The Unifinished City (New York and the Metropolitan Idea) works as a series of independant essays (as it was written) but also pulls together beautifully as a major look at a city, specifically New York but more generically at cities in general in the book's final chapters. The author's, Thomas Bender, view is expansive and always intellectually sound as it ranges from architecture to Walt Whitman to cultural politics to Beat poets to democracy and to universities, and these are only a few of the ideas integrated smoothly into the book. Some of the concepts may be a little difficult for the uninitiated (myself, at times) but the writing is so smart and clear that the reader will fall into place quickly enough. A wonderful book and one of the best examinations of New York to be encountered.

Collection of distinct but companionable articles by Bender (Humanities/NYU) assessing New York City as a multiplicity of public places and institutions in flux and very much sui generis. New York, the author finds, sits outside the metropolitan idea. Unlike Paris or Vienna, it has not assumed national centrality and leadership in political and cultural matters; it doesn't realize and standardize the best hopes for the American polity. This, he figures, is because the city is continually in the making: unresolved, or resolved only temporarily. In its physical development and social organization it refuses a single logic, preferring a self-fashioned pluralism that is pragmatic, unpredictable, nonhierarchical. "The center has never held firmly in New York," Bender writes. "It has been continually undermined by fragmentation of the elite and by manifold rebellions." That has consequences for better and worse. Aspiringly democratic, polyvalent, and vibrant in architecture, politics, and art, the city is a place where, as Virgil Thomson observed, one group could argue "esthetics with intelligence and politics with a passion" while the other discussed "esthetics with passion and politics with intelligence." But New York lacks an image of itself as a collectivity; it has no representative institutions and lacks a civic culture in which "the public space is the terrain of the public as visual representation, while institutions provide a place for representative political deliberation." Bender (Intellect and Public Life, not reviewed, etc.) brings wide-ranging curiosity, literacy, and experience in urban matters to the question of New York, from the iconography of the Brooklyn Bridge and its rolein urban reconfiguration to the dialectical relationship between the city's horizontal, civic impulses and its vertical, corporate ones. There are persistent issues, including the city's racial divisions, but "New York's character is to be incomplete." A meaty and satisfying look at a great city, its multiple environments, and their unending transformations. (b&w photos throughout)

Whether you know nothing about New York, or think you know it all, this eloquent book will nourish your love and broaden your embrace of the City.

Dennis R. Hidalgo

Thomas Bender, ed. The Antislavery Debate

What can a historian do when there is not enough empirical evidence to produce a quantitative and comprehensively thesis for a social historical problem that defies psychological scrutiny? David Brion Davis opted for an answer that satisfies cynic assumptions with circumstantial evidences. Davis argues that the strength of abolitionism in early industrial Britain derived from its susceptibility to the needs of the dominant political elite. It was particularly influenced by this new bourgeoisie capitalist class' modes of industrial discipline. Antislavery main, and unconscious, purpose was to desensitize English society to the newer forms of oppression evident in the increasing wage labor. His context of conceptual reference appears to flow from Marxism and Freudian thought: the rise of an oppressing bourgeoisie driven by its hidden and selfish Id. To Thomas Haskell this idea of unconscious "self-deception" and motivation by class interests is not convincing. For him, it is impossible for the historian to bring concrete evidence to bear, which will distinguish between unconscious intention and unintended consequences. Following what appears to be a more objective goal, Haskell intends to draw a straighter line between the rise of the market economy and the rise of the abolitionist movement in 1750s. In doing so he moves from a quasi-Freudian historical analysis to an Ericsonian: that of a cognitive change of behavior. For Haskell capitalist and market expansion broaden social perception that in turn promoted moral responsibility. The most powerful catalyst in this process of change was the "intensification of market discipline, and the penetration of that discipline into spheres of life previously untouched by it." To this Davis decries Haskell approach for being more economic deterministic than a rationalistic. To this, John Ashworth adds that Haskell is not able to follow up the empirical inclinations of his Davis' critic since he does not supply enough evidence to support his argument. Indeed, his only example of moral switch to Antislavery is the Quaker John Woolman. Without knowing Haskell is caught in one of the most frustrating traps of an empirical driven discipline. His response is that he is not looking for a comprehensive societal change but for a mechanism that might have caused the change. The problems this approach is the usefulness of such "found" mechanism if there is no proof that the mechanism was indeed used sufficiently as to merit its historical validity. Nevertheless, Haskell bottom line is his desire to demonstrate that abolitionists rationally attached the worst evil of their times. Davis and Ashworth's response to Haskell's premise is that wage labor could have been also attacked and was not. Ashworth spend most of his time criticizing Haskell and throwing some bits toward Davis. Yet he is also able to provide an interesting proposition. First, he asserts Davis' starting point as the place to launch the investigation: the emergence of a dominant class. This would lead us to the disregarding of wage labor abuses and protected interests. But instead of moving completely toward Davis, he detours into the cultural notion of family and its effect on productivity. The simple conclusion, thus, is that since slavery, through its detrimental effect on family and society, slowed the pace of economic advance, "it is not surprising that to more people than ever before it seemed an unmitigated evil." Haskell response to this is that these family values could have been in existence long before the abolitionist movement, thus, rendering useless in the debate. Ashworth's last answer is that the production ethos has a long family history, it was the innovation brought by master-wage earner relationship that transformed the view of family into a more entrepreneurial project. Clearly this debate is provocative, but narrowly conceived, as is mainly centered around Marxist concepts of history, evasive evidences and a revival of neo-Whiggists approaches. Very little criticism could be employed against the authors since they exhausted most of it that could be applicable to their line of argument. However, an also important critique to a combine look at the arguments presented may be the dearth of sociological and cultural approaches that may enhance the historical view that as historians we are trying to discover.

In New York Intellect, Thomas Bender provides a guide to the history of intellectual life in America's cultural capital. He takes it through three phases which are based on the preoccupations of the city's intelligentsia during different periods: first, a city in which cultural institutions brought together an intellectual elite, next, a city with an explicitly literary orientation, and finally, the international capital of culture with an academic orientation. For students of cultural, intellectual, and/or urban history (which I am) this is essential reading. It's a good read for anyone interested in the history of New York City or the intellectual life of a city in general.

I studied out of 7 different preparation books, and this one, by far is the worst one! The questions in this book are really difficult, tricky and unlike the CLEP exam! The questions in the actual CLEP exam arent tricky like the SAT or GRE, they are straightforward. For some reason, Peterson's has decided to put in SAT-like questions on their practice exam. This book should be thrown out of the market because its NOTHING like the real exams! I would recommend Princeton Review's Cracking the CLEP, and Review for Clep Examination by Comex Systems. The REA also writes really accurate practice exams. If you are taking English, I also recommend you purchase "The Writer's Reference" by Diana Hacker. That was probably the most helpful book in brushing up on your English.

I found the practice exercises in this book to be very helpful, and I did really well when I took the CLEP afterwards.

Looking to maximize my ability on the CLEP tests to avoid taking numerous classes that I have no interest in. If you'd like to get practice on these tests, than this book may help.

I expect to see more information, reference rather than the history of US universities. First half are spent for the history and history. Even though I like the history, the author should put more effort in making comparison than fact.