Library Journal articles from August 1997

Library Journal archives from August 1997

Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The subtle simplicity of haiku depends on the complex balance of structure, object, image, and impression. The 17-syllable poem combines two phrases, arranged in three lines; balanced by a pause that presents the picture of a seasonal object...

Blue Horses Rush In: Poems and Stories.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Tapahonso (A Breeze Swept Through, West End, 1987) presents a poignant collection of stories and poems celebrating the joys and sorrows of everyday life. Some bring belly laughs, such as "I Remembered This One in Tucson," which tells of a...

Mark Twain's Letters, vol. 5, 1872-1873.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The 309 comprehensively annotated letters in the fifth volume of Twain's correspondence help illuminate his 36th and 37th years, a largely happy and exuberant time when he was tasting the first fruits of domestic and foreign celebrity. With...

Wild Women: Inspiring Prose and Poetry.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Editor and fiction writer Hall has selected fiction and poetry by living authors, both male and female, who "aren't usually thrown together," e.g., Margaret Atwood, Erica Jong, Ursula Le Guin, and Alice Walker. Kate Wilhelm writes in "The...

Parting from Phantoms: Selected Writings, 1990-1994.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the demise of the German Democratic Republic, and the reunification of Germany are events that still instigate a sometimes uneasy debate in German intellectual circles and beyond. Wolf (What Remains and...

Misfits: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley.
August 1, 1997... Exley, best known for his 1968 cult classic, A Fan's Notes, was indeed a misfit. He managed to sponge off his family and friends successfully throughout his life, believing it was beneath him to earn a living by conventional means. Yardley,...

Making More Waves: New Writing by Asian American Women.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... In this new anthology of writing by Asian American women, Kim, Lilia V. Villanueva, and Asian Women United of California expand considerably on Making Waves (Cornell Univ., 1993) to produce a wonderful collection of fresh new stories. poems,...

Vigil.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Shapiro's sister Beth is dying of cancer, and he and his family spend her last four weeks at her bedside in a hospice. Within this short work, Shapiro (The Last Happy Occasion, LJ 10/1/96) reveals the history of a family torn apart by...

Art Without Boundaries: The World of Modern Dance.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... In his newest book, New York Times dance critic Anderson chronicles the diversity of this art form as performed throughout the world since the 19th century. The presentation is historical, so dancers and choreographers reappear in various...

French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, rev. ed.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Happily for aficionados of French music of the ]7th and 18th centuries, Anthony has revised and expanded his 1974 classic. Incorporating much of the recent voluminous scholarship on this subject, he has added nearly 100 pages of text and 800...

New Broadways: Theatre Across America As the Millennium Approaches, rev. ed.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... In revising and updating his first edition (LJ 8/82), Berkowitz has made even better the best survey of American professional theater since 1950. After an admirably concise chapter on the theater and drama of the first half of the century,...

Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The title of this biography has a double meaning: it's the name of one of Bergman's greatest films, the 1946 collaboration with costar Cary Grant and director Alfred Hitchcock, and it also refers to her adulterous affair with director...

Great Garbo: A Life Apart.
August 1, 1997... Since the death of Greta Garbo in 1990, a handful of biographies have been written, some focusing on her relationships, but only two have attempted to analyze her entire life. The first was Barry Paris's excellent Garbo (LJ 1/95), Swenson...

Ruth Crawford Seeger, American Composer: A Composer's Search for American Music.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Long-awaited in some musical circles, this admiring biography of one member of an influential American family of musicians is deeper, broader, and more theoretically conceived than Matilda Gaume's Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories,...

Friendship.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Emerging from obscurity, Blanchot is now regarded as one of the great 20th-century critics, but as The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French acknowledges, "It is not entirely clear why this change has come about." Though he displays...

Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Ceaser (government and foreign affairs, Univ. of Virgina) distinguishes between the "metaphysical or symbolic" America (the notion of America as a materialistic, decadent country) and the "real" America (America as a preeminent bastion of...

Politics of Friendship.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Following the death of Paul DeMan and the controversies surrounding the ensuing revelations of his personal life and wartime politics, Derrida delivered a lengthy seminar on the ethics and emotions of friendship. Each session began with the...

