nov07c.indd George M. Eberhart N e w P u b l i c a t i o n s The Academic Library and the Net Gen Stu­ dent, by Susan Gibbons (119 pages, August 2007), asserts that university libraries will have a viable future only if they realign their services and resources with the learning and research needs of undergraduate students. Because Net Generation students are adept at using new technologies, libraries must adopt and exploit the educational functions of online gaming and virtual worlds, deliver information through blogs and wikis, support student research skills through tagging and social bookmarking, and explore ways to communicate with students through instant messaging and social networking systems. $45.00. ALA Editions. 978­0­8389­0946­1. Atlantic Coast Beaches: A Guide to Ripples, Dunes, and Other Natural Features of the Seashore, by William J. Neal, Orrin H. Pilkey, and Joseph T. Kelley (250 pages, May 2007), is the perfect book to bring with you on a trip to the seashore. The three geologist authors provide a clear expla­ nation for anything you are likely to fi nd and teach you how to “read” a beach by re­ viewing such phenom­ ena as tides, erosion, sand and gravel, mud balls, scarps and cusps, sea wrack, foam, swash marks, blisters and pits, bubbly sand, groundwater, beach crit­ ters, shell fossils, and dunes. A fi nal chapter discusses beach nourishment and conserva­ tion as an antidote to urbanized shorelines. $20.00. Mountain Press. 978­0­87843­534­1. The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy, by Bob Carlin (193 pag­ es, February 2007), recounts the life and in­ George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, e-mail: geberhart@ala.org fluence of Joel Walker Sweeney (1810–1860), the Elvis Presley of the 1840s as Carlin calls him, an Irish American who brought the Afri­ can­American banjo and slave songs to white audiences through the medium of blackface minstrelsy—the first national form of Ameri­ can musical theater. Sweeney is sometimes credited with inventing the modern banjo by adding a fifth string and replacing the original gourd body with a circular wooden soundbox, but Carlin disputes the tradition by showing that those features were pres­ ent when Sweeney began popularizing the instrument. Carlin’s excellent history of min­ strelsy from its origins to its heyday with the Virginia Minstrels and the Ethiopian Serenad­ ers is both entertaining and authoritative. $35.00. McFarland. 978­0­7864­2874­8. A Brief History of the Spanish Language, by David A. Pharies (298 pages, May 2007), of­ fers a linguistic history of Spanish, from its Iberian roots to its expansion to the Ameri­ cas. Pharies traces the primary shifts through which spoken Latin transformed fi rst into Medieval Castilian and finally into modern Spanish, noting along the way that Castilian became the dominant dialect on the penin­ sula during the Reconquest because of the Kingdom of Castile’s dominance in military exploits against the Andalusian Muslims. Ac­ companied by an essay on Spanish dialects, a history of the Spanish lexicon, and a glossary of linguistic terms. Also available in Spanish. $65.00. University of Chicago. 978­0­226­ 66682­2. The Cat and the Fiddle: Images of Musical Humour from the Middle Ages to Modern Times, by Jeremy Barlow (88 pages, May 2007), presents instances of humorous musi­ cal imagery found in the marginalia of medi­ eval manuscripts, British and European draw­ ings and prints of the 17th and 18th centuries, children’s books, cartoons, and sheet music, all from the Bodleian Library at the Univer­ C&RL News November 2007 658 mailto:geberhart@ala.org sity of Oxford. Barlow interprets the meaning for modern readers, who may be puzzled by pigs playing bagpipes, demons ringing bells, and London street musicians playing Spike Jones–like instruments. $20.00. Bodleian Li­ brary, distributed by the University of Chi­ cago. 978­1­85124­300­6. Parallel Lines: A Journey from Childhood to Belsen, by Peter Lantos (246 pages, Sep­ tember 2007), traces the author’s life as a 6­ year­old in Makó, Hungary, when he and his family were deported in June 1944, first to a Jewish ghetto in Szeged, then to labor camps in Strasshof and Wiener Neustadt, Austria, and finally to the Bergen­Belsen concentra­ tion camp in Germany. Lantos, whose origi­ nal name was Leipniker, recalls those days with a mixed sense of child­like adventure and retrospective horror. As an adult, after re­ tiring from a faculty position at King’s College London, Lantos sought out the scenes of his youth and a moving reunion with the Ameri­ can soldier who liberated him from a German prison train near Magdeburg in April 1945. $19.95. Arcadia Books. 978­1­905147­57­0. Silver and Gold Mining Camps of the Old West, by Sandy Nestor (269 pages, January 2007), rescues some elusive facts and fi gures about Western mines and mining camps from the tailings of industrial history. Arranged by state, Nestor’s encyclopedia documents the remaining history of each location, includ­ ing yields, population, residents, and colorful anecdotes. Numerous historical and modern photographs, a glossary, and a tongue­in­ cheek “Miner’s Ten Commandments” reprint­ ed from the Placerville (Calif.) Herald, June 4, 1853, accompany the text. $55.00. McFar­ land. 978­0­7864­2813­7. Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, by Anne Goldgar (425 pages, May 2007), examines the extraor­ dinary outbreak of market speculation in tu­ lip bulbs in the Netherlands in 1636–1637. Although tulips had first been imported from Turkey since the mid­16th century, the fl ow­ ers began to appeal to gardeners and collec­ tors for their color variants. Prices for some bulbs rose to enormous heights in the 1630s, reaching an unsustain­ able crescendo of fu­ tures trading that bot­ tomed out a year later. Tulipmania has been held up as a caution­ ary tale about stock bubbles and the hu­ bris of unbridled capi­ talism, especially by Charles Mackay in his 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Goldgar’s analy­ sis shows that much of what we know about the episode is myth; in the process of decon­ structing it, she offers us a vivid portrayal of a colorful cultural crisis that transformed Dutch society. $30.00. University of Chicago. 978­0­ 226­30125­9. The Voodoo That They Did So Well: The Wiz­ ards Who Invented the New York Stage, by Stefan Kanfer (230 pages, June 2007), con­ sists of eight essays that first appeared in City Journal describing the high points and personalities of Broadway history. Kanfer profiles the Italian li­ brettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838), a colleague of Mozart and Casanova who emigrated to New York and built the city’s fi rst Italian opera house; the wonders of vaude­ villean variety enter­ tainment where such legendary entertainers as the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Buster Keaton, and Burns and Al­ len earned their fame; the heyday of Yiddish theater on Second Avenue in the fi rst three decades of the 20th century; and the stellar achievements of George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Stephen Sondheim, all vividly portrayed. $24.95. Ivan R. Dee. 978­1­56663­735­0. November 2007 659 C&RL News