University of Iowa Press

Where Do Birds Live?

tina — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

There are few things in life better than large, hardcover, richly-illustrated children’s books. As a child, these were the books I most often pulled from the library shelves. Beautiful visuals invite the eye to stay for a while, while skilled writing engages and challenges the mind. Even today, I sheepishly browse the children’s sections of libraries and bookstores, in love with nearly everything in sight.

In Where Do Birds Live?, Claudia McGehee works as both writer and illustrator to inform and enchant us about the habitats of American birds. This large, hardcover book has full, two-page spreads dedicated to each bird featured. The left pages include: illustrations of the bird itself, basic information about its traits, habitat, life challenges, and how humans can help keep the particular bird from becoming endangered. The right pages feature a full page illustration of the bird’s habitat and neighbors. I must add that every illustration in the book is a scratchboard piece; a difficult medium to work with, but gorgeously performed by Claudia McGehee.

The birds represented in the book are limited to those that live in the United States. Common varieties such as hummingbirds, bluebirds, gulls, and ravens are presented, as well as less commonly noted birds such as tanagers, flycatchers, roadrunners, and oystercatchers. I was inspired to do research on my own after reading this book; I wanted to listen to bobolink prairie birds sing and see photos of the Pacific rain forest. Now I’m considering visiting that area someday, if possible.

People of all ages would appreciate and benefit from this book. The writing is informative and accessible and the illustrations were a labor of love. The entire book is inviting and engaging, with interesting tidbits on bird behavior and helpful advice on how humans can conserve bird habitats for years to come.

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, January 31st 2011

The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti

priyanka — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell

University of Iowa Press

Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell's collection of short stories, The Company of Heaven, is an unkind narrative of Haiti and Haitians. It is unkind in the way one can be unkind when recalling a sibling’s awkward puberty or seeing for the first time, the humiliation of a parent by a stranger in a public place. She is unkind to her Haitians and yet she remains a family member, intimately invested and loyal. It is difficult to like even one of her characters, however, it is even more difficult to look away from them.

In "Meat," a stranger stranded at the airport in Boston describes the contents of her suitcase. Cooked meat to delight her undernourished relatives in Haiti for at least a week. The traveler cannot stop returning to Haiti and yet she describes a mean Haiti where dog fights dog and even goat, and family members are picked up off the street by masked men and discovered decomposing in sewage holes.

The living are also decomposing: there is sickness in Haiti and Phipps-Kettlewell rarely distinguishes between mental, spiritual and physical corrosion. There is cancer, old age, the lust for little girls, insanity, and AIDS too—a disease that wipes out a circle of beautiful boys and men in the story "River Valley Rooms." The narrator mourns in rooms inhabited by decaying family and filthy dogs. The narrator has returned from the US and becomes the reluctant heir to her late father’s patriarchy: spying on her brother Justin and her mother and saving them from an encroaching army of parasites siphoning off the illusory remains of the family wealth and status.

And yet Phipps-Kettlewell’s characters are not caricatures of rich and poor in a poor country. Neither the poor or the rich are noble, and the power (im)balance between the two fluctuates within each story. Phipps-Kettlewell never allows the servants, workers, guards, gardeners and other dependents of the masters to be powerless. In "Down by the River," it is the servant Venant who carries the collapsed patriarch Misye Emanyèl from his shower and hands him his teeth. There are the legion of servants who attend Misye Emanyèl’s funeral bringing their children and grandchildren: "They were there to bury our dead. We were never there to bury theirs."

The servants and poor Haitians are at the disposal of the elite, they stoke the masters’ vanities, witness their follies and also fan their paranoia. In "Land," a woman who describes herself as French and proud of it, is swindled and threatened by Sasal, her son’s poor friend, in a land deal gone wrong. Sasal is sick of ‘these bourgeois’ but accepts their money. In "Down by the River," the daughter recently bereaved by her father’s death seduces a poor child with a new dress, running water and the promise of America—she steals her away from an impoverished but devastated surrogate mother. And in "Marie Ange’s Ginen," a wily American immigrant returns to his community and extorts a travel fee from friends desperate to flee poverty. The vessel to America is overcrowded, poorly constructed and destined to sink. And yet an old mother boards it and makes a pact with death, with the ocean, with ocean zombies, that she may be taken but that her daughter must survive and escape misery.

