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NEW PUBLICATIONSC&RL News, November 2004 by George M. Eberhart
Looking at Greek and Roman Sculpture in Stone, by Janet Burnett Grossman (124 pages, December 2003), is a well-illustrated glossary of terms, styles, and techniques related to ancient statuary. Other books on this topic focus on the chronology, aesthetics, and iconography of Greco-Roman sculpture, but Grossman favors definitions of the materials, tools, and technology of the art, from abrasion to x-ray diffraction spectrometry. $14.95. J. Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 0-89236-708-3. Motivating Students in Information Literacy Classes, by Trudi E. Jacobson and Lijuan Xu (143 pages, April 2004), offers tips on course design, teaching behaviors, active learning techniques, student autonomy, and assessment using two different motivational models. A final chapter describes online teaching exercises using a similar framework. $59.95. Neal-Schuman. ISBN 1-55570-497-2. Off the Map: A Journey through the Amazonian Wild, by John Harrison (350 pages, April 2004), tells the story of the trip the author and his wife Heather took to one of the most remote areas remaining in South America—the Guiana highlands on Brazil’s northern frontier—inspired by the diary of a French explorer, Raymond Maufrais, who disappeared in the region in 1950. Unencumbered with GPS equipment, Discovery Channel camera crews, or any way to contact the outside world, the Harrisons encountered wild animals, nasty insects, treacherous rapids, and claustrophobic jungle trails. A good, old-fashioned wilderness travelogue. $16.95. Chicago Review. ISBN 1-55652-519-2. Psychotherapists on Film, 1899–1999, by John Flowers and Paul Frizler (802 pages, 2 vols., July 2004), summarizes the plots of 5,000 films in which a psychiatrist, hypnotherapist, brain researcher, or mental health therapist appears. In the introduction, the authors look at how the image of the psychotherapist in movies has changed over the decades and note a surprising reversal from an all-time low opinion in the 1990s to new respect in 2000–2002. $75.00. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1908-3 Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case, by R. Bruce Craig (436 pages, May 2004), sets out to reassess if not exonerate White, a U.S. Treasury Department official accused of acting as a Soviet agent in the 1930s and 1940s. Craig concludes that, although White had many progressive and left-wing friends, there is no clear evidence that he was engaged in political subversion directed by Moscow; rather he was an “individual devoted to the cause of Soviet-American cooperation and international peace before it was deemed fashionable and long after it was considered politically correct.” White died in 1948 before any charges were filed. $34.95. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1311-0. Who Killed King Tut? by Michael King and Gregory M. Cooper (258 pages, April 2004), analyzes the death of the teenage Egyptian New Kingdom Pharaoh Tutankhamun and concludes that, although the 1968 x-rays of Tut’s mummy do not definitively point to murder as the cause of death, strong circumstantial evidence fingers the high priest Ay as the prime suspect. King and Cooper, police investigators with an expertise in criminal profiling, consider the case against Ay compelling, even if he only engineered Tut’s accidental death. A similar verdict was reached by Bob Brier in The Murder of Tutankhamen (Putnam, 1998) and even by novelist Mika Waltari in The Egyptian (Putnam, 1949), but this book is unique in presenting a criminological analysis. $25.00. Prometheus. ISBN 1-59102-183-9. George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, e-mail: geberhart@ala.org |
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Crimes Against Nature, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (244 pages, August 2004), documents the Bush administration’s assault on U.S. environmental protection legislation and its weakening of the agencies that were set up to protect them. The list of laws rolled back to favor the mining, energy, chemical, oil, agribusiness, and automobile industries includes the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, and Endangered Species Act. Kennedy avoids partisan polemics, pointing out that many of the farmers, fishermen, and other working people he represents as an attorney for Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council are traditional Republicans. His arguments are not with free-market capitalism but with cartels and multinational monopolies with no demonstrated loyalty to U.S. citizens who increasingly have to breathe air polluted with ozone and particulates and drink water tainted with PCBs, acid rain, and mercury. Well documented, though it lacks an index. $21.95. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-074687-4.