Proudly Printed Books from University Presses

The book is indeed still with us! Checking through university press catalogs confirms a vibrant, optimistic world of publishing, a universe of ideas in print. Nonetheless, the future of the printed book is now a matter of learned debate, together with much unfettered speculation. The telephone has not killed letter-writing and the DVD has not killed the big-screen movie experience. But the once ubiquitous independent local bookstores, the travel agencies, and the family-owned pharmacies are noticeably fewer on America’s small-town Main Streets.

Accessing a text on Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, and similar devices is worlds apart from enjoying the palpability, the feel, the smell, and the texture of a printed book. The handwritten letter offers us a perfect format for a shaped, controlled, and uninterrupted message that the interactive phone call precludes; a movie theater offers a vibrant, shared experience that the small screen denies us, and a book offers the easy to and fro-ing, the penciled note, the check mark in the margin, all without the intermediation of keyboards and screens. Atlases, art books, and albums defy presentation in electronically canned format; like-wise, the gatefold illustration and the foldout chart need the book qua book. Rejoice—books will long outlast us!

As usual, interest and impact (and forgive the limitations of a single reviewer’s sensibilities) are the criteria for selection. Un-usual and unexpected books deserve their champion; big books from big names already receive support. “Also Recommended” books are not second choices, but are loosely complementary or antithetical to the category choices. Before purchasing books, check publishers’ Web sites: titles may be available in both hardcover and paperback, some also in eBook format.

Beauty and Utility

Oxford Atlas of the World
Oxford University Press
Hardcover $80.00 (448pp)
978-0-19-539328-6

The sixteenth edition of the Atlas is a stunning production, truly “uniting utility and beauty” (a phrase applied to Major-General Sir Henry James’ career as founding director of Britain’s map-making agency). What puts this major atlas light-years ahead of the Internet and the GPS device beloved by the incurious traveler is the true marriage of information with education: it is impossible not to learn an immense amount through even the most causal browsing. Over 100 pages concisely address topics ranging from cli-mate change to food production, health and standards of living—converting our vague awareness to useful knowledge. Similarly, we may think we “know” London, Cairo, or Cape Town, but the crystal-clear maps depicting the layouts of some sixty cities will certainly add to our knowledge.

The Atlas’s true achievement naturally lies in the incorporation of state-of-the-art cartography through which presentation, de-tail, contrasts, and clarity are enhanced, while the side-by-side positioning of physical and political maps of the continents is a great advantage, particularly where geopolitical conflicts are raging.

The Atlas is also a showcase for high-definition satellite photography, with a portfolio of knockout images of panoramas the unaided eye cannot hope to capture. At the other end of the scale is a near-encyclopedia of highly specialized part-page illustra-tions, charts and graphs, depicting everything from geological time to causes of death.

Also Recommended: The Book of Codes: Understanding the World of Hidden Messages; Paul Lunde, editor (University of California, 978-0-520-26013-9). Secrecy and power are symbiotic; they coexist and feed each other through signs, symbols, ciphers, and secret languages. Codes takes us from petroglyphs to genes—with hundreds of truly fascinating, sometimes disturbing, excursions en route.

Biography: Power and Passion

The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy
Adrienne Mayor
Princeton University Press
Hardcover $29.95 (570pp)
978-0-691-12683-8

The dangerous youth, dramatic mid-life, and tragic death of Mithradates of Pontus (134-63 BCE), key maker-and-shaker of the 80s-60s BCE, have lacked a full-scale English-language presentation. Neither Reinach’s stolid biography (1890, German and French) nor Duggan’s novelistic treatment (1958) fully captured the drama. And Mithradates, unlike Tamerlane, lacked an impassioned Christopher Marlowe. Thanks be to Adrienne Mayor for a definitive biography, blazing with color, presenting a magnificent cast headed by a hero who caused Rome to tremble for a quarter-century.

Larcenous Rome had despoiled Greece and saw yet greater spoils in Asia Minor and Anatolia as she drove farther east. Mithradates’ interest and greatness lies in his epic struggle to drive Rome out of the region and maintain local dynasties (under his sway!), revitalizing a Greco-Persian culture. Deposing his murderous mother, he seized wealthy Pontus in 114 BCE, created alliances, lost and won battles, massacred 80,000 Romans, and liberated much of Greece. Rome sent Sulla, Licinius, and the indomitable Pompey against the tenacious king; Roman discipline finally overwhelmed Pontic élan. This splendidly produced book is a cavalcade of intrigue, action, and slaughter. Danger, hope, fear, and love and lust are never absent.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Arctic Scientist, Gulag Survivor: The Biography of Mikhail Mikhailovich Ermolaev, 1905-1991, by Alek-sei Mikhailovich Ermolaev and V.D. Didner; William Barr, translator and editor (University of Calgary Press, 978-1-55238-256-1). Centuries later and continents away, one man navigated survival in Russia’s northernmost camps, never losing his determination to resume a career in science. For the much-tested Ermolaev, adaptability and quiet courage were means of defeating a nefarious, unthinking system. A powerful, wrenching book.

