ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

New Publications

George M. Eberhart

Character Is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America,by Judy Hilkey (210 pages, September 1997), offers a cultural history of “success manuals,” didactic, book-length works of nonfiction that promised to show men how to find success in life. Written in the United States between 1870 and 1910 by ministers, educators, and publicists, these books were marketed door- to-door by traveling book agents. Hilkey shows that the manuals extolled old-fashioned virtues like character as essential to finding success in the new, uncertain industrial age. An excellent genre study. $39-95. University of North Carolina. ISBN 0-8078-4658-9.

The Complete Dinosaur,edited by James O. Farlow and M. K. Brett-Surman (752 pages, November 1997), makes an excellent companion volume to Donald Glut’s Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia (C&RL News, October 1997). Instead of an alphabetical listing of species, this new volume features contributions by 47 experts on such topics as dinosaur fossil hunting, taxonomy, molecular paleontology, coprolites, combat and courtship, eggs, biogeography, and footprints. Nor are the popular controversies of warmbloodedness and catastrophic extinctions ignored. Species are described in ten chapters on each of the dinosaur groups. Realizing the popular appeal of dinosaurs, the editors have included a chapter (coauthored by Glut) on dinosaurs in science fiction, in the movies, on postage stamps, and on the Internet. Numerous illustrations by paleontological artists accompany the text. $59.95. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-333349-0.

For the latest information on how a huge asteroid or cometary impact killed off half the species on the planet at the end of the Mesozoic, read T. rex and the Crater of Doom, by Walter Alvarez (185 pages, July 1997). This tells the story of the geologists who pieced together evidence that points to the earth’s largest impact crater (discovered in 1950 but little recognized until 1991) at Chicxulub in Yucatan as the place where the celestial object fell. $24.95. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01630-5.

Criminal Justice Research in Libraries and on the Internet,by Bonnie R. Nelson (276 pages, October 1997), is a revised edition of Marilyn Lutzker and Edward Sagarin’s 1986 Criminal Justice Research in Libraries that covers research using the Web and other online resources. A new chapter on library research in forensic science corrects an omission from the first edition. $75.00. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30048-8.

The Encyclopedia of Cryptology,by David E. Newton (330 pages, October 1997), describes every prominent code and cipher from Egyptian hieroglyphs to data encryption. It also traces the development of invisible inks, cipher disks, transposition and substitution ciphers, microdots, and digital signatures, as well as Ogham and Norse runic encryption. Famous ciphers in history and literature are covered, such as the Navajo code talkers of World War II and Poe’s short story “The Gold Bug.” If you’re not sure where to turn for information on the RSA algorithm, knapsack problems, or the Babington plot, this is the book for you. $60.00. ABC-Clio. ISBN 0-87436-772-7.

The Encyclopedia of Healing Therapies,by Anne Woodham and David Peters (335 pages, November 1997), though not as comprehensive as the Burton Goldberg Group’s Alternative Medicine, is certainly more practical and better illustrated. Each therapy is rated according to the scientific evidence supporting it, the degree of its acceptance by the medical profession, whether or not it can be self-administered, and its compatibility with conventional or other holistic therapies. The final part of the book covers various ailments and suggests how they might be treated by holistic therapies. $39-95. DK Publishing. ISBN 0-7894-1984-X.

Other new releases from DK are Quentin Wilson’s Classic American Cars ($29.95, ISBN 0-7894-2083-X), which showcases au- tomobiles from 1943 to 1978 (back in the days when you could tell them apart); and Bruce Fogle’s Encyclopedia of the Cat ($34.95, ISBN 0-7894-1970-X), which goes beyond describing breeds and delves into feline behavior and physiology.

Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States,edited by George H. Shriver and Bill J. Leonard (542 pages, No- vember 1997), attempts to bring a sense of understanding to the causes and types of con- flict in American reli- gious history. This ref- erence covers individu- als (Maria Monk, Pat Robertson, Bishop Pike), churches (Six- teenth Street Baptist, Reformed Episcopal), theological seminaries (Southwestern Baptist, Gordon-Conwell), movements and prac- tices (church growth, faith healing, liberation theology, serpent han- dling, pietism), and events (the Great Awak- ening, Bloody Monday). $99 50. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29691-X.

Holiday Symbols 1998,edited by Sue Ellen Thompson (558 pages, November 1997), is a compendium of lore on 174 holidays around the world. For each holiday, the contributors provide background on its origin, date, and place of celebration, symbols, colors, and related holidays. What separates this from other holiday books is its focus on symbols. For example, England’s St. George’s Day involves armor, blessing of the horses, crosses, dragons, Green George, and lances; for Easter there are bonnets, bunnies (or hares), eggs, fires, lilies, Paschal candles, and lambs. The general index is supplemented by a symbol index, so you can find out which holidays are symbolized by pigs, goats, or water buffalo. $55.00. Omnigraphics. ISBN 0-7808-0072-9.

Medical Warrior,by Miguel A. Faria Jr. (207 pages, November 1997), is an unabashed polemic against managed care or “corporate socialized medicine,” as the author calls it. Faria is editor-in-chief of Medical Sentinel, the journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. In this collection of essays he makes many radical conservative claims, such as that HMOs are “an unholy partnership of government and impersonal health care megacorporations”; that “child abuse has been deliberately placed at the forefront of the social justice debate for ulterior political reasons”; and that the “gun control lobby means to disarm the law-abiding citizen, step by step.” Libraries with wide-ranging social policy collections may wish to consider this. Otherwise beware—the content is inflammatory. $23-95. Hacienda Publishing, P.O. Box 13648, Macon, GA 31208-3648.

Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization,by Gene I. Rochlin (293 pages, May 1997), is less a diatribe against cyberspace than a reminder of how society is changing because of its dependence on computers. A physicist and social scientist, Rochlin warns that as automation gets more complex there is less control of technology on the client end, especially in critical operations like air traffic control and combat. The central problem is that these systems are designed and maintained by “technical experts who seem to view the interactive social world as an exercise in game theory”; and although computers certainly make human tasks more efficient and accurate, this loss of operational control severely limits human learning, adaptation, innovation, and creativity. He mentions the loss of browsability in automated library catalogs as a symptom. $29-95. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01080-3 ■