Review Copy Research Articles

Publications received between 2 June 1998 and 16 June 1999

The following list includes recent books potentially relevant to the traditional and/or allied disciplines of linguistics. An effort is made to see that all books of interest to the readers of Linguistics are reviewed. Publishers receive two copies of reviews accepted for publication. We regret that it is not possible to return unreviewed books to publishers.

HOW DID TCHAIKOVSKY COME TO DIE--AND DOES IT REALLY MATTER?

IN 1979 the Soviet scholar Alexandra Orlova emigrated to the West, bringing with her a story which alleged that Tchaikovsky, having become the subject of a particularly sensitive homosexual accusation, had been sentenced to take his own life by a court of honour of his former school fellows: this was to prevent the accusation becoming public knowledge and tarnishing the honour of their Alma Mater. Orlova retold the story and examined it in detail in this journal ('Tchaikovsky: the Last Chapter', lxii (1981), 125-45). Opinion has remained sharply divided over the story's authenticity, and although it has been discussed mostly in temperate terms on this side of the Atlantic, in the USA it has on occasion excited a highly personal and sometimes immoderate response, especially from other expatriate Russians or persons of Russian extraction, a significant proportion of them non-musicians. Furthermore, the question 'Did Tchaikovsky commit suicide (for whatever reason)?' became caught up in the increasing preoccupation with creative artists' sexuality, ensuring that both the question and the court-of-honour story have remained obstinately in the public domain. Into the late 1980s the arguments went on, and the 1993 centenary saw now familiar data and predictable views being picked over yet again, but without further knowledge being added or significant insights afforded. At which point, fourteen years after Orlova had brought the story from the USSR, it might have been hoped that these over-aired matters would have been allowed to rest. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no serious suggestion that Tchaikovsky would have committed suicide for any reason other than some homosexual involvement that had arisen after the creation of his last significant composition, the six Rathaus songs of May 1893; that being so, his suicide and its cause would be of only marginal interest to us. But these questions are not, it seems, to be let go, for now we have Alexander Poznansky's Tchaikovsky's Last Days: a Documentary Study'-in fact, Poznansky's second book-length investigation of the circumstances surrounding Tchaikovsky's death. To have written one book on so circumscribed a subject shows zeal; to have written two suggests zealotry. In addition, yet another book on the matter has been published in Russia: a microbiologist's view of the evidence concerning Tchaikovsky's last illness and death. Few subjects so small can have commanded so much attention. Nor is Poznansky's new offering his first English-language book on Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky: the Quest for the Inner Man (New York, 1991) appeared in a revised edition in London in 1993. It was not reviewed in these pages (since no review copy was received (Eds.)), so it seems appropriate to note it briefly here. Its author is not a musician but a cultural and social historian who left the Soviet Union in 1977 to settle in the USA. His book drew a wide range of critical reactions; at one extreme it was seen as 'superb . . . a fabulous performance . . . Poznansky possesses . . . remarkable powers of inference' (Richard Taruskin in The New Republic), at the other it was judged 'a tottering castle of unwarranted, indelicate extrapolations' containing 'simple disingenuous avowals that the truth is something other than what every shred of evidence suggests it is' (Paul Griffiths in the New rork Times Book Review). In one regard it is certainly invaluable, for Poznansky fills in the background of the homosexual culture in

High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics and Ideology in Deng's China (review)

