nov05c.indd George M. Eberhart N e w P u b l i c a t i o n s A Bloomsday Postcard, by Niall Murphy (322 pages, November 2005), offers a unique celebration of James Joyce and the fi ctitious events in his novel Ulysses, which took place in Dublin on June 16, 1904. One hundred years ago, sending postcards was an essential, cheap, and reliable form of communica­ tion that many Dub­ liners engaged in. Murphy has amassed a collection of some 1,600 postcards, now housed at the National Library of Ireland, that were postmarked in Dublin in 1904, four of them on Bloomsday itself. The cards brilliantly illustrate this summary of the Ulysses narrative, and some of the messages on the back—writ­ ten by people who wandered Dublin streets side by side with Stephen Dedalus and Leop­ old Bloom—eerily mirror events in the novel. Included are some postcards of the National Library itself, which features prominently in the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode. $69.95. Lilliput Press; distributed by Dufour Editions. ISBN 1­84351­050­2. Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators, by Kenneth D. Crews (141 pages, 2d ed., August 2005), updates the author’s 2000 work and provides a greater emphasis on music, online networks, and changes in the law of fair use. One fair­use change involves the 2002 TEACH Act, which allows educators to use protected works in distance education without risk of infringement. Appendices include selected provisions from the U.S. Copyright Act, a checklist for fair use, and a model letter for permission requests. $45.00. ALA Editions. ISBN 0­8389­0906­X. George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, e-mail: geberhart@ala.org Cultural Programming for Libraries: Linking Libraries, Communities, and Culture, by Deborah A. Robertson (107 pages, June 2005), offers suggestions for funding, planning, de­ veloping, marketing, and presenting library programs with a cultural focus to a variety of audiences. Robertson, director of ALA’s Public Programs Office, does not focus solely on public libraries, but gives some examples of successful programs in university settings. $35.00. ALA Editions. ISBN 0­8389­3551­6. Green Weenies and Due Diligence, by Ron Sturgeon (305 pages, October 2005), defi nes some 1,200 business terms used in the board rooms and back offices of corporations, in­ vestment firms, banks, and insurance agen­ cies. Sturgeon has di­ vided the book into two parts, the fi rst containing whimsi­ cal jargon, and the second a more tradi­ tional business glos­ sary. Of course, part one is more fun, with definitions of such phrases as “throw in some Ginsu knives,” “testosterone poisoning,” “bend over here it comes again (BOHICA),” and “lipstick on a pig.” But what makes this book unique are artist Gahan Wilson’s playfully grotesque car­ toon drawings that accompany many of the definitions. You might imagine what he does with “green weenie” (an unpleasant surprise), the term that inspired entrepreneur Sturgeon to begin this opus. $28.95. Mike French Pub­ lishing. ISBN 0­9717031­1­6. Monuments to Money: The Architecture of American Banks, by Charles Belfoure (348 pages, September 2005), looks at the evolu­ tion of bank architecture in the United States from 1781 to the 21st century. Once as impor­ tant a centerpiece as churches in American November 2005 743 C&RL News mailto:geberhart@ala.org 25 Years of publications Mount St. Helens had blown its top in May, the Iran hostage crisis was a thorn in America’s side, the Red Army was occupying Kabul, and Ronald Reagan was asking us if we were better off than we were four years ago. It was November 1980, and I had just come to ACRL as C&RL News editor where one of my duties was writing this publica­ tions column. It must have been to my liking, because I have been writing it ever since. I thought I’d take this quarter­century anniversary to point out how the column has evolved. College & Research Libraries had offered a “Book Reviews” section since its second issue in March 1940, but the edi­ tors were always receiving notices of other interesting monographs, many published by libraries rather than commercial concerns. These tended to get a short paragraph in the “News from the Field” section of the journal, which began with the fi rst issue in December 1939. The column’s first appearance as a semi­ distinct entity was in the July 1946 issue, when editors Carl White and Maurice Tauber decided to abandon the section’s geographic arrangement (East, Middle West, South, etc.), and use such subject headings as Collec­ tions, Buildings, Exhibits, and Publications, though still under the “News from the Field” umbrella. The first Publications listing was for the new Newsletter of ACRL’s Junior Col­ lege Libraries Section. This arrangement was inherited by C&RL News in March 1966, when editor David Kaser split the news and classifi ed ad portions off as a separate periodical (called a Supplement at first). As the number of listings increased and the descriptions got wordier, news editor John V. Crowley liber­ ated the publication notices from “News from the Field” in the February 1977 issue and made the column independent.The fi rst listing was for the Journal of Library His­ tory, which was getting transferred to the University of Texas Press. The March 1977 issue saw the division of the column into two sections:“Notices,” which consisted of mini­reviews of up to four paragraphs; and “Received,” contain­ ingshorter mentions of books that pub­ lishers had sent to C&RL for full­review consideration.This was the setup that the fi rst in­house C&RL News editor, program assistant Jeffrey T. Schwedes (who was working