Emily Post’s Etiquette By Peggy Post, Anna Post, Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning ’99 William Morrow, 2011 736 pages • $39.99

As the great-great-grandson of the world’s most famous expert in etiquette and a fifth-generation steward of “the family business,” Daniel Post Senning ’99 is a co-author of the 18th edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette. He and his cousins Anna and Lizzie Post are part of a new generation working to keep that classic work relevant in the 21st century.

PCM: Today the word ‘etiquette’ has an old-fashioned ring. Is that justified?

Daniel Post Senning: It’s certainly a perception that I’m used to. The Emily Post Institute is a five-generation family business. The original Emily Post was my great-great-grandmother, and she wrote the first edition of Etiquette in 1922.

If you were to pick up that book today, it would read like a historical document. It’s actually quite remarkable as that. There are people who love looking at etiquette books that have been produced throughout history. One of my favorites, Castiglione’s The Courtier, predated The Prince. Oftentimes, a good book of etiquette will tell you a lot about a culture or a time.

We are very fortunate to be part of a tradition that has continued to update that original book. It was incredibly popular in its time. They couldn’t print it fast enough. But as times changed, they found that it was absolutely necessary to revise it. It’s that process of revision that I think has really become the substance of what we do at The Emily Post Institute.

PCM: Define ‘etiquette’ for me.

DPS: We say that etiquette is a combination of manners and principles. For us, the manners are time-, location- and culture-specific. They’re the particular expectations we have of others and ourselves in a particular social situation. The principles are what we use to guide us as manners change and evolve, or to help us make choices when we’re in a new situation. For us at the Emily Post Institute, the fundamental principles for all good etiquette are consideration, respect and honesty.

Here’s an Emily Post quote for you, “Any time two people come together and their lives affect one another, you have etiquette.” Etiquette is not some rigid code of manners. It’s simply how persons’ lives touch one another. Any time you have people interacting, you’ve got social expectations.

PCM: So how do you become an expert on etiquette? Is it something you just absorb?

DPS: I never thought a liberal arts education would prepare me so well for the work that I do. Being someone who writes about etiquette, researches about etiquette, teaches about etiquette, I find myself drawing from so many disciplines and so many skill sets. When I’m teaching and I’m presenting, my background in dance and the performing arts comes out. When I’m doing research, my background in critical inquiry comes out. When I’m assessing a new study that we’re getting, and I’m looking at data that’s come in from our survey partners, my background in microbiology and having the ability to look at data sets come into play.

Let me tell you a personal story. I was living in Claremont, working with the Laurie Cameron Company out of the Pomona College Dance Department, when I first started working for Emily Post. At the time, I was answering questions via email. My cousins and I cut our teeth on those emails. We would get batches of questions. We’d go through the books. When there was a particular question that had a historical precedent—questions about how you use formal titles or orders of introduction or protocol and courtesy around weddings—oftentimes we would refer to the book and find an answer that was pretty concrete.

Other times, there are relationship situations that people are trying to resolve, and that framework of consideration, respect and honesty comes into play. You ask yourself: Is the advice that I’m giving considerate? Is it taking into account all the people who are involved? Is it respectful? Is it recognizing their worth and their value? Is it honest? Is it something I can do with a sense of integrity and sincerity? It’s really a pretty powerful framework to give advice from.

PCM: How much of etiquette is timeless and how much do you believe is bound to the times?

DPS: Our whole approach is that etiquette is a moving, living, breathing thing. It changes and evolves all the time. That’s why the book is currently in its 18th edition. It’s never been out of print, and we think that’s really important. That’s why it’s important to continue to update it, because it is a moving target. If it were to ossify, it would lose its meaning very quickly.

When you look at the 1922 edition of Etiquette and the 18th edition of Etiquette, there’s some material that looks remarkably similar. You can probably guess that the way my great-great-grandmother described using a knife and fork is very similar to the way I would describe that today. Manners around how we share food and how we eat change relatively slowly. Those are cultural expectations that are very firm. The ones that we see changing the most rapidly are manners around communication.

PCM: So, do you have etiquette suggestions for Twitter?

