Encyclopedic Work Research Articles

EAST AFRICAN COASTAL HISTORY

Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. By DEREK NURSE and THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH. Edited by THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH, with a special addendum by GERARD PHILIPPSON. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 121). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1993. Pp. xxxii+780. $80 (ISBN 0-520-09775-0).Shanga. The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa. By MARK HORTON. (Memoirs of the British Institute of East Africa, 14). London: The British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996. Pp. xvi+458. £75 (ISBN 1-872-56609-x).Nurse's and Hinnebusch's Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History is the most comprehensive study yet done of Swahili history through linguistic analysis. It is an encyclopedic work representing many years of research by the authors and other scholars, and it focuses particularly on the emergence and evolution of the Swahili language. The massive and diverse evidence they marshal is, of course, almost entirely linguistic: as such they discuss four basal parameters of language relationship and change, namely lexis, morphology, phonology and tone. (The last two are treated together, and G. Philippson reviews the latter.)

Less than the Sum of Its Parts:

I have an embarrassment of choice in my approach to the review of this impressive volume.1 I can consider it as an example of the contemporary historiography of science (drawing on my earlier experience in that field). Or I can review it in relation to the concerns of the readers of this journal. Or finally, I can ask about its contribution to 'the public understanding of science'. Perhaps I will try all three in succession. My title expresses my main conclusions. Somehow this volume fails to satisfy. The back-page blurb promises that 'students and professionals [historians, presumably] alike, will appreciate how science has developed, and why'. There is quite a lot of incidental detail on the first question: but the second requires a synthetic overview, a command of the questions put to the separate authors, and this seems to be lacking. We are promised a lot: the last sentence of the blurb reads, 'No less than any other human activity [science] is subject to the dynamics of society and politics'. So this is the new historiography of science, a triumph of 'externalism' which an old-guard had been fighting for for many years. It is realized in the themes of many of the essays, in their narratives, and in the conclusions of some. But for a synthetic account, all we have is a two-page section of the editors' Introduction. This is fine as far as it goes, but inevitably is only a sketch. This lack of an integrating core derives from the theme of the book. Violating Lord Acton's instruction, it studies a period, not a problem. Perhaps this is necessary in a large collaborative, rather encyclopaedic work. After all, the multi-volume histories emanating from Cambridge study periods, not problems. And there is certainly a place for both styles. It could be that a volume like this could only be assembled around a period. Perhaps the history of contemporary science doesn't have any big problems. In that case, this production is about the best that can be expected. And we also learn just how much illumination about the past century we can expect to receive from the specialist historians. This is a great pity, for the standard of the essays is generally quite high. Each of the authors succeeds in compressing much history into a few

