Beyond the Burning Time by Kathryn Lasky

Beyond the Burning Time by Kathryn Lasky

Pioneering anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner is renowned for her work on the Sherpas of Nepal. Now she turns her attention homeward to examine how social class is lived in the United States and, specifically, within her own peer group. In New Jersey Dreaming, Ortner returns to her Newark roots to present an in-depth look at Weequahic High School's Class of 1958, of which she was a member. She explores her classmates' recollected experiences of the neighborhood and the high school, also written about in the novels of Philip Roth, Weequahic High School's most famous alum. Ortner provides a chronicle of the journey of her classmates from the 1950s into the 1990s, following the movement of a striking number of them from modest working- and middle-class backgrounds into the wealthy upper-middle or professional/managerial class.

Ortner tracked down nearly all 304 of her classmates. She interviewedabout 100 in person and spoke with most of the rest by phone, recording her classmates' vivid memories of time, place, and identity. Ortner shows how social class affected people's livesin many hidden and unexamined ways. She also demonstrates that the Class of '58's extreme upward mobility must be understood in relation to the major identity movements of the twentieth century--the campaign against anti-Semitism, the Civil Rights movement, and feminism.

A multisited study combining field research with an interdisciplinary analytical framework, New Jersey Dreaming is a masterly integration of developments at the vanguard of contemporary anthropology. Engaging excerpts from Ortner's field notes are interspersed throughout the book. Whether recording the difficulties and pleasures of studying one's own peer group, the cultures of driving in different parts of the country, or the contrasting experiences of appointment-making in Los Angeles and New York, they provide a rare glimpse into the actual doing of ethnographic research.

Kathryn Lasky is the award-winning author of more than ninety books for children, including JOHN MUIR: AMERICA'S FIRST ENVIRONMENTALIST; A VOICE OF HER OWN: THE STORY OF PHILLIS WHEATLEY, SLAVE POET; VISION OF BEAUTY: THE STORY OF SARAH BREEDLOVE WALKER; and INTERRUPTED JOURNEY: SAVING ENDANGERED SEA TURTLES. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Matthew Trueman spent his childhood in Italy but returned to the United States to attend art school. He is the illustrator of A PICTURE FOR MARC and NOAH'S MITTENS. He lives in Phillipsburg, New Jersey.
Of ONE BEETLE TOO MANY, he says: The illustrations in this book started out as drawings created with acrylic inks, watercolor, and graphite pencil. I moved up the food chain to add gouache and colored pencil. After sealing the pictures with acrylic medium, I did my thicker acrylic painting, then fooled around a little more with graphite and colored pencil. Finally, I added the collage elements, including paper, string, and weeds and wildflowers from my yard and nearby ditches and fields.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780590473323
ISBN 10	0590473328
Title	Beyond the Burning Time
Author	Kathryn Lasky
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Scholastic US
Year published	1996-09-01
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.