ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


1040 I C&RL News ■ December 2000

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

The Catalogue of Meteorites, by Monica M. 
Grady (698 pages plus CD-ROM, 5th ed., Sep­
tem ber 2000), includes data for the 22,507 well- 
authenticated meteorites know n through De­
cem ber 1999, w hether or not a sam ple has 
been preserved. This edition updates the 1985 
edition and is enhanced w ith a searchable, 
W indows-compatible CD-ROM containing the 
full database, w hich is m aintained by the Brit­
ish Natural History Museum. Each entry in­
cludes the nam e of the m eteorite (usually the 
nearest inhabited place), the location of fall or 
find, date, class a n d  condition, recovered 
w eight, b ib lio g rap h y , a n d  d istrib u tio n  o f 
samples. Separate lists by clas­
sification an d  location, an d  
tables show ing unnam ed m e­
te o r i t e s  fro m  A n ta rc tic a ,
A u s tr a lia ’s N u lla r b o r  P la in ,
R o o s e v e lt C o u n ty  in  N ew  
Mexico, and the Sahara Desert 
are included. $150.00. Cam­
bridge University. ISBN 0-521- 
66303-2.

T h e  I r is h  W a r, by  T o m
Geraghty (420 pages, 2d ed.,
May 2000), is an excellent over­
view, not only o f the Catholic- 
Protestant conflict in Ireland 
from 1968 to 1999, but also of 
the persistent populist revolt that sprouted in 
l691 w hen the last professional Irish army w ent 
into exile in France after the Battle of the Boyne. 
It was the section on British intelligence o p ­
erations that got journalist Geraghty arrested 
under the Official Secrets Act in 1998 after the 
first edition of this boo k  appeared; though the 
charges w ere later dropped, his revelations 
about sophisticated British counterinsurgency 
techniques w ere m ore than mildly embarrass­
ing. This edition will help American readers 
understand the confusing conflict o f culture, 
propaganda, and terror that has plagued the 
island for centuries. $29-95. Johns Hopkins 
University. ISBN 0-8018-06456-9.

G e o rg e  M . E b e r h a rt  is s e n io r e d ito r o f  Am erican 
Libraries; e-m ail: g eb erh art@ ala.org

If the timeline is unclear, pick u p  Northern 
Ireland: A Chronology o f the Troubles, 1968-
1999, by Paul Bew and G ordon Gillespie (471 
pages, 2d ed., D ecem ber 1999), for a recap of 
day-by-day developm ents. $45.00. Scarecrow. 
ISBN 0-8108-3735-8.

The Island o f Lost Maps: A  True Story of 
C arto g rap hic Crim e, by Miles Harvey (432 
pages, Septem ber 2000), should be required 
reading for students considering a career in 
special collections. Not only does Harvey tell 
a compelling story that is inherently horrific 
for any bibliophile, but he rem inds us of som e 

of the basic elem ents of w hat 
our profession is about. In case 
you m issed it, Island o f Lost 
Maps c o n c e rn s th e  th e ft o f 
priceless m aps by a PTSD-di- 
a g n o s e d  V ie tn a m  v e te r a n  
n a m e d  G ilb e rt B land, w h o  
razored them  out o f atlases in 
the special collections of n u ­
m erous research libraries in the 
United States and Canada. He 
w a s  f in a lly  c a u g h t a t th e  
Peabody Library in Baltimore 
in D ecem ber 1995, b u t only 
served 17 m onths behind bars. 
Some o f the participants in this 
dram a are w ell-known to ACRL 

members, and the author’s frequent digressions 
into history and cartographic imagery (though 
labeled as padding by  som e reviewers) are 
p le a s a n t o rn a m e n ta tio n . $24.95. R andom  
House. ISBN 0-375-50151-7.

The Je w ish  C o nfed e rate s, by Robert N. 
Rosen (517 pages, O ctober 2000), brings to­
gether a w ealth of information o n  Southern 
Jew s w ho w ere dedicated to the Confederate 
cause in the Civil War. Nearly one-third of all 
the Jew s in the South in 1861 w ere G erm an­
speaking immigrants living in Louisiana, a state 
that provided both the Confederacy’s Attor­
ney G eneral Judah P. Benjamin an d  a Confed­
erate soldier nam ed Benjamin Franklin Jonas, 
w h o  after the w ar becom e the first practicing 
Je w  in the U.S. Senate. Rosen has do n e a m as­

mailto:geberhart@ala.org


C&RL News ■ D ecember 2 0 0 0 1 1041

terful job o f telling the story o f Jewish Johnny 
Rebs, most of whom did not own slaves and 
who fought to prove they were worthy citi­
zens. He also paints a portrait o f Jewish life in 
the antebellum South, activities on the home 
front, and conditions in occupied New Orleans. 
$39-95. University of South Carolina. ISBN 1- 
57003-363-3.

