CAMPUS BEST-SELLERS
Members of the MIT community could relax late at night by reading science fiction, mysteries or bodice-rippers, but no-o-o-o-o. It's round-the-clock entrepreneurship for students and faculty, according to amazon.com's monthly tally of best-selling books here.
Topping this month's list of 10 greatest hits was Acquisitions, Mergers, Sales, Buyouts, and Takeovers: A Handbook with Forms by Charles A. Scharf et al.
Four books by MIT faculty authors snared spots on the amazon.com hit list. Two books by Michael A. Cusumano, Distinguished Professor of Management, occupied second and eighth place, respectively. They are Competing on Internet Time: Lessons from Netscape and its Battle with Microsoft (with David B. Yoffie) and Microsoft Secrets: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets, and Manages People (with Richard W. Selby).
International Economics: Theory and Policy by Professor of Economics Paul R. Krugman ranked seventh among MIT's best-sellers and The Econometrics of Financial Markets by John Y. Campbell, the Fischer Black Visiting Professor of Finance, ranked ninth.
The sixth-place book on amazon.com's MIT list stood out for its direct reflection of student interest. It was Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis by Joan Bolker.
To see the list for MIT, go to www.amazon.com and click on "Best Sellers," then "Education A-Z" (under the Purchase Circles heading on the left-hand side) and then "Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
CHILDREN AND THE MEDIA
On September 9, Professor Henry Jenkins, director of the new Program in Comparative Media Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Science, delivered the keynote address to producers and marketers of media content geared to children and teenagers at KidScreen Magazine's Annual Conference, "Breakthrough to Kids and Teens," in New York City.
Working from one of the new program's central research themes, "childhood and adolescence in a mediated culture," Professor Jenkins spoke about public reaction to the shootings in Littleton, CO last April. He noted that public concern has been misdirected, focusing on "what the media are doing to our children" instead of what Professor Jenkins argues is the real issue, namely, "what our children are doing with media."
In his KidScreen address, he demonstrated how much of the "moral panic" surrounding the shootings derives from adults' feeling uncomfortable with children's relationship to digital media, as well as cut off from new forms of popular culture. Professor Jenkins had previously testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce following the tragedy at Columbine High School.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 29, 1999.
