ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 120 / C&RL News ■ February 2003 N e w P u b l i c a t i o n s George M. Eberhart The Complete Road Atlas o f Canada, by Reader’s Digest o f Canada (463 pages, February 2003), provides a much-needed, detailed guide to Canadian roads, cities, parks, physical features, and points o f interest. Each o f the 127 maps offers a gatefold section that describes selected destinations in the area. Most roads are clearly identified dow n to the narrowest local routes. A ll o f N unavut and much o f the northern portions o f Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec are excluded on the basis that there are few roads; however, a town map o f Iqaluit on Baffin Island is provided, along with maps o f 42 other Canadian cities from Vancouver to St. John’s. A 64-page “traveler’s com­ panion” lists festivals, tourist information, parks, radio stations, and weather charts, and a shorter section offers advice on driving problems and emer­ gencies. The 80-page index o f place names was supposed to list all mapped populated places, but a computer error left out many towns in British Columbia, Alberta, and the Northwest Territo­ ries; one hopes this will be corrected in a future edition. Nonetheless, this remains the best one- volume Canadian atlas available. $44.95. Reader’s Digest Association (Canada), 1100 René-Lévesque Blvd. West, Montreal, Quebec H3B 5H5. ISBN 0-88850-747-X. Cubans in the Confederacy, edited by Phillip Thomas Tucker (254 pages, September 2002), high­ lights the careers o f three Cuban nationals who served the Confederate States o f America: José Agustín Quintero (1829-1885), a poet and trans­ lator of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who served the Confederacy well in Mexico as a diplomat; Ambrosio josé Gonzalez (1818-1893), who served as a colonel of artillery under Beauregard and other Confederate generals; and Loreta Janeta Velazquez (1842- ?), who fought four battles dressed as a G eorge M . E be rhart is senior ed ito r o f American Libraries; e-mail: geberhart@ala.org man, then turned to spying and posed as a Lieut. Buford to serve as a double agent in Col. LaFayette Baker’s Federal detective corps. $39.95. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0976-2. The Dinosaur Filmography, by Mark F. Berry (483 pages, December 2002), contains a massive amount o f information on every movie that fea­ tures prehistoric, reptilian, nonhumanoid crea­ tures. Berry, w ho is knowledgeable both about dinosaurs and film history, ventures far beyond the basics, providing detailed notes on production and special effects, as well as much insightful and humorous commentary on the accuracy and be lievability of the dinos depicted. Both well-known films (JurassicPa rk, King Kong) and obscurities ( Voy­ age to the Planet of Prehistoric Women) are included. Appendices list films with isolated dinosaur scenes, movies that were never completed, and the Japa­ nese quasi-dinosaur films from Toho Studios. $65.00. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1028-0. Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife o f an American Outlaw, by Mark Svenvold (312 pages, October 2002), tells the bizarre story o f onetime bank robber Elmer McCurdy w ho died in a shoot-out in 1911, but whose cadaver was preserved in arsenic and sent on a 65-year career as a mummified curiosity in a funeral home, several carnivals and theater lob­ bies, and a Long Beach amusement park. In this offbeat, postmortem biography, Svenvold explores the seamy side o f American entertainment history and the realities o f the Old West that drove men like McCurdy, w ho served for three years in the infantry at Fort Leavenworth, to a life o f indi­ gence and crime. $25.00. Basic Books. ISBN 0- 465-08348-X. Red, White, and Blue Letter Days, by Mat­ thew Dennis (338 pages, May 2002), traces the origins and malleable meanings o f the major holi­ days that commemorate the American past— the Fourth o f July, Thanksgiving, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, Labor Day, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday. Unlike other holiday histories, this one closely addresses the racial, sexual, regional, and sectional differences mailto:geberhart@ala.org C&RL News ■ F ebruary 2003 / 121 in perspective that marked and sometimes marred public celebrations. American public holidays meant much more to citizens in previ­ ous centuries who had no multimedia barrages o f entertainment and