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June 15, 2006
"Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love" by R.D. Egan
"Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love" may sound like the title of another coed-turned-stripper tell-all, but if that's what you're hunting for, hunt elsewhere. Danielle Egan did indeed work as a stripper, but in the context of a women's studies/sociology graduate student investigating the complicated relationship between exotic dancers and their regular customers. Egan clearly writes for an academic audience while discussing the interactions between dancers and regulars. She explores the lines between fantasy and reality, romance and finance, masochism and narcissism. Egan uses a few first person interactions to illustrate and enliven her discussion, but the majority of the book is dense and occasionally essoteric enough to force you to read sections a couple of times before completely understanding her point. One thing she makes very clear, though, is that sex work is a complex system of power interactions that deserves a great deal of study, especially from feminist and sociological standpoints. In short, this is well worth the time it takes to read.
ISBN: 1403970440
Jennifer, Reference
Posted by jnardine at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2006
"Maybe I'll Pitch Forever" by Leroy "Satchel" Paige
This year, the National Baseball Hall of Fame wrapped up a special research effort into the Negro Leagues’ history. They collected box scores from almost every game, and they have finally tabulated statistics for these nearly-forgotten players. They celebrated by electing seventeen new members to the Hall, including former Detroit Stars first-baseman Mule Suttles. A large part of the research has now been released in the new book Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball by Lawrence D. Hogan.
I’m sure that Shades of Glory is a fine book, but I’m reading Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever instead. An autobiography from Satchel Paige, crafted from interviews with David Lipman (who also wrote biographies of Bob Gibson and Branch Rickey), it provides a first-hand look at the Negro Leagues. Paige’s distinctively colorful voice carries a joy we are to assume infected these players, in spite of the harsh circumstances of their professional and personal lives. Yet Satch starts his story several games into his first major league season, when he was forty-one, so we know it all worked out for the man many thought should have broken baseball’s color barrier before Jackie Robinson ever finished college.
ISBN: 0803287321
Everett, Reference
Posted by jnardine at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2006
"Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis" by Jimmy Carter
If you’ve been given the impression that all born-again Christians have the same ideas about how religion and faith inform politics and values, Jimmy Carter can show you a very different way.
ISBN: 0743284577
Linda, Head of UGL
Posted by jnardine at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)