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NEW PUBLICATIONS

C&RL News, January 2004
Vol. 65, No. 1

by George M. Eberhart

The Bookplate Journal, published by the Bookplate Society, launched a new series in March 2003 after 20 years of publishing. Published twice a year in an enlarged format, the journal is now 72 pages. The first issue of the new series includes articles on Irish Jacobean bookplates, Welsh bookplate collectors, and Charles Atwood Kofoid and scientific book collecting at the University of California at Berkeley. Annual membership in the Society is $50.00 or £30. To request a sample copy of the Bookplate Journal, contact Michael Whitelock, 2 St. Bride’s Bay View, Broadhaven, Pembrokeshire, United Kingdom, SA62 3JG.

A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, by Michael Barkun (243 pages, November 2003), examines the odd fusion and flowering of right-wing conspiracy theories with both religious and secular millennialism and beliefs in an official cover-up of an alien presence on earth. Barkun analyzes the origins and concepts of such theories as the New World Order (in which powerful groups are secretly attempting to seize control of the world using fleets of black helicopters, concentration camps for dissenters, and mind-control techniques) and UFO conspiracism involving cattle mutilations, abductions, underground caverns, and reptoid aliens. Of particular interest are sections on how conspiracists reacted to the September 11 attacks and the existence of anti-Catholic, anti-Masonic, and anti-Semitic themes in the more extreme literature. $24.95. University of California. ISBN 0-520-23805-2.

Earth, editor-in-chief James F. Luhr (520 pages, October 2003), is another visual blockbuster of a collaboration between DK and the Smithsonian Institution similar to Animal, their 2001 effort. It’s divided into five major sections: planet earth (rocks, minerals, and geological processes), land (landforms and habitats), oceans (oceans, seas, and coasts), atmosphere (climate and weather), and tectonic earth (continental plates).  A visual timeline from the Big Bang to the last glacial epoch provides a nutshell perspective on earth’s history, while illustrations of specific places (such as the Giant’s Causeway, Mt. St. Helens, Great Slave Lake, the Kara Kum Desert, the Serengeti Plains, cities like Manila and Chicago, and the Baltic Sea) are accompanied by explanations of how they originated. $50.00. DK Publishing. ISBN 0-7894-9643-7.

Encyclopedia of the Great Depression, edited by Robert S. McElvaine (1,134 pages, 2 vols., November 2003), contains more than 500 essays on every aspect of the 1930s, from New Deal legislation, politics, and the economy to famous people, music, crime, civil rights, and sports. Although the focus is primarily on the United States, the book also addresses economic conditions in Canada, Mexico, Europe, and other countries. The entries are written by 270 scholars in history and other specialized fields and each provides sources for further reading. A moderate number of photographs lend interest. $265.00. Thomson/Gale. ISBN 0-02-865686-5.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A Reference Handbook, by Cynthia L. Jackson and Eleanor F. Nunn (252 pages, September 2003), offers both a history of HBCUs and a discussion of their continued role and function in 21st-century higher education. Included are chapters on legislation and court decisions, HBCU funding, North Carolina’s innovative Historically Minority Universities Bioscience and Biotechnology Program Initiative launched in 1993, and suggestions for research that should be conducted on these institutions. Appendices list HBCUs by state and selected graduates of HBCUs. $45.00. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1-85109-422-9.

My Fellow Americans, by Michael Waldman (336 pages, 2 CDs, November 2003), presents the full text of 43 U.S. presidential addresses from George Washington’s first inaugural to George W. Bush’s March 2003 address on Iraq. Excerpts from each speech are recorded on the accompanying CDs, featuring narration by former Clinton policy advisor George Stephanopoulos and the actual voices of each president from Benjamin Harrison on. Waldman offers background on each address, accompanied by many illustrations. A creative audiovisual package. $45.00. Sourcebooks. ISBN 1-4022-0027-7.

