ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

New Publications

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

The ABCs of XML: The Librarian’s Guide tothe eXtensible Markup Language,by Norman Desmarais (206 pages, March 2000), is the reference to turn to when you finally have to figure out what all the meta-fuss is about XML. Beware: There are phrases in here like “external entity management” and initialisms aplenty, but Desmarais attempts to make it relevant. A prior familiarity with HTML and some acquaintance with the MARC format will help you get through it. A bibliography, glossary, and appendices that show a book about Confucius in SGML format, XML format, USMARC converted from XML, and XML format for bibliographic data will enhance understanding. $28.00. New Technology Press, P.O. Box 842411, Houston, TX 77284-2411. ISBN 0-9675942-0-0.

Academic Freedom: A Guide to the Literature,ompiled by Stephen H. Aby and James C. Kuhn IV (225 pages, March 2000), is an annotated listing of 481 books, journal articles, documents, and Web sites on academic freedom in post-secondary education published since 1940. Special sections on religious education, political correctness, the issue of tenure, and academic freedom in other countries are included. $75.00. Greenwood. ISBN 0-313- 30386-X.

Arabia Felix from the Time of the Queen of Sheba,by Jean-Frangois Breton (216 pages, May 2000), summarizes what little is known about the history, commerce, and customs of the people of Saba, a kingdom in the highlands of South Arabia that thrived for seven centuries before its decline in the second Century A.D. Saba was the source for many of the fragrances of the ancient West, especially frankincense and myrrh. The Sabaeans were skilled in hydraulics, construction, funerary architecture, and commerce, and possessed the oldest form of written language in the region. Unfortunately, they are best known for the Queen of Sheba who, it turns out, either had nothing to do with Saba or else was completely mythical. $24.00. University of Notre Dame. ISBN 0-268-02002-7.

Cattus Petasatus: The Cat in the Hat in Latin,translated by Jennifer Morris Tunberg and Terence O. Tunberg (75 pages, October 2000), features the original artwork accompanied by rhyming Latin verse set to an octosyllabic, trochaic rhythm that echoes that used by Dr. Suess. Latin students and scholars will have fun tackling this during a break from Horace and Ovid or on a rainy day: “Imber totum diem fluit / Urceatim semper pluit.” A note on the verse form and a Latin vocabulary accompany the text. $22.50. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1000 Brown St., Unit 101, Wauconda, IL 60084. ISBN 0-86516-471- 1.

The Dime Novel Companion: A Source Book,by J. Randolph Cox (333 pages, June 2000), contains more than 1,200 descriptive entries on titles, publishers, characters, authors, and genres of the popular adventure novelettes that appealed to young U.S. readers from 1860 to 1915. As Cox writes in the introduction, “The heroes are often patriotic, rugged individuals, and represent Contemporary popular concepts of the nation,” and they had colorful names like Deadwood Dick and Barranca Bill. Libraries with dime-novel collections will find this a useful guide. $79.50. Greenwood. ISBN 0-313-25674-8.

Fossil Snakes of North America: Origin, Evolution, Distribution, Paleoecology,by J. Alan Holman (357 pages, June 2000), is the first comprehensive description of all known fossil snake taxa in North America with illustrations of the vertebrae that allow precise identification. A descriptive list of all known North American sites where snake fossils have been found is also valuable. Holman gives an overview of snake evolution and describes how various species responded to glacial advances and retreats in the Pleistocene. For those who are wondering, the oldest known snake on the continent is a late Cretaceous pipe snake (Coniophis) found in Wyoming and New Mexico. $69-95. Indiana University. ISBN 0- 253-33721-6.

Humor in Twentieth-Century British Literature: A Reference Guide,by Don L. F.