Writing East: The Travels” of Sir John Mandeville by Iain MacLeod Higgins

fRfEVFEWS Iain MacLeod Higgins. Writing East: The “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. 336. $49.95 (U.S.) cloth. As most admirers of this unusual work now know, The Book of John Mandeville is a medieval encyclopedic pastiche of accounts of pilgrimages to Jerusalem and of travels to the Orient set down in French in 1356 or 1357. Within fifty years it was extant in nine other languages. Over three hundred manuscripts remain. Its popularity survived until well into the nineteenth century when doubts of the veracity of the writer, which had indeed been expressed in earlier centuries, were taken seriously. The realization that the author, whoever he was, had probably never travelled East at all and was not even an Englishman resulted in widespread denunciation of the work as fraudulent. Mandeville’s travels took place in his study. He utilized a vast amount of written matter, organizing it in a new form. While adopting an impersonal, factual tone, he nevertheless managed to impose devotional and exhortatory concepts on the fabric of the whole. At the same time the authoritative style is appropriate to such an encyclopedic work. Mandeville’s Trav­ els, as Donald Howard remarked in Writers and Pilgrims, is an attem pt “to write a new kind of work, a summa of travel lore” (58). It combined the authority of learned books and guide books with the eye-witness manner of accounts of pil­ grims, travel writers, missionaries, and merchants in the Ori­ ent. The compiler drew from many sources and his work is worthy of Higgins’s purpose, which he explains thus: Writing East “is an experiment in literary and cultural criticism, whose principal innovation is the attempt to read a historically signif­ icant medieval book in a manner responsive to the alterity of its multiple textual existence.” Various transcribers modified their texts; “Such inter- and intra- textual multiplicity,” states Higgins, “is the overwhelming fact about medieval writing, and ESC 25, 1999 ESC 25, 1999 yet it has not often affected the ways in which scholars make use of ‘olde bokes’ for literary, cultural, or historical studies.” The textual variants, if properly taken into account, enable us to see much that would otherwise be overlooked. He rightly claims to be using an approach that can serve as a model for reading medieval writing in its various forms of multiplicity. While medievalists may have been aware of The Book's plural existence, they have usually proceded as though textual schol­ arship had little bearing on their perception of the work. The textual history is complex, and Higgins produces diagrams to show how The Book of John Mandeville was transmitted. He describes numerous manuscripts, their language, and the source of each. The Book was familiar to medieval audiences in French, English, German, and Latin and in two major variants that Hig­ gins calls “original O and Ogier.” He states that the two last are “characterized especially by a series of interpolations about the Carolingean hero Ogier, the Dane, and differing more among themselves than do any of the ‘original’ variants.” Higgins explores various ways of dealing with The Book's textual multiplicity. One could choose “a best text” and pro­ duce a kind of diplomatic reading by considering the text of the original French in one of its surviving forms such as Deluz or in a relatively faithful translation like the English Cotton version; one could make a comparison of two versions in vari­ ous ways in order to produce an adapted rendering as a work in its own right; a third way would be to read two or more related versions of The Book with reference to their immedi­ ate sources and, thus, consider each as an individual response to a specific, received text — a kind of diachronic reading that tracks the textual transformations through time, space, and lan­ guages. Having remarked on these three methods of approach, Higgins chooses what he considers to be a more interesting and fruitful method: reading several versions at once and placing each in the complex network of transmission centered on the French versions, and, while doing so, reading against what he calls “the grain of habit...

Consolidation of the Field: a Review Article

When a particular research field experiences the sudden and simultaneous appearance of several encyclopaedic and anthological works, this might be taken as a sign of consolidation. This article tests the hypothesis of consolidation on occasion of the appearance of several new anthologies and an encyclopaedia.

A medieval scientific encyclopedia "renewed by goodly printing"; Wynkyn de Worde's English De proprietatibus rerum.

Wynkyn de Worde published c. 1495 the first printed edition of John Trevisa's English translation of an influential work of science composed by Bartholomew the Englishman in Latin in the thirteenth century, De Proprietatibus Rerum (DPR). The design of the Worde's book, the use of Latin in the rubrics, and the visual vocabulary of the illustrations bring readers of English into the circle of learning. First, the plan of organization of Bartholomew's encyclopedic work is analyzed and both that structure and the expository style of the work are related to memorial reading and use as a textbook. Next, the widespread use of DPR in Latin and vernacular languages is reviewed, the suggestion that certain of its books seem to have been used more than others is made, and the reliance of English readers, such as Roger Thorney, who commissioned de Worde's edition, on de Worde for learned books printed in their provincial tongue is pointed out. Finally, through comparison with certain manuscript and other printed editions, the methods de Worde used to make the book readable are explained, the layout is shown to support the idea of system, and the function of the pictures as visual texts carrying scientific ideas is demonstrated.

Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy

Demented Particulars offers a detailed annotation of Samuel Beckett's first published novel, Murphy. The book includes an extensive Introduction, which outlines the compositional and publishing history of the novel, the critical debate, an account of Beckett's reading that went into the book, and a sophisticated discussion of the 'Cartesian catastrophe' at the heart of this comic cosmos. There is also an extensive bibliography of works pertinent to Murphy, and a thematic Index. The main thrust of the book concerns the page by page annotations of the novel itself, with close reference to the range of Beckett's reading (literary, philosophical, theological, biographical and other) that went into the making of this encyclopedic work. The importance of the study lies not simply in the discovery of many new facts, but equally in the assessment of how these laid the foundations for so much of Beckett's later work. The book pays tribute to the astounding range of Beckett's reading in the 1930s, and in so doing documents with precision the extent to which Beckett's later writings, and his dramatic pieces in particular, arise out of the matrix of the earlier works.