commercials to distract them. It’s fascinating to read Dennis’s account o f the controversy surrounding the early cel­ ebration o f Washington’s Birthday, which was regarded by some as an antirepublican cult o f personality. $35.00. Cornell University. ISBN 0-8014-3647-8. Reference Reviews Europe Annual 2001 (309 pages, volume 7, May 2002) provides En­ glish-language reviews o f European-language reference books on a w ide number o f topics. Based in part on reviews o f German publica­ tions that ap p ea r in Klaus S ch reib er’s Informationsmittel, the series also features re­ views (written by North American librarians) o f imprints from the rest o f Europe and spe­ cial thematic reports, in this volum e travel guides to Germany and Italy. An essential re­ source for Western European studies collec­ tions. $40.00. Casalini Libri, Via Benedetto da M aiano 3, 50014 Fiesole, Italy. ISBN 88- 85297-69-2. The Ritual Abuse Controversy: An An­ notated Bibliography, by Mary de Young (248 pages, August 2002), reviews published sources on cases allegedly involving the ritual­ ized sadistic abuse o f children by satanists, pedophile rings, pornographers, government agents, Freemasons, and occultists. Virtually unknown in clinical literature prior to the ap­ pearance o f Michelle Smith’s memoir Michelle Remembers in 1980, accounts and court cases crescendoed betw een 1983 and 1992 w hen more than 100 day-care centers and preschools in the United States were investigated for ritual abuse. De Young organizes the literature into definitions; U.S. day-care ritual abuse cases; U.S. family and neighborhood cases; Canadian, European, and Australasian cases; alleged symp­ toms o f ritual abuse; controversies over re­ covered memory and multiple personality; the impact on the helping professions and Ameri­ can law; reports and narratives; and social-sci­ ence perspectives. $49-95. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1259-3. The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience, edited by Michael Shermer (903 pages, 2 vols., N ovem b er 2002), review s a w id e range o f anomalous scientific claims, from acupuncture to witchcraft. Many o f the entries are case studies or investigations formerly published in Skeptic magazine, and all are signed by the vol­ umes’ numerous contributors. The scope makes in-depth treatment o f any one topic impractical, but the primary value o f this set is to question the methodology and assumptions o f many paranor­ mal or alternative theorists. Volume two contains for-and-against debates on evolutionary psychol­ ogy, memetics, correlations o f race and I.Q., cor­ relations o f race and sports, and deconstructivism in science that offer some different perspectives. $185.00. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1-57607-653-9. Television Talk: A History o f the TV Talk Show, by Bernard M. Timberg (364 pages, De­ cember 2002), looks at the first 50 years o f talk shows, beginning with the early days o f Edward R. Murrow and Arthur Godfrey, continuing through the classic Johnny Carson Tonight show and its reinvention by David Letteman, and end­ ing with the current mix o f trash talk (Jerry Springer), nice talk (Rosie O ’Donnell), and blended talk (Bill Maher and Garry Shandling). Timberg brings a certain amount o f respectability to this host-centered, topical, and spontaneous yet struc­ tured genre, which has been ignored by scholars in favor o f television news and drama. Robert Erler’s 100-page “Guide to Television Talk” complements the history with an A to Z listing o f programs and personalities. $70.00. University o f Texas. ISBN 0-292-78175-X. VO: Tales and Techniques o f a Voice-Over Actor, by Harlan Hogan (249 pages, October 2002), is an amusing and practical guide to be­ coming a successful voice-over talent. Techno­ jargon is defined so that the aspiring VO actor will know what “stealomatic,” “patch in,” and “dough­ nuts” mean. Hogan, who made memorable such advertising slogans as “When you care enough to send the very best” and “Kills bugs fast, kills bugs dead,” enriches his tips with numerous personal anecdotes gleaned from his more than 25 years in the business, casually mentioning that his dogs and cats are mortified when his voice comes on the radio or TV. In fact, the book can easily be read as a personal memoir, since Hogan’s tales are separated from his “techniques” sections, which appear on screened pages. $19-95. Allworth Press, 10 E. 23rd Street, N ew York, N Y 10010. ISBN 1-58115-249-3. ■