Endowment Books

Pink Ribbons, Inc. is an excellent overview of breast cancer philanthrophy's relationship to breast cancer research politics. As an epidemiology graduate student, most of the people I know with criticisms of current breast cancer research agendas are medical researchers. This book gave me valuable insights into why we have such a difficult time obtaining grants to research the correlation between environmental toxins and breast cancer.

However, because it appears to be written for academics who specialize in breast cancer history, it glosses over the social and political context that these changes are occurring in. Anyone interested in this book should read Barron H. Lerner's The Breast Cancer Wars: Hope, Fear, and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America or Robert Aronowitz's Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) before reading this.

The previous two reviews I don't think really touch upon the book itself, but are more of a personal opinion in regard to the "pink ribbon phenomenon" in general.

While I think the author of the book had some important things to say and did her research, the writing really leaves something to be desired. Many of the pages could have been omitted as King tends to refer back to previous chapters and outlines what is to come far too much. I really felt as if I was reading the same thing over and over just so that the author could fill a few more pages.

The message itself is a good one, but it could have been written in a much more reader-friendly manner. A 30-page introduction by the author and another 30 pages of notes at the end, let you know it is going to be a wordy one.

She seemed to be saying people stick pink ribbons on their products to be 'current', 'trendy' and ultimately to get consumers to purchase their product. And, this is true to some extent. Savvy marketers understand that these events translate into big bucks.

This is a far cry from the 1970's when it was still scandalous to talk about breast cancer in public. Traveling back in time, we would not find any ribbons anywhere. People apparently must have held to a policy that talking about breast cancer ultimately spread it.

However, because breast cancer does strike anybody anywhere, raising that public awareness has become an important public action. Where it differs from the AIDS awareness (which also became trendy) and why more conservative organizations feel free to join their feminist counterparts in this cause is because cancer is not a condition which is transmitted around through the public population through a transmission of bodily fluids.

So while I do think that those other people promoting pink ribbon-themed materials also want a cancer-free world, I doubt they precisely share the same politics of feminist health care activists. In the 1970's, these women envisioned low-cost, multicultural, and high-quality healthcare models which placed women themselves as equal partners in the decision-making process about their own bodies.

To some extent, the current pink ribbon market flooding could be a re-co modification of women by the status quo according to the author. Women's breast health is being reduced to a symbol as opposed to the more substantive and ultimately three-dimensional reality which would be required when dealing with a person attached to the breast.

But since cancer does not discriminate, splitting hairs over the source of political support and current marketing strategies seems like a ridiculous quibble. Let's instead close ranks and just work together to say that cancer is bad and should be eradicated, while working towards an agreeable compromise in strategy.

I do think that the awareness of preventative screening and making women conscious of their health is a positive testament to many runs and galas dedicated to a cure for breast cancer. Treatment options are still evolving but overall, the pink ribbon phenomenon has created the awareness of the disease like never before. What this book does examine is what happens beyond the gala fundraisers ... how does the money raised translate into actual cure outcomes? This is similar to the commens made when AIDS fundraising crossed into a showbiz opportunity. However, despite the pinkwash of breast cancer awareness month ... one thing really seems to be clear ... the condition is top of mind, women are more likely to mind their health, and more money is raised than before towards treatment. Like the saying ... all roads lead eventually lead to Rome .... all efforts eventually lead to a cure in some way, shape, or form. Nothing is ever wasted especially when the intent of many individual fundraisers really is true and comes from the heart.

It was for a class, but anyone interested in the Yeltsin's 90's period in Russia, it is a very good consice summary of events behind the red tape.

This book provides a chronological history of political events in Russia under Yeltsin. It is well researched and very thorough, but it has some problems that keep it from being a great book.

There is little social and economic context provided. It assumes the reader has a knowledge of what social and economic forces are impinging on the political events. Who for example are the "oligarchs," or the "natural monopolies," and what role do they play? This gets little explanation.

This is not an insider's story. There is no feeling of seeing deeply into the different personalities. You can argue that the book is about history and is not investigative reporting, but nevertheless the 2-dimensionality of the main players in the drama leaves the book flat.

There is nothing to help the reader separate out the more significant from the less significant events. This is an important role for the historian, to bring out the defining and pivotal moments of historical events. This book is simply a chronology.

The book gives a glimpse into the nature of politics in Russia today and for this reason it is valuable. But the academic historian will find it more valuable than the general reader who, like me, may find it a disappointment.