Early American railroads: Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner's Die innern Communicationen (1842-1843)

This is the first English translation of a monumental account of American railroads (and canals) in the years 1838-1839. Its author, Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner, was Europe's leading authority on railroad construction, and he conducted his study at the behest of the Russian government, which rightly felt that the United States would provide a more suitable model for the construction of a Russian railroad system than England. For a century and a half, Gerstner's Die innern Communicationen has been recognized as by far the most comprehensive and detailed work on the development, construction, finance, and operation of early American railroads and canals, enriched by accounts of the pioneering men who were involved in the enterprise that was to transform the century. Most of the technological data presented is to be found nowhere else; for example, virtually every technique for constructing the various kinds of track is explained and illustrated by line drawings. Gerstner supplemented his first-hand observations of every railroad in the United States with data from transportation companies and government documents, including the amounts, dimensions, and kinds of rolling stock, personnel, funds dispersed, revenues collected, ton-miles of freight, and seat-miles of passengers. Throughout, Gerstner's insights and commentary reflect his vast experience and knowledge of railroads (he built what is often called the first railroad on the European continent and the first Russian railroad). Gerstner went beyond technology to examine the management and organization of railroads and canals and to review the structures and responsibilities of state boards for the oversight of transportation firms. In addition, he included vivid accounts of many aspects of American culture, such as early Jim Crowism, with blacks traveling in baggage cars rather than coaches, and the horrific working conditions of both free laborers and slaves (the highly profitable Tallahassee Railroad owned its own slaves for working on the line). All in all, the publication in English of Gerstner's encyclopedic work is a major event in the economic and transportation history of the United States.

A New Reference Work on Seal-Amulets

Based on two decades of research, Othmar Keel's introductory volume to his corpus of seal-amulets discovered in Palestine offers an encyclopedic reference work on this genre of artifact. While concerned primarily with material from Palestine, this volume represents a landmark in the investigation of scarabs and other seal-amulets that generally also applies to Egyptian evidence. Wide-ranging essays on typology, design motifs, materials, and especially the local Palestinian production of these objects mark this work as the most complete analysis to date of this class of archaeological material.

A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period

No comprehensive history of Israelite religion has been published for some time now, so this new, encyclopaedic work meets a considerable need. The two volumes cover the history of the religion of Israel and Judah from the earliest recognizable beginnings to the Hellenistic period and constantly take into account not only the other religions of the ancient Near East but also Israelite social history. The history of Israel's religion is described as an interplay between historical demands, religious experiences and theological reactions, as the ongoing struggle between different groups over the appropriate religious response to God and the social practice that needs to go with it.

The Polyphony of the Spheres

"The Polyphony of the Spheres." Every student of music history learns that the earliest extant description of the polyphonic performance of Western music is found in an anonymous Carolingian music theory treatise, Musica enchiriadis, from around A.D. 900. What seems to have gone unnoticed, however, is that the procedure is also mentioned in Remigius of Auxerre's contemporary commentary on Martianus Capella's encyclopedic work that has come to be known as De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. The reference does not occur, as one would expect, in the section containing glosses of Martianus's book on harmony, but in the commentary on the sustained allegory, informed by Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean metaphysics, that Martianus presents in books 1 and 2. The identification of a contemporary practice in the performance of liturgical music as an exemplum of one of Martianus's most striking metaphors is explained as a polyphonic variation on a theme first stated 1500 years before Remigius undertook the exposition of De Nuptiis the Pythagorean-Platonic theory of the harmony of the spheres.

Before Science: The Invention of the Friars' Natural Philosophy by Roger French and Andrew Cunningham

