October 2006

After collapse; the regeneration of complex societies; edited by Glenn M. Schwartz and John J. Nichols. The University of Arizona Press 2006 289p $50.00
ISBN 008165-2509-9; LC 2005-28813
Encompassing the regions of the Near East, East Asia, the Aegean, Mesoamerica, and the Andes, this collection of essays explores the reemergence of early complex urban societies and how they resembled or differed from the ones that preceded them.

Continuity and change in Canadian politics; essays in honour of David E. Smith; edited by Hans J. Michelmann and Cristine de Clercy. University of Toronto Press 2006 273p $55.00
ISBN 0-8020-9060-5
An assessment of contemporary Canadian government and politics addressing such topics as the senior civil service, the impact of NAFTA, Aboriginal self-government, citizenship and immigration policies, federal-provincial relations, and Smith’s impact on political studies in western Canada.

Crosscurrents: transatlantic perspectives on early modern Hispanic drama; edited by Mindy Badia and Bonnie L. Gasior. Bucknell Univ. Press 2006 175p $44.50
ISBN 0-8387-5622-0; LC 2005-45681
Contributors explore the effects of Spanish imperialism in the New World upon sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish and Latin American literature.

Earle, Peter G.
The writer’s experience; essays on self and circumstance in the Hispanic literatures. Bucknell Univ. Press 2006 183p $43.50
ISBN 0-8387-5660-3; LC 2006-767
Octavio Paz, Perez Galdos, Ortega y Gasset, Cervantes, Jose Marti, and Jorge Luis Borges are among the writers studied in this examination of the writer’s function in Spain and Hispanic America.

Edmund Spenser: new and renewed directions; edited by J. B. Lethbridge. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press 2006 385p $55.00
ISBN 0-8386-4066-4; LC 2006-42863
This collection of essays explores Spenser’s poetry, life, and thought with particular attention given to his moral and religious commitments, the technique of his rhymes, and medieval aspects of structure and organization in his works.

Fair philosopher; Eliza Heywood and The female spectator; edited by Lynn Marie Wright and Donald J. Newman. Bucknell Univ. Press 2006 (The Bucknell studies in eighteenth-century literature and culture) 252p $55.00
ISBN 0-8387-5636-0; LC 2005-30316
Contributors discuss how Haywood’s writing shaped women’s experiences in the eighteenth century in response to social, economic, political, and literary issues.

Holland, Norman N.
Meeting movies. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press 2006 201p $41.50
ISBN 0-8386-4099-0; LC 2005-32356
Through personal memories and associations, the author offers interpretations on such films as Casablanca, Vertigo, The seventh seal, Persona, Children of paradise, John Huston’s Freud, 8 ½, and Shakespeare in love.

“In the open”; Jewish women writers and British culture; edited by Claire M. Tylee. University of Del. Press 2006 272p $48.50
ISBN 0-87413-933-3; LC 2005-37717
Essays examine the various ways such writers as Anita Brookner, Naomi Jacob, Denise Levertov, Mina Loy, Bernice Rubens, Lynne Reid Banks, and Diane Samuels tackle issues of marriage, motherhood, sisterhood, female relationships, as well as the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in their works.

The Kantian legacy in nineteenth-century science; edited by Michael Friedman and Alfred Nordmann. The MIT Press 2006 370p $45.00
ISBN 0-262-06254-2; LC 2005-58035
Historians of philosophy, science, and mathematics assess the link between Kant’s philosophical ideas and discoveries in the natural and mathematical sciences during the nineteenth century, and how those scientific developments influenced the science of the twentieth century.

Leonard, David J.
Screens fade to black; contemporary African American cinema. Praeger Pubs. 2006 217p $49.95
ISBN 0-275-98361-7; LC 2006-3336
Discussing the current state of African American cinema and its various genres, the author examines issues of class, racial stereotypes, racial progress, capitalism, and the American Dream. Antwone Fisher, Training day, Love and basketball, Good fences, Brown sugar, and Dumline are among the films surveyed.

Madden, David
Touching the web of southern novelists. The University of Tennessee Press 2006 258p $37.00
ISBN 1-57233-463-0; LC 2005-25947
In this exploration of the southern literary tradition, the author offers analyses of works by William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Carson McCullers, Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Gaines, and James Agee, among others.

Magida, Arthur J.
Opening the doors of wonder; reflections on religious rites of passage. University of California Press 2006 294p $24.95
ISBN 0-520-24545-8; LC 2006-7729
Comparing the coming-of-age ceremonies of such figures as Elie Wiesel, Deepak Chopra, Cat Stevens, Julia Sweeney, Huston Smith, and Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author explicates the underlying theologies of Jewish bar and bat mitzvahs, Christian confirmations, Muslim shahadas, Hindu sacred thread ceremonies, and Zen jukai ceremonies.

Mendelson, Edward
The things that matter; what seven classic novels have to say about the stages of life. Pantheon Bks.
2006 260p $23.00
ISBN 0-375-42408-3; LC 2006-43155
The author examines the ways such novels as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Mrs. Dalloway, and To the lighthouse portray such passages of life as childhood, love, marriage, and parenthood.

