Book Reviews 83 dozen other coauthors (all identified in a contributors list) were doctoral students at her institution when the chapters were written. While the title is unwieldy, it is nev- ertheless exact. The author’s stated aim is to encourage readers to contribute to the field “by conducting research and evaluation studies and publishing their results.” To learn how to do that—to learn how to use appropriate research models to achieve desired results—other texts from other fields, such as psychology or sociology, have traditionally been used. Seeing a need for a book that would ex- plain research methods to librarians and informational professionals and students, using examples from the ILS field, she set out to fill the gap and has succeeded admirably. Once noting the aim of the book, Wildemuth explains its tone. She writes that she “was envisioning a student or colleague sitting in my office, asking me questions.” The friendly and jargon-free language she uses helps explicate con- cepts that could otherwise seem dense. Copious examples, breaking up of text with boldface titles and subtitles, the use of frequent summaries, and short chapter help in the process as well. The organizational principles of the book and individual chapters are quite logical and uniform. A brief introduc- tion (Section One) is followed by an examination of how to identify and refine a research question; Section Three discusses the number of options available in research designs, and associated sam- pling issues. Section Four introduces the methods of collecting data; Section Five focuses on the analyzing of data; and the final section briefly addresses how vari- ous research methods can be combined in particular studies. Each chapter can be read individually from the others, and related themes pres- ent elsewhere in the book are helpfully noted to those readers who are sampling. (Those reading the text straight through might find the constant explanation of abbreviations and the repeating patterns of explanation a bit wearying, but both are a tribute to the author’s determina- tion to be consistent.) The topic to be discussed in each chapter is summarized; the reader is told what will follow. The research method or analytical construct is identified and explained, and sometimes even the history of a particular methodol- ogy is given as well. Any confusion that might arise after a theoretical discussion almost always is resolved as the authors follow up the abstract with specific studies summarized from ILS literature. What is produced is not just an amazing synthesis of research methods and pro- tocols but a succinct summary of various ILS research papers on numerous topics that used the particular research method under discussion. Endnotes and a list of works cited follow each chapter, making further research easier. Two indices round out the volume: one, on the authors of articles used as examples; the other, a subject index. The book has not a single graphic throughout its hundreds of pages; but the scores of research articles illustrating the methods under discussion in each chapter open up broad vistas for not just students and professionals but the ILS field as a whole. This book will easily achieve its stated goal of aiding its read- ers in designing and publishing research projects that will eventually improve professional practice.—Harlan Greene, College of Charleston. Laura Cruz. The Paradox of Prosperity: The Leiden Booksellers’ Guild and the Distribution of Books in Early Modern Europe. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2009. 275p. alk. paper, $55 (ISBN 9781584562351). LC 2008-027743. Laura Cruz is an associate professor of history at Western Carolina University. Her previous publications include articles on book markets, social networking, and death practices of seventeenth-century Netherlands. She edited several collected volumes on Dutch history, including 84 College & Research Libraries January 2010 Boundaries and Their Meanings in the His- tory of the Netherlands [Boston: Brill, 2009], and is currently president of the Society of Netherlandic History. Her major research interest is Dutch economic history, and it is through the eyes of an economist that in this book she examines Dutch Golden Age publishing, bookselling, and marketing as it was practiced in the city of Leiden in the years following the Revolt against Spanish rule. Cruz’s book is based upon her doc- toral dissertation, which she completed at the University of California, Berkeley in 2001. Among the scholars she studied with at Berkeley was Jan de Vries, who contributed a foreword to the present book, and whose own book The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Per- severance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 [Cambridge; New York: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1997] is cited repeatedly here and was of obvious importance to Cruz’s thinking. The central paradox referred to by the title of this book seems to be that guilds, those feudal social organizations derided by Adam Smith as “enemies of natural liberty” and of modern capitalism, suc- cessfully assisted the printers and book- sellers of seventeenth-century Leiden to negotiate lives of financial and social se- curity in a way neither purely feudal nor capitalist, but rather in a manner adopt- ing the “modern and the pre-modern in order to create new forms that defy easy categorization.” Cruz argues that guilds were not mere anachronistic holdovers from medieval times and cites as proof of this the fact that the magistrates of Leiden granted 10 new guild chapters between 1604 and 1650. In 1600 Leiden was the only major Dutch city that lacked a guild for printers and booksellers. The fact that it wasn’t until as late as 1652 that Leiden created such a guild is a prime piece of evidence in Cruz’s argument. Leiden was an industrial town best known for its textile manufacturing and for the presence of