Author: Scott Malcomson File Type: epub A bold and original retelling of the story of race in AmericaWhy has a nation founded upon precepts of freedom and universal humanity continually produced, through its preoccupation with race, a divided and constrained populace? This question is the starting point for Scott Malcomsons riveting and deeply researched account, which amplifies history with memoir and reportage. From the beginning, Malcomson shows, a nation obsessed with invention began to create a new idea of race, investing it with unprecedented moral and social meaning. A succession of visionaries and opportunists, self-promoters and would-be reformers carried on the process, helping to define black, white, and Indian in opposition to one another, and in service to the aspirations and anxieties of each era. But the people who had to live within those definitions found them constraining. They sought to escape the limits of race imposed by escaping from other races or by controlling, confining, eliminating, or absorbing them, in a sad, absurd parade of events. Such efforts have never truly succeeded, yet their legacy haunts us, as we unhappily re-enact the drama of separatism in our schools, workplaces, and communities. By not only recounting the shared American tragicomedy of race but helping us to own, even to embrace it, this important book offers us a way at last to move beyond it.**Amazon.com ReviewIn this exhaustive, introspective study of Americas obsession with color, nobody escapes author Scott L. Malcomsons probing. The obvious white supremacists share scrutiny with the Indians, Hispanics, and African Americans who have turned inward in their reaction to racism and called for their own noninclusive territory. The books imposing size and scope--it roves from early assimilation attempts by Indians to the Harlem Renaissance to white flight through the ages--may put off some who mistake it for a stale textbook. That would be a shame. Malcomson writes with a lyrical, storytelling quality. He mixes solid reporting with his own thoughtful speculation in tracing the histories of Indians, whites, and blacks in this country. Woven through this vivid narrative are the authors conversations with descendants of his own ancestors, who commingled in marriage and love with Cherokees and former slaves. Raised by a seemingly colorblind Baptist preacher father, Malcomson writes of his dismay as a boy as he and his friends began to think with our skins and separate by race as they grew older. These were roles prepared by the American generations that had gone before the past was forming us, and so we would carry that past into the future. I have never ceased regretting that process, because it diminished each of us. Its clear how Malcomson feels about what he calls Americas tragic drama, but he avoids preaching and gains credibility in doing so. His account is worthy reading for anybody who believes the dramas ending has yet to be written. --Jodi Mailander FarrellFrom Publishers Weekly In a breathtaking and unusual treatment of the artifice and hypocrisy that has surrounded racial differences in America from its earliest settlement to the present, this massive work offers stunning insights with a subtle hand. The first three parts of the book deal with indianness, blackness and whiteness respectively, followed by a fourth, which aims to reconcile the previous sections. The opening exploration of the opportunistic ways that philosophers, politicians and white society have defined Indian identity and land rights is haunting and powerfulDas is the chapter on the Indian as slaveholder, which reveals the life of black slaves on a Cherokee reservation and their march on the Trail of Tears beside their masters. But the rest of the book does not deliver upon the promise of the first 100 pages. Although the focuses on America, Malcomson journeys back into the medieval and the ancient world to find the defining moment when skin color was associated with good, evil and slavery. At times, this wide-ranging approach yields surprising insights (for example, Malcomson offers a thoughtful discussion of Shakespeares outlook on blackness). However, he also includes long-winded digressions that are not securely anchored in his larger argument. Malcomson (Empires Edge Travels in South-Eastern Europe, Turkey and Central Asia) reveals the creation of race as a tool to obtain power, suppress the newly created powerless and justify immoral claims to land and property. Although not fully realized, his ambitious study of race and American identity is to be commended for dragging our racial conundrums further into the light of day. (Oct.) 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Michael Beckerman File Type: pdf Antonin Dvorak made his famous trip to the United States one hundred years ago, but despite an enormous amount of attention from scholars and critics since that time, he remains an elusive figure. Comprising both interpretive essays and a selection of fascinating documents that bear on Dvoraks career and music, this volume addresses fundamental questions about the composer while presenting an argument for a radical reappraisal.The essays, which make up the first part of the book, begin with Leon Botsteins inquiry into the reception of Dvoraks work in German-speaking Europe, in England, and in America. Commenting on the relationship between Dvorak and Brahms, David Beveridge offers the first detailed portrait of perhaps the most interesting artistic friendship of the era. Joseph Horowitz explores the context in which the New World Symphony was premiered a century ago, offering an absorbing account of New York musical life at that time. In discussing Dvorak as a composer of operas, Jan Smaczny provides an unexpected slant on the widely held view of him as a nationalist composer. Michael Beckerman further investigates this view of Dvorak by raising the question of the role nationalism played in music of the nineteenth century.The second part of this volume presents Dvoraks correspondence and reminiscences as well as unpublished reviews and criticism from the Czech press. It includes a series of documents from the composers American years, a translation of the review of Rusalkas premiere with the photographs that accompanied the article, and Janaceks analyses of the symphonic poems. Many of these documents are published in English for the first time. **