Book Alert - June/July 2005

This is not a book only about September 11; the towers' collapse begins on number 236 of 337 pages of narrative text. The New York Times reporters Glanz (science) and Lipton (metropolitan news) instead deliver a thoroughly absorbing account of how the World Trade Center developed from an embryonic 1939 World's Fair building to "a city in the sky, the likes of which the planet had never seen." In this lively page-turner, intensively researched and meticulously documented, a world of international trade, business history, litigation, architecture, engineering and forensics comes clear-a political and financial melodrama with more wheeling and dealing than Dallas, touched lightly with the comedic and haunted by tragedy. The authors move a Robert Altman-sized cast (engineers, architects, iron workers, builders, demolitionists, lawyers, mobsters, mayors, mathematicians, critics, activists, real estate dealers, biochemists, union organizers, an aerialist, an arsonist) through the design, construction, destruction and memorializing. The authors are remarkably skilled at telling all without telling too much: a "deadening" 44-page speech by Port Authority official Austin Tobin gets short shrift but a fair account. Their descriptions of new technologies (e.g., "artificial creakiness"), fresh experiments (particularly in wind engineering), complicated financial maneuverings and secret studies become clear to the non-specialist reader. ISBN 0805074287: $26.00 CH (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003)

2. Scully, Vincent Joseph.
Modern architecture and other essays / Vincent Scully ; selected and with introductions by Neil Levine. Princeton University Press, ©2003. 399 p. REF 724.6 SCU

One of the luminaries of American university life during the second half of the 20th century, Scully taught architectural history at Yale for over 40 years, influencing generations of scholars, critics, and designers as a legendary lecturer, writer, and scholar before his retirement in 1991 to an emeritus status at the University of Miami. This book brings together his most noted essays from far-flung publications that are difficult, if not impossible, to find. It is long overdue, as Harvard's Michael Hays notes in his enthusiastic endorsement. Topics range from the nature of classical art to Frank Lloyd Wright, to Pueblo ruins, Egyptians, and urban renewal in the 1960s. This book is a treasure trove of great writing and observations on American, modern, and worldwide architecture. ISBN 0691074429 (pbk.): $42.50; ISBN 0691074410 (For use only in the AIRC) C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003)

3. Mittell, Jason.
Genre and television : from cop shows to cartoons in American culture / Jason Mittell. Routledge, 2004. 238 p. 791.456 MIT

Genre and Television proposes a new understanding of television genres as cultural categories, offering a set of in-depth historical and critical examinations to explore five key aspects of television genre: history, industry, audience, text, and genre mixing. Drawing on well-known television programs from dragnet to The Simpsons, this book provides a new model of genre historiography and illustrates how genres are at work within nearly every facet of television - from policy decisions to production techniques to audience practices. Ultimately, the book argues that through analyzing how television genre operates as a cultural practice, we can better comprehend how television actively shapes our social world. ISBN 0415969034 (pbk.): $18.71; ISBN 0415969026 CH

4. Acuff, Jerry.
The relationship edge in business : connecting with customers and colleagues when it counts / Jerry Acuff with Wally Wood. Wiley, ©2004. 237 p. 650.13 ACU

Acuff believes that everyone can succeed at any livelihood by mastering the art of relationships. Acuff, who had a long career in pharmaceutical sales, defines the three keys to "relationship edge" as having the right mindset, asking the right questions and doing the right thing. The book develops these principles and uses real-life examples to show readers what types of behavior and conversations lead to success. For example, a sales person can offer to help a prospective customer without pitching a particular product, and often, because of this "goodwill," the would-be client ends up a steady customer. An employee at a large company makes a point of treating everyone equally, sending birthday greetings to staff in different departments. When her position is eliminated, she has a number of colleagues she can ask for help in finding a new job. Acuff says that asking other people about their lives outside of work is often a crucial step in forming a lasting business relationship. He includes a list of questions designed to stimulate conversation including "What do you do when you're not working?" "Do you actually get to see any teams play?" and "Where is your favorite place to vacation?" The author's reliance on quotes from just a handful of people, generally not well known, is a little tiresome, but overall, Acuff's casual, low-key writing style is appealing. The book should be particularly helpful to less experienced business people, who are more likely to try the recommended strategies than seasoned executives. ISBN 0471477125: $24.95 C/CH/M/ND(Ref) (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2004)

5. Bacon, Terry R.
The behavioral advantage : what the smartest, most successful companies do differently to win in the B2B arena / Terry R. Bacon and David G. Pugh. AMACOM, ©2004. 308 p. 658.0019 BAC

Business is a lot like chess, a battle in which outmaneuvering an opponent requires a delicate balance of advance planning and responsiveness to unexpected moves. Success depends on confident and flawless execution of specific opening, middle, and endgame strategies. The Behavioral Advantage reveals the secrets of exemplary business-to-business companies whose extraordinary and lasting success is attributable to exceptional behavior at the individual and organizational levels. At every point of interaction these organizations make clear that the customer's needs and goals are of paramount importance. The Behavioral Advantage is packed with examples of how behavioral differentiation propels leading organizations. ISBN 0814472257: $27.00 C/CH/M/ND(Ref)

6. Barth, Steven R.
Corporate ethics : the business code of conduct for ethical employees / by Steven R. Barth. Aspatore, 2003. 153 p. 174.4 BAR

Never has ethical business conduct received as much attention and focus as it does at present, in the wake of the far-reaching financial and societal effects of the dramatic collapses that have thundered through Corporate America. Whether the company is private, publicly-held, works with the government - either contractually or through direct regulation - the establishment and enforcement of a comprehensive, ethical code of conduct within the organization is essential for doing business now, and into the future. As corporate culture is ever-evolving, a trend that will only accelerate in the future, and as ethics plays a central role in many decisions that employees make, it is now more important than ever to implement a corporate code of conduct for the workforce. This book will help entrepreneur to establish a set of company-wide business behavioral rules that will serve to govern decisions for employees. A corporate culture, generated and fostered under this ethical scope, will keep company's vision in line with the law and can even limit liability exposure, should an ethical lapse occur. This book is useful to establish the standards for the employees to employ as a roadmap for navigating whatever legal, ethical and moral dilemmas they may face in the ordinary course of conducting business. ISBN 1587623056: $17.95 C/CH/M/ND

7. The Blackwell handbook of global management : a guide to managing complexity / edited by henry W. Lane … [et al.]. Blackwell, 2004. 476 p. REF 658.049 BLA

Aimed at managers and executives working in the global business environment, this text summarizes current approaches and research in the study of international management and organizations. Twenty-three contributions from international scholars and practitioners address such topics as creating and building trust, designing and forming global teams, and managing complexity in the global innovation process. The volume concludes with a special section on developing and transitioning economies. ISBN 0631231935: $88.00 (For use only in the AIRC) M (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004)

8. Boyer, Kenneth Karel.
Extending the supply chain : how cutting-edge companies bridge the critical last mile into customers' homes / Kenneth Karel Boyer, Markham T. Frohlich, and G. Thomas M. Hult. American Management Association, ©2004. 252 p. 658.788 BOY

Boyer examines some of the most high-profile practitioners of telephone and Internet-based order processing and fulfillment. Companies examined, including Amazon, Tesco, and Office Depot, use decoupled extended, semi-extended, fully extended, and centralized extended supply chain models. Boyer shows how each model can be adapted to specific circumstances, and provides practical tools for establishing and maintaining a customer-focused fulfillment operation. ISBN 0814408362: $27.50 C/CH/M/ND(Ref) (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004)

9. Business-driven information technology : answers to 100 critical questions for every manager / David R. Laube and Raymond F. Zammuto, editors. Stanford Business Books, 2003. 519 p. 658.4 BUS

What are web services? Why do customers and suppliers sometimes react negatively to an organization's IT projects? And, how does one know when to kill an IT project? These questions (and 97 more) are answered by more than 60 business and computer experts, providing a quick reference for students and business professionals needing to fill gaps in their understanding of business-driven information technology solutions. The book began as collaboration between the business community and the Business School at the University of Colorado, Denver, where it became known as the 100 Questions Project. ISBN 0804749434 (pbk.): $34.00 CH (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004)

10. Cappo, Joe.
The future of advertising : new media, new clients, new consumers in the post-television age / Joe Cappo. McGraw-Hill, 2003. 260 p. 659.1 CAP

In The Future of Advertising, Joe Cappo offers a provocative analysis of recent changes along with insightful projections of what's to come. He traces the consolidation of twenty major agencies into four giant holding companies and explores the curious absence of a new generation of swaggering advertising entrepreneurs on the model of Leo Burnett and David Ogilvy. He examines the continuing impact of cable TV, direct marketing, and the Internet on the advertising industry and traditional media and suggests strategies for adapting to - and thriving in - this challenging new environment. Laced with colorful anecdotes from Cappo's career, The Future of Advertising addresses such major issues as the need for newspapers to transform themselves as radio did after the advent of television; the growth of commercial-free, fee-for-service media such as HBO; and the virtual disappearance of the mass audience. He explains why there is no longer any distinction between "above-the-line" advertising and alternative "below-the-line" marketing techniques and why agencies who choose to ignore this emerging truth do so at their peril. Among the innovative ideas one finds in this surprising look into the future are techniques for coordinating traditional media advertising efforts with known online buying patterns, merging traditional advertising with direct marketing via transactional TV, and marketing traditionally youth-oriented products to an aging population. One would also find entertaining and perceptive commentaries from such industry leaders as John Emmerling, Phil Guarascio, Bruce Mason, Dom Rossi, Fred Danzig, and more. ISBN 0071403159: $24.95 C/CH/ND(Ref)

11. Carr, Nicholas G.
Does IT matter? : information technology and the corrosion of competitive advantage / Nicholas G. Carr. Harvard Business School Press, ©2004. 193 p. 658.4 CAR

Over the last decade, and even since the bursting of the technology bubble, pundits, consultants, and thought leaders have argued that information technology provides the edge necessary for business success. IT expert Nicholas G. Carr offers a radically different view in this eloquent and explosive book. As IT's power and presence have grown, he argues, its strategic relevance has actually decreased. IT has been transformed from a source of advantage into a commoditized "cost of doing business" with huge implications for business management. Expanding on Carr's seminal Harvard Business Review article that generated a storm of controversy, this work provides a truly compelling-and unsettling-account of IT's changing business role and its leveling influence on competition. Through astute analysis of historical and contemporary examples, Carr shows that the evolution of IT closely parallels that of earlier technologies such as railroads and electric power. He goes on to lay out a new agenda for IT management, stressing cost control and risk management over innovation and investment. And he examines the broader implications for business strategy and organization as well as for the technology industry. A frame-changing statement on one of the most important business phenomena of our time, the book marks a crucial milepost in the debate about IT's future. ISBN 1591394449: $29.95 CH

12. Carreira, Bill.
Lean manufacturing that works : powerful tools for dramatically reducing waste and maximizing profits / Bill Carreir. American Management Association, 2004. 295 p. 658.5 CAR

Is there one factor that allows some manufacturing companies to succeed while others fail? With production a level playing field, with anyone able to purchase the same equipment and facilities, hire and train the same qualified people, and purchase the same raw materials required to make a product - why is it that some companies are consistently more competitive? The simple answer lies in manufacturing technique: how one manages and balances people, materials, and machines. And if a manufacturing organization is slow and inefficient, it's time to slim down. Lean manufacturing allows manufacturers to reduce waste and maximize profits by adopting a philosophy of operation that considers value from the perspective of the customer. Far from a dry explanation of theory that simply looks good on paper, Lean Manufacturing that Works brings all the principles of lean manufacturing to where they're needed most: the shop floor. Engagingly written and easy to put to work, the book is specifically aimed at the people whose daily work involves the manufacturing floor, and it features essential tools that can help streamline operations in any manufacturing environment, A proven "weight loss" plan for any manufacturing environment, the lean strategy allows to expend fewer resources in delivering value to the customer. The results are growth through the taking of market share, greater profitability, and increased opportunity and stability for employees. Lean Manufacturing that Works provides insights into this remarkable strategy and shows how to put it to work immediately in one's own operations. ISBN 0814472370: $27.95 C/CH/M/ND(Ref)

13. Bezanson, Randall P.
How free can the press be? / Randall P. Bezanson. University of Illinois Press, ©2003. 258 p. 342.73 BEZ

Legal scholar Bezanson ponders the contradictions of a free press in this study of nine historical court cases involving free speech. He critically explores the thorny issues surrounding freedom of the press and the press's use of First Amendment protections. Drawing on selected Supreme Court and lower court cases to illustrate his argument, Bezanson articulates important legal questions pertaining to First Amendment rights. Does the First Amendment always give the press the freedom to publish whatever it wants? Is the press above the law when it comes to news gathering? What about the conflicting rights of individual privacy vs. the public interest? Bezanson does not have all the answers to these questions but instead takes the reader through an analysis of each case and scrutinizes the arguments presented in court. What results is an intelligent discussion of real constitutional issues affecting the press and journalism in the United States. ISBN 025202866X: $34.95 ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003)