The Annual Register of Grant Support offers comprehensive coverage of grant providers in a single attractively bound hardcover volume. Its entries are formatted in easy-to-read vertical columns, while its introductory section on "Program Planning and Proposal Writing" is a useful place from which the uninitiated grant proposal writer can jumpstart. First-time grant proposal writing can be daunting. Browse the ARGS to ease your way into the world of nonrepayable funding!

This book should be part of any basic library on government funding of the arts. Ziegler does a very good job laying out the problems, which unfortunately have been ignored for decades. Recommended reading.

Martha Brill Olcott's valuable new survey of Central Asia has appeared at a tricky time. Clearly, the study of Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan was started with an optimistic spirit. It looks like a guidebook that could have been used for businesspeople, academics, students, and even tourists to the region that fills the center of the Eurasian land mass, Mackinder's famous "pivot point" of world history.

The Andijan violence of 2005 has clearly been a pivot point for regional geopolitics, and perhaps for President Bush's Global War on Terror. In the aftermath of what the Uzbek government declared was a terrorist attack on a major population center, the US and EU condemned the government for "excessive force," demanding an international investigation. China and Russia, on the other hand, backed authoritarian leader Islam Karimov's decision to fire on armed demonstrators holding hostages, who had earlier seized several government buildings and set fire to movie theatres. To answer riot and rebellion with Napoleon's "whiff of grapeshot" seemed logical to the East, if not to the West.

This split had spillover effects. In its aftermath, Karimov ordered troops out of the US base in Uzbekistan and signed an alliance with Russia. It marked a geopolitical defeat for the United States, and the first instance where Bush's "democracy" policy took precedence over military requirements for the Global War on Terror. Deprived of its base in Uzbekistan, the US was then squeezed by Kyrgyzstan, which asked for some $200 million dollars to keep open Ganci airbase--100 times what the US had been paying previously.

Round One: Russia and China, by a knockout.

Olcott's book is fascinating, as much for what she does not say, as for what she does. For while she states that "Blame Lies with the Region's Leaders," (p.234), the data in her book equally support an alternative hypothesis which goes unstated: American policies have not only harmed Central Asia, they have damanged the strategic interests of the United States.

Evidence for this hypothesis can be found in remarks scattered throughout the text, like clues to a Sherlock Holms mystery. For example:

For a certain group of policy makers, those concerned with monitoring the democratic progress of these governments, the leaders in charge of these states have effectively become the enemy, men whose departure from political life was viewed as a good thing for their populations . . . The US foreign assistance strategy has led to much ill will on all sides, without substantially enhancing the capacity of either government or opposition to govern in a democratic fashion.(240)

Olcott's book seems to end suddenly--without a customary concluding chapter on p. 244. Instead of tying together loose ends, pages 245-387 present is a mass of raw data in appendices containing charts and graphs; footnotes with fascinating tidbits, and a valuable index.

This silence about her key message seems very Central Asian. If one digs through the data sets, one comes up with a picture of a region that is closer to the one presented by its authoritarian leaders than the one found in reports by NGOs such as Human Rights Watch or the International Crisis Group.

Central Asia is not poor. In fact, the region's economies are growing. There is considerable foreign investment, especially in oil, gas, and mining sectors.

Central Asia is not backwards. In fact, the countries enjoy literacy rates higher than the USA.

What is most striking is Oclott's evidence that Central Asian leaders have not invented the extremist Islamist threat in order to maintain power. The threat from extremism is real. Like Thailand during the Vietnam War, these countries have adopted authoritarian policies to prevent conflicts raging around them from exploding among their populations.

And Olcott almost says this--with caveats blaming Uzbek leadership failures--in a section called "Uzbekistan: Central Asia's Frontline State." Where she points out this little reported fact: "Uzbekistan was the only Central Asian state to join the US-led coalition that invaded Iraq, despite the fact that this damaged its relations with Russia and China."(177) In other words, attacks on Uzbekistan--including Andijan--were attacks on the US-led coalition.

There is more detail in Appendix 13, listing both official and unofficial Islamic organizations--some of which have documented ties to Al Qaeda in addition to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, for example the "Jamaat of Central Asia Mujahideen." This group, according to Olcott, "remains focused on terror acts in Central Asia." She also notes that Tajikistan's "Baiat" (covenant) has perpetrated terror attacks against both non-Muslims and "Muslim grops that it considers too moderate."