Pioneer Aviators of the World, by Hart Matthews (208 pages, July 2003), provides a short biography of the first individuals in 108 countries who piloted heavier-than-air machines in a sustained flight from the Wright Brothers’ first success in 1903 to 1950, when the first known Jordanian pilot completed his training. Nationalities are determined by place of birth within modern political boundaries, so that Austria-Hungary actually has three pioneer aviators, a Czech, an Austrian, and a Hungarian (who, incidentally, was Harry Houdini, a pilot for seven months before he became an escape artist). A timeline and numerous photos of the flights and the pilots accompany the text. $39.95. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1522-3.

A related McFarland title is Race to the Sky, by Stephen B. Goddard (222 pages, December 2003), which describes the competition between the Wright Brothers and other aviation pioneers to become the first to attain powered flight. Goddard points out the parallels with the space race 60 years later, especially after President McKinley made the quest a national priority in order to have the advantage of military aerial reconnaissance. While Samuel Langley cost the American government and his Smithsonian benefactors $70,000, the Wrights disdained government funding and spent less than $1,000 over three years to achieve their goal. $39.95. ISBN 0-7864-1594-0.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Penicillin, by Dean W. Andersen (228 pages, September 2003), is yet another excellent volume in McFarland’s informal series of wartime memoirs. Andersen annotates 93 letters he wrote to his wife and parents when he served for three years as a medic in the Pacific theater of World War II. The text is accompanied by many photos published for the first time, including several taken of General Yamashita’s surrender at Baguio on August 15, 1945. $29.95. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1670-X.

A related title is Bataan Death March: A Soldier’s Story, by James Bollich (222 pages, November 2003), a reprint of a 1993 privately published memoir describing the author’s capture and internment by the Japanese from 1942 to 1945. $18.95. Pelican. ISBN 1-58980-167-9.

Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, by Stephen Knight (247 pages, May 2003), examines the legend of Robin of Locksley, medieval good outlaw and redistributor of wealth. Although the evidence for a historical Robin Hood is slim, the myth has flourished for 700 years, and Knight traces its various elements from trickster figure to noble thief to countercultural free spirit, with a strong analysis of its treatment by Hollywood. $25.00. Cornell University. ISBN 0-8014-3885-3.

Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon (320 pages, September 2003), chronicles the career of the co-creator of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and other Marvel Comics characters. Based on interviews with the illustrator and his friends and relatives, as well as documents in the University of Wyoming Stan Lee archive, the book traces Lee’s heritage from his early work on Captain America Comics in the 1940s to his still-pending lawsuit against Marvel for proceeds from the Spider-Man film. $24.95. Chicago Review. ISBN 1-55652-506-0.

The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination, by David R. Wrone (368 pages, October 2003), meticulously reexamines the 27-second Abraham Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination and concludes that more than three gunshots were fired from more than one direction and that none were likely fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. This will come as a surprise to those who watched The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy November 20 on ABC-TV, which featured Dale Myers’s three-dimensional computer animation that seemed to convincingly validate the Oswald-as-lone-assassin theory. However, there is apparently room for much doubt, and Wrone commented in the Detroit Free Press that Myers was manipulating data to suit his preconceptions. He also declines to speculate on who fired the shots, preferring to specialize on showing how the film decisively refutes the Warren Commission’s findings. $29.95. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1291-2.

Another detailed study is The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK, edited by James Fezter (496 pages, September 2003), a collection of analyses that emerged from the Zapruder Film Symposium held at the University of Minnesota at Duluth on May 9–11, 2003, that point out anomalies in the film that have led some to speculate that it was altered (or even manufactured) to distort the record, which if true could negate the findings of both Wrone and Myers. $27.95. Catfeet Press. ISBN 0-8216-9547-X.

An audio record of the four days from the assassination to JFK’s funeral procession at Arlington National Cemetery is contained on a 60-minute CD narrated by Dan Rather that accompanies President Kennedy Has Been Shot, by the Newseum with Cathy Trost and Susan Bennett (300 pages, November 2003). The book is filled with additional accounts and reminiscences by news reporters on those grim events 40 years ago. $29.95. Sourcebooks. ISBN 1-4022-0158-3.