Montage Art, books, diverse creations

15 Fakery and Shakespeare 16 A Baton with Sting 18 Open Book 20 Devoted to Debt 21 Off the Shelf 22 Chapter and Verse

how I got the job…,” he mar- vels), working with authors ranging from Abbie Hoffman to Theodor Seuss Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”). He was also involved with the publisher’s Beginner Books imprint (started by Seuss and his wife, Helen, along with Phyllis Cerf), which published easier-to- read Seuss titles. Then he branched out, ap- plying his facility at writing parodies (honed as an under- graduate on the staff of the Christopher Cerf in Harvard Lampoon, his home office in where he and Manhattan, sur- Channel Cerfing rounded by his books, Michael Frith keyboards, files, ’63 co-wrote With sound, image, and word, Chris Cerf teaches the basics. screens, and stuffed the James Bond animals by craig lambert parody book Alligator) at the National Lampoon, which Cerf joined in 1970 as a contributing editor hristopher Cerf ’63 had author, columnist, and TV panelist on from its first issue (see “Funniest Pages,” laughter in his blood even be- What’s My Line? November-December 2010, page 27). That fore he was born: New Yorker Like his father, the jovial Cerf is a creator same year, he signed on with a fledgling Cfounder Harold Ross intro- in several media. “I’ve found that the most children’s television program, Sesame duced his parents and comically bran- interesting way to go, too,” he says. “To Street—his Beginner Books experience dished a shotgun at their wedding. build on what you learn in one place and came in handy—and to date has composed Those parents would be Phyllis Fraser, use it somewhere else.” His professional more than 200 songs for it. “If you write a onetime Hollywood actress and lat- career also began in his father’s footsteps. four or five songs a year and the show lasts er book editor, and Bennett Cerf, co- For eight years after college, Cerf was an 40 years, you have a huge body of work!” founder of Random House publishers, editor at Random House (“Don’t know he explains. That body of work has earned

Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer Harvard Magazine 13 Montage

“He had the voice down to a T,” Cerf says. “We wrote the paper just like the New York Times, only more so. The Times’s own writers were all available—they were out on strike! Nora Ephron was involved, and Frances FitzGerald [’62] did a book re- view. Nobody slept for four weeks; it was one of the highlights of my profession- al life. Our big terror was that the strike would end and the real Times would start publishing again before we went to press. Luckily it didn’t, and we sold millions of them.” In recent years Cerf has been rolling out his own educational programs under the auspices of Sirius Thinking Ltd., the media company he launched with three partners, including Michael Frith, in 1995. Between the Lions, co-produced with WGBH-TV in Boston, a children’s literacy initiative that Above: A younger Cerf with includes a daily television show, a website, Muppeteer Jim Henson (right) and and print and multimedia components, Muppet Ernie. Left: Cerf and col- premiered on PBS in 2000. It stars a pair league Norman Stiles flank dog star of lions who live in and run an enchanted Lomax as Cerf holds Delta the cat. Below: Cerf today with characters library. Cerf co-produces and writes songs from Between the Lions for the show, which has won six Emmys. “Sesame Street targets preschoolers, three- to Lampoons,” he explains. (He and five-year-olds, and early fives,” Cerf says. National Lampoon co-founder Hen- “Lions’ sweet spot is pre-kindergarten to ry Beard ’67 have collaborated on first grade: four- to seven-year-olds.” several humorous books, includ- Lomax: The Hound of Music, another Sir- ing The Experts Speak.) His versa- ius project, launched in 2008. It follows tility embraces a 1987 collabora- Lo­­max, a good-natured dog hooked on tion with actress/producer Marlo ­melodies, around the country with his him three Grammys and eight Emmys, for Thomas on Free to Be…A Family (the book/ human and feline compan- both songwriting and producing. record/TV special sequel to Free to Be…You ions, Amy Cerf’s songs include parodies of pop and Me) and Not the New York hits, including Beatles classics like “Let Times, a parody of the Grey It Be” (“Letter B”) and “Hey Jude” (“Hey Lady published during the Food,” sung by the Cookie Monster). As 1978 strike that closed down “Bruce Stringbean,” Cerf belted out a the newspaper. Co-conspir- send-up of The Boss’s “Born in the U.S.A.” ators on the latter, among that featured various farm animals mak- his “most enjoyable adven- ing sundry sounds while getting along tures,” included George Plimp-

