sept06c.indd


George M. Eberhart N e w  P u b l i c a t i o n s  

Achieving Diversity, edited by Barbara 
I. Dewey and Loretta Parham (245 pages, 
April 2006), offers solid suggestions on cre­
ating a successful diversity plan, recruiting 
and retaining a diverse workforce, and im­
proving diversity through services and col­
lections. The majority of the examples and 
case studies involve such academic libraries 
as the University of Maryland, North Caro­
lina State University, and the University of 
Mississippi. $75.00. Neal­Schuman. ISBN 1­
55570­554­5. 

Another recent Neal­Schuman how­to­do 
it manual is Wireless Networking, by Louise 
E. Alcorn and Maryellen Mott Allen (201 
pages, April 2006), which gives the basics 
of wireless networks in libraries, the equip­
ment required, and techniques for security 
and maintenance. A glossary of terms and 
sample policies and FAQs offer guidance. 
$65.00. Neal­Schuman. ISBN 1­55570­478­6. 

The Bamboo Sword and Other Samu­
rai Tales, by Shuhei Fujisawa (253 pages, 
March 2006), is a translation by Gavin Frew 
of eight short stories by Japanese author 
Fujisawa (1927–97) that portray life in the 
early 17th­century Edo period, when the 
samurai warrior class adjusted to peacetime 
conditions by taking on mundane jobs. The 
title story is about a masterless samurai with 
an impoverished family who presents him­
self to a castle chamberlain with a letter of 
recommendation, only to have his hopes 
dashed. $22.00. Kodansha International. 
ISBN 4­7700­3005­3. 

The Box, by Marc Levinson (376 pages, 
March 2006), explains how the invention of 
the standardized, stackable, steel shipping 
container in 1956 revolutionized the world 

George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, 
e-mail: geberhart@ala.org 

of international trade. Invented by steamship 
company owner and former trucker Mal­
com McLean, the shipping container is basi­
cally a railroad boxcar, minus the wheels, 
that does not need to be opened in transit 
and can easily be transferred from ship to 
truck to train. McLean’s use of the boxes 
to supply U.S. forces in Vietnam cemented 
his success and ultimately made globaliza­
tion possible. As Levinson writes, “The con­
tainer is at the core of a highly automated 
system for moving goods from anywhere, 
to anywhere, with a minimum of cost and 
complication on the way.” $24.95. Princeton 
University Press. ISBN 0­691­12324­1. 

Burning Books and Leveling Libraries, 
by Rebecca Knuth (233 pages, May 2006), 
looks at modern instances of the destruction 
of books and libraries as a “radical repudia­
tion of intellectual freedom, individualism, 
pluralism, and tolerance.” In her 2003 book 
Libricide, Knuth 
focused on au­
thoritarian re­
gimes; here, her 
emphasis is on 
extremist groups, 
such as the po­
litical protesters 
who vandalized 
A m s t e r d a m ’ s  
South African 
Institute in 1984, 
the Sinhalese 
police mob that 
burned down the Jaffna Public Library in Sri 
Lanka in 1981, the Nazi youth group that 
burned the collection of Berlin’s Institute for 
Sexual Science in 1933, the Khmer Rouge’s 
eradication of Cambodian literature from 
1975 to 1979, the Taliban’s destruction of 
Afghan secular and Persian heritage from 
1994 to 2001, and the Bush administration’s 
failure to prevent the looting of Iraqi cultural 

C&RL News September 2006  518 

mailto:geberhart@ala.org


institutions in 2003. $39.95. Praeger. ISBN 0­
275­99007­9. 

Another recent title, Burning Books, by 
Haig Bosmajian (233 pages, April 2006), 
has a much broader sweep, covering book 
suppressions from ancient times through 
the present. Bosmajian places objections 
to books into three categories—blasphe­
mous­heretical, seditious­subversive, and 
obscene­immoral—and traces the history 
of the burnings of each. $39.95. McFarland. 
ISBN 0­7864­2208­4. 

Encyclopedia of the Underground Rail­
road, by J. Blaine Hudson (308 pages, March 
2006), provides an impressive amount of 
detail on the antebellum network that as­
sisted fugitive slaves in gaining their free­
dom to the North or Canada. Running pri­
marily through communities of free blacks, 
the Underground Railroad aided more than 
100,000 African American runaways from 
1810 to 1860. The book’s hundreds of en­
tries identify fugitive slaves, friends of fugi­
tives, historic sites, and events, and its ap­
pendices include a timeline, selected friends 
of the fugitive, National Park Service sites, 
a bibliography of slave autobiographies, 
and selected Underground Railroad songs. 
$55.00. McFarland. ISBN 0­7864­2459­1. 

The Grail Bird: The Rediscovery of the Ivo­
ry­billed Woodpecker, by Tim Gallagher 
(286 pages, paperback ed., April 2006), 
tells the story of the Cornell Laboratory of 
Ornithology’s search for and possible dis­
covery of a surviving colony of Ivory­billed 
woodpeckers (Campephilus principalis) in 
the bayous of eastern Arkansas from 2004 
to 2005. The first­hand narrative of the ex­
pedition is infectiously exciting. This edi­
tion contains a 14­page afterword written 
in early 2006 that acknowledges some of 
the skepticism about the discovery. $14.95. 
Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0­618­70941­X. 

Marsupial lovers will enjoy Tasmanian 
Devil: A Unique and Threatened Animal, 
by David Owen and David Pemberton (225 
pages, July 2006), describing the habitat, bi­

ology, history, and behavior of the wolver­
ine­like Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus har­
risii), threatened with extinction in the wild 
since the 1990s from an epidemic of the can­
cerous Devil Facial Tumor Disease. It also 
tells how the Warner Brothers cartoon char­
acter based on the devil came about. $24.95. 
Allen & Unwin; distributed by Independent 
Publishers Group. ISBN 1­74114­368­3. 

The Imperfect Spy, by Andy J. Byers (256 
pages, November 2005), tells the remarkable 
history of George Trofimoff, a retired Army 
Reserve colonel who had worked in military 
intelligence in Germany from 1969 to 1994 
and was convict­
ed in June 2001 
of spying for the 
Soviets for most 
of those years. 
Byers befriended 
Trofi moff and 
his wife, Jutta, 
in 1996 when he 
moved next door 
to them in a re­
tirement com­
munity in Mel­
bourne, Florida, 
and was taken by surprise when Trofi moff 
was arrested in June 2000. Although Trofi moff 
had been interrogated in Nuremberg in 1994, 
based on evidence provided by the 1992 
defection to Britain of former KGB archi­
vist Vasili Mitrokhin, Germany has a fi ve­
year statute of limitations on espionage 
and the arrest didn’t stick. But the United 
States has no statute of limitations on spy­
ing, so after Trofimoff, for reasons that are 
unclear, made a six­hour confession to an 
undercover FBI agent in Florida, he was 
convicted and sentenced to life in prison at 
age 73. Byers uses trial testimony to show 
how Trofimoff passed on negatives of more 
than 50,000 classified documents to a Rus­
sian spy in Germany—his foster brother, 
Austria’s Russian Orthodox Archbishop Igor 
Susemihl. $24.95. Vandamere Press. ISBN 0­
918339­66­9. 

September 2006  519 C&RL News