dec11b.indd


December 2011  703 C&RL News

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

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

University of British Columbia, and Borsos, a 
Canadian visual artist, write in the introduction 
that the postcards are strange hybrids of tourism 
and terror, of nationalism and pacifism (two of 
the cards have been stamped with “Pray for 
Peace” cancellations), where “the extraordinary 
keeps company with the ordinary, the exces-
sive with the banal.” Information on the titles, 
captions, dates, publishers, and handwritten 
messages for each card are provided in an ap-
pendix. $45.00. Intellect / University of Chicago. 
978-1-84150-431-5.

Back from the Dead: Remakes of the Romero 
Zombie Films as Markers of Their Times, by 
Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. (244 pages, June 2011), 
analyzes the zombie films of George Romero 
and their remakes by other directors in order 
to see how the shifting ecology of the undead 
over time resonates with the audience’s fear 
of war, terrorism, social malaise, and spiritual 
apocalypse. Romero began the current zombie 
craze with his 1968 cult film Night of the Liv-
ing Dead and has kept the pallid, shambling, 
revivified genre going with Dawn of the Dead 
(1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead 
(2005), and others. Wetmore’s close reading of 
these films weds the passion of a fanboy with 
the objectivity of an academic and results in a 
dissection that is both insightful and entertaining. 
$40.00. McFarland. 978-0-7864-4642-1.

McFarland is on a major zombie kick this 
year, with three additional books released in 
four months. Generation Zombie: Essays on 
the Living Dead in Modern Culture, edited by 
Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz (259 pages, 
June 2011), collects some academic perspec-
tives on z-horror, including zombie origins, 
environmental contagion, living-dead crowd 
psychology, and zombies on campus. Two 
books edited by Christopher M. Moreman and 
Cory James Rushton, Race, Oppression, and the 
Zombie (232 pages, July 2011) and Zombies Are 
Us (220 pages, September 2011), focus on cross-
cultural appropriations of the Caribbean zombie 
tradition and zombie sociology respectively.

Answer Them Nothing: Bringing Down the 
Polygamous Empire of Warren Jeffs, by Debra 
Weyermann (386 pages, August 2011), chroni-
cles the story of the Fundamentalist Church of 
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a splin-
ter group of Mormons who practice polygamy 
(“plural marriage”) and are headquartered at the 
YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas. Its leader, Warren 
Jeffs, was convicted in San Angelo, Texas, in 
August 2011 of two counts of sexual assault on a 
minor and is now serving a sentence of life plus 
20 years. During the trial, prosecutors showed 
evidence that Jeffs had 78 plural wives, includ-
ing 12 girls married at age 16 and another 12 
who were 15 or younger. Weyermann presents 
a thorough account of FLDS beliefs, practices, 
and criminal activities, beginning with the 1953 
raid by National Guard troops on its former com-
pound in Short Creek, Arizona. $24.95. Chicago 
Review Press. 978-1-56976-531-9.

Atomic Postcards: Radioactive Messages from 
the Cold War, by John O’Brian and Jeremy Bor-
sos (188 pages, May 2011), features a collection 
of 128 postcards, published between 1945 and 
1989, that depict atomic bomb tests, nuclear mis-
siles, atomic processing plants, nuclear-energy 
museum exhibits, atomic ships and subma-

rines, nuclear 
physicists, and 
nuclear power 
plants. From 
Army photos of 
the devastation 
in Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki 
to a set of real 
p h o t o s  o f  a 
1953 mushroom 

cloud from the Nevada Test Site as an adver-
tisement for a Las Vegas hotel and casino, the 
images speak volumes about the Cold War 
era and its fears. O’Brian, an art historian at the 



C&RL News December 2011  704

litical discourse 
or to counter 
established cul-
tural viewpoints. 
His analysis of 
their collections 
during this time 
period provides 
some intriguing 
details about 
their book se-
lection choices. 
$25.95. Univer-
sity of Iowa. 978-
1-60938-067-0.

Toward a Better Life: America’s New Immi-
grants in Their Own Words, by Peter Morton 
Coan (379 pages, October 2011), brings together 
32 firsthand accounts written by immigrants 
to the United States from 1898 to 2000. Some 
came through Ellis Island before it closed in 
1954, others were refugees, still others crossed 
the border illegally. Coan, who also compiled 
Ellis Island Interviews: In Their Own Words 
(Facts on File, 1997), arranges the accounts by 
decade, interspersed with immigration statistics, 
photos, key events, and famous immigrants of 
the period. Their stories explain why they left 
their homelands, what they endured in com-
ing here, and what became of them and their 
families. $26.00. Prometheus. 978-1-61614-394-7.

Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital 
Divide, by Jessamyn C. West (258 pages, May 
2011), will come in handy for librarians who 
have to explain basic computer procedures 
and safeguards to anyone else, whether 
incoming freshmen, senior faculty, or their 
grandmothers. Although written primarily for 
public librarians, West’s book gives advice 
that is general enough for many situations and 
includes tips on basic instruction techniques, 
browsing and search engines, e-mail hazards, 
software, online databases, and troubleshoot-
ing technical problems, all of it interspersed 
with practical philosophy and engaging 
anecdotes that make for a fun read. $40.00. 
Libraries Unlimited. 978-1-59884-453-5. 

The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Busi-
ness in America, by Marc Levinson (358 pages, 
September 2011), traces the rise of the first 
billion-dollar grocery store from its founding in 
1859 to its decline in the 1960s following unfa-
vorable antitrust verdicts in the late 1940s and 
the deaths of its two debt-averse and innovative 
owners in the 1950s. Brothers George and John 
Hartford had guided the Great Atlantic & Pacific 
from tea company to grocery-store chain and 
finally to a supermarket empire where American 
families in 39 states bought their food. A&Ps 
were the Walmarts of their day, threatening the 
existence of mom-and-pop stores across the 
country with lower prices and a wide range of 
products that included recognizable store brands 
like Eight O’Clock Coffee. Levinson tells the 
story entertainingly and sympathetically. $27.95. 
Hill and Wang. 978-0-8090-9543-8.

Just My Type: A Book about Fonts, by Simon 
Garfield (356 pages, September 2011), is a 
playful series of musings on the uses, mean-
ings, and aesthetics of typefaces. Although fonts 
have been around for 560 years, it’s only been 
in the past two decades since the introduction 
of desktop publishing that they have become 
household words to anyone but graphic de-
signers. Garfield leads us through such byways 
as the stigma of Comic Sans, type designers 
from