On Violence: A Reader
Edited by Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim Ph.D. '04.
Duke University Press, 2007. 578 pages. $29.95, paper.

An anthology of classic perspectives on violence that includes the writings of Hannah Arendt, Sigmund Freud, Mohandas Gandhi, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Adolf Hitler, Thomas Hobbes, Osama bin Laden, and Karl Marx. Lawrence, the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of religion at Duke, and Karim, a professor of English and foreign languages at Saint Xavier University, contend that violence is a process, rather than a discrete product, and is intrinsic to the human condition. It can be channeled and reckoned with but never completely suppressed. In placing these classic arguments in conversation, they seek to examine how one might speak about violence without perpetuating it. Lawrence contributes an essay, as does Kristine Stiles, Duke professor of art, art history, and visual studies.

Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism
By Fredric Jameson, edited by Ian Buchanan.
Duke University Press, 2007. 277 pages. $22.95, paper.

In a compilation of interviews conducted by noted scholars between 1982 and 2005, Jameson discusses key concepts like postmodernism, the dialectic, metacommentary, the political unconscious, the utopian, cognitive mapping, and spatialization. He muses on culture, architecture, art, cinema, literature, philosophy, and politics. One of the most influential literary and cultural critics writing today, Jameson, William A. Lane Professor of comparative literature and Romance studies at Duke, is credited with reshaping the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences.

Getting the Best Out of College: A Professor, a Dean, and a Student Tell You How to Maximize Your Experience
By Peter Feaver, Sue Wasiolek '76, M.H.A. '78, LL.M. '93, and Anne Crossman '00.
Ten Speed Press, 2008. 249 pages. $14.95, paper.

Bucking a trend of how-to college-admissions manuals, the writing team—a Duke professor, a dean of students, and a recent alumna—pools its collective fifty-plus years of experience in higher education to share insider strategies for everything from getting along with a first-year roommate, to navigating the college social scene, to getting the most out of classes and other academic opportunities. The tone is chatty, and the lessons are applicable. Feaver, for example, shares insights into how to genuinely impress a professor. Anecdotes from real Duke students (names changed to protect the innocent, as well as the guilty) illustrate each point.

Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement
By Sally G. McMillen Ph.D. '85.
Oxford University Press, 2008. 310 pages. $28.00.

In the latest contribution to Oxford's Pivotal Moments in American History series, McMillen, a professor of history at Davidson College, takes the reader to Seneca Falls, New York, the site of the pivotal 1848 convention that effectively launched the women's-rights movement in the United States. She traces the movement's momentum in its early years, focusing on the roles of prominent women Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone. She describes how they came to the movement, the advances they made during their lifetimes, and the lasting effects of their work.

Family Bible
By Melissa J. Delbridge.
University of Iowa Press, 2008. 143 pages. $23.95.

In this memoir about growing up in the Deep South, Delbridge introduces the reader to the people in her own family Bible. Now an archivist in Duke's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Delbridge, an essayist and aspiring novelist, shares tales of her father's circumspect "hunting trips"; her mother's sudden, tempestuous moves across town in the middle of the night; and sipping stolen rum from a rinsed-out perfume bottle in the middle-school bathroom.