14. Holtz, Shel.
Corporate conversations : a guide to crafting effective and appropriate internal communications / Shel Holtz. AMACOM, ©2004. 292 p. 651.79 HOL

Everything a company says sends a message to its employees. Organizations that communicate well with their employees boast higher profitability, better customer acquisition and retention, and enhanced reputation. Without a strategically managed employee communications strategy, results suffer. Corporate Conversations is a comprehensive guide to crafting and delivering vital internal messages. The book covers a broad range of issues, including: the four types of corporate and business communications (human resources, business-related, legal, and informal); how to communicate bad news; managing employee-to-employee communication; and how to measure the impact of internal communications. The book incorporates for the professionals the valuable strategies for aligning all business correspondence with the company message. ISBN 0814407706: $22.00 C/CH/M/ND(Ref)

15. Martin, Dick.
Tough calls : AT&T and the hard lessons learned from the telecom wars / Dick Martin. AMACOM, ©2005. 294 p. 384 MAR

Former AT&T PR head Martin records his take on Ma Bell's descent from blue chip royalty, offering an insider's view of the corporation's struggle to reorient itself to a world in which its longtime cash cow-long-distance service was becoming a profitless commodity. CEO Michael Armstrong's late 90s attempt to counter this trend by expanding into cable, wireless and business services forms the centerpiece of the book. Ultimately, AT&T ran out of time as the overly exuberant market collapsed and the company had to break itself up once more, this time in order to stay afloat. The journey was highlighted by mega-deals, leadership missteps, PR blunders and outright fraud. Martin also offers an eye-opening analysis of the impact of MCI WorldCom's fraudulent financial statements, which, he says, lowered AT&T's sales by $5 billion per year. Martin lightens the endless carnage with portraits of the telecom industry's top players, describing, for instance, how a new AT&T president was unable to tell the reporters at his first press conference the name of the long-distance company he uses at home. The result: Run AT&T? He apparently couldn't even spell it. And so forth. There are lots of good PR and leadership lessons here. ISBN 0814472435: $24.95 C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2004)

16. Toward a political economy of culture : capitalism and communication in the twenty-first century / edited by Andrew Calabrese and Colin Sparks. Rowman & Littlefield, ©2004. 375 p. 302.2 TOW

Calabrese and Sparks present a collection of 19 critical media studies that originated out of a conference dedicated to honoring the work Nicholas Garnham has carried out in studying the relationships among political communication, cultural practices, industry structures, technological innovation, state power, and capitalist accumulation. The bulk of the contributions are critical of the relationship between capitalism, the state, and public and private media institutions. The papers explore a range of issues, with the bulk of the material focusing on Anglo-American concerns, but with issues from South Africa, Japan, and elsewhere also considered. ISBN 0742526844 (pbk.): $32.50; ISBN 0742526836 CH (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004)

17. Alcaly, Roger E.
The new economy / Roger Alcaly. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003. 324 p. 330.973 ALC

An economist, a hedge fund manager, and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Alcaly here examines the current economy, which is characterized by globalization, advances in information technology, and greater productivity from leaner, more entrepreneurial companies. Stock market woes stemming from questionable practices by business executives and the accounting community, the aftermath of the technology bust, and losses in retirement accounts are foremost in the minds of many Americans. Alcaly considers such issues while detailing the role of the stock market in this new economy. To offer some perspective, he also surveys the economics of the past century, examining theories and practices, technology, monetary policies, and the contributions of various business leaders. Though this new economy is a work in progress, as Alcaly acknowledges, his thoughts may help readers understand what is happening now and prepare them for what yet may come. This timely, readable, and well-documented book will interest economists, investors, and business and economics students alike. ISBN 0374288933: $25.00 M (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003)

18. Baumol, William J.
Downsizing in America : reality, causes, and consequences / William J. Baumol, Alan S. Blinder, and Edward N. Wolff. Russell Sage, ©2003. 321 p. 338.64 BAU

Downsizing in America offers a range of compelling hypotheses to account for adoption of downsizing as an accepted business practice. In the short run, many companies experiencing difficulties due to decreased sales, cash flow problems, or declining securities prices reduced their workforces temporarily, expanding them again when business conditions improved. The most significant trigger leading to long-term downsizing was the rapid change in technology. Companies rid themselves of their least skilled workers and subsequently hired employees who were better prepared to work with new technology, which in some sectors reduced the size of firms at which production is most efficient. Baumol, Blinder, and Wolff also reveal what they call the dirty little secret of downsizing: it is profitable in part because it holds down wages. Downsizing in America shows that reducing employee rolls increased profits, since downsizing firms spent less money on wages relative to output but it did not increase productivity. Nor did unions impede downsizing. The authors show that unionized industries were actually more likely to downsize in order to eliminate expensive union labor. In sum, downsizing transferred income from labor to capital - from workers to owners. Downsizing in America combines an investigation of the underlying realities and causes of workforce reduction with an insightful analysis of the consequent shift in the balance of power between management and labor, to provide us with a deeper understanding of one of the major economic shifts of recent times - one with far-reaching implications for all American workers. ISBN 0871540940: $29.88 CH

19. Cooper, Phillip J.
Implementing sustainable development : from global policy to local action / Phillip J. Cooper, Claudia Maria Vargas. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, ©2004. 424 p. 338.927 COO

There is a great deal of rhetoric and no shortage of ideas about sustainable development. However, note Cooper and Vargas, there has also been an "implementation gap." Saying that "implementation is the art of the feasible," they present a feasibility framework for professionals called on to implement policy that allows them to assess the technical, legal, fiscal, administrative, political, ethical, and cultural feasibility of policy. The issues raised by each of these feasibility factors are explored in separate chapters. ISBN 0742523616 (pbk.): $27.71; ISBN 0742523608 CH (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004)

20. Cortada, James W.
The digital hand : how computers changed the work of American manufacturing, transportation, and retail industries / James W. Cortada. Oxford University Press, ©2004. 494 p. 338 COR

Computers have fundamentally changed the nature of work across America. They have made possible new roles, turning bankers into stockbrokers, while digital supply chains altered the retail landscape. However, it is difficult to grasp the full extent of these changes and their implications for the future of business. To begin the long process of understanding the effects of computing in American business, we need to know the history of how computers were first used, by whom, and why. In The Digital Hand, James W. Cortada combines detailed analysis with narrative history to provide a broad overview of computing's role in sixteen industries, accounting for nearly half of the U.S. economy. Beginning in 1950, when commercial applications of digital technology began to appear, Cortada examines the ways different industries adopted new technologies, as well as the ways their innovative applications influenced other industries and the U.S. economy. In addition to this account of computers' impact on industry, Cortada also demonstrates how industries themselves influenced the nature of digital technology. Managers, economists, and anyone interested in the history of modern business will appreciate this historical analysis of digital technology's many roles and its future possibilities in a wide array of industries. ISBN 0195165888: $32.00 C/CH

21. Eat here : reclaiming homegrown pleasures in a global supermarket / Brian Halweil. W.W. Norton, ©2004. 236 p. 338.19 HAL

Everyone everywhere depends increasingly on long-distance food. Since 1961 the tonnage of food shipped between nations has grown fourfold. In the United States, food typically travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate - as much as 25 percent farther than in 1980. For some, the long-distance food system offers unparalleled choice. But it often runs roughshod over local cuisines, varieties, and agriculture, while consuming staggering amounts of fuel, generating greenhouse gases, eroding the pleasures of face-to-face interactions, and compromising food security. Fortunately, the long-distance food habit is beginning to weaken under the influence of a young, but surging, local-foods movement. From peanut-butter makers in Zimbabwe to pork producers in Germany and rooftop gardeners in Vancouver, entrepreneurial farmers, start-up food businesses, restaurants, supermarkets, and concerned consumers are propelling a revolution that can help restore rural areas, enrich poor nations, and return fresh, delicious, and wholesome food to cities. ISBN 0393326640 (pbk.): $13.95 ND

22. The essential agrarian reader : the future of culture, community, and the land / edited by Norman Wirzba. University Press of Kentucky, ©2003. 276 p. 338.1 ESS

Agrarianism, a set of values rooted in place and soil, is diametrically opposed to global industrialization and devastation. Instead, it strives to appreciate, understand, and care for the earth and its inhabitants. It also realizes that a sound food economy is based on sound farming practices. In this collection of eminently quotable and passionately argued essays, farmers, philosophers, scientists, and environmentalists look at the ways in which industrial agriculture, unchecked consumerism, and the squandering of natural resources have caused great harm. "I cannot imagine," writes David Orr, "a system built on exploitation, consumption, growth, and uniformity-however cleverly managed-as anything other than a prelude to ruin." Particularly inspiring in its celebration of existence is "Placing the Soul: An Agrarian Philosophy," by editor Wirzba. Several of the pieces were originally speeches delivered at a 2002 conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Wendell Berry's groundbreaking The Unsettling of America. Berry, of course, is represented here. ISBN 0813122856: $26.93 CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003)

23. Fox, Loren.
Enron : the rise and fall / Loren Fox. Wiley, ©2003. 370 p. 333.79 ENR

The word "Enron" has officially entered the American vocabulary - not as the symbol of excellence and innovation that Chairman Kenneth Lay envisioned but as the corporate embodiment of greed, excess, and unprecedented fraud. Never in history has one company plummeted so quickly from the heights of power and glory to the depths of public humiliation, bankruptcy, and criminal investigation, dragging so many individuals and firms down with it. Fascinating and frightening. Enron: The Rise and Fall provides today's most illuminating and entertaining look on what was right - and wrong - with late twentieth-century corporate America. ISBN 0471237604: $24.95 C/M/ND

24. Friedman, Walter A.
Birth of a salesman : the transformation of selling in America / Walter A. Friedman. Harvard University Press, 2004. 356 p. 381.1 FRI

Friedman narrates how salesmanship became integral to American capitalism. Friedman argues that salesmanship, which in 2000 involved 16 million Americans in various sales positions, has contributed to the systematization and standardization of production, distribution, and consumption of goods. He focuses on those most responsible for devising innovative and effective sales strategies, including academics such as Walter Dill Scott and corporate managers such as John Patterson at National Cash Register. Friedman shows how sellers evolved in the 19th and early 20th centuries from peddlers, hawkers, and drummers to modern salesmen with their emphasis on order, control, efficiency, professionalism, improved customer relations, industrial psychology, mass consumerism, and scientific salesmanship. He also considers gender issues, e.g., how men dominated sales, shunting women to less prestigious positions such as door-to-door sales agents. ISBN 0674012984: $27.95 C (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2004)

25. The handbook of globalisation / edited by Jonathan Michie. Edward Elgar, ©2003. 421 p. REF 337 HAN

This text aims to present a systematic and thorough examination of the concept of globalization. Written by academics and practitioners representing a variety of disciplines, 25 essays address such topics as the international debt crisis, the role of multinational corporations in the world economy, and the relationship between globalization and national economic policy. Several chapters make a case for resisting globalization, emphasizing instead the importance of strengthening local economies. ISBN 1843762749 (pbk.): $38.00; ISBN 1843762218 (For use only in the AIRC) M (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004)

26. Hankin, Harriet.
The new workforce : five sweeping trends that will shape your company's future / Harriet Hankin. American Management Association, 2005. 241 p. 331.1 HAN

The trends Hankin identifies as altering the workforce are older, multigenerational, diverse workers, the rise of alternative households, and the need to find meaning in the workplace. She documents these trends and describes the changes in Human Resource policies that will be necessary to accommodate them. She advocates such policies as flexible scheduling, in-house medical support, double family leave, aptitude testing and total-rewards strategies and makes recommendations for their implementation. ISBN 081440829X: $27.95 C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004)

27. Henwood, Doug.
After the new economy / Doug Henwood. New Press, ©2003. 269 p. 330.973 HEN

Rarely a day went by in the dizzy 1990s without some well-paid pundit heralding the triumphant arrival of a 'New Economy.' According to these financial mavens, an unprecedented technological and organizational revolution was ushering in an era of rapid productivity growth and had extinguished the threat of recession forever. Mass participation in the stock market would transform workers into owners, ideas would become the motors of economic life, and globalization would render national borders obsolete. Though much of the rhetoric sounds ridiculous today, few analysts have explored how the New Economy moment emerged from deep within America's economic and ideological machinery. Instead, they've preferred to treat it as an episode of mass delusion, stoked by stock touts and creative accountants. Now, with customary irreverence and acuity, journalist Doug Henwood dissects the New Economy, arguing that the delirious optimism of the moment was actually a manic set of variations on ancient themes - techno-utopianism, the frictionless market, the postindustrial society, and the end of the business cycle - all promoted from the highest of places. Claims of New Eras have plenty of historical precedents; in this latest act, our modern mythmakers held that technology would overturn hierarchies, democratizing information and finance and leading inexorably to a virtual social revolution. But, as Henwood vividly demonstrates, the gap between rich and poor has never been so wide, wealth never so concentrated. For all of capitalism's purported dynamism, the global economic hierarchy has remained remarkably stable for more than a century, and few regions of the world enjoy bright economic prospects. ISBN 1565847709: $24.95 CH/M

