Take a Look: Recent Harvard Books

With this issue the Gazette premieres its books column, to run periodically and feature the published writings of Harvard faculty, staff, and students. Send news about new books to Rhea Becker, Copy Editor, 1060 Holyoke Center.

Why the Wealthy Give: The Culture of Elite Philanthropy (Princeton University Press, 1996) by Francie Ostrower, associate professor of sociology, demonstrates that philanthropy involves far more than writing a check. Through a series of candid personal interviews with nearly 100 donors, Ostrower shows that the wealthy take philanthropy and adapt it into an entire way of life that serves as a vehicle for the social and cultural life of their class.

The Chicano/Hispanic Image in American Film (Vantage Press, 1995) by Frank Javier Garcia Berumen, a Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Education, chronicles the portrayal of the Chicano and Hispanic in American film. The book examines the roots of media stereotypes in their historical and political contexts, demonstrating how history itself was often revised "to suit the public's conceptual whim and fancy with the minimum of historical accuracy." The book includes a concise guide to Chicano/Hispanic filmmakers, films, and performers.

Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (University of North Carolina Press, 1996) by Patricia Sullivan, a visiting scholar at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Studies, explores a loose alliance of blacks and whites, individuals and organizations, who came together in the 1930s and '40s to offer an alternative to Southern conservative politics. Days of Hope traces the rise and fall of this movement, which helped shape the struggle for racial democracy in America.

The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Getty Center, 1996) by Gülru Necipoglu, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture, examines the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library. The scroll is regarded as an invaluable source of information because few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced in full color.

Education Professor Carol Gilligan's newest book, Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationship, has been published by Harvard University Press (with co-authors Jill McLean Taylor and Amy M. Sullivan).

The book weaves together two stories -- one based on interviews with 26 at-risk girls (of varied races, but all from low-income backgrounds) -- and one based on the interactions of the 11 women who constituted the "interpretive community" that analyzed the girls' narratives.