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Four new books by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism faculty and administrators tackle very different subjects -- presidential campaigns, Greece just after the fall of the Junta in 1974, and Judaism -- but share a hallmark of fine writing: an engaging writing style that appeals to readers of diverse backgrounds and interests.
"These new books reflect so many of our common experiences that a wide range of readers will find them appealing and informative," said Tom Goldstein, dean of the Journalism School. "We're very proud of our faculty authors, and it's quite remarkable to begin the school year with four new publications."
A journalist's thorough reporting technique and appreciation of how the past often shapes the present mark the three non-fiction works: "Hats in the Ring: An Illustrated History of American Presidential Campaigns" by Associate Dean Evan Cornog and Richard Whelan; "Jew Vs Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry" by Professor Samuel G. Freedman, and "Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practices of Judaism Today" by Professor Ari Goldman. The novel, also based on research, "The Sailor's Wife" by Professor Helen Benedict, received advance praise for the author's exceptional storytelling, complete with unexpected plot turns and revelations.
From George Washington and the elections of 1789 and 1792 to the Clinton - Dole - Perot race of 1996, "Hats in the Ring" chronicles every American presidential campaign with lively narrative and more than 200 illustrations, from portraits and posters to cartoons and buttons. Various themes, including the rise and fall of political parties, the growing importance of foreign policy as the nation emerged as a world power, the changing role of the media in the election process, the central role of slavery and the rights of African Americans in the country's political discourse, are woven throughout.
"One of our assumptions," writes Cornog, "has been that the images and symbols of an election are as freighted with meaning, and as 'valid' a political medium, as the more explicitly issue-oriented material inscribed in party platforms and spoken at debates." The text looks at contemporary nonelection issues and problems in the nation so that the electoral debates can be understood within the context of their times, and sidebars and charts detail electoral tallies, major-party candidates, and constitutional changes. "Hats in the Ring," published by Random House, is available now.
Samuel Freedman's "Jew Vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry," now available from Simon & Schuster Inc., examines current struggles over Jewish identity and Jewish authenticity among American Jews. Conflict between and within the different branches of Jewry is traced in real-life episodes that include the story of Reform Jews from Long Island who left town to get away from Orthodox Jews, whom they accused of "flaunting" their religion, and the Florida Jew so opposed to the peace process that he tried to bomb a synagogue where Shimon Peres was speaking.
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Being Jewish
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Three years of research and hundreds of interviews led Freedman to identify three reasons why the most comfortable, secure and prosperous Jewish community in history is also the least cohesive. First, instead of unifying American Jews, Israel divides them on both political and religious grounds. Second, neither America nor the larger world presents Jews with a single foe against whom to coalesce. Finally, nothing in their history of persecution, oppression and exile prepared Jews for the challenge of being absorbed into a tolerant and diverse nation -- evidenced by an intermarriage rate of over 50 percent.
Insights from Jews across the country also form the foundation of Ari Goldman's "Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practices of Judaism Today." Goldman explains the origins and meanings of Judaism's rituals, including the ceremonies associated with birth, coming of age, marriage and death; the classic holidays, minor fast days and newly-created holidays, and the rhythm of the Jewish day, marked by prayers and blessings. Within this frame of hallowed traditions, the extraordinary variations in how Jews practice their faith -- from quirky rules for keeping Kosher to different ways of marking the High Holy Days -- illustrate how Jews, according to Goldman, are "reaching for the holy" in unexpected and innovative ways.
"My hope," writes Goldman, "is to be one of those mentors -- Gabriel's helper, if you will -- by making Jewish ritual accessible for American Jews and others interested in the faith . . . In these pages I offer a 'toolbox' of Jewish ritual that I hope readers will open, explore, and experiment with." Being Jewish is also published by Simon & Schuster and available now.
Professor Helen Benedict's novel, "The Sailor's Wife," published by Zoland Books and in stores soon, is set in Greece in 1975, right after the fall of the Colonels' dictatorship, and tells the story of Joyce Perlman, a naive young woman from a Miami suburb, who meets and marries a Greek merchant marine. She returns with him to his family's remote island, where she remains mostly without him for more than two years.
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In spite of living the merciless life of a Greek peasant woman, at the command of people steeped in religion, misogyny, superstition and their experiences of war, Perlman, for the first time in her life, feels that she has a purpose. She finds the village community, the urgency of farming and the love of her in-laws more rewarding than anything she experienced in what she considers her empty, vacuous life in Florida. As she learns Greek, however, Perlman comes to understand her husband in a new way, and does not like what she discovers. A young Englishman enters, representing everything she has given up: modernity, education, freedom, passion. "By following Joyce's struggle to balance duty and love, safety and challenge, ambition and obligation," says Benedict, "the novel examines the role of women, the nature of freedom and the tensions between love and independence."
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