Anthropology: Odd Bodies

How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories
David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton
Columbia University Press
Hardcover $29.95 (210pp)
978-0-231-14664-7

David B. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton bring impressive scientist–writer qualifications to an engaging exploration of the puzzling “whys, hows, and what-fors” of female sexual characteristics, functions, and behaviors. With a nod to Kipling’s playful Just-So sto-ries, they note that their explorations will put up and knock down some far-fetched theories as they move through evolutionary his-tory, scientific hypotheses, and findings—which, they also emphasize, may not be scientifically conclusive. The authors are indeed thought-provoking: take their observation that in matters of menstruation, ovulation, breast development, orgasmic capability, and menopause (the book’s five chapter topics), women are unique: these functions and features do not occur in anything like the same way in other species. Analyses of the ways in which they do occur (with examples ranging from the elephant shrew to the chimpan-zee, the lion, and the highly appealing meerkat) add an interesting extra to the book as well as correcting many common misconcep-tions about animal behavior.

Why, for example, is ovulation, visibly signaled in many other species, invisible in women and by no means always pinpoin-table even by themselves? Why does menopause terminate one function long before the kidneys terminate theirs? Two essen-tials of American wellbeing, the breast and orgasm, are questioned…are they strictly necessary?

The authors shift seamlessly from possible evolution and functional specifics to the impact features and functions have on the female possessor and, to a lesser extent, on the shaping of male perceptions. Somewhere in his writings, Somerset Maugham commented that female physiology determined female psychology: en passant, the authors powerfully illuminate his maxim.

At Sea…For Science or Empire

Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti
Anne Salmond
University of California Press
Hardcover $29.95 (538 pp)
978-0-520-26114-3

Early reports on Tahiti (“Aphrodite’s Island”), discovered by Captain Samuel Wallis in 1767, seeded a persisting vision of coral reefs, verdant islands, and handsome natives—with a hint of the exotic erotic on offer. Thankfully, Anne Salmond, professor at the University of Auckland and a historian of Captain Cook (The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas) to-tally reorients us with her gripping multidisciplinary history of this troubled encounter of European and Pacific cultures.

We can discard any notion of sophisticated Europeans meeting primitive islanders: Salmond’s exploration of the cosmology, religion, political, and social history and the behaviors of the Tahitians reveals a highly complex civilization, often crudely misun-derstood. What Tahitians thought of their visitors is just as fascinating as what the visitors thought of the islanders. Perceptions changed—and tensions grew—as Bougainville and then Cook visited Tahiti and its neighbors in the Society Islands. On both sides trifles bred troubles.

Throughout we have the Europeans’ genuine shock at these new sights, observed with honest attempts at objective reportage (with possible lapses when “the excesses of the night were incredible”), recorded in numerous journals, with first-class drawings and watercolors. Salmond has mined an immense archive to create a brilliant picture of Tahiti, and also the Europe it fascinated.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire by Jon Latimer (Harvard University Press, 978-0-674-03403-7). An enthralling account in which “pirates” were agents of Europe’s maritime powers, for whom sugar and slaves meant power and wealth. High adventure by land and sea abounds—in pursuit of empire.

Short Stories: Tough Lives

Upheavals
Chris Holbrook
University Press of Kentucky
Softcover $17.95 (155pp)
978-0-8131-9244-4

The eight stories in the aptly named Upheavals are the work of a master: raw in the situations and emotions that Chris Holbrook presents, visceral and resonant in the characters through which he speaks. Appalachia, with its scarred wooded valleys, polluted creeks, and dangerous mines, invariably calls to mind hardscrabble lives, but Holbrook captures pride despite poverty, tenacity despite hardship, and the clannishness, despite the isolation, that age often brings.

There’s no coasting through life in Holbrook’s Appalachia; every incident threatens to torpedo some fragile equilibrium, some fraught peace.

In “New-Used,” trading in an ancient beat-up Ford for a used Dodge pick-up is a major undertaking. Layoffs threaten at the mine; friends are critical; cash and pride on the line: “Hey listen now…I druther drive a Dodge than push a Ford.” “How bad did you get took?” “I’m lucky I still got my britches.” There’s a pervasive palpability in the stories; a woman knows a hired hand is a killer before he strikes; a man witnesses a work-site accident and knows it can play out in miniature at home, telling his son, “So many ways to get hurt working with tools.” Prayer and food, fuel and grease, pride and vulnerability drive these telling stories in which the protagonists often transcend the constraints of hard, narrow lives. Holbrook’s work resonates.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale (University of Texas Press, 978-0-292-71941-5). Nine description-defying stories and two excerpts from the author’s novels. Larger than life characters, off-beat or bizarre situations, knockout language (happily not devoid of political incorrectness) in a world that just might have been—and should have been. Truly Texan.

