jan10b.indd C&RL News January 2010 44 The Cambridge Handbook of Earth Science Data, by Paul and Gideon M. Henderson (277 pages, July 2009), incorporates many handy tables that students of geology, paleontol- ogy, and hydrology will consult often, such as composition of the crust and mantle, ele- ment concentration in ocean and river water, properties of the atmosphere, life events and geological time scales, primary impact struc- tures, naturally occurring nuclides, common silicate and nonsilicate minerals, oil and gas reserves, the Volcanic Explosivity Index, and the European Macroseismic Scale. References to original data sources are provided. $30.00. Cambridge University. 978-0-521-69317-2. The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Fu- ture, by Robert Darnton (240 pages, October 2009), brings together 11 recent essays the author has written on Google and the future of books, libraries in the digital age, e-books, open access, a response to Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold, descriptive bibliography, com- monplace books, and the history of books. The successor to Sidney Verba as director of the Harvard University Library, Darnton is also a cultural historian as well as a former journalist and publisher who writes engag- ingly on topics central to librarianship. My new favorite German word is Fingerspitz- engefühl (literally, “fi ngertip feeling”), which Darnton describes as our physical interac- tion with media, whether it’s paging through a book, adjusting a radio dial, or thumbing a text message. $23.95. PublicAffairs. 978-1- 58648-826-0. The F-Word, by Jesse Sheidlower (270 pages, 3rd ed., September 2009), examines every possible variant and combination of the Eng- lish language’s most versatile vulgarity, with well more than 100 new words and senses than the second edition, which was pub- George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, e-mail: geberhart@ala.org N e w P u b l i c a t i o n sGeorge M. Eberhart lished in 1999 by Random House. Since then, Sheidlower has become editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and has made use of its extensive database to add non-U.S. ex- amples. The main part of the book is in OED format, consisting of defi nitions, etymologies, use in phrases, and abundant examples of quotations in chronological order. Even ac- ronyms are included (WTF, FUBAR). His in- troduction provides a general history of the word, which does not appear to be older than the late 15th century, when it began to be used as a synonym for the equally vul- gar “swive.” Its fi rst appearance in a diction- ary dates from 1598. Comedian Lewis Black contributes a short, amusing foreword to this edition, claiming that the word is one of the few in English “with true medicinal qualities,” clearing our heads of the cobwebs spun by the banal, tired clichés we hear from politi- cians and pundits. $16.95. Oxford University. 978-0-19-539311-8. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford Eng- lish Dictionary, edited by Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels, and Irené Wother- spoon (2 vols., October 2009), is an extraor- dinary work of lexical scholar- ship, billed by the publish- ers as the fi rst historical the- saurus to be written for any of the world’s languages. At fi rst glance it seems quite intimidating with its long strings of numbers and 6-point type, but the HTOED (as it likes to be called) deserves a place on the academic shelf because it indeed leaves Roget, Webster, and even other Oxford thesauri far behind. For example, the second edition of the Oxford American Dictionary January 2010 45 C&RL News and Thesaurus provides synonyms for a mere 150,000 words and phrases; this 4,000-page monster covers more than 920,000 words and phrases. The precision and granularity of its se- mantic arrangement is also distinctly superior. Here’s how it works. Volume 1 is the the- saurus, which arranges nearly every word in the language by categories of meaning, and volume 2 is the index, an alphabetic list that lets you locate words and phrases in the fi rst volume. Let’s look at “darkness,” which we fi nd in volume 1 at the category number 01.04.08.10. Roget used integers for his ar- rangement, which were sequential and inher- ently meaningless, but the HTOED’s numeri- cal categories make sense, once you get the hang of them. The 01 means that our word is in the fi rst of three major sections—the ex- ternal world, the other two being the mental world and the social world. The 04 indicates that darkness is within the subcategory of “matter,” while 08 refers to “light” (or lack thereof) and 10 introduces a whole range of dark, dim, and shadowy shades of meaning that are further subdivided. The general entry for the noun “darkness” gives us synonyms that are arranged chrono- logically from the date of their fi rst known use. So the fi rst listed are Old English terms like “blindnes” and “þeostorfulnes,” which lead to “therkness (c1250–c1485),” “ten- ebrosity (1490– ),” “murksomeness (1625),” “lightlessness (1865– ),” and fi nally “darkling (1903–1963).” Not only will this allow philolo- gists to track the evolution of the language, but it will also be a boon to writers of histori- cal fi ction. But wait, there’s more. The entry further subdivides into darkness related to heavenly bodies, night, mist, confi nement, and the un- derworld; people who like darkness; the pro- cess of darkening; one who or something that extinguishes light; and (remember, this is Brit- ish) darkness as an air-raid precaution (black- out). Then the 01.04.08.10 entry moves on to adjectives (dark), adverbs (darkly), intransi- tive verbs (become dark), and transitive verbs (make dark). Semidarkness merits two further subdivisions—dimness (01) and gloominess (02)—with a third reserved for cutting off light in the sense of causing a shadow (03). Work on the HTOED began in 1965, with volunteers collecting data on slips of paper just like James Murray did with the original OED in the 19th century. In the 1970s the major semantic arrangement solidifi ed, and in the 1980s it was all transferred to an elec- tronic database. The fi nal words were added in 2008. Slang is well-represented, especially his- torical slang. Corporate and product names are avoided unless they’ve earned longevity, like Kleenex and Xerox. “Google,” although it seems to have solidly entered the language as a verb, is only included as a bowling term; in fact, computer terminology more recent than the early 1990s seems sparse. Scottish, Irish, U.S., Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and African variants are clearly labeled, although Anglo-Indian words (such as tiffi n and maha- rajah) are strangely uncredited. For some rea- son “bigfoot” is missing, though “sasquatch” and “yeti” are present. The set comes in a box and is accom- panied by a poster that sets out the general arrangement. An essential purchase, though the numeric coding may prove daunting for some. $395. Oxford University. 978-0-19- 920899-9. Sea of Dangers: Captain Cook and His Rivals in the South Pacifi c, by Geoffrey Blainey (322 pages, May 2009), retells the epic story of Cook’s fi rst voyage in the Endeavour in search of a suspected southern continent in 1768–1771. It was also a successful scientifi c voyage, thanks to naturalist Joseph Banks bringing back to England more new speci- mens of fl ora than any other expedition in his- tory. Australian historian Blainey coaxes out scintillating details from Cook’s and Banks’s journals, offering insights gleaned from his own visits to many landmarks on the voyage. He also contrasts the contemporaneous visit to New Zealand by Jean-François-Marie de Surville, who would have had more success if his crew had not been wracked with scurvy. $27.50. Ivan R. Dee. 978-1-56663-825-8.