july07c.indd


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

Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright 
and the Taliesin Murders, by William R. Dren­
nan (218 pages, January 2007), explores the 
facts and motives surrounding the murder of 

architect Frank 
Lloyd Wright’s 
mistress Mamah 
Borthwick and 
s i x  o t h e r s  a t  
T a l i e s i n  i n  
Spring Green, 
Wisconsin, Au­
gust 15, 1914. 
A servant, Ju­
l i a n  C a r l t o n ,  
w a s  c a u g h t  
red­handed af­
ter setting the 

house on fire and drinking acid in a suicide 
attempt. Many of Wright’s biographers pro­
vide few details about the crime because of 
the scandal involving the couple, who were 
married to others at the time, but Drennan of­
fers as comprehensive a scenario as possible. 
He also shows how the Taliesin catastrophe 
signified an abrupt end to Wright’s Prairie 
style and affected the architect’s later work. 
$29.95. University of Wisconsin. ISBN 978­0­
299­22210­1. 

East, West, and Beyond, by Gloria Dyc (75 
pages, April 2007), evokes a wealth of con­
trasting images from Dyc’s Polish­American 
childhood in Detroit to her explorations of 
Rosebud Lakota and Pueblo culture in South 
Dakota and New Mexico. Her poems are vivid 
clusters of consciousness growing in a stratum 
of myth. “Language Barrier” commemorates 
her enigmatic grandmother, whose “stockings 
were opaque and salmon­colored / We had 
to accept the flesh beneath on faith.” In “On 
the Fourth Day,” the Lakota tell stories “about 
the days when warriors / still battled with the 

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

lightning / shooting their arrows into the sky / 
challenging the terrible and powerful nation.” 
Dyc laments the decay of the New West in 
“We Create Myth,” where “The arroyo is fi lled 
with busted tv’s / lame bikes and such / a 
dead calf by the stock pond / was worth four 
hundred bucks.” $14.95. Plain View Press. 
ISBN 978­1­891386­59­6. 

The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and 
Architecture, edited by Gordon Campbell (2 
vols., May 2007), is an expansion of the Grove 
Art Online database and the Grove Dictionary 
of Art (1996) with a focus on Greek, Roman, 
Minoan, Mycenaean, and Etruscan civiliza­
tions. The more than 1,000 articles range 
from intensive regional or topical reviews of 
architecture, sculpture, pottery, painting, mo­
saics, and other art to shorter examinations of 
specifi c sites or techniques and concise defi ­
nitions of artistic terms and tools. Some 550 
illustrations and maps supplement the text 
along with 32 color plates. $195.00. Oxford 
University. ISBN 978­0­19­530082­6. 

A Journey into Ireland’s Literary Revival, by 
R. Todd Felton (153 pages, May 2007), offers 
a personalized tour of locations in Galway, 
the Aran Islands, Mayo, Sligo, Wicklow, 
and Dublin that play a significant role in 
the writings of J. M. Synge, William Butler 
Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O’Casey, and 
other architects of the 20th­century Celtic 
Revival. Felton has selected colorful illustrations 

C&RL News July/August 2007  454 

mailto:geberhart@ala.org


and relevant literary extracts to accompany his 
travelogue. $21.95. Roaring Forties Press. ISBN 
978­0­9766706­7­4. 

The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from 
Times Square to the Golden Gate, by Michael 
Wallis and Michael S. Williamson (291 pages, 
July 2007), follows America’s fi rst transconti­
nental highway 3,000 miles from east to west, 
salting the trail with curious facts and historical 
tidbits. Not a mere traveler’s guide like Brian 
Butko’s Greetings from the Lincoln Highway 
(Stackpole, 2005), this book also highlights the 
owners and proprietors of some of the restau­
rants and roadside attractions still in business 
along the route. The illustrations were pro­
vided by Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington 
Post photographer Williamson, who not only 
snapped current pix but also dipped into his 
collection of historic postcards and nostalgic 
printed ephemera. $39.95. W. W. Norton. ISBN 
978­0­393­05938­0. 

My Name Is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank, 
by Jacqueline van Maarsen (176 pages, June 
2007), contains the reminiscences of the 
woman whom Anne Frank described in her 
diary as her “best friend” at the Jewish Lyceum 
school in Amsterdam from 1941 until July 1942, 
when Anne and her family went into hiding. 
Van Maarsen describes her life in Amsterdam 
through the rest of the war and how she came 
to learn that Anne had not gone to Switzerland 
as she had been told. This memoir was origi­
nally published in the Netherlands in 2003. 
$24.95. Arcadia Books (London), distributed 
by Independent Publishers Group. ISBN 978­
1­90514­710­6. 

The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, 
and Revenge, by Paul Preston (381 pages, 
June 2007), is the paperback edition of an 
expanded version of Preston’s Concise History 
of the Spanish Civil War (Fontana, 1996). The 
complexity of the Spanish confl ict requires 
multiple treatments, and this overview is ev­
ery bit as enlightening as those by Anthony 
Beevor, Helen Graham, Hugh Thomas, and 
Peter Wyden. Preston covers the conditions 

in Spain leading up to the war, the mish­mash 
of political parties and federations, the battles 
and atrocities, and the war’s legacy on con­
temporary Spain. An extensive bibliographical 
essay takes the place of endnotes. $16.95. W. 
W. Norton. ISBN 978­0­393­32987­2. 

Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in 
the American South, by Michael W. Fitzgerald 
(234 pages, June 2007), summarizes the efforts 
from 1865 to 1877 to transform the South 
from a vanquished society based on slavery 
to a reformed and economically developed 
region with African American suffrage, free 
schools, a free press, interracial juries, black 
officeholders, and improved railways. Fitzger­
ald explains what an impossible task this 
became for Radical Republicans in federal and 
local government who, in grappling with an 
unprecedented population of 4 million newly 
emancipated citizens, made a series of poor 
policy decisions and miscalculations despite 
their lofty goals. Renewed white supremacist 
terrorism, economic depression, and rampant 
corruption led to the end of Reconstruction in 
1877 and the enactment of Jim Crow laws that 
persisted for nearly a century. $26.00. Ivan R. 
Dee. ISBN 978­1­56663­734­3. 

The Virtual Reference Handbook, by Diane K. 
Kovacs (132 pages, January 2007), is a practical 
guide to the technical, communication, and 
reference skills you need to deliver fl uent chat 
and e­mail reference services. Tips and anec­
dotes from other virtual reference librarians are 
scattered throughout. $65.00. Neal­Schuman. 
ISBN 978­1­55570­598­5. 

(“Reviews” continued from page 453) 

Despite the navigational problems, under­
graduate students and anyone interested in 
the extensive involvement of UN agencies in 
freshwater issues will find much information 
in the reports including country, regional, and 
global information. The consolidated links to 
other organization’s sites available under the 
thematic index will be useful to researchers, 
as well.—Carol McCulley, Linfi eld College, 
cmccull@linfi eld.edu 

July/August 2007  455 C&RL News