ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

New Publications

George M. Eberhart

Ahead of Their Time: A Biographical Dictionary of Risk-taking Women,by Joyce Duncan (312 pages, March 2002), offers minibios of 75 famous women mountaineers, aviators, travelers, naturalists, explorers, and astronauts. The women who are profiled, according to Duncan, “displayed the shared characteristics of going beyond what was expected, either by their era or their gender or both.” Each entry offers suggestions for further reading. $55.00. Greenwood. ISBN 0-313-31660-0.

Becoming Mona Lisa: The Making of a Global Icon,by Donald Sassoon (337 pages, November 2001), consists of the author’s entertaining quest to discover why Leonardo’s painting is the best-known artistic portrait in the world. Poised to celebrate its 500th birthday in 2003, Mona Lisa’s appeal has achieved a pop status far exceeding its deserved reputation as a Renaissance masterpiece. Sassoon discusses the mysteries of the painting: when da Vinci completed it, the identity of the sitter, how it came to France, and the meaning of her smile. He also describes its 1911 theft by Vincenzo Peruggia, a 30-year-old Italian decorator who worked at the Louvre; its damage in 1956 by the stone-throwing Bolivian Hugo Unzaga Villegas; and examples of the many send-ups, satires, songs, postcards, ads, comics, and Web sites devoted to La Joconde. $30.00. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-100828-0.

British Archives: A Guide to Archive Resources in the United Kingdom,edited by Janet Foster and Julia Sheppard (815 pages, 4th ed., March 2002), has been fully updated since the third edition of 1995 with e-mail and Web site addresses for each of the 1,231 entries, which also provide information on access, open hours, major collections, and finding aids for each organizational repository. Business archives are included in this edition for the first time. The main index offers access to collections, personal names, and parent organizations, while a subject guide

George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries; e-mail: geberhart@ala.org indicates subject strengths. $170.00. Palgrave. ISBN 0-333-73536-6.

Censorship: A World Encyclopedia,edited by Derek Jones (4 vols., 2,891 pages, December 2001), contains 1,550 entries by more than 600 contributors worldwide who discuss every aspect of the suppression of free expression in politics, religion, education, art, media, language, and law. International in scope, few countries and periods of history are left out of this wide-ranging and scholarly analysis of censorship issues. Libraries in Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and South Africa receive special treatment, but many less familiar topics are also covered, for example: the two occasions in Islamic history when observatories were destroyed for religious reasons; the 17th-century English pamphleteer William Prynne, who had his ears cut off and his cheeks branded with the letters “SL” for “seditious libeller”; the story of banned Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, who worked briefly at the National Library in Havana; official censorship in Trinidad and Tobago, Gambia, Nepal, and ancient Rome; the rumor-saturated history of snuff movies; and Jishukusei, the Japanese form of self-censorship practiced since 1945. Zimbabwean author Doris Lessing has written the foreword, “Censorship and the Climate of Opinion,” in which she takes both tyranny and political correctness to task.- $395.00. Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN 1-57958-135-8.

The Fine Art of Copyediting,by Elsie Myers Stainton (153 pages, 2nd ed., March 2002), updates the 1991 edition with a new chapter on changes in style, spelling, and usage, as well as revised and expanded sections on citations, indexing, bias-free writing, editing procedures, and computer technology. Designed for both editors and authors, this guide outlines the steps in manuscript preparation and identifies some of the pitfalls in editor/ author relationships that can mar the process. A helpful handbook for novices and a good refresher course for old hands. $17.50. Columbia University. ISBN 0-231-12479-1.

Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!by George G. Rable (671 pages, March 2002), recounts in detail the Union military disaster in December 1862 at Fredericksburg, Virginia, when the Army of the Potomac under the poorly organized Ambrose Burnside sustained staggering losses in futile attacks against James Longstreet’s Confederates on the unassailable Marye’s Heights south of town. The battle set the stage for both Lee’s optimistic invasion of Pennsylvania and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Rable’s comprehensive treatment of the courage and carnage of the campaign helps the reader understand why federal troops at Gettysburg shouted “Give them Fredericksburg” when they saw Longstreet’s men advancing from Seminary Ridge. $45.00. University of North Carolina. ISBN 0-8078-2673-1.

From Angels to Hellcats: Legendary Texas Women, 1836 to 1880,by Don Blevins (149 pages, October 2001), is a light biography of seven women of the Texas frontier who are often skipped over in more general texts. Blevins reminds us of Susanna Dickinson, the only adult Anglo to survive the Alamo battle; the “yellow rose of Texas,” mulatto Emily Morgan, who was taken as a mistress by Mexican President Santa Anna but served as a spy for the Texians; Fort Griffin professional gambler Lottie Deno; Houston hotel owner Pamelia Mann; horse trader and “champion cusser” Sally Scull; Sarah Hornsby, whose premonitory dream in 1833 saved settler Josiah Wilbarger after he had been scalped by Comanches; and Diamond Bessie Moore, whose unsolved murder near Jefferson in 1877 prompted one of the most famous trials in Texas history. $12.00. Mountain Press. ISBN 0-87842-443-1.

