Small Press Bk Rev-Spring 99, Part 1
HenryBerry
Spring 1999 - Part 1
Current Interest
Weddings - Dating and Love Customs of Cultures Worldwide by Carolyn Mordecai.
Nittany Publishers, PO Box 80362, Phoenix, AZ 95060. 1999. 274 pp. $28.00
hardcover; 8-1/2" x 11: (0-961823-2-5). b+w photographs; glossary;
bibliography; index.
(multiculturism; social practices)
Country by country within major geographical areas of the word, Mordecai
relates ethnic customs with respect to marriage and describes marriage
ceremonies. Where applicable, she notes the changes brought to such customs and
ceremonies upon the ethnic group's encounter with Western culture. Typical
subjects include courting, dowries, clothing, and religious facets involved in
weddings and marriage. Occasionally the different practices of different
classes are related. The encyclopedic coverage of weddings and surrounding
topics is helpful for persons who would like to adopt colorful or meaningful
aspects of particular ethnic customs for their own relationships and weddings
and also for persons with multicultural interests.
My Generation - Collective Autobiography and Identity Politics by John Downton
Hazlett. U. of Wisconsin Press, 2537 Daniels St., Madison, WI 53718;
800-829-9559. 1998. 275 pp. $45.00 hardcover (0-299-15780-6). $19.95 trade
paper (0-299-15784-9). notes; bibliography; index.
(1960s; U. S.social history)
Hazlett finds three major types of autobiographies written by social activists
and writers who participated one way or another in the events of the 1960s: the
annunciatory narrative; the reactive narrative; and the elegiac narrative.
Malcolm Lowry's Exile's Return published in 1934 was the precedent out of which
the three types grew in that it played a role in articulating the idea of a
generational collective identity. Abbie Hoffman's Revolution for the Hell of It
and Jerry Rubin's We Are Everywhere are two of the examples of the annunciatory
narrative which in proclaiming the coming-to-age and aroused potency of the
younger generation also help to form it and give it a consciousness. Dotson
Rader's I Ain't Marchin' Anymore and Jane Albert's Growing Up Underground are
representations of the reactive narrative reconsidering or reevaluating the
period. The elegiac narrative--e. g., Joyce Maynard's Looking Back and Tom
Hayden's Reunion--look back on the period from some years later and offer not
just a criticism but in many cases a revision of perspective, beliefs, and even
self. In referring to the phenomena of the 60s that were the grounds for the
different types of generational autobiographies in his literary critique of
them, Hazlett also provides something of a social history of the decade. The
author is an associate professor of English at the U. of New Orleans.
The Books in My Life by Colin Wilson. Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 134 Burgess
Ln., Charlottesville, VA 22902; 800-766-8009; email: hr...@hrpub.com. 1998. 311
pp. $15.95 trade paper (1-57174-111-9).
(books; literary memoir)
Colin Wilson--the popular author of nearly 40 books, The Outsider, Religion and
the Rebel, The Craft of the Novel, and The Occult Trilogy among them--makes his
contribution to the number of books being done by authors and critics on their
involvement in books and reading and discussion of books and authors that were
influential in their own ideas and writing. In his long literary career, Wilson
has been especially concerned with higher states of consciousness and how
history, science, religion, philosophy, and the occult come into this. His
reading as an adult--after youthful interests in comics, pulp novels, and
popular authors such as Mark Twain and Conan Doyle--reflect this deep, often
fugitive, central interest of Wilson's. James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Dostoevsky,
William James, Ernst Cassirer, and are among the authors whose books, ideas,
and influence Wilson discusses. Because Wilson deals with each author and book
from the perspective of higher consciousness and from his broad knowledge on
this subject, his book is as much about higher consciousness as it is a memoir
of significant books and authors in his life.
Information Eclipse - Privacy and Access in America by Michael Fraase. Arts and
Farces, 2021 Grand Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105; kcal...@farces.com. 1999. 344
pp. $25.00 trade paper (1-892659-00-X). charts; diagrams; bibliography;
resources; index.