Phipps-Kettlewell’s stories describe poor people, even her rich prose cannot conceal their poverty of both spirit and pocket. Her narrators do not conceal depravity, failure, perversion, grief, and longing. As a result, her fiction cannot be conventionally beautiful... but it is true.

Written by: Chiseche Salome Mibenge, November 2nd 2010

Her America: “A Jury of Her Peers” and Other Stories

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Edited by Patricia L. Bryan, Martha C. Carpentier

University of Iowa Press

Popular in her own time, Susan Glaspell has somewhat fallen out of favor in contemporary academic circles while other American writers of realist fiction such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Willa Cather have enjoyed more attention. Yet, Glaspell enjoys a mini-renaissance in Her America: "A Jury of Her Peers" and Other Stories, an edited collection of twelve short stories that joins a growing movement led by feminist scholars to recuperate her work.

Spanning the years 1914 to 1927, these stories are vibrant tales of the United States at the turn of the century and are alternately humorous and touching, speaking to timeless concerns such as individual isolation, our collective responsibility to each other, the illusions we hold about ourselves and others, and the cost of pretending to be someone we’re not. Many readers will easily see themselves and/or their neighbors in Glaspell’s vivid cast of characters—whether it’s the young adopted woman who mourns the discovery that her biological mother was not a gypsy (“Unveiling Brenda”), or the pseudo-intellectual who feels sorry for his brother’s “common” life only to learn that his brother had, in fact, felt sorry for him (“Poor Ed”).

Glaspell’s compassion for the people who populate Her America is striking. This is clear in such stories as “The Manager of Crystal Sulphur Springs” wherein a caretaker chooses to let her elderly patient die rather than have him suffer potential humiliation or in the case of the farmer from the beautifully written “Pollen,” a man who obsessively isolates himself from his neighbors until he realizes that “I can’t have good corn while their corn’s poor.” Yet, even in stories wherein Glaspell pokes fun at her protagonists, she does so with an empathetic touch, reminiscent of Mark Twain’s satirical humor. A memorable instance is the story “Looking After Clara” about a vain man whose romantic overtures are undone by his beloved’s wily cat.

While it’s somewhat unfortunate that Glaspell is almost exclusively known for “A Jury of Her Peers” and the play Trifles on which it is based, it’s no wonder that this is the case. The story focuses on Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale who piece together a neighbor’s motive for killing her husband. While their husbands and the country attorney belittle their attention to Minnie Wright’s jarred preserves, quilt pieces and birdcage—what the men openly mock as “trifles”— these objects hold the key to her motive. These women come to realize Minnie’s desperation, and Mrs. Hale laments, “We live close together, and we live far apart,” questioning what was the greater crime—Minnie murdering her husband or her own failure to visit Minnie. Readers enjoy a pleasant surprise at encountering the story in its original version here. Between 1917 and its inclusion in The Best Short Stories of 1917 published in 1918, Glaspell made several revisions, most significantly deleting the final line, “He [the country attorney] did not see her [Mrs. Hale’s] eyes." Reprinting the original version opens up new interpretive possibilities for a classic of feminist literature.

Besides the stories, Her America opens with a very useful introduction by the editors Patricia L. Bryan and Martha C. Carpentier. It provides background information about Glaspell’s early career and publication history while also introducing the stories’ thematic concerns and summarizing key features of Glaspell’s style. Overall, this book is a welcome text in reviving interest in Glaspell’s shorter works, and its cast of characters should definitely be introduced to a new audience. Since this collection provides just a taste of Glaspell’s skill as a storyteller, one can only hope that a complete collection of her short stories is forthcoming soon.

Written by: Dr. Jennifer A. Smith, August 20th 2010

A Little Middle of the Night

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Molly Brodak

University of Iowa Press

Molly Brodak’s poetry collection A Little Middle of the Night is wide in its range: big dog topics like perceptions of art and the weight of tragedy are sifted through by a careful and talented poet. These poems tell the story of how "we stopped making up stories of how our horror was salvation/ and just lived it."

Brodak's poetry is "turning under and under every buried thing." The reader is expected to follow suit, to keep up, and do the work necessary to access and engage with the poems. Broadak says it herself in "The First Poem." The first line tells the reader to "get up" and the closing lines explain that "the first poem" never did "ask you to sit."

