MILLS, Nicolaus 1938-

PERSONAL: Born December 2, 1938, in Cleveland, OH; son of Nicolaus and Muriel Mills. Education: Harvard University, A.B., 1960; Brown University, Ph. D., 1966.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Sarah Lawrence College, One Mead Way, Bronxville, NY 10708. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, assistant professor of English, 1965-70; Center for Urban and Minority Studies, Columbia University Teachers College, New York, NY, researcher, 1970-72; Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, professor of American studies, 1972—.

MEMBER: PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS: Woodrow Wilson fellow, 1960; Rockefeller Foundation fellow, 1980; American Council of Learned Societies grant, 1978; Hewlett-Mellon grant, Sarah Lawrence College, 1986.

WRITINGS:

American and English Fiction in the NineteenthCentury: An Antigenre Critique and Comparison, Indiana University Press (Bloomington IN), 1973.

The Crowd in American Literature, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1986.

Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi, 1964—The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America, I. R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 1992.

The Triumph of Meanness: America's War against ItsBetter Self, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1997.

(With Kira Brunner) The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2002.

editor

Comparisons: A Short Story Anthology, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1972.

The Great School Bus Controversy, Columbia University Teachers College Press (New York, NY), 1973.

The New Journalism: A Historical Anthology, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1974.

Busing U.S.A., Teachers College Press (New York, NY), 1979.

(And author of introduction) Culture in an Age ofMoney: The Legacy of the 1980s in America, I. R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 1990.

Legacy of Dissent: Forty Years of Writing from Dissent Magazine, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

(And author of introduction) Debating Affırmative Action: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Inclusion, Delta Trade Paperbacks (New York, NY), 1994.

Arguing Immigration: The Debate over the ChangingFace of America, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

Dissent, editorial board, 1980; Cleveland Plain Dealer, columnist, 1998-99. Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, New Republic, Nation, and Yale Review.

SIDELIGHTS: American studies professor Nicolaus Mills has written or edited a long list of books, beginning with American and English Fiction in the Nineteenth Century: An Antigenre Critique and Comparison, in which Mills looks at several pairs of books, such as Rob Roy and The Prairie and Great Expectations and Huckleberry Finn. Mills opposes the views of scholars who include Lionel Trilling, Richard Chase, and Marius Bewley. He refutes the commonly accepted theory that British fiction of the period is novelistic and socially motivated, while its American counterpart is romantic, visionary, mythic, and abstract. He contends, for example that in the latter two books, the social context is equally relevant. Mark Taylor noted in Commonweal that "the detailed readings of eight novels with which Mr. Mill supports his position are outstanding."

Mills is editor of The Great School Bus Controversy, a collection of previously published articles on the 1970s debate. Provided is a background of public school busing, including the relevant court cases, actual busing programs, and other hard data. The contributors present both sides in the case for and against the controversial issue. Thomas J. Rookey wrote in Educational Leadership that "by balancing arguments and carefully separating data from opinion, Mills allows the reader to derive independent opinions." Busing U.S.A. is a followup volume published some seven years later.

In The Crowd in American Literature Mills explores the literary treatments of "three major crowd types—the revolutionary crowd of Adams and Jefferson, the majority crowd of the classic American novel, and the working-class crowd of America's social realists" as "a basis for redefining the meaning of society in American fiction." First Mills notes that the crowds of Adams and Jefferson were a legitimate force, as long as they acted with restraint. He cites the works of such authors as Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and their crowds that spoke to national unity. With authors like John Steinbeck, he notes the crowds that organized to eventually resist victimization by the monied corporations. Lastly, Mills addresses the media crowds in the postwar literature of Norman Mailer and Ralph Ellison.

Tom Quirk remarked in American Literature that The Crowd in American Literature "is a stimulating book—insightful, informed, and rigorously argued," and noted that it closes "fittingly with an instructive appendix on the crowd in American painting, providing as it does an alternative to the image of the solitary American in idyllic contemplation." "Mills writes with clarity and simplicity," commented R. Hearn in Choice.