28. Krugman, Paul R.
The great unraveling : losing our way in the new century / Paul Krugman. W.W. Norton, ©2003. 426 p. 330.973 KRU

"This is not, I'm sorry to say, a happy book," says Krugman in the introduction to this collection of essays culled from his twice-weekly New York Times op-ed column, and indeed, the majority of these short pieces range from moderately bleak political punditry to full-on "the sky is falling" doom and gloom. A respected economist, Krugman dissects political and social events of the past decade by watching the dollars, and his ideas are emphatic if not always well argued. He has a somewhat boyish voice and a pleasingly enthusiastic tone, although his enthusiasm sometimes leads him to take liberties with punctuation. The essays are grouped thematically instead of chronologically, which gives this audio adaptation a scattershot feel. Since these pieces were written over a long stretch of time, certain key ideas recur quite often-political reporters don't pay enough attention to the real news, the Bush administration is dishonest, big corporations are inherently untrustworthy - and can become tedious. To his credit, Krugman is not entirely partisan - he reveals himself to be a free-market apologist - and even listeners who disagree with most of the things he says will likely be taken in by his warm and energetic delivery. ISBN 0393058506: $25.95 C/CH/M (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003)

29. Lewis, William W.
The power of productivity : wealth, poverty, and the threat to global stability / William W. Lewis. University of Chicago Press, ©2004. 339 p. 338.06 LEW

Lewis offers a detailed look at the local economies in several parts of the world including the U.S., Japan, India and Brazil. Based on the Institute's 12-year survey and analysis, Lewis concludes that the great economic disparity between rich and poor countries will ultimately have a negative impact on all nations. Lewis and his team examined individual industries within a country to evaluate the productivity per employee. The specific country-by-country distillations are easily understood, regardless of one's familiarity with economic theory, and readers will not be surprised by Lewis's discussion of the thriving Japanese economy, successful largely because of its domination of the automobile market. However, the more detailed analysis of Japanese business, which is limited by government policy including restrictive land regulations that have kept larger retailers like Wal-Mart away, is quite informative. The author's examination of American domestic productivity is also clear and accessible: in the 1990s, growth occurred in only six sectors, including four technological areas-security brokers, microprocessors, computer assembly and mobile telephone services. As evidenced by the tech bubble, slowed growth in these fields has hurt the economy. Lewis concludes by explaining how various factors, including education, government controls and cooperation among countries, will play a part in future international economic stability. ISBN 0226476766: $28.00 C/CH (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2004)

30. Meyer, David R.
The roots of American industrialization / David R. Meyer. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 333 p. 338.0973 MEY

Meyer reexamines previous studies, provides new evidence, and presents a new explanation. He argues that agriculture and industry both grew and transformed, thus constituting mutually reinforcing processes. Eastern agriculture thrived from 1790 to 1860, and rising farm productivity permitted surplus labor to enter factories and provided swelling food supplies for growing rural and urban populations. Farms that were on poor soil and distant from markets declined, whereas other farms successfully adjusted production as rural and urban markets expanded and as Midwestern agricultural products flowed eastward after 1840. Rural and urban demand for manufactures in the East supported diverse industrial development and prosperous rural areas and burgeoning cities supplied increasing amounts of capital for investment. ISBN 0801871417: $41.50 C/CH/ND

31. Reforming India's external, financial, and fiscal policies / edited by Anne O. Krueger and Sajjid Z. Chinoy. Stanford University Press, 2003. 248 p. 330.954 REF

Krueger and Chinoy present discussions from a June 2001 conference held at Stanford University devoted to the current state of Indian economic policy and the possibilities for further restructuring based on the ideology of the Washington neoliberal consensus. Separate sections look at external, financial, and fiscal policies. ISBN 080474775X: $49.50 M (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2003)

32. Soros, George.
The alchemy of finance / George Soros ; [foreword by Paul A. Volcker]. J. Wiley, ©2003. 391 p. 332.6 SOR

George Soros is unquestionably the most powerful and profitable investor in the world today. Dubbed by Business Week as "The Man Who Moves Markets," Soros made a billion dollars going up against the British pound. Soros is not merely a man of finance, but a thinker to reckon with as well. Now, in The Alchemy of Finance, this extraordinary man reveals the investment strategies of the present times that have made him one of the most well-known. ISBN 0471445495: $19.95 CH

33. Uldrich, Jack.
The next big thing is really small : how nanotechnology will change the future of your business / Jack Uldrich with Deb Newberry. Crown Business, ©2003. 207 p. 338.064 ULD

Ever heard of self-cleaning floor tiles and windows? Or mirrors that won't fog up in the shower? What about army uniforms that can monitor a soldier's health, detect and detoxify chemical agents, heat and cool the soldier... and independently generate power so the soldier can remain in constant communication with headquarters? The authors explain, "Nanotechnology is, broadly speaking, the art and science of manipulating and rearranging individual atoms and molecules to create useful materials, devices, and systems. With this manipulation, products can be made with fewer imperfections and more durability, drugs can be more efficient and have fewer side effects, and energy sources can be cleaner and more cost-effective. Approximately $2 billion a year is being invested in nanotechnology worldwide in industries such as textiles, plastics and pharmaceuticals. To help determine how directly one's business will be affected by nanotechnology, the authors offer "nanopoints" at the end of each chapter, which raise questions about how to best prepare for change in any given field. The business advice is general and obvious, but the book clearly presents many intriguing and important applications of this burgeoning field, which may interest those looking to invest in nanotechnology. ISBN 1400046890: $18.95 C/CH (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2002)

34. Zonis, Marvin.
The Kimchi matters : global business and local politics in a crisis-driven world / by Marvin Zonis, Dan Lefkovitz, and Sam Wilkin. Agate, ©2003. 356 p. 337 ZON

"All politics is local," former House Speaker Tip O'Neill once famously remarked, and the adage holds true for economics as well, even in the era of globalization. In a world where local markets are increasingly interconnected, events in one small country can easily snowball to have a worldwide impact. Using kimchi, the flavorful Korean pickle, as a metaphor for unique regional socio-cultural conditions, this trio of political analysts reminds readers that while powerful corporations may be able to plant their flags around the world, they still need to deal with the locals. Factors like political corruption or ethnic conflicts can undermine a country's chances for prosperity, the analysts say, but strong leadership and stable institutions can counter them. In order to "do globalization better," business leaders need to recognize the importance of local political dynamics. Other than suggesting that there isn't a single approach that will work for all countries, the book doesn't offer much advice; what it does provide are dozens of textual snapshots of various regional hot spots, primarily from often overlooked corners of Asia, Africa and South America (where, unfortunately, the overused kimchi references quickly grow old). Readers with geopolitical experience may find the analysis redundant and superficial, while the financially inclined may want more concrete answers to their concerns, but the three authors do a reasonable job of providing the big picture on this complex issue. ISBN 097245621X: $25.95 M (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003)

35. Bain, Ken.
What the best college teachers do / Ken Bain. Harvard University Press, 2004. 207 p. 378.12 BAI

37. Climate : into the 21st century / edited by William Burroughs. Cambridge University Press, 2003. 240 p. REF 551.6 CLI

39. Albright, Madeleine Korbel.
Madam Secretary / Madeleine Albright, with Bill Woodward. Miramax Books, ©2003. 562 p. 973.929 ALB

54. Appleman, Daniel.
Always use protection : a teen's guide to safe computing / Dan Appleman. Apress, ©2004. 266 p. 005.8 APP

66. Grave new world : security challenges in the 21st century / Michael E. Brown, editor. Georgetown University Press, 2003. 342 p. 327.17 GRA

69. Farber, Daniel A.
Lincoln's Constitution / Daniel Farber. University of Chicago Press, 2003. 240 p. 342.73029 LIN

94. Abramson, Paul R.
Change and continuity in the 2000 and 2002 elections / Paul R. Abramson, John H. Aldrich, David W. Rohde. CQ Press, ©2003. 372 p. 324.973 ABR

99. Nalebuff, Barry.
Why not? : how to use everyday ingenuity to solve problems big and small / Barry Balebuff and Ian Ayres. Harvard Business School Press, ©2003. 238 p. 153.4 NAL

101. Bhote, Keki R.
World class reliability : using Multiple Environment Overstress Tests to make it happen / Keki R. Bhote and Adi K. Bhote. American Management Association, ©2004. 218 p. 620 BHO

103. Asante, Molefi K.
Erasing racism : the survival of the American nation / Molefi Kete Asante. Prometheus Books, 2003. 294 p. 305.8 ASA

