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NEW PUBLICATIONS

C&RL News, March 2006
Vol. 67, No.3

by George Eberhart

Africanist Librarianship in an Era of Change, edited by Victoria K. Evalds and David Henige (242 pages, April 2005), includes 16 essays on Africana libraries and literature, among them Al Kagan on teaching African studies bibliography, Patricia Ukoli Ogedengbe on Africana outreach programs, David Westley on African lexicography, and Hans Zell on reference publishing in Africana. Also included are two tributes to the work of the late Northwestern University Africana bibliographer Dan Britz by David Easterbrook, and Nancy Lawler and Ivor Wilks. $35.00. Scarecrow. ISBN 0-8108-5201-2.

Armageddon Now: The End of the World A to Z, by Jim and Barbara Willis (450 pages, October 2005), serves as an encyclopedia of eschatological speculation on how the world might end, from the Second Coming and the Rapture to nuclear devastation, a wayward asteroid, or alien invasion. Religious viewpoints aren’t limited to Christianity; the Willises include the beliefs of Hindus, Jews, New Age movements, Buddhists, and indigenous peoples. Other entries cover individuals (Nostradamus, Hal Lindsey), concepts (failed prophecy, eternal life), groups (Millerites, Heaven’s Gate), books (Left Behind, Lord of the Rings), techniques (numerology, Bible code), and mechanisms (polar shift, peak oil, Big Crunch). $52.00. Omnigraphics. ISBN 0-7808-0923-8.

Asbury Park’s Glory Days: The Story of an American Resort, by Helen Chantal-Pike (208 pages, May 2005), recalls the era from the 1890s to the 1960s when Asbury Park, New Jersey, was an extraordinarily popular seaside resort featuring fancy hotels and restaurants, a boardwalk, pony rides, amusements, paddle boats, theaters, and bands. The city went into a steep decline starting in the 1970s, and only in the past few years has the downtown begun a tentative cultural and economic revival. This well-illustrated history shows what a vacation mecca Asbury Park was in its heyday. $29.95. Rutgers University. ISBN 0-8135-3547-6.

Choro: A Social History of a Brazilian Popular Music, by Tamara Elena Livingston-Isenhour and Thomas George Caracas Garcia (254 pages + CD, November 2005), examines the origins and development of an African-based Brazilian folk genre that influenced Latin jazz as well as the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos. An instrumental form that developed in Rio de Janeiro around 1870, choro features melodic leaps, rapid modulations, and soaring improvisation. Although displaced by samba, modern jazz, and rock in the mid-20th century, choro experienced a revival in the 1970s and a rebound in the 1990s that shows little signs of fading. $55.00. Indiana University. ISBN 0-253-21752-0.

Creating a Comprehensive Information Literacy Plan, by Joanna M. Burkhardt, Mary C. MacDonald, and Andrée J. Rathemacher (174 pages + CD-ROM, November 2005), provides practical advice on planning, writing, implementing, and assessing an information literacy program for an academic library. The CD-ROM allows users to customize their own planning worksheets. $89.95. Neal-Schuman. ISBN 1-55570-533-2.

Rolland Golden: The Journeys of a Southern Artist, by John R. Kemp (208 pages, October 2005), features nearly 200 paintings by Louisiana artist Golden, who describes himself as an “abstract realist, a combination of the intellectualism of abstraction and the emotionalism of realism.” Many of his scenes feature Southern highways and landscapes, cows and road signs, Civil War battlefields, and French scenery and still life. Kemp provides an overview of the artist’s life, style, and journeys that inspired his works. $60.00. Pelican. ISBN 1-58980-290-X.

The Sea Rover’s Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630–1730, by Benerson Little (303 pages, August 2005), surveys the weapons, ships, and stratagems used in the golden age of sea piracy. Quoting frequently from contemporary sources, Little describes what life was like for those who took to the high seas in search of plunder, especially the methods pirates used to attack other ships by surprise. Several appendices offer glossaries of nautical terms, 17th-century weights and measures, and an essay on pirate cuisine which reveals that barbecue originated with the buccaneers of Hispaniola. $27.50. Potomac Books. ISBN 1-57488-910-9.

Spunk and Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language and Style, by Arthur Plotnik (263 pages, November 2005), offers a book full of remedies for literary listlessness, sprinkled with examples of ringing prose penned by wordsmiths from Poe to Proulx. Plotnik rips past the rigid rules of Strunk and White’s 1959 Elements of Style and calls on writers to invigorate stodgy phrasings and pallid diction with freshness, texture, force, and form. Each chapter contains apt advice on what to avoid (actionless action, wandering modifiers, exhausted adverbs) and what to emulate (over-the-top tropes, killer megaphors, enallage, foreignisms, nuanced semicolons, edgy style). An energetic and entertaining read for cramped writers. $16.95. Random House. ISBN 0-375-72115-0.

Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective, by J. Samuel Walker (303 pages, March 2004), reviews the events of March 28–April 1, 1979, in the light of 24 years of analysis and hindsight. I missed this when it was first published, but caught the December 2005 trade paperback edition. Walker, a historian for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, recreates the confusion and uncertainty experienced in those days before anyone knew that the event could have been prevented by water-level gauges on the reactor vessel as a check on the faulty pressurizer relief valve that failed to close. In retrospect, the incident fell far short of the catastrophe that occurred seven years later at Chernobyl, yet it signaled an abrupt decline in the public perception of the safety of nuclear power plants. $16.95. University of California. ISBN 0-520-24683-7.

George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, e-mail: geberhart@ala.org