(information society; computers; social critique)
Fraase looks at both sides of the issue of information in contemporary society
that has come to the fore lately--the matter of how individuals can buffer
themselves against government and business information-gathering techniques and
how individuals can access information that may be relevant to them. With
several previously-published books on the computer field, this author has the
knowledge to deal with the role of the computer with respect to information.
Not limiting himself to the role of the computer, however, Fraase reviews past
and recent legislation affecting the gathering, reporting, and storing of
information; and he identifies government and business entities that are
important in the understanding and use of information in today's society. The
author regularly casts a light on how practices and principles entailed in the
central, still-growing field of information bear on matters in the lives of
individuals. especially privacy.
Hashish! by Robert Connell Clarke. Red Eye Press, 845 W. Avenue 37, Los
Angeles, Ca 90065-3201. 1998. 391 pp. $29.95 trade paper; 7-1/4" x 10"
(0-929349-05-9). b+w photographs; illustrations; maps; charts; glossary;
bibliography; index.
(drug; history; social critique)
A voluminous, multifaceted study of the drug hashish with plentiful
photographs, illustrations, maps, charts, and diagrams. The place of hashish in
certain cultures, and economies, of Asia, the Western perspective on it as
originating in literary figures such as Baudelaire and Gautier, its cultivation
and manufacture from marijuana plants, and its contemporary world-wide
distribution are among the general topics. Although with its discussion of the
chemical effects of hashish, straightforward accounts of its use in Middle
Eastern and Asian culture, historical data, and other wealth of
incontrovertible matter, Clarke's Hashish can be said to basically provide
information, his glossing over of any controversies surrounding hashish implies
a benign, rather than strictly non-committal, position by the author, apart
from any reader's opinion of the book, it is undeniably a singular source of
information on the drug.
Raids on Human Consciousness - Writing, Anarchism, and Violence by Arthur
Redding. U. of South Carolina Press, 937 Assembly St., Carolina Plaza, 8th
floor, Columbia, SC 29208. 1998. 284 pp. $39.95 hardcover (1-57003-230-0).
$18.95 trade paper (1-57003-276-9). footnotes; bibliography; index.
(social critique; literary critique)
Redding is a lecturer in the Program on Gender and Culture at Central European
University in Budapest who explores the role of violence in modern culture both
as a means to try to realize a personal and social vision and also by trying to
divorce or isolate oneself from violence, as a means to keep one's body pure
and whole. Thus, Redding sees violence as a central aspect of modern culture,
especially its visionary, utopian, tendencies and its self-centered,
narcissistic character. He engages in this exploration of violence mostly by
literary criticisms of many and varied authors' use of violence in their works.
Among these authors are William Burroughs, William Gibson, Norman Mailer, and
Kathy Acker, with special attention given to the latter. A concentrated study
of a significant, abiding element of modernity; with its frequent references to
many modern thinkers in addition to many authors, somewhat academic in style,
but not abstrusely so.
Dead End Kids - Gang Girls and the Boys They Know by Mark S. Fleisher. U. of
Wisconsin Press, 2537 Daniels St., Madison, WI 53718-6672; 800-829-9559. 1998.
284 pp. $24.95 hardcover (0-299-15880-2). notes; index.
(gangs; social critique)
The author fills in the picture of urban gangs by focusing on the place of
girls in gangs, largely through recounting the experiences of Cara, a girl
associated with the Kansas City gang The Fremont Hustlers. Fleisher draws a
picture of Cara exemplifying the place of girls and also to a good extent the
life of male gang members in a first-person narrative. The author not only
wanted to show the place of girls in gangs, but also tried to help her break
out of the cycle of abuse and pregnancies that are the lot of girls with gangs.
The failure of Fleisher to help Cara break away reveals a lot about the effects
and purposes of gangs. Only in the last chapter, Street Ethnography--Methods,
Ethics, and Politics--does the author turn to the standard sociological
approach in studying the topic. In using the first-person narrative throughout
most of the book, Fleisher write both a memorable story of a forlorn, lost
young women and the desperate, frequently violent life of gangs.
The Irish Century - A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years by Michael
MacCarthy Morrogh; Foreword by Neil Jordan. Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 6309
Monarch Park Place, Niwot, CO 80503. 1998. 240 pp. $45.00 hardcover; 12-1/4" x
9-1/2" (1-57098-237-6). b+w photographs; bibliography; index.