For more than 25 years, college faculties have questioned how to become more effective teachers. Much of the support for their efforts to improve has come from centers for teaching excellence such as those that Bain has directed at institutions including Vanderbilt University, Northwestern University, and New York University. Drawing on interviews with more than 60 exemplary college teachers from a number of disciplines and a variety of institutions, Bain identifies personal characteristics, pedagogical practices, assessment techniques, and other individual and institutional elements that can help anyone with a commitment to teaching and learning to become a more effective college teacher. In works such as Improving College Teaching and Learner-Centered Teaching, Maryellen Weimer has addressed the popular "myth" that good teachers are "born, not made." Like Weimer, Bain demonstrates that disciplined attention to relevant research and to effective practice can help scholars in any field become better teachers. Providing insight into how teachers can help students demonstrate significant gains in learning in a variety of ways, this volume will be of interest to any member of the college faculty. ISBN 0674013255: $21.95 C/CH/ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2004) / Sol Stern. Encounter Books, ©2003. 248 p. 379.111 STE Using engaging personal narrative, journalist Stern explores the demand for school choice among inner-city families. He takes readers on his personal journey from left-wing politics in the 1960s, when he edited and wrote for the leftist magazine Ramparts, to his current position as champion for the libertarian right in its relentless crusade to privatize education. Stern excels in presenting historical detail, and his history of the politics of New York City public schools and their teachers' unions is both revealing and instructive. He is also a captivating storyteller, and his point of view, as a parent of New York City schoolchildren, sets his book somewhat apart from other ideological discourses in the annals of think tank-sponsored "school choice" writings. As a leftist turned "educational traditionalist," Stern uses political metaphors cleverly: there is a "Berlin Wall" between private and public schooling that must be broken down for liberty to flourish; teachers' unions are the "ruling class in education" and the school choice movement is "countercultural in the best sense of the word." Stern makes a strong case for dismantling public education and subjecting it to market forces. However, his book grasps educational theories and practices only at a superficial level. He calls well-researched theories of cognition progressive educational "fads" and sees multicultural education as "political correctness" that hurts black children. These weaknesses lessen Stern's credibility, but his account will be of interest to those engaged in the school choice debate. ISBN 1893554074: $25.95 C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) Packed with full of fascinating facts and diagrams, this book is written for a wide audience and will captivate the general reader interested in climate issues, as well as forming a valuable teaching resource. Compiled by an international team formed under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization, this work is edited by William Burroughs. The World Meteorological Organization coordinates global scientific activity to allow increasingly prompt and accurate weather information and other services for public, private and commercial use, including international airline and shipping industries. From weather prediction to air pollution research, climate-change-related activities, ozone layer depletion studies and tropical storm forecasting, WMO's activities contribute to the safety of life and property, the socio-economic development of nations and the protection of the environment. ISBN 0521792029: $29.00 (For use only in the AIRC) C/CH/M/ND / edited by Jill bailey. Facts on File, ©2004. 248 p. REF 577.03 FAC This reference contains over 2,000 alphabetically arranged, cross-referenced entries explaining frequently used terms in environmental science. Some of the many topics covered include extinction, hazardous waste, genetic engineering, coliform bacteria, wildlife management, and global warming. Intended as an additional source of information for students taking Advanced Placement science courses in high schools, the volume may also be used as a reference by more advanced students and researchers. ISBN 081604922X: $44.50 (For use only in the AIRC) C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004) Albright proposes to "combine the personal with policy" in these memoirs, a sensible narrative strategy, considering her emblematic struggles as a working mother breaking through the glass ceiling of the foreign policy establishment to become U.N. ambassador and secretary of state. Albright's recollections of her background as a child refugee from Czechoslovakia and its twin scourges of Nazism and Communism (later, she accounts for the belated discovery of her Jewish heritage) suggest a basis for her belief in "assertive multilateralism." Although she laments coining this derided term, it's an apt name for her doctrine that the international community, led by American power, should protect human rights. In the Clinton administration, this was the hawkish position, opposed by Colin Powell, William Cohen and others more cautious about military commitments. Albright treats these and other rivalries with restraint, but she is relatively candid about policy and personality conflicts, to an extent unusual in a diplomat and welcome in an autobiographer. Pitched at a popular audience, Albright's anecdotal style is engagingly direct, but it's not suited to mounting a comprehensive defense of humanitarian interventionism in light of failures in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. Albright is willing to admit mistakes, though she generally pursues the political memoirist's standard agenda of spinning the historical record. Filled with shrewd character sketches of world leaders, Albright's descriptions of the Balkan conflicts, the Middle East peace process and other critical negotiations are thorough and insightful. This memoir captures the disarmingly blunt purposefulness that made its author an irrepressible force in foreign affairs. ISBN 0786868430: $27.95 CH (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / John P. Avlon. Harmony Books, ©2004. 387 p. 973.9 AVL The title of this book suggests that it may be an analysis of how independent voters affect the political landscape. Instead, Avlon, a newspaper columnist and speechwriter for former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, offers a series of vignettes about political figures from presidents to governors whom he defines as centrists. While misleading titles are forgivable, the problem with this book is the misuse and misunderstanding of the meaning of centrist. Avlon implicitly defines centrism as the position held by the vast majority of Americans who fall between the extremists in the two major parties at any time in the history of the United States. By definition, the majority of Americans is the center, but the center isn't fixed; it shifts constantly but imperceptibly over time. He also assumes that centrism is always good, right, and even patriotic - a dangerous assumption when one considers that the majority of Americans in the 1850s tolerated slavery and in the 20th century demanded prohibition and accepted segregation, and that some of the greatest figures in American history weren't centrists but people who struggled against the establishment - people like Lincoln or FDR - to shape new centers. What the author thinks he's describing as centrism is actually moderation, compromise, and tolerance. For all its problems, the book is a good read that finds some commonality among an unusual collection of political personalities. ISBN 1400050235: $24.00 CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2004) / Alan Axelrod. Prentice Hall, ©2003. 595 p. REF 920 AXE The world's greatest achievers have always sought out the stories of power. George Washington steeped himself in Caesar's Gallic Wars, General Patton read everything he could on Napoleon, Winston Churchill reveled in the study of Queen Elizabeth I. But in the sixty or seventy hours of today's work week, who has time to mine a mountain of biographies in search of a nugget or two? In Profiles in Leadership, noted historian and best-selling author Alan Axelrod offers the nuggets without the mountain. In 200 concise and compelling narratives, he presents the careers of leaders from Genghis Khan, to William the Conqueror, to Joan of Arc, to Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, Dwight David Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Colin Powell, and many more, from many cultures, countries, and eras. Each of the 200 profiles is selected, targeted, and treated as an object lesson in leadership, his or her life and career presented not merely as a set of biographical facts, but as a unique example of a life program for success. Each profile includes a leadership analysis based on fifteen specific categories of achievement, which make it possible for readers to find the stories of men and women who represent the leadership areas of greatest interest to them. Looking for a great Motivator? Check out Omar Bradley or Julius Caesar for starters. Want a Visionary? Read about Sam Houston, Joan of Arc, or maybe Lawrence of Arabia. At once informative and practical, this outstanding reference takes the broadest possible view of leadership, then crystalizes it into essential models of power and success. ISBN 0735202567: $40.00 (For use only in the AIRC) CH / Colin G. Calloway. University of Nebraska Press, ©2003. 631 p. 978 CAL Calloway draws on tribal histories, anthropology, and archaeology, as well as traditional historical sources, to present this useful and insightful overview of vibrant nations actively charting their futures in the time of great change and tremendous challenge before Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery set forth in 1803. In addition to corn agriculture and its impact upon prehistoric populations, the author discusses the later historic shift from bow and arrow to firearms, the incorporation of horses into Plains Indian life, and the increased acquisition of European trade goods and culture. Colonial European powers and their interaction with Native populations, including the Spanish colonies in the Pueblos and California and the French and British rivalry, are explored in depth, though throughout the Native nations remain the primary focus. ISBN 0803215304: $39.95 CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) Reader's Digest Association, ©2003. 704 p. REF 917.304 DIS This hulking volume might be best described as a cross between a fact-filled encyclopedia of the 50 states and a collection of brochures from state-sponsored travel agencies. With 100 pages of road maps, over 3,000 place entries and sidebars highlighting significant cities and state parks, the book is chockablock with random bits of trivia and essential information. The editors have divided it by geographical region and subdivided by state. The photographs neatly capture iconic images: an intricately sculpted sand castle on the beach at Fort Lauderdale, the crowded Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, bison roaming the North Dakota wilderness, brilliant fall foliage in New York's Adirondack Park. The book ends with a gazetteer including towns and cities, national parks, national forests and other national reserves, with page references. ISBN 0762104341: $39.95 (For use only in the AIRC) C/CH/ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / Daniel Mark Epstein. Ballantine Books, 2004. 379 p. 973.7 EPS Beginning with Abraham Lincoln's fascination with Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the author uses Lincoln's activities in the nation's capital as a backdrop for the story of Whitman's life there during the Civil War. Working as a copy clerk, Whitman spent most of his free time comforting wounded Union soldiers. A dedicated Lincoln admirer, he also planned his walks around the city to coincide with the President's carriage rides, often waving to Lincoln as he watched him pass. The closest the poet came to the President was to see him from an adjoining room in the White House. As Whitman published his book of poetry Drum-Taps, Lincoln was assassinated. Whitman's grief led to his poems "When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd" and "O Captain, My Captain." Both are included here, along with brief interpretations. The author's premise that there is value in juxtaposing the lives of a famous president and a poet is not supported. There is not enough evidence of a strong connection between the two men to warrant a book on the subject. Epstein (author of biographies of Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as a number of books of poetry) emphasizes literary aspects rather than historical ones. ISBN 0345457994: $24.95 CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2004) / Phillip H. Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro. McGraw-Hill, ©2004. 266 p. 956.70443 GOR In this study, what the authors make clear, without shrillness or grandstanding, is that "the European complaint that the American decision-making process and diplomacy about Iraq violated reasonable alliance norms and expectations is valid." They prove this point with careful analysis of what happened in 2002 and 2003 and with a short, sharp reminder of previous alliance crises and how they were overcome. This is not to say that the authors side with France and Germany; their criticism of those countries' diplomacy is often quite stinging. But the fact that the United States is the "indispensable power" does not mean that its allies must support it in every case. As Gordon and Shapiro write, "when taken too far, assertive leadership can quickly turn into arrogant unilateralism, to the point where resentful others become less likely to follow the lead of the United States. "Even a country as powerful as the United States," they explain, "needs a certain level of legitimacy and consent." ISBN 0071441204: $19.95 CH/ND / Robert H. Jackson ; edited and introduced by John Q. Barrett ; with a foreword by William E. Leuchtenburg. Oxford University Press, 2003. 290 p. 973.917 ROO While conducting research for a biography on Robert H. Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt's solicitor general, attorney general, and appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Barrett discovered Jackson's unfinished manuscript on the president dating from the early 1950s. Here, he supplements that text with excerpts from Jackson's unpublished autobiography and oral interviews. Though most of the narrative lacks Jackson's usual eloquence, there are flashes of it. In discussing FDR as a politician, lawyer, commander in chief, administrator, economist, and human being, Jackson indirectly reveals himself. He was essentially a lawyer, while FDR was a politician despite his law degree. The president encouraged the electoral entrance of his decade-younger protege, but Jackson admits his happiest days during the Roosevelt administration were spent as the solicitor general, his least political position. Barely mentioned in the editor's endnotes and biographical sketches is Jackson's subsequent self-destruction as the leading candidate for the chief justiceship to replace Harlan Fiske Stone. Nonetheless, Jackson viewed FDR and Charles Evans Hughes as the two greatest men of his era. His insights into FDR's personality confirm those presented in the best biographies of the president. ISBN 0195168267: $30.00 C/CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) / Wilson Jeremiah Moses. Cambridge University Press, 2004. 308 p. 305.896 MOS Building upon his previous work and using Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition as a model, Professor Moses has revised and brought together in this book essays that focus on the complexity of, and contradictions in, the thought of five major African-American intellectuals: Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois and Marcus M. Garvey. In doing so, he challenges both popular and scholarly conceptions of them as villains or heroes. In analyzing the intellectual struggles and contradictions of these five dominant personalities with regard to individual morality and collective reform, Professor Moses shows how they contributed to strategies for black improvement and puts them within the context of other currents of American thought, including Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, Social Darwinism, and progressivism. ISBN 0521828260: $69.95; ISBN 0521535379 (pbk.) ND / Williamson Murray, Robert H. Scales Jr. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. 