CANR
WORK TITLE: IN JERUSALEM
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NATIONALITY: American
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https://arts.columbia.edu/profiles/lis-harris
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Bennington College, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. New Yorker, New York, NY, staff writer, 1970-95; Columbia University, New York, associate professor, Writing Department head. Two-time Woodrow Wilson Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow.
AWARDS:Grant, J.M. Kaplan Fund, 1998; grant, Fund for the City of New York, 1998; grant, Rockefeller Fund, 1998, 1999.
WRITINGS
Contributor to the anthology The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America’s Greatest Women Journalists; contributor to periodicals and journals, including the New York Times, World Policy Journal, and the Wilson Quarterly.
SIDELIGHTS
Lis Harris is a writer, journalist, and educator. Harris worked as a staff writer for the New Yorker for twenty-five years beginning in 1970. Harris later became a professor of writing at Columbia University and chair of the Writing Department. She is a two-time Woodrow Wilson Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow and has received grants for her work from a number of organizations, including the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Fund for the City of New York, and the Rockefeller Fund. Harris published her first book, Holy Days: The World of a Hasidic Family, in 1985.
In 1995 Harris published Rules of Engagement: Four Couples and American Marriage Today. In it she introduces readers to four American families, classified as an upper-class couple who live in New York City, a middle-class African-American couple, a working-class couple, and a “bohemian” couple. Harris spent several years talking with these four couples to gain greater insight into their views and practices of marriage. Harris also pays particular attention to how the women’s movement has impacted the institution of marriage. She also deals with issues related to courtship, family history, money issues, arguments, sex, housework, and children. Booklist contributor Donna Seaman noted that “each couple’s story is compelling, as true stories always are.” Seaman pointed out that “Harris is able to insinuate herself into people’s lives and then describe them succinctly and insightfully.”
Harris published Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze in 2003. The account looks at Natural Resources Defense Council scientist Allen Hershkowitz’s idea to create a green paper mill in the middle of New York City, partly as a means to recycle used paper and de-ink it to help reduce the city’s biggest waste export. Nationally, this paper waste makes up around half of waste in landfills, marking it as an important issue to address. Harris shows how Hershkowitz created the plan, both scientifically and bureaucratically, to pitch the idea to New York City officials for the creation of an environmentally progressive de-inking factory in the city to deal with this problem. Harris shows the hurdles he faced and also how he was able to see his idea into fruition.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews stated: “Overly laden with detail, Harris’s account has its torturous moments.” However, the reviewer admitted that “in the end it adds up to a pointed case study.” The Kirkus Reviews critic suggested that Tilting at Mills would be “of much interest to environmentalists, community planners, and policy wonks.” While a Publishers Weekly contributor reasoned that Harris attempted to address too much for a book of this size, “this deservedly will be popular among environmentalists and should be required reading for politicians and businesspeople who claim to support innovation.” Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush claimed that “this is a surprisingly fast-paced and dramatic account of a failed environmental project.”
Harris published In Jerusalem: Three Generations of an Israeli Family and a Palestinian Family in 2019. The account looks into contemporary life in a divided Israel by focusing on the domestic lives of three generations of families. Harris covers the modern history of Israel to clarify the complicated nature of its current existence, particularly as it relates to relationships between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Harris’s account highlights the fear and bitterness across demographics in the country. She also details her drives with Palestinian driver Fuad Abu Awwad, who introduces her to new interviewees. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews commented that “the stories of the Palestinians’ daily strife to eek out a paltry living are some of the most memorable in the book.” The same reviewer concluded by calling In Jerusalem a collection of “fair, evenhanded stories of what life is really like in” Israel.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 15, 1995, Donna Seaman, review of Rules of Engagement: Four Couples and American Marriage Today, p. 120; March 1, 2003, Vanessa Bush, review of Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze, p. 1130.
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2002, review of Tilting at Mills, p. 1821; July 1, 2019, review of In Jerusalem.