(Irish studies; modern Irish history)
Morrogh's running text is clear and informative with relevant facts and
educating summations and commentary--but it's necessarily mostly generalized to
satisfactorily cover such a broad subject as Irish history and culture in the
20th century. It's the pictures mostly, many from private collections, that
convey the sides of Irish history and the changes in it in this period. These
capture diverse subjects such as conflicts between Irish citizens and British
authorities, and pastimes, city life, and political figures and artists.
Pictures from different parts of the book such as Irish WWI dead in one place
and Irish political disturbances against British rule in another; a group of
men bowling on a country lane here and an Irish pop singer in Las Vegas there,
divulge the range of contrasts, as well as the fault lines, of modern Irish
culture. Morrogh teaches history at Shrewsbury School in England. An over-size
book with plentiful and varied photographs covering a topical interest, a
special publication for Irish studies collections and individuals as an
introduction, a photography book, or reference.
Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique - The American Left, the
Cold War, and Modern Feminism by Daniel Horowitz. U. of Massachusetts Press,
Amherst, MA 01004. 1998. 362 pp. $29.95 hardcover (1-559849-168-6). b+w
photographs; notes; index.
(women’s studies; feminism)
Betty Friedan is commonly identified with her book The Feminist Mystique
published in 1963 and her leadership in the feminist movement in the following
decade. But as Horowitz, a professor of American Studies at Smith College,
shows, this watershed book for modern U.S. feminism was not the start of
Friedan's social though and activism, but rather the natural (though not
predictable) outgrowth of her education, experiences, causes, and involvements
of the preceding two decades. Horowitz fills in the little-known years of this
major feminist, cultural figure. Friedan's publication of The Feminist Mystique
comes at the end of this biographical study, following narration and exegesis
of her time, interests, associations, and activities in college and as a
journalist in the 1940s and freelance writer in the 1950s. Horowitz looks to
Friedan's activities and writings as a student journalist at Smith College in
the years 1940-41 regarding psychology, social issues, and the threat of Nazism
as the time when she was "radicalized." Horowitz weaves together biographical
matter and U. S. social history for an informative and incisive portrayal of
Friedan.
The Television and Video Survival Guide - An Insider's Top Notch Creative and
Technical Advice for Your First (or Next) Production by Sherri Hope Culver.
Brown Dog Press, 10 Laurel Hill Dr., Cherry Hill, NJ 08003. 1999. 264 pp.
$24.95 trade paper (0-9664906-0-6). illustrations; charts; glossary;
appendices; index.
(film-making; independent film-making; entrepreneurialism)
The general manager of the public TV station WYBE in Philadelphia with more
than 17 years experience in TV, including video production, Culver presents a
reader-friendly manual covering technical, management, and entrepreneurial
aspects of video production. Given the growing opportunities for video
production with inexpensive equipment and computer technology, the manual is
timely. And it is timely as well with its up-to-date information and advice
with respect to techniques, structure, practices, etc. of today's field of
video. Aspiring independent filmmakers will find Culver's experienced guidance
relevant and useful.
Capital for Our Time - The Economic, Legal, and Management Challenges of
Intellectual Capital edited by Nicholas Imparato. Hoover Institution Press,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. 1999. 418 pp. $19.95 trade paper
(0-8179-9562-5). footnotes; appendix; index.
(intellectual property; collected articles)
Twenty essays presented at a Hoover Institute conference for business
strategies, legal questions, and global competitiveness relating to
intellectual capital. With the growth of the Internet and the unprecedented
opportunities it offers for gathering and disseminating information and ideas,
intellectual property has become a pressing creative, business, and legal
issue. The diverse authors come from government, business, and academia. The
distinction between intellectual capital and intellectual property, quantifying
and evaluating intellectual capital, and the changed business environment
brought about by the Internet are major sections. Two essays deal with the
specialized topic of intellectual property as discoveries or creations in the
field of biotechnology, or genomics as is it also known. Three other essays
take up matters in the broad, yet relatively defined field of international,
global business; one on intellectual property in Latin America in particular.