on his MLS at the University of Chicago), continued when he arrived in time for the March 1979 issue. And so did I, for awhile. Although the first issue I worked on as C&RL News edi­ tor was October 1980, I allowed the books to stack up a bit and let loose with my fi rst reviews in November.The fi rst listing was for the University of Central Florida’s bibliography of Acid Rain (some of which might have been caused by that Mount St. Helens eruption I mentioned earlier). I began giving the column a goofy­look­ ing clip­art graphic in the February 1983 issue and continued writing the Notices while the C&RL review editor supplied the Receiveds. This lasted until some time in 1984, when the latter section was dropped. Although my last issue as C&RL News editor was October 1990, incoming editor Mary Ellen Davis graciously let me stay on as volunteer columnist. (Besides, I had a big backlog.) These days I tend to review university press titles, books for the library profession, reference works in history and science, and, quite frankly, anything else that strikes my fancy or that might intrigue reference and acquisitions librarians. A fascinating parade of publications has marched along my review shelf for the past 25 years, and I hope readers have found items they might otherwise have missed in Choice, Booklist, or Publisher’s Weekly. Now, in 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have unleashed their fur y on the Gulf Coast, the Iraq War is a big thorn in America’s side, the U.S.Army is occupying Kabul, and few people think we’re better off than we were four years ago. See you in 2030!—George M. Eberhart C&RL News November 2005 744 towns, banks were built impressively with tall ceilings and marble and bronze coun­ ters to convince customers their invest­ ments were solid and their savings secure. Belfoure provides many photos and line drawings of bank exteriors and interiors to illustrate architectural trends from the neoclassicism of the early republic and the eclecticism of the Gilded Age to post­ war modernism and the convenience of supermarket branches and the retail­store concept popular now. $55.00. McFarland. ISBN 0­7864­2060­X. The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, by Clémont Chéroux, et al. (287 pages, October 2005), is a catalog issued in conjunction with an exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art through December 31, 2005. The exhibition was organized by la Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, where it was on display earlier this year. The book brings together more than 250 rarely seen photos culled from the archives of psychic societ­ ies in the United States, England, France, Germany, Austria, and Canada. Three types of images included are: spirit photography; photographs of invisible rays, auras, and thoughts; and photographs of spirit mediums (Mina Crandon, Eusapio Palladino, Franek Kluski, and others) emanating ectoplasm and producing other physical phenomena like levitation. The commentary focuses on the photography and anthropology of the images as cultural artifacts, rather than the pros and cons of parapsychology. $65.00. Yale University. ISBN 0­300­11136­3. If you are wondering what I meant in the previous paragraph by “ectoplasm,” you might consult The Spirit Book: The Encyclopedia of Clairvoyance, Channeling, and Spirit Commu­ nication, by Raymond Buckland (500 pages, October 2005). Buckland offers concise defi ni­ tions of psychic terms, brief bios of mediums and parapsychological investigators, and a substantial bibliography of print and online resources. $52.00. Visible Ink; distributed by Omnigraphics. ISBN 0­7808­0922­X. S h a d o w p l a y : T h e H i d d e n B e l i e f s a n d Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, by Clare Asquith (348 pages, May 2005), pres­ ents the intriguing hypothesis that the Bard was a closet Catholic in a brutally intolerant era who embedded encouraging messages to like­minded coreligionists in his plays and poems. Asquith writes that she got the idea when she saw a performance of Chekhov in Cold War Moscow where the actors engaged in between­the­lines allu­ sions and subtle protests. First demonstrat­ ing that coded language was prevalent in Elizabethan times, Asquith then argues that Shakespeare developed it into a sophisti­ cated allegorical art form and discusses the plays sequentially, putting them into the context of contemporary politics. An explanation of some of Shakespeare’s code words appears in a glossary. $26.95. Public Affairs. ISBN 1­58648­316­1. Stalin’s Last War: Korea and the Approach to World War III, by Alan J. Levine (320 pages, July 2005), reinterprets the Ko­ rean War in the light of newly available evidence from the Cold War International History Project (wilsoncenter.org/cwihp/) and other sources unavailable to earlier scholars. Levine argues that Stalin was in the process of planning a world war with the Western powers when North Korea invaded the south in June 1950. Consider­ ing it an opportunity to tie down Ameri­ can forces and provide a stage for faked atrocities and allegations of biological warfare, Stalin manipulated the Chinese into prolonging negotiations for POW re­ patriation, but in 1953 the Soviet dictator’s death brought more moderate leadership to power. Levine defends Truman’s fi ring of General MacArthur in 1951 by showing that the administration’s fears of a wider conflict were justified, and he reminds us that Korea was “fought in a political and strategic framework and a mental and moral atmosphere” much closer to World War II than Vietnam. $39.95. McFarland. ISBN 0­7864­2088­X. November 2005 745 C&RL News