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The University of Akron Press
Pollution Concerns, Regulatory Mechanisms, and Technological Change in the U.S. Petroleum Industry
By Hugh S. Gorman
Today, pollution control regulations define how complex technological systems interact with natural ecosystems and competing human uses of the environment. Redefining Efficiency examines the evolution of this industrial ecology in the United States by tracing numerous pollution concerns associated with the production, transportation, and refining of petroleum over the course of the twentieth century. In doing so, this book demonstrates that a pollution control ethic based on the efficient use of resources emerged early in the century and met with enough success to undermine the first calls for strict government-enforced regulations. Redefining Efficiency also chronicles the failure of this efficiency-based pollution control ethic and its replacement by another. This second ethic required society first to define its environmental objectives and then to institute policies to achieve those objectives. The resulting regulations, by restructuring the economics of pollution control, have since redefined the notion of industrial efficiency.
By Oliver de la Paz
These are vivid, visceral poems about coming of age in a place "where the Ferris Wheel/ was the tallest thing in the valley," where a boy would learn "to fire a shotgun at nine and wring a chicken's neck/ with one hand by twirling the bird and whipping it straight like a towel." Looking back, the poet wrestles with the meaning of labor in the apple orchards and "the filthy dollars we'd wad into our pockets," or the rites of passage that included sinking a knife into the flank of a dead chestnut horse. In spite of such hardscrabble cruelties-or because of them-there is also a real tenderness in these poems, the revelations of bliss driving along an empty highway "like opening a heavy book, / letting the pages feather themselves and finding a dried flower." In line after line, poem after poem, there is an immersion in the realm of the senses. The poet has a gift for rendering his world in cinematic images: a ten-gallon hat on his head in the second grade is "an upside down chandelier;" carnival workers "snarl into the darkness on their borrowed Harleys." In short, these poems are the stuff of life itself, ugly and beautiful, wherever or whenever we happen to live it. -Martín Espada
The Applied Psychology of Harry Hollingworth
edited by Ludy T. Benjamin and Lizette Royer
Harry Levi Hollingworth was one of the pioneers in the field known today as industrial-organizational psychology. He was the author of more than 20 books and 100 scientific and theoretical articles. His honors were many, including serving as President of the American Psychological Association in 1927. In 1940, at the age of 60 and partly initiated by the sudden death of his wife, Hollingworth took stock of his life in an autobiography that focused on his origins and development in rural Nebraska and his subsequent career as a psychologist at Columbia University. For the first time, this autobiography is now available. An early research study funded by the Coca-Cola Company in 1911 propelled Hollingworth to fame and eventually considerable wealth as an applied researcher in the field of business psychology. Coca-Cola was being sued by the federal government under the recently passed Pure Food and Drugs Act for marketing a beverage with a deleterious ingredient, namely caffeine, and the company wanted research on humans to counter the government's claims. The story of this research and the trials that eventually led to the United States Supreme Court are part of the fascinating career described in this book. Hollingworth's success in applying the science of psychology to the problems of the business world opened many doors for other psychologists including many who worked full-time in business and industrial settings. This book provides an intimate account of the life and career of a very successful applied researcher who claims, in this autobiography, that the applied problems to which he devoted virtually his entire life were never of interest to him and that he did such work only for the money. The paradox of this claim offers considerable insight into the prejudices faced by applied scientists and how Hollingworth tried to separate himself from his own accomplishments.
Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective
By Joel A. Tarr
Whether it comes by air, by land, or by water, pollution has long plagued the American city. And for just as long, the question of how to deal with urban wastes has taxed the minds of scientists, engineers, and public officials - and the pocketbooks of ordinary citizens. For more than twenty years, Joel A. Tarr has written about the issues of urban pollution. In this collection of his essays, Professor Tarr surveys what technology has done to, and for, the environment of the American city since 1850. In studies ranging from the horse to the railroad, from infrastructure development to industrial and domestic pollution, from the Hudson River to the smokestacks of Pittsburgh, his constant theme is the tension between the production of wastes and the attempts to dispose of them or control them with minimal costs. The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective stands alone in its scholarly depth and scope. These essays explore not only the technical solutions to waste disposal, but also the policy issues involved in the trade-offs among public health, environmental quality, and the difficulties and costs of pollution control, and all this against the broader background of changes in civic and professional values. Any reader concerned with the interactive history of technology, the environment, and the American city will find in The Search for the Ultimate Sink an informative and compelling account of pollution problems from the past and a serious guide to urban policies for the future
Theories, Methodologies, Results
Ineke Klinge and Claudia Wiesemann, Editors
Sex and gender in biomedicine are innovative research concepts of theoretical and clinical medicine that enable a better understanding of health and disease, evidence-based knowledge, effective therapies, and better health outcomes for women and men. Gender medicine, which focuses on the impact of gender on human physiology, pathophysiology, and clinical features of diseases, stimulates new ways of doing research by considering sex and gender at all levels of investigation, from basic research into gene polymorphisms to health behavior. New research questions have been put forward that focus not on differences per se but on the developmnetal path of these differences. In this book, contributions from the fields of neuroscience, addiction research, and organ transplantation exemplify concepts, approaches, methods and results in the field of gender medicine.
