july05c.indd


George M. Eberhart N e w  P u b l i c a t i o n s  

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African 
and African American Experience, edited 
by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Lou­
is Gates Jr. (5 vols., March 2005), updates, 
corrects, and massively expands the fi rst, 
single­volume edition of 1999 with new bi­
ographies, many topical essays, and an ex­
panded scope that encompasses more of the 
African diaspora in the Americas. This set 
must come close to the vision that historian 
and activist W. E. B. Du Bois had in 1909 of 
an Encyclopedia Britannica for people of Af­
rican descent. Africana contains entries for 
most countries of the world, with a detailed 
history, description, and achievements of 
their black populations, often accompanied 
by maps showing political subdivisions. The 
editors include a much­needed index in the 
fifth volume and have scattered major essays 
(called “interpretations”) throughout the text 
on such topics as Islam, race, blacks in Latin 
America, AIDS, and African religions. There 
are many entries for music genres (from 
ragtime and blues to bebop and rap) and 
even descriptions of significant African ani­
mals from aardvarks to zebras. An excellent 
resource for all academic libraries. $525.00. 
Oxford University. ISBN 0­19­517055­5. 

The Atlas of the Civil War, by Steven E. 
Woodworth and Kenneth J. Winkle (400 
pages, March 2005), offers a nice carto­
graphic overview of campaigns and battles, 
enhanced with concise text descriptions and 
well­chosen illustrations. The maps are ex­
cellent and easily interpretable by anyone 
without a military background. An oversize 
format, 10 by 13.75 inches. $85.00. Oxford 
University. ISBN 0­19­522131­1. 

Baseball before We Knew It: A Search for 
the Roots of the Game, by David Block (340 
pages, January 2005), thoroughly examines 

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

the confusing protohistory of baseball and 
its bat­and­ball predecessors. Not content 
with merely demolishing the credibility of 
Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown once 
again, Block discerns baseball’s true ori­
gins in a British children’s game of the early 
18th century. Masterfully researched and 
extraordinarily well­documented, this book 
includes an invaluable 60­page, chronologi­
cal bibliography of baseball mentions from 
1450 to 1861. Other extras include a list of 
constitutions and bylaws of pre­Civil War 
baseball clubs and nine surviving descrip­
tions of baseball­like games written and 
published before 1845. $29.95. University of 
Nebraska. ISBN 0­8032­1339­5. 

A British Eyewitness at the Battle of New Or­
leans, edited by Gene A. Smith (150 pages, De­
cember 2004), contains the annotated memoirs 
of Royal Navy Admiral Robert Aitchison from 
1808 to 1827. Although the title makes it sound 
like this is a thorough account, Aitchison actu­
ally missed much of the 1814 battle because 
he was only serving as a valet. However, his 
manuscript is a centerpiece of the Historic New 
Orleans Collection and offers rare insights into 
the Napoleonic era as well as the flora and fau­
na of Louisiana, New England, Canada, Cuba, 
and Bermuda, where he went on his travels. 
Accompanied by numerous engravings, maps, 
and color plates. $15.95. Historic New Orleans 
Collection. ISBN 0­917860­50­X. 

Degunking Your PC, by Joli Ballew and 
Jeff Duntemann 
(370 pages, March 
2005), offers practi­
cal advice on get­
ting rid of com­
p u t e r ­ r e l a t e d  
clutter. Common 
signs of “gunk” 
in an academic 
setting include 
too many periph­

July/August 2005  539 C&RL News 

mailto:geberhart@ala.org


erals, out­of­control cabling, outdated hard­
ware, dust and dirt, disorganized backups, 
and slow performance. This guide shows 
how to configure your work area, degunk 
your components and peripherals, untangle 
USB and FireWire connections, create both 
wired and wireless networks, launch an ef­
ficient backup strategy, and enhance PC and 
media performance. Running on a different 
platform? Paraglyph Press also has Degunk­
ing Linux (June 2005), Degunking Your Mac 
(June 2004), and Degunking Your Mac, Ti­
ger Edition (June 2005) in the same series. 
$24.99. Paraglyph. ISBN 1­933097­03­5. 

Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counter­
intelligence, edited by Rodney P. Carlisle 
(776 pages, 2 vols., January 2005), takes a 
geographically inclusive approach to espio­
nage, with articles on spying in most mod­
ern nations by 72 contributors. Former CIA 
Director Robert M. Gates and former KGB 
Officer Oleg D. Kalugin wrote two differ­
ent forewords. Entries include individuals 
(Anthony Blunt, George Tenet), operations 
(Cointelpro, Operation Ivy Bells), wars (Eliz­
abethan era, Iraq War 2003), organizations 
(Secret Service, Homeland Security), and 
methods (cryptography, signals intelligence, 
spy planes). $199.00. M. E. Sharpe. ISBN 0­
7656­8068­8. 

The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia, edited by 
Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos and Stephen 
J. Adams (342 pages, April 2005), encom­
passes the life, influences, and writings of 
this controversial American modernist poet 
who flirted with fascism in the 1930s but 
pioneered the use of free verse in extended 
compositions and was a major infl uence on 
Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Moore, Frost, and other 
poets. This volume provides 265 entries 
written by more than 100 contributors and 
an extensive bibliography. $125.00. Green­
wood. ISBN 0­313­30448­3. 

