Basic Books
Dominion of memories; Jefferson, Madison, and the decline of Virginia.
Virginia was a colonial powerhouse that produced American founding fathers including Jefferson and Madison, but who lost more than its slaves in the Civil War. Dunn (humanities, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts) traces the factors that led to the Old Dominion's slide into secession and socioeconomic decline. The epilogue shows that this legacy of favoring state rights guarded by a genteel elite rather than a "despotic Central Government" (per Sen. Harry Byrd) still dominated the state's 20th century politics. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Group genius; the creative power of collaboration.
Sawyer (education and psychology, Washington U. in St. Louis) argues that collaboration is the key to breakthrough creativity. Through research with improvisational theater and jazz groups, businesses, and that of social scientists, he shows how successful collaborations have an improvisational nature. He also reveals how the individual mind has an internal collaboration and how insight can be traced to dedication, hard work, and cooperation. He also describes stories about inventions like the telegraph, the light bulb, and the airplane, and how they are myths of a lone genius. Throughout he uses examples of a variety of innovations from different companies such as Apple, eBay, Toyota, and Google. He also provides examples of creativity games. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Retained by the people; the "silent" Ninth Amendment and the constitutional rights Americans don't know they have.
The Ninth Amendment of the US Constitution reads: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." In the view of Farber (law, U. of California at Berkeley), this largely neglected amendment points to the existence of unenumerated rights, such as the right to privacy, that are now denied by many parties. In an effort to renew the relevance of the Ninth Amendment and protect many rights from attack by the federal government or, when the Ninth is considered in conjunction with the Fourteenth Amendment's "privileges or immunities" clause, state governments, he reviews the history of the Constitutional framers views on rights and how their views suggest the Ninth can be used to support reproductive rights, end of life choices, gay rights, rights to education, the right to governmental protection, and the right to travel, among other rights. He also considers the implications of the Ninth Amendment for the judicial process as a whole and for the current debate about the applicability of foreign law. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Scorpion down; sunk by the Soviets, buried by the Pentagon; the untold story of the USS Scorpion.
Since its disappearance in 1968, the cause of the sinking of the Spipjack-class submarine, the USS Scorpion, has been shrouded in mystery, with most official Navy accounts pointing to some form of mechanical failure or accidental explosion in the torpedo room. Offley (military reporter for the News Herald in Panama City, Florida), however, has a darker story. Placing the operations of the Scorpion within the context of Cold War submarine rivalries, he makes the case that the vessel was sunk on purpose by a Soviet torpedo in apparent revenge for the loss of the Soviet submarine K129 some time earlier, which the Soviet navy believed was the responsibility of the Scorpion's sister sub, the USS Seawolf. He further argues that the US Navy covered up their original location of the sunk Scorpion, delaying its revelation for months in order to obscure the facts, and that it cooperated with the Soviets for decades in order to hide the truth. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