Before Science: The Invention of the Friars' Natural Philosophy. By Roger French and Andrew Cunningham. (Brookfield, Vermont: Scolar Press, Ashgate Publishing Company. 1996. Pp. x, 298.) French and Cunningham argue in this book that there was no medieval science, but only medieval natural philosophy; and this natural philosophy, they assure us, was radically different from what we now call science:. . there was no scientific tradition (in the modern sense of the term 'scientific') of looking at nature in the thirteenth century, only a religio-political way of doing so (p. 273). What primarily differentiated medieval natural philosophy from modern science, they argue, was religion; for the medieval investigation of nature was motivated and its conclusions shaped by religious interests. As a reaction against the recent (but now moribund) tendency to write the history of medieval science as though religion did not exist, this is a salutary conclusion. French and Cunningham do an excellent job of demonstrating the religious motivation, and thus the handmaiden status, of medieval natural philosophy.They are interested especially in the natural philosophies developed by the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century: they connect the Christian Aristotelianism of the Dominicans closely and convincingly with the Church's campaign against the Cathar heresy, and they associate the Neoplatonizing Aristotelianism of the Franciscans (the Aristotelian foundations of which they somewhat belligerently refuse to acknowledge) with the ideal of mystical contemplation emanating from pseudo-Dionysius. They also offer interesting and useful surveys of the idea ofnature from antiquity through the thirteenth century, of education within the mendicant orders and its relationship to the universities, of the natural philosophical literature (including encyclopedic works) produced by the mendicants, and more. It should be clear, then, that this book has many merits. However, French and Cunningham frequently weaken their case by oversimplification and overstatement, black-and-white dichotomies, and bold claims unsupported by textual evidence. They announce, for example, that Roger Bacon studied the multiplication of species and related topicsbecause he was a Franciscan friar (p. 238); that Albert the Great was motivated by a Dominican agenda to introduce mathematics into his Aristotelian natural philosophy (p. 180); that William of Conches was motivated to study philosophy for purely religious reasons (p. 76); that Franciscans undertook the investigation of nature because of their devotion to pseudo-Dionysius (p. 218). No textual support for any of these claims is provided; no uncertainty is expressed; no qualifications (mainly for religious reasons; partly because they were Dominicans or Franciscans or devoted to pseudo-Dionysius) are offered. …

Brain Tumors: An Encyclopedic Approach

In 1932, Harvey Cushing published the monograph<i>Intracranial Tumors</i>, which, in essence, described the entire knowledge of and treatment for the recognized tumors arising in the brain, meninges, or cranium. His monograph consumed 150 pages. The 990-page volume under review addresses the same subjects, attesting to the tremendous advances made in the past 60 years, particularly the last 10. It is an encyclopedic work by authorities on the multidisciplinary approach to neoplasms of the brain, from the neoplastic potential in the developing brain to the care of patients dying from the fulfillment of such potential. The book has two sections, on basic principles and specific brain tumors. The initial chapters deal with the basic science of the causation and maturation of tumors arising primarily from the glia but also from the meninges, vasculature, pineal gland, choroid plexus, and other sites. It is only natural that the main emphasis is on

To Redeem Metal with Paper: David Hume's Philosophy of Money

David Hume's writings on political economy, and on money in particular, constitute only a small portion of his encyclopedic work.1 His stature in histories of economic thought appears correspondingly modest. In particular, Hume is credited by economic historians with having articulated an early version of the self-regulating mechanism of classical trade theory, and its relation to the quantity theory of money.2 This essay challenges the accepted view that money is a minor aspect of Hume's work. Instead, this essay argues that, by interpolating Hume's limited treatment of money into his wider philosophical concerns, money takes on a much wider significance for Hume's social thought than has been heretofore appreciated. Hume's analyses of the understanding and the passions do point to a central role for money in a Humean society. While such a role is only hinted at in Hume's actual discussion of money, his larger epistemological and moral doctrines imply that money transactions are the ideal units of social life. Money must become the mediator of social relations because a society actuated on Humean psychological principles would otherwise be an entropie one. This entropy is derivable both from Hume's doctrine of sensationalism and his formulation of utilitarian self-interest and sympathy in sensationalist terms. In short, implicit in Hume's thought is something like a Humean philosophy of money. This argument not only reintroduces money into Hume's other concerns, but highlights a triplet of reversals that are immanent in Humean social

Grimms' Fairy Tales: A History of Criticism on a Popular Classic (review)