564 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 1997 as silver. It was the "lifeblood oflocal commerce" (p. 257), and thanks to von Glahn's detailed and insightful study we now know much more about its importance. Brian Moloughney University of Otago Brian Moloughney's research interests include late imperial history and Chinese historical writing. Jing Wang. High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics and Ideology in Deng's China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. x, 376 pp. Hardcover $50.00, isbn 0-520-20294-5. Paperback $20.00, isbn 0-520-20295-3. This is an outstanding and pathbreaking book. Jing Wang has made a very important contribution to China studies, and my judgment is that High Culture Fever has redefined our field. There are new questions and new approaches implied by her work that have implications for all disciplines examining the China question . The posing of new questions and new approaches is arguably long overdue, considering how much China has been transformed and its place in the world has changed over the past twenty years. This book should therefore be required reading for anyone who reads China Review International. The text is comprised of seven essays, each focusing on "a historic moment of danger and indeterminacy: the outbreak ofthe debate over socialist alienation and Marxist humanism in 1983; Culture Fever in 1985; the controversy over the TV series Heshangin 1988; the proposition of "pseudomodernism" during the same year; the emergent problematic of subjectivity from 1985 onward; the rise of the pseudoproposition of postmodernism in the late 1980s; and the dialogue of 'the Wang Shuo phenomenon' with a rampant popular culture in the early 1990s" (p. 4). It would appear that Professor Wang is going over well-trodden ground, as there is already extensive literature on much of this, but her book addresses these questions in a much more sophisticated and erudite manner than anything that I have read on these topics in Western languages or in Chinese. Moreover it isn't so much what she is looking at as the way she looks at it. It is her approach to© 1997 by University ¡^^ about china ^ as Howard Goldblatt puts it in the publisher's blurb tucked into my review copy, will establish this book as "one of the most noted and discussed scholarly works in our field and will furtiier establish its author as one of modern China's foremost cultural critics." Reviews 565 As a Student of Chinese politics, my interest in this book is ofcourse different from that ofmy colleagues in literary criticism. The subtitle is "Politics, Aesthetics and Ideology in Deng's China." My scholarly focus has been more on politics and ideology and less on aesthetics. Frankly, I find the sections where the book analyzes the content of short stories the least interesting parts. Moreover, the tone ofthe book is sometimes pedantic and die prose too often rather tortured (a shortcoming that I didn't notice in the footnotes, which are very clear). This could reflect a lack ofconfidence on the part of an author who has a lot to feel confident about. She is wonderfully erudite and intellectually sophisticated. She cites an enormous quantity ofliterature. She has brilliant insights into the Chinese condition. Moreover, while Jing Wang has not converted me from politics to literary criticism as a vocation, thanks to her I am now very taken with the importance of "aesthetics" as a factor for analysis on a par with politics and ideology . "Because Confucianist and Marxist indoctrination deprived people of authentic experiences (that is, genuine self-expression in verbal, physical, sexual and epistemological terms), vision making about democracy, fantasy making of the potent sexual selfin literature and the construction of the theory of subjectivity have become tantalizing national hobbies." Wang mentions the name ofTu Wei-ming a number of times in her text, not always unfavorably, but she does suggest tiiat "his evasiveness about the problematic implications of the neo-Confucian renaissance in the context ofmainland politics is disturbing" (pp. 300-301 n. 51). Professor Wang also sees elements of defense of "patriarchal elitism" in his defense of Confucianism (p. 302 n. 56). The section on Confucianism is outstanding. She also...

La version copte de la Predication et du Martyre de Thomas: Avec une Contribution codicologique au Corpus copte des Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha par Enzo Lucchesi (review)

