dec05c.indd


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

The Ape in the Tree: An Intellectual and 
Natural History of Proconsul, by Alan Walk­
er and Pat Shipman (288 pages, April 2005), 
tells the fascinating story of the discov­
ery and history of the Miocene ape ge­
nus Proconsul, a skull of which was fi rst 
found by anthropologist Mary Leakey on 
Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, Kenya, in 
1948. Now thought to be the last common 
ancestor of modern apes and humans, this 
tailless, fruit­eating, monkey­sized primate 
lived in Africa between 21 and 14 million 
years ago. Anthropologist Walker also de­
scribes his expeditions to the island in 
the 1980s to find more Proconsul fossils. 
The authors’ enthusiasm for the topic is 
contagious, and their ability to transform 
often­dry paleontological analysis into a 
potential screenplay for CSI: Kenya is ad­
mirable. $26.95. Belknap Press of Harvard 
University. ISBN 0­674­01675­0. 

Born Again—in Exile: Poems, by Mirela Ro­
znoveanu (134 pages, May 2004), offers an 
intriguing selection of poetry by this Roma­
nian literary critic and writer who has called 
New York City her home since 1991. The ma­
jority are translations of Romanian­language 
originals, filled with classical allusions (“Ex­
posed like an infant on the Tarpeian Rock”), 
natural imagery (“And willows bored with 
too much weeping”), revelations of self­dis­
covery (“The flower of life has turned to­
day toward me”), and fear and melancholy 
(“Like a bag of camphor grains on a string/ 
we wear dread around our neck”). Perhaps 
her most vivid verses are in the ten poems 
about New York that capture the excitement 
and anxieties felt by the newly arrived (“Park 
Avenue is the new Via Appia/with the de­
lirium tremens of its opulent dinners”). Ro­
znoveanu now works as a researcher and 
assistant professor in New York University’s 

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

Law School Library. Her 2004 book of short 
stories, The Life Manager and Other Stories, 
is also worth a look. $13.95. iUniverse. ISBN 
0­595­31831­2. 

Pages from the Past: History and Memory 
in American Magazines, by Carolyn Kitch 
(256 pages, September 2005), justifi es re­
taining extended runs of popular periodi­
cals in the library as cultural narratives of 
American life. Kitch offers examples from 
some 60 magazines published in the past 25 
years to demonstrate that “what most people 
know about the American past is encoded 
in stories, which today are told primarily 
through the media.” She focuses on the 
self­appointed status of news magazines as 
national leaders, the events of September 
11 as recognizable American mythology, 
common themes in celebrity deaths, visual 
imagery in African­American identity, the 
role of the media in generational nostalgia, 
the presentation of the past as a simpler 
and better time and place, and the role of 
consumer magazines in characterizing the­
matic history as vital to American culture. 
Shelve this one in the periodicals collec­
tion. $49.95. University of North Carolina. 
ISBN 0­8078­2967­6. 

Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Cam­
pus, by Donald Alexander Downs (295 pag­
es, March 2005), reviews four case studies 
involving academic policies developed in 
the late 1980s and 1990s to foster civility and 
tolerance on campus. Downs offers an ob­
jective perspective on Columbia University’s 
2000 sexual misconduct policy; the status of 
free speech in the public forum at Berkeley 
and in Boalt Law School from 1997 to 1998; 
the 1993 “water buffalo” case that resulted 
in the removal of the student speech code 
at the University of Pennsylvania; and the 
institutional consequences of the 1999 aboli­
tion of the faculty speech code at the Uni­
versity of Wisconsin­Madison. He concludes 

C&RL News December 2005  832 

mailto:geberhart@ala.org


that academic enforcement of codes that fa­
vor special categories of race or gender, 
however well­intended, often harms the 
“would­be beneficiaries because they as­
sume that such students are incapable of 
handling the rigors of open debate and 
due process.” $28.99. Cambridge Univer­
sity. ISBN 0­521­83987­4. 

Saving Higher Education in the Age of Mon­
ey, by James Engell and Anthony Danger­
field (277 pages, May 2005), examines the 
disinvestment in the humanities, the decline 
of reading assignments, shrinking academic 
library budgets, and the marginalization of 
the liberal arts and sciences as some of the 
many symptoms of an overwhelming pub­
lic perception of higher education as an in­
vestment that must be repaid. An academic 
declaration of principles, this book shows 
that economic advancement is only one of 
several interdependent benefi ts conferred 
by a college degree. $27.95. University of 
Virginia. ISBN 0­8139­2331­X. 

Veritas: Harvard College and the Ameri­
can Experience, by Andrew Schlesinger 
(304 pages, June 2005), explores the social 
conflicts in Harvard’s history as a series of 

clashes between the 
university’s motto 
of veritas (truth) 
and impediments to 
truth (sectarianism, 
racism, aristocracy) 
from Puritan times 
to the 21st century. 
Schlesinger portrays 
Harvard student life 
against the back­
drop of such issues 

as the American Revolution, slavery, fas­
cism, diversity, the Vietnam War, multicul­
turalism, and the current administration of 
President Lawrence Summers. $27.50. Ivan 
R. Dee. ISBN 1­56663­636­1. 

The War Aims and Strategies of Adolf 
Hitler, by Oscar Pinkus (537 pages, June 

2005), spells out in great detail the dynamic 
of Hitler’s objectives in starting World War II 
and persisting in its execution long after his 
chances for victory had eroded. Pinkus ar­
gues convincingly that his primary aim was 
the conquest of Eastern Europe and Russia 
up to the Urals, a “geoethnic cataclysm in 
which the Eastern peoples were to be half­
exterminated and half­converted into serfs 
to toil in a vast Teutonic empire ruled by 
settled Nazi barons.” War with England and 
America was an annoying sideshow. How­
ever, by 1942, facing ultimate failure, Hitler 
devoted his efforts to the obliteration of en­
emy and ally alike, including the destruction 
of Germany itself. In the course of research­
ing this book over the past 50 years, Pinkus 
made use of many sources written in Pol­
ish, German, Russian, Italian, Hebrew, and 
Yiddish that have never been translated into 
English. $45.00. McFarland. ISBN 0­7864­
2054­5. 

The Führer’s obsessive European blitz­
krieg has long captured the imagination of 
writers of alternative historical scenarios in 
which the Wehrmacht wins the war, Hitler 
survives it as a fugitive, or he either never 
existed or died much earlier. The World Hit­
ler Never Made, by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld (524 
pages, June 2005), reviews this literature in 
depth, from comics and novels to Twilight 
Zone episodes, Saturday Night Live skits, 
and film treatments. $30.00. Cambridge Uni­
versity. ISBN 0­521­84706­0. 

William Anthony, Fine Binder, edited by 
Lawrence Yerkes (70 pages, 2005), com­
memorates the 21st anniversary of the Uni­
versity of Iowa’s conservation lab by show­
casing more than 100 color photographs of 
the work of master book binder Bill Anthony 
(d. 1989). This exhibition catalog includes 
illustrations of Anthony’s design bindings 
(those that reflect the content of the book), 
edition bindings, conservation work, and 
historical models. A glossary defi nes such 
terms as doublure, nipping press, and spat­
ter paper. $39.95. University of Iowa Librar­
ies. ISBN 0­87414­150­8. 

December 2005  833 C&RL News