading of his life's struggles, from combat in World War II, fighting tuberculosis four decades ago when survival rates were much lower, and founding the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania with no faculty, no office, and no students. A fascinating person has written an excellent book.

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A Question of Identity: Iberian Conversos in Historical Perspective

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In 1391 many of the Jews of Spain were forced to convert to Christianity, creating a new group whose members would be continually seeking a niche for themselves in society. The question of identity was to play a central role in the lives of these and later converts whether of Spanish or Portuguese heritage, for they could not return to Judaism as long as they remained on the Peninsula, and their place in the Christian world would never be secure. This book considers the history of the Iberian conversos-both those who remained in Spain and Portugal and those who emigrated. Wherever they resided the question of identity was inescapable. The exile who chose France or England, where Jews could not legally reside, was faced with different considerations and options than the converso who chose Holland, a newly formed Protestant country where Jews had not previously resided. Choosing Italy entailed a completely different set of options and dilemmas. Renée Levine Melammed compares and contrasts the lives of the New Christians of the Iberian Peninsula with those of these countries and the development of their identity and sense of ethnic solidarity with "those of the Nation." Exploring the knotty problem of identity she examines a great variety of individual choices and behaviors. Some conversos tried to be sincere Catholics and were not allowed to do so. Others tried but failed either theologically or culturally. While many eventually opted to form Jewish communities outside the Peninsula, others were unable to make a total commitment to Judaism and became "cultural commuters" who could and did move back and forth between two worlds whereas others had "fuzzy" or attenuated Jewish identities. In addition, the encounter with modernity by the descendants of conversos is examined in three communities, Majorca, Belmonte (Portugal) and the Southwestern United States, revealing that even today the question of identity is still a pressing issue. Offering the only broad historical survey of this fascinating and complex group of migrants, this book will appeal to a wide range of academic and general readers.

A Question of Identity: Iberian Conversos in Historical Perspective Review

R. M. Levine has done a lot of work on conversos, particularly the female converso experience, and is a competent scholar. I was curious to see where she would go next.

There are good sides to this volume. Levine surveys the converso experience in different lands--Portugal, Amsterdam, Italy, among others. This sort of geographical breath is relatively unusual for books about conversos, which tend to focus on a particular aspect or place. Her writing is clear, and she often retells the stories and anecdotes surrounding particular individuals and families. She also mentions interesting customs and practices here and there.

However, there are some serious drawbacks. Because Levine tries to cover so much territory, the book lacks in depth. I also would cast doubt on her method of using single individual cases to validate her claims. Often, unnecessary details distract from the main point. But more serious is her claim that a sense of converso identity could have been someone's sole basis for the decision to leave Iberia and for the choice of where to go; yet, this seems to be projecting a notion of "identity" back to the 16-17th centuries that might not have been there. On the other hand, she does not clearly define "identity," saying that the essence of converso identity was "uncertainty or serious dilemma" with examples of "cultural commuters" and "fuzzy Jews" (p.133). One wonders if the conversos saw themselves in that way. Last, her chapter on "Modern Manifestations" doesn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the book, and deals with converso groups in the 20th century. Apart from one paragraph, it's up to the reader to surmise what happened to converso identity from the 17th to the 20th century.

The book has limited appeal because it tries to cover too much without some overarching theory other than an exploration of a non-defined "identity." Examples of more penetrating studies are Yosef Kaplan's An Alternative Path to Modernity (on several communities), or Daniel Swetchinski's Reluctant Cosmopolitans (on Amsterdam).

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Reconstructing Political Economy: The Great Divide in Economic Thought (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Political Economy)

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This volume offers an original perspective on the questions the great economists have asked and looks at their significance for todays world. Written in a provocative and accessible style, it examines how the diverse traditions of political economy have conceptualised economic issues, events and theory. Going beyond the orthodoxies of mainstream economics it shows the relevance of political economy to the debates on the economic meaning of our times.
Reconstructing Political Economy is a timely and thought-provoking contribution to a political economy for our time. In this light it offers fresh insights into such issues as modern theories of growth, the historic relations between state and market and the significance of globalisation for modern societies.