famously, a lesson in diversity called “Barn ton ’48, editor/writer Rusty cerf of christopher courtesy photographs in the USA.” Sesame Street puppet-meister Unger, and writer/sati- Jim Henson even created a stuffed char- rist Tony Hendra. acter based on Cerf: the piano-banging The group dis- lead singer of “Little Chrissy and the covered that the Alphabeats.” (Cerf’s rock-piano style, Toledo Blade used which owes much to Jerry Lee Lewis, is the same type- energetic enough to fracture a keyboard faces as the Times occasionally.) and was willing For some years Cerf headed Sesame to print the parody, Street’s “non-broadcast division,” which and the Washing­ton spun off educational products like books Post’s Carl Bern- and records from the show. “Sesame uses stein agreed to all the media, just like we did on both write the lead story.­

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and Delta, as they scout out folk songs you can do, so we just had to use it,” Cerf people like two-time Grammy-winning and teach viewers about musicality and notes. He and his Sirius colleague Norman guitarist Larry Campbell. The program America’s musical heritage. The peda- Stiles visited Anna Lomax, the musicolo- has aired on about half the PBS stations in gogy draws on the ideas of twentieth- gist’s daughter, to ask permission to use the country, but depended on a one-time century Hungarian composer Zoltán the family name. As they explained the grant from the Bingham Trust and, Cerf Kodály, who advocated “using folk mu- show’s concept of a roaming puppet dog says, “in this environ- sic to teach music,” Cerf explains. “Folk obsessed with tunes, “She just sat there ment, it’s kind of hard songs are a great way to teach young looking blankly at us, and we thought we to find millions of dol- Visit harvardmag.com/ children—they’ve got lots of repetition, were in more and more trouble the more lars to keep making extras for video and audio of Cerf’s work. and call-and-response.” we said,” Cerf recalls. “Then she said, ‘You new episodes.” Should The dog star’s namesake is, of course, guys are crazy—you’re nuts! But I love it!’” those millions turn up, we’ll not have Alan Lomax ’34, who unearthed and re- Lomax doesn’t do “kiddie music.” “We heard the last of Lomax, but if not, it’s safe corded much of America’s folk music, and got the best bluegrass and folk musicians to say that Chris Cerf will find something “‘Hound of Music’ is about as bad a pun as we could possibly find,” Cerf explains— else—or 10 other things—to do.

Shakespeare play unearthed by his father, a con man whose unsuccessful track re- Fakery and Shakespeare cord has landed him in jail more often than not. Convinced that the play is his father’s A con man, his son, and a fiction on two levels final con—a sophisticated forgery meant to make good on his life’s goal of adding n some circles, the debate still rag- missing something or that everybody who “to the world’s store of wonder and magic, es about who Shakespeare really was: was telling me I was missing something disorder, confusion, possibility”—Phillips A mere actor? A pseudonymous earl? was missing something,” he explains. “I uses the introduction to challenge the I Rival playwright Christopher Mar- love a lot of it, but somehow that’s not play’s genuineness. Along the way, his lowe? The novelist Arthur Phillips ’90 is enough for a lot of people.” introduction gradually morphs into a not typically listed among the contend- The Tragedy of Arthur plays an elaborate confessional memoir as he becomes in- ers but, with The Tragedy of Arthur (Ran- game with the reader. A narrator named creasingly “addicted to the pleasures of dom House), he has briefly thrown his Arthur Phillips, who bears an uncanny re- self-revelation.” hat into the ring. semblance to the author—he has written Except that the life he recounts is only Structured, Pale Fire-like, as a lengthy novels called Prague and The Egyptologist and glancingly autobiographical. The real introduction to a newly discovered went to Harvard—is under contract to Phillips’s father is distinctly not a con Shakespeare play, the novel concludes with write an introduction to an unpublished man. “Conservative, lawyer, bow-tied,” a full five-act play in impeccable iambic pentameter written by Phillips himself. Phillips presented the play to a handful of Arthur Phillips scholars and theater companies before let- ting them in on the joke—and managed to persuade a few of them of its authenticity along the way. (One company regretfully declined, its managers said, not because they didn’t believe it was Shakespeare, but because their line-up was booked through 2013.) Phillips won instant acclaim with his first novel Prague (2002), about expats adrift, ironically, in Budapest, the less glamorous of the two post-Iron Curtain capitals. The Tragedy of Arthur is no less funny and no less mischievous than his previous four novels, but takes up an especially rig- orous line of questioning: Why are we so inclined to worship Shakespeare? Phillips seems to take the question personally. “I’ve read Shakespeare since I was a kid and I liked some of it, but I always felt that ei-

