College and Research Libraries During this period in Britain it became possible for the first time for scholars to earn a living by writing, and, concomi- tantly, English printers recognized the existence of a humanist market. Four of the authors discussed are foreign-born, including Erasmus; the other three are native Englishmen, including Sir Thomas More. Carlson presents their works from the broad and fresh economic and cultural perspectives offered by the history of the book as a discipline. Book historians will find his chapter on printers' economic needs and marketing strategies of partic- ular interest. In the past few years Carlson has writ- ten a dozen articles on similar or related topics. His seventeen-page bibliography here offers a useful compilation for any- one researching the book's composition, production, and reception in early Tudor England. Thirty-two full-page illustra- tions, drawn from the manuscripts and books discussed, help bring the publica- tions to life. For academic librarians the interest of Carlson's careful research into motives and meanings lies in his explorations of the complex relationships among scholars, patrons, publishers, reputations, and markets that remain with us today. The possible nuances of publication-which in early sixteenth-century England still was not synonymous with print-are seen once more as twentieth-century scholars' distribution patterns shift into an elec- tronic mode.-Elizabeth Swaim, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Vol. 122, no. 4 (Fall 1993). Issue Title: ''The American Research University." $7.95. This issue of Daedalus assembles a dis- tinguished company of academics to de- fine the historic moment that American research universities now face and to consider the future. The essayists are four senior faculty, three university presidents (one of them emeritus), a pro- vost, and two foundation and learned society officers. The essays are uni- formly thoughtful and, with few excep- tions, deeply engage the reader. One of Book Reviews 187 them, by statistician Stephen M. Stigler, conveys serious purpose with some wit. His tone is the more welcome because the condition of research universities is fundamentally so troubling and the grounds for optimism so uncertain. Libraries are mentioned in passing perhaps ten times in this volume, so librarians will have little direct reason for reading it. Librarians at research uni- versities who wish to understand their own institutions are, however, well ad- vised to read these essays. The same ad- vice applies to any academic librarian who is sensitive to the issues of diversity, the epistemological crisis in higher edu- cation, the ability of academe to make hard choices, the international dimen- sions of education, and the future of aca- demic health centers. Most of the issues under discussion have a long history in higher education, but they come together in the 1990s in particularly troubling ways. But per- haps the most troubling of these issues may actually be unprecedented: there- focusing and retrenchment of federal support for scientific, medical, and en- gineering research (treated most fully in the essays by Jonathan R. Cole, Rodney W. Nichols, and William C. Richardson). This shift is unprecedented only because the federal commitment to such research has itself been so much a product of a particular (and one can hope unique) definition of national security set in place by World War II and dominating national policy until quite recently. As if fundamental shifts in the finan- cial base of research universities were not enough, higher education is also beset with an epistemological crisis and with deeply conflicting promptings on diversity. Cole and John R. Searle both address the crisis in knowing. Searle's essay is at once both philosophical and political. He describes the ways in which the Western rationalistic tradition has shaped knowing at the university and the ways in which some contemporary linguistic and philosophical currents in thought challenge this tradition, leaving us- possibly!-with nothing but oppos- ing political powers to guide academic 188 College & Research Libraries policy. Neil J. Smelser's essay on diver- sity resonates in some ways with Searle's essay. He notes that much of the call for diversity is a challenge to entrenched in- . terests, with the most likely outcome being that "all involved parties [struggle] for but never finally [gain] new and satisfactory definitions of the situation, institutional advantages, or political domination." To these observations on the public conduct of institutional life Smelser adds a dis- cussion of the cultural and psychological dimensions of diversity, describing the omnipresence of personal ambivalence in the diversifying process. So formidable a set of financial, philo- sophical, arid communal challenges re- quires a robust capability within higher education to reshape its future. Perhaps the most interesting reading in this volume describes this capacity and leaves this reader, at least, doubtful that it exists in necessary measure. Cole iden- tifies the dilemma of governance in his lead essay, and governance problems re- appear virtually as a leitmotiv throughout the volume, most notably in the essays by Donald Kennedy and Stigler. Kennedy writes compellingly about increasing costs in higher education, severely con- strained resources, the necessity for making institutional choices, and all the factors that weigh against success in making hard choices. Stigler argues that such choices set the terms for competi- tion and for success in higher education, but much of his essay suggests it is "far easier to recognize egregious error than to suggest a wise course" in making the choices that rna tter. If neither Kennedy nor Stigler offers clear prescriptions for success, they March 1994 nonetheless write with optimism about the future. Kennedy, president emeritus of Stanford, draws his optimism from the extreme pressure on higher educa- tion to change; from the likelihood that research universities will return to their first principles and "care. well for stu- dents, ... provide the kind of education that will produce leaders and not fol- lowers, and ... be a shelter for new ideas and a force for social improvement"; and from the fact that the problems before us "are as intellectually exciting and fasci- nating as any we have ever seen" and provide "an opportunity to deal imagi- natively and constructively with a world that is also being reshaped." One sus- pects that a professional optimist speaks here, and speaks sincerely. Stigler ends his essay by asking "how negative a tone is justified" by the problems facing re- search universities. In answering, he re- fers to the competitive world of natural selection and observes that "universities' future strength, like their present strength, like the fitness of biological species, will be the product of the com- petition that organizes their activities." Here speaks, perhaps, the statistician making predictions about a life form rather than about individual lives. Each reader will judge how powerful these essays are as sources of optimism for the future. Whatever the answer, each reader will surely wrestle with the issues presented here, just as each reader will have some responsibility for shaping the future of research libraries and the larger academic enterprise they serve. Each of us will have to find our optimism somewhere!-Scott Bennett, The Johns Hop- kins University, Baltimore, Maryland.