Reviewed by: La version copte de la Prédication et du Martyre de Thomas. Avec une Contribution codicologique au Corpus copte des Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha par Enzo Lucchesi Richard I. Pervo Paul-Hubert Poirier. La version copte de la Prédication et du Martyre de Thomas. Avec une Contribution codicologique au Corpus copte des Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha par Enzo Lucchesi. Subsidia Hagiographica 67. Bruxelles: Société des bollandistes, 1994. Pp. 124 + eight plates. Because they were both suspect and useful, none of the early Apocryphal Acts survives in its original form. Popularity generated frequent revisions intended to purify their theologies, update their ecclesiastical orientation, and condense them into a more accessible form. Suspicion led to suppression. For the recovery of their original text, contents, and scope, the various ancient versions can be of great value, but these present their own challenges, since translators also revised and some translations are themselves versions of versions. Poirier and Lucchesi have made a useful contribution to the assembly of materials for the evaluation of the Coptic evidence regarding the Acts of Thomas (AThom). This work is distinct for two reasons: it survives in complete, but not original, form and was arguably composed in Syriac rather than Greek. Lucchesi sorts into six codices the Coptic texts about the ministries and deaths of various apostles (no more than half of which may have included Paul), now found in many fragments distributed among at least fourteen libraries. This was an arduous task if ever such existed. Poirier then presents a Coptic edition of some sixteen fragments, ranging from a few lines to several pages in length, together with a French version. Each contributor supplies a number of notes and comments. Prédication includes summaries and parts of episodes from what are called the Acta Thomae minora, which are not from the ancient AThom, although they are related to it. Characteristics of this tradition include a ministry in Macedonia as well as India, destruction of idols with the consequent conversion of temples to Christian usage, and an edifying conclusion in which the protagonist is skinned alive but then restored and transported to the company of other apostles. There Peter is hailed as “my Bishop” and Thomas as “the second Christ” (Codex F f. 108r, 23–25, p. 67). The latter epithet is an echo of the ancient Acts, where Thomas is Jesus’s twin. The Martyre fragments, on the other hand, are relatively close and generally full translations of AThom 159–70 (71). Codices F and M support those editions that place Thomas’s prayer (chs. 144–48) after ch. 167, with M giving the latter part of ch. 165 as the conclusion to this episode. In several cases the Coptic texts may offer earlier readings than those attested in the Syriac and Greek mss. of the Acts. It now seems quite likely that the Arabic and Ethiopic versions of these texts were made from Coptic originals. This welcome example of patient Bollandist labor serves to remind those who work with printed editions of Christian apocrypha that we shall do well to take the particularity of individual manuscripts into account. Page 64 (Coptic text) of the review copy was, evidently through a printing error, blank. Richard I. Pervo Seabury-Western Theological Seminary Evanston, Illinois Copyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Statistical Computing Software Reviews

This section is similar in organization to a book-review section in other journals; however, software of interest to statisticians is the subject of review here. Emphasis is on software for microcomputers. Programs that operate only in larger mainframe computers will seldom receive review. Normally, producers of programs make a copy of their product available to the section editor, who then selects one or more persons to test the product and prepare a review. Producers of computer software who wish to have their product reviewed are invited to contact Section Editor Richard Goldstein, Qualitas, Inc., 37 Kirkwood Road, Brighton, MA 02135. Readers are encouraged to send to the Section Editor copies of reviews of statistical software appearing outside of the general statistical literature-for example, reviews appearing in journals such as Journal of Applied Econometrics or Computer Applications in the Biosciences . Readers are invited to make two types of submissions to the “Editor’s Notes” area of this Section: (1) specific software features that are currently unusual implementations; this must not be controversial and should have general appeal; examples appear in the November 1991 and February 1992 issues; please send a brief explanation of the statistic, a brief statement of its importance, and a small number of citations; and (2) views regarding general attributes or design issues for statistical software; an example appears in the November 1991 issue; other issues include: documentation, user interface, test data sets, forms of data editing allowed, output format control, speed, and so forth. Both types of submissions should be made directly to the Section Editor, Richard Goldstein, and are subject to extensive rewriting. Findings and opinions expressed in every review are solely those of the author. They should not be construed as reflecting endorsement of the product, or opinions held, by the American Statistical Association, nor is any warranty implied about any product reviewed.

Now Read This: Recent Additions to the Business Ethics Library

Book publishers seem to have found a new niche judging by the number of review copies coming our way. This column just aims to give a line or two on some of them to help the reader decide whether to buy, borrow or leave it for now.