Nilsen (561 pages, April 2000), is a survey of British literary humor from Sir Arthur Wing Pinero to Douglas Adams. The ten chapters are arranged by the birth decade of the authors, with an analysis of the comedic, satirical, ironic, and witty writings of each, to which is appended a representative bibliography of criticism. Some Irish, Scottish, and Welsh authors are included, among them James Barrie, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, Dylan Thomas, and Joyce Cary, though the author’s 1996 Humor in Irish Literature: A Reference Guide is cross-referenced. Comedy is not entirely restricted to prose: Where appropriate, poetry, drama, and film works are critiqued. $85.00. Greenwood. 0-313-29424-0.

Library Service to Youth of Hispanic Heritage,edited by Barbara Immroth and Kathleen de la Pena McCook (197 pages, August 2000), contains essays prepared for the fourth national conference of the Trejo Foster Foundation for Hispanic Library Education, held in March 1999 at the University of South Florida. The papers include “The Support Role of Community College Library/ Learning Resources Programs in Academic Success,” by Derrie Perez; “Collection Development across the Borders,” by Haydee C. Hodis; and “Subject Access to Fiction: A Case Study Based on the Works of Pat Mora,” by Elaine Yontz. $42.50. McFarland. ISBN 0- 7864-0790-5.

A related title is Library Services to Latinos: An Anthology, edited by Salvador Güerena (249 pages, September 2000), which focuses on Spanish-language collections and services. $35.00. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0911-8.

The Men of Secession and Civil War, 1859-1861,by James L. Abrahamson (186 pages, April 2000), examines the words and motivations of the radical “fire-eaters” who took the South out of the Union and the abolitionists and moderates who tried to deal with the secession crisis. The Civil War came about because of a refusal to compromise and a failure to examine the consequences of radical action. A grasp of the events of these three crucial years— the persistence of sectionalism, the collapse of the Democratic Party, the failure of Southern unionism and compromise, and the long stalemate at Fort Sumter— helps us understand the underlying forces that tore America apart through four long years of war. $55.00. SR Books, 104 Greenhill Ave., Wilmington, DE 19805- 1897. ISBN 0-8420-2819-6.

Missing Reels: Lost Films of American and European Cinema,by Harry Waldman (313 pages, September 2000), presents short descriptions of nearly 1,000 American and European fiims made between 1900 and 1950 and subsequently lost through neglect, destruction, or deterioration. A significant portion of film history has been permanently lost. 80% of Western-made movies produced before World War I have been lost, while 15% of those made between 1930 and 1950 are also gone. Stills from some of the films have been preserved, and Waldman uses a few to enhance his summaries. Lost foreign-language films from Denmark, France, Hungary, Portugal, and other European countries are given equal space with British and American films. $55.00. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0724-7.

The Possession at Loudoun,by Michel de Certeau (251 pages, August 2000), is the first translation into English of the late Jesuit historian’s 1970 study of the demonic possession of the nuns at the Ursuline convent in Loudun, France, that led to Urbain Grandier’s burning at the stäke in 1634 for sorcery. Certeau looks at the event from many perspectives—religious, political, and psychological—and refers to court proceedings, medical reports, and memoirs to reconstruct its probable causes. $40.00. University of Chicago. ISBN 0-226- 10034-0.

Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones: The American Medicine Show,by Ann Anderson (190 pages, September 2000), looks at the medicine show from its origins in the Middle Ages through its blossoming in the 19th century. Though largely forgotten now, this form of popular theater had a lasting influence not only on vaudeville but on American commercial marketing techniques. Anderson traces its history through the peddlers of colonial times, circuses, Wild West shows, minstrelsy, traveling quacks, and its last expression in Louisiana, Dudley J. LeBlanc’s Hadacol Caravans from 1949 to 1951. Well-illustrated and documeflted, as well as entertaining. $38.00. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0800-6.