The Gay Person in America Today
By Shannon Gilreath
Contemporary and controversial, Shannon Gilreath's Sexual Politics is an important update to the continuing debate over the place of gay people in American law, politics, and religion. Gilreath incisively navigates a number of complex issues, including the delicate balance between sexual privacy and public equality, the entwining of religion and U.S. law and politics, and gay marriage. He offers astute academic observation and depth of personal reflection to create an unmatched critique of gay people in American society. Ultimately, Gilreath argues for the further emergence of a gay and lesbian ethos of public attentiveness and the practice of "transformative politics," encompassing all those activities of gay and lesbian people: art, literature, sports, business, education, spirituality, and otherwise conventional forms of politics. Conversational and written with a compelling frankness, this book is vital for the serious legal and political student and the informed general reader alike.
By Jeff Gundy
I am a native but not exactly at home, says the speaker near the end of "The Song of the Weed Witch," a declaration that echoes through Jeff Gundy's Spoken among the Trees. Gundy is restless in body and spirit-and in poetic form-a compulsive explorer through the flatlands of Ohio and Indiana. On one level, he seeks out "the green, astonishing world" abuzz with birds and water and wind through the trees. On another level, he looks to the immediate sensations of nature for spiritual clues, entrances into the realm beyond blue jays and pines. But, as he drolly says in "The Recovery of Imaginary Friends," "The guidebook of holy places lacks directions." Spoken among the Trees may hunger after moments of recognition and release, but not with the chill pallor of pietism. These poems mingle the romantic and ironic; they tell jokes and light up a scene with the flash of an incandescent phrase. Titles offer delights of their own, as in "June Report with Suppressed Geese and Sweatbees," or this collision of the sublime and the mundane, "Soul Travel at the Electric Brew, Goshen, Indiana" (with another statement of Gundy's restless theme: "If I could, I would live everywhere for a little while"). Spoken among the Trees is a book to live with, companionable even as it challenges easy beliefs and resists the overly earnest with a warm wit. Jeff Gundy's intricate and musical poems are wise in their humility, as probing as they are sweetly reasonable.
At the Dawn of Professional Football
By Keith McClellan
In the most complete and compelling account of the origins of professional football, The Sunday Game tells the stories of all the teams that played independent football in the small towns and industrial cities of the Midwest, from early in the twentieth century to the beginning of the National Football League shortly after the end of World War I. The foundations of what is now the most popular professional sport in America were laid by such teams as the Canton Bulldogs and the Hammond Clabbys, teams born out of civic pride and the enthusiasm of the blue-collar crowds who found, in the rough pleasure of the football field, the gritty equivalent of their own lives, a game they could cheer on Sunday afternoons, their only day free from work.
Cases and Movies
Silke Schicktanz, Claudia Wiesemann and Sabine Wöhlke, Editors
Organ transplantation allows modern surgeons to give "new life" to chronically ill patients. At the same time, the new opportunities raise ethical questions concerning human identity and the definition of the human body. These concerns do not play out the same in all cultures or in every situation. This collection of 30 case studies illustrates the range of global and local, ethical, social, and cultural problems associated with organ transplantation. The collection also provides a list of popular movies and websites to aid instructors and their students. This work is aimed at educators in medicine, health care, philosophy, and religious studies.
Studies in the History of Psychology
By David Baker
The essays contained in this volume offer a unique and personal perspective on the archival research process in the history of psychology. Celebrating the achievements of John A. Popplestone and Marion White McPherson, founders of the Archives of the History of American Psychology at The University of Akron in 1965, nine leading scholars describe the value, frustration, and satisfaction inherent in the archival process in the history of psychology. The essays provide valuable information on modern historiography in the history of psychology and the construction of historical narrative based on archival resources.