If there's one criticism that could be latched to this collection, it is that the poems are not immediately accessible. Then again, the purpose of poetry is not so much obvious meanings, but what poets can line in their pockets, sleeves, and grinning lyrics. Brodak's poetry is about the act of discovery. For example, in the final poem, "Real World Magic," both the speaker and the reader sense themselves "formless in force, disarmed by a little sun, waking." We may think we are awake, but these poems take new stabs at age-old mysteries and ideas.

Dream, the space of darkness, and the relationship between nature and art are all examined. Like a child experimenting with blocks, Brodak is happy to manipulate and experiment with the abstract and concrete entities, as well as the space between such ideas. The joy of these poems is that they do not always rest on an answer but rather to the joy of the problem, vision, or idea explored. The poems are like a wheel: there are many spokes of meanings. To read her, you must climb without searching for an exact point. To cling to such hope, would cause you to miss the surrounding scenery as well as the blood, sweat, and tears of the journey. There are many nooks, crannies, and possibilities in these poems if you only make the effort to look.

Written by: Lisa Bower, July 18th 2010

All That Work and Still No Boys

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Kathryn Ma

University of Iowa Press

In All That Work and Still No Boys, Kathryn Ma writes short stories with one thing in common: the Chinese American experience in California. This book is not for those who like conventional storytelling. Each chapter is the story of a person or family, sometimes related to another person or family in the book and sometimes not at all. The stories jump through time and space—sometimes told in first person and sometimes in third—but each chapter brings a refreshing and unique look at the way different people deal with immigration, culture, and family.

It’s hard to write about what I enjoyed most in this book without going into detail about specific stories. I’ll briefly mention that I loved the grandmother, who is so dedicated to helping her aspiring actress of a granddaughter, and the overachieving student with a school prank gone wrong. With the grandmother, you see pride and dedication almost to a fault. The student, meanwhile, provides an unexpected spin on the stereotype of overachieving Asian student. These are a couple of my favorites because Ma breathed life into each character, no matter how short the story. I found myself connecting to some part of almost every story, seeing the weaknesses of the protagonists and sympathizing with the antagonists.

This is normally the point in a review where I would elaborate on what I didn’t like about the book, but there isn’t really much I didn’t like. If I had to offer a criticism, it would be that I find the characters a little underdeveloped and wish I could read more about all of them. I’d like to know how their stories continue and where they end up.

Admittedly, even though I love reading narratives that jump around and don’t always match up the way these stories do, it was sometimes hard to figure out what stories were actually connected and which were not. I look forward to reading the book again—not just to connect the dots, but simply because it was a very enjoyable read.

Written by: frau sally benz, December 2nd 2009

How to Leave Hialeah

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:04:00 +0000

By Jennine Capó Crucet

University of Iowa Press

In real life, I have had only a small glimpse of Miami, driving through on the way to the Florida Keys. After reading Jennine Capó Crucet’s story collection How to Leave Hialeah, I feel I have witnessed Miami life on the most intimate levels.

This debut story collection won the 2009 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the thirty-fourth Annual Chicano/Latino Literary Prize. The eleven stories, one of which is set in Cuba, are about characters who could be part of one big, extended family in Miami’s Cuban American community. With narrators and protagonists ranging in age from childhood to retirement, Capó Crucet demonstrates her ability to write in a believable voice for a variety of characters.

While Capó Crucet has brought to life a particular community, the themes in her stories translate across cultures: love and loss, familial and marital relationships, desire for success, the generation gap. Finding a balance between independence and familial obligations has a central place, and one narrator describes his family as being “like the heat in a car you’ve left parked in the sun.”

The stories deal with ordinary, painful struggles such as facing illness and making ends meet; the soap opera dramas of family resentments and grudges; and the challenges of transmitting values and culture to the next generation. Moments of beauty are sprinkled throughout, in the kindnesses shown to one another and the small, physical pleasures of daily life. My favorite story was "The Next Move," about a man whose wife had gone home to Cuba for a visit, and how he coped with a glimpse of life without her. This old man’s voice was so clear, vivid evidence of Capó Crucet’s gift for listening to real voices and transforming them into print.