The End of the Modern World by Romano Guardini. ISI Books, Intercollegiate
Studies Institute, PO Box 4431, Wilmington, DE 19807-0431; 800-526-7022. 1998.
236 pp. $24.95 hardcover (1-882926-23-4). chapter notes.
(modern society; social critique)
Reprintings with introductory essays added, one by Richard John Neuhaus, of two
of Guardini's essays of social critique from about 1960 which are still
relevant today. Guardini (1885-1968) was a noted professor of philosophy and
theology at the U. of Munich. The title essay critiques the condition of "Mass
Man" in the modern society of mass production, mass communication, and mass
marketing. The second essay, Power and Responsibility, analyzes different ideas
of power in the modern age, such as "technological power," and how these have
resulted not only in the abdication of responsibility for individuals, but also
the threat of nuclear holocaust and other dangers which apparently cannot be
faced effectively. By this day, Guardini's subjects, his assessments, and some
of his conclusions are familiar. He does however bring to the subjects a
classical Christian (i. e., not fundamentalist or evangelic) perspective which
has been obscured.
Art
Our Saints Among Us: 400 Years of New Mexican Devotional Art by Barbe Awalt and
Paul Rhetts. LPD Press, 2400 Rio Grande Blvd. NW #1213, Albuquerque, NM
87104-3222; 800-249-7737; Pau...@aol.com. 1998. 192 pp. $59.95 hardcover;
9-3/4" x 8-3/4" (0-9641542-8-5). $44.95 trade paper; 9-3/4" x 8-3/4"
(0-96441542-8-5). color/b+w photographs; illustrations; resources;
bibliography.
(regional art; Southwest; religious art)
Natural-color photographs display details of the coloring, sculpture, and
features of the santos--figures of saints--that played an important part in the
religious culture of the Spanish Southwest; which culture was essentially the
Catholicism of the Spanish missionaries inculcated in the region's Native
Americans. The santos were generally crude, almost primitive in many cases, but
reflected religious passion and devotion. Besides the many color photographs,
there are many black-and-white as well. Of the 150 santos pictured, there are
about an equal number of each kind of photograph. The large majority of the
photographs are part of the four essays on different historical, cultural, and
religious aspects of them, especially the exceptionally long chapter (60-plus
pages) Major Devotional themes in New Mexican Santos. As the companion book of
the exhibition of santos traveling to several museums in the Southwest, it
catalogs the 350 santos of the exhibition and gives brief background
information in the artists who made them, dead and living. The earliest santos
go back to the mid 1700s; the latest are from the 1990s. For its photographs
and comprehensiveness, a primary book on the subject of santos.
Elvgren - His Life and Art by Max Allan Collins and Drake Elvgren. Collectors
Press, PO Box 230986, Portland, OR 97281; 800-423-1848. 1998. 202 pp. $39.95
hardcover; 10" x 12" (1-888054-05-0). color illustrations; b+w photographs;
index.
(pin-up art; popular art; advertising art)
The oversize book gives an appreciation of Gil Elvgren's art by its
reproductions of some 200 of the artist's pin-ups and advertisements. Elvgren
became famous for his classic girlie pin-ups of young women in poses
accentuating their full, shapely figures that were popular with servicemen in
World War II. Going with many of the pin-ups in this extensive sampling are
black-and-white photographs of the models Elvgren drew his pin-ups from.
Collins, a movie producer and writer, provides text relating the development of
Elvgren's art, the course of his career, and his rise to renown; while Drake
Elvgren,the artist's youngest child, writes a memoir of his father who became
the exemplar of the art of the pin-up.
A Century of Pop - A Hundred Years of Music That Changed the World, From
Vaudeville to Rock, Big Bands to Techno by Hugh Gregory. A Cappella
Books/Chicago Review Press, 814 N.Franklin St., Chicago, IL 60610. 1998. 255
pp. $29.95 trade paper; 9-1/2" x 11" (1-55652-338-6). color/b+w photographs.
(popular music)
The past 100 years of popular music are surveyed decade by decade with short
articles on the different styles of such music emerging or dominant in each
decade. The Popular Song and Swing are covered for the decade of the 1930s, for
example; for the 1970s, its Mainstream Rock, Glam Rock, and Funk, among others.
