Adams Walls of Books

No one seems to know about this bookstore, hidden away behind the government buildings on 8th St. But C. and I found it shortly after moving here last year: it's right next to the ticket office for the jazz series. All the same, we hadn't made it back since then. Until last Saturday.

Adams Walls of Books is one of those old-school used-book stores: some sort of order is suggested by various shelf labels, but it isn't the kind of place to go to with your mind made up about what you want to buy. No, you go there to see what you can find.

What I found:


Psychology for Business and Industry, by Herbert Moore. Published 1939.
I'm sure I could find this book or a similar one in the library, but I love having old texts around to peruse for research and teaching. I'm interested in industrial psychology, of course, because it's a preeminent management tool, a strategy for the management of workplace emotion. I brought a couple of pages to class last Monday:

Table 1: Psychological Problems of Businessmen (Problem #2: "How to make employees enthusiastic and energetic")

and

The Frederick Test for Emotional Maturity, which asks, among other things:

Do I get discouraged rather easily and have moods and occasional fits of depression?

Do I incline toward tears when attending an emotional play?

Do little annoyances tend to "get my goat"?

And my second find:

The School Administrator and Subversive Activities: A Study of the Administration of Restraints on Alleged Subversive Activities of Public School Personnel, by E. Edmund Reutter, Jr.

Published in 1951, this book takes a look at the extent to which public schools were making efforts to identify and rid themselves of Communists and other subversives. If we've entered an era of New McCarthyism, this book might be a useful warning of where we don't want to go. Twenty-one states, for example, required faculty at the public universities to take loyalty oaths. Here's one from the University of Illinois:

I,-----, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I believe in and pledge my allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the system of free representative government founded thereon; that I do not nor will I advocate the
overthrow of the Government of the United States by force or violence; and that I am not a member nor will I join any political party or organization that advocates the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force or violence.

Two books that provide insight into the history of control, control of workers, control of teachers. Found at a bookstore that looks a bit like the antithesis of control.