312 p. 956.70443 MUR The practice of "embedding" journalists in combat units provided a good deal of spectacular, timely footage, but tended to restrict insight to the frontline perspective of riflemen and vehicle crews. Murray and Scales provide a lucid and leavened look at the larger-scale forces shaping the war. Murray (A War to Be Won), currently a fellow at the Institute of Defense Analysis, is an eminent military historian, and Scales (Yellow Smoke), a retired major general and former commandant of the Army War College, is a familiar commentator on security issues. In this operational history, they eschew discussion of such abstractions as whether the war was a "revolution in military affairs." Instead, they show how, since the Gulf War of 1991, each of the services (army, air force, navy and marines) improved its mastery of the craft of war: individually integrating technology, training, and doctrine while at the same time cultivating a "jointness" that eroded, if it did not quite eliminate, traditional rivalries at the operational level. The result, they argue, was a virtuoso performance in 2003 that did not depend on Iraqi ineffectiveness, a model exercise in maneuver warfare at the operational level that stands comparison with any large-scale operation in terms of effectiveness and economy. The authors complement their work with competent surveys of Iraq's history and of how the U.S. armed forces recovered from the Vietnam debacle, and with an excellent appendix describing the weapons systems that dominated America's television screens. While the short duration of the war's main push -- three weeks from start to finish -- works against systematic analysis, and there will be much more material to surface and be sifted in the coming years. ISBN 0674012801: $25.95 CH (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / Geoffrey Perret. Random House, ©2004. 470 p. 973.7 LIN Well-known military historian Perret casts new light on Lincoln as war president by emphasizing the ways Lincoln used the implicit powers of commander in chief to mobilize an army, suspend habeas corpus, issue money, free the slaves, and suppress a rebellion. Although the story of Lincoln as commander in chief is hardly unknown, no one since T. Harry Williams in Lincoln and His Generals has looked so closely at Lincoln's progress in developing and applying those powers. Especially important in Perret's account are his corrections of old standbys on the origins and purpose of the so-called Anaconda Plan, Lincoln's preoccupation with taking Richmond, and his understanding of military operations. If the book is more anecdotal than analytical, it also is intelligent and informed and an excellent introduction to big questions about war-making, Lincoln's learning curve as president, and the politics of command in Washington and among commanders. ISBN 0375507388: $35.00 C (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2004) / Gerald Posner. Random House, ©2003. 241 p. 973.931 POS The story of the years leading up to 9/11 is the story of what might have been, and also serves as a call to the defense of America's future. Since 9/11, one important question has persisted: What was really going on behind the scenes with intelligence services and government leaders during the time preceding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks? After an eighteen-month investigation that uncovered explosive new evidence through interviews and in classified documents, Gerald Posner reveals much previously undisclosed information. In a dramatic narrative, Why America Slept exposes the frequent mistakes made by law enforcement and government agencies, and demonstrates how the failures to prevent 9/11 were tragically not an exception but typical. Along the way, by delving into terror financing, the links between far-flung terror organizations, and how the United States responded over the years to other attacks, Posner also makes a damning case that 9/11 could have been prevented. Why America Slept lays to rest two years of conjecture about what led up to the worst terror attacks in America's history. ISBN 0375508791: $24.95 CH / edited, with introduction and commentary, by Ralph E. Weber, editor ; Ralph A. Webber, associate editor. Doubleday, 2003. 372 p. 973.927 REA While researching at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Ralph E. Weber, former professor of modern American military and intelligence history at Marquette University, discovered a trove of more than 3,500 letters handwritten by President Reagan between 1981 and 1989 from such locations as the White House, Camp David and Rancho del Cielo (near Santa Barbara), and aboard Air Force One. Although Weber had researched five other presidential archives, he had located "few comparable files containing such a vivid and personal record; none was as lively and optimistic." Weber and his son, Ralph A. Weber, have made a careful selection of these revealing letters, written to everyone from lifelong friends to ordinary citizens. The correspondence comments on personal matters, such as Reagan's recovery after the assassination attempt ("Let me say I'm very lucky and the Lord really had his hand on my shoulder") to subjects such as Star Wars ("That term was never mine - it was dreamed up by the press and now they saddle me with it"). Covering a wide range of issues, Reagan wrote to newspaper columnists, magazine writers, the parents of soldiers killed in Lebanon, Soviet leaders, children, students, sports figures and Hollywood personalities. The letters are arranged chronologically into chapters for each year, and each chapter has an introduction recapping the events of that year. Along with his faith and determination, Reagan's warmth, kindness, concern and compassion are evident throughout. ISBN 0385507569: $26.00 ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / edited, with an introduction and commentary by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, Martin Anderson ; with a foreword by George P. Schultz. Free Press, 2003. 934 p. 973.927 REA Hoover Institution fellows Skinner and the Andersons (all editors of the bestselling Reagan, in His Own Hand) use a carefully arranged and astutely annotated sampling from Reagan's lifetime of correspondence to narrate the arc of the great communicator's life. Always charming, always unassuming, always genuine, Reagan's letters tell the story of his family, his health, his Hollywood and political careers, and his evolution as a political thinker with an authority (and a charm) no other documents can. Reagan regularly corresponded with friends, movie business colleagues, fellow politicians and conservative allies, as well as with simple fans. To William Buckley in 1984: "the Middle East is a complicated place - well not really a place, it's more a state of mind." To Mickey Rooney, from the Oval Office, in 1985: "I'll bet you don't remember the first time we met. The year was 1937... I was new in Hollywood living in the Montecito apartments. Someone had run over a dog in the street outside. You came in to look for a phone book so you could find the nearest veterinarian and take the dog.... I figured this had to be a nice guy." The book includes more than 1,000 letters (some to unknowns, others to the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, George Bush Sr., Dr. Spock, Joseph Coors, Henry Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher), fewer than 25 of them previously published. Taken together, they provide remarkable and otherwise unobtainable insight into a singularly important and fascinating American life: "Dutch" up close and personal. ISBN 074321966X: $35.00 C/M/ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / Gore Vidal. Yale University Press, ©2003. 198 p. 973.4 VID Vidal uses the 1787 Constitutional Convention both as a focus for his psychological portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams and as a jumping-off point into these Founders' lives. The narrative briefly traces early American history through the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson. But, more a commentary than a history, Vidal's short book relates certain modern troubles (e.g., the Enron scandal) to events from early U.S. history and spends so much time denigrating Alexander Hamilton that Hamilton's name might have been added to the book's subtitle. Uncertain of his intended audience, Vidal assumes that readers are familiar with little-known historical incidents, yet he goes to the trouble of defining Tories. His literary allusions are well beyond the average reader, as is his long-winded writing style. ISBN 0300101716: $22.00 C/CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) This is a book about computer security and privacy, written especially for the many people who are taking advantage of all the Internet has to offer. It goes beyond the "beware the dangers of chat room" warnings that readers are already aware of. The book tells not only how to protect a computer from the latest invasions of viruses, worms, and Trojans, but also how to fight back and actually do something about them. ISBN 159059326X (pbk.): $16.00 C/CH/M/ND(Ref) / Connie Christopher. American Library Association, 2003. 75 p. REF 023 CHR Christopher shares solid advice and techniques for empowering library staff to maintain a competitive edge over other information providers. Beginning with her rationale that empowered employees fully realize their potential, Christopher proceeds with other sound reasons for achieving a motivated staff, namely the increased competition for funds, customers, staff, and professional librarians. Nicely integrating into the principles of librarianship the main ideas found in Peter Block's The Empowered Manager and Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline, as well as the well-known motivation principles of Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg, and Douglas McGregor, Christopher also covers active listening as the building block of effective communication, creating shared vision and trust, defining the role of a library manager in an empowered library, developing team skills, and growing emotional intelligence. Her wrap-up chapter on empowered library leadership succinctly connects with Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee's successful Primal Leadership. ISBN 0838908586 (pbk.): $29.50 (For use only in the AIRC) C/M/ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) / by Juris Dilevko and Lisa Gottlieb. McFarland & Co., ©2004. 263 p. REF 025.5 DIL Is today's reference work just a matter of keying in search terms into an online catalog or web search engine? Dilevko and Gottlieb present original research findings and conclusions in support of the thesis that quality reference service and the preservation of the reference librarian as a key player in the information age rely on the acquisition of a wide range of general knowledge and subject area expertise through concerted and extensive reading of newspapers, magazines, and works of nonfiction and fiction. Further, the authors ask: Is reference librarianship in need of "re-intellectualization" and is it being defined by "external forces" (i.e., technology-based solutions)? Reading and the Reference Librarian is unique in addressing the specific impact of reading on reference service and reference librarianship. The thesis and questions are fodder for compelling thought and discussion. Though a little repetitious, the presentation of the research data (the authors surveyed some 900 academic and public library reference librarians) is not mind-bogglingly complex. ISBN 0786416521: $44.50 (For use only in the AIRC) C (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2004) / Rodger D. Drabick Testing is not a phase. Software developers should not simply throw software over the wall to test engineers when the developers have finished coding. A coordinated program of peer reviews and testing not only supplements a good software development process, it supports it. A good testing life cycle begins during the requirements elucidation phase of software development, and concludes when the product is ready to install or ship following a successful system test. Nevertheless, there is no one true way to test software; the best one can hope for is to possess a formal testing process that fits the needs of the testers as well as those of the organization and its customers. A formal test plan is more than an early step in the software testing process - it's a vital part of any software development life cycle. This book presents a series of tasks to help develop a formal testing process model, as well as the inputs and outputs associated with each task. ISBN 0932633587: $35.99 C/CH/M/ND(Ref) / Susan L. Fowler and Victor R. Stanwick. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, ©2004. 658 p. REF 006.7 FOW Describing the essential widgets and development tools that will the lead to the right design solutions for one's Web application, the authors provide a thorough treatment of the subject for many different kinds of applications, and provides quick reference for designers looking for some fast design solutions and opportunities to enhance the Web application experience. This book adds flavor to the standard Web design genre by juxtaposing Web design with programming for the Web and covers design solutions and concepts, such as intelligent generalization, to help software teams successfully switch from one interface to another. ISBN 1558607528 (pbk.): $43.85 (For use only in the AIRC) C/CH/M/ND / Steven Holzner. McGraw-Hill/Osborne, ©2004. 380 p. 005.2762 HOL Create powerful Web applications with Struts, the dynamic application framework built for online Java programming. Through hands-on examples one will quickly learn Struts basics - working in the MVC architecture, handling user input, and using Struts actions and tag libraries. Then, one finds coverage of the Struts Validator framework, Tiles, and Eclipse - the most popular Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE). ISBN 0072256591: $29.99 C/CH/M/ND(Ref) / Eric Hunley. Charles River Media, ©2004. 558 p. 005.7 HUN This book provides beginning designers with a step-by-step process for creating a Web site with the new Macromedia Studio MX 2004. Structured around a good Web development cycle of plan, design, build, test, and maintain, the book starts by planning the site and creating a wire frame with Freehand MX, along with vector graphics for use in Macromedia Flash MX 2004 and Fireworks MX 2004. From there it moves to Flash, where the designer learns how to create dynamic content for use on the Web. Next, Fireworks is used to manipulate graphics and create Web page designs. Then the content is brought into Dreamweaver MX 2004 and the site launched. Throughout the book, the focus is not only on how to use each tool, but how to use them together to create a seamless workflow. All of the tools needed to create and test the Web site are on the book's CD-ROM, including trial versions of the Macromedia products covered in the book, as well as the Open Source server technologies (Apache, MySQL, PHP, and PERL). ISBN 1584502835 (pbk.): $49.95 C/CH/M/ND(Ref) / Steve Johnson. Que Pub., ©2004. 478 p. 005.265 JOH Microsoft Windows XP Home and Professional editions provide an elegant new user interface and powerful new tools with which to burn a CD, view and manage digital photos and music, and invite PC experts to see and manipulate what's on the screen over the Internet. This book covers all the important tasks that readers need to know, from using WordPad, Paint, and Outlook Express to configuring a firewall and backing up data. Service Pack 1 coverage is included. Show Me Microsoft Windows XP offers readers a fast, visual way to solve problems and get work done with Windows XP, covering the tasks in a way that makes it easy for new and upgrading users to get going quickly. Other features include a "Troubleshooting Guide" to help solve common problems, and a "Project Guide" with a listing of real-world projects by feature. ISBN 0789730189 (pbk.): $19.99 C/CH/M/ND(Ref) / Sara Laughlin, Denise Sisco Shockley, Ray Wilson. American Library Association, 2003. 133 p. REF 025.1 LAU In order to continue to provide an ever-growing set of standard resources in a world of diminishing funds, many libraries are looking for creative ways to allocate resources and provide the maximum return on time and dollars spent. Some are exploring decision-making tools and strategies that are used by business and industry. In 2001, authors Laughlin, Denise Shockley, and Ray Wilson, who combine many years of successful librarianship, partnered with 19 public libraries to apply W. Edward Deming's theories of continuous quality improvement, in the form of "continuous improvement tools" as a way to help libraries rethink the ways in which they make decisions and manage the business of librarianship. Their book presents 29 tools (from affinity diagrams and brainstorming to Gantt charts and histograms) arranged by chapter; each chapter contains the tool, an explanation of how to use the tool, a success story of how the tool was applied in a library, and a "Hints, Cautions, and Tricks" section. Each tool is well defined and the instructions are easy to follow. ISBN 0838908594: $34.50 (For use only in the AIRC) C/M/ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) / Russell Shaw. American Management Association, ©2003. 259 p. REF 004.67 SHA Whether a home user who wants to hook up several computers to one printer, an executive who needs on-the-go information access, or a business owner eager to connect employees from multiple office locations, wireless networking has opened up a whole world of possibilities. With applications now widely available, and without the tangle of wires connecting computers, printers, fax machines, and other wired devices, these devices can be integrated seamlessly with PDAs and other wireless equipment. In fact, installing, monitoring, and using wireless networking has become easier than ever. But to get the most out of wireless, there has to be an expert to guide through the transition. Wireless Networking Made Easy takes step-by-step through the entire process of choosing, setting up, and maintaining a wireless network, showing how to connect all the different devices that have come to depend on. Featuring a full listing of wireless networking online resources, as well as a special section on wireless broadband access, Wireless Networking Made Easy shows how to experience all the benefits of wireless networking. Mapping out the best and easiest way to achieve outstanding performance, this is the one book one needs to go wire-free. ISBN 0814471757 (pbk.): $26.95 (For use only in the AIRC) C/CH/M/ND / Tim Speed, Juanita Ellis. Digital Press, ©2003. 