Each short article is surrounded by many photographs, making the book
practically an illustrated history of pop. Although European classical and the
multicultural roots of pop music are referred to and pop music in Britain,
South Africa, and other countries is mentioned, the focus is pop music in
American popular culture, how the historical and foreign elements were
assimilated into the pop music, and the styles of music growing out of American
society. A good book for readers of popular culture or ones with more academic
interests as an introduction to popular music. Hugh Gregory is the author of
Soul Music A-Z and regular contributor to music periodicals such as Mojo and
Folk roots.
Celtic Designs from the British Museum by Ian Stead and Karen Hughes. Roberts
Rinehart Publishers, 6309 Monarch Park Place, Niwot, CO 80503. 1998. 100 pp.
$14.95 trade paper; 8-1/2" x 11" (1-57098-229-5). illustrations.
(Celtic art)
Unlike most other collections of Celtic art, which contain designs from
6th-century Ireland, this collection contains designs from Celtic tribes living
in mainland Europe centuries earlier. Thus, with designs from scabbards,
shields, spearheads, jewelry, and chariot fittings, the 300-plus designs of
this volume go beyond the familiar "knotwork" from Ireland. Notes specify the
source of each design; while an Introduction gives the origins and meanings of
the types of designs.
The Anime Companion - What's Japanese in Japanese Animation? by Gilles Poitras.
Stone Bridge Press, PO Box 8202, Berkeley, CA 94707; 800-947-7271;
s...@stonebridge.com. 1999. 175 pp. $16.95 trade paper (1-880656-32-9).
illustrations; glossary; bibliography.
(popular art; popular culture; Japanese animation; film studies)
In a dictionary format, over 500 entries on specifics of Japanese culture and
stylistic elements of anime (Japanese animated film art, also used in comic
books) to help a reader unfamiliar with Japanese culture understand anime
better. Anime is having a big impact on American popular visual art, especially
computer art. Geography, landmarks, food and drink, history, warfare, and
sports are among the cultural subjects included in Poitras's explanations of
details of anime; and he gives references to works of anime exemplifying each
entry. An invaluable, extensive reference for anyone with a serious interest in
this Japanese art style having an international influence.
Paul Renner - The Art of Typography. Princeton Architectural Press, 37 East
Seventh St., New York, NY 10003. 1998. 223 pp. $35.00 trade paper
(1-56898-158-9). b+w photographs; color/b+w illustrations; footnotes;
bibliography; index.
(typography; modern typography; biography)
Known particularly as the creator of the typeface Futura, Paul Renner
(1878-1956) had a considerable influence on modern typography, modern book
design, and more generally modernist aesthetics. He was active in Germany.
Arrested once by the Nazis for his supposedly subversive artistic ideas and
activities, he had a rocky relationship with the Hitler dictatorship. Burke's
book is not a biography in a conventional sense. While Burke does follow the
facts of Renner's life, he deals as much with his aesthetic ideas and
principles; his typography, design, activities in promulgating his artistic
ideas; and his influence--thus making the book on Renner a fairly broad study
of modernist aesthetics which deals to some degree with its inter-relation with
politics and mass culture. The abundant visual material--illustrations,
graphics, photographs variously black-and-white, duotone, and color--support
the book's pronounced aesthetic dimension. Burke is a teacher at the Department
of Typography and Graphic Communications at the U. of Reading in England who is
the designer of typefaces used in contemporary printing. The publisher,
Princeton Architectural Press, has a reputation for exceptionally well-designed
books. Apart from its lucid treatment of Renner as an important modern artistic
figure, many readers would appreciate this book as a collector's item for its
handsome design and its illustrations and photos of books, posters, typefaces,
and other examples of modern design and art.
The Small Press Book Review is posted quarterly on the Internet newsgroup
alt.books.reviews. SPBR reviews noteworthy books in all fields from small
presses and independent publishers, including university presses. Inquiries and
review copies can be sent to Henry Berry, PO Box 176, Southport, CT 06490;
203-332-7629 phone/fax; email: henry...@aol.com.