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 Catalogue of Meteorites,by Monica M. Grady (698 pages plus CD-ROM, 5th ed., September 2000), includes data for the 22,507 wellauthenticated meteorites known through December 1999, whether or not a sample has been preserved. This edition updates the 1985 edition and is enhanced with a searchable, Windows-compatible CD-ROM containing the full database, which is maintained by the British Natural History Museum. Each entry includes the name of the meteorite (usually the nearest inhabited place), the location of fall or find, date, class and condition, recovered weight, bibliography, and distribution of samples. Separate lists by classification and location, and tables showing unnamed meteorites from Antarctica, Australia’s Nullarbor Plain, Roosevelt County in New Mexico, and the Sahara Desert are included. $150.00. Cambridge University. ISBN 0-521- 66303-2.

The Irish War,by Tom Geraghty (420 pages, 2d ed., May 2000), is an excellent overview, not only of the Catholic- Protestant conflict in Ireland from 1968 to 1999, but also of the persistent populist revolt that sprouted in l691 when the last professional Irish army went into exile in France after the Battle of the Boyne. It was the section on British intelligence operations that got journalist Geraghty arrested under the Official Secrets Act in 1998 after the first edition of this book appeared; though the charges were later dropped, his revelations about sophisticated British counterinsurgency techniques were more than mildly embarrassing. This edition will help American readers understand the confusing conflict of culture, propaganda, and terror that has plagued the island for centuries. $29-95. Johns Hopkins University. ISBN 0-8018-06456-9.

If the timeline is unclear, pick up Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles, 1968-1999, by Paul Bew and Gordon Gillespie (471 pages, 2d ed., December 1999), for a recap of day-by-day developments. $45.00. Scarecrow. ISBN 0-8108-3735-8.

The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime,by Miles Harvey (432 pages, September 2000), should be required reading for students considering a career in special collections. Not only does Harvey tell a compelling story that is inherently horrific for any bibliophile, but he reminds us of some of the basic elements of what our profession is about. In case you missed it, Island of Lost Maps concerns the theft of priceless maps by a PTSD-diagnosed Vietnam veteran named Gilbert Bland, who razored them out of atlases in the special collections of numerous research libraries in the United States and Canada. He was finally caught at the Peabody Library in Baltimore in December 1995, but only served 17 months behind bars. Some of the participants in this drama are well-known to ACRL members, and the author’s frequent digressions into history and cartographic imagery (though labeled as padding by some reviewers) are pleasant ornamentation. $24.95. Random House. ISBN 0-375-50151-7.

The Jewish Confederates,by Robert N. Rosen (517 pages, October 2000), brings together a wealth of information on Southern Jews who were dedicated to the Confederate cause in the Civil War. Nearly one-third of all the Jews in the South in 1861 were Germanspeaking immigrants living in Louisiana, a state that provided both the Confederacy’s Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin and a Confederate soldier named Benjamin Franklin Jonas, who after the war become the first practicing Jew in the U.S. Senate. Rosen has done a masterful job of telling the story of Jewish Johnny Rebs, most of whom did not own slaves and who fought to prove they were worthy citizens. He also paints a portrait of Jewish life in the antebellum South, activities on the home front, and conditions in occupied New Orleans. $39-95. University of South Carolina. ISBN 1- 57003-363-3.

The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, by John Lowden (2 vols., September 2000), documents the creation and history of one of the most ambitious attempts at miniature illustration ever undertaken—the Bibles Moralisées, a presentation of the events of the Bible in a graphic format that bears an uncanny resemblance to an eight-panel-per-page comic strip. Seven manuscripts, only one of which is complete, survive. They were produced from the 13th to the 15th centuries for the kings and queens of France, and have rarely been reproduced. Volume 1 offers a general background, while Volume 2 examines the Book of Ruth in detail. On sale from the publisher at $68 each, or $128 for the set. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01909-3/0.

Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions, by Andrew Gulliford (285 pages, June 2000), recounts the limited success that Indian peoples have had in preserving their culture against the encroachments of anthropologists, museum curators, tourists, and New Agers. Topics include the repatriation of human remains to the tribes claiming them; the return by museums of such sacred objects as the centuries-old Omaha Shaman Pole and the White Buffalo skin; the protection of sacred mountains, rocks, canyons, springs, and other landscape features from rampant tourism; and the efforts of tribal preservation offices to carry culture into the future. Each chapter is supplemented with photographs, case studies, and commentary by Native Americans. $55.00. University Press of Colorado. ISBN 0-87081-560-1.

Teaching the New Library to Today’s Users, edited by Trudi E. Jacobson and Helene C. Williams (256 pages, June 2000), offers background and strategies for teaching academic library use to diverse groups: international students, students of color, lesbigays, first-generation and at-risk students, reentries, older adults, and distance learners. Contributors include Karen E. Downing, Kwasi Sarkodie- Mensah, Trudi E. Jacobson, Sara McDowell. David A. Tyckoson, and Cheryl LaGuardia. $49.95. Neal-Schuman. ISBN 1-55570-379-8.

Travels with the Fossil Hunters, edited by Peter J. Whybrow (212 pages, April 2000), is as much about the adventures of paleontologists in foreign lands as it is about fossils, but that’s what makes this book intriguing. Each of the 12 chapters describes the multicultural, gastronomic, and travel experiences of British paleontologists in Tibet, the Sahara, Gibraltar, Latvia. Abu Dhabi, Sierra Leone, India, China, Pakistan, Turkey, Antarctica, and Yemen. Accompanied by well-chosen photographs, the travelogues offer enough to please fossil fans as well—Miocene hippo remains in Arabia, a new ape ancestor in Asia Minor, dinosaurs in Antarctica, and Neanderthals in Gibraltar, among others. $39-95. Cambridge University. ISBN 0-521-66301-6.

Word Parts Dictionary, by Michael J. Sheehan (227 pages, September 2000), will be much appreciated by writers, linguists, and coiners of neologisms. Much of our complex language is made up of word chunks with specific meanings that combine with other fragments to fomr elegant-sounding compounds—“$10 words,” as I heard them called once by someone with a preference for monosyllables. This dictionary defines all known suffixes, prefixes, combining forms, and bases; provides a reverse dictionary of meanings to locate that elusive particle; and groups some of the word parts into categories (animals, food, shapes, etc.). With no trouble at all, the user can formulate a new word for “obsession with pinching buttocks” (pygoπ’hexophilia), in case one is ever needed. A work of lexicoplastic brilliance. $39.95. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0819-0.

If you need even more word analysis, check out We American Heritage Dictionaiγ of Indo- European Roots, revised and edited by Calvert Watkins (149 pages, September 2000). Here you will discover that the English words “weird,” “wreath,” “worry,” “wrong,” “wrestle,” “ribald,” “warp,” “wrap,” and “vermin” all derive from the Indo-European root “wer-” (to turn or bend). $28.00. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-98610-9- ■