DPS: We absolutely do. The framework that we use is relationships. When you’re assessing behaviors around new communication technology, you use the relationship as your guide. My cousin Anna’s really good at this. When she’s presenting, she’ll take her phone, hold it up and say, “This is my phone. It’s the newest, the latest, the greatest. It’s amazing. I can do incredible things with it. It’s not rude. It’s not polite. It’s how I use it that matters.” If you think about the relationships that are being impacted and affected, it helps you make good choices in those environments.

PCM: Still, there’s a lot of rudeness out there in cyberspace. Do you think this is a particularly bad-mannered period in history?

DPS: Sometimes we hear from people, “Oh, there are no manners today; manners are in a state of decline.” One of the nice things about having a generational perspective on this work is that every generation perceives that to be true, witnesses the changes that occur over time and thinks that the state of manners are in decline.

Like so many things in life, I really think of it as a pendulum. I think that people challenge and push the boundaries, and then there’s a response. New structures come into being. I think the generation that had the most difficult time with this was my parents’ generation, and even my grandmother, who was writing in the late ’60s and early ’70s. You had a generation that was intentionally trying to deconstruct the social order at that time.

I don’t think that happens in the same way right now. Quite the contrary, I think we might be in a time where, because there is so much choice, because we do live in an increasingly casual and informal world, people are looking for information to help them make choices in that environment.

PCM: You said it’s mostly about relationships. But a lot of modern communication is more like broadcasting. Emily Post didn’t have to worry about the etiquette of announcing one’s foibles to seven billion people around the world.

DPS: Absolutely, but here, too, there are lessons to be learned from the past. When I teach conversation skills, I’ll teach three tiers to a conversation. Tier one is safe territory—sports, the weather, pop culture, local celebrities, what you had for breakfast that morning. Tier two is potentially controversial. People have different and valid opinions about these topics. They were not table talk. They were reserved for private conversation—religion, politics, dating, your love life. The third tier, the most intimate, is family and finance. You don’t ask probing questions or offer too much information unless someone has already opened the door to that in some way.

Those rules for conversation around a dinner table or in the workplace function very well for the online space, where you’re talking about a much bigger conversation, but one where a sense of discretion and propriety are really important.

One of the immediate associations people often have with etiquette is that it’s common sense or that it’s the Golden Rule. It’s treating other people the way you’d want to be treated. You hear that a lot. I like to emphasize the Platinum Rule these days, the evolution of the Golden Rule. In an increasingly diverse and complex world, it’s really important to treat other people the way they would want to be treated. It’s no longer enough to go around applying your own standard to everybody that you meet. You need to make an effort also to take into account the different standards that different people have. That’s a challenge for all of us to continue to push ourselves to be aware of not just our own perspective, but that of others as well.

PCM: So what’s the future of etiquette?

DPS: Sometimes people ask me, “What would success look like in this business?” and I say, “If I can be a steward for this tradition, if I can hand it off to the sixth generation, I’ll absolutely consider that a success.”

We’re approaching the hundredth anniversary of the original publishing of Etiquette. The 20th edition will be out in 2022. They stopped, as you know, publishing Encyclopedia Britannica a couple of years ago. Being in the publishing industry, particularly publishing reference books, is a really challenging thing.

One of the challenges for our generation has been figuring out how to not just continue to evolve our content, but also to continue to find new mediums for it. The vehicle that I most like to promote these days is a podcast that I’m doing with my cousin Lizzie called Awesome Etiquette. It’s produced by American Public Media, the folks that do Marketplace, and Prairie Home Companion, and Splendid Table. It’s a Q and A show, kind of a Car Talk of etiquette.

To me, Emily was also a radio star. She was a lifestyle personality who was recognizable across America. The return of Emily Post to radio, I think, is a really big deal for us.

PCM: But is the printed book still the core of the business, or is it becoming less important?

DPS: It’s the backbone of what we do. There have been other etiquette experts who have done amazing work. A contemporary of Emily’s, Amy Vanderbilt, produced an amazing book. Letitia Baldrige in the 1960s, the Kennedy White House social secretary—her book is also very good.

Emily Post’s Etiquette is unique in the fact that we are a reference book that has continued to change and evolve, and has been in print for over 90 years now. There is no replacing that. We sometimes call ourselves a social barometer. In figuring out which manners have lost their utility and have gone out of fashion and which are emerging and coming into being, the process of editing and rewriting that book every five to seven years is substantively the most important work that we do.

Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Terrorists
By Colin J. Beck
Polity, 2015 / 208 pages / $22.95

Pomona College Professor of Sociology Colin Beck says the genesis of his recently released book, Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Terrorists, can be traced back to a student’s question during his course of the same name. “I’m just wondering why some groups get labeled as terrorists and others don’t?” asked Emily Miner ’12, an English major who was a sophomore at the time.

An excellent question, as there had been no large-scale case studies on how those designations were made, says Beck. So he, in collaboration with Miner over the course of two years, looked at organizations listed as terrorist groups by the U.S. and the European Union, and then compared it to a dataset on terrorist events that occurred.

Policymakers and those responsible for the designation of “terrorist,” seize on certain markers, Beck says. Beck and Miner couldn’t find clear geopolitical interests at play, but they did find that the labels weren’t given based on activity. Threat markers that landed groups on the terrorist list included whether they attack airplanes or U.S. and E.U. allies, and whether they are Islamic or not—just by virtue of ideology, not whether they had necessarily engaged in many or high-profile terrorist acts.

“What I concluded was that this is basically done in an ad hoc fashion. There’s not a shadowy cabal of government experts sitting around with lots of information,” says Beck, who calls that finding astounding.

“Looking through the terrorism lists, my sense was that most of the groups you’d want to designate are on there. But there’s also a number who really don’t make sense to receive sanctions when other similarly sized active organizations do not. Basically, it appears to be the irrationality of using markers—such as whether a group attacks airplanes or is an Islamist organization—that drives the results at the margins,” Beck says.

Beck believes this calls into question many of the justifications for the continuing “War on Terror.” This focus on a few markers that signal terrorism—especially the post-9/11 focus on Islamist organizations—suggests that governments are not well equipped to perceive and respond to emerging threats, he says. “The Islamic State was quite downplayed during its initial formation, as was Boko Haram, etc. Like in matters of grand military strategy, it seems that governments are always preparing to fight the last war rather than the next one,” says Beck.

Beck and Miner wrote a paper about their findings, which was published in the journal Social Forces. Miner, who is now an English teacher in Los Angeles, says of her work with Beck, “Researching together was an amazing opportunity; even though I felt vastly underqualified in comparison, Colin very deliberately involved me in every step of the process, and the study and paper felt completely collaborative. I learned a lot about the different pieces of sociological research, from data collection to analysis to publication,” she says.

So how do you know who’s a terrorist? Beck points to three aspects that are key to making the designation: First, whether or not the perpetrator is a legitimate wielder of violence—per international norms, governments are the only entities permitted to use violence, and so violent non-governmental actors are usually illegitimate, says Beck. Two, whether their violent action is routine or not routine; terrorism is non-routine violence, not actions during wartime. Finally, who is the intended target of the action? “If you just want to hurt the person, that’s murder, that’s not terrorism.”

In Beck’s “Radicals, Revolutionaries and Terrorists” course, students study groups and personalities from Che Guevara to Al Qaeda to Weather Underground. This semester, Beck will include ISIS and the Arab Spring in the curriculum. Beck says the class discussions and feedback from students gathered over the years were integral to the development of his book. “They were the first audience as well as the inspiration,” says Beck.

In his book—which critics have called “sweeping and powerful”—Beck examines eight questions about radicalism, including its origins, dynamics and outcomes. He points out that terrorism is not a new phenomenon. There was a wave of terrorist activity around the world starting in the late 19th century through World War I, when more heads of state were assassinated than at any other time in history, he says. Then as now, there were sharp increases in telecommunications technology and international trade, ups and downs in global economic cycles and demographic pressures, says Beck.

Beck says the impact of globalization is one factor that sets our current era apart from past ones. “Globalization gives movements a stage and a target. International connectivity makes it more likely that contention in one place will become contention in another,” he says.

ISIS is a fascinating case, says Beck, and its rise is no surprise, as it developed in ungoverned spaces left by the American invasion of Iraq and the Syrian civil war. They are here to stay for the near term, he says, but in the long term, “when radical groups tend to seize power, they tend to either do themselves in by becoming either more radical or moderate over time.”