ther I was missing something or he was reed barbi

Harvard Magazine 15 Montage says the son, succinctly. bit in a lot of things.” he began, to laughter, and then refused to Phillips is happily mar- Like English royalty. break character for the better part of an ried to a Pilates instructor “By the time I was in fifth hour, insisting that his novel was every bit named Jan, not divorced grade I had memorized the true story it claims to be. He read from from a former Czech mod- all the English monarchs one of its comic high points, a scene in el named Jana. And he has from Egbert through which Arthur absconds with Heidi, a fel- definitely never seduced Elizabeth II,” he recalls. low Shakespeare-skeptic from Germany. his twin sister’s girlfriend; He studied medieval his- “Old King Hamlet’s ghost just walked by! he doesn’t have a twin. tory at Harvard, hoping Also, wait, don’t get yourself excited about In person, Phillips for a chance to wield this this, though, because first let’s talk about comes across as far more knowledge, but the pro- the Norwegian army for an hour first,” he sympathetic than his gram wasn’t for him. “We exclaimed excitedly in Heidi’s Teutonic self-pitying fictional alter never talked about any of accent. ego. Slender, verging on the kings, we never got to It’s not that Phillips isn’t a Shakespeare gaunt, with icy blue eyes, talk about sword-fight- enthusiast—it would require years to he is at once soft-spoken and command- ing,” he recalls. “All we talked about was imitate the Bard’s verse so well—but he ingly charming. Unlike many novelists, he climate change in the fourteenth century finds that the mythology surrounding the doesn’t seem loath to think of himself as and what that did to the labor supply and playwright obscures the more workaday an entertainer. “One of the rules I set for how the potatoes….” He trails off. Luckily, realities of being a writer: Shakespeare myself about 15 years ago was, ‘Sit down with The Tragedy of Arthur, he’s been able was just a guy writing on deadline like every day and try to have fun or amuse to put his knowledge of English kings to everyone else. What if, 400 years from yourself or entertain yourself or don’t good use. now, he suggests as an analogy, the only worry about anything other than holding At a recent reading at the Harvard Book television writer known from our era was your own attention, and if you can’t do Store, he launched into a deadpan pre- Sopranos creator David Chase? that, there’s no point to this,’” he says. This sentation of The Most Excellent and Tragical vamelia atlas pursuit of amusement accounts, perhaps, Historie of Arthur, King of Britain, for the variety of Phillips’s career track: the play at the end of the Sarah Hicks before turning to fiction, he had stints as new novel. “The best place a child actor, a jazz musician, and five-time to start when dealing with winner on Jeopardy. “Maybe it’s the Jeopardy a possible Shakespeare play thing,” he surmises. “I’m interested a little is probably my childhood,” A Baton with Sting Conductor Sarah Hicks spans Prokofiev and the Police. by David Menconi

decade into her career as a was amazed that Hicks was conductor, Sarah Hicks ’93 enough of a fan to know the had “the first of two turning words to his songs. Once A points.” She was conducting Folds saw her singing along a Minnesota Orchestra program fea- during rehearsal, he re- turing the group Pink Martini, the first laxed—and Hicks realized pops show she’d ever done (see “Stirred, that such crossover ventures Shaken, and Sung,” January-February could be a way to pursue two 2008, page 17). Some classical musicians passions: her work, and the look at such work as slumming, but music she listened to when Hicks found it a revelation: “I thought, not working. “Few people ‘Wait a second. This is legitimate, well with my background and written, evocative. I’m having fun, the training” attempt this, she orchestra’s having fun. What’s not to explains. “Most pops conduc-

like?’” tors are arrangers who fell symphony carolina the north of courtesy The second turning point came with into conducting and probably her second pops show, conducting the aren’t classically trained. But I have a com- to Curtis, so I’ve got the classical training.” music of singer/pianist Ben Folds, who position degree from Harvard and I went That made Hicks the perfect choice

16 July - August 2011 montage for her latest crossover coup, conducting Sting’s Symphonicity tour on 30 European dates this summer. The show features or- chestrated versions of songs from through- out Sting’s career, both solo and with the Police. “The Sting tour is a true marriage of both worlds,” Hicks says. “Presenting his music in this way makes it different, changes the whole nature of what he’s written. That’s a reason to do crossover projects. It shouldn’t be one thing support- ing another. You’re trying to make some- thing new.” Born in her mother’s native country, Japan, Hicks grew up mostly in Hawaii as a child-prodigy pianist, playing music rather than leading it. When she devel- oped chronic tendonitis as a teenager, she thought Sarah Hicks her music career was conducting the Minnesota over. It hurt too much to