Hordes and History

Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire
William Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi, and William Honeychurch, editors
University of Washington Press
Softcover $40.00 (320pp)
978-0-295-98957-0

For most of us “Mongol” conjures up highly colored visions of ruthless conquests in a distant past, with vast armies of fierce pony-mounted warriors surging over the steppes, mountains of skulls, and death and destruction threatening the very heartlands of Europe…and then? The question mark looms when we ask ourselves about the Mongols’ political and military organization, their economy, their religious and social customs, and art. And then the small matter of the extent and duration of their empire and the Mongol legacy…Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire gives us all the answers.

In its five thematic sections this magnificent 8.5 x 11-inch volume offers us the concise essays of some forty scholars, ranging from Mongolian-born specialists to leading Western scholars such as David. O. Morgan and Morris Rossabi, both well known for their gift of clear narrative. “Kublai Khan and Yuan China” (with an essay on Ibn Battuta’s travels) will add a whole new dimension for many of us; “The “Mongolian Western Empire” will greatly expand on what we learned in European history courses—included is The Mongols at War, an eye-opening essay by Timothy May, a young military historian. “Genghis Khan’s Legacy” offers, among other topics, engrossing narratives addressing Genghis Khan’s genetic legacy and modern marketing and filmmaking that have promoted him. Content, illustrations, bibliography and scholarly notes add up to a truly fine book.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Under A Lucky Star by Roy Chapman Andrews (Borderland Books/University of Wisconsin Press, 978-0-9768781-8-6). Andrews’ pioneering explorations in Mongolia greatly advanced science and archaeology; his life and adven-tures there, which Indiana Jones would envy, make this a welcome reissue of a thrilling read.

Poetry: Sensitive Antiquity and Brash Modernity

Ancient Greek Lyrics
Willis Barnstone, translator
Indiana University Press
Softcover $19.95 (376pp)
978-0-253-22121-6

With the work of more than seventy poets from the Greek, Hellenistic, Byzantine, and Roman periods, the distinguished translator Willis Barnstone offers us a very rich selection. The giants—Alkman, Alkaios, Theognis, Pindar, Bakchylides, and Meleagros—are generously represented. Sappho’s “shards and fragments” are translated in full, with the haunting Barnstone-McCulloh trans-lation of the recently discovered Growing Old: “These lovely gifts of the fragrant-breasted Muses, / girls, seek them eagerly in thrilling song of the lyre…” But there is no neglect of the lesser-known poets—many have made acerbic comments on life, hope, fear, and death; others excel in the personal insult.

The poets touch upon every human emotion, often with a timeless aphoristic focus and brevity. Instantly meaningful is “Money is the man; and a poor man / can be neither good nor honorable” (Alkaios). Anakreon’s “The dice of love are / shouting and mad-ness” is an apt reflection for those caught up in the frenzied contemporary dating game. Not all subjects are winners: “Eros, the blacksmith of love / smashed me with a giant hammer / and doused me in the cold river.”

William E. McCulloh’s fine introduction traces the development of the Greek lyric, while Barnstone’s notes on the poets pro-vide valuable contexts. It is hard to conceive of a more satisfying anthology than this, but the still unsatisfied can consult the Loeb Library volumes.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Start with the Trouble by Daniel Donaghy (University of Arkansas Press, 978-1-55728-907-0). In revisiting his childhood Philadelphia, Donaghy captures raw moments of urgent life, giving us searing poems of angst, fear, death—and occa-sionally hope and joy—in a resonantly evoked “City of Brotherly Love.”

Simple Murder . . . Sophisticated Detection.

The Anatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh’s Notorious Burke and Hare and of the
Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes
Lisa Rosner
University of Pennsylvania Press
Hardcover $29.95 (336pp)
978-0-8122-4191-4

In the year following November 1827, the Irish knockabouts William Burke and William Hare, who lived in Edinburgh and worked as laborers, became entrepreneurs, founding a home-operated business with low overhead, a high-demand market, and pay-ment on delivery. But in procurement, operations, and deliveries they remained amateurs. The duo’s program of bodysnatching, involving “burking” (suffocating) the victim and delivering the corpse to Dr. Robert Knox, an ambitious anatomist, crashed after the seventeenth murder. A suspicious resident in Burke’s lodging house called the police….