The Courage to Become: The Virtues of Humanism.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Kurtz, a former copresident of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, says he is writing not philosophy but eupraxophy -- instructions for a good and practical life. So his book resembles a creed -- that of a liberal Protestant except...

A Primer on Ethics.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The author (philosophy, Auburn Univ.) intends this textbook to be used jointly with "at least one other text that presents major ethical theories by central moral thinkers." The recommendation is sound, for this text is very elementary...

The Troubadour of Knowledge.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... French thinker Serres (The Natural Contract, Univ. of Michigan, 1995) philosophizes by indirection. He does not argue for particular propositions but instead juxtaposes facts in unusual combinations. Among other topics, he discusses the...

Love Is Hard Work.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Algarin, founder of the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe and three-time winner of the American Book Award, makes for a formidable presence in contemporary poetry. This volume, which comes with an interpretive introduction by Roy Skodnick and an...

The Country Without a Post Office.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... This is the seventh book of poetry by Ali (A Nostalgist's Map of America, Norton, 1992), director of the writing program at the University of Massachusetts. The book is a poignant, nostalgic evocation of Kashmir, Ali's homeland, with a...

Apology for Want.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... These difficult, allusive poems won the 1996 Bakeless Prize, awarded by Middlebury College and the publisher for a first book by an emerging writer. Intelligent yet insular, the title poem makes a case for art as the attempted fulfillment of...

Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... This posthumous collection of poems by Bukowski (Pulp, LJ 6/1/96) is a wonderful swan song. The settings remain mostly the same -- taprooms, race tracks, and back alleys -- and the themes largely unchanged -- fragile relationships, heavy...

The Night Path.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... This collection of poems, winner of the 1997 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, will be a blessing to everyone who enjoys poetry and has parented a child or may do so someday. Kutchins writes with grace primarily about pregnancy, childbirth, and...

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Lorde -- a recent New York State poet, author of ten books, a self-styled "black lesbian mother warrior poet," and matriarch of the North American lesbian feminist movement -- has been sorely missed since her death of cancer in 1992. For...

The Early Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert: City in Tears, Sheer Love, On the Waves of TSF, and The Nightingale Sings Poorly.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The "conscience" of Czechoslovakia during the Communist regime, Seifert (1901-86) was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1984. For over 60 years, he commemorated his native heritage and landscape. This important English translation...

Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Christ (Odyssey with the Goddess, LJ 3/1/95) manages to combine heart and intellect in her latest work, melding personal experience with goddess studies and her scholarship. She discusses who the goddess is, what her history is, why there is...

The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... This one-volume translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls joins those of Florentino Garcia Martinez (The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, Eerdman's, 1996) and Michael Wise and others (The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, LJ 12/96) and is the...

American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The author (history, Vanderbilt Univ.) offers a history of the largest and most influential new or original forms of Christianity in the United States. He divides these by chronological cluster, defining the forms as restoration (Christian &...

Awakening the Buddha Within: Eight Steps to Enlightenment.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Das, who heads an institution dedicated to transmitting Buddhist contemplative practices and ethical teachings to Western audiences, here offers clear, understandable descriptions of Buddhist thought. His effort brings to mind several recent...

The Singular Beast: Jews, Christians, and the Pig.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Fabre-Vassas, a research fellow in Paris, has written an examination of Christian attitudes toward Jews particularly during the Middle Ages. A reader may ask: Why focus on the pig? In the author's words, "The pig is a creature divided. It...

On My Mind.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Lehmann, the recently deceased scholar of rabbinics and head of an international communications corporation, writes in this work as an Orthodox right-wing Zionist. He covers a wide variety of issues, from his campaign to encourage the...

Jerusalem and the Holy Land: The First Ecumenical Pilgrim's Guide.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... McCormick, a Michigan trial judge and ecumenical activist, targets a specialized audience in this work: evangelical Christians planning to visit Jerusalem and the Holy Land as religious pilgrims. He informs readers that they should look...