Publishers Weekly, July 10, 1995, review of Rules of Engagement, p. 49; January 6, 2003, review of Tilting at Mills, p. 48.
ONLINE
Columbia University, School of the Arts, https://arts.columbia.edu/ (August 21, 2019), author profile.
Heyman Center, http://heymancenter.org/ (August 21, 2019), author profile.
Lis Harris was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1970 to 1995 and is the forthcoming Chair of Columbia University's School of the Arts Writing Department. In addition to innumerable articles, reviews and commentaries, she is the author of Holy Days: The World of a Hasidic Family, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Rules of Engagement: Four American Marriages, and Tilting at Mills. A two-time Woodrow Wilson Lila Acheson Wallace Fellowship recipient, she has been awarded grants from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Fund for the City of New York, and the Rockefeller Fund.
Her work has been widely anthologized, most recently in The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America's Greatest Women Journalists. Her latest book, In Jerusalem: Three Generations of an Israeli Family and a Palestinian Family, a work she researched for over a decade, will be released in September 2019.
Lis Harris
Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Writing
Columbia University
Lis Harris is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Writing. She received a B.A. from Bennington College and was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1970 to 1995. In addition to innumerable articles, reviews and commentaries, she is the author of Holy Days: The World of a Hasidic Family, Rules of Engagement: Four American Marriages, and Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings and the Corporate Squeeze. A two-time Woodrow Wilson Lila Acheson Wallace Fellowship recipient, she was awarded grants in 1998 from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and the Fund for the City of New York, and in 1998 and 1999 from the Rockefeller Fund.
Lis Harris
Professor of Professional Practice, Writing
ON LEAVE, FALL 2019
Lis Harris was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1970 to 1995 and is the forthcoming Chair of the Writing Department of Columbia University’s School of the Arts. In addition to innumerable articles, reviews and commentaries, she is the author of Holy Days: The World of a Hasidic Family, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Rules of Engagement: Four American Marriages, and Tilting at Mills. A two-time Woodrow Wilson Lila Acheson Wallace Fellowship recipient, she has been awarded grants from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Fund for the City of New York, and the Rockefeller Fund.
Her work has been widely anthologized, most recently in The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America’s Greatest Women Journalists. Her latest book, In Jerusalem: Three Generations of an Israeli Family and a Palestinian Family, a work she researched for over a decade, will be released in September 2019.
Lis Harris
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Lis Harris is an American author and critic[1] and was for 25 years a staff writer on The New Yorker magazine which she left in 1995. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The World Policy Journal, Du and the Wilson Quarterly.[2] She is now a full-time professor of writing at Columbia University.
Contents
1
Education
2
Awards and honors
3
Major publications
4
References
Education[edit]
Harris obtained her B.A. from Bennington College.
Awards and honors[edit]
Harris was a Woodrow Wilson Lila Acheson Wallace Fellowship recipient twice. In 1998, she was awarded grants from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Fund for the City of New York, the Gund Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Kaplan Fund, the Fund for the City of New York, the Woodrow Wilson Lila Acheson Wallace Foundation, and the Rockefeller Fund.[2][3]
Major publications[edit]
Holy Days : The World of the Hasidic Family, Touchstone books 1995 ISBN 0-684-81366-1
Rules of Engagement – Four Couples and American Marriage, Touchstone books 1996 ISBN 0-684-82527-9
Lis Harris. Simon & Schuster, $23 (272p) ISBN 0-684-80826-9
Harris (Holy Days: The World era Hasidic Family), a staff writer at the New Yorker, presents four couples as representing varieties of American marriage in the late 20th century, though four couples can hardly stand for all marriages. Over several years, she consorted with an upperclass couple in New York City, a middleclass African American couple, a bluecollar couple and a couple best described as determinedly bohemian. Being privy to these vastly differing marriages allowed Harris to draw interesting, even entertaining conclusions. For instance, all four couples agreed that none of them was prepared for the reality of marital life (who is?). In a pleasing anecdotal style, especially with the story of the upperclass pair, the author conveys her respect for the eight people who allowed her into their lives, as well as her appreciation for marriage as an institution that, however challenged, is still viable. (Sept.)
