Choice 评论
Kemmis (Northern Lights Research and Education Institute) a former minority leader and speaker of the Montana House of Representatives is the mayor of Missoula, Montana. His book is not only an insightful case study in the politics of community, colonialism, and corporations in the Northern Rockies region; it is also a major contribution to the growing literature of civic republicanism and the "New Regionalism." A penetrating critique of the "procedural republic" characterized by "public hearings" without a hearing public, this essay identifies a prevailing value privatism as the deeper ground of "the politics of alienation, separation, and blocked initiatives." Kemmis grapples with the patterns of historic divisiveness that have made it hard for communities to build innovative enterprises based on cooperation and love of place. He emphasizes the capacity of "place-centered practices" to transform public life partly by "making values objective and public." Brilliantly reweaving John Dewey's argument of some 60 years ago, Kemmis argues that it is through the politics of place that people have a chance to discover their power as citizens. He persuasively contends that one of the reasons that "corporations are a problem in public life is precisely because we have lost so much of our sense of public identity." Upper-division undergraduates and above. -H. G. Reid, University of Kentucky