398 p. 005.8 SPE Internet Security incorporates not only the technology needed to support a solid security strategy but also those policies and processes that must be incorporated in order for that strategy to work. New methods of breaking into corporate networks are resulting in major losses. This book provides the latest information on how to guard against attacks and informs the IT manager of the products that can detect and prevent break-ins. Crucial concepts such as authentication and encryption are explained, enabling the reader to understand when and where these technologies will be useful. Due to the authors' experiences in helping corporations develop secure networks, they are able to include the newest methods for protecting corporate data. ISBN 1555582982: $44.99 C/ND(Ref) / Patricia Wallace. Cambridge University Press, 2004. 301 p. 004.67 WAL The workplace and the working lives are being transformed by the Internet and the netcentric innovations it has triggered. The impact may not be obvious from a quick glance at a typical office, but the Internet unleashed fundamental changes in how and when we work, how we relate to coworkers and employers, how managers monitor workers, and what kinds of work are still important to the value chain. Workers, from the mailroom clerk to the CEO, are learning new skills to succeed and remain employable in organizations moving on Internet time. We are learning how to capitalize on the power of netcentric technologies yet avoid the egregious blunders and traps that the net so dramatically amplifies. In The Internet in the Workplace: How New Technology is Transforming Work, Patricia Wallace shows how netcentric technologies touch every kind of workplace and everyone who works for a living and explores the challenges and dilemmas they create. ISBN 0521809312: $27.50 C/CH Thirteen contributions from academics and practitioners examine a wide range of threats to national and international security and assess the prospects for the next decade or two. Some of the factors considered include the proliferation of nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional weapons; the development of technologies such as genetic engineering; and the changing nature of the energy market. Brown is coeditor of the journal International Security. ISBN 0878401423: $25.00 C/CH/M (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2004) / Monte Palmer and Princess Palmer. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, ©2004. 293 p. 909 PAL This readable, deeply informed book examines the threat that Islamic extremists pose to the United States and provides a balanced discussion of Iraq as a test case of America's war on terrorism. Explaining the basics of Islam and guiding the reader through the intricacies of each significant extremist group, the Palmers answer key questions: Who are the jihadists and how do they fit within the broader context of the Islamic religion? What is their war plan and how do they operate? Who are their allies and what are their weaknesses? What is the experience of Israel, the Islamic world, and the United States in fighting Islamic extremists? Drawing on their thorough understanding of the culture and history of the Muslim world, the authors provide the only current analysis of the vulnerabilities of the jihadists, linking those weaknesses to concrete strategies to defeat them. The Palmers trace the movement far beyond Osama bin Laden and the now-splintering al Qaeda into a range of autonomous networks. They also offer detailed information on the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah, and other extremist groups attempting to achieve an Islamic state by more-or-less peaceful means and discuss the evolution of a vibrant Hizbullah organization in Iraq. The nuanced observations in this invaluable study pay tribute to the authors' thirty years of working with Middle Eastern organizations and conducting pioneering studies in the areas of Arab psychology and political behavior. The Palmers effectively combine an engaging writing style and extensive personal experience into an invaluable resource for both policy makers and general readers. ISBN 0742536025: $24.95 CH / Todd S. Purdum and the staff of the New York Times. Times Books/Henry Holt, 2003. 319 p. 956.70443 PUR It was a war like no other the United States had ever fought. It began with the bombing of Saddam Hussein's bunker and ended with statues of the Iraqi dictator being toppled in downtown Baghdad, and it marked a turning point in America's relations with its enemies, its allies, and its sense of itself. Yet most Americans experienced the war as impressionistic and often confusing - the story of one battle here, one unit there, a report from one city, then another, without the larger context we so urgently needed. Each reporter had his "slice" of the war, it seemed, but no one had the whole story or the broad view. A Time of Our Choosing fills that gap brilliantly, drawing on the resources and reportage of The New York Times. Todd S. Purdum, one of the paper's most gifted writers, traces the war in Iraq from the first rumblings after 9/11, to the diplomatic recriminations at the United Nations, to the battles themselves and their aftermath. He deftly rolls out the whole canvas, showing how the individual "slices" fit together into a single, gripping drama. As the war's narrative unfolds, Purdum also introduces us to the men and women who waged it. Finally, Purdum explores the complex legacy of America's near-unilateral action - in the Middle East, among our allies in Europe, and in the halls of power in Washington. President Bush has vowed that the United States would confront its enemies at "a time of our choosing," and Purdum shows in vivid terms what this choice has meant for America's transformed world. ISBN 0805075623: $25.00 CH The Civil War brought pressure on the Constitution that had never been seen before and hasn't been seen since, testing the document in much the same way as an engineer tests his materials to destruction to assess their structure. Did the South have the right to secede? Did Abraham Lincoln trample on the Bill of Rights? Can the president go to war without congressional approval? What is the nature of the Union, and what are the limits of states' rights? Forced to confront these issues during the Civil War, Lincoln ran squarely into the conflicts at the heart of American Constitution, conflicts that remain with them today. Daniel Farber's purpose in Lincoln's Constitution is to lead the reader to understand exactly what Lincoln did, what arguments he made in defense of his actions, and how his words and deeds fit into the context of the times. Farber sets the constitutional problems that arose during Lincoln's term within their historical moment, as illuminated by recent work by historians, and investigates how well Lincoln's views hold up today over a century later. The answers are crucial not only for a better understanding of the Civil War but also for shedding light on issues that the courts struggle with now: state sovereignty, presidential power, and national security limitations on civil liberties. The first comprehensive evaluation of Lincoln's legal legacy in over seventy-five years, Lincoln's Constitution is a marvelous blending of history and constitutional thought. Written for the general reader, its insights speak urgently to Americans as their nation again finds itself in a time of danger and the limits of constitutional law are once more being tested. ISBN 0226237931: $27.50 CH / Mike Godwin. Rev. and updated ed. MIT Press, ©2003. 402 p. 342.730853 GOD With an unusually broad view of free speech, lawyer and advocate Godwin, brings his opinions to bear on a slate of Net-related First Amendment cases and policy issues. Citing examples ranging from the landmark Compuserve ruling, in which the court found that an Internet service provider was akin to a bookstore and not a publisher in its culpability for disseminating offensive speech, to the LaMacchia incident, a software piracy case that was ultimately dismissed, Godwin argues for less government intervention, displaying a Panglossian view of the Net's potential. In doing so, he frames nicely some of the issues raised by the encounter of the 200-year-old Bill of Rights and the cutting-edge Internet. But through much of his book Godwin sounds defensive, and his polemics often trump nuanced analysis. By the time he gets to discussing the notorious Time magazine expose on cyberporn, criticizing the magazine for buying into hype, his arguments have become predictable - or flimsy, as when he implies that the Net poses no new risks with its dissemination of dangerous information, such as bomb-making instructions, because libraries have carried such information for years. Godwin's book is a thoughtful examination of an important subject, but its thoughts seem too often filtered through rose-colored screens. ISBN 0262571684 (pbk.): $18.75 ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas. M.E. Sharpe, ©2003. 520 p. REF 340.092 KLE Klebanow and Jonas have taken ten notable civil rights lawyers and written a lively, balanced account of their lives. Starting with the first female attorney to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court (Belva A. Lockwood in 1879) and ending with an attorney who has tackled the Ku Klux Klan (Morris Dees), the authors provide a chronology of each attorney's life, a well-footnoted biography, a description of selected cases, and an annotated bibliography. What distinguishes this collection is the authors' rich collection of anecdotes about their subjects. For example, they recount that William Kunstler came from an eccentric family, never made much money, and relished his role as "attorney for the despised." Similarly, Ralph Nader, bored to death at Harvard Law School, would slip off to Mexico, return with a deep tan, and cram for exams. Each chapter has a section that explains the subject's significance as a civil rights lawyer. The authors should be commended for bringing to life their ten favorite civil rights lawyers and explaining the significance of the major cases in which they were involved. ISBN 0765606739: $94.76 (For use only in the AIRC) CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) / Larry D. Kramer. Oxford University Press, 2004. 363 p. 342.73 KRA In this interpretation of America's founding and its concept of constitutionalism, Larry Kramer reveals how the first generations of Americans fought for and gave birth to a very different system from the current one and held a very different understanding of citizenship from that of most Americans today. "Popular sovereignty" was more than an empty abstraction, more than a mythic philosophical justification for government, and the idea of "the people" was more than a flip rhetorical gesture to be used on the campaign trail. Ordinary Americans exercised active control and sovereignty over their Constitution. The constitutionality of governmental action met with vigorous public debate in struggles whose outcomes might be greeted with celebratory feasts and bonfires, or with belligerent resistance. The Constitution remained, fundamentally, an act of popular will: the people's charter, made by the people. And it was "the people themselves" who were responsible for seeing that it was properly interpreted and implemented. ISBN 0195169182: $22.46 CH / Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. W.W. Norton & Co., ©2004. 365 p. 342.7308 OGL Fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional, Ogletree takes a confrontational look at the effects of the landmark decision on his own life as an African-American student and scholar and concludes that the Brown ruling ultimately failed to deliver on its promise of equality for all. By insisting that schools desegregate with "all deliberate speed," Ogletree argues that the court essentially told Southern school districts to "ignore the urgency on which the Brown lawyers insisted" and paved the way for decades of resistance to integration. He offers well-documented personal and historical examples to back up his arguments: the lack of quality schools and facilities available to minorities in his hometown of Merced, Calif. (he was two years old when the Brown decision was issued); his own experiences with affirmative action and the increasing legal challenges that have threatened it; and the profound impact of "white suburbanization" on efforts to desegregate urban areas. Ogletree, a protege of Thurgood Marshall, who served as lead counsel to Anita Hill in the U.S. Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, also provides some interesting-albeit sketchy-details on his initial reluctance to represent Hill and his own analyses of Thomas's pre and post-confirmation judicial opinions. Although the book occasionally bogs down in legal lingo, it offers readers an honest if fractured account of one man's firsthand experiences with one of the most significant court decisions of the 20th century and brings new insights into America's continuing struggle with race and integration. ISBN 0393058972: $25.95 C/CH/ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2004) / Anne-Marie Slaughter. Princeton University Press, ©2004. 341 p. 341.7 SLA Breaking new ground in international relations theory, Slaughter urges readers to lose their "conceptual blind spot" and see how the world really works. Scholars, pundits and policymakers, she writes, have traditionally seen nations as "unitary" - that is, as single entities that "articulate and pursue a single national interest." In fact, she says, we would do better to focus on government networks, both horizontal and vertical. Horizontal networks link counterpart national officials across borders, such as police investigators or financial regulators. Vertical networks are relationships between a nation's officials and some supranational organization to which they have ceded authority, such as the European Court of Justice. Networks, she says, are the solution to the "globalization paradox": The world needs global governance to combat problems that jump borders, like crime and environmental degradation, and yet most people fear - rightly, Slaughter implies - the idea of a centralized, all-powerful world government. The book both describes the here and now and plots a course for the future: Strengthening existing networks and developing new ones "could create a genuine global rule of law without centralized global institutions." The author is steeped in these issues and offers genuinely original thinking. Written in dense academic language, this book will not pick up many casual readers, but it will likely attain instant textbook status and generate much discussion about foreign policy and whether, as Slaughter believes, the U.S. should welcome such networks in a globalized world. ISBN 0691116989: $23.90 C/CH/ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2004) African American Literature is thematically arranged, comprehensive survey of African-American Literature. The unique thematic organization of the anthology allows for a concise and coherent assessment of African American literature. The thematic approach gives readers a better sense of the intertextuality that binds a literary tradition together rather than a chronological approach that organizes material strictly on the basis of an author's birth date. ISBN 0321113411: $32.95 ND / edited by Elaine B. Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson II. Southern Illinois University Press, ©2004. 309 p. 808 AFR Outlining African American rhetorics found in literature, historical documents, and popular culture, the collection provides scholars, students, and teachers with innovative approaches for discussing the epistemologies and realities that foster the inclusion of rhetorical discourse in African American studies. In addition to analyzing African American rhetoric, the contributors project visions for pedagogy in the field and address new areas and renewed avenues of research. The result is an exploration of what parameters can be used to begin a more thorough and useful consideration of African Americans in rhetorical space. African American Rhetoric(s) presents Reconstructionist, Black/African American, Nubian/Ancient Egyptian, and Afrocentric rhetorics. The scope of the volume is vast, yet the contributors are unified in finding connections between African American cultural understandings and current persuasive and negotiation strategies. The essays collectively work to reclaim topics that have shifted to other disciplines, and they also delineate debates about African American studies within rhetoric and composition and communications studies. The volume includes a foreword by Jacqueline Jones Royster and an introduction by Keith Gilyard. ISBN 0809325659: $53.95 ND / edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig. Facts on File, ©2004. 