Reviews.indd


194 College & Research Libraries March 2008 

as impassioned, opinionated, devoted 
to the trade and, with few exceptions, 
blessed with narrative abilities and an 
extraordinary sense of humor. With Eric 
Moore—founder in 1965 of Eric T. Moore 
Books in Hitchin, Hertfordshire—readers 
of these interviews will probably agree 
“that bookselling is the most humane, 
sociable, ill-organized, yet absorbing form 
of commerce to be found anywhere.” 

So, is “ill-organized” a distinguishing 
characteristic of the bookseller profession 
and even a source of pride? In one of the 
funniest but also most illuminating inter-
views of this highly enjoyable volume— 
Markham’s conversation with Eric Korn, 
the London bookman once known for his 
“Remainders” column in The Times Liter-
ary Supplement—we come to understand 
that “ill-organized” may in fact be just the 
self-deprecating way in which the very 
best booksellers describe how they lead 
a customer from book to seemingly unre-
lated book, often based on only a single 
minor physical or textual detail the books 
have in common—“minor,” that is, except 
in the eye of the prospective customer. 
Korn, asked about the “unusual degree of 
free association” that seems to character-
ize his thinking and writing style, suggests 
that this is “the one advantage of having 
an undisciplined mind…. If you’re heavily 
structured …it’s harder to fi nd profitable 
cross-fertilization.” Peter Eaton celebrated 
his own powers of association by creating 
whimsical exhibits of curiosa in his book-
shop, displaying things like “the clock that 
belonged to the people who put the engine 
in the boat Shelley drowned in.” (Or was 
this example just made up?) 

Crisscrossing associative fi laments link 
the thousands of books on the bookseller’s 
shelves in a dense net of intertextuality, a 
net that may exist solely in the bookseller’s 
mind and can be only inadequately rep-
resented or replaced by catalog searches 
or even keyword searching in a full-text 
environment. This may explain, at least 
in part, the disdain many antiquarian 
booksellers have for computers and the 
Internet. It’s not primarily the economic 

survival aspect that is at work here. 
(Though Korn does quip that admitting 
computers into bookshops is “rather like 
turkeys cultivating cranberries.”) In the 
end, it’s the particular kind of wilderness 
guide service that only a truly knowledge-
able bookseller can provide that explains 
the resistance of the guild to “embrace” 
change. This refrain is heard throughout 
Markham’s book. Nigel Burwood, owner 
of Any Amount of Books on London’s 
Charing Cross Road, asserts that it “would 
have been better for the book trade if the 
Internet had never been invented.” Yet all 
the same, Burwood and other booksellers 
interviewed on the pages of this book have 
leapt into the new environment with both 
feet, since “because it has been invented, 
you have to join in.” And they have done 
so very successfully, while still seeking 
to attract customers to their shops in the 
physical world, where many of the most 
fascinating conversations—and exciting 
discoveries—still take place. 

This book was self-published in a 
hardbound edition limited to 500 copies 
in 2004. It may still be available through 
Sheila Markham’s Web site, but it is hard 
to find through the usual online ordering 
channels. The new paperback edition, by 
contrast, is both available and affordable. 
Those who want to read the interviews 
but place no value on owning the book 
may find many of them at the Sheila 
Markham Rare Books Web site, includ-
ing the interviews with Peter Eaton, Eric 
Korn, Nigel Burwood, and Simon Gough. 
Though they are unlinked, Google knows 
they are there; and librarians, using pas-
sages quoted in this review, should have 
no problem finding them. Nothing beats 
owning the printed book, however, for 
pulling all of this material together and 
keeping it conveniently and reliably in 
one place for a very long time. Physical 
books are like that.—Jeff rey Garrett , North-
western University Library. 

Wiegand, Shirley A. and Wayne A. 
Wiegand. Books on Trial: Red Scare in 
the Heartland. Norman: University 



Book Reviews 195 

of Oklahoma Press, 2007. 286p. alk. 
paper, $24.95 (ISBN 0806138688). LC 
2007-4141. 

On August 17, 1940, Oklahoma City 
police raided the local office of the Com-
munist Party, the Progressive Bookstore, 
and five private homes. They confiscated 
thousands of books and other printed ma-
terials and arrested sixteen people under 
a state Criminal Syndicate law dating 
back to WWI. Law enforcement officials 
probably expected to achieve their aim of 
intimidating radicals and driving them 
out of the state quickly. Instead, the arrests 
resulted in a series of trials, convictions, 
and appeals that lasted over three years. 
In 1940, the Nazi-Soviet pact was in force 
and American Communists opposed the 
war. By 1943, Hitler had invaded the 
Soviet Union, Japan had att acked Pearl 
Harbor, and the United States and Soviet 
Union were allies. The changed political 
climate, along with widespread public 
protest at the violation of civil liberties in 
the absence of “clear and present danger,” 
helped the accused eventually to gain ac-
quittal. A cause celebre that att racted the 
attention of the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt 
sank from historical memory. 

When Wayne Wiegand stumbled on 
the story in 1999, he invited his wife 
Shirley to join him in the exhaustive de-
tective work that eventually led to Books 
on Trial, one of the most engrossing books 
I’ve ever reviewed for a library journal. 
Shirley had taught law at the University 
of Oklahoma, and Wayne specialized in 
library history. They haunted archives 
and libraries around the country, pored 
over newspaper files, solicited documents 
under the Freedom of Information Act, 
and interviewed people with direct or 
indirect experience of the incident. Their 
narrative incorporates generous quota-
tions and summaries of court proceed-
ings, written documents, press accounts, 
and eyewitness testimony. It is sprinkled 
with vivid words and images that bring 
the era to life, such as this passage describ-
ing Detective Wade Webb’s preparations 
for an undercover visit to the Progressive 

Bookstore: “He then donned an old oil-
stained shirt, an oil-soaked hat and over-
alls, and some greasy, oil-soaked boots. 
He had not shaved for two days. ‘Now I 
look like a Communist,’ he thought as he 
checked himself in the mirror.” 