Orchestra H elgeson G reg play the piano, and her fa- ther found her crying in her room one day. her instructor if she could give conduct- says. “I was hooked.” At Harvard, though His advice: “Stop crying. You can still hold ing a try. He handed over his baton and she specialized in composition because of a stick.” She switched to the viola, because disappeared for 20 minutes. “That gave music department requirements—her se- it was less painful to play, and joined the me enough time to conduct the first move- nior thesis, The AIDS Oratorio, set poetry high-school orchestra. One day she asked ment of Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony,” she and prose written by people with AIDS

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Harvard Magazine 17 Montage

to music—she recalls having “a fantastic There is no more powerful gambit time conducting: so many groups to work o p e n b o o k in contemporary political rhetoric with, doing things like opera and musical than resorting to “common sense,” to theater.” principles grounded in the sentiments Hicks’s current posts with the (Un)common of “the people.” But it is not evident Minnesota Orchestra (principal conduc- why this is so, nor how it came to be. tor of pops and presentations), North Sophia Rosenfeld, Ph.D. ’96, associate Carolina Symphony (associate conduc- Sense professor of history at the University tor), and Curtis Institute of Music (staff of Virginia, has dug deeply into this conductor) keep her busy with works fertile ground. Readers can draw contemporary resonances. This excerpt is from from both the classical and modern the introduction to her book, Common Sense: A Political History (Harvard, $29.95). canon. Between those responsibilities and endeavors such as Symphonicity, her Hot things can burn you. Two plus and thus opposed to the rulership of schedule can be mind-boggling. A typical two make four. Seeing is believing. Blue kings. We have no reason, even now, workday involves rehearsals, studying mu- is different from black. A leopard can- to accept this pairing of common sense sic she’ll conduct next week, writing an not change its spots. If I am writing these and republican governance as anything arrangement she’ll conduct next month, words, I exist. more than wishful thinking or a rhetori- and working on a contract for an event There are many reasons not to write cal masterstroke on the part of Paine. next year. a book about common sense, especially For most of history, and indeed even in Arranging is her professional specialty, if you happen to be a historian. For one, North America in early 1776, the oppo- with a special emphasis on pop/classical common sense is, by definition, ahistorical site was surely the case; the direct rule of projects. One recent work was an “’80s- terrain. In modern parlance, we sometimes the people was deemed an obvious recipe themed show” (“the 1980s, not the 1880s,” use common sense to mean the for disorder, instability, and worse. she quips) that takes the likes of Dexy’s basic human faculty that lets us It is worth noticing, though, that Midnight Runners and Cyndi Lauper make elemental judgments ever since the appearance of into the classical world. “I think it’s a about everyday matters Common Sense, Paine’s fa- more interesting process than conducting based on everyday, real- mous call to arms of that something for the fiftieth time,” she says. world experience…. fateful year, Americans in “I branch out into everything I can. The Other times we mean particular, but ultimately future of classical music has to be more the widely shared and exponents of democ- inclusive than it’s been in the past, and seemingly self-evident racy everywhere, have that’s part of my vision for myself. I want conclusions drawn from paid enormous lip ser- to work until I retire, and I don’t intend this faculty, the truisms vice to the epistemologi- to retire until I die. We shouldn’t just be about which all sensible cal value of the collective, playing the great classical composers. Arts people agree…. everyday, instinctive judg- organizations have a curatorial responsi- If that is not problem ments of ordinary people. bility, yes, but they also have to serve the enough, the tenets of com- This is particularly true when community—and survive. Those go hand mon sense are ostensibly so it comes to matters of public in hand. Now we’re scrambling to become banal, so taken for granted, that Thomas life.…Trust in common sense— relevant. This is a conversation we should they generally go without saying.… Paine meaning both the shared faculty of have been having generations ago.” Moreover, when historians do con- discernment and those few fundamental, With a foot in both the pop and classi- sider common sense, they generally do inviolable principles with which everyone cal worlds, Hicks is just the person to lead so from a position of hostility: it is what is acquainted and everyone agrees—has, the discussion. Some years ago, she was social scientists see as their professional in the context of contemporary demo- briefly in a garage band with other classi- obligation to work against.… cratic politics, itself become commonsen- cal musicians. And even though she claims There is a good reason, however, why sical. Politics has been recast (no matter not to be much of a singer, Hicks was the historians might well want to pause and the growing complexity of the world we lead vocalist because, she says, “There’s reflect on the history of common sense inhabit) as the domain of simple, quotidian something therapeutic about screaming itself, including its evolving content, determinations and basic moral precepts, into a microphone. meanings, uses, and effects. That reason of truths that should be self-evident to all. “Part of me always wanted to be a rock is the centrality of the very idea of com- …How did this come to be? How— star, which is why I’m attracted to the mon sense to modern political life and, and with what lingering consequenc- kind of projects I do,” she admits. “I find especially, to democracy. es—did common sense develop its it satisfying to be onstage with my hair Consider for a moment Thomas Paine’s special relationship in modern times down, in four-inch heels and sequined eighteenth-century boast that common with the kind of popular rule that we tank top—and I dare you to find any sense is firmly on the side of the people call democracy? other conductor who regularly performs library of congress library in that—listening to a standing ovation.”

