594 College & Research Libraries November 2010

have benefitted from the addition of 
concrete examples and more theoreti-
cal material. Those chapters provide so 
little information that they would be of 
minimal use to a new administrator or to 
a staff member seeking to understand the 
political environment of a college campus. 
Several thought-provoking chapters bal-
ance these deficiencies, however. Frank 
Cervone provides an excellent descrip-
tion of effective project management, 
and Luanne DeGreve’s discussion of 
the management of explicit and tacit 
institutional knowledge is informative. 
Additionally, Kathleen Walsh’s enthu-
siastic essay makes a clear distinction 
between management and leadership, 
while emphasizing the need for leader-
ship in today’s rapidly changing digital 
environment. Harvey Gover’s essay on 
“Knowing the Library User” is succinct 
and well written. New administrators 
would benefit especially from reading 
these sections. Since each chapter stands 
alone and deals with a unique manage-
ment issue, the reader can select indi-
vidual essays to peruse and ignore those 
that are less helpful. 

The title implies that this guidebook 
is written solely for academic library 
managers, but some of the chapters have 
application to administration in other 
types of libraries. For example, Anne 
Marie Casey’s chapter on communication, 
Luann DeGreve’s chapter on corporate 
culture, and Kathleen Walsh’s leadership 
essay could serve as valuable resources 
for any library administrator or staff 
member. It is unfortunate that the title 
may deter public, special, and school 
librarians from exploring the contents of 
this volume.

Experienced administrators may wish 
to read Mistakes in Academic Library Man-
agement to review management strategies 
useful for handling specific situations. 
New administrators may wish to read se-
lected essays to gain a better understand-
ing of library culture and to learn how to 
avoid some of the hazards caused by poor 
communication and inadequate planning. 

However, because of its inconsistencies, 
Mistakes in Academic Library Management 
is an optional purchase for library man-
agement collections.—Margaret N. Gregor, 
Appalachian State University.

Janice Leslie Hochstat Greenberg. Jazz 
Books in the 1990s: An Annotated Bibliog-
raphy. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 
2010. 211p. alk. paper, $45 paper (ISBN 
9780810869851). LC2009-051072.

Like jazz itself, jazz bibliography has a 
relatively short but remarkably dynamic 
history marked by a succession of key 
developments and notable figures. While 
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie 
Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornet-
te Coleman, and other icons shaped the 
music’s stylistic development, dedicated 
researchers tracked what was written 
about jazz, organizing and presenting 
their findings in important reference 
sources. Alan P. Merriam’s groundbreak-
ing A Bibliography of Jazz (1954) was first 
to bring together a wide range of popular 
and critical writings on the topic. As this 
body of literature grew, compilers of 
bibliographies adopted various selective 
strategies, restricting their scope to books 
(such as Carl Gregor in his International 
Jazz Bibliography: Jazz Books from 1919 to 
1968 [1969; supp. 1971, 1975; rev. eds. 
1983, 1988]), to books in English (such 
as Donald Kennington in The Literature 
of Jazz: A Critical Guide [1970; 2nd ed. 
1980]), or to writings on a specific style or 
period (such as John Gray in Fire Music: 
A Bibliography of the New Jazz, 1959–1990 
[1991]). Today, the most extensive, though 
certainly not exhaustive, bibliography of 
books on jazz is Eddie S. Meadow’s Jazz 
Scholarship and Pedagogy: A Research and 
Information Guide (3rd ed. 2006), which 
draws in a variety of dictionaries, ency-
clopedias, histories, biographies, discog-
raphies, instructional materials, and other 
monographs. In Jazz Books in the 1990s, 
Janice Leslie Hochstat Greenberg focuses 
on a comparatively narrow slice of jazz’s 
vast literature, resulting in a bibliography 
that covers its defined territory well but 



Book Reviews 595

is somewhat restricted in its usefulness.
As Greenberg states in the introduc-

tion, this bibliography aims “to provide 
the reader with as comprehensive a listing 
as possible of the adult nonfiction books 
on jazz published in English from 1990 
through 1999.” In this regard, the book is 
successful overall. While Meadows also 
takes in books from the 1990s, causing 
a fair amount of redundancy between 
the two bibliographies, there are many 
titles identified by Greenberg that are 
not listed by Meadows, especially those 
published by small presses. The benefits 
of Greenberg’s deep coverage of the 1990s 
can be seen, for example, when compar-
ing the two bibliographies’ listings for 
books on saxophonist-composer Anthony 
Braxton. While Meadows registers only 
one English-language biography of Brax-
ton published in the 1990s, Greenberg 
includes four. Yet a quick comparison 
between the two bibliographies does 
reveal some oversights on Greenberg’s 
part, such as the absence of John Fraim’s 
Spirit Catcher: The Life and Art of John Col-
trane (1996), which is found in Meadows. 
Though short of comprehensive, Green-
berg still achieves a laudable result with 
the roughly 700 titles compiled here, un-
doubtedly the most thorough treatment 
of this particular, albeit rather confined, 
portion of jazz literature.

Segmented into eleven chapters, each 
assembling publications of a certain type 
and arranging them further into germane 
subcategories, the bibliography is best 
suited for browsing, allowing casual read-
ers to find historical surveys, collections 
of criticism, biographies, discographies, 
and other grouped writings without 
much difficulty. After discovering a title 
of interest, however, there is little ad-
ditional guidance provided by the brief 
annotations, which are purely descrip-
tive and without evaluative comment. 
Fuller, more critical annotations would 
have enhanced the bibliography’s utility, 
especially in comparing publications on 
related themes, but an even greater short-
coming is found in the book’s indexing. 