364 Book Revkws "prudent" abridgment of tie Conversations (Fiükr αÎμίÎμίÎμα references to Goetiie 's scientific expertoÂœnts), shÎμ sÎμÎμms to takÎμ her advocacy a Uttlc too far. Several of the articles in the coUection are quite informative—tadudtag Joan von Mehren's biographical sketch, Urbanski's study of FuUer's rhetoric, and Judith Strong Albert's discussion of FuUer's impact on me feminist movement. A weakness of the book, howev8r, is that it lacks an introduction. The book begins widi a personal letter (May 18, 1980) to the editor (Urbanski) from R. Buckmtoster FuUer, who at mat time was Margaret's oldest Uvtog relative. The kner canvasses a number of topics, including his theories of education, Margaret FuUcr scholarship, and the synerçetic operations of the ιιηίνÎμΓβÎμ. Stoce the letter does not address any of the essays to the volume, one may be left confused about die book's purpose. Although the contributors write short, highly personal accounts of how Margaret FuUer tofhenced thek lives or scholarship, the book would have benefited from a discussion of its intended place to FuUer scholarship or from an explanation for the choice of die particular sckctions to this volume. University of Minois at Chicago Astrida Orle Tantillo James M. McGlathery, Grimms' Fairy Tales: A History of Criticism on a Popular Classic. Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1993Given the Ï• ητηÎμηβÎμ amount of important, ^w, and often contradictory scholarship published on the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen during the last twenty-frve years, James McGlathery's comprehensive study of the most significant critical works about this "popular classic" can sene both scholar and student as a handy gukk to the different approaches to the tales. Moreover, McGlathery deals not only with tie more recent criticism but also discusses die historical origins of folktale scholarship to the nineteenth century and covers relevant research to four different languages. McGlathery himself has written extensrrely on the Grimms' taks and favors a psychoanalytic and Uterary approach to the tales that explores thek immanent nreantogs to thematic dusters. Î¥ÎμΕ , ΙιÎμ is, for ΟίÎμ most part, judicious in his summaries of interpretative methods that differ from his own. As he states, his aim was to "tadude sufficient breadth and depth to give a good accounting and rep- Κ5ÎμηΕ 3ίίνÎμ picture of the various types of scholarship and commentary and an outline of thek development.... The purpose of an account such as this mUitates against fiükr exposition of given critical positions, instead, the aim has ΰÎμÎμη to fit ΟίÎμ work of particular individuals into the context of the whole without misrepresenting them" (3). To accomplish his task, McGlathery divides his book into ΰιτÎμÎμ parts: 1) The Folktales; 2) The Grimms' Collection; 3) individual Stories and Motifs. In the first section, McGlathery begins with a historical survey of the development of folktale scholarship. After briefly discussing the work of the Grimms themselves and Theodor Benfey, he explains how scholars sought to explain the origins of folk taks through notions of monogc^sis and polygenesis. By the bÎμgtontog of the twentieth century, however, the shift to folktak studies was influenced by the Finnish or historical-geographical school led by Antti Aarne and carried on by Stith Thompson in America. As McGlathery explatas, this school of thought in- Goethe Yearbook 365 ίÎμ^Îμα to "show which tale types were native to, or predominated to, a given area, so that a particular story might be claimed as belonging Îμβϕ Îμα3% to a particular national culture.... Or, to a comparative way, differences to versions between geographical areas could be βÎμÎμη as helping to αÎμίΕ ηÎμ cultural differences betwÎμÎμn nations" (9). This approach led to the valuable index, Verzeichnis der Märchentypen (1911) and Thompson's Narrative Motif-Analysis (1955). McGlathery succinctly sums up the Finnish School's accomplishments and alludes to oder important encyclopedic work such as Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens (1930-40) and die ongoing Enzyklopädie des Märchens (begun to 1975). Then he turns to otiier important scholars and tiiek distinctive approaches to the Grimms' tales and folktales in general. After a brief discussion of the rise of the Freudian approach, he comments on the work of German Uterary scholars who were interested to questions of genre, including Friedrich Panzer, Albert...

Euclidean geometry in the mathematical tradition of islamic India

This paper describes the importance of Euclidean geometry for the educational system in medieval Islamic India and surveys the kinds of sources available for study of this branch of Euclidean scholarship. It examines several types of source documents important for the study of Euclidean thought in India and its ties to other branches of the medieval Euclidean tradition. The major types of sources described are: (1) Arabic and Persian translations, (2) Recensions of these translations, (3) Summaries of the Euclidean corpus, (4) Encyclopedic works that include descriptions of Euclidean geometry, and (5) Rhymed prose (manzūmāt). Diese Abhandlung beschreibt die Bedeutung der Geometrie Euklids fur das Schulwesen des islamischen Indien im Mittelalter and gibt einen Überblick über die für eine Untersuchung der euklidischen Tradition zur Verfügung stehenden Quellen. Sie untersucht verschiedene Arten von Quellen, die fur die Erforschung in Indien auftretenden euklidischen Gedankengutes und dessen Verbindung zu anderen Zweigen der mittelalterlichen euklidischen Tradition wichtig sind. Die Hauptarten der beschreibenen Quellen sind: (1) arabische und persiche Übersetzungen, (2) revidierte Ausgaben dieser Übersetzungen, (3) Zusammenfassungen des euklidischen Werkes, (4) enzyklopädische Arbeiten, die Beschreibungen von Euklids Geometrie beinhalten, and (5) gereimte Prosa.

