Cornell books

Cornell books: Hull, Lazzaro, McConkey note new published titles

The Cornell Books column notes a selection of current and recent published books by faculty members.

History and art history

This month, Cornell University Press is publishing two books by Cornell faculty members. Cornell University Press, a division of Cornell and the nation's first university press, publishes general and specialized nonfiction books in a wide range of fields on a selective basis. According to Heidi Steinmetz Lovette, publicity manager, approximately 10 percent of the 160 titles published by Cornell University Press each year are authored by Cornell faculty. "Although we publish authors from institutions across the country and internationally, working with Cornell authors is especially rewarding," Lovette said.

Isabel V. Hull, the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell, presents a revisionist account of German military history in Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Hull provides a devastating account of the unstoppable momentum of embedded military routines. John G. Ackerman, director of Cornell University Press, calls the book a "truly exceptional and timely work of history."

Hull shows how a military culture that esteemed extreme solutions developed within the German army in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In chilling detail and with clear contemporary overtones, Hull examines how modern militaries, if unchecked by civilian restraint, can gravitate toward increasingly more extreme measures in their effort to secure order. The momentum of this quest for absolute security leads inexorably to a policy of absolute destruction, to mass killings and even genocide as the most effective way to maintain order.

Absolute Destruction is a beautiful example of historical research with modern implications. Hull's work resonates with modern-day headlines such as the rise of the "Free Fire" zones of Vietnam, where the U.S. sought to "destroy the village in order to save it." One saw the same logic at work in Soviet Afghanistan, in Bosnia and today in Darfur and, seemingly without end, in Chechnya. "Hull's book is the most essential kind of history," notes Ackerman, "one whose lessons invite us to fresh thinking on current dilemmas."

Claudia Lazzaro, professor in the Department of History of Art, has co-edited an ambitious collection of original essays on the Italian fascists' appropriation of the past in Donatello among the Blackshirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy. It is well-known that the fascist regime made frequent reference to the ancient Roman Empire, as Mussolini attempted to cast himself as a new Emperor Augustus. The contributors to this volume find that fascist appropriation had many additional dimensions. Medieval, Renaissance and mid-19th-century artistic traditions and imagery were equally mined for political purposes. Bernie Kendler, executive editor of Cornell University Press, emphasizes the book's insight into the "role that the visual played in implementing, constructing and completing a fusion between the past and the modern world."

Cornell University Press books are available at the Cornell Store or online at http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

New collection of essays

James McConkey, the Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature, emeritus, recently celebrated the release of his latest book, a collection of essays titled The Telescope in the Parlor (Paul Dry Books, 2004). These previously uncollected writings by the Cornell teacher and author of Court of Memory and To a Distant Island cover a range of topics, including his abiding interest in the works of Anton Chekhov, E.M. Forster and the late Cornell poet A.R. Ammons. In addition to clear-eyed and lucid recollections of courting, family life and literary lions, McConkey writes poignantly of friend and local poet Anne Silsbee, whose works were just gaining recognition at the time of her death.

Publisher's Weekly noted the following about Telescope in the Parlor: "McConkey looks back from his 83rd year on his evolution as a reader, thinker and family man. McConkey ... muses engagingly on his choice to become 'a writer of my own experiences' while devoting himself to the theme of memory and its role in literature and the life of the mind. In an essay on reality and imagination in literature and psychology, McConkey makes a heartfelt case for modernist writers' focus on the inner self. Analyzing Chekhov's story In the Cart, he longs for a satisfying theory of memory adequate to the nuances of such a masterly piece of fiction. Displaying a gift for relating his most impassioned reading to his emotional and intellectual growth, he reappraises Christopher Morley's essay-novel Human Being in the context of his own childhood, one disrupted by his parents' divorce and financial hardship. McConkey includes several pieces that recount his blissful adult family life, conveying an idyllic sense of cherished relationships and landmarks, literal and figurative. Elegant and deeply personal, McConkey's essays reveal a seasoned mind and a soulful spirit."

December 16, 2004