ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

New Publications

George M. Eberhart

George M. Eberhart is associate editor of American Libraries; e-mail: geberhart@ala.org

Art: A World History(720 pages, October 1998) was produced in collaboration with experts from leading art galleries and museums and a team of Italian art historians. Though its one-volume approach may be criticized by purists, this may be the best introduction to the subject since H. W. Janson’s History of Art. now in its fifth edition. Illustrations are plentiful; commentary is bite-sized but insightful; and the analysis of specific artworks in terms of proportion, focal point, balance, allusion, lighting, shape, and color is illuminating. Other sources are better for finding a picture of, say, the Mona Lisa; but here you will be led into an assessment of Leonardo’s influences on mannerism and High Renaissance technique. $59.95. DK Publishing. ISBN 0-78942382-0.

Blundering to Glory: Napoleon's Military Campaigns,by Owen Connelly (254 pages, revised ed., March 1999), evaluates Bonaparte’s performance as a commander and comes to the conclusion that he was not a military genius but “an improviser who profited from his enemies’ mistakes.” He also showed a dogged determination to win at all costs, an attitude that most of his contemporaries lacked. This updated edition of Connelly's 1987 volume incorporates data from studies published in the past ten years. Maps and clear descriptions of campaigns and battles make this an excellent supplement to Alan Schom’s awardwinning Napoleon Bonaparte (HarpeiCollins, 1997). $55.00. SR Books. ISBN 0-820-2779-3.

Our Dumb Century,edited by Scott Dikkers and the editors of The Onion(164 pages, April1999) , doesn’t need my help to sell any copies. However, I do want to point out that this parody of 20th-century American newspapers offers an entertaining supplement to media history studies. The tone and typography used for all papers from 1900 to the 1990s are dead on, and the satire is a devastating critique of journalistic excesses as well as a crash course in critical thinking. $15-00. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80461-8.

The Photography Encyclopedia,by Fred W. McDarrah and Gloria S. McDarrah (689 pages, December 1998), seems to be saying that color is unimportant, while frame, focus, and content are king. There is not a single color photograph in this reference work, though it credits Gabriel Lippmann with producing the first color photographic plate in 1908. That’s 90 years of photographic history gone unrecognized. The highlights of this book are not so much the biographies of photographers (which are sketchy) or the technical definitions (you will learn much more about f-stops from any Kodak manual), but Fred McDarrah’s own images of famous photographers taken at galleries or press conferences in New York. The timeline, annotated bibliography, and gallery directory are helpful, but the 350 black-andwhite photos are the real stars. $80.00. Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-865025-5.

The West of Billy the Kid,by Frederick Nolan (350 pages, November 1998), opens with a one-paragraph summary of what is definitely known about the notorious outlaw, then proceeds to fill in the details by extracting reliable facts from the haze of myth that surrounded William H. Bonney (or was his name Henry McCarty?) even when he lived. Filled with dozens of photographs of people who the Kid interacted with and places he visited (both historical and contemporary images), the book is both a masterful narrative and pictorial essay of what life was like in the Southwest in the 1880s. Well-researched and indexed. $39.95. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3082-2.

Who's Who in Space,by Michael Cassutt (665 pages, 3d ed., February 1999), offers biographical information on astronauts and astronaut candidates, not only from the U.S. and Russia, but from every country that has participated in a space program. Shuttle payload specialists, X-15 pilots, and individuals scheduled for future tourist flights are also included. Scattered throughout are such first-person descriptions as Yuri Gagarin’s reminiscence of the first space flight, the transcript of the last moments of the Challenger crew, and Buzz Aldrin’s account of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. Appendices offer a complete list of manned flights in chronological order, world duration and EVA (ex tra-vehicular activity) logs, and the names of teachers and journalists selected in 1985 and 1986 prior to the Challenger disaster. Descriptions of how each group of astronauts were chosen and a color section showing NASA mission crew patches add value. $115.00. Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-864965-6.