Getting Past 1492: The Renaissance in Recent Portuguese and Spanish Publications

Nineteen ninety-two was such a watershed year for publications concerning the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries that dozens of these works could easily be described as “the best.” Unfortunately, out of the numerous Portuguese and Spanish publishers contacted in 1993 with our request for review copies, only two in Spain plus the Sorbonne took this project seriously. In response to their cooperative attitude, I want to mention their three books before turning to a more general discussion of Renaissance publications from the Iberian Peninsula. (Publishers in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America were not included simply because of limitations on my time.)

Life on the Internet

This article was first published in the North American Review , University of Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa in November 1993. The interviews for this article were conducted over the Internet. A review copy of Cardiyakking in manuscript, which Ms. Peterson received over the network from Dr. Phillips, is the source for quoted material in this article.

NEW AND REVIEW COPIES OF BOOKS

NEW AND REVIEW COPIES OF BOOKS

Books In Brief

Abstract KOMOROUS, Hana, and HARRIMAN, Robert S.International guidelines for the cataloguing of newspapers. London: IFLA Universal Bibliographic Control and International MARC programme, 1989. v, 28 p. (UBCIM occasional paper; 14.) A$39. (Review copy supplied by D.W. Thorpe.) SCHULTZ, Julianne.Accuracy in Australian newspapers. Sydney: Australian Centre for independent Journalism, University of Technology, Sydney, 1990. 103 p. (Working paper; no. 1.) LAYTON, Suzanna (ed.).1990 Who's where: a directory of journalists and mass media in the Pacific Islands. Honolulu, HI (1777 East-West Road): East-West Center, 1990. i, 24 p. US$3. (Review copy supplied by the publisher.) MURPHY, Ffion, and NILE, Richard (eds.).The gate of dreams: the Western Mail annuals1897-1955. South Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1990. 191 p. ISBN 0-949206-84-9. AS29.95. (Review copy supplied by the publisher.) FLANAGAN, Martin.One of the crowd: a personal view of newspapers. South Melbourne: Sun Books, 1990. 295 p. ISBN 0-7251-0615-8. AS16.99. (Review copy supplied by the publisher.) VICTORIA. Working Party into Print Media Ownership.Stage one report. Melbourne (200 Queen Street): Attorney-General's Department, 1990. 43 p. (Available free of charge.)

Progress or Stasis: A Matter of Taste?