This is a book that I am sure to turn to again and again. It is a treasure trove of information that is useful to anyone attempting to understand why what is happening in small countries that are far, far away has relevance to the lives of ordinary Americans, and for improving chances for world peace.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the most positive side, it is the only, and therefore the best, treatment of the issues of citizenship that I could identify, and that is why I bought it. The range of authoritative essays that have been brought together is very worthy, and anyone contemplating this topic must take this work into account.

On the other hand, as I went through chapter after chapter, what I tended to see was an awful lot of academic whining about how the world is getting too complex and too multi-cultural to be able to pin someone down to just one citizenship, let them have many. Reality check needed here. Governments exist to preserve and protect very specific moral, ideological, and cultural values, and governments are the means by which a Republic finances what are called external diseconomies--those things that are needed for the common good but not profitable for the private sector to do.

There are glimmers here and there of how one might better integrate new immigrants and otherwise promote good citizenship, but overall what this book is missing is a major commitment to thinking about how one draws the line between nationalized citizens truly loyal to their newly chosen nation-state, and those who choose to retain another primary citizenship and simply enjoy the bounty of the land they have chosen to VISIT....

Of all the contributions, the one that stood out for me was by Adrian Favell, on "Integration Policy and Integration Research in Europe: A Review and Critique." Despite the title, the heart of this chapter concerns the information "sources and methods" that underlie conclusions about citizenship and the policies on citizenship. There is a great deal of meat in this chapter, and it could useful guide the next book in what I hope will become a series.

I like this book. It forced me to think and it certainly opened my eyes to how we are letting a whole bunch of people debate the nature of citizenship without ever really being committed to the idea that an oath of loyalty is fundamental--as universal service should be fundamental, not to flesh out the military, but rather to provide a common foundation for knowing one another intimately, for respecting one another from that common ground. How one defines citizenship is fundamental to the future of every nation--this book both enlightens and frightens.

This is one of the best and most comprehensive bookshelf volumes on the topic of nuclear, biological, chemical and conventional weapons production, proliferation, and stockpiling. Organized by weapons system type and geographic location, Cirincione and his research team provide a straightforward and rather frightening catalog of current programs and stockpiles, as well as regional and country-specific forecasts.

Though it is not the most comprehensive coverage of the topics, it is the best source of information that one can lift single-handedly. The only other single-source volumes you'll find on these topics are issued by the U.S. government and contain thousands of pages.

If you need to know something about weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missile programs, this is the book to reference.

This book outlines a unique problem in America--hospitals are hurting for money. Many of us, after being hit with high cost for medical care do not understand when a medical center comes to us for a donation. This book explores the real need and why it is relevant. It is a great rference for those of us who raise money for hospitals, and provide us with answers to questions when asked "Why should I give."

Stumped in your proposal writing? Enraged by another rejected grant request? What was the Stupid Foundation looking for that you didn't have? This book will give you answers: some original, others you can find elsewhere.

As a guide to framing your proposal, what good proposals look, sound, and feel like, this book is extremely useful. In the heat of the battle to win funding, it's easy to succumb to tunnel vision, neglecting the foundation's point of view. McIlnay not only reminds the grantseeker that they have to sell their proposal, but explains what foundations seek. It's particularly astute on the political culture and internal dynamics of foundations.

"How Foundations Work" is written in a direct, though often plodding, style. But in a field where too much of the writing is namby-pamby, it gets points simply for uncluttered clarity.

This book has been professionally written by Mr. Harrison, which talks about what Baluch nationalism really meant. The author really tries to talk about the issues rather than the made up theories about nationalism. Being a baluch in the decade of innovation and globalization, it really helped me understand the why the Baluchs took on the Pakistan army; not for personal glory but for a cause most people in Pakistan do not want to understand and don't understand.
The interviews with Baluchi tribal leaders, really gives the book the authencity the most other books miss out on. What really impressed me, was the authors commitment, when he interviewed Baluchi guerilla fighters, rather than telling the same old stories about them for an outsiders prespective. Although I know that most people, have never even heard of the Baluchi people, but anyone who ever gets interested in the Baluchi people and their issues should read this book as it explains from scrath the ideology behind the Baluchi struggle for both idependence and justice by the hands of other Pakistanis. And the brief but informative chapter in the begining gives a good back ground to the origins of the Baluchi people.