Pediatric Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Over the past several years, a variety of encyclopedic works in the area of pediatric gastroenterology and hepatology have been published, ending an era of dependence on shorter texts that were often written by a single author. The newer texts generally depend on a large corps of experts to provide individual chapters, while the smaller texts tend to provide less information but more continuity and how-to advice. The third edition of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Hepatology is a pleasant compromise between these extremes, incorporating a more personal style into a truly comprehensive text. The primary authors of this volume continue to be Charlotte Anderson, Valerie Burke, and Michael Gracey. J. Ranier Poley has added a large section dealing with pediatric liver disease. Other contributors provided single chapters, including an excellent discussion of bile salt metabolism and its contribution to disease by Piccoli, Maller, and Watkins. The strength of this text, however,

Psychiatric Care of the Medical Patient

The medicalization of psychiatry is well illustrated in this virtually encyclopedic work by the editorial team of Alan Stoudemire and Barry S. Fogel. Together with their other two recent works— Medical-Psychiatric Practice , volumes one and two—the essential library of current information about medical psychiatry is formed. While this book is a revised and expanded version of their original 1987 volume, Principles of Medical Psychiatry , it is made even more useful by including numerous new chapters and topics and by updating the original work. The number of authors has expanded from 49 in the original volume to 78 in the current one. The number of chapters has expanded as well, from 33 to 45. More important, the work is substantially better written and organized, aided significantly by the extensive use of tables, giving the book the feel of a database. Several noteworthy directions have been pursued that round out this volume:

Toward Empirical Studies on University Ethics

August 28, 1991 . . . the apologists for any to achieve desired forget that the separation of means and ends is merely a verbal convenience. They forget that the they employ are included in the ends. Anatole Rapoport, Science and the Goals of Man, 1950 Part 1: Introduction On the Ethical Study of the University The American university has a long history of concern for ethical matters.(1) Currently, the American Association of University Professors and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges establish standards on the ethical governance of the university. Further, the regional and professional accrediting associations, together with the collective bargaining agreement, are other vehicles that affect the university's moral governance |39, 93, 94, 99, 101~. However, powerful and pervasive external influences affect university governance, especially economic and governmental power. In the last thirty years or so, the ethos and argot of the business world have taken over the university. Markets are sought. Contributions to margin become goals. Cost/benefit analysis is used in deciding to drop a small-enrollment classical language department or in retaining a costly laboratory science curriculum. Students become customers. The faculty become employees excluded from the economic decisions relative to the curriculum. An economic engine, the university produces new and retrained employees, new arts, new sciences, and new technologies and provides packaged services for business, church, community, education, and government. Without doubt, the regional and professional accrediting associations act in the public interest protecting students and their parents as consumers |99, chap. 12 and p. 447~. Importantly, the accrediting associations serve as an important countervalent that sets governing standards for university boards of trustees, including the sheltering of their academic communities from attacks upon institutional autonomy and academic freedom |cf. 93, pp. 15-24; 99 pp. 442-48.~. The university's missions and goals no longer seem tied as imperatives to educational practice. With the exception of the university president, no one appears accountable for the cultivation and maintenance of institutional direction |67~. Like the American corporation, the university's broad dispersion of responsibility contributes to the university-wide practice of no one being specifically held accountable. If an institution's mission and goals become inapplicable, new general statements are drawn up, again without agential assignment of responsibility |cf. 26, 89~. One reads in The Chronicle of Higher Education and the daily press about administrative fraud, the scientific investigator who fudges data, faculty and student plagiarism, student cheating on tests, the commercial production of undergraduate term papers and their purchase by students, sexual harassment of students and staff, student athletes' use of drugs to enhance strength and stamina in athletic competition, and the booster club's corruption of student athletes. Of course, student activism is a perennial source of ethical controversy. What about recent revelations of dubious university accounting practices |cf. 67~? Such a continuing stream of disturbing reports sent me to seek empirical studies on the moral behavior of those who comprise the American university community. No empirical studies on the university's moral deportment were found in reviewing bibliographies that concentrated on the professional higher education literature since the 1950s, though one bibliography on the university presidency began with literature since 1900 |28, 29, 30, 44, 63, 96~. Two encyclopedic works on higher education yielded no citations of empirical studies on ethical behavior in American higher education |49, 56~. At roughly ten-year intervals, Lunsford in 1963, Peterson in 1974, and Bess in 1984, provided status summaries of social science research on organizational behavior for American universities |10, 59, 76~. …