feel honored indeed to have my book singled out as stimulus for essays by such wise and distinguished scholars, each of whom has been sufficiently critical to certify a friendly objectivity. Perhaps reader can imagine heightened sense of anticipation (suspense? anxiety?) as copies of reviews from three such different sources made their way to me, one by one. My main reaction upon reading them is one of relief-and gratitude. The comments about book are gracious and most humbly appreciated. The elaborations and remarks on state of person-perception field are thoughtful, provocative, and very different from one another. Indeed, there is a certain delicious irony in diversity of critical comments. Hastorf and Cole proceed not only to enroll me in cognition school but compliment book on accurately rendering this school's take . Hamilton laments my inattention to recent developments in our understanding of information processing and, in effect, says I know social cognitionists, and you aren't one of them. Berscheid takes a somewhat different tack but basically sides with Hastorf and Cole in dumping on sterility of social-cognition approach. My task in these brief remarks is a peculiar one, at least for me. Not only do want to avoid point-by-point defensive rebuttals, but it is not always clear from reviews whether criticisms are addressed to my particular approach to subject or to current state of our knowledge in personperception field, and strategies and emphases in that field that try to characterize with some accuracy. This is particularly true of Berscheid's fretful sense of disappointment and betrayal. It is easier for me to believe that field is not ready for a full-color Monet than to acknowledge that my own treatment lies dead in a bell jar. Berscheid suggests that our field has suffered severely from dessicated constraints of experimental approach. confess that was seduced by this approach at outset of my career and feel quite comfortable in defending fruits of controlled experimentation throughout most of topic areas of social psychology. In my judgment, that is essentially unique contribution we have to offer, a pattern of skills and procedures that set us apart from journalism and astute novelistic observation. Whether or not one actually does experiment, thinking in terms of experimental designs is enormously valuable as a powerful analytic technique. Many of conclusions in my book are obviously not closely drawn from experimental results, but represent selected extrapolations following logic of experimentalist thinking. share Berscheid's complaint that many personperception experiments (including some of my own) are so pallid and devoid of context that they border on irrelevance. But this has more to do with failure of experimenter's imagination than with experimental approach itself. Berscheid caricatures the literature as dealing almost exclusively with people who are not motivationally involved and who are trying to be impartial, judicious, systematic. But we have learned a great deal about role of motivational involvement and about how people act under pressure-and much of this learning has come from well-designed experimental studies. We have even learned, from a series of recent experiments (Gilbert, 1989), how people are affected by distractions and interruptions of everyday life. In spite of a personal preference for theory-based experimentation, do acknowledge that exclusive reliance on experimental approach can limit one's attention to controllable independent variables and can therefore be self-defeating. In studying close relationships, for example, experimental designs can at best capture some of early moments of impression development. Interviews and behavioral observation must inevitably contribute to our part of a pluralistic attack on vicissitudes of ongoing relationships. The fact that each such relationship has a complex, idiosyncratic history does not offer much hope for strategies of experimentation. However, it would surely be wrong to suggest that experimental approach is irrelevant for studying aspects of interpersonal perception that affect our social relations in everyday life. am not happy about way in which book is characterized by Berscheid and especially by Hastorf and Cole. Both essays imply that am content to deal with person perception as a bloodless cognitive enterprise, that have lost track of social in social cognition. was particularly surprised at Hastorf and Cole's implication, if not their explicit charge, that book somehow fails to capture dynamic quality of interpersonal behavior, that it fails to appreciate importance of how we perceive intentions and emotions. Such remarks almost led me to wonder whether they began to speed read, once they finished slogging through early chapters on attributional approaches and expectancy effects. had hoped that book's unique contribution would be to explore important consequences of embedding person perception in context of ongoing sequences of interaction. Time after time, book comes back to this theme-to delicate, tangled interplay between expectancies, perceptions, goals, emotions, and behaviors.

E. A. KESSEL (edited by P. H. Arnaud jr). Autobiographical anecdotes (I was a preacher's kid) with a tribute and biological publications of Edward Luther Kessel. (Myia, a publication on entomology 4). Insect Associates, 395 Reston Court, South San Francisco: 1989. Pp xxxii, 234; illustrated. Price: US$10. ISBN: none, (limited edition of 600 copies (review copy 496))

E. A. KESSEL (edited by P. H. Arnaud jr). <i>Autobiographical anecdotes (I was a preacher's kid) with a tribute and biological publications of Edward Luther Kessel. (Myia, a publication on entomology 4)</i>. Insect Associates, 395 Reston Court, South San Francisco: 1989. Pp xxxii, 234; illustrated. Price: US$10. ISBN: none, (limited edition of 600 copies (review copy 496))

Pelikan's "Ambitious Lifework": A High Point of Twentieth-Century ScholarshipThe Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Jaroslav Pelikan

With the appearance of volume 5, Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700), Jaroslav Pelikan brings to a close his extraordinary scholarly achievement, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Even apart from magnificent series, Pelikan's many other firstrate publications have assured him a leading place among the historical theologians of century. But The Christian Tradition is clearly the magnum opus he began planning and outlining ... in the 1940s, with first sketches and drafts dating from the 1950s (5:vii, ix). In the final paragraph of the preface to the fifth volume, Pelikan expresses his bittersweet feelings on completing the task that had preoccupied him for nearly half a century by citing Edward Gibbon's recollections of his mood as he finished his own multivolume work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: will not dissemble the first emotions ofjoy on recovery of my freedom, but my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion. Pelikan adds, however: For me, the joy and melancholy are more than matched by the gratitude I sense to all those who have made it possible for me to take on, and now to complete, ambitious lifework (5:ix). It is my assignment to offer a relatively brief critical appraisal of the contribution this ambitious lifework makes to the study of Christianity. I intend to take into account the entire series, but with greater attention to the fifth volume. The limited space allotted overview precludes mention, not to say discussion, of the detailed points and questions that occupy the margins of my review copies.

