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Chester Pierce was born in 1927; by 1952 he was a graduate of the Harvard Medical School. He went on to become president of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and president of the American Orthopsychiatric Association. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences and had an annual research seminar named after him by the National Medical Association.

Founding chair of the Black Psychiatrists of America, Pierce has profoundly affected American psychiatry and the thinking of African American psychiatrists during the last two decades. While recognized for his substantive scholarship on coping with extreme environments such as the South Pole, he is probably best known for his theories regarding how blacks cope with racism in the United States.

In Race and Excellence, Ezra Griffith, also an African American professor of psychiatry, engages Pierce in a dialogue with the goal of clarifying the inter-connection between the personal and the professional in the lives of both black scholars. The text melds the story of Pierce's life and his achievements, with particular attention to his theories about the predictable nature of racist behavior and the responses of oppressed groups. Having earned his doctorate a generation after Pierce, Griffith approaches his conversation with Pierce as a face-to-face meeting between mentor and student. Retelling Pierce's life story ultimately becomes for Griffith an exercise in conceptualizing his own experience. As he writes, “I never just wanted to tell Chet's story; I wanted to work his story out, to measure it, to try it on, to figure out which parts are good for me and other blacks so earnestly seeking heroes.”

Raymond Carver has become a literary icon for our time. When he died in 1988 at the age of fifty, he was acclaimed as the greatest influence on the American short story since Hemingway. Carver's friends were the stuff of legend as well. In this rich collection—greatly expanded from the earlier When We Talk about Raymond Carver—of interviews with close companions, acquaintances, and family, Sam Halpert has chronologically arranged the reminiscences of Carver's adult life, recalling his difficult “Bad Raymond” days through his second life as a recovering alcoholic and triumphantly successful writer. The result is a spirited Irish wake—toasts, anecdotes, lies, songs, confessions, laments—all beautifully orchestrated by Halpert into a very readable and moving narrative.

These funny, poignant, intensely remembered interviews juxtapose personal anecdotes and enlightening criticism. Memory mixes with analysis, and a lively picture of Carver emerges as we hear different stories about him—of the same story told from different viewpoints. He is here presented as hero, victim, and even villain—Carver's readers will recognize the woof and warp of his stories in these affectionate narratives.

Reinventing Cities emphasizes the extraordinary accomplishments of eleven urban planners who work for the needs of low income and working class people. Through the voices of equity planners who have worked "in the trenches" of city halls, Norman Krumholz and Pierre Clavel explore the inner dimensions of social change, economic development, community organizing, and the dynamics of implementing and producing fair housing. Preceded by "snapshots" that describe the demographics, politics, and economics of each specific city or region, the editors' interviews with these leading progressive planners highlight productive strategies, disquieting failures, and the cities in which the fought for equity.

Included are conversations with Rick Cohen, former director of Jersey City's Department of Housing and Economic Development; Dale F. Bertsch, former first director of the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, Dayton, Ohio; Robert Mier, former commissioner of the Department of Economic Development (DED); Kari J. Moe, former deputy commissioner of Research and Development, DED'; Arturo Vazquez, former director of Mayor Washington's Office of Employment and Training, Chicago; Margaret D. Strachan, former city commissioner, Portland, Oregon; Peter Dreier, former housing director, Boston Redevelopment Authority, and policy aide to Mayor Raymond Flynn; Billie Bramhall, planning staff, Mayor Federico Pena, Denver, Colorado; Howard Stanback, city manager, Hartford, Connecticut; Derek Shearer, former Planning Commission chairman, Santa Monica, California; and Kenneth Grimes, senior planning analyst, San Diego Housing Commission.

For two and a half years, Katherine J. Black crisscrossed Kentucky, interviewing home vegetable gardeners from a rich variety of backgrounds. Row by Row: Talking with Kentucky Gardeners is the result, a powerful compilation of testimonies on the connections between land, people, culture, and home.

The people profiled here share a Kentucky backdrop, but their life stories, as well as their gardens, have as many colors, shapes, and tastes as heirloom tomatoes do. Black interviewed those who grow in city backyards, who carve out gardens from farmland, and who have sprawling plots in creek bottoms and former pastures. Many of the gardeners in Row by Row speak eloquently about our industrialized food system’s injuries to the land, water, and health of people. But more often they talk about what they are doing in their gardens to reverse this course.

Row by Row is as sure to appeal to historians, food studies scholars, and sustainability advocates as it is to gardeners and local food enthusiasts. These eloquent portraits, drawn from oral histories and supplemented by Deirdre Scaggs’ color photographs, form a meditation on how gardeners make sense of their lives through what they grow and how they grow it.