The M a k in g  o f  th e  Bibles Moralisées, by
John Lowden (2 vols., September 2000), docu­
ments the creation and history of one o f the 
most ambitious attempts at miniature illustra­
tion ever undertaken— the Bibles Moralisées, a 
presentation of the events of the Bible in a 
graphic format that bears an uncanny resem­
blance to an eight-panel-per-page comic strip. 
Seven manuscripts, only one of which is com­
plete, survive. They were produced from the 
13th to the 15th centuries for the kings and 
queens o f France, and have rarely been re­
produced. Volume 1 offers a general back­
ground, while Volume 2 examines the Book 
o f Ruth in detail. On sale from the publisher at 
$68 each, or $128 for the set. Pennsylvania 
State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01909-3/0.

Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserv­
in g  T rib a l T ra d itio n s , by Andrew Gulliford 
(285 pages, June 2000), recounts the limited 
success that Indian peoples have had in pre­
serving their culture against the encroachments 
of anthropologists, museum curators, tourists, 
and New Agers. Topics include the repatria­
tion of human remains to the tribes claiming 
them; the return by museums of such sacred 
objects as the centuries-old Omaha Shaman 
Pole and the White Buffalo skin; the protec­
tion o f sacred mountains, rocks, canyons, 
springs, and other landscape features from 
rampant tourism; and the efforts of tribal pres­
ervation offices to carry culture into the fu­
ture. Each chapter is supplemented with pho­
tographs, case studies, and commentary by 
Native Americans. $55.00. University Press of 
Colorado. ISBN 0-87081-560-1.

Teaching th e  N ew  L ibrary t o  Today's Us­
ers, edited by Trudi E. Jacobson and Helene
C. Williams (256 pages, June 2000), offers back­
ground and strategies for teaching academic 
library use to diverse groups: international stu­
dents, students o f color, lesbigays, first-gen-

EconLit
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1042 /  C&RL News ■ December 2000

eration and at-risk students, reentries, older 
adults, and distance learners. Contributors in­
clude Karen E. Downing, Kwasi Sarkodie- 
Mensah, Trudi E. Jacobson, Sara McDowell. 
David A. Tyckoson, and Cheryl LaGuardia. 
$49.95. Neal-Schuman. ISBN 1-55570-379-8.

Travels w it h  th e  Fossil H unters, edited by 
Peter J. Whybrow (212 pages, April 2000), is 
as much about the adventures o f paleontolo­
gists in foreign lands as it is about fossils, but 
that’s what makes this book intriguing. Each 
o f the 12 chapters describes the multicultural, 
gastronomic, and travel experiences o f British 
paleontologists in Tibet, the Sahara, Gibraltar, 
Latvia. Abu Dhabi, Sierra Leone, India, China, 
Pakistan, Turkey, Antarctica, and Yemen. Ac­
companied by well-chosen photographs, the 
travelogues offer enough to please fossil fans 
as well— Miocene hippo remains in Arabia, a 
new ape ancestor in Asia Minor, dinosaurs in 
Antarctica, and Neanderthals in Gibraltar, 
among others. $39-95. Cambridge University. 
ISBN 0-521-66301-6.

W ord Parts D ictionary, by Michael J. Sheehan 
(227 pages, September 2000), will be much

appreciated by writers, linguists, and coiners 
of neologisms. Much o f our complex language 
is made up o f word chunks with specific mean­
ings that combine with other fragments to fomr 
elegant-sounding compounds— “$10 words,” 
as I heard them called once by someone with 
a preference for monosyllables. This dictio­
nary defines all known suffixes, prefixes, com­
bining forms, and bases; provides a reverse 
dictionary of meanings to locate that elusive 
particle; and groups some of the word parts 
into categories (animals, food, shapes, etc.). 
With no trouble at all, the user can formulate a 
new word for “obsession with pinching but­
tocks” (pygoπ'hexophilia), in case one is ever 
needed. A work o f lexicoplastic brilliance. 
$39.95. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0819-0.

If you need even more word analysis, check 
out We American Heritage Dictionaiγ o f  Indo- 
European Roots, revised and edited by Calvert 
Watkins (149 pages, September 2000). Here 
you will discover that the English words 
“weird,” “wreath,” “worry,” “wrong,” “wrestle,” 
“ribald,” “warp,” “wrap,” and “vermin” all de­
rive from the Indo-European root “wer-” (to 
turn or bend). $28.00. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 
0-395-98610-9- ■



C&RL News ■ D ecem ber 2000 /  1043