Briefer Notices

Briefer Notices Barbara L. Curtis, compiler The annual meeting of Friends Historical Association took place on Eleventh month 12th, 1990 at Friends Meetinghouse, 4th and Arch Sts., Philadelphia. Following a social period and supper together in the East Room the group of some 90 members and friends gathered in the Monthly Meeting room at 7:30 p.m. Under the able direction of Margaret H. Bacon, president of the Association, the regular business was completed. Reports were read and approved from the Treasurer, the auditors, the editor of QuakerHistory, the chairpersons of historical publications, and the membership and nominating committees. Minutes of the annual meeting of the Association in 1989 were read and approved with thanks expressed for the work which these reports entail. Margaret Bacon then introduced the speaker of the evening, Irwin Abrams. Dr. Abrams, retired professor of history at Antioch University, gave an informative and insightful account of events leading up to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. The joint recipients were the American Friends Service Committee and the British Friends Service Council. In early summer 1990 a centenary was observed at Scattergood School in West Branch, Iowa. The event was marked in part by the publication of a book called Scattergood Friends School: 1890-1990. The authors are Robert Berquist, David Rhodes and Carolyn Smith Treadway. This hard cover volume contains 399 pages, 72 photographs and an index. Copies are available from the school at $15.00, which includes postage. Address the school at Route #1, Box 32, West Branch, IA 52358. A review copy has been received by Thomas Hamm, of Earlham College, book review editor for Quaker History. The Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists, at its business meeting at the close of the 8th Biennial meeting held at George Fox College, Newberg, Oregon, June 22nd to 24th, 1990, decided after careful discussion to retain its biennial schedule. The next meeting of the conference will be held in 1992 at Wilmington College. This is in response to an invitation from Wilmington to the conference to participate in their 100th anniversary events taking place in 1992 in Wilmington , Ohio. The steering committee for the conference will be chaired by Carole Treadway. Others who agreed to serve with her in planning the gathering are Larry Ingle, Charles Cherry, Jack Marietta, Barbara R. Dailey, Ina Kelley and John Oliver. Persons proposing papers to present in 1992 are invited to get in touch with Carole Treadway, Chair, Steering Committee, Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists, Guilford College Library, Greensboro, NC 27410. The Board of Directors of the Friends Historical Association at its regular meeting held on Tenth month 10, 1990 requested that notice be given in Quaker History, Spring 1991, that interested persons may obtain a full copy of the Constitution and By-laws of the Association. Please write to Elisabeth P. Brown, Secretary, at the Quaker Collection, Haverford College, Haverford, PA 19041. ...