Madeleva: A Biography.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Mary Madeleva Wolff (1887-1964), a sister of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, was president of St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, for 27 years and an influential force in Catholic women's education. Widely known for both her poetry and her...

The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... In June 1938, three Jesuit priests drafted a work that might or might not have changed European history. Humani Generis Unitas (The Unity of the Human Race) was Pope Pius XI's encyclical to address the encroaching modernity of Fascist Italy...

Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... In this spiritual biography of the English social commentator and author, most memorably, of the Father Brown mysteries, English author Pearce focuses primarily on Chesterton's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1922. Pearce goes on to...

Hand of God: The Life of Diego Maradona.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Burns, a correspondent with the English Financial Times, has written a compelling unauthorized biography of soccer's Diego Maradona. Unequivocally, Maradona's prowess on the field has thrilled millions; 50 years from now this Argentine...

Cotton Bowl Days: Growing Up with Dallas and the Cowboys in the 1960s.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Not so long before their first Super Bowl, the Cowboys were a struggling expansion team with a new coach who were competing with another Dallas team for fan favor. Sportswriter Eisenberg (The Longest Shot: Lil E. Tee and the Kentucky Derby,...

Hiking!: The Ultimate Natural Prescription for Health and Wellness.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Stressed out? Creativity dead-ended? Need to lose weight or make new friends? Take a hike, in nature or with a hiking club. These West Coast authors enthusiastically describe all the good things a day-hiker may expect from the sport,...

Lombardi.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... This work is a relatively in-depth profile of one of professional football's legendary coaches, the man who created the Green Bay Packers dynasty of the 1960s. Today, Lombardi is often better remembered for such pithy sayings as "No one ever...

UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The UFO community strongly believes that the U.S. government has suppressed information about a supposed flying saucer crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Here. a group of anthropologists look at the mythological aspects of the...

A History of Dogs in the Early Americas.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Schwartz, a research assistant in physical anthropology at Yale, presents here a meticulously documented study of the relationship between aboriginal peoples and dogs in the Americas from prehistory through European contact. Borrowing from...

The Arbitrary Indian: The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Retired attorney Sheffield presents here a revised version of her Ph.d. dissertation in cultural anthropology, which was accepted by Tulane University in 1994. It focuses on an act that was supposed to stop trade in counterfeit Native...

The Time of the Gypsies.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Anthropologist Stewart, a research fellow at the London School of Economics, conducted fieldwork among the Gypsies of Harangos, Hungary, in the 1980s. Focusing primarily on the economic life of one Roma settlement, Stewart also addresses...

The Story I Tell Myself: A Venture in Existentialist Autobiography.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Barnes first made Sartre and the French Existentialist movement available to American readers with her translation of Being and Nothingness (1956). Here she provides an engaging autobiography that spans not only her self-identified period of...

I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff, vol. 1.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Ukrainian-born Bashkirtseff, who emigrated to France in 1870, began a diary at the age of 13 and continued writing until her death from tuberculosis at age 25 in 1884. This is a smooth English translation of the first 59 of 106 notebooks of...

The Civil War Letters of Joshua K. Callaway.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... With gripping clarity and insight. Callaway's Civil War letters detail a soldier's life in camp and on campaign. Callaway, a 28-year-old lieutenant in Company K, 28th Alabama Infantry Regiment, was also a schoolteacher, husband, and father...

A Jump for Life: A Survivor's Journal from Nazi-Occupied Poland.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... This journal, written by a middle-class Jewish woman who grew up in Warsaw before the German invasion in 1939, describes the ordeal Cyprys and her child. Eva, endured in German-occupied Poland from the formation of the Warsaw Ghetto through...

Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Dutton (modern history. Univ. of Liver-pool) proves here that U.S. politicians don't have a monopoly on Teflon coating. Dutton recounts how Eden, British prime minister from 1955 to 1957, managed to steer clear of accountability for dubious...

Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... "Beyond pleasure. there is still happiness -- such is the insolent legacy of Giacomo Casanova." Thus sounds the last line of this pretentious retelling of legendary lover Casanova's life -- and that's about as deeply as Flem, a...