Spies and Commandos: How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam,by Kenneth Conboy and Dale Andrade (347 pages, March 2000), teils the story of the U.S. covert plan to insert South Vietnamese commandos into North Vietnam for the purpose of creating dissent, Subversion, and Sabotage. The operation was a complete failure, as first the CIA then the Defense Department slowly came to realize that blind missions into closed communist societies did not work. Between 1961 and 1967, 54 teams totaling nearly 500 men went north, only to be captured or killed almost immediately on arrival. However, this operation, along with later short-term covert insertions, allowed Washington to think that somehow it could produce a resistance movement that would slow down Hanoi’s assault on the south. The authors have interviewed some of the agents who went on these missions, many of whom endured years of imprisonment and torture in Vietnam and years of neglect by the U.S. government. $34.95. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1002-2.

Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence,edited by Etzel Cardena, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner (474 pages, January 2000), offers a rare overview of research and theories on anomalous experiences written by and for clinicians, teachers, and researchers in psychology. The title pays homage to The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) by William James, who pointed out that psychology cannot claim to be comprehensive if it does not understand and treat experiences that are distinct from those considered normal. The experiences described here, whatever the cause, are definitely paranormal: hallucinations, synesthesia, lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, telepathy and clairvoyance, alien abduction experiences, pastlife memories, near-death experiences, anomalous healing, and mystical visions. Each chapter is written by recognized authorities in these areas and examines the empirical support for various models to explain the experiences. $39.95. American Psychological Association. ISBN 1- 55798-625-8.

The Variety of Life,by Colin Tudge (684 pages, May 2000), provides an illustrated survey of all major groups of living creatures, alive or extinct, from algae and bacteria to Homo sapiens. Tudge says he under took this task as a tribute to taxonomy, which he claims has become marginalized in the past few decades as dull, esoteric, and irrelevant. Not so, as he explains in the first few chapters with a brilliant overview of classification from Aristotle and Linnaeus to modern cladistics and molecular techniques for judging phylogeny. Taxonomy is, in short, an attempt “to reconstruct the evolutionary history of all the creatures on Earth, over a period of nearly 4 billion years, with extremely limited data, and with a huge number of obvious and notso-obvious pitfalls along the way.” In any case, plant and animal groupings are looked at much differently now, and if your last biology dass was 1975 or earlier, you may wish to use this as a refresher. Anindex of organisms and many drawings by several illustrators make this volume easy to use. $45-00. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850311-3.

Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson,by Paul Lawrence Farber (160 pages, July 2000), looks at the scientists who sought to make sense of variations in the natural world and to understand the place of our own species within it. $39.95. Johns Hopkins University. ISBN 0-8018-6389-9.

Women and Warriors of the Plains: The Pioneer Photography of Julia E. Tuell,by Dan Aadlund (182 pages, June 2000), reviews Tuell’s work in chronicling the sunset of the Plains Indian culture from 1906 to 1929. She and her schoolmaster husband lived on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana and the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. She was allowed to photograph a Sioux sun dance and the last animal dance performed by the Northern Cheyenne in August 1911, preserving portraits of the oldest holy men and women who performed the ceremonies in their most ancient form. Her photographs also show rare examples of everyday life on the Plains, from children swimming in a creek to women scrapiiag hides or preparing dog stew. $18.00. Mountain Press. ISBN 0-87842-417-2.

Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History,edited by Jane Caplan (319 pages, August 2000), examines the history and representation of tattoos in Western culture from antiquity to the current “tattoo renaissance.” Though Europeans rediscovered tattooing in the 18th Century when they encountered Polynesians in the South Pacific, the contributors to this volume show that it was an ancient practice: The Neolithic “Iceman” found in the Alpine Ötz Valley in 1991 sported tattoos made 5,000 years ago, and the Greeks, Romans, and Celts branded prisoners and slaves with tattoos. Other topics include religious tattoos, the Renaissance tattoo, tattoos in Victorian Britain, branding and tattooing in Russian prisons, tattooed entertainers, and modern tattooing as a self-actualizing process. $65.00. Princeton University. ISBN 0-691-05722-2. ■