Military intervention; Jarrell and Auden; Antarctica

Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media and the American Public

by Jon Western '85 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 320 pages, $48 hardcover, $18.95 paperback)

Selling Intervention and War examines the competition among foreign policy elites in the executive branch and Congress in winning the hearts and minds of the American public for military intervention. The book studies how the president and his supporters organize campaigns for public support for military action. According to Jon Western, the outcome depends upon information and propaganda advantages, media support or opposition, the degree of cohesion within the executive branch and the duration of the crisis. Also important is whether the public believes that the military threat is credible and victory plausible.

Western uses several modern conflicts as case studies to illustrate the methods involved in selling intervention and war to the American public: the decision not to intervene in French Indochina in 1954, the choice to go into Lebanon in 1958, and the more recent military actions in Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia and Iraq.

Western is Five College assistant professor of international relations at Mount Holyoke College. He has also been on staff at the United States Institute of Peace.

Night Wonders

by Jane Ann Peddicord '76 (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2005. 32 pages, $16.95 hardcover, $6.95 paperback)

Intended for ages 6-11, this book takes young readers on a journey through the solar system and galaxy to the edges of the known universe. Informative sidebars and NASA images reveal the scope and structure of the cosmos.

Jane Ann Peddicord grew up in Iowa where she and her sister used to lie in the backyard on summer nights and make up stories about the constellations. She now lives in the Texas hill country, near Austin, where stargazing with her children reawakened memories of magical summer nights and inspired the verses of Night Wonders.

On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica

by Gretchen Legler '84 (Milkweed Editions, 2005. 256 pages, $15.95 paperback)

Sent to Antarctica as an observer, Gretchen Legler tells the story of a season she spent at McMurdo Station, where temperatures fall to 70 below, winds reach 80 miles per hour and there are months of nearly total darkness. A lesbian recovering from a recent breakup, Legler travels to Antarctica to escape her own demons and tell "the story of this land...making some human sense of its vastness and its terrible beauty." She finds a community of people stripped of any excess by the necessities of existence in a harsh land.

Legler is the author of All the Powerful Invisible Things: A Sportswoman's Notebook. The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, she taught in the MFA Writing Program at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and now teaches English and creative writing at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden

edited by Stephen Burt with Hannah Brooks-Motl (Columbia University Press, 2005. 200 pages, $34.50 cloth)

Macalester Professor Stephen Burt has collected six lectures that Randall Jarrell delivered at Princeton in 1951-52 on the poetry and prose of W.H. Auden. The lectures reflect a passionate appreciation of Auden's work, a witty attack from an informed opponent and an important document of a major poet's reception. While an admiring and sympathetic reader, Jarrell offers occasionally blistering assessments of individual poems and laments Auden's turn from a cryptic, feeling, impassioned poet to a rhetorical, self-conscious one. Burt's introduction provides a backdrop to the lectures and their reception and importance for the history of modern poetry.

Burt, chair of the English Department at Macalester, is the author of Randall Jarrell and His Age and Popular Music, a collection of poems. His reviews and essays on poetry have appeared in several journals, including the Boston Review, London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.

Hello America: An International Debate on the Events Leading to the War in Iraq

by Jim Burho '70 (Dorrance Publishing Co. Inc., 2005. 262 pages, $18 paperback)

Responding to anti-war, anti-American comments he read by a Norwegian television journalist, Jim Burho was drawn into an extensive Internet debate over the then-imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq. His book chronicles that debate, providing views from ordinary people in Norway, Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. The American participants range from a college student at Berkeley to a veteran of World War II.

Burho, who served 21 years as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, currently flies for a major commercial airline. He has a B.A. in economics from Macalester and an M.B.A. from Texas Tech University and describes himself as having "a keen interest in both politics and history." He lives in Florida.

La isla de oro: una relación californiana (Relación de la Alta y Baja California de Rodrigo Motezuma)

[The Island of Gold: A Californian Brief Account (Brief Account and Exploration of Upper and Lower California by Rodrigo Motezuma)].

edited by Galo F. Gonz·lez (Universitas Castellae, 2005)

This work is the first Spanish edition ever printed of a manuscript authored by Rodrigo Motezuma, a mestizo descendent of the mythical Aztec emperor Motezuma. Written in 1598 in Monterrey, Calif., the manuscript is part of an unpublished collection of documents at the National Library of Madrid. It offers the first mestizo perspective of the history of exploration of Upper and Lower California and predates other known narratives. This edition reveals Motezuma's short but detailed account of the geography, natural resources, fauna and flora, and ethnography of the inhabitants of "the Island of California." Motezuma's account informs the Spanish crown of the existence of gold mines in Upper California and also requests the appointment of a governor to oversee the exploration and exploitation of gold.

Galo González, professor of Hispanic and Latin American studies at Macalester, teaches and researches primarily 20th century Latin American literatures and cultures.

The Promise of Partnerships: Tapping into the College as a Community Asset

by Jim Scheibel, Erin M. Bowley '93 and Steven Jones (Campus Compact/Brown University, 2005. 110 pages, $23)

Designed specifically for community-based organizations, this book offers straightforward guidance on how to tap into the resources and expertise of local colleges and universities. It tells organizations how they can make contact with the right people on campus, refine the planning process to ensure that they are true partners in any enterprise, work with students and faculty, and build long-term success. Examples from the field cover a range of partnership activities, from recruiting and training effective volunteers to establishing multimillion-dollar alliances.

Erin Bowley is manager of a community-based environmental education program, outside evaluator for several community and campus programs, and a nationally regarded expert on campus-community partnerships and service-learning. She lives in Minneapolis.