Between Two Streams: A Diary from Bergen-Belsen.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Herzberg, a Dutch lawyer and writer, kept a diary while incarcerated in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II. Written between August 11. 1944 and April 26, 1945, it was originally published in a Dutch journal in 1950. The...

Barry Goldwater: Native Arizonan.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Iverson (history. Arizona State Univ.), the author or editor of six books about Native Americans, offers here a brief biography of the longtime senator, 1964 Republican presidential candidate, and singular leader of modern conservatism....

The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Kubler-Ross's landmark On Death and Dying (LJ 7/69) influenced much of today's work with the terminally ill. Now in her 70s and facing her own death, the renowned psychiatrist recounts here the story of a life spent not only endeavoring to...

Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Levy, a staff reporter for Time magazine, tells the picaresque story of Jewish adventurer Morris Cohen, who in a small way helped influence events in China. Born in Russia of Orthodox Jewish parents and reared in England, Cohen was a...

Allan Pinkerton: The First Private Eye.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Award-winning historian Mackay's (Michael Collins, LJ 1/97) research skills show through in this book. He apparently spent many years studying one of the most enigmatic characters from the Civil War era, Allan Pinkerton. Though Pinkerton...

Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... This implausible memoir is from a woman who experienced extreme adversity suffering the loss of six children and her husband and then struggling, to support her remaining family as a domestic worker. It is the narrative of a woman with a...

The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... There are a number of good biographies of Elizabeth II, but this one is different. Pimlott is primarily a political biographer, and while other works have focused on Elizabeth the woman, he goes further, exploring the role of the queen and...

Edward VII.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... British historian Plumptre provides a good summary of the life and reign of Edward VII, Queen Victoria's son who grew old as heir apparent and eventually became a respected sovereign who served the diplomatic interests of his country....

The Return: A Family Revisits Their Eastern European Roots.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... In this stirring memoir. exiled author Popescu (Almost Adam, LJ 5/15/96), who directed the film Death of an Angel, richly details his life in Romania, his defection to America, and his journey back to his homeland after the Romanian...

Where Light and Shadow Meet: A Memoir.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... In this autobiography, the wife of Oskar Schindler, whose story is known through Schindler's List, chronicles her own wartime heroism. She begins with her childhood in Bohemia, then traces her life from her marriage to her work against the...

Gloria Steinem: Hew Passions, Politics, and Mystique.
August 1, 1997... Stem (Toyland: The High-Stakes Game of the Toy Industry, LJ 3/15/97) has attempted a readable portrait of a complex contemporary whose story is not nearly concluded. She obviously likes and admires Steinem but is not blind to inconsistencies...

Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Historians who dismiss psychobiographies as psychobabble will now have to consider this reasoned case for applying psychoanalytic interpretation to the study of presidential leadership. Volkan (psychiatry, Univ. of Virginia) and Norman...

Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Schacht, as the Weimar Republic's finance minister, saved Germany from hyperinflation. He later gave his support to Hitler, and his financial manipulations hastened Germany's rearmament. Nevertheless, Schacht did not approve of war and spent...

Writing Treatments That Sell: How to Create and Market Your Story Ideas to the Motion Picture and TV Industry.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Walter's name is synonymous with excellence in motion picture screenwriting. The guru of the completed script (he previously wrote Screen writing: The Art, Craft and Business of Film and Television Writing, LJ 11/15/88), he here offers a...

The Whole Picture: Strategies for Screenwriting Success in the New Hollywood.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Walter's name is synonymous with excellence in motion picture screenwriting. The guru of the completed script (he previously wrote Screen writing: The Art, Craft and Business of Film and Television Writing, LJ 11/15/88), he here offers a...

The Art of Comedy Writing.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Berger (Blind Men and Elephants: Perspectives on Humor, Transaction, 1994) combines some worthwhile generalities with some narrow specifics in this brief book. He ambitiously claims that it "will be of use to anyone interested in humor" -- a...

The Factsheet Five Zine Reader.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Otto von Stroheim, publisher of Tiki News, a journal of all things tiki, explains his entrance into the world of zines as a sort of epiphany: After putting a lot of time into researching tiki culture, he thought "Why don't I try to package...