Mills is editor of Culture in an Age of Money: The Legacy of the 1980s in America, a collection of fifteen essays, most of which first appeared in Dissent, the magazine of the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, and New Republic. They look at the commercialization of our society in such diverse areas as television, film, technology, the Supreme Court, art, fashion, and AIDS.

"The message of the book," wrote Ira E. Bogotch in School Library Journal, "is that never have so few strived so hard to create so little. Meaningful values, complexity, tentativeness, ambiguity are all missing today."

Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi, 1964—The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America is Mills's study of the Mississippi Summer Project, led for the most part by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). One thousand northern, white college students went South to register voters and help organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), and although there was hesitation over bringing, often naive, whites into the movement on the part of the veteran black organizers, they realized that the white population and the federal government would pay more attention to their cause than if it were an all-black movement. The movement did come to national attention when three young male volunteers, two white and one black, were murdered by white racists.

There were other murders, and blacks who registered to vote were listed in the newspaper, ensuring that their jobs would be terminated, and they would never again work for either white business or white government. The Democratic Party denied seats to the legally chosen blacks who came to Atlantic City, and a stand against the mainstream party resulted in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and a huge increase in black voter registration. Douglas A. Sylva noted in the New York Times Book Review that in this volume, Mills "lets participants speak for themselves, which many of them do with a touching eloquence."

Library Journal's Donna L. Cole wrote that most of the essays in Legacy of Dissent: Forty Years of Writing from Dissent Magazine reinforce "the 'real' aims of social democracy: freedom, justice, and a decent life for all." Some of the older reprints are classics, including Norman Mailer's 1957 "The White Negro" and Paul Goodman's 1960 "Growing Up Absurd." Others are more recent, like Cornel West's 1991 "Nihilism in Black America."

In Debating Affırmative Action: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Inclusion Mills provides a history that introduces the book's twenty-eight essays, most of which were previously published. Choice reviewer N. Lasher, who noted that the book emphasizes that affirmative action is not only a racial issue, called it a "thought-provoking and timely anthology."

Arguing Immigration: The Debate over the Changing Face of America features essays by Toni Morrison, Linda Chavez, Richard Rodriguez, and others that address the increasing number of legal and illegal immigrants. Most, but not all, of the essays emphasize the positive effects of immigration and consider even illegal immigration to be a boon to the U.S. economy because undocumented workers contribute to it and perform work that goes begging in the United States. Charles Solomon noted in the Los Angeles Times Book Review that anyone with a strong opinion either way "will find at least one piece that confirms their opinions."

William A. Reinsmith wrote in College Teaching that in The Triumph of Meanness: America's War against Its Better Self Mills "catalogues . . . a recent acceleration in meanness, shown most notably by a marked falling off in sensitivity and compassion: hard as nails, cut no breaks, take them out, watch your back, bottom line, survival-of-the-fittest, capitalism back in the saddle. Since the 1930s, there had been a kind of reprieve, an attempt by the federal government to even things out somewhat, to create programs for those in distress—a welfare liberalism that showed capitalism with a human face."

Mills talks about "meanness without guilt," as practiced through the use of sexist, homophobic, and racist language by media hosts, attacks on the under-class by conservative politicians, the massive layoffs of workers by corporations interested only in their bottom lines, and "journalists" whose news consists of attacks, rather than stories based on objective investigation. He also notes the underlying meanness of gangsta' rap, brutal entertainment, and shock feminism. A Humanist contributor commented that Mills "has given us a compelling account of the unacceptable level of selfishness, spite, and aggression in today's America."

Mills collected fourteen essays about slaughter in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, East Timor, Cambodia, Sarajevo, Bosnia, Kabul, and other locations for The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention. Mills studies the language of slaughter through writings by Primo Levi, Joseph Conrad, and others, and with coeditor, Kira Brunner, discusses what has happened in each location since the killings. Several of the contributors recall the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, observing that such barbarism against American citizens may open our eyes to the evil and cruelty against the subject countries and help establish a national policy that more effectively deals with terrorism.