What surprised me most about this 
story was the timing. I’d been under the 
impression that the anti-Communist 
witch hunt picked up steam only in the 
late forties, with the Cold War. I knew 
about the Hatch Act of 1939 outlawing 
membership in “subversive” organiza-
tions by federal employees, and the Smith 
Act of 1940 making it illegal to advocate 
the overthrow of the government. But 
I did not realize that the House Un-
American Activities Committ ee existed 
before the war. The Wiegands provide 
information on the background to the 
trials within Oklahoma, where poverty, 
unemployment, and racial segregation 
were potent sources of discontent. Lo-
cal issues were the real concern of the 
radical activists and the forces who op-
posed them (business, industry, veterans 
groups, the KKK). But the international 
situation forced the constitutional issue 
of free speech—the right to read and 
think what one wished—to the center of 
the conflict. The prosecution used scare 
words such as Trojan Horse and Fifth 
Column and ridiculed the names of some 
of the defendants, Jews from New York. 
Defense supporters hurled accusations of 
Gestapo tactics, while each side branded 
the other as fascist and un-American. 

Bob Wood, the state Communist Party 
Secretary, was charged with running the 
bookstore, while the others were charged 
with being Communists, but all their 
cases rested on the purportedly seditious 
content of thousands of books, ranging 
from the works of Marx and Lenin to 
Thomas Jefferson and Charles Dickens. It 
was quickly pointed out that these books 
could be found in research libraries and 
were for sale in bookstores. Once the issue 
was defined as one of censorship, support 
for the defense (initially confined to left-
wing voices) widened to include groups 



196 College & Research Libraries 

such as the American Booksellers Associa-
tion, university faculty and administra-
tors, and professional associations. But 
not the American Library Association. 

The Wiegands learned what they 
could about the lives of the principals 
in the case, even tracking down their 
descendants to find out about their later 
lives. I particularly enjoyed the portraits 
of the brilliant strategist Bob Wood, the 
party loyalist Alan Shaw, the irrepress-
ible would-be novelist Ira Jaffe, and their 
wives Ina, Nena Beth, and Wilma. An FBI 
informant reported on them this way: 
“Robert and Ina Wood are the real lead-
ers and the party whips, experienced and 
well traveled and slick as ice.” Alan and 
Eli were “mere babes in arms” next to Bob 
Wood, “who keeps them going through 
flattery and bombast.” The Wiegands are 
unsympathetic toward the prosecution 
side, implying that their motives were 
political, but the pugnacious Assistant 
County Attorney John Eberle does emerge 
as an individual. 

Readers are given ample evidence with 
which to make up their minds about the 
rights and wrongs of the case, with a few 
exceptions. The Wiegands off er litt le back-
ground on right-wing groups in Oklahoma 
such as the American Legion, and they 
tend to underestimate (in my opinion) 
grassroots support of racism and nativism. 
While they acknowledge that the American 
Communist Party was mouthing the party 
line from Moscow, they nevertheless view 
the Communists in the case as basically 
good-hearted and nonideological. More 
information on treatment of the American 
Nazi Party would have provided a useful 
context for comparison. 

The authors occasionally hint at their 
story’s relevance to events today, as when 
they comment that “another part of 
Oklahoma’s conservative elite made clear 
its priorities on civil liberties in periods of 
national crisis.” They speak their minds 
more openly in an epilogue, referring to 
periodic episodes of “paranoid politics” 
in American history, the antiterrorism 
bill passed under Clinton, and the USA 

March 2008 

PATRIOT Act. They are heartened that 
the strength of public opinion can restore 
the balance. Puzzlingly, they remark that 
the nation must have emerged from the 
Oklahoma affair with a “good dose of 
cynicism.” Perhaps. The performance of 
the press and the legal system struck me 
as better then than now. My fi nal impres-
sion is one of sad irony, knowing that 
the temporary victories for freedom of 
thought and expression recorded in this 
book were reversed almost as soon as the 
war was over.—Jean M. Alexander, Carnegie 
Mellon University. 

Caribbean Libraries in the 21st Century: 
Changes, Challenges, and Choices. 
Ed. Cheryl Peltier-Davis and Shamin 
Renwick, Medford, N.J.: Informa-
tion Today, 2007. 387p. $49.50 (ISBN: 
1573873012). LC 2007-9440. 

This is a current compilation of specially 
written chapters on a wide-ranging set of 
topics by knowledgeable people with Ca-
ribbean experience. The title is overbroad, 
however, as there is nearly no att ention to 
the non–English-speaking islands of the 
insular Caribbean, countries like Puerto 
Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and 
Haiti. The editors and most of the 40 con-
tributing authors have a connection with 
one of the campuses of the University of 
the West Indies, supplemented by others 
working in the Bahamas and the Dutch-
speaking countries. Two of the contribu-
tors are currently working in the region, 
and the other two have had considerable 
experience with IFLA. 

The subtitle accurately reflects the va-
riety of chapters. These include surveys 
of two countries; institutional histories 
of large and small academic libraries; 
examination of services to several spe-
cial populations, including people living 
in rural areas, users of school libraries, 
blind and print disabled users; and chap-
ters, including collection management, 
a classification scheme for Caribbean 
legal materials, and special information 
services to the agricultural sector. Impact 
and appropriate integration of informa-