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NEW PUBLICATIONSC&RL News, November 2007Vol. 68, No. 10 by George Eberhart The Academic Library and the Net Gen Student, by Susan Gibbons (119 pages, August 2007), asserts that university libraries will have a viable future only if they realign their services and resources with the learning and research needs of undergraduate students. Because Net Generation students are adept at using new technologies, libraries must adopt and exploit the educational functions of online gaming and virtual worlds, deliver information through blogs and wikis, support student research skills through tagging and social bookmarking, and explore ways to communicate with students through instant messaging and social networking systems. $45.00. ALA Editions. 978-0-8389-0946-1. Atlantic Coast Beaches: A Guide to Ripples, Dunes, and Other Natural Features of the Seashore, by William J. Neal, Orrin H. Pilkey, and Joseph T. Kelley (250 pages, May 2007), is the perfect book to bring with you on a trip to the seashore. The three geologist authors provide a clear explanation for anything you are likely to find and teach you how to “read” a beach by reviewing such phenomena as tides, erosion, sand and gravel, mud balls, scarps and cusps, sea wrack, foam, swash marks, blisters and pits, bubbly sand, groundwater, beach critters, shell fossils, and dunes. A final chapter discusses beach nourishment and conservation as an antidote to urbanized shorelines. $20.00. Mountain Press. 978-0-87843-534-1. The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy, by Bob Carlin (193 pages, February 2007), recounts the life and influence of Joel Walker Sweeney (1810–1860), the Elvis Presley of the 1840s as Carlin calls him, an Irish American who brought the African-American banjo and slave songs to white audiences through the medium of blackface minstrelsy—the first national form of American musical theater. Sweeney is sometimes credited with inventing the modern banjo by adding a fifth string and replacing the original gourd body with a circular wooden soundbox, but Carlin disputes the tradition by showing that those features were present when Sweeney began popularizing the instrument. Carlin’s excellent history of minstrelsy from its origins to its heyday with the Virginia Minstrels and the Ethiopian Serenaders is both entertaining and authoritative. $35.00. McFarland. 978-0-7864-2874-8. A Brief History of the Spanish Language, by David A. Pharies (298 pages, May 2007), offers a linguistic history of Spanish, from its Iberian roots to its expansion to the Americas. Pharies traces the primary shifts through which spoken Latin transformed first into Medieval Castilian and finally into modern Spanish, noting along the way that Castilian became the dominant dialect on the peninsula during the Reconquest because of the Kingdom of Castile’s dominance in military exploits against the Andalusian Muslims. Accompanied by an essay on Spanish dialects, a history of the Spanish lexicon, and a glossary of linguistic terms. Also available in Spanish. $65.00. University of Chicago. 978-0-226-66682-2. The Cat and the Fiddle: Images of Musical Humour from the Middle Ages to Modern Times, by Jeremy Barlow (88 pages, May 2007), presents instances of humorous musical imagery found in the marginalia of medieval manuscripts, British and European drawings and prints of the 17th and 18th centuries, children’s books, cartoons, and sheet music, all from the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. Barlow interprets the meaning for modern readers, who may be puzzled by pigs playing bagpipes, demons ringing bells, and London street musicians playing Spike Jones–like instruments. $20.00. Bodleian Library, distributed by the University of Chicago. 978-1-85124-300-6. Parallel Lines: A Journey from Childhood to Belsen, by Peter Lantos (246 pages, September 2007), traces the author’s life as a 6-year-old in Makó, Hungary, when he and his family were deported in June 1944, first to a Jewish ghetto in Szeged, then to labor camps in Strasshof and Wiener Neustadt, Austria, and finally to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Lantos, whose original name was Leipniker, recalls those days with a mixed sense of child-like adventure and retrospective horror. As an adult, after retiring from a faculty position at King’s College London, Lantos sought out the scenes of his youth and a moving reunion with the American soldier who liberated him from a German prison train near Magdeburg in April 1945. $19.95. Arcadia Books. 978-1-905147-57-0. Silver and Gold Mining Camps of the Old West, by Sandy Nestor (269 pages, January 2007), rescues some elusive facts and figures about Western mines and mining camps from the tailings of industrial history. Arranged by state, Nestor’s encyclopedia documents the remaining history of each location, including yields, population, residents, and colorful anecdotes. Numerous historical and modern photographs, a glossary, and a tongue-in-cheek “Miner’s Ten Commandments” reprinted from the Placerville (Calif.) Herald, June 4, 1853, accompany the text. $55.00. McFarland. 978-0-7864-2813-7. Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, by Anne Goldgar (425 pages, May 2007), examines the extraordinary outbreak of market speculation in tulip bulbs in the Netherlands in 1636–1637. Although tulips had first been imported from Turkey since the mid-16th century, the flowers began to appeal to gardeners and collectors for their color variants. Prices for some bulbs rose to enormous heights in the 1630s, reaching an unsustainable crescendo of futures trading that bottomed out a year later. Tulipmania has been held up as a cautionary tale about stock bubbles and the hubris of unbridled capitalism, especially by Charles Mackay in his 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Goldgar’s analysis shows that much of what we know about the episode is myth; in the process of deconstructing it, she offers us a vivid portrayal of a colorful cultural crisis that transformed Dutch society. $30.00. University of Chicago. 978-0-226-30125-9. The Voodoo That They Did So Well: The Wizards Who Invented the New York Stage, by Stefan Kanfer (230 pages, June 2007), consists of eight essays that first appeared in City Journal describing the high points and personalities of Broadway history. Kanfer profiles the Italian librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838), a colleague of Mozart and Casanova who emigrated to New York and built the city’s first Italian opera house; the wonders of vaudevillean variety entertainment where such legendary entertainers as the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Buster Keaton, and Burns and Allen earned their fame; the heyday of Yiddish theater on Second Avenue in the first three decades of the 20th century; and the stellar achievements of George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Stephen Sondheim, all vividly portrayed. $24.95. Ivan R. Dee. 978-1-56663-735-0. When Scotland Was Jewish, by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates (258 pages, July 2007), proposes the astounding hypothesis that many present-day Scots are descended from Mediterranean Jews from France, Spain, and Portugal who migrated to Scotland between 1100 and 1700. The authors not only provide genealogical and documentary evidence, but they also examine DNA and population characteristics, coming to the extraordinary conclusion that the Stewarts derived their dark look from their Mediterranean Jewish origins. They find stars of David on 13th-century Scottish coins, the Tetragrammaton on a 1623 Glasgow psalter, Judaic surnames aplenty, and Crypto-Jewish origins for Presbyterianism with John Knox and John Calvin of Semitic ancestry. The Templars and freemasons also make an appearance. A tantalizing argument, though not thoroughly convincing. $45.00. 978-0-7864-2800-7. George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, e-mail: geberhart@ala.org |
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