Harris is able to insinuate herself into people's lives and then describe them succinctly and insightfully. A New Yorker staff writer whose first book was about Hasidic life, Harris decided to write about contemporary marriage to see how that most basic of human units has fared in light of the changes the women's movement has wrought. Harris, who must be easy to talk to (she's certainly a pleasure to read), found four couples willing to share their private selves: the McLanes, an upper-class couple; the Robbins, a blue-collar couple; the Jacksons, a middle-class African American couple; and the Clarks, the most egalitarian and artistic of the bunch. Each couple's story is compelling, as true stories always are. Harris manages to cover family histories, courtship, sex, money issues, arguments, children, and housework. What emerges from these intriguing anatomies of marriages is that the improved status of women has changed marriage for the better and that people work "terribly hard all the time" both at their jobs and at their relationships.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1995 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Seaman, Donna. "Rules of Engagement: Four Couples and American Marriage Today." Booklist, 15 Sept. 1995, p. 120. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A17543433/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8cfbf9fc. Accessed 11 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A17543433
Harris, Lis
Houghton Mifflin (256 pp.)
$25.00
Mar. 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-395-98417-3
Create a clean, green paper mill in the heart of New York, adding jobs and dollars to a failing economy? Rare is the good idea that is realized without being made somehow less good.
Or good and dead. So former New Yorker staffer Harris (Rules of Engagement, 1995, etc.) proves in this thoroughgoing account of good intentions, white papers, backroom dealing, and, in the end, sabotage. The hero of the tale is 30-ish Allen Hershkowitz, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council who by dint of hard study and work had made himself one of the world's leading authorities on recycling technologies. Inspired in part by the saga of the Mobro, a New York City garbage scow that in 1987 sailed the high seas seeking a place to deposit its noxious cargo, Hershkowitz concocted a plan by which an essentially abandoned plot of land in the Bronx could be remade into an environmentally progressive factory for de-inking and recycling used paper which accounted for nearly half of the contents of America's overflowing landfills and was New York's biggest export.
Hershkowitz recruited a stellar host of allies and even persuaded Maya Lin to design the new factory. But enter an opposing army of special interests, from NIMBY (and sometimes crooked) neighborhood associations to trade unions, from the mayor's office (Rudy Giuliani comes in for a good shellacking here) to competing paper companies, all bent on either seizing a piece of the action or making sure that the Bronx Community Paper Company is stillborn. As the narrative unfolds, Hershkowitz's idea is bled dry by a thousand paper cuts, an excruciating torture. Overly laden with detail, Harris's account has its torturous moments as well, but in the end it adds up to a pointed case study in the conflicting priorities and unforeseen foes that any do-gooder is likely to face in advancing a just cause.
Of much interest to environmentalists, community planners, and policy wonks.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze. (Nonfiction)." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2002, p. 1821+. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A96193269/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c51062aa. Accessed 11 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A96193269
LIS HARRIS. Houghton Mifflin, $25 (256p) ISBN 0-395-98417-3
In this insightful though slim volume, Harris (Holy Days) documents the rise and fall of a major New York City recycling plant. After suffering a defeat in Washington in 1992, environmental lobbyist Allen Hershkowitz began to think that working to develop green-friendly business might be a more successful means of achieving his idealistic ends. With the support of his nonprofit employer, he embarked on an eight-year odyssey to build a technologically advanced paper mill in the South Bronx that would be responsive to the surrounding community. The reasons for the plant's ultimate demise are too numerous to list--they touch on technology, market forces, politics and personality, Harris, to her credit, doesn't try to scapegoat one culprit. Based on interviews with many but not all of the important players, the book hews to the point of view of Hershkowitz, who takes only a light drubbing for being too smart, naive and enthusiastic. Harris essentially fleshes out and follows up on the story she first reported in the New Yorker in 1995, and the book retains the flow and skilled writing associated with the magazine. However, due to the numb er of players and the complexity of the issues involved, Harris raises many more questions than she is able to address in a book of this length and style. Still, this deservedly will be popular among environmentalists and should be required reading for politicians and businesspeople who claim to support innovation. (Mar. 11)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze. (Nonfiction)." Publishers Weekly, 6 Jan. 2003, p. 48. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A96809602/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fedd94fc. Accessed 11 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A96809602
Mar. 2003. 256p. Houghton, $25 (0-395-98417-3). 363.7.