Goin' Back to Sweet Memphis: Conversations with the Blues,edited by Fred J. Hay (271 pages, November 2001), offers transcriptions of Hay’s interviews in the 1970s with Memphis blues musicians prominent in the first half of the 20th century: Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Big Amos Patton, Lillie Mae Glover, Laura Dukes, and others. Beale Street in Memphis was the entertainment center for the black mid-South, and its music and culture are represented here in the artists’ own words. $34.95. University of Georgia. ISBN 0- 8203-2301-2.

A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar,by Francis Maes (427 pages, November 2001), reassesses the supposed nationalist and orientalist elements in music by Russian composers from Glinka to Shostakovich—a concept based on the ideas of music historian Vladimir Stasov, who is now seen as more propagandist than objective observer. As much an analysis of sociopolitical influences as it is an examination of Russian musical trends, Maes’s work offers a new appreciation for the complex interaction of traditional and modernist styles that characterize Russian composition in the late 19th and 20th centuries. $45.00. University of California. ISBN 0-520-21815-9.

Not Seeing Red: American Librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960,by Stephen Karetzky (504 pages, February 2002), is an unabashedly partisan look at the writings of leaders of the library profession in the United States and their perspectives on Soviet librarianship, internationalism, intellectual freedom, and McCarthyism. Karetzky, director of the Felician College library in Lodi, New Jersey, makes the case that—like many other American authors, academics, and educators of the era—librarians were blind to the repressive totalitarianism of the Soviet state, failed to understand the responsibility of the Soviet Union for the perpetuation of the Cold War, and countered anti-Communist warnings about the pervasive evil of Marxism by waving the banner of intellectual freedom without ensuring that conservative viewpoints found their way to library shelves. The author makes many valid points in this well- footnoted volume, and many more that are, at best, controversial. Some seem purely inflammatory, such as his characterization of ALA’s 1953 adoption of the Freedom to Read Statement as the result of “librarians’ enduring and rueful yearning for greater prestige and professional status” that was “impelled largely by self-induced feelings of low selfesteem.” Definitely worth a look, as the profession comes to grips with current challenges and criticisms. $92.00. University Press of America. ISBN 0-7618-2162-7.

Perilous Trails, Dangerous Men,by William B. Secrest (255 pages, October 2001), looks at the careers of 28 bandits who robbed stagecoaches in California from 1856 to 1900. Richly illustrated with mug shots of the crimi- nals and the lawmen who nabbed them, this well-researched rogue’s gallery provides a glimpse of the reality behind the Western myth. Included is the fa- mous Charles “Black Bart” Bowles, who robbed 28 stages in eight years and posed as a gentleman miner in San Francisco between holdups; Bill Miner, the legendary train-robbing “Grey Fox,” who spent much of his life in vari- ous prisons; John and Charley Ruggles, who were lynched in Redding in 1892 after a botched and bloody robbery; and the Tom Bell gang, who engi- neered the first stagecoach holdup in Califor- nia in 1856. Secrest intersperses all this his- tory with interesting sidebars on the parts of an 1840s Concord coach, famous stage driv- ers, how to drive a stagecoach, the types of guns used in robberies, and the books and songs of the era. $15.95- Word Dancer Press, 8386 N. Madsen, Clovis, CA 93611. ISBN 1- 884995-24-1.

Resting Places,by Scott Wilson (432 pages, November 2001), identifies the grave site or other final disposal of the remains of 7,182 famous persons, primarily Americans and Europeans. The exact cemetery plot or area where the ashes were scattered is given if known, along with gravestone inscriptions, monument details, and other circumstances of burial. Wilson takes three full pages to list all of his acknowledgments, but he singles out reference librarians for special praise because they “have taken up the search through old newspaper microfilm or county cemetery records, with an increasing interest of their own in where the subject of each particular search was or was not interred.” An index of place names identifies the famous in each locality. $85.00. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1014-0.

A related title is Suicide in the Entertainment Industry, by David K. Frasier (428 pages, February 2002), which offers the details of 840 suicides by people in show business (vaudeville, film, theater, dance, and music) from 1905 to 2000. A macabre yet fascinating catalog, this book makes one wonder whether self-inflicted death is an occupational hazard in the entertainment industry. Both famous (Kurt Cobain, Brian Keith, Inger Stevens, and Gig Young) and minor figures (Rusty Hamer, who played Danny Thomas’s son in the TV sitcom Make Room for Daddy; Chief Long Lance, an actor-writer who claimed to be a Blackfoot Indian but who 50 years after his death was revealed as an African-American from North Carolina; and Clara Blandick, who played Auntie Em in The Wizard of Of) are profiled. A few questionable suicides are listed, including Marilyn Monroe, George Reeves, and Alan Ladd. $65.00. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1038-8.

Skulls and Skeletons: Human Bone Collections and Accumulations,by Christine Quigley (263 pages, October 2001), completes this trio of postmortem publications. Quigley describes catacombs, ossuaries, mass graves, prehistoric excavations, private collections, and institutions that have preserved human skeletal remains, and looks at why these collections are important scientifically and historically. $39-95. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864- 1068-X. ■