562 p. REF 812 FAC While both books give a broad view of the American theater, they have different strengths. The Oxford Companion is an extensive revision of the 1984 edition and is updated with about 700 entries on contemporary playwrights, performers, and plays, which brings the total to approximately 2600 entries. Both Bordman and Hischak have written extensively about the Broadway theater, particularly musicals, and their experience and interests are reflected in the text. The Oxford has many more entries on producers and individual performers (e.g., Bernadette Peters, Audra McDonald, and Ruby Dee have separate entries here but do not in The Facts on File Companion). The Facts on File Companion reflects the scholarly training of editor Bryer. There are fewer entries (600 total), and many of the articles run several columns with discussions of a particular title (e.g., discussions of Death of a Salesman and Mourning Becomes Electra are each almost three pages). ISBN 0816046654: $64.00 (For use only in the AIRC) CH/ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2004) / chronology and notes by Virginia C. Fowler. William Morrow, ©2003. 452 p. 811.54 GIO With the initially self-published Black Feeling Black Talk (1968) and the same year's Black Judgment, the then 25-year-old Giovanni helped take the Black Arts Movement to national prominence, including TV appearances, a top-selling spoken-word LP, and nine books (counting interviews and anthologies) in the next six years. Giovanni's fiery yet personal early voice struck many listeners as the authentic sound of black militancy: "This is a crazy country," one poem explained, "But we can't be Black/ And not be crazy"; White degrees do not qualify negroes to run The Black Revolution. The '70s saw Giovanni move toward more personal or private concerns: "touching was and still is and will always be the true revolution, she concluded in 1972, suggesting a few years later "We gulp when we realize. There are few choices in life. That are clear." This volume compiles not all Giovanni's poems but those of her first seven volumes, from Black Feeling to Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983), which introduced her later "lineless" style ("This is not a poem... this is hot chocolate at the beginning of spring"). Her outspoken advocacy, her consciousness of roots in oral traditions, and her charismatic delivery place her among the forebearers of present-day slam and spoken-word scenes. Virginia C. Fowler provides an ample and diligent introduction, chronology and notes to individual works. ISBN 0060541334: $24.95 C/CH (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / edited and with an introduction by Ted Solotaroff. HarperCollins Publishers, ©2003. 540 p. 810.9 KAZ Over the course of sixty years, Alfred Kazin's writings confronted virtually all of our major imaginative writers, from Emerson to Emily Dickinson to James Wright and Joyce Carol Oates - including such unexpected figures as Lincoln, William James, and Thorstein Veblen. This son of Russian Jews wrote out of the tensions of the outsider and the astute, outspoken leftist - or, as he put it, "the bitter patriotism of loving what one knows." Editor Ted Solotaroff has selected material from Kazin's three classic memoirs to accompany his critical writings. Alfred Kazin's America provides an ongoing example of the spiritual freedom, individualism, and democratic contentiousness that he regarded as his heritage and endeavored to pass on. ISBN 0066213436: $29.95 CH / Laurie F. Leach. Greenwood Press, 2004. 176 p. 818.5209 HUG This biography traces Hughes' life and artistic development, from his early years of isolation, which fostered his fierce independence, to his prolific life as a poet, playwright, lyricist, and journalist. Hughes' inspiring story is told through 21 engaging chapters, each providing a fascinating vignette of the artistic, personal, and political associations that shaped his life. Recounted are the pivotal developments in his literary career, with all its struggles and rewards, as well as his travel adventures to Africa, Europe, and Asia, and his political commitments to fight fascism as well as racism. ISBN 0313324972: $23.50 ND / Alison McGhee. Shaye Areheart Books, ©2003. 240 p. MCG William T. Jones, age 50, is barely going through the motions, trapped in the unspeakable hell unique to parents who outlive their children. After watching in helpless horror as a train kills his beloved only child, William J., he is fired from his job, and his wife, as ruined by suffocating sadness as her husband, moves in with her sister. Meanwhile, Sophie, William T.'s treasured daughter-in-law, seeks oblivion in the arms of a local carpenter. Nothing that William T. loved - not his land, not his friends, not the rhythms of nature's inevitable cycles - can break through the guilt that bleaches any shred of joy from his forever - altered heart. Here, McGhee revisits the setting of her magical novel Shadow Baby; many of the same characters in the Adirondacks community of North Sterns, NY, surround William T. in a gently desperate bid to pull him back from the abyss. Hypnotic, wrenching, and powerful in its promise of hope in the face of impossible grief, this book reveals McGhee's extraordinary gift for nuanced simplicity. ISBN 0609609785: $23.00 C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2002) / edited by Grace Schulman. Viking, 2003. 449 p. 811.52 MOO Pultizer Prize winner Moore published her Complete Poems in 1967. However, the title was far from accurate. In that collection Moore warned her readers that "omissions are not accidents," and she left out about half her poems. This edition finally brings Moore's complete oeuvre before the public, including 60 poems never before published. In the introduction, Schulman recounts how shocked she felt when Moore told her that she had cut her poem "Poetry" to only three lines. This edition includes five variants of that poem. The collection begins with a poem Moore wrote at age eight, "Dear St. Nicklus." Here is the complete poem: "This Christmas morn/ You do adorn/ Bring Warner a horn/ And me a doll/ That is all." The poems are arranged by date so that the reader can trace Moore's development as a writer. Also included are the author's original notes and 41 pages of editorial commentary. Well represented is Moore's renowned wit and lapidary style, as seen in this excerpt of "Critics and Connoisseurs": "I remember a swan under the willows in Oxford,/ with flamingo-colored, maple-/ leaflike feet. It reconnoitered like a battle-/ship." ISBN 0670031984: $40.00 CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) / Donald E. Morse. Praeger, 2003. 203 p. 813.54 VON This book is the first scholarly study to discuss all of Vonnegut's novels against the background of his other writing, events of the 20th century, and the vast array of Vonnegut scholarship. In his novels he speaks eloquently and succinctly for his generation of Americans - the central generation of 20th-century Americans - thus making him the representative 20th-century American writer. Morse discusses how Vennegut's novels reflect the major traumatic public and private events that have gone into imagining being an American during that century, including the Great Depression, World War II, the Bomb, Vietnam, the weakening of social institutions, the vicissitudes of marriage and family, divorce, growing old, experiencing loss, and anticipating death. ISBN 0313319146: $62.00 C/ND / Joyce Carol Oates. Ecco, ©2003. 158 p. 813.54 OAT Prolific novelist, playwright, and poet Oates has collected 12 previously published essays about the craft of writing, plus an interview regarding her novel Blonde. The topics covered range from coping with failure as an artist to the inspiration derived by reading others' writing. The award-winning writer draws insight from various writers' diaries, especially that of Virginia Woolf, regarding unsuccessful attempts at evaluating one's own writing. Although her intention is not to write an autobiography, she does incorporate personal anecdotes, particularly those about childhood readings, attending a one-room schoolhouse, and her in-home study. Except for the introduction and an initial half-page essay, no new material has been included in this collection. While this may disappoint some Oates fans, those desiring to know more about this versatile writer or those who aspire to write will find the essays instructive, albeit they are more general than those found in how-to-write manuals. ISBN 0060565535: $21.95 CH (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) / Mary Oliver. Da Capo Press, ©2004. 101 p. 818.54 OLI Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oliver is best known for her collections of poetry (e.g., The Leaf and the Cloud). She is also the author of A Poetry Handbook, one of the quintessential tools of encouragement, advice, and direction for the budding poet. In this arresting anthology of 17 essays and ten poems, similar in style to Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, Oliver takes her time word painting charmingly simple yet deeply enduring pictures of interactions among women and men, animals, and nature. She appears to etch each line with ease, which is the stamp of the professional, pointing out that prose is the softened, fleshy story, while poetry remains the stark revelation in writing. Each word touches the next, forming a virtual symphony of visuals. Daily tasks become touching rituals that define who Americans are, while the mundane is made sparkling, sometimes sharp, and even shattering yet never dull or lost owing to repetition. ISBN 0306809958: $22.00 ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2004) / Amy Tan. Putnam, ©2003. 398 p. 813.54 TAN Born into a family who believed in fate, Amy Tan has always looked for alternative ways to make sense of the world. And now, in The Opposite of Fate, her first book of nonfiction, she shares her thoughts on how she escaped the expectations and curses of her past, and created her own destiny. Amy Tan tells of her family, of the ghosts that inhabit her computer, of specters of illness, ski trips, the pliability of memory, rock and roll, and the twinned mysteries of faith and fate. Whether she is remembering arguments with her mother in suburban California, recounting trips to an outdoor market in Shanghai, or describing her love-hate relationship with the CliffsNotes edition of her first book, The Joy Luck Club, her recollections offer an intimate glimpse of a best-selling writer whose own life story is as magical and hopeful as her fiction. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her beloved novels, Amy Tan presents a refreshing antidote to the world-weariness and uncertainties we face today, contemplating how things happen - in her life and beyond - but always returning to the question of fate and its opposites: the choices, charms, influences, attitudes, and lucky accidents that shape us all. ISBN 0399150749: $24.95 CH / Henry D. Thoreau ; edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer. Yale University Press, ©2004. 370 p. REF 818.3 THO Henry Thoreau is considered, along with Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Nathaniel Hawthorne, as one of the leading figures in early American literature, and Walden is without doubt his most influential book. It recounts the author's experiences living in a small house in the woods around Walden Pond near Concord in Massachusetts. Thoreau constructed the house himself, with the help of a few friends, and one of the reasons why he moved into it was in an attempt to see if he could live independently and away from society. The result is an intriguing work that blends natural history with philosophical insights and includes many illuminating quotations from other authors. Thoreau's wooden shack has won a place for itself in the collective American psyche, a remarkable achievement for a book with such modest and rustic beginnings. ISBN 0300104669: $30.00 (For use only in the AIRC) CH / Kenneth W. Warren. University of Chicago Press, ©2003. 131 p. 818 WAR What would it mean to read Invisible Man as a document of Jim Crow America? Using Ralph Ellison's classic novel and many of his essays as starting points, Kenneth W. Warren illuminates the peculiar interrelation of politics, culture, and social scientific inquiry that arose during the post-Reconstruction era and persisted through the Civil Rights movement. Warren argues that Ellison's novel expresses the problem of who or what could represent and speak for the Negro in an age of limited political representation. So Black and Blue shows that Ellison's successful transformation of these limits into possibilities has also, paradoxically, cast a shadow on the post-segregation world. What can be the direction of African American culture once the limits that have shaped it are stricken down? Here Warren takes up the recent, ongoing, and often contradictory veneration of Ellison's artistry by black writers and intellectuals to reveal the impoverished terms often used in discussions about the political and cultural future of African Americans. Ultimately, by showing what it would mean to take seriously the idea of American novels as creatures of their moment, Warren questions whether there can be anything that deserves the label of classic American literature. ISBN 0226873803 (pbk.): $14.50; ISBN 0226873781 CH / Brenda Wineapple. Alfred A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 2003. 509 p. 813.3 HAW One of the great American writers of the 19th century never fully believed in his profession. For Nathaniel Hawthorne, writing was "a source of shame as much as pleasure and a necessity he could neither forgo nor entirely approve," says Wineapple (Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner). He uprooted his family again and again, shuttling between government jobs and the solitary writing life, never fully satisfied with either. His romances were brilliant and powerful, but his own life seemed muted and melancholy. Although he had an impressive set of friends and associates during his early years in New England, he nevertheless led a strikingly reclusive existence; he was neighbors with Emerson and Thoreau in Concord, Mass., classmates with Longfellow and Franklin Pierce at Bowdoin, and a good friend to Margaret Fuller and Herman Melville, but very little is made of these relationships. His friends and associates repeatedly described Hawthorne as enigmatic, a man who loved humanity in the abstract but not in its particulars. Wineapple, too, seems mystified by Hawthorne and his life, insecure about his motives. The biography assumes a reportorial style, presenting conflicting views (of his ambiguous friendship with Melville, of his mysterious death) without putting forth any pet theories or compelling evidence to sway the reader one way or the other. The final years of his life coincided with an incredibly tumultuous period in American history, the Civil War, and Wineapple describes how Hawthorne alienated many Northerners with his proslavery views. One critic described his politics as "pure intellect, without emotion, without sympathy, without principle" and that best captures the essence of Nathaniel Hawthorne as depicted in this biography. ISBN 0375400443: $30.00 C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / Anita L. Allen. Rowman & Littlefield, ©2003. 211 p. 303.3 ALL Allen examines how a liberal society can accommodate the competing demands of privacy and accountability in personal matters, concluding that the ways in which people practice accountability in daily life are flexible enough to accommodate egalitarian moral, legal, and social practices that are consistent with contemporary feminist reconstructions of liberalism. ISBN 0742514099 (pbk.): $22.95; ISBN 0742514080 C (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2003) / Allen D. Hertzke. Rowman & Littlefield, ©2004. 421 p. 261.7 HER Given unprecedented insider access, Allen D. Hertzke charts the rise of the faith-based movement for global human rights and tells the story of the personalities and forces, clashes and compromises, strategies and protests that shape it. In doing so, Hertzke shows that by bringing attention to issues like religious persecution, Sudanese atrocities, North Korean gulags, and sex trafficking, the movement influences American foreign policy and international relations in ways unimaginable a decade ago. ISBN 0742508048: $27.95 CH / Peter H. Schuck. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. 444 p. 305.8 SCH Peter H. Schuck explains how Americans have understood diversity, how we came to embrace it, how the government regulates it now, and how we can do better. He mobilizes a wealth of conceptual, historical, legal, political, and sociological analysis to argue that diversity is best managed not by the government but by families, ethnic groups, religious communities, employers, voluntary organizations, and other civil society institutions. Analyzing some of the most controversial policy arenas where politics and diversity intersect - immigration, multiculturalism, language, affirmative action, residential neighborhoods, religious practices, faith-based social services, and school choice - Schuck reveals the conflicts, trade-offs, and ironies entailed by America's commitment to the diversity ideal. He concludes with recommendations to help manage the challenge of diversity in the future. ISBN 0674010531: $35.00 CH/ND / Ian Shapiro. Yale University Press, ©2003. 