What parent wouldn't want an optimistic child, especially in a climate where the media report almost daily the rising incidence of childhood depression and teen suicide?
Can children be taught thinking patterns that will protect them from mental illness? Martin E. P. Seligman, Penn professor of psychology, believes that children can be immunized against pessimism, hopelessness and depression if they are taught skills to promote optimism before adolescence. He sets forth these tenets and skills in "The Optimistic Child" (Houghton Mifflin). Dr. Seligman also is the author of the national bestseller, "Learned Optimism."
His latest book focuses on 8- to 12-year-olds because, he maintains, most mental-illness problems begin before puberty. Dr. Seligman and researchers with the Penn Depression Prevention Project have found that pessimistic thinking in young children can put them at higher risk for more serious mental illness in later life.
Pessimism, "The Optimistic Child" contends, is a view of reality that children learn from parents, teachers, coaches and the media. Pessimists believe that bad things last a long time, undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. But children can be taught to become realistic, resilient optimists who see a defeat as a temporary setback caused by bad luck or circumstances brought about by others, not themselves.
A new book from Paul Rosenbaum, professor of statistics in the Wharton School, provides a sound statistical account of the principles and methods used in the design and analysis of observational studies. Logically enough, the book is titled "Observational Studies" (Springer-Verlag).
So what, exactly, is an observational study? Dr. Rosenbaum defines it as "an empirical investigation of treatments, policies, or exposures and the effects they cause, but it differs from an experiment in that the investigator cannot control the assignment of treatments to subjects." When controlled experiments are not possible, observational studies are employed instead. Scientists from a wide range of disciplines find such studies useful in their work.
The book may be a bit overwhelming for readers without a basic knowledge of statistics and probability. Others will find it easy to follow. Illustrative examples of actual observational studies support the author's ideas. These studies include smoking and lung cancer, lead in children, nuclear-weapons testing, and placement programs for students.
"On Margins of Art Worlds" (Westview Press) features a collection of original studies based on research conducted by Larry Gross, professor of communication, and graduate students at the Annenberg School for Communication. Essays in the volume, which was edited by Dr. Gross, question the social arrangements that determine the recruitment and training of artists, the institutional mechanisms that govern distribution and influence success, the process of innovation within art worlds, and the emergence of new formations around new media or new players.
"By approaching the study of art worlds within the context of communication studies, these scholars were at once free from the disciplinary boundaries that separate the study of art into social, historical, and aesthetic domains and at the time obliged to follow the threads of their questions wherever they led them, without resorting to the security of those same disciplinary constraints," writes Dr. Gross in the book's introduction.
In "Recovered Roots" (University of Chicago Press), Yael Zerubavel examines how members of society remember and interpret historical events and how the meaning of the past is constructed and altered over time.
More precisely, she shows how a new nation can create a past by reawakening a dormant "national memory." History and memory interweave, creating a national history written not by government policy-makers alone, but by writers, educators and politicians collaboratively.
Dr. Zerubavel, associate professor of modern Hebrew literature and culture in Penn's Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, looks at Hebrew culture and explores how--in the years prior to Israel's birth in 1948--Zionist settlers in Palestine consciously attempted to rewrite Jewish history by molding Jewish memory. She goes back to 73 C.E. and the defense of Masada against the Romans and follows a thread to the Bar Kokhba revolt of 133-135 and to the 1920 defense of a new settlement in Tel Hai. Dr. Zerubavel demonstrates how these events, which ended in death and defeat, were transformed by collective memory into symbols of heroic national revival.
Sports franchises: Cities that have them want to keep them; cities that don't will go to great lengths to get them.
Bargains, threats and deals are all part of the big leagues, according to Kenneth L. Shropshire, associate professor of legal studies and real estate at the Wharton School. In "The Sports Franchise Game: Cities in Pursuit of Sports Franchises, Events, Stadiums, and Arenas" (University of Pennsylvania Press), Dr. Shropshire takes a look at the power plays that unfold in the offices of city officials.
The competition involved in the "sports franchise game" rivals the competition on any gridiron, diamond, court or ice rink. Dr. Shropshire provides interesting examples of the extremes to which some cities are willing to go to satisfy a sports franchise. He also demonstrates how manipulative owners profit from the system.
In the end, Dr. Shropshire points out that cities may not be getting a practical return for their investments. Before playing the game, cities must first realize what's at stake--and ask if it's really worth winning.