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being a Masterpiece

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being a Masterpiece Perry Nodelman (bio) Canemaker, John . Winsor McCay: His Life and Art. New York: Abbeville Publishers, 1987. I must begin with an admission of guilt: it has taken me an outrageously long time to write this review. Valid excuses I have none—but I do have an excellent explanation. I like to read in bed. Upon receiving my review copy of Winsor McCay: His Life and Art, I did what comes naturally. I unwrapped it, admired its physical beauty in anticipation of the pleasures it promised, and took it to bed with me that very evening. And quickly discovered the exercise to be impossible. This book cannot be read in bed. It's too big. And it weighs too much. Winsor McCay: His Life and Art is 13½ inches high by 11½ inches wide—more than two feet wide when opened. It's what's usually called a coffee table book, presumably because all you'd need to do with one in order to serve coffee from it is screw a leg into each of its corners. Winsor McCay: His Life and Art would make a fine coffee table. It could easily handle the coffee pot, the cream, the sugar, and enough cups for a considerable klatsch—not to mention an interesting selection of other coffee table books. But its size wasn't why I didn't get around to reading it. It was the weight. This is one heavy book. Scientific experimentation reveals that my bathroom scale registers five pounds heavier when I'm carrying Winsor McCay: His Life and Art than when I'm not. Five whole pounds. Every time I tried to read the book in bed, I got a dent in my chest. It was an ugly looking dent. If I'd been of a Winsor McCay cast of imagination, I might have fallen into a dream after trying to read it, like the ones he himself once used to imagine followed upon the ingestion of rarebit, and found my body being gradually sliced into two separate pieces by the bulk of this dangerously weighty tome. At the end of my dream, I'd awake in one piece again and say something like. "Oh my, what a dream! That's what I get for reading heavy books in bed!" What I actually got was just the dent. While it was usually gone by morning, reading the book was a painful process—one I chose to avoid. And so Winsor McCay: His Life and Art has been gathering dust by my bedside for so long now that the family has come to [End Page 45] think of it, even without legs, as part of the furniture. It's only after much impassioned urging from both the Quarterly review editor and the person who does the dusting that I've finally brought myself to sit upright at a table with it long enough to finish it. Even then I've had trouble—the pages are printed on stock so thick that I constantly found myself turning back to check because I thought, incorrectly, that I'd turned two at once. Having, finally, made my way through this weighty tome, I can report the following: the weight is mostly physical. There isn't much weight in the text, which contains an astonishing amount of speculation. John Canemaker, the author, managed to find out less about the sizeable unknown areas of his subject's life than might actually warrant a biography. More significantly, there isn't much weight in the life or art of the subject. This isn't to say that Winsor McCay was an uninteresting person or an insignificant illustrator. He was both. A self-taught artist, McCay lived at a time, at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, before photography became omnipresent and there were still an astonishing variety of ways for an illustrator to make use of his talent. At various times in his life, McCay was a quick sketch artist, first in a dime museum and later in vaudeville; he designed advertising posters; he became a leading editorial cartoonist for Hearst; and he...

Book Reviews

Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica ScandinavicaVolume 70, Issue 6 p. 514-514 Book Reviews First published: January 1991 https://doi.org/10.3109/00016349109007172AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Book reviewed in this article: Mishell DR, Paulsen CA, Lobo RA, eds. The Year Book of Infertility 1990. 250 pages, tables, figures. St. Louis: Mosby Year Book, Inc. 1990. Review copy received from Wolfe Publishing, London. Price GBP 39.00, USD 51.95. Per Bergsjø Huisjes HJ, Buekens P, Reid M, eds. Antenatal screening. Current policies in the EC and evaluation. European Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Volume 28 Supplement. 103 pages, tables, figures. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 1988. Price NLG 95.00. Per Bergsjø Volume70, Issue6January 1991Pages 514-514 RelatedInformation

R. McLEAN and A. McLEAN. Benjamin Fawcett, engraver and colour printer with a list of his books and plates. Scolar Press (Gower Publishing Co. Ltd), Aldershot: 1988. Pp 196; illustrated. Price: £47.50. ISBN 0-58967-789-3. (Limited edition of 750 copies of which nos. 21–750 are for sale: the review copy was no. 66).

R. McLEAN and A. McLEAN. <i>Benjamin Fawcett, engraver and colour printer with a list of his books and plates</i>. Scolar Press (Gower Publishing Co. Ltd), Aldershot: 1988. Pp 196; illustrated. Price: £47.50. ISBN 0-58967-789-3. (Limited edition of 750 copies of which nos. 21–750 are for sale: the review copy was no. 66).

