I initially decided to read this book because I had heard mention of its historical importance in the field of young adult work. Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to find that Margaret Edwards was a dynamic, funny writer whose issues in the sixties regarding the state of young adult services has numerous parallels in today's world of teen services! While the text is certainly dated in terms of language and the books discussed, the refreshing attitude of Edwards can still be seen in many public libraries all over the country. This is a great read, intrinsically and historically, and I think many librarians will say, "How little has changed!" Let's hope we all work to further the work that Edwards began.

Jackson Pollock is seen as the greatest American artist ever, because of his poured paintings of the late 40's and early 50's. Dying in a drunken car crash in 1956, he left behind a legacy of American artists who weren't driven by European art tastes. The Abstract Expressionist movement, large canvases, and Pop Art are all traced back to Pollock.

Also includes chapters about Rauschenberg, Johns, de Koonig, and Warhol, among others

A young man discovers a fretful infant on his back porch, calls the hospital in a panic and hooks up with a responsible young nurse who runs a basic how-to course for expectant fathers. This seems to be the first "Daddy School" novel. Its light and frothy prose makes it well worth reading.

Dale Carter's excellent "The Final Frontier" traces the history of the US space and aeronautics program from the end of the Second World War onwards, using Thomas Pynchon's magnificent novel "Gravity's Rainbow" as a jumping-off point.

One of the reasons that "Gravity's Rainbow" is such an extraordinary book is Pynchon's remarkable insight into the links between what was to become during the 50s and 60s the US military-industrial complex (exemplified in the book by characters such as Clayton "Bloody" Chiclitz) and the Nazi rocket programme. Pynchon's historical imagination is more vivid and sensitive than any other living American novelist, and GR is the book in which all his gifts spectacularly coalesce. Carter takes the ball and runs with it, showing with admirable concision and clarity how US fears of global subordination during the post-war period expressed themselves in both popular culture (the sudden explosion in UFO sightings post-1947, the amazing growth of science fiction, the baby boom and industrial slump) and in government policy. He carries the rise of what he calls the Rocket State up until the Challenger disaster of 1986. At the time, the loss of the Challenger (and its token Ordinary-Person-as-Crewmember, the schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe) provoked a resurgence in public support for the space program. But in the 14 years since then (and in the 12 since this book was published), it's become fairly clear that the space program has perhaps permanently lost its old appeal for the mass of the American public. Economic recession and domestic problems can no longer be brushed aside with the promise of a new life in space (even Homer Simpson at his lowest ebb dreamt of living under the sea, rather than on Mars.)

The rocket may or may not be permanently tarnished, but Carter's book is an excellent exposition of the factors that helped to reinforce and preserve its appeal. It's also one of the very few essential books about Pynchon's novel, which tends to attract the attention of slow-witted deconstructionists rather than clued-up materialist historians.

The only tiny quibble I have is that Carter is apparently blind to one of the most pervasive features of GR - its relentless sense of humour. While it's true that Pynchon analyses with great acuity the forces in industry and government that converged on the rocket program, he does so with such irrepressible mischief that the reader is left in severe doubt of what to think. But that's a subject for another book.

The US space program has stalled since the late 80s, plagued by cost-cutting and media neglect. It's hard to see how Carter's book could be usefully revised when so little of major significance has happened in the meantime, unless he were to turn his attention to the new paranoia of alien abduction syndrome and its putative links to advanced aviation technology (and if anyone could do it, it's him - if he hasn't done it already). But it's of great interest both to Pynchon fans and those interested in linking up the forces at work in post-war US history. (Which, the US being as powerful as it is, includes most of the rest of the world.)

Although I have recently switched to another textbook for my Media Law class, I greatly enjoyed using as a class text Carter's First Amendment and the Fourth Estate. The text lent itself to excellent discussions in class and readily provided excellent case studies and reading material for the students. (Currently I use two texts for such diversity). My only concern is that, at an undergraduate level, the book is unclear on direction for the student not versed in legal and analytical thinking, and like all comphrehensive and advanced texts, a bit too overwhelming academically for freshmen and sophomores. I would highly recommend the text, however, for graduate studies in media law.