While the author and title indexes are 
complete and accurate, researchers trav-
eling less straightforward paths may be 
frustrated by the subject index, which fails 
to mine the collected citations sufficiently 
and misses opportunities to reflect areas 
of inquiry that crop up regularly in jazz 
discourse. The subject index’s entry for 
“race,” a topic as sensitive as it is central to 
jazz’s history and place in society, points 
to seven books, six of which are listed 
in the “Jazz and Race” subsection of the 
“Musicology” chapter. But a quick scan 
of the bibliography turns up at least four 
other pertinent books (Karlton Edward 
Hester ’s The Melodic and Polyrhythmic 
Development of John Coltrane’s Spontane-
ous Composition in a Racist Society [1997], 
Frank Kofsky’s John Coltrane and the Jazz 
Revolution of the 1960s [1998], Susan Cur-
tis’ Dancing to a Black Man’s Tune: A Life of 
Scott Joplin [1994], and William Howland 
Kenney’s Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 
1904–1930 [1993]), all of which have titles 
or annotations unmistakably indicating 
coverage of racial issues. Spirituality, 
whether pertaining to individual musi-
cians or to the essence of composition 
and improvisation, is another common 
theme in the literature but is entirely 
absent from the subject index, despite the 
word “spiritual” appearing in the anno-
tation for Eric Nisenson’s Ascension: John 
Coltrane and His Quest (1993) and in the 
titles of Janna Tull Steed’s Duke Ellington: 
A Spiritual Biography (1999) and Paul Horn 
and Lee Underwood’s Inside Paul Horn: 
The Spiritual Odyssey of a Universal Traveler 
(1990). (Fraim’s aforementioned book on 
Coltrane would also be relevant were it 
listed.) No matter how meticulous, subject 
analysis in any bibliography of this size 
would necessarily be incomplete. Just a 
bit more care in preparing this subject 
index, however, would have improved 
access to the diverse, interdisciplinary 
collection of books cited.

The weight of this bibliography’s defi-
ciencies, to a great degree, will depend on 
the background and expectations of each 
user. Jazz enthusiasts seeking interesting 



596 College & Research Libraries November 2010

recreational reading may be satisfied, eas-
ily browsing their way to books on their 
favorite artists, but scholars will likely be 
disappointed by the weak annotations, 
insufficient subject indexing, and limited 
chronological span, as well as the absence 
of writings in languages other than Eng-
lish. As a result, most researchers will 
continue to rely on Meadows as their pri-
mary jazz bibliography, and only libraries 
with very ambitious collecting missions in 
the area of jazz should feel it necessary to 
purchase Jazz Books in the 1990s.

Ultimately, it may just be that the 
publication of this bibliography was 
premature, leaving any evaluation of it 
unduly tilted toward the negative. De-
spite the above critique, Greenberg has 
proven to have the research skills and 
dedication necessary for authoring an in-
depth reference tool, and with this book 
she has made a valid contribution—or 
at least the beginning of one. In her in-
troduction, as well as in series editor Ed 
Berger’s foreword, there are intimations 
that this volume is the first of more to 
come. If indeed the bibliography keeps 
growing, thus creating a much more 
complete inventory of jazz books and 
establishing a broader context for the 
publications compiled so far, Jazz Books 
in the 1990s can be understood less for 
its limitations and more for its potential. 
While it is hoped that the criticisms stated 
here will be regarded in future iterations, 
it is clear that Greenberg is on the right 
track; and, with continued pursuit, this 
project could become significant in jazz 
bibliography’s developing history.—D.J. 
Hoek, Northwestern University.

Owen Davies. Grimoires: A History of 
Magic Books. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford 
University Press, 2009. x, 368p. $29.95 
(ISBN 9780199204519). LC2009-924589.

In Grimoires, Owen Davies (social history, 
University of Hertfordshire) continues 
the work begun in his previous books, 
Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951; 
The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts; 
and Cunning-folk: Popular Magic in English 

History. Davies places this current effort 
within the framework of the history of 
the book, the history of ideas, and, most 
especially, the powers (whether perceived 
or real) that people throughout history 
have bestowed on writing, words, and 
the physical book.

The epigraph to Grimoires quotes an 
episode from Don Quixote in which a 
character, standing at the gates of hell, 
observes a dozen or so devils, playing 
tennis with rackets of fire—but rather 
than using tennis balls, their implements 
were books, “apparently full of wind and 
rubbish.” While Davies never specifically 
says that grimoires are trash-filled ten-
nis balls,” his entire book is filled with 
examples of charlatans, cunning-men, 
and those who are duped by them and 
their magical books. The introduction 
defines grimoires as “books of conjura-
tions and charms, providing instructions 
on how to make magical objects such as 
protective amulets and talismans. They 
are repositories of knowledge that arm 
people against evil spirits and witches, 
heal their illnesses, fulfill their sexual 
desires, divine and alter their destiny, 
and much else besides.” The author is 
careful to distinguish between grimoires 
and other types of magic books, which 
might be used to uncover the secrets of 
the natural world—early predecessors of 
scientific texts. Conjuring up spirits, using 
the right words and prescribing rituals are 
all essential to the content of grimoires. 
According to the Oxford English Diction-
ary, the word itself is probably derived 
from the Old French word “gramaire,” 
which, in the Middle Ages, meant the 
knowledge or study of Latin, and was 
often synonymous with learning in gen-
eral, including magic, astrology, and the 
occult sciences. The history of grimoires, 
claims Davies, can help us “understand 
the spread of Christianity and Islam, the 
development of early science, the cultural 
influence of print, [and] the growth of 
literacy ….” Most decidedly, in this book 
Davies has illustrated the talismanic 
power of words on paper—even in this