New Publications
Art Through the Pages: Library Collections at the Art Institute of Chicago (96 pages, Fall 2008), has been published as volume 34, no. 2, of the Art Institute’s Museum Studies. Following an overview of the institute’s two libraries—the Ryerson and the Burnham Library of Architecture—by Library Executive Director Jack Perry Brown, the volume includes 30 essays on such topics as Walter Brewster’s Whistleriana collection, fine bindings, Chicago comics, and collections from the New Bauhaus. $16.95. Art Institute of Chicago. 978-0-86559-227-8.
Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainments, by Eric Ames (336 pages, January 2009), assesses the work of German animal collector and exhibitor Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913) in the history of theme parks, panoramic zoo habitats, and wildlife films. He was the first to come up with the concept of zoo visitors immersing themselves among wild animals in an apparently open setting that simulates a natural habitat. Hagenbeck was also known for his exhibitions of humans in his Tier-park in Hamburg—most notably Sami, Inuit, Nubian, and Samoan peoples—and Buffalo Bill–style Wild West shows with Native American performers. Ames also explores the Tierpark’s connection with German cinema companies, which often used its lush and exotic settings to recreate realistic safari or ethnographic spectacles. $35.00. University of Washington. 978-0-295-98833-7.
The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (1,406 pages, 2 vols., September 2008) is a consolidation of Garland’s ten-volume set of ethnomusicological essays published between 1997 and 2001 that is directed to a more general audience. For this edition, some essays were shortened or updated, in-text references were removed, and scholarly terms were replaced with more familiar ones (such as “wind instrument” instead of “aerophone”). The arrangement is geographic, with a decided emphasis on Asian musical traditions that takes up all of the second volume. The essays focus more on instrumentation, contexts, and genres than artists or recordings, and no discographies are provided. Separate glossaries and CD samplers are given for each volume, which are well-illustrated with photos, maps, and transcriptions. $350.00. Routledge. 978-0-415-97293-2.
Encyclopedia of Abortion in the United States, by Louis J. Palmer Jr. and Xueyan Z. Palmer (624 pages, 2d ed., March 2009), has some 200 pages more than the first edition, published in 2002, in order to accommodate recent state and federal legislation and Supreme Court decisions, as well as 40 new illustrations and 300 additional charts and graphs. An entry for each state includes the full text of its abortion statutes. Other entries describe pro-life and pro-choice organizations and proponents, abortion and contraception methods, and diseases affecting pregnancy. $150.00. McFarland. 978-0-7864-3838-9.
For the Love of Murphy’s, by Jason Togyer (279 pages, November 2008), explains why G. C. Murphy’s five-and-ten-cent stores were so important to small towns in the East and Midwest throughout most of the 20th century. Headquartered in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, the dime-store chain managed to adapt itself to every major American shopping trend until 1985, when a takeover led to its demise. In its prime, Murphy’s was immensely popular with its customers and managed to make money even during the Depression. In 1954, it became the first variety-store chain to advertise on television. Togyer has interviewed dozens of former managers and employees who shared their memories and their photographs for this history. $34.95. Pennsylvania State University. 978-0-271-03370-9.
From Guns to Gavels: How Justice Grew Up in the Outlaw West, by Bill Neal (364 pages, November 2008), tells several stories of murder, cattle rustling, and bank robbery in West Texas and Oklahoma from the 1880s through the 1920s in order to illustrate the evolution of frontier justice from posses and lynching to the rule of law. Neal, a former criminal lawyer, uses newspaper accounts, trial transcripts, interviews, and other sources to paint a vivid picture of the outlaws and lawmen of those violent times, most notably the complicated Tom Ross, a robber and murderer who settled down for 17 years as a more or less well-behaved rancher. Numerous rare photos and excellent documentation enhance Neal’s storytelling. $29.95. Texas Tech University. 978-0-89672-637-6.
Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior, by Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew (765 pages, April 2009), is a fascinating and authoritative successor to Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, first published in 1841 and still in print today. Sociologist Bartholomew and historian Evans include hundreds of incidents of odd group behavior, mass hysteria, panics, scares, fads, widespread delusions, religious outbreaks, mysterious psychogenic illnesses, suicide clusters, and collective visions that have taken place from the Middle Ages to the present. They describe and analyze hundreds of events, both familiar (the Orson Welles Martian radio panic of 1938, the mad gasser of Mattoon in 1944, the Loudun possession outbreak of the 1630s, 19th-century masturbation delusions, fibromyalgia syndrome) and obscure (the Andrée balloon mania of 1897, the South African phantom aircraft wave of 1914, the Laredo earthworm hoax of 1993, the Japanese Pokémon illness of 1997). Each event is exquisitely referenced and placed in historical and scientific context. The original accounts are scattered throughout sociological, anthropological, historical, and medical literature, so having them gathered into one volume is a boon to researchers. $39.95. Anomalist Books. 978-1-933665-25-2.
Soup through the Ages, by Victoria R. Rumble (272 pages, June 2009), serves up a culinary smorgasbord of historical soups, from primitive porridges and pottages to slave soups, tavern soups, and bouillabaisses of the 19th century. Some bizarre varieties are enumerated, such as the Scottish cock-a-leekie and sheep’s-head soups; the maritime dunderfunk, salmagundi, and lobscouse, described as a “last dish of gastronomic desperation”; medieval lark soup boiled in almond broth; and the black concoction made of blood, vinegar, and pork favored by Spartan warriors. Rumble calls soup the world’s first prepared dish, charts its evolution through various Old and New World cultures, and provides a 32-page appendix of period recipes, with sources. $39.95. McFarland. 978-0-7864-3961-4.
Another McFarland food volume is H. J. Heinz: A Biography, by Quentin R. Skrabec Jr. (281 pages, May 2009), which chronicles the life of American businessman Henry J. Heinz (1844–1919). Known primarily as the ketchup king, Heinz was much more—as Skrabec explains, he was an “industrialist, a brilliant advertising pioneer, a marketing genius, and a promoter of new technology” who deserves as much recognition as his Pittsburgh neighbors George Westinghouse, Thomas Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Clay Frick. Supplemented with many rare photos and other illustrations showing baked-bean, ketchup, and pickle manufacturing and advertising. $39.95. McFarland. 078-0-7864-4178-5.
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