Lange's handbook of chemistry

Lange's Handbook has served as a leading source of reliable chemical information and data for chemists, engineers, and other technical specialists since l934. This encyclopedic work includes authoritative coverage of atomic and molecular structure, organic chemistry (revised), inorganic, analytical, and electro- chemistry, mathematics as applied to chemistry, and more. It also includes nomenclature consistent with recommendations of the IUPAC Commission rules.

Growth in a Changing Environment: A History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) 1950–1972 and Exxon Corporation 1972–1975 by Bennett H. Wall

142 Book Reviews TEC.HNOI.OGY AND CULTURE discusses the industry’s shortsighted business strategies and briefly recounts a big mistake made in the 1950s when the domestic industry overexpanded and also built large open hearths rather than installing the more efficient basic oxygen furnaces. This was the beginning of a period of inattention to technological developments that led to increased competition from Japanese and European firms in the 1970s and 1980s and from South Korea and other developing nations in the 1980s. This coverage of technology, of particular concern to readers of this journal, is accurate, if brief, but it suffers from important omissions. Hoerr neglects the pivotal role of continuous casting in transforming modern steel technology and the effects of its slow implementation on the declining international competitiveness of the major integrated steel companies. He also overlooks the greater willingness of foreign producers to invest “patient” money in new technology in anticipation of low but long-term profits. For the technological side of steelmaking, we must continue to rely on standard sources such as: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Technology and Steel Industry Competitiveness, 1980; Robert W. Crandall, The U.S. Steel Industry in Recurrent Crisis; Donald F. Barnett and Louis Schorsch, Steel: Upheaval in a Basic Industry; David Ault, “The Continued Deterioration of the Competitive Ability of the U.S. Steel Industry: The Development of Continuous Casting,” Western EconomicJournal (March 1973); and Walter Adams and Joel B. Dirlam, “Big Steel, Invention and Innovation,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 1966). Hoerr’s long, exhaustively researched, and well-written book de­ serves a wide readership for its probing insights into the collective bargaining process and its sensitive depiction of the ills of troubled communities robbed of the facilities and technology that they re­ quired for their economic survival. Irwin Marcus Dr. Marcus is a professor of history at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who specializes in U.S. working-class history. He has published several articles on the steelworkers of Homestead, Pennsylvania, in the 1970s and 1980s and is coediting a forthcoming volume, The Global Economy: A Handbook for Reference and Research. Growth in a Changing Environment: A History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) 1950—1972 and Exxon Corporation 1972—1975. By Bennett H. Wall. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988. Pp. xlv+ 1,020; illustrations, notes, appendixes, index. $39.50. Growth in a Changing Environment is the fourth volume in the series covering the history of the Standard Oil Company (N.J.) and surveys the years from 1950 to 1975. It follows the earlier works of Ralph and Muriel Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 1882—1911, George S. Gibb TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 143 and Evelyn H. Knowlton, The Resurgent Years, 1911—1927, and Hen­ rietta Larson, Evelyn H. Knowlton, and Charles S. Popple, New Horizons, 1927—1950. Their conception and execution reflect the Gras school of business history that began half a century ago at Harvard University. These books were concerned primarily with the internal development of the corporation, usually in exhaustive detail. Although the various authors did not completely ignore the interac­ tion of the company with the physical or human environment in which it operated, their main emphasis was on internal operations. A similar approach has guided Bennett Wall’s volume. He has examined a veritable mountain of corporate records as well as extensive government documents. In addition, during the decade he was engaged on this book, he conducted extensive interviews with Exxon officials. On one level, therefore, the book should bejudged as an example of the “Jersey Standard histories.” Wall covers a wide range of the company’s operations in this encyclopedic work. He describes investment strategies, corporate reorganization, and marketing policies. Since he is writing about one of the world’s largest multinationals, Wall spends considerable time discussing its activities in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, with special chapters on troublesome areas such as Iraq and Libya. Of special interest to historians of technology will be the chapters on the chemical division and on refining operations in Europe. Unfortu­ nately, the volume does not include an overall assessment or analysis based on factual data in 899 pages of text...