Beck hesitates to make predictions, but he says the question is whether ISIS will change as other revolutionary movements have over time, like the Tamil Tigers or Hezbollah or Hamas. He says ISIS’s endgame is still unclear and he questions what their objectives are, despite their stated aims.

“What is important is to look behind their actions,” says Beck, “because the first wisdom of sociology is that things are not what they seem.”

Working Through the Past
Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective

Coedited by Teri L. Caraway ’89 with Maria Lorena Cook and Stephen Crowley, this collection of essays examines the clash of labor movements and authoritarian governments. ILR Press, 2015 / 296 pages / $27.95

Global Families
A History of Asian International Adoption in America

Catherine Ceniza Choy ’91 looks at the complex history and impact of Asian international adoption in the United States. NYU Press / 244 pages / $25.00

Straights
Heterosexuality in Post-Closeted Culture

James Joseph Dean ’97 explores how straight Americans make sense of their sexual and gendered selves in a time of dramatic change in societal attitudes. NYU Press, 2014 / 320 pages / $26.00

Hitler’s Money Trail
How He Aquired It, How He Squandered It

David Green ’58 fills a gap in 20th-century history by investigating the financing of Adolf Hitler’s dramatic makeover of the German economy and war machine.CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015 / 294 pages / $16.95

Two Women Against the Wind
A Tierre del Fuego Bicycling Adventure

Réanne Hemingway-Douglass ’63 recounts her 300-mile bicycle journey across the southern tip of South America, one of the most remote and beautiful regions on the planet. Cave Art Press, 2015 / 130 pages / $12.95

Faust, Parts I and II

This curatorial version of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s masterwork, intended to bring the tragedy back to the theatre, was translated into English by Douglas Langworthy ’80 and trims the 21-hour work to only six. Richer Resources Publications, 2015 / 247 pages / $18.95

Supporting the Dream
High School-College Partnerships for College and Career Readiness

Charis McGaughy ’91 and Andrea Venezia ’91 offer educators a guide to cross-system partnerships to support college-bound students. Corwin, 2015 / 152 pages / $28.95

Frederick Law Olmstead
Plans and Views of Public Parks

Coedited by Lauren Meier ’79 with Charles E. Beveridge and Irene Mills, this lavishly illustrated volume reveals Olmstead’s design concepts for more than 70 park projects. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015 / 448 pages / $74.95

Driving Hungry
A Memoir

The author of the cult blog “Taxi Gourmet,” Layne Mosler ’96 takes her readers on a delicious tour from the back seat of taxis in Buenos Aires, New York and Berlin. Pantheon, 2015 / 320 pages / $24.95

Southern California Mountain Country
Places John Muir Walked and Places He Would Have Loved to Know

Photographer Glenn Pascall ’64 provides a delightful visual tour of the high country of Southern California, using the words of John Muir to tie the photography together. Sierra Club Angeles Chapter 2015 / 106 pages / $24.99

Interstellar Cinderella

This futuristic retelling of the classic tale, in a new picture book written by Deborah Underwood ’83 and illustrated by Meg Hunt, gives Cinderella a fairy godrobot and an unladylike knack for interstellar mechanics. Chronicle Books, 2015 / 40 pages / $16.99

On Betrayal

In his second book and first novel, Reuben Vaisman-Tzachor ’88 offers an intricately woven tale of betrayal and redemption spanning generations, places, cultures and languages. CBH Books, 2015 / 266 pages / $24.99

Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy
Chile and Argentina, 1990-2005

Thomas Wright ’63 traces a triumph for human rights—the erosion and collapse of the impunity of former repressors in Chile and Argentina. University of Texas Press, 2014 / 206 pages / $55.00

Ideas With Consequences
The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution

Assistant Professor of Politics Amanda Hollis-Brusky shows how a network of lawyers, judges, scholars and activists worked successfully to push American constitutional law to the right. Oxford University Press, 2015 / 264 pages / $29.95

From Trafficking to Terror
Constructing a Global Social Problem

Associate Professor of Anthropology Pardis Mahdavi challenges the anti-Muslim panic surrounding two socially constructed conflicts, the “war on terrorism” and the “war on trafficking.” Routledge, 2013 / 106 pages / $18.42