"The First Battles: A Sourcebook of the Civil War" presents a rich assortment of historical prints, broadsides, photographs, journals, maps, and other works, all drawn from the Library of Congress. The book covers the Civil War through the end of 1862 and begins with a timeline of major events, divided into April-August 1861, September 1861-April 1862, and May-December 1862. Each two-page spread consists of one column of informative text and then one to three illustrations, each with a detailed caption. Among "The First Battles" covered are Fort Sumter, both Bull Runs, Shiloh, New Orleans, the Seven Days, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Young readers will also learn something about other aspects of the war, but the emphasis here is clearly on the illustrations. Consequently, this book is not intended as an introduction to the Civil War, but rather as a companion volume that goes beyond what students and their teachers will find in their American History textbook. However, it sure would be nice if these were available on CD-Rom or something that would make them easier to show to an entire class instead of passing the book around.

Other Sourcebooks on the Civil War look at "Prelude to War," "1863: The Crucial Year," "The Road to Appomattox," "Behind the Lines," and "One Nation Again." There are also other Sourcebooks devoted to Colonial America and the American West. The goal of all of these series is to make available for students many of the original visual documents preserved in the Library of Congress as records of the American past. I love looking at stuff like this and even though I have read far more than my share of books about the Civil War, I have to say that most of what I saw in "The First Battles" were new to me.

A comprehensive book deals with the mathematical tools needed in studtying advanced economics. But I suggested that it should include a review of basic calculus and linear algebra.

This is an unusual history, in which Lorena Walsh seeks to investigate the lives of slaves within one related set of Virginia's Burwell family plantations, rather than focusing upon slavery on a larger regional scale. Her subject is Carter's Grove, Virginia, where Walsh is employed as a resident historian, and where historical reenactments suffered from a lack of information on the slaves who worked the plantation in the 18th century. She is therefore motivated primarily to provide a detailed account of the Carter's Grove slaves themselves, though she hopes that her study will help to substantiate more general histories of slavery in Virginia.

Walsh begins by tracing the origins of the Carter's Grove slaves, noting that perhaps half came to the plantation from other Virgina slaveholders, while the others arrived directly from Africa. She believes that the diverse backgrounds of the slaves must have resulted in cultural conflict among them at first, but that they eventually assimilated while maintaining some African traditions. By the 1750s, the majority of the plantation's slaves were creolized, resulting in a more stable population where close kin networks led to decreased resistance and more tolerable lives for the slaves. The slaves' material and working conditions also improved over time, as the Burwell family reduced their reliance on tobacco and turned to producing less labor intensive crops like wheat and dairy products for local markets. The emphasis on local trade also allowed slaves to visit among neighboring plantations and strengthen kin networks. Unfortunately, the 1770s saw the Burwell family fortunes decline, and the community at Carter's Grove was broken apart, with some slaves moving to western plantations while others were eventually scattered throughout the state. While nuclear family units were usually kept together, the extended family continued on in importance in the slaves' lives only through oral tradition.

Walsh's inquiry is both unique and problematic due to the limitations of her sources. While she hopes that the primary evidence she finds at Carter's Grove (archaeological evidence, planters' records, and 19th century slave memoirs) will help to bolster the conclusions made in more generalized histories of slave life in Virginia, it is difficult at times to determine whether her conclusions are drawn entirely form her primary sources, or whether she is simply using secondary literature to guide her in understanding the evidence from Carter's Grove. Moreover, at times her conclusions, while creative, are based on little evidence at all, such as when she assumes cultural conflict between creole and African slaves. Such hypotheses are sensible, but there is little actual evidence to support them. Nonetheless, this is an important study for anyone seriously interested in the history of slave life and culture in 18th century Virgina, and a model for future inquiries in the field.

I have used this book in my work with chemically dependent women. Every woman to whom I've assigned the book has strongly identified with the various personality types and styles of anger. Every one has told me the book has been helpful to them. I used to have 3 copies of this book so several women could be working in it at the same time; 2 women moved away and took the book with them!