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NEW PUBLICATIONS

C&RL News, January 2007
Vol. 68, No. 1

by George M. Eberhart

Citizen Spielberg, by Lester D. Friedman (361 pages, July 2006), presents a genre-by-genre examination of Steven Spielberg’s films, which often attain blockbuster status but are treated unfairly by critics who accuse him of substituting spectacle for substance and emotion for depth. Friedman argues that Spielberg as auteur subtly disagrees with the conventional worldviews of his protagonists by providing frequent cinematic opportunities to contradict their opinions and has actually “evolved into a director of thought and spirit as well as spectacle and style.” The author offers an in-depth analysis of all of Spielberg’s films about science fiction (including Close Encounters of the Third Kind), fantasy (Hook), action and adventure (the Indiana Jones trilogy), monsters (War of the Worlds and Jaws), World War II (Empire of the Sun and Saving Private Ryan), social problems (The Color Purple and Amistad), and the Holocaust (Schindler’s List). $75.00. University of Illinois. ISBN 978-0-252-07358-8.

Clocks of New York: An Illustrated History, by Chris DeSantis, accompanied by photographs by Vinit Parmar (255 pages, September 2006), explores the horological landmarks of New York City in fascinating detail. “Nowhere else in the country, perhaps the world,” writes DeSantis, “were so many clocks erected and nowhere else were people so accustomed to finding the time on a public clock than in New York City.” The city laid claim to the first tower clock mechanism made this side of the Atlantic; it was mounted in 1716 on the second City Hall. DeSantis covers New York clockmakers, tower clocks, sidewalk post clocks, ornamental clocks (such as the clock above the circulation desk in the New York Public Library’s Rose Room), clocks on historical buildings, community clocks, church clocks, bank clocks, glockenspiels, and sundials. $45.00. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-2680-5.

An Introduction to Reference Services in Academic Libraries, edited by Elizabeth Connor (194 pages, September 2006), offers case studies and essays as a context for understanding reference services in a university setting. Topics include marketing services to young male faculty, the evolving reference and technology desk at Governors State University, and virtual reference. $49.95. Haworth. ISBN 978-0-7890-2958-4.

The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776, by Brendan McConville (322 pages, September 2006), offers a new perspective on the American colonies from the English Revolution of 1688 to the Declaration of Independence. The author contends that the colonists’ various conceptions of the divine right of the British monarchy—rather than American exceptionalism or an innate democratic impulse—were central to the development of political thought in the 13 colonies.

McConville reinterprets such events as the Salem witch trials, the Great Awakening, the John Peter Zenger trial, agrarian uprisings, and even slave revolts as conflicts between provincial power structures and individuals who could imagine a personal relationship with a benevolent, emancipating sovereign whose legitimacy transcended the local royal authorities. It was only in the 1770s that confidence in the British king, unable to restrain Parliament from the tyrannical imposition of taxes, eroded to the point of an assault on the monarchy itself. $39.95. University of North Carolina. ISBN 978-0-8078-3065-9.

Lost World of the Kimberley, by Ian Wilson (315 pages, December 2006), discusses the Bradshaw rock art in the Kimberley region of north Western Australia that was drawn by mysterious people who arrived on the continent between 60,000 and 20,000 years ago, at a time when Europe lay under deep ice sheets. Building on the work of Grahame Walsh in Bradshaws: Ancient Rock Paintings of North-West Australia (Bradshaws Foundation, 1994), Wilson thinks that the artists were not ancestral to indigenous Australians, who until recently denied any responsibility for the Bradshaw art and for many centuries painted over it with their own Wandjina images. Bradshaw rock art shows broad-shouldered, straight-haired people who wore tassels hanging from a waistband and built high-prowed reed boats. One zoological oddity is a painting of a line of what look like reindeer, but which Wilson contends are depictions of Sambar deer (Cervus timorensis) found in Indonesia. A fascinating archaeological controversy little-known outside Australia. $24.95. Allen and Unwin; distributed by IPG. ISBN 978-1-74114-391-1.

Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Painting, the Legend, and the Reality, by John F. Moffitt (261 pages, July 2006), examines the origins of the painting of the Virgin said to have miraculously appeared on the cloak of an indigenous Mexican peasant, Juan Diego, in 1531 after he experienced an apparition on the hill of Tepeyac. Now a modern cultural icon, the painting is considered by some to be the single most important artwork in the Western Hemisphere. Moffitt looks at the documentary evidence for the miracle, the history of miraculous images in Europe, and the painting itself to conclude that it actually dates from 1556 and was produced by the Aztec painter Marcos Cípac de Aquino. The story of Juan Diego and his cloak originated even later with the writer Miguel Sánchez, who penned the first account of the miracle story in 1648 that one year later became part of the Náhuatl-language Nican mopohua by the vicar of Tepeyac. Moffitt provides the Spanish-language texts of both documents in appendices. $39.95. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-2667-6.

The Spice Route, by John Keay (286 pages, August 2006), chronicles the history of the spice trade from the Age of Alexander through the heyday of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century. Keay peppers his narrative with such curious details as the depiction of spice ships in the Ajanta Caves in India and the Borobodur stupa in Java, the gift of a rhinoceros from the ruler of Gujerat to Manuel I of Portugal that became the subject (sight unseen) of Albrecht Dürer’s famous woodcut, and the little-known Greek navigator Hippalos who is said to have pioneered a blue-water route from the Red Sea to the Indian coast. The author also explains why spices were so important in the ancient and early modern world, and how the European trade was eclipsed by closer Asian markets, naturalized spice crops and new spices from the Americas, and an insatiable new demand for coffee, tea, and sugar shipments. $27.50. University of California. ISBN 978-0-520-24896-0.

Two for the Road: Our Love Affair with American Food, by Jane and Michael Stern (292 pages, May 2006), describes the authors’ lively cross-country searches for authentic American culinary experiences—not in haute cuisine dining rooms, but in diners, truck stops, barbecue joints, and state fairs from Maine to California. Just as digestible as their other road-food books, but a bit more bite-size. $24.00. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-618-32963-2.

George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, e-mail: geberhart@ala.org