The Freedom of the Streets, by Sharon E. 
Wood (321 pages, April 2005), investigates 
the problems of working women—both 

prostitutes as well as 
those more respect­
ably employed—in 
Davenport, Iowa, 
during the Gilded 
Age. Post­Civil War 
industrialization al­
lowed women to 
take up paid em­
ployment as a path 
to political and so­
cial independence. 
Wood chose Davenport as typical of many 
American cities of similar size where wom­
en’s reform attempts were thwarted at the 
local level by men with differing views of 
sexuality and political power. Middle­class 
women who entered the work force faced 
the prevailing conviction that employment 
disrupted domestic stasis and that wage­
earners were little better than the prosti­
tutes who often worked a block or two 
away from respectable businesses. Wood 
also takes a close look at the Lend a Hand 
Club that working women joined, the rea­
sons why local women turned to prostitu­
tion, civic efforts to regulate the brothels, 
and the reformatories that attempted to 
civilize wayward girls. $59.95. University 
of North Carolina. ISBN 0­8078­2939­0. 

A Guide to Slavic Collections in the United 
States and Canada, edited by Allan Urbanic 
and Beth Feinberg (198 pages, January 2005), 
describes 85 libraries in North America that 
own significant Slavic and East European 
research materials. Contact information for 
each is provided, along with online catalog 
Web sites and access policies. Published si­
multaneously as Volume 5, Number 3–4, of 
Haworth’s Slavic and East European Infor­
mation Resources. $19.95. Haworth. ISBN 
0­7890­2250­8. 

For Africanists, Haworth’s Research, 
Reference Service, and Resources for the 
Study of Africa, edited by Deborah M. 
LaFond and Gretchen Walsh (299 pages, 
January 2005), offers eight essays on Afri­
can studies in the United States and library 

C&RL News July/August 2005  540 



collaboration and innovation in Africana 
collection development and information re­
sources. Also published as Numbers 87–88 
of The Reference Librarian. $39.95. ISBN 0­
7890­2509­4. 

Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the 
World Dictionary, edited by Helene Hen­
derson (906 pages, 3rd ed., March 2005), 
is a major reworking of the 1997 edition 
with 75 additional pages, more than 400 
new entries, an expanded section on calen­
dar systems, a perpetual calendar for 1583– 
2080, and e­mail addresses and Web sites 
for many events. There is a surfeit of fetes 
here for everyone to celebrate, including 
the Reindeer Driving Competition in Fin­
land, the Red Waistcoat Festival in Portu­
gal, Gambia Independence Day, the Black 
Cowboys Parade in Oakland, the Song of 
Hiawatha Pageant in Minnesota, and the 
National Hollerin’ Contest in North Caro­
lina. With many appendices, notably legal 
holidays by state and country, chronologi­
cal indexes of fixed and movable holidays, 
and special subject indexes. $110.00. Om­
nigraphics. ISBN 0­7808­0422­8. 

Military Tribunals and Presidential Power: 
American Revolution to the War on Terror­
ism, by Louis Fisher (279 pages, February 
2005), takes a comprehensive legal look at 
the military tribunals created by the United 
States that operated either in this country 
or abroad, with a particular emphasis on 
the breadth of presidential powers during 
wartime. Fisher starts with the Articles of 
War enacted by the Continental Congress 
in 1775 and winds up with the Bush ad­
ministration’s actions against al Qaeda and 
Taliban terrorists and its designation of cer­
tain U.S. citizens (Yaser Esam Hamdi and 
Jose Padilla) as “enemy combatants.” The 
author argues that, as judicial proceedings 
created and administered by the executive 
branch, tribunals represent an aberration 
of the constitutional balance of powers. 
$35.00. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0­
7006­1375­7. 

The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Po­
tomac, by Josephine F. Pacheco (307 pages, 
February 2005), describes the nature of slav­
ery in the District of Columbia, where the 
slave trade was not prohibited until 1850 
and the institution not abolished until 1862, 
only nine months before the Emancipation 
Proclamation. Slave labor helped build the 
U.S. Capitol, the White House, and the Trea­
sury building, and slaves were often rented 
out for work in the Washington Navy Yard. 
Pacheco takes as a focal point the Pearl inci­
dent of 1848, in which two white watermen 
hid 76 fugitive slaves on a schooner they had 
leased and tried to take them up the Chesa­
peake Bay to freedom. However, they were 
apprehended by a posse of slaveowners as 
they lay anchored at the mouth of the Po­
tomac waiting for favorable winds. Most of 
the runaways were given to slave dealers 
who sold them to buyers in the Deep South. 
The incident inspired the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher to take up the antislavery cause. 
$29.95. University of North Carolina. ISBN 
0­8078­2918­8. 

West Virginia Tough Boys, by F. Keith Davis 
(254 pages, November 2003), recounts the 
little­known story of the rough­and­tumble, 
old­style, back­room electioneering that re­
sulted in John F. Kennedy winning the West 
Virginia primary in 1960. As much an exami­
nation of life in Appalachia in the mid­20th 
century as a political memoir, Davis’s inter­
views and conversations with the former old­
boy Democratic bosses in Logan County— 
who engaged in some questionable methods 
for getting out the vote—are a rich mine 
of local color and country culture. $29.95. 
Woodland Press. ISBN 0­9724867­2­0. 

Another Woodland Press title is The 
Tale of the Devil: The Biography of Devil 
Anse Hatfield, by Coleman C. Hatfi eld 
and Robert Y. Spence (320 pages, August 
2003), which centers on the Hatfi eld­Mc­
Coy feud of 1882–1890 and the leader of 
one faction, William Anderson Hatfi eld, 
the coauthor’s great­grandfather. $29.95. 
ISBN 0­9724867­1­2. 

July/August 2005  541 C&RL News