A Kirkus Reviews writer noted that "sound policy recommendations . . . arise from time to time, all in the hope of encouraging an active internationalist peacekeeping effort so that such horrors do not occur again. As they almost certainly will."

A Publishers Weekly contributor agreed that other atrocities "will likely occur in the decades ahead. Close observation and analysis of the kind demonstrated in this book will be essential to forming the nation's and the world's response."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Historical Review, October, 1993, Hugh Davis Graham, review of Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi, 1964—The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America, p. 1342.

American Literature, December, 1987, Tom Quirk, review of The Crowd in American Literature, pp. 647-649.

Booklist, September 1, 1994, Mary Carroll, review of Arguing Immigration: The Debate over the Changing Face of America, p. 7.

Choice, December, 1973, review of American andEnglish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century: An Antigenre Critique and Comparison, p. 1551; September, 1974, review of The New Journalism: A Historical Anthology, p. 934, review of The Great School Bus Controversy, p. 988; May, 1987, R. Hearn, review of The Crowd in American Literature, p. 1398; February, 1993, T. H. Baker, review of Like a Holy Crusade, p. 1019; January, 1995, N. Lasher, review of Debating Affırmative Action: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Inclusion, p. 830.

College Teaching, spring, 1998, William A. Reinsmith, review of The Triumph of Meanness: America's War against Its Better Self, p. 79.

Contemporary Sociology, Diane Barthel, review of Culture in an Age of Money: The Legacy of the 1980s in America, p. 610.

Educational Leadership, December, 1974, Thomas J. Rookey, review of The Great School Bus Controversy, p. 234.

Humanist, May-June, 1998, Peter Grosvenor, review of The Triumph of Meanness, p. 44.

Journal of American Culture, fall, 1991, Ray B. Browne, review of Culture in an Age of Money, p. 112.

Journal of American History, March, 1988, Paul A. Gilje, review of The Crowd in American Literature, pp. 1316-1317; March, 1994, Steven F. Lawson, review of Like a Holy Crusade, p. 1539.

Journal of Southern History, February, 1995, Neil R. McMillen, review of Like a Holy Crusade, p. 188.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1994, review of Legacy of Dissent: Forty Years of Writing from Dissent Magazine, p. 1473; August 15, 2002, review of The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention, p. 1201.

Kliatt, July, 1994, Edna M. Boardman, review of Debating Affırmative Action, p. 34.

Library Journal, August, 1973, Judith Ann Sessions, review of American and English Fiction in the Nineteenth Century, p. 2300; May 15, 1974, Adeline Konsh, review of The Great School Bus Controversy, p. 1384; September 15, 1994, Donna L. Cole, review of Legacy of Dissent, p. 82.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October, 1994, Charles Solomon, review of Arguing Immigration, p. 10.

Modern Fiction Studies, Sanford E. Marovitz, review of The Crowd in American Literature, p. 313-314.

New York Times, December 5, 1990, Herbert Mitgang, review of Culture in an Age of Money, p. C25.

New York Times Book Review, October 11, 1992, Douglas A. Sylva, review of Like a Holy Crusade, p. 22; September 21, 1997, Laura Mansnerus, review of The Triumph of Meanness, p. 24.

Progressive, January, 1991, Jacob Stockinger, review of Culture in an Age of Money, p. 35.

Publishers Weekly, March 7, 1994, review of DebatingAffırmative Action, p. 64; September 5, 1994, review of Arguing Immigration, p. 105; October 17, 1994, review of Legacy of Dissent, p. 75; September 9, 2002, review of The New Killing Fields, p. 54.

Rapport, April, 1994, review of Arguing Immigration, p. 41.

Review of English Studies, November, 1975, Robert Belflower, review of American and English Fiction in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 502-503.

School Library Journal, December, 1990, Ira E. Bogotch, review of Culture in an Age of Money, pp. 32-33.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), February 14, 1993, James North, review of Like a Holy Crusade, p. 93.

Wall Street Journal, Matthew Scully, review of TheTriumph of Meanness, p. A12.*