289 p. 172 SHA Shapiro discusses the different answers that have been proposed by the major political theorists in the utilitarian, Marxist, and social contract traditions over the past four centuries. Showing how these political philosophies have all been decisively shaped by the core values of the Enlightenment, he demonstrates that each one contains useful insights that survive their failures as comprehensive doctrines and that should inform our thinking about political legitimacy. Shapiro then turns to the democratic tradition. Exploring the main arguments for and against democracy from Plato's time until our own, he argues that democracy offers the best resources for realizing the Enlightenment's promise and managing its internal tensions. As such, democracy supplies the most attractive available basis for political legitimacy. ISBN 0300079079: $24.00 CH Political scientists from Duke and Michigan State Universities analyze the results of the United States federal elections for 2000 and 2002. Utilizing voter survey and campaign result data collected since the 1940s, they place the contests within the context of general voting and campaign patterns in the country. Exploring voting behavior in general, they discuss voter demographics, attitudes towards issues and candidates, and party loyalties and preferences. That framework is then applied to the 2000 and 2002 presidential and congressional elections. ISBN 1568027427 (pbk.): $36.00 ND (Adapted from Book News, Inc., ©2003) / edited by Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy. Cambridge University Press, 2003. 754 p. 320.50904 CAM This major work of academic reference provides a comprehensive overview of the development of political thought from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, and is the concluding volume (chronologically) in the acclaimed Cambridge History of Political Thought series. Like its predecessors, this volume offers a state-of-the-art overview of current scholarship, written by a distinguished team of international experts. Every major theme in twentieth-century political thought is covered in a series of chapters of interest to students and scholars at all levels from beginning undergraduate upwards. ISBN 0521563542: $110.00 CH / edited by Robert Dahl, Ian Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Cheibub. MIT Press, ©2003. 556 p. REF 321.8 DEM The Democracy Sourcebook offers a collection of classic writings and contemporary scholarship on democracy, creating a book that can be used by undergraduate and graduate students in a wide variety of courses, including American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and political philosophy. The editors have chosen substantial excerpts from the essential theorists of the past, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the authors of The Federalist Papers; they place them side by side with the work of such influential modern scholars as Joseph Schumpeter, Adam Przeworski, Seymour Martin Lipset, Samuel P. Huntington, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen. In light of the ongoing war against terrorism, can the United States maintain its dedication to protecting civil liberties without compromising security? At stake is nothing less than whether the ideas associated with the modern period of political philosophy, the freedom of conscience, the inviolable rights of the individual to privacy, the constitutionally limited state, as well as the more recent refinement of late modern liberalism, multiculturalism, can survive. Contributors evaluate the need to reassess the nation's public policies, institutions, as well as its very identity. The struggle to persist as an open society in the age of terrorism will be the defining test of democracy in the twenty-first century. ISBN 0262042177: $75.00; ISBN 0262541475 (pbk.) (For use only in the AIRC) ND / Charles Lockhart. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 221 p. 320.6 LOC How is the United States different from other states? Why is it different? The Roots of American Exceptionalism draws on societies' unique histories, distinctive paths of institutional development and contrasting cultures to explain why they adopt different policies for common problems. It compares the United States with Sweden on tax policy, Canada on financing medical care, France on abortion policy, and Japan on immigration. The book shows that American public policies across these four areas fit a pattern of embodying the fundamental beliefs and value priorities of a particular culture: individualism. And while American public policies are rational from this cultural perspective, this culturally-constrained rationality is contrasted with alternative culturally-constrained rationalities, that are more egalitarian and/or hierarchical, prevailing in Sweden, Canada, France and Japan. ISBN 1403961964 (pbk.): $18.00; ISBN 1403961956 M / Jules Witcover. Random House, ©2003. 826 p. 324.2736 WIT Witcover has covered the American political scene for more than 50 years. In his latest book, he offers a comprehensive look at the evolution of the Democratic Party, from its origins in the earliest days of the Republic, through its many crises and mutations to remain an influential and balancing force in American government. Witcover shows that from Thomas Jefferson through William Jefferson Clinton, the Democratic Party has continually reinvented itself despite perpetual regional conflicts, surviving clashes over slavery, reconstruction, prohibition, racial strife, and various economic philosophies. He offers extensive biographical material on major and minor Democratic leaders while primarily focusing on the national party, especially presidential politics. Witcover relies on published historical, biographical, and news reporting sources, rather than primary source material, for the early historical periods and uses his personal experience and published material for events beginning in the 1950s. Although the book does not reveal new insights or uncover unknown intrigues or alliances, it remains consistent to the theme that throughout the party's 200-plus-year history, it has sought repeatedly to be the party of the "working masses, difficult to reach, more difficult to organize." ISBN 0375507426: $35.00 C/M/ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) Authors Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres have spent their careers asking questions, solving problems, and bringing fresh ideas to market. Illustrated with examples from every aspect of life, this book offers simple techniques for generating ingenious solutions to existing problems, and for applying existing solutions to new problems. In the spirit of Edward de Bono's Lateral Thinking, Why Not? helps to take the things we all see, every day, and think about them in a new way. Why not have telemarketers pay for time when they call? Why not sell a mortgage that automatically refinances when interest rates drop? Why not organize a "buycott" rather than a boycott? This book provokes into finding new business opportunities using everyday ingenuity. Great ideas are waiting. Why not be the one to discover them? ISBN 1591391539: $12.95 CH / W. James Potter. Pearson/Prentice Hall, ©2005. 183 p. 153.42 POT This book addresses the biggest issues facing those readers who are in a learning environment today: dealing with the flood of information in all courses and in the culture in general, and learning the most important information to do well in their endeavors. It shows readers how to become strategic thinkers, thereby enhancing efficiency in decision-making about accessing and processing information. The goal of this book is to help understand how one can think better, and the topics covered will help to reach that goal. It covers the eight skills necessary to become a strategic thinker: analysis, evaluation, induction, deduction, grouping, synthesis, abstracting, and persuasive expression. A book for anyone who wants to learn to better organize their thoughts and develop more efficient problem-solving techniques. ISBN 0131179837: $24.00 C/CH/M/ND Product excellence is no longer enough to sustain market dominance. Manufacturers in every industry have long known that there is simply no competitive advantage in mediocre offerings, so these days every assembly line is a model of consistency and a guarantor of well-crafted products. But what happens after the product goes out of the door? Does its quality last? Is reliability built in, and can the product withstand years of use, misuse, abuse, and torturous conditions? World Class Reliability gives a proven methodology for replicating a lifetime of wear and tear in a tiny fraction of the time, under completely controlled conditions. This authoritative guide to best reliability practices shows how to upgrade or replace current reliability program with a comprehensive testing program known as Multiple Environment Overstress Testing, or MEOST. "The beauty of MEOST," the authors state, "is its speed in generating failures." MEOST brings, both in sequence and in combination, an array of extreme conditions that will quickly expose any flaw in the product's design, manufacture, or assembly. Even the greatest quality assurance models are incomplete without a comprehensive life cycle testing program to expose the potential for field failures. World Class Reliability offers a thorough and applicable methodology for bringing a "zero tolerance" failure-proofing process into the design and manufacturing environments - paving the way to greater reliability, substantial financial savings, and a significantly stronger bottom line. ISBN 0814407927: $38.95 C/CH/M/ND / edited by Steven H. Strauss and H.D. (Toby) Bradshaw. Resources For the Future, ©2004. 245 p. 634.9 BIO Bioengineering offers many opportunities for forestry. Bioengineered trees can produce more valuable wood, help reclaim contaminated land, improve the health of urban trees, and facilitate pest management. But the ecological risks are complex, and public views about the ethical acceptability of genetic engineering vary widely. Unprecedented in its breath and diversity, The Bioengineered Forest begins with a survey of the range of forestry practices for which the use of biotechnologies might be appropriate. Scholars representing diverse academic perspectives and viewpoints examine in depth the economic and environmental rationale for forest biotechnologies, and the current state of technology with respect to gene performance and safety. They consider the contemporary political and economic environment in which bioengineering is being introduced, and where the "genomic revolution" might take forestry and genetic engineering in the future. The Bioengineered Forest presents compelling arguments in favor of genetic engineering. Just as powerfully, it examines the significant technical and legal hurdles involved in genetic engineering, undesirable environmental and social consequences that might result from its misapplication, and the risks for businesses that are looking for near-term benefits. ISBN 1891853716: $42.50 M In this scathing analysis of the history of racism in America, Asante divides the nation into two camps: a white majority who perceives America as a land of promise, and a black minority that is relegated to exist in a wilderness on the margins of society. Asante, the chair of African-American studies at Temple University and a proponent of Afro-centrism, lays out a non-linear history of racial matters in America, weaving the 17th century arrival of the first indentured African servants with the Los Angeles race riots of 1992 and his own experiences as a black man in America. The key to bridging the racial divide, he argues, lies in getting all Americans to understand and confront the history of slavery. Otherwise, the gap will remain open and the significance of all subsequent racial injustices, from lynchings to police profiling, is lost. Asante can be sketchy in some of his examples of headline-making events involving race (including the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, for instance). Whether one agrees with him or not, however, he backs many of his harsh accusations with tough questions, carefully crafted solutions and engaging personal anecdotes. In the end, anyone who has struggled to understand race relations in America or to engage others in open debate about it will glean something valuable from this book. ISBN 1591020697: $25.00 C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / Wally Lamb and the women of York Correctional Institution. ReganBooks, ©2003. 350, [2] p. 810.8 COU At the urgent request of the librarian at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut, Lamb (She's Come Undone) organized a writing class for incarcerated women. The intention was to make writing a coping tool that might counter an epidemic of despair at the prison. The 12 pieces in this volume are the best of the students' efforts, and as efforts they are noteworthy, offering memoirs of childhood and acute observations about prison life. In "Three Steps Past the Monkeys," Nancy Birkla chronicles her dependence on drugs by describing her early dependence on candy. In "Christmas in Prison," Robin Cullen describes a congregation at a prison church service as "a rainbow of skin tones, their chocolate, honey vanilla, and raspberry ripple-colored hair topped with crocheted red scrunchies that sit like cherries atop ice cream parlor hairdos." All in all, the volume represents good student writing and a success from everyone's point of view. ISBN 006053429X: $24.95 ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2003) / Joyce D. Duncan. ABC-CLIO, ©2004. REF 306.483 DUN Even those who aren't sports fans can't deny how much sport is a part of our culture. Thus, it comes as no surprise that much, often of a scholarly nature, has been written on the subject. This book's encyclopedic format-featuring more than 400 short articles from approximately 150 contributors-makes it perfectly accessible to lay readers. Editor Duncan has amassed entries ranging from Wild West Shows to National Basketball Association and from Babe Ruth to Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Why is there an article about Bear Bryant and not Adolph Rupp? Why the Indianapolis 500 but not the Kentucky Derby? Perhaps the biggest question might be in regard to the currency of the articles: the one on professional wrestling alludes to Vince McMahon's Extreme Football League, which folded in 2001; and the one on Michael Jordan gives his retirement date as 1999, whereas he came out of retirement to play two more seasons before quitting most recently in 2003. Nevertheless, an amazing range of individuals and subjects is covered here. Bottom Line This fun and thought-provoking resource offers an extensive bibliography for further study. ISBN 1576070247: $85.00; ISBN 1851095594 (e-book) (For use only in the AIRC) C/CH/M/ND (Adapted from Library Journal, ©2005) / Gail Sheehy. Random House, ©2003. 412 p. 974.7 SHE With nearly 50 victims, the commuter hamlet of Middletown, N.J., and its environs suffered the "largest concentrated death toll" on September 11 of anyplace in America. A "town with no middle," Middletown consists of affluent financiers and working-class police officers and firefighters - two groups that were hit particularly hard in the attacks. Bestselling author Sheehy (Passages; Hillary's Choice; etc.), who spent almost two years observing the residents' reactions to the staggering loss, explores how this high-end suburb, for which the closest thing to a social fabric was a ferocious sensitivity to social status, dealt with the tragedy. Sheehy ignores governmental machinations in order to describe the welter of emotions ordinary Americans experienced. The enemy of clich is detail and - Sheehy's months in the town yield subtle, detailed portraits that confound easy images of "strength" or "denial" (although those are also present). Sheehy implicitly critiques modern American life: any salutary community bonding suggests a prior lack of cohesion, just as the emphasis on financial assistance tends to obscure more fundamental psychological needs. In a community filled with "prefeminist" housewives, "loss of self" became a substantial problem - who am I, if not this or that victim's spouse? Fortunately, in addition to the considerable generosity the town evinced, survivors were able to form an "intentional family" united by grief. One sometimes hears that everyone "knows" what happened on September 11. This admirable book tells precisely the stories we could stand to hear more about. ISBN 0375508627: $25.95 CH (Adapted from Publishers Weekly, ©2003) / edited by Melissa Walker, Jeanette R. Dunn, and Joe P. Dunn. University of Missouri Press, ©2003. 243 p. 305.4 SOU This collection of essays by eight scholars of southern women's history traces the evolution of southern women's lives during the twentieth century. Throughout this era, southern life, and in particular the opportunities for southern women, changed dramatically as southern women have taken leadership roles in business, government, education and social programs. The essayists employ a variety of approaches, ranging from case studies to historical overviews, but they all carefully place the developments in southern women's lives in a national context. Most important, each author seeks to understand the nature of change in these women's lives over the last century and to forecast the course of their lives in the future. ISBN 082621505X: $44.00 M