reviews Book Reviews 291 oral history project at Columbia Univer­ sity. A long, slow decline led to today’s more purely commercial orientation. Radway interprets and deconstructs the Book of the Month Club as a social and cultural symptom and force with rel­ ish. Her ability to find meaning in what some might regard as a minor, if not trivial, subject is prodigious. Middlebrow culture, she demonstrates, defined itself in opposition to high culture and not as a diluted form of it. Valued above all was the personal experience of both author and reader, the emotional experience of being caught up and transported by a book. The Book of the Month Club saw itself as the “book club of record,” which maintained the highest standards in bal­ ancing reader demands and literary qual­ ity, matching the best books of all types to potential readers. Radway rather hesi­ tantly defines the readership as a socially insecure, rising class of managerial pro­ fessionals who used these books both to gain information about contemporary is­ sues and for the emotional element miss­ ing from their professional lives. Radway is an exciting thinker who can ring interesting changes even on the fa­ miliar triad of race, class, and gender. Early critical attacks on the Book of the Month Club, for example, had an under­ lying gender bias, and popular novels during the Cold War subtly promoted the superiority of the white man. Yet, I found the book profoundly irritating. The trendy words desire, performance, bound­ ary work, circulation, and construction echo like mantras. Radway’s residual grudge against the English professors who clipped her wings in college leads her to belabor the culture wars between mod­ ernist and middlebrow culture ad nauseum. Repetition and overinterpre­ tation leave the reader weary, whereas important questions, such as the cost of buying these books and their reception by ordinary people, remain underexplored. (Radway’s explanation that data on read­ ership are lacking is not convincing. What about book reviews in newspapers and popular magazines, book club lectures, etc.?) The book’s tone can be inflated comically, as in the claim that “a system enshrining speed, repetition, circulation, and integration . . . did away almost from the start with the very idea of origin, cre­ ation, inspiration and source.” Unfortu­ nately, all the comedy is unintentional in this earnest exploration of a subject that cries out for humor, as Sinclair Lewis well knew. School and public librarians may see themselves mirrored in the Book of the Month Club judges who tried so hard to anticipate the needs of all kinds of read­ ers. The relevance of A Feeling for Books for academic librarians is less direct. This is a fairly accessible example of cultural criticism that can serve as an introduction to the burgeoning study of reading, read­ ers, and the book. It explains (albeit in a biased way) some of the ideological struggles going on in academic depart­ ments of English. It can make us pause and consider the assumptions and biases that go into our own choice of resources for the library, and to understand that there are no eternal, universal, and unconstructed (to use a trendy word) principles of selection.—Jean Alexander, Carnegie Mellon University. Restructuring Academic Libraries: Organi­ zational Development in the Wake of Tech­ nological Change. Ed. Charles A. Schwartz, for the ACRL. Chicago: ALA, 1997. 289p. alk. paper, $28 (ISBN 0-8389-3478-1). LC 97-40243. The computer has radically changed how librarians and patrons access information. Librarians search to find the best organi­ zational structures and services to utilize new technologies most effectively. Nu­ merous articles and books address these issues. Now, the ACRL has published this collection of nineteen essays concerning library organizational change in light of technological development. Although these essays offer few new insights, they 292 College & Research Libraries May 1998 provide an excellent discussion on the effects of technological change on librar­ ies. The essays focus on five areas: assess­ ment of traditional library organizations and services; relationship between librar­ ies and computer services; state and re­ gional consortia; case studies of library organizations; and library–university re­ lationships. Editor Chalres A. Schwartz (University of Massachusetts-Boston) contributes the opening and closing es­ says. He discusses the theory of “bound­ ary spanning,” which identifies ideas and relationships outside traditional thinking and practice that can meet the new chal­ lenges. His closing essay touches again on this theme and how it fits into a bal­ anced organization. In section one, David W. Lewis reviews changes in public services resulting from efforts to make more effective use of new technologies. Next, Herbert S. White em­ phasizes the importance of campus poli­ tics for ensuring support for library ser­ vices. Control of the virtual library is a turf battle for scarce resources. The next section opens with Richard M. Dougherty and Lisa McClure’s essay on the models for realignment of library– computer center relationships and the importance of understanding the differ­ ence between the working “cultures” of librarians and computer center staff. Meredith A. Butler and Stephen F. DeLong discuss reorganization efforts at the University of Albany, and Nina Davis- Millis and Thomas Owens cover similar ground at MIT. The last essay echoes Doughtery and McClure’s discussion of cultural differences between the two groups. The role of state and regional consor­ tia in library reorganization is the empha­ sis of the next section. David E. Kohl dis­ cusses the OhioLink project and its im­ pact on individual library operations, es­ pecially in collection development. Bar­ bara McFadden Allen and William A. Gosling look at the Committee on Insti­ tutional Cooperation’s work among ma­ jor research institutions. Sue O. Medina and William C. Highfill discuss how de­ velopment of computer networks facili­ tated library cooperation among Alabama academic libraries. Derrie B. Roark closes the section by presenting the successful use of centralized, directed technological change within the Florida Community College System. Rebecca R. Martin, Caroline M. Kent, Joan Giesecke and Katherine Walter, Gloriana St. Clair, Rita A. Scherrei, and Peggy Seiden contribute case studies on restructuring efforts at Vermont, Harvard, Nebraska-Lincoln, Penn State, the Uni­ versity of California system, and seven leading liberal arts colleges. Scherrei’s study of the effects of reorganization on midcareer librarians in the University of California system is especially good. The final part presents essays by Charles B. Osburn and Douglas G. Birdsall examin­ ing the relationship between libraries and universities and the political aspects of strategic planning. The overall quality of the essays is quite good, and the book provides much for librarians and administrators to con­ sider. It echoes and complements many of the themes presented in recent books such as Gateways to Knowledge (MIT Press 1997, reviewed in C&RL 59:1). All librar­ ians and library administrators would benefit from this work, as would univer­ sity administrators.—Stephen L. Hupp, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Slaughter, Sheila, and Larry L. Leslie. Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University. Bal­ timore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr., 1997. 276p. alk. paper, $39.95 (ISBN: 0-8018-5549-7). LC 96-49956. The title of this timely volume is deliber­ ately provocative. Without even mention­ ing the dreaded and dated Marx, the au­ thors have produced a convincing analysis of the transition of the academy from its own protected form of feudalism