American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago Judith A. Barter, Kimberly Rhodes and Seth A. Thayer '89 The Art Institute of Chicago This beautifully printed and bound coffee-table book showcases the Art Institute's collection of American paintings, decorative arts and sculpture. Highlights include paintings by Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer and Albert Bierstadt and furniture by Frank Lloyd Wright.     The book catalogues the Art Institute's collection from roughly 1650 to World War I but emphasizes works from the second half of the 19th century, which dominate the museum's holdings.     The book has 220 color illustrations and detailed descriptions of each piece. Thayer, a former member of the institute's department of American art and now an independent consultant, wrote several of the essays. Unraveling Somalia: Race, violence and the legacy of slavery Catherine Besteman (anthropology) University of Pennsylvania Press Besteman's years of research in Somalia, a country ravaged by civil war during the past decade, provide the basis for her theories on how and why the country's disintegration occurred.     Besteman counters the popular notion that Somalia's troubles are the product of clan rivalries played out on a vast scale. The pattern of violence, she says, can be traced to a deeply stratified social order rooted in slavery and developed over the past 150 years. The collapse of the Somali state offers clues to how race and class divisions may mask problems in Africa typically characterized as "tribal."