18 July - August 2011 i choose harvard...

Harvard graduate students are tHe next generation of preeminent educators, scientists, artists, and civic and business leaders

Chris ’84 and silvana ’83, Jd ’86 PasCuCCi Research has the power to yield new ideas for relieving suffering in the world. That concept inspired Chris Pascucci ’84 and his wife, Silvana ’83, JD ’86, to create an endowed fellowship for Harvard graduate students working on their dissertations—especially in fields that benefit society, such as microfinance and community building. “We wanted to help them explore their passions and pur- sue research that could greatly improve the lives of disadvantaged people everywhere,” says Chris. The couple is excited to see how their gift will translate into hope for people who need solutions.

To read more, please visit www.alumni.harvard.edu/stories/pascucci. John Carey Phd ’79 History and business have long fascinated John Carey PhD ’79. After earning a doctorate in history from Harvard, John chose to advancing knowledge develop his financial skills and join Pioneer Investments, where he has managed the Pioneer Fund for many years. But his shift in career ambitions has not stopped him from helping others pursue their scholarly dreams in the humanities. John and his late wife, Harriet Stolmeier Carey ’74, chose to support a PhD student in Support the history through an immediate-use gift to the Graduate School Fund Fellows Program. “I was a scholarship and fellowship student myself from college on, and I’ve always felt it was important to give back,” he says. “It’s a kind of social contract between generations.”

To read more, please visit www.alumni.harvard.edu/stories/carey.

Photo credits Pascuccis: gordon M. grant; carey: courtesy of John carey

110719_AAD_full.indd 1 6/2/11 1:04 PM Montage

profitability wasnot , he writes, the result of a sinister cabal or conniving scoundrels, Devoted to Debt but rather of countless choices that lie at the heart of a market economy. “The same banal The American love affair with credit—and the new realities of investment decisions—where can this dol- economic constraint and income inequality lar get the greatest return?” that “produced our nation’s wealth-producing farms and factories also produced our omnipresent by nancy f. koehn indebtedness.” The first half of the book examines n the first quarter of 2011, the av- largest credit-card issuers earned more the origins of installment loans, national erage American household carried than $18 billion—more than Wal-Mart mortgage markets, and credit cards. $115,000 of mortgage, credit-card, or Microsoft. Although business owners historically I and other forms of debt—a huge sum, In Debtor Nation: The History of America in extended informal loans to their cus- but less (because of the recession) than Red Ink, Louis Hyman, Ph.D., ’07, recon- tomers, Hyman explains, most did so the figure for the third quarter of 2008, structs the history of personal debt in reluctantly. Recordkeeping was cumber- when the average family owed more modern America. This is a fascinating, some. Butchers, bakers, and candlestick- than $125,000 to financial institutions important, and at times ominous story. It makers lacked information about a given and other organizations. This enor- begins around 1917, when personal indebt- customer’s finances, and few had excess mous ocean of red ink has become big, edness existed at the fringes of the econo- capital to tie up in such loans. In the early big business. In both the go-go years of my, the province of struggling merchants 1900s, only self-financed companies such 2006 and 2007, for example, the nation’s and loan sharks, and ends in our own time, as Sears, Roebuck when personal debt has become a cor- or Singer Sewing Louis Hyman, Ph.D. ’07, nerstone of economic and capital- Machine could Debtor Nation: The His- market activity, and the center of afford to offer in- tory of America in Red Ink the recent financial crisis. stallment-buying (Princeton, $35) How did petty, scattered loans plans—and even to workers become transformed, they generally lost money on such loans, as Hyman writes, into “one of making the losses up on larger volumes American capitalism’s most sig- and the economies of scale that powered nificant products, extracted and their business models. traded as if debt were just another In the 1920s, however, lending practices commodity, as real as steel?” He and attitudes began to change. One fac- answers these questions by offer- tor behind this shift was the emergence ing a (generally) careful analysis of the finance company, which first ap- of the evolution of modern lend- peared in the automobile industry, to ing practices—from installment help dealers fund their inventories and loans to universal credit cards to later, to help customers who could not mortgage-backed securities. pay cash for a car. Over time, some of these Corporations, commercial banks, companies began diversifying, buying up and government agencies, he ar- the consumer debt of refrigerator, radio, gues, played vital roles in creating vacuum-cleaner, and other appliance our “debtor nation”; so, too, did manufacturers. financial- The breadth and magnitude of fi- product in- nance operations spread quickly, help- novation and ing power both the mass production of the evolution durable goods and their consumption by of debt mar- millions of American families. By the end kets. In different of the decade, companies such as General ways at different Motors and General Electric had absorbed moments, these retail finance as a core aspect of their busi- factors greatly nesses, and installment credit had spread increased the profit- throughout the retail world. Not surpris- ability of consumer ingly, collective attitudes toward credit lending during the began to shift. By the eve of World War II, twentieth century a quarter of American families were using and into the twenty- installment loans to buy cars and other first. This growing consumer durables.