Even when the stories have bizarre and outlandish plot devices, the results are fantastic. A couple of times I had to realize that what seemed odd to me would not to another reader (and vice versa), depending on life experience. (For example, the opening story has a young woman go from a dance club to church, and while at first surprising, that seemed reasonable to me.) I look forward to Capó Crucet’s next book, and will check her website regularly in the hopes of seeing information about new stories published.

Written by: Lisa Rand, November 9th 2009

The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

admin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:48:00 +0000

By S. L. Wisenberg

University of Iowa Press

Laying it out there with stunning realness, incorporating funny yet saddening as well as humorous but serious moments, S. L. Wisenberg presents blog entries of her journey through breast cancer discovery, surgery, and recovery in The Adventures of Cancer Bitch. Sharing many—if not all—of her life’s vulnerable moments with the reader, the author demonstrates the humanness of living through cancer.

Illuminating but difficult experiences fill Wisenberg’s writing. She delves into self-absorption as well as utter hysterics due to her bare bones admittance of recovery drugs and daily living through the painful process. As a reader, it is easy to feel her stress and sympathize as if you are on the sofa next to her as she wallows in her pain. This pain does not make Wisenberg bitchy; on the contrary, it reveals her true character questioning the world around her and why the commodified pink ribbons have become a "catch-all" for the destructive disease we all encounter at some point in our lives.

In addition, Wisenberg feeds background to the reader: both her Jewish culture and Texas childhood pop up at different moments throughout the book. These points give Wisenberg even more credibility and realness as she elaborates on her mother, her attendance at seder, her self-proclaimed yuppiness, and her interactions with close friends who lost their son to cancer at a very young age. Literary allusions as well as other anecdotal stories lend a substantive and creative fill to the book.

I found myself laughing at the author's antics while dealing with the seriousness of her condition, and I found myself sobbing at points where her depression and darkness haunts her recovery through chemotherapy. Weisenberg is so real. I find her journey an adventure indeed, but her "bitch" title more of a friend who puts it out there, no lies, no holds barred. Folks, if you have cancer, you may attest that this person's story is very close to yours.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, August 7th 2009

Reforming the World: Social Activism and the Problem of Fiction in Nineteenth Century America

admin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:49:00 +0000

By Maria Carla Sanchez

University of Iowa Press

Reforming the World: Social Activism and the Problem of Fiction in Nineteenth-Century America explores the complex relationship between American social activism and literature in the nineteenth century. At times symbiotic, at times turbulent, this relationship was formed both by the power of literature and by the hopes and dreams of American social reformers for their country. In perhaps the most compelling argument of the book, Maria Carla Sanchez describes the many ways in which period writers both used fiction as a tool of reform, and used reform as an excuse to write fiction. Sanchez argues that the beliefs and views of these antebellum reformers indelibly shaped literature, literary criticism, and the literary canon.

Sanchez skillfully depicts the “reform culture” of the antebellum period, at the apex of the temperance and abolition movements. In addition to the popular moral initiatives, groups of nineteenth century reformers tackled many niche issues such as prison reform, vegetarianism, and Indian rights. Sanchez posits that though Christian preachers and other religious figures played an unmistakably important role in the movements, the antebellum period truly came to be the first time in American history when social reform was carried out by groups of people with diverse philosophical, class, race, creed, and educational backgrounds. Sanchez also makes special note of the fact that women used the social reform movements as a vehicle to “resist the confines of domesticity.” Their activism thrust them into the public sphere and allowed them to participate in a discourse to which they had been previously unwelcome. An important part of the way they participated, of course, was through the written word.

Reform culture in antebellum America was both fearful of and excited by the power of fiction, and Sanchez deftly demonstrates the complicated maneuverings that period authors went through to ensure the respectability of their work. This was especially true for women writers, who had to prove both that the writing they did was truthful and morally upstanding, but also that it had an “uplifting or edifying” purpose. Reading or writing for pure pleasure was not something that could be admitted to. Sanchez contend convincingly that the reform culture of the antebellum period gave women the chance both to enter the public sphere as readers and writers, and as champions of causes they believed in.