Nelson, Nicolas H.
The pleasure of poetry; reading and enjoying British poetry from Donne to Burns. Praeger Pubs. 2006 267p $49.95
ISBN 0-275-99137-7; LC 2006-9799
Considering works by such seventeenth- and eighteenth-century figures as Jonson, Donne, Milton, Marvell, Dryden, Swift, and Pope, the author explains themes, devices, styles, language, sound, tone, imagery, and meaning.

Ozick, Cynthia
The din in the head. Houghton Mifflin 2006 243p $24.00
ISBN 0-618-47050-6; LC 2005-16102
The author offers her thoughts on writings by such figures as Leo Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Helen Keller, Isaac Babel, Sylvia Plath, and Susan Sontag.

Race, religion, region; landscapes of encounter in the American West; edited by Fay Botham and Sara M. Patterson. The University of Arizona Press 2006 190p $40.00
ISBN 0-8165-2478-5; LC 2005-33745
Essays explore the influence of ethnicity upon religious and regional identity in the American West through studies of various communities of different races and religions.

Reading Plato in antiquity; edited by Harold Tarrant and Dirk Baltzly. Duckworth 2006 268p $90.00
ISBN 0-7156-3455-0
Essays assess how ancient scholars read and interpreted Plato between 100 BC and AD 600. Hayden W. Ausland, Luc Brisson, John J. Cleary, Lloyd Gerson, Dirk Baltzly, and Harold Tarrant are among the contributors.

Readings in African American language; aspects, features, and perspectives, vol. 2; edited by Nathaniel Norment, Jr. Peter Lang 2005 (African American literature and culture: expanding and exploding the boundaries) 310p pa $32.95
ISBN 0-8204-7870-9; LC 2002-22986
Scholars explore various aspects of African American language, including its origins and cultural roots; the effects of social, psychological, and educational factors, codeswitching, and the writing performance of African American students.

Remnick, David
Reporting: writings from The New Yorker. Knopf 2006 483p $27.95
ISBN0-307-26358-4; LC 2005-44709
In this compilation of articles culled from over the last fifteen years, the author covers such topics and figures as Katherine Graham and the state of American newspapers, the decline and fall of Mike Tyson,
Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Al Gore in the aftermath of his loss in the 2000 election, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s return to Russia.

Robert Bloomfield: lyric, class, and the Romantic canon; edited by Simon White, John Goodridge, and Bridget Keegan. Bucknell Univ. Press 2006 315p $58.50
ISBN 0-8387-5629-8; LC 2005-36295
Contributors investigate the popularity of Bloomfield’s poetry with the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century reading audience. Special focus is given to particular themes that dominate his major works.

Screening world cinema; the screen reader; edited by Catherine Grant and Annette Kuhn. Routledge 2006 228p $110.00, pa $33.95
ISBN 0-415-38428-1; 0-415-38429-X; LC 2005-29278
Themes addressed in this collection of essays include modernity and modernization, the problem of defining ‘world cinema,’ globalization, and the various modes of melodrama in films from Turkey, Iran, China, and India.

Seeing high & low; representing social conflict in American visual culture; edited by Patricia Johnston. University of Calif. Press 2006 308p $65.00, pa $29.95
ISBN 0-520-24187-8; 0-520-24188-6; LC 2005-23951
Scholars of American art explore the evolution of visual culture in the United States through fifteen case studies, with special focus given to the influence of such art forms as sculpture, photographs, museum exhibitions, architecture, graphic arts, and landscape painting. Harper’s Weekly illustrations, Anheuser-Busch ads, Craftsman chairs, and American Indian handicrafts are among the subjects studied.

Vale of tears; new essays on religion and Reconstruction; edited by Edward J. Blum and W. Scott Poole. Mercer Univ. Press 2005 265p $49.95, pa $25.00
ISBN 0-86554-962-1; 0-86554-987-7; LC 2005-20707
Contributors present various perspectives on how Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction period made sense of the war, freedom, the Union, identity, loyalty, and valor based on their religious beliefs and practices.

When we were young; new perspectives on the art of the child; edited by Jonathan Fineberg. University of Calif. Press 2006 289p $60.00, pa $34.95
ISBN 0-520-25042-7; 0-520-25043-5; LC 2006-12107
Featuring drawings by ordinary children, as well as by such famous artists as Picasso, Van Gogh, Miro, Homer, and Klee when they were children, this chronology encompasses the literature and history of child art from the thirteenth century to the present.

The Worlds of S. An-sky; a Russian Jewish intellectual at the turn of the century; edited by Gabriella Safran and Steven J. Zipperstein. Stanford Univ. Press 2006 542p $70.00, pa $27.95
ISBN 0-8047-4527-7; 0-8047-5344-X; LC 2005-32415
This comprehensive examination of An-sky’s life and works includes photographs culled fron archives in the former Soviet Union and an English translation of an early Russian draft of The Dybbuk.