Reconstructing Political Economy: The Great Divide in Economic Thought (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Political Economy) Review

Tabb has done an excellent job in demonstrating that it is the risk versus uncertainty issue that separates economics into orthodox and heterodox camps.He correctly shows,implicitly,that Adam Smith understood the clear differences between risk(tolerable security-a static,stationary state with little change),where one can calculate the probability of a ship sinking on a particular oceanic trade route or of a house burning down, and uncertainty(a lack of security- a dynamic,nonstationary state with great change ),where such calculation is unreliable, as being the main operational factor constraining the "rational" decision maker.
Interestingly,it is in the works of Benoit Mandelbrot ,with his emphasis on the wild risk of the Cauchy distribution versus the mild risk of the Normal distribution,and Nassim Taleb,with his emphasis on luck,improbable outcomes,and the gigantic impacts of so called "outlier " events(the outliers are only outliers if you believe in the normal distribution) on the economy,that one can find this distinction carried on in a manner that is both rigorous,practical,and applicable to the macroeconomy.There are simply no current heterodox economists who have or will have accomplished what these two thinkers have accomplished .This is due to heterodox economists unfortunate rantings and ravings against any use or application of mathematics/statistics in economics.J M Keynes,like Mandelbrot and Taleb,understood the important role that mathematics and statistics(properly defined , carefully applied,and empirically checked)could play in economics .
Tabb demonstrates that he does not understand what it was that Keynes actually accomplished in the GT.He simply has no clue.Keynes's mathematical analysis in chapters 20 and 21 of the GT culminates on p.306 with Keynes's specification of the expectational elasticities, e and ed subscript ,that solves the risk versus uncertainty(or mild risk versus wild risk) divide that separates the economics profession.e and ed subscript will equal 1 if and only if there is no uncertainty ,only risk.One can then use the standard equation of exchange because there will be no speculative demand for money.Only the transactionn demand for money will be operational.Only risk need be considered.On the other hand ,if e and ed subscript are < 1,then large amounts of money are being used for speculative purposes in an environment of uncertainty.The orthodox claims about " rational " decision making,universally based on the claim that the normal probability distribution's standard deviation can be used to measure risk,break down completely.
Tabb, unfortunately, relies on the Post Keynesian heterodox school's assessment(Chick,O'Donnell,etc.) in order to obtain an evaluation of what it was that he " thinks " Keynes did in the GT.Of course,this is not surprising as economists are still engaged in fierce debates about what Adam Smith did or did not do over 230 years ago.Tabb misses a major explanation for this phenomenon-the vast majority of economists,both orthodox and heterodox,are simply not trained in a scientific or artistic manner.

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Representing Sylvia Plath

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Interest in Sylvia Plath continues to grow, as does the mythic status of her relationship with Ted Hughes, but Plath is a poet of enduring power in her own right. This book explores the many layers of her often unreliable and complex representations and the difficult relationship between the reader and her texts. The volume evaluates the historical, familial and cultural sources which Plath drew upon for material: from family photographs, letters and personal history to contemporary literary and cinematic holocaust texts. It examines Plath's creative processes: what she does with materials ranging from Romantic paintings to women's magazine fiction, how she transforms these in multiple drafts and the tools she uses to do this, including her use of colour. Finally the book investigates specific instances when Plath herself becomes the subject matter for other artists, writers, film makers and biographers.

Representing Sylvia Plath Review

I can't do better than Peter K. Steinberg's detailed and insightful review. I would only add that I, too, am skeptical that you can entirely discount the autobiographical nature of Plath's work by emphasizing unreliable narrators. But then I am a professional biographer. What else would I think?

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Residential and Bording Education and Care for Young People

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This innovative book identifies the key elements of good management and practice common to all residential child care settings - whether hospital unit, boarding school, children's home, special school or custodial care establishment - and important variations between the different settings. Using a model developed under the auspices of the Rowntree Foundation, it provides managers with a coherent framework for understanding the different facets of their role and the outcomes they are aiming to achieve. Major components of the model are:
� the environment
� the legal framework
· developmental issues
time-related issues.

In each case the salient factors for practice and management are identified and discussed. Good Practice Education and Residential Care of Children offers a model which can be readily applied to training, assessment of standards, inspections, and research and development. Based on the latest research and reflecting the national drive towards evidence-based standards, it will be an invaluable support to managers in training and practice.

Residential and Bording Education and Care for Young People Review

The book is directed mostly to the context of boarding schools and suchlike in Britain. It harks to the centuries-old tradition of affluent parents bundling their kids off to some faraway school. But nowadays, there are numerous regulations enacted regarding how such schools are to be maintained.

Anderson helps the reader, who might be a principal or social worker affiliated with such a school. The book gives an overall conceptual framework within which to understand how such a boarding school could be maintained. Many issues are discussed, albeit not any great depth, given the concise nature of the text.

Readers from outside Britain might well also find the book useful. Some issues, like keeping an eye on the wear and tear of the buildings, and on possible hazardous situations, are applicable to any school anywhere.

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