States and rulers in later medieval Europe (review)

190 Reviews which is implicit in an unwillingness to consider the wider context. Dr. Goodman fulfils his brief with admirable sensitivity. Perhaps, however, the Historical Association should next consider publishing a European interpretation. The change in focus might assist in distinguishing the important from the trivial. Sybil M . Jack Department of History University of Sydney Guenee, B., States and rulers in later medieval Europe, trans. J. Vale; Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1985; pp. xi, 322; 2 maps; R.R.P. A U S $34.95. This book is an English translation of VOccident aux XlVe et XVe sUcle: les Etats, which appeared in the Nouvelle Clio series in 1971. The bibliography, dways a fine feature of Nouvelle Clio, has been doubled to include works published between 1971 and 1984 though Guenee's text has not itself been revised in response to this recent literature. Guenee is one of the leading French medievalists of our day and his book, since its English translation by Juliet V d e in 1985, has enjoyed a wide circulation amongst English-speaking students of the later Middle Ages. They have been attracted by its wide geographicd canvas (though its western European emphasis is concealed in the Englishtitle)and by its discursive, problem-oriented, treatment of constitutional and politicd themes. There is a great deal of generalization about what 'people' thought, what 'everyone' demanded, and what 'no-one' disputed which, with the almost complete absence of foot-notes, gives the work a magisterial - if not downright dogmatic dr. These breaches of scholarly etiquette should be tolerated because Guenee is a trustworthy guide in an area of historicd study which is notoriously fragmented and particularized. The translation is good, though St. Paul's conversion by Dionysius the Areopagite (p. 38) is the fruit of a mistranslation and thefinalconclusion (p. 208) has been rendered even more impenetrable than the original. The binding of this Blackwell paperback is as bad as ever, with pages already falling like confetti from m y review copy. Nicholas Wright Department of History University of Adeldde Ives, E., Anne Boleyn, rpt, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988, pp. xvii, 451; 3 genealogical tables, 55 plates; R.R.P. A U S $24.95. Anne Boleyn was controversial in her life and after her death. Biographies of her have been equally contentious. This reprint of the most recent scholarly work should enable scholars to appreciate the new perspective which recent research ...

Alerts

Book Preview is a new publication, under the editorship of David Elliott, offering “thorough and uncompromising” verdicts on key books two to three months ahead of publication, reviewing about a hundred (half of them fiction) in each issue. The expertise of more than 50 reviewers has been assembled from amongst “book trade professionals” whose independence and impartiality of judgement might therefore be questionnable. Be that as it may it is unfortunate that reviewers' identities have not been disclosed and that reviews are unsigned. The publisher is Book Preview Ltd, 10 Barley Mow Passage, London W4 4PH, but J. Whitaker and Sons Ltd, 12 Dyott Street, London WC1A 1DF has taken on the marketing and distribution, a possible indication of reliability, but clearly the guide's success will depend to some extent on which publishers, and how many, co‐operate by sending review copies. It must be seen substantially to cover the market. The subscription cost for ten issues is £98 in the UK from either of the addresses quoted above. A specimen copy will be sent on request. The reviews in the copy I have seen run from 250 to 500 words and disclose the plots or content in much the same way as would a publisher's blurb. There is, however, addition of a definite opinion from someone who has read the book and is neither its author nor publisher. How far it is worth the subscription price to have this previewed opinion on a total of 1,000 books each year and its possible help in book selection is for each librarian to judge.

Ulrich'sand EBSCO:

Since October 1986, there have been two major serials directories in direct competition with each other: Ulrich's International Periodicak Directoty, and The Serials Directory published by EBSCO. These are now available in various formats, and both are continually being enhanced and improved as new features are added. What follows is a look at each format for each title, with a description of their main characteristics, and some comments and evaluation as a basis for comparing them. Ulrich's is only available in Australia through D.W. Thorpe of Melbourne; my review copies were supplied by Buttenvorths Australia. EBSCO materials are available through Bennett-EBSCO in Sydney, or through any subscription agent; EBSCO Publishing in the United States provided me with review copies. The prices quoted are for 1989.