Harris follows the rise and fall of an idea proposed by a respected environmental scientist to build a recycled-paper mill in a neglected neighborhood in New York City, an idea that promised to bring jobs and promote profitable green business. It was the dream of Allen Hershkowitz of the environmental advocacy group National Resources Defense Council. He identified a local community group, Banana Kelly, and its administrator, Yolanda Rivera, as a potential ally in the venture. From 1992 until the project finally failed in 2000, Harris details the incredible negotiations and machinations that eventually killed this promising project, including groups working at cross purposes and a good deal of intrigue. Community groups were suspicious of outsiders, be they industrialists or environmentalists. Industrialists were similarly suspicious. Between them all stood a very determined Hershkowitz, raising money, securing permits, juggling partners from Europe and the U.S., and masking growing tensions among the partners. Given the technical information, detailed negotiations, and incredible cast of characters, this is a surprisingly fast-paced and dramatic account of a failed environmental project.
Bush, Vanessa
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bush, Vanessa. "Harris, Lis. Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2003, p. 1130. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A98978074/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=97a217e8. Accessed 11 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A98978074
Harris, Lis IN JERUSALEM Beacon (Adult Nonfiction) $27.95 9, 17 ISBN: 978-0-8070-2968-8
A firsthand look at the continuing turmoil facing the citizens of Jerusalem.
In interviewing families both Israeli and Palestinian, former New Yorker staff writer Harris (Arts and Writing/Columbia Univ.; Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze, 2003, etc.) ably navigates between harsh criticism of the way Israel has treated the Palestinians and knee-jerk support. The author acknowledges the youthful inspiration she gleaned from summer camps in Israel, but over the years, she has also befriended displaced Palestinians affected by the "deep civic unrest engendered by the Occupation." On each side, she traces three generations, looking at the effects of the historical markers of Israel's creation in 1848, the Six-Day War of June 1967, the years after the Oslo Accords, and two intifadas of 1987 and 2000. Harris sought out the earliest settlers in some of the storied Jerusalem neighborhoods--e.g., a daughter of Zionists who had defied Hitler and the concentration camps, and the Abuleils, one of a few hundred Palestinian families still living in the disputed French Hill, refugees from the village of Lifta. Throughout the narrative, the author clearly portrays the enormous bitterness and fear on both sides. The author also weaves in sections of levity, "Travels with Fuad," in which she chronicles her wanderings with a fearless Palestinian driver, Fuad Abu Awwad, who recognized no boundaries and knew everyone, allowing her enviable access to further interview subjects. Ultimately, while Harris does her best to represent the Israelis' righteous struggle to succeed in the country, the stories of the Palestinians' daily strife to eek out a paltry living are some of the most memorable in the book. "Violence may haunt the average Israeli and loom large at the funerals of its soldiers and terrorist victims," she writes, "but for too many Palestinians its threat is a menacing, day-in, day-out presence."
Fair, evenhanded stories of what life is really like in the riven state of Israel.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Harris, Lis: IN JERUSALEM." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A591278976/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5b565f58. Accessed 11 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A591278976
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1995 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rules of Engagement: Four Couples and American Marriage Today." Publishers Weekly, 10 July 1995, p. 49. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A17212638/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=37a602cf. Accessed 11 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A17212638