Goodman, James 1956–

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Goodman, James 1956–

PERSONAL: Born November 21, 1956; son of Burton S. (a travel agent) and Rachel Jeanne (an attorney) Goodman; married Jennifer McFeely (a clinical social worker), June 1, 1986; children: M. Samuel, M. Jackson. Education: Hobart College, B.A., 1979; attended Columbia University, 1980–81; New York University, M.A., 1983; Princeton University, Ph.D., 1990. Politics: Liberal.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of History, Rutgers University, 175 University Ave., Newark, NJ, 07102-1814. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, educator. New York City Commission on Human Rights, New York, NY, assistant director of public relations, 1980–81; Daniel J. Edelman Public Relations, Inc., New York, NY, account executive, 1981–82; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, assistant professor of history and social studies, beginning 1990; Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, professor of history, department chair, 1999–2002. Holy Roman Repertory Company, historical consultant.

MEMBER: Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grant from American Council of Learned Societies, 1990; finalist, Pulitzer Prize in history, for Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case That Shocked 1930s America and Revived the Struggle for Equality; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1997–1998; Shelby Cullom Davis Center Fellowship, Princeton University, 2000–01.

WRITINGS:

Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case That Shocked 1930s America and Revived the Struggle for Equality (nonfiction), Pantheon (New York, NY), 1994.

(Coeditor, with James Anderson) Dis/agreeing Ireland: Context, Obstacles, Hopes, Pluto Press (London, England), 1998.

(Editor) John Kenneth Galbraith, Letters to Kennedy, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.

Blackout (nonfiction), North Point Press (San Francisco, CA), 2003.

Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Newsday, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Reviews in American History.

SIDELIGHTS: James Goodman once told CA: "I began my graduate studies in creative writing and finished (at least for the time being) in history, so it should not be surprising that I am a historian who thinks that history ought to be creative writing about the past. The great challenge is to imagine and create literary forms that do justice to the richness, complexity, power, and drama of the past and the complicated stories we tell ourselves about it. I write nonfiction narrative, but each day I learn about the past, and about how to write history, from those who write novels, short stories, essays, poems, and plays.

"In politics, I am to the left of most American liberals, but, in hard times for liberals, I am happy to be known as one. Of course, politics in the present is one thing, in history and literature another."

Goodman is the author of two nonfiction works, the 1994 Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case That Shocked 1930s America and Revived the Struggle for Equality and the 2003 Blackout. In the former title, Goodman sheds light on the 1931 Scottsboro case when nine black youths were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama. The ensuing trials lasted over a decade and presented a bewildering assortment of narratives and counter-narratives. Ultimately, the nine black youths were convicted, though all were released from prison in subsequent years, some with charges dropped and some on parole; one received a pardon in 1976. Goodman's book presents a narrative history of the event and its historical impact, as America critic Bruce Nelson noted: "Instead of telling one story in linear narrative form, Goodman tells many different stories, highlighting the perspective of many of the individuals who became involved in the case." New Republic contributor Edward L. Ayers praised the results: "Patiently sifting through tales that have been told over and over, straining to listen to voices that few others have heard, Goodman has captured the terror and the agony of the 1930s." Ayers further commended Goodman's "scrupulous attention to sources." Similarly, writing in the Nation, Robin D.G. Kelley observed that Goodman is a "masterful storyteller and beautiful writer, [who] weaves an intricate tale, telling and retelling the stories of each participant." Further praise came from Michigan Law Review contributor Stephan Landsman, who wrote, "Goodman brings to bear all the apparatus of story-conscious history to help explore the implications of the case," and from Booklist critic Margaret Flanagan, who felt Goodman "meticulously reconstructs" the drama of the Scottsboro trial and creates" multidimensional narrative history of a shameful episode." For Carrie Foster, writing in the Historian, Goodman tells his complex tale in "simple yet elegant prose." Likewise, Southern Review contributor Joseph P. Reidy concluded that Stories of Scottsboro was "one of the most imaginative and stylistically innovative of recent historical works."

Goodman employs a similar technique of multiple-viewpoint stories to describe one event in Blackout, a work describing the New York City electrical failure and subsequent blackout in 1977. A critic for Kirkus Reviews described Blackout as a "jazzy, crescendo-building portrait," while a reviewer for Publishers Weekly thought it provided a "looming dark side of power outages in the electrified world." Booklist contributor Allen Weakland concluded, "Goodman sheds light on a dark episode in the life of the Big Apple."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America, September 24, 1994, Bruce Nelson, review of Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case That Shocked 1930s America and Revived the Struggle for Equality, p. 28.

Booklist, March 15, 1994, Margaret Flanagan, review of Stories of Scottsboro, p. 1308; November 15, 2003, Allen Weakland, review of Blackout, p. 568.

Contemporary Review, February, 1999, Esmond Wright, review of Letters to Kennedy, p. 103.

Historian, summer, 1995, Carrie Foster, review of Stories of Scottsboro, p. 794.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2003, review of Blackout, p. 1260.

Library Journal, December, 2003, Elaine Machleder, review of Blackout, p. 138.

Michigan Law Review, May, 1995, Stephan Landsman, review of Stories of Scottsboro, pp. 1739-1767.

Nation, October 3, 1994, Robin D.G. Kelley, review of Stories of Scottsboro, p. 353.

New Republic, November 11, 1994, Edward L. Ayers, review of Stories of Scottsboro, p. 36.

Publishers Weekly, April 6, 1998, review of Letters to Kennedy, p. 70; November 3, 2003, review of Blackout, p. 67.

Southern Review, spring, 1996, Joseph P. Reidy, review of Stories of Scottsboro, p. 373.