 |
 |
| current issue |  |
past issues | |
send a letter/news | |
address update | |
advertise | |
about us | |
alumni home |
|
Looking for the Fall 2007 book reviews? Please go to this page instead: Fall 2007 Book Reviews Our apologies for the confusion. |
Previews
Books, music, art, theater, film, and danceby Anne Downey '95G
Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon , By James Sullivan '87
Overviews:
Meredith Hall '95G
Nancy Pagh '91G
Tom Wessels '73
Todd Balf '83
Dr. Yakov M. Zilberberg '81G
Christopher Walsh '90
Juliana Fern Patten '78GAlso of Note...
Ron Moore '71, '72G
Margo Fortier Corbett '68
Etta Madden '95G
Albert Pia '49, '53G
E. Ray Canterbery and Thomas D. Birch
Dicky Jensen '82G
Patricia Lynne Grace Cummings '73
Linda Benoit Bilodeau '91Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon
See at amazon.com
As a 13-year-old reader of Rolling Stone, James Sullivan '87 didn't want to be the kind of musician that the magazine profiled—he wanted to be one of the writers who got to tell the musicians' stories. At UNH, his writing teachers, the late Don Murray '48 and Brock Dethier, taught him that his desire constituted a viable career, and three years out of college, he landed a job as the San Francisco Chronicle's popular music critic.
"Eventually, I started writing about anything and everything in the entertainment industry, and my job title changed to pop culture critic," Sullivan explains. Arts entertainment and pop culture are fascinating things to write about, he says, because they encompass politics, social behavior, generational issues and history. "You basically get paid for learning in public."
When his agent had an idea for a book about blue jeans, Sullivan jumped on it. Hence, Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon (Gotham Books, 2006), Sullivans multifaceted history of a quintessentially American garment that is singular in its staying power.
"I'm not a fashion writer, and it was clear to me from the beginning of the project that in writing about denim, I was writing a version of social history," Sullivan says. "As I researched, I was really surprised to see how jeans parallel the signicant cultural movements of the last 150 years." One of the many threads Sullivan follows in his book is the mythology surrounding dry-goods supplier Levi Strauss, who built an empire in the late 19th century producing denim work pants for the miners, loggers, cowboys and farmers who were busy building a nation. Sullivan describes the restless teenagers of the 1950s, who adopted denim because it had an aura of disrepute, and shows how hippies in the 1960s were the first to wear jeans as a political statement. He explores the disco and designer jeans culture of the 1970s and '80s, the thousands of jeans manufacturers that compete in today's global marketplace, and the evolution of couture denim.
Americans spent $14 billion on jeans in 2004. The virtues of a garment that began life as a lowly pair of work pants have been extolled even by fashion designersthe late Bill Blass once declared Levis jeans the best single item of apparel ever designed. Sullivan notes that although European in origin, denim is woven into the cultural fabric of our nation. "Blue jeans—not soft drinks, or cars, or computers—are the crowning product of American ingenuity," he writes. They are timeless—flawlessly designed, yet innitely versatile. They are mass-produced on an epic scale, yet each pair tells its own story. Most of all, blue jeans work on our behalf. They cover our asses."
Anne Downey '95G is a freelance writer who lives in Eliot, Maine.
| Overviews: Books |
|
|
Without A Map: A Memoir
by Meredith Hall '95G, UNH lecturer in English, This highly personal, graceful memoir manages to be both haunting and, in the end, redeeming. It chronicles how, as a pregnant 16-year-old, Hall was banished from her family and community but eventually returned to a place where she could reconcile the mystery of love and all its failings...and its final redemptions.
(Read an excerpt)
|
 |
|
No Sweeter Fat: Poems
by Nancy Pagh '91G, Winner of the 2006 Autumn House Poetry Prize, Nancy Paghs first collection is poignantly honest, tender and very funny. From Ten Reasons Your Prayer Diet Wont Work: Praying to God that you will be thin/instead of eating/only burns eleven calories/at average fervency. |
 |
|
The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future
by Tom Wessels '73, Wessels, a professor of ecology at Antioch New England Graduate School, thoughtfully argues that we are trapped in a paradigm of progress that violates the scientific laws that govern all sustainable systems. |
 |
|
The Story of Manny Being Manny,
by Todd Balf '83, illustrated by Oliver Balf This father-and-son collaboration is sure to enchant the youngest members of Red Sox Nation. |
 |
|
Raptures and Ruptures: Desultory Delights of Love
by Dr. Yakov M. Zilberberg '81G, The author, a professor emeritus of engineering, is a poet, playwright and fiction writer, and his second novel is an intriguing story of love and friendship in the mid-20th-century Soviet Union. |
 |
|
No Time-Outs: What Its Really Like to be a Sportswriter Today
by Christopher Walsh '90, Walsh, who covers Alabama football for the Tuscaloosa News, shares personal experiences and advice about this misunderstood profession in this must-read for any aspiring sportswriter. |
 |
|
Another Side of World War II: A Coast Guard Lieutenant in the South Pacific
by Juliana Fern Patten '78G, The author discovered a box of letters that her father sent home during his two years in the South Pacific, and compiled them in this colorful account. |
 |
|
Also of Note... Selecting the Right Manufacturing Improvement Tools: What Tool? When? by Ron Moore '71, '72G, Industry consultant Ron Moore helps make sense of the plethora of quality improvement tools developed over the last two decades. |
 |
|
Lead Your Way to Better Healthcare: Help Your Doctor Help You
by Margo Fortier Corbett '68, Corbett has a B.S. in medical technology from UNH and a passion for helping people avoid preventable medical errors through her Partner With Your Doctor System. |
 |
|
Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias edited by Etta Madden '95G and Martha L. Finch, These 13 essays broaden the familiar definitions of utopianism and community to explore the ways Americans have produced, consumed, avoided, and marketed food and food-related products to further their visionary ideals. |
 |
|
Acting the Truth: the Acting Principles of Constantin Stanislavski and Exercises, a handbook for Actors, Directors, and Instructors of Theatre by Albert Pia '49, '53G, This compilation of major works by Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), a Russian theater director and acting innovator, comprises the most valued acting principles for teachers of theater students, stage directors, and by actors of any age or experience. |
 |
|
F. Scott Fitzgerald: Under the Influence
by E. Ray Canterbery and Thomas D. Birch, associate professor of business administration at UNH Manchester, Fitzgerald's novels can tell us not only about our past but just as much about the present and our future. Scott had originally set The Great Gatsby in the Gilded Age, an age of excesses similar to those of the 1920s. Today the Casino Economybeginning in the early 1980s and now becoming globalhas remarkable parallels to these earlier epochs. |
 |
|
Where's Mom? by Dicky Jensen '82G, At age 60, the author quit her job, gave up her apartment and used her social security checks to travel the world. She has been on the road for 20 years, and her book is an account of the people and places she has discovered, with a lot of resourceful advice about how to live out of a backpack.
|
|
|
Profile of the Life and Times of John Edward Grace by Patricia Lynne Grace Cummings '73, Grace was a pioneer in establishing credit unions in New Hampshire, and this memoir by his daughter reveals much about the challenges of mid-20th century life in Manchester.
|
 |
|
Stepping Through Seagrass
by Linda Benoit Bilodeau '91, In this lively second novel, a medical doctor, challenged by her own alcoholism, begins a new life treating the citizens in rural Immokalee, Fla.
|
 |
Anne Downey '95G, a freelance writer who lives in Eliot, Maine, received her Ph.D. in English from UNH.