Iconoclast: Abraham Flexner and a Life In Learning by Thomas Neville Bonner (review)

Health Services, Appalachian Family Ministries); communitybased education ( Appalachian University Without Walls, Clinch River Education Center ); communitybased economic development Bread and Chicken House); and women' s advoeach social action, and empowerment ( Save Our Cumberland Mountains, Woodland Community Land Trust). Some of these efforts died early deaths as a resu lt of internal problems or lack of funding but others continue to the present. Part history, part sociological case study, part source book, part autobiography, this book is a scholarly, yet very personal, account told largely through the words of the women who directly experienced the events recounted here. As members of FOCIS, both Lewis and Appleby actively participated in the events and efforts they chronicle, and although they express their point of view clearly throughout the book, the authors usually avoid overt bias. Their tale draws upon primary research done in convent,diocesan,and university archives, as well as on a broad familiarity with an impressive array of interdisciplinary secondary readings. The heart of the narrative, however, rests upon extensive oral histories,effectively mined by the authors for their rich testimony,that were conducted in the 1990s with about thirty individuals,most of whom served first as Glenmary Sisters and then as founding members of FOCIS. These interviews are always refreshingly frank and honest as they document FOCIS' s ambivalent relationship with the Catholic Church, its success and failure in local community programs, and its members' relations with each other. While highly critical of the rigid inflexibility of the maledominated church hierarchy ,the unethical business practices of mining companies and other Appalachian industries, and the corruption of local politicians for exploiting the region and its people, the FOCIS members freely admit to the collective and personal tensions involved in maintaining their " dispersed community." Although the book' s topical organization sometimes leads to excessive repetition from chapter to chapter ,the voices captured in this book thus bear witness to the ongoing struggle for social justice in Appalachia as well as to one source ot feminist discontent within the American Catholic Church. Ill sum, the experiences of these " Mountain Sisters link religious life,community organizing, and feminist theon' in Ivays that should appe. 11 tc,anT une interested in these topics, especially as they relate to the Appalachian region. Joseph Manitard Indiana University of Penlisvlvallia I. See especiall>·, George C. Stewart, In. Marvels of Gb,?,· iti': A History Of Ainerican Sisters a, id Nit, is (1994): Jo Ann Kay MeNamara, Sisters i, 1 Arms: Catbc, lic Nuits Thrcmgli Two Mille, tia l\ 996); Carol K. Coburi[ and Martha Smith, Spirited Lires: How Nit, is Shaped Catlic, lic Ctilt, tre and Americaii 1.ife. 18361910 l\ 999); and John J. Fialka, Sisters: Catbolic Nzins . md tbe M. iki, ig of America (2003 ). Thomas Neville Bonner. Iconoclast: Abraham Flexner and a Life In Learning. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 376 pp. ISBN: 0810871247 ( cloth), 36. 00. conoclast is the definitive biography of the uncommon life of Abraham Flexner,a towering figure in American higher education during the early part of twentieth century. Flexner was born to impoverished immigrant Jewish parents during the Reconstruction era in Louisville,Kentucky,the youngest of six sons. He was the first in his family to attend collegethe newly established Johns Hopkins Universityand did so with financial help from his elder brother Jacob. Two years later at age nineteen, Flexner came back to Louisville to teach school, and later he established a highly successful private preparatory school of his own 10cated on West Ormsby Street. Approaching his fortieth year, he enrolled at Harvard University and later studied at Oxford University and the UniverWINTER 2003 63 BOOK REVIEWS sity of Berlin. After the turn of the century, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching commissioned Flexner to conduct a whirlwind survey of the 155 medical schools operating at the time in North America. His report, Medical Education in tbe United States and Canada,published in 1910, was the epitome of muckraking journalism and described in candid detail the sorry state of most of those medical schools. He later conducted two other important surveys, one OIl prostitution in Europe and the second on comparative medical education in Europe. After 1910, armed...