the prestigious Leiden University, established by William the Orange in 1575 as a reward for the town’s perseverance during the Spanish siege of the previous year. During the late six- teenth and throughout the seventeenth century, Leiden became a major center for both publishing and distributing books; this book examines reasons for that success. After the introduction, the book is arranged in the following chapters: “Guilds,” “The Academy Printers,” “Auctions,” “Social Structures,” and “De- mand,” and ends with a brief summary conclusion. In “Guilds,” Cruz provides a summary overview of generic functions of guilds, such as regulation of the quality of work and skill levels of guild members. One important duty was to oversee (and some- times pay for) the funerals of its members and sometimes to provide charitable assistance to widows and children of the deceased. Funeral attendance of all members was required, and neglecting to do so was punished with a fine. This “life insurance” function was an impor- tant economic inducement toward guild membership. Also important was the social status guild membership bestowed upon its members. Admittance into the printers/booksell- ers guild for residents of Leiden could occur in various ways; and, generally speaking, it was easier to accomplish than in other towns, where proof of mastery of the arts of printing, bookbinding, and the like were required before obtaining master status. Admittance was more dif- ficult for nonnatives of Leiden . For most of the sixteenth century, the city of Antwerp was the pre-eminent center of printing in the Low Countries, home to, among other presses, the famous Plantin Press of Christopher Plantin (who is confusingly referred to in Cruz’s book as both the fully Dutch Christoffel Plan- tijn and partly Anglicized Christopher Plantijn). Antwerp, however, capitulated in 1585 to Spanish forces and, with the ensuing restrictive Spanish/Catholic environment, generated a stream of reli- Book Reviews 85 gious exiles, many of whom went north to the more tolerant environs of Leiden and other Dutch Republic towns. Cruz points out that from 1570 to 1630, Leiden attracted more immigrant printers per capita than any other Dutch town. In the chapter “The Academy Printers,” Cruz reasonably speculates that part of the appeal of Leiden for those involved in the book trades would have been the prestige of the university. Beginning in 1577, the university decided to appoint an official “printer for the Academy.” The first of these, Willem Silvius, was recruited from Antwerp. His tenure was brief: he died in 1580 in a state of debt, despite the rather generous terms provided by the university. The university next sought out Christoffel Plantijn himself, who agreed to relocate to Leiden and began serving in the post in 1583. Plantin, however, remained Catholic and soon returned to Antwerp, after printing about 30 books during his Leiden tenure. The rest of this chapter is an interesting depiction of the intersection of printers, scholars, and libraries of Leiden, more concrete and particular than some of the more speculative and table-heavy chapters that follow, and more likely to appeal to those readers with an interest in book history rather than economic theory. Cruz points out that Leiden was home to the innovation of the book auction catalog, and of advertising upcoming auctions both locally and abroad in newspapers and by distribution of the book auction catalogs themselves. The earliest definitely recorded book auction was performed in Leiden in 1599 by Louis Elsevier, paterfamilias of the famous publishing house. Cruz sees these book auctions and their catalogs as examples of a Dutch “microinventions”: that is to say small, clever innovations that could lead to a competitive advantage. The remaining portions of the book survey the relative economic status of various subsets of the book trade (bind- ers, printers, booksellers, and the like) by examining tax records, both internally within Leiden and in comparison to other Dutch towns. Cruz also examines the changing demands of the marketplace. As the merchant classes became more affluent and literate, there was a propor- tional rise in the printing of books in the vernacular, and a spreading prolifera- tion of casual forms of literature such as newspapers. Attention must be drawn to some edito- rial and design problems. The tables are, with one exception, built upon the same template of difficult-to-read grids regard- less of the information they convey. Worse, they are often severely underexplained and confusing, both in themselves and within the accompanying text (or lack thereof). The book also has a noticeably sloppier than usual occurrence of missing or misspelled words, and of other little mistakes and anomalies such as the Chris- toper/Christoffel issue mentioned above, and the incorrect founding date of 1576 for Leiden Leiden University cited on page 78. More inexplicable and less forgivable, particularly in a book about books, is the absence of proper citations for many of the illustrations, and the incorrect or in- adequate descriptions given of the same. For example, the source and date of the portrait engraving of printer Franciscus Raphelengius reproduced on page 82 is not listed, only the name of the library that provided it. A title page of an auction catalog depicted on page 145 is strangely described as “Printed Auction Catalogue (inside).” On page 221 a double-page spread of a frontispiece and title page is called “Example of Frontispiece printed by Elseviers.” The Paradox of Prosperity is a book of rather specialized appeal. While some of Cruz’s arguments lack the clarity conducive to epiphany, it is a detailed work of research with many components of interest.—Scott Krafft, Northwestern University. Beth Gallaway. Game On! Gaming at the Library. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2009. 306p. alk. paper, $55 (ISBN 9781555705954). LC2009-014110.