20 July - August 2011 Illustration by Miguel Davilla montage

more destructive leveraged buy- and shapes, world culture—but the move- out of the Tribune Company, dur- ment is reciprocal, as Pells, professor of Off the Shelf ing troubled times for journalism. history at the University of Texas at Aus- Useful background on the Nieman tin, comprehensively demonstrates in this Recent books with Harvard connections Foundation’s new curator, Ann Ma- scholarly work. For instance, he notes, rie Lipinski (see page 59), another Aaron Copland, D.Mus. ’61, George Constitutional Redemption: Politi- Tribune veteran (and casualty). Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein ’39, cal Faith in an Unjust World, by Jack M. Balkin ’78, J.D. ’81 (Harvard, $35). The Nancy Holt: Sight- author, a professor at Yale Law School, lines, edited by Alena J. turns from questions of constitutional Williams ’98 (California, theory and judicial review to public atti- $49.95). A young curator tudes toward the “constitutional project,” (still a doctoral student and explores and critiques the “Great at Columbia) presents, Progressive Narrative” that underlies with others, a compre- Americans’ story about their basic law. hensive look at the work of a monumental sculp- Big-Time Sports in American Uni- tor (Sun Tunnels) and in- versities, by Charles T. Clotfelter, Ph.D. stallation artist who has ’74 (Cambridge, $29). Now a professor of also worked in photog- economics, public policy, and law at Duke, raphy, video, and film. Clotfelter takes advantage of that venue to explore his subject. Commercial athletics, Near Andersonville:

he finds, has become a core function of the Winslow Homer’s Winslow Homer, Dressing for the universities that host it—a fact “as unre- Civil War, by Peter H. Wood ’64, Ph.D. Carnival, 1877, one of the paintings markable to most adults who were raised ’72 (Harvard, $18.95). A close reading examined in Near Andersonville in this country as it must surely be strange of a rediscovered Civil War painting by D.Mus. ’67, followed Picasso, Duchamp, to a first-time visitor from abroad.” Homer reveals deep meanings about the and Stravinsky in “intermingling elements conflict, slavery, and race—from an en- from high and low culture, combining the R esource, NY A rt A rt/ The Sorcerer’s Apprentices: A Sea- slaved black’s perspective. The Nathan I. sacred and the profane.” son in the Kitchen at Ferran Adrià’s Huggins Lectures, delivered by the profes- elBulli, by Lisa Abend, A.M. ’93, G ’99 sor of history emeritus at Duke. A Reforming People: Puritanism and (Free Press, $26). A journalistic look be- the Transformation of Public Life in hind the scenes at the famous restaurant Strange New Worlds: The Search New England, by David D. Hall ’58, etropolitan M useum of T he M etropolitan whose proprietor inspired the School of for Alien Planets and Life beyond Bartlett Research Professor of New Eng- © Engineering and Applied Sciences’ recent Our Solar System, by Ray Jayawardha- land church history (Knopf, $29.95). We cooking class. You, too, can learn how to na Ph.D. ’00 (Princeton, $24.95). A read- think of our Puritan forebears as, well… plate the artichoke rose. ily accessible account of the increasingly Puritan, conservative. In fact, the found- successful search for other planets, by a ers of New England created “churches, Reasoning from Race: Feminism, University of Toronto astrophysicist (and civil governments, and a code of laws” Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution, 2011-12 Radcliffe Institute fellow). that marked them as “the most advanced by Serena Mayeri ’97 (Harvard, $39.95). reformers of the Anglo-colonial world.” An examination of the connections be- Divine Art, Infernal Machine, by Eliza- tween race and sex equality, civil rights beth L. Eisenstein, Ph.D. ’53 (Pennsylvania, The People’s Republic of China at and feminism—from Jim Crow to “Jane $45). A history, for our digital age, of the 60, edited by William C. Kirby, Chang Crow”—by an assistant professor of law ambivalent attitudes toward printing and professor of China studies and Spangler and history at the University of Pennsyl- printers, beginning with the conflation of Family professor of business administra- vania Law School. Mayeri was a Ledecky Gutenberg’s partner, Johann Fust, with tion (Harvard Asia Center/Harvard Uni- Undergraduate Fellow at this magazine. the necromancer “Doctor” Johann Georg versity Press, $29.95 paper). Conference Faustus. The author is professor of history proceedings featuring a stellar lineup of The Deal from Hell, by James O’Shea emerita at the University of Michigan. expert China scholars (many from Har- Harvard Kennedy School Fellow ’86 (Pub- vard’s faculties) on the country that has, licAffairs, $28.99). The former managing Modernist America: Art, Music, for example, been on an increasingly ac- editor of the Chicago Tribune and editor of Movies, and the Globalization of celerated march from 83 percent rural the Los Angeles Times details the disastrous American Culture, by Richard Pells, (in 1949) to two-thirds urban within the merger of those enterprises, and the even Ph.D. ’69 (Yale, $35). America exports, foreseeable future, with all that entails.

