New Publications
A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism, edited by Silvio Pons and Robert Service (921 pages, July 2010), contains some 400 entries on communism by 160 scholars in 26 countries. A translation of the Italian edition published in 2006, this volume provides an overview of world communism from the October Revolution to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Entries cover events (Kronstadt revolt), people (Mikhail Gorbachev, André Malraux), organizations (Comintern), concepts (polycentrism, socialist realism), and keywords (camps, elections, workers). An ideologically and internationally diverse lot of contributors manage to keep the tone analytical and critical throughout, making this an insightful and essential reference for 20th-century studies. $99.50. Princeton University. 978-0-691-13585-4.
Electric and Hybrid Cars: A History, by Curtis D. Anderson and Judy Anderson (257 pages, 2d ed., April 2010), is even more relevant now than when the first edition was published in 2004. The authors have retained all of the material describing the heyday of electric vehicles in 1895–1905, while adding details about contemporary design and technology, energy sources, incentive programs, and marketing methods. $45.00. McFarland. 978-0-7864-3301-8.
Fans of alternative transportation will also want Flying Cars, Amphibious Vehicles, and Other Dual Mode Transports, by George W. Green (230 pages, July 2010), a comprehensive compendium of autogiros, car-planes, skycycles, hovercraft, amphicars, ducks, railcars, flying boats, and Dymaxions. Green notes that few road-air vehicles have actually flown, while amphibious vehicles and hovercraft are more successful by far. $45.00. McFarland. 978-0-7864-4556-1.
The Ice Road: An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom, by Stefan Waydenfeld (406 pages, March 2010), is an extraordinary memoir that begins with the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, although the author tells the story as if it had happened yesterday. Caught in the Soviet occupation zone, the teenage Waydenfeld and his parents apply to be repatriated back to their home in the German sector. Instead, in June 1940 they are sent with hundreds of other Poles to a labor camp in the far north of Russia, where Waydenfeld is put to work cutting timber in the summer and in the winter maintaining an ice road along which sledges can transport the logs. Their fortune begins to change in September 1941 when Stalin, now at war with Germany, grants amnesty to the Polish detainees. The rest of the book describes the family’s harrowing journey from the camp to the Volga River, then across Kazakhstan and eventually across the Caspian Sea to Persia and freedom. The book was first released in the United Kingdom in 1999, but the American publisher has added new commentary, photos, and an interview with the author, who has been living in England since the war. $28.96. Aquila Polonica. 978-1-60772-002-7.
Introduction to Controlled Vocabularies, by Patricia Harpring (244 pages, April 2010), explains how to identify, construct, and maintain vocabularies that describe art and other cultural works to ensure consistency in the retrieval of information about them. She gives examples of controlled vocabularies (subject heading lists, thesauri, and folksonomies), the hierarchies and relationships within a vocabulary, and some of the most commonly used vocabularies—the Union List of Artist Names, the Cultural Objects Name Authority, Clenhall’s Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging, Library of Congress Subject Headings, and the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials. The final chapter focuses on retrieval issues, such as truncation of names, keyword searching, compound terms, diacritics and punctuation, abbreviations, stop lists, Boolean operators, and results lists. $50.00. Getty Publications. 978-1-60606-018-6.
The Last Crusaders: The Hundred-Year Battle for the Center of the World, by Barnaby Rogerson (482 pages, March 2010), analyzes the complicated clash of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires in the period 1450–1590 and how it essentially became a world war as the Age of Exploration blossomed and trade routes multiplied. Rogerson writes engagingly, offering insights into the motivations and personalities of such “fascinating, violent, clever, cynical, creative, and ambitious characters” as Henry the Navigator of Portugal; Sultan Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople; Ferdinand and Isabella, the engineers of the reconquest of Grenada; the bearded Barbarossa brothers, Khizr and Uruj, who established Ottoman power in North Africa and the Mediterranean; Suleyman the Magnificent; the Habsburg Emperor Charles V; and Philip II of Spain. $35.00. Overlook. 978-1-59020-286-9.
Marathon: How One Battle Changed Western Civilization, by Richard A. Billows (304 pages, July 2010), reexamines the significance of the ancient Athenian victory over the Persians just in time for its 2,500th anniversary this year. Billows makes the case that the world would be a radically different place had the Persians won and resettled the citizens of Athens in Asia, as they had done with the Milesians five years earlier: The fledgling Athenian democracy would have been a failed historical experiment, and a world without the flowering of Hellenic culture—its architecture, philosophy, theatre, art, education, and literature—is difficult to imagine. The author also looks at Marathon’s most enduring modern legacy, the 26-mile sporting event said to be based on the messenger Philippides’s run back to Athens bearing news of the victory. Much more important, Billows points out, is the fact that the greater part of the Athenian army did the very same thing on the afternoon of the battle in order to defend the city from a possible attack by the Persian fleet. $30.00. Overlook Duckworth. 978-1-59020-168-8.
The Simpsons in the Classroom: Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield, by Karma Wiltonen and Denise Du Vernay (332 pages, April 2010), offers a wealth of ideas on how educators can incorporate America’s favorite cartoon family into their English lesson plans or as teachable examples in composition, linguistics, and literature classes. After a 61-page list of 20 seasons of episodes annotated with themes, discussion points, and teachable elements, the authors discuss the many books, academic articles, and Internet resources that analyze the series. A final chapter proclaims The Simpsons’ usefulness in illustrating the central concepts of post-modernism. $29.95. McFarland. 978-0-7864-4490-8.
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