Written by: Jennifer Wedemeier, June 20th 2009

Micrographia

admin — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:21:00 +0000

By Emily Wilson

University of Iowa Press

Monadnock. Ochers. Moraine. These are some of the terms you’ll find while reading Emily Wilson’s Micrographia. You will find yourself consulting Webster’s a lot. Unless, of course, you know a great deal about isolated rock hills and unconsolidated glacial debris. Heading spinning yet? If so, Wilson’s book of poetry is not for you.

While Wilson exhibits immense talent in selecting words that sound wonderfully together—“like ships squat-sparred” and “kelp closes up”—many of the words themselves are very scientific. This limits the scale of readers who can relate to her work. If you know little about earth science, nature and flora, you will find yourself in a strange new land that may be frustrating.

One critic describes Wilson’s work as “a speech whose power lies in its admitting to being ‘sort of true, sort of torturous.’” This sums up exactly how I felt reading Micrographia. While phrases like “more rose than rubiate” and “in the form of a forest of tulip trees” drew me into the poems and left me wanting more, I stumbled painfully over awkward phrases like “jouvence blue” and “rouge-wedged bogs.” There were just too many word couplings that felt obnoxiously ostentatious.

With this in mind, I must note that Wilson gained inspiration for her work from Robert Hooke’s own Micrographia, in which observations he made through the lens of his microscope. Wilson utilizes Hooke’s same painstaking observation to write about the world. And, it causes a sense of disconnect and frustration for an individual with a non-science background or little interest in the subject. However, those who thoroughly enjoy the intricacies of science, will admire Wilson’s ability to craft poetry reminiscent of Hooke’s remarkable observations.

Written by: Michelle Tooker, May 27th 2009

Great Expectations: A Father's Diary

admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:48:00 +0000

By Dan Roche

University of Iowa Press

Memoirs about preparing for the birth of a first child are easily located on library shelves. What aren’t so common, however, are those books addressing the particular experience of preparing for a second child. A second pregnancy is at once sobering and blissful—you know the rough waters that loom ahead, but press on toward the joy that’s also in store—and this paradoxical tone is reflected throughout Dan Roche’s beautifully-written nine-month diary of his wife’s pregnancy. As his wife says of their first child’s infancy, “I felt like I was making it up as I went along. I was off-balance. I guess now I want a chance to bring my attention more to taking care of a baby without feeling panicked about it. I want a do-over.”

Roche writes honestly and insightfully in this slim volume of his hope and apprehension over this “do-over”: the challenges of being an older father (he’s forty-five); the anxious possibility of having a son (will he be one of those little boys who, rather than speaking, will “act everything out physically?”); and the fulfillment parenting his five-year-old daughter has given him. He wonders how his love for the new baby could possibly match that—where will it come from, and will it feel like a threat to the existing love for his wife and daughter?

Roche not only reflects eloquently on birth, he is forced to confront death as well, with the sudden passing of his mother-in-law and the slow and painful demise of a beloved pet. Dealing with this subject, he’s thoughtful, yet acknowledges his ultimate powerlessness; it’s the same way he addresses the gender question. Roche struggles with his initial aversion to having a son: it will be so hard to raise a boy “ruled by empathy rather than ego,” he laments, and girls, anyway, are “new and interesting” to him. He talks himself through this internal struggle with humor and pragmatism.

Parents will recognize themselves in Roche and empathize with him, feeling all over again the emotions swirling around an impending birth. But this book doesn’t just speak to parents; anyone interested in relationships, the universal themes of love and death, or the joys of childhood can find something of value here.

Written by: Anne Wilmoth, April 19th 2009

Patient Listening: A Doctor’s Guide

admin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:44:00 +0000

By Loreen Herwaldt

University of Iowa Press

We talked for 45 minutes. It didn’t take much. You’re not asking them to be a guru, a Tibetan monk, a psychologist, or practice in a different field. Just ask one more question, two more questions. Somehow everything comes into place much quicker.

This patient’s story captures the meaning of this collection of prose by twenty-four writers who have extensive experiences as patients. Loreen Herwaldt is a physician and educator in Internal Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Iowa who selected close to one hundred pieces in Patient Listening in order to help students and medical practitioners appreciate the importance of communication and listening in their service.

An introduction and additional section, along with responses from other professionals, orient educators and practitioners on how to use this book. Here, a section of prose by a patient summarizes the purpose of what follow, “Medical training is fantastically narrow and intensive. It has to be…I’m not saying doctors need to go to liberal arts college…but I think it would be important to get the patient’s point of view.”