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The making of national mortgage mar- to consumers in the form of charge cards. ues, “borrowed their mortgages, financed kets was a second key development—the Merchants and manufacturers quickly their cars, and charged their clothes.” Be- result of government initiatives intended recognized the resulting benefit: in the tween 1970 and 1979, the amount of debt to expand home ownership and thus mid 1950s, to take one example, the Boston outstanding tripled as buying and bor- jump-start construction during the Store in Fort Dodge, Iowa, calculated that rowing became “thoroughly entangled.” Great Depression. At the center of New the average revolving-account customer Hyman notes several times that the Deal programs like the Federal Housing bought 62 percent more than the average growth of credit between 1960 and 1980 Administration (FHA) was a new instru- cash customer. occurred against the backdrop of large- ment that enabled borrowers to repay scale economic change. As the U.S. econ- their home loans with a long-term mort- The proliferation of all this credit and omy transitioned from manufacturing to gage. This innovation was a decisive break the dependence it engendered—on the service provision—and, one might add, as from older, prevalent forms of mortgages part of both businesses and households— stagflation and increased global competi- by which borrowers took out loans for had important consequences. Most no- tion challenged historically high levels three to five years and paid back some or ticeably, it helped fuel material prosper- of national prosperity—income inequal- all of the principal within that time, refi- ity for millions of middle-class consumers ity grew rapidly and the future of middle- nancing or rolling over the balance when who could not otherwise have attained class incomes, upon which so much of the the loan came due. (The bank that had the trappings of “the good life” for which postwar credit expansion had been predi- issued the loan could choose whether to higher-income consumers paid cash. For cated, became much less stable. In this renew the mortgage when the note came most households, “credit had become an context, the logic of borrowing against due.) The stock market crash brought entitlement.” Homebuyers, Hyman contin- those future incomes “began to unravel.” such lending to a halt as nervous investors and bankers pulled their capital from the mortgage market, making refinancing im- possible for many homeowners and trig- c hapter & verse gering a wave of foreclosures. Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words The FHA aimed to guide private capital into a new, government-enabled mar- ket for home lending; public guarantees Jessica Pierce asks whether anyone can Willow,” with the refrain, “We’re with would undergird privately issued long- identify the origin of the expression “to it, we’re with it, we’re with it.” term mortgages that would be amortized die like an animal.” as buyers paid back both principal and “What was Karl Marx but Macauley interest. If a buyer defaulted, the insur- More queries from the archive: with his heels in the air?” (May-June). ance program would repay the principal A description of nationalism as “the Dan Rosenberg located this remark by to the lender. Interest rates were regulated religion of an extremely high percentage William Butler Yeats, first requested in at levels below 5 percent. Lenders’ profits of mankind an extremely high percent- the March-April 1995 issue, in the poet’s were assured because virtually all risk had age of the time.” collection On the Boiler, in the essay “To- been transferred to the government. “Good men and bad men/Lying in morrow’s Revolution” (part iv, page 19), These and other New Deal policies their graves—/Which were the good (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939). helped increase home ownership and men/And which were the knaves?” revive the construction industry: in 1936, An original source for the motto “What her rugged soil denies/The almost a half-billion dollars was lent in “Adopt, adapt, and adept.” harvest of the mind supplies” (May- FHA-guaranteed mortgages; by 1939, “If it is a university, it cannot be Cath- June). Andre Mayer and Dan Rosenberg about $4 billion in insured mortgages and olic; if it is Catholic, it cannot be a uni- tracked this reference from the March- home improvement loans were issued. versity.” April 1995 issue to the “sweet New Eng- As mortgage practices changed, Hyman “The scent of woodsmoke in an April land poet” John Greenleaf Whittier. The writes, “the stigma of mortgage indebted- lane…” poem, titled “Our State” on page 114 ness receded over the course of the 1930s.” A poem in which the poet (Robert of the Complete Poetical Words of John In the 1940s and 1950s, the growth of Graves?) points with pride to his vol- Greenleaf Whittier (1884), is described revolving credit laid the groundwork for umes of prose but will not say why he elsewhere as “Originally entitled ‘Dedi- the modern credit card. Revolving credit, wrote them, lest he commit the absur- cation of a School-house.’ It was writ- in which buyers pay back a given amount dity of the man who bred cats because ten for the dedication services of a new over time with interest but without a spe- he loved dogs so much (or bred dogs school building in Newbury, Mass.” cific end date, emerged in retailers’ efforts because he loved cats). to avoid World War II-related restrictions Who coined the phrase “the moving Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter on installment lending. During and after edge”? and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware the war, department stores and other busi- A musical satire on trendy clergymen, Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail nesses hustled to protect their sales, issu- to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Tit to [email protected]. ing an increasing volume of revolving debt

22 July - August 2011 montage Income inequality grew rapidly and the profits to everyone else in the form of credit-card debt and mortgage-backed future of middle-class incomes, upon which securities? “American capitalism,” he concludes, “is America, and we can so much of the postwar credit expansion had choose together to submit to it, or rise to its challenges, making what we will been predicated, became much less stable. of its possibilities.” Hyman has written a hefty book on an The last chapters of the book examine gap between the American reality and the important subject. One closes its covers how issuers, households, and govern- American Dream, but without rising real more knowledgeable and more thoughtful ment dealt with debt in an increasingly wages the debts remained.” about the role of credit and our current insecure economy. Hyman’s explanation of The result of almost a century of fi- economy. But such understanding does the origins of mortgage-backed securities nancial innovation, intermittent govern- not come cheap. The dense chapters and in the late 1960s, the collateralization of ment policymaking, and increased real sparse, at times inconsistent, statistics these assets, and the advent of subprime borrowing by households is our cur- make high demands on the reader. And lending reads like an eerie prelude to the rent economy—critically dependent on Hyman’s reconstruction of complex finan- 2008 financial crisis. So does the history of credit in a volatile world. “The relative cial history, though incisive, would have home-equity loans, which consumers used danger of relying on consumer credit to been stronger with additional attention to fund not only what they bought but drive the economy,” Hyman observes, to how consumers viewed the tentacular also the credit-card debt (and attendant “remains a macroeconomic puzzle to growth of credit in their lives. But despite interest rates) they incurred when they be solved.” Will we invest the profits these shortcomings, this is a book well originally purchased all kinds of goods from borrowing productively to create worth your time and energy. and services. For their part, legislators jobs and sustainable purchasing power and other policymakers (like the Federal on the part of most households? Or will Historian Nancy F. Koehn is Robison professor of Reserve) consistently “pushed credit to we distribute economic returns to a business administration. Her most recent book is rectify income inequality. Credit,” Hyman small number of Americans at the top The Story of American Business: From the writes, “appeared to close the material of the food chain and then lend those Pages of the New York Times.

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