Lisa Rosner, professor of history at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, has dissected a vast overburden of material to deliver a fully fleshed account that goes far beyond murder. She explores a fascinating network of factors—Edinburgh’s socio-economic strata, the demands of scientific medicine, the lack of bodies for dissection, and contemporary legal philosophy and criminal justice among them. Much of the book’s gripping interest lies in Rosner’s skilled analysis of the widespread furor and media frenzy that the murders provoked. The public became concerned over investigative and court procedures and a prosecu-tion deal through which Hare was able to shop Burke, who was hanged, while he was spared execution.

The Burke–Hare crimes became a minor investigative industry and have given rise to numerous films, but Rosner has deliv-ered the definitive account in both detail and interest.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Lacan at the Scene by Henry Bond (MIT Press, 978-0-262-01342-0). In demonstrating the value of a Lacanian approach to crime solving, Bond re-interprets true crime photographs, asking: What do the anomalous details tell us? Rigorous, challenging, and highly rewarding.

Voices From Afar . . . .

Four Russian Serf Narratives
John MacKay, editor and translator
University of Wisconsin Press
Softcover $26.95 (242pp)
978-0-299-23374-7

Very few Russian serfs wrote memoirs: those that did seldom expected publication. Hence the value of these four, translated and annotated by John Mackay, professor of Slavic and Eastern European Languages at Yale University, where he is also chair of the Department of Film Studies. The authors wrote exceptionally revealing narratives detailing horrific life situations from which there was no legal escape if manumission was withheld. Owners had life and death power: a recalcitrant serf could expect the knout, exile to Siberia, or dispatch to the army.

Nikolai Smirnov (1780s), a serf of the great Golitysn family, managed to secure a surprisingly broad education. This aroused ambition in him, but also increased his value to his owner. Smirnov finally fled, was betrayed, and though condemned to the knout and execution, ended up in exile in Siberia, his gifts wasted. Nikolai Shipov (1830s-1860s) took to the road, recording much risk and reward in various businesses. Then, turning down a fraudulent takeover of the Georgian postal system, he arranged his “capture” by and “escape” from Chechen rebels, with “escape” nullifying serf status.

Very different is the long c. 1849 poem (by “Petr O”) titled “News About Russia” in which a complex narrative about the au-thor’s prohibited marriage to a free peasant and a matchmaker’s own tragic tale mingle with wonderfully descriptive verse illumi-nating villagers’ lives, hopes, and fears. The fourth narrative, M.E. Vasilieva’s “Notes of A Serf Woman,” brings out the sheer casual cruelty that millions suffered at the hands of uncaring owners.

The powerful and moving Narratives is a significant book and points one to American and Caribbean slave narratives. No parallel in translated Russian work comes to mind, though O. S. Tian-Shanskaia’s Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia (published in 1993) provides useful insights.

Ethnic Flavors

The Pistachio Seller
Reem Bassiouney
Osman Nusairi, translator
Syracuse University Press
Hardcover $29.95 (198pp)
978-0-8156-0919-3

Reem Bassiouney, a professor of Arabic at Georgetown University, has published five novels in the Middle East, and if we are to judge by the exuberant, picaresque, and poignant Pistachio Seller, the other four well deserve the skillful translation that Osman Nairi has rendered here.

Bassiouney plunges us into the seething world of a middle-class family living in a suburb of Alexandria. Traditional Islamic values are put to the test as modernity invades Egyptian life. A would-be dictatorial father is frustrated, mother (projecting conservative sta-bility) is driven into an affair, son Kareem is attracted to the worldly West, sister Sally to instant romance…But it’s virtuous Wafaa, hopelessly in love with her visiting British-born cousin Ashraf, who drives the pulsating story. As narrator, she provides a wry, insight-ful commentary on Ashraf’s ultimately doomed romance with the firebrand pro-communist journalist Dubna.

With Ashraf returned to Britain and to failed fortune-making ventures, Wafaa painfully re-creates herself as an aware, inde-pendent woman, freer than newly widowed Sally, burdened with an unloved son, and stronger than the now fugitive Ashraf, victim of his dreams.

Bassiouney’s gift is in the illuminating detail, in depicting how Egyptians see their culture and the limitations it imposes—inevitably yielding to the thrust of westernization. Given Wafaa’s inner strength, faith and hope bring her romantic dream to fulfillment. A husband dealing in pistachios (a luxury) proves to be a better bet than a banker…

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Is It Good for the Jews? More Stories from the Old Country and the New by Adam Biro (University of Chicago Press, 978-0-226-05217-5). Deftly translated by Catherine Tihanyi, this successor to Two Jews on a Train sparkles with the happy anguish of Jewish humor, with the wit of threateningly cultured protagonists, and with the “special case” treatment that life’s tangles invariably receive in this milieu between old and new worlds.