The patients' experiences are negative and positive, sometimes both are heard from the same author. Some experience alienation, for example, while overhearing a teaching physician excitedly pegging her as “a great case” and telling students “[t]hey were going to have an opportunity to do things they didn’t normally do.” Another appreciates a statement made by a surgeon who suddenly gets that the two don't have a good rapport: “No, you’ve had enough trouble with your eyes, you’re not having trouble with your doctors as well.”

Patients also take responsibility for their own experiences: “I thought if I got really sick, people would pay attention.” Another woman, who had a bone marrow replacement, describes taking the advice of hospital staff: to put up a picture of herself when she was healthy, so friends would remember and other staff members would be more likely to treat her like a “normal” person. Another appreciative piece relates, “I could not imagine getting 87,000 phone calls the way my hematologist does and not being half crazy. But he’s not… When I see him he is incredibly focused… and he’s very compassionate."

On average, the prose in Patient Listening has a tone that is critical of patient-doctor relationships, but there are many positive examples interwoven. In short, this book would be helpful read for anyone in either of the “two classes” described by one author: the “healthy in white coats, calling the shots” and “the great cases.”

Written by: Heather Irvine, July 23rd 2008

Entitled to the Pedestal: Place, Race, and Progress in White Southern Women's Writing,1920-1945

admin — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:37:00 +0000

By Nghana tamu Lewis

University of Iowa Press

I have to be honest. This was not the easiest book to read or absorb. It reminded me of a book that might appear on a required reading for a college literature course. The author covers a lot of ground in her analysis of the construction of “the myth of white southern womanhood.”

In her extensive analysis, Lewis reviews the works and autobiographical histories, private correspondences, essays and lectures of five female southern white writers over a period of twenty-five years (1920-1945).

The five authors Lewis shines a spotlight on are: Julia Peterkin, Gwen Bristow, Caroline Gordon, Willa Cather and Lillian Smith. Not being familiar with the works of female southern writers also placed me at a disadvantage in reading Lewis’s critique, but inspired me to add Willa Cather and Lillian Smith to my reading list.

In her painstakingly researched critique, Lewis offers a new perspective on the role these female authors played in the reinforcement of plantation mythology and the position of white women in the complex structure that was southern society at the time. In introducing her thesis to the reader, she writes: similarities and differences among these writers not only deconstruct the white southern womanhood monolith, they also lay bare in this myth and the Plantain mythology a yet unrecognized heterogeneity…it is obvious to me that without the presence of white southern women of means, the social economies and gender politics born out of the myth of White Southern Womanhood and Plantation Mythology neither happen nor endure.

Lewis ends her book with her last chapter “Old Sites of Authority,” in which she describes how the film industry and popular culture continue to reinforce and reinvigorate these myths and stereotypes with films like Bringing Down the House starring Queen Latifah and Steve Martin. She points out that the blockbuster hit earned an estimated $31,680,000 and a number-one rating in its premiere week at the box office.

Written by: Gita Tewari, June 6th 2007

A Place for Dialogue: Language, Land Use, and Politics in Southern Arizona

admin — Thu, 24 May 2007 03:34:00 +0000

By Sharon McKenzie Stevens

University of Iowa Press

Sharon Stevens has dual intention for A Place for Dialogue. She has brought to light the conflicts between ranching, grazing and conservation in Southern Arizona. Stevens also brings forward the manner in which distinct groups dialogue to move people from “representation to relationship.” The many sided debate between ranchers, developers, conservationists and public officials moves through the book as she insightfully defines the methodology in finding collaborative space. The author’s approach to the situation was done in such a manner to present all perspectives without bias, illuminating the need for engaging people at the local level to build understanding within groups whose “primary allegiance is those they identified with.” There, she describes the conflicts and the impact our changing society has had on everyone involved.

The contention in creating space for collaboration is not solved here – the process of experiential methods within the context of public land use is described, defined and the reader is taken through the experience step-by-step. The struggle between these entities described is impacted by stereotypes compounding how, in negotiation, someone is bound lose and how parties prioritize the importance of their own success above the needs of others.

Written by: Mary O'Hara, May 23rd 2007