Zines.
August 1, 1997... Otto von Stroheim, publisher of Tiki News, a journal of all things tiki, explains his entrance into the world of zines as a sort of epiphany: After putting a lot of time into researching tiki culture, he thought "Why don't I try to package...

The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The authors (both English and journalism, Univ. of Delaware) compiled this excellent anthology for their students in a college course in literary journalism. In their introductions, they define literary journalism as factual, innovative, and...

Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Despite their title, Albelda (economics, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) and Tilly (policy and planning, Univ. of Massachusetts, Lowell) do a far better job of exploring the topic of women's poverty than they do glass ceilings. Indeed, much...

How Champions Sell.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Barber, a business consultant, educator, and professional speaker, sets forth here 27 strategies and over 1000 sales improvement as that salespersons can use to sell like "champions." The chapters may be read in any order, making this a...

DNA Leadership Through Goal-Driven Management.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Applying principles regarding cellular biology and DNA to organizations (the employees are the cells, etc.), Ball, head of his own Goals Institute, presents a sound, methodological approach to molding an organization into a self-managed,...

Selling Microsoft: Sales Secrets from Inside the World's Most Successful Company.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Dayton, previously a sales and contract support manager for Microsoft, now heads Client-Centered Training, Inc., whose methods he espouses in his book. The method consists of several steps: identify prospective customers; qualify the...

Plowing the Sea: Nurturing the Hidden Sources of Growth in the Developing World.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... In this well-written work, global strategy consultants Fairbanks and Lindsay address the issue of competitiveness in the developing world and advance ways to build and sustain macro, long-term competitive advantage. The authors first...

Asset Protection for Everyone: Secrets to Legally Safeguarding Your Hard-Earned Money, Home and Business.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Frasier, an attorney specializing in asset protection, points out that wealthy individuals may be vulnerable to losing much of their wealth as a result of legal action, accident, or catastrophic illness. Beyond his general advice to keep a...

The Contrarian Manager.
August 1, 1997... Management shelves have recently been flooded with books written by retired CEOS from major U.S. corporations (e.g., Al Casey's Casey's Law, LJ 4/15/97). Jenrette is the former CEO of both Donald-son, Lufkin and Jenrette, Inc., and...

How to Succeed in Business by Breaking All the Rules: A Plan for Entrepreneurs.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Kennedy (How To Make Millions with Your Ideas, Dutton, 1996) thumbs his nose at conventional paths to success. Here he writes about both famous and not-so-famous people who have become wealthy by defying the so-called "rules." Despite the...

The Marketing of Nations: A Strategic Approach to Building National Wealth.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Why do some nations perform better than others economically? What enables a nation to take advantage of its opportunities and build its wealth? Kotler (Standing Room Only, Harvard Business School, 1996) and a group of scholars take on these...

How to Build Wealth with your 401(k): Everything You Need to Know to Become More Than a Millionaire over the Course of Your Working Lifetime, 2d ed.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The retirement value of a 401(k) plan depends largely on how it was invested. Merritt, president of the nonprofit National Association of 401(k) Investors, explains here the basics of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, tax-deferred investing,...

Wheeling and Dealing for Dummies: Everything You Need to Know About Cars and Money.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... The "For Dummies" series is on most public libraries' best-loved, highest-circs lists today, and this addition will be warmly welcomed, because "car books" are perennial favorites as well. Sclar, a frequent talkshow guest who writes a...

Changing Focus: Kodak and the Battle to Save a Great American Company.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Those little yellow boxes of film made Eastman Kodak a classic American success story through much of this century. Swasy, business editor for the St. Petersburg Times, chronicles how the film made Eastman Kodak and nearly destroyed it as...

The Knowledge-Enabled Organization.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Are companies getting real value from their training dollars? According to Tobin (Transformational Learning, Wiley, 1995), most companies are not. He presents a convincing argument for effective investment in training and demonstrates where...

Humble Work and Mad Wanderings: Street Life in the Machine Age.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1997... Appollo, who calls himself a "street person," attempts to record street life during the late 19th and early 20th centuries with 61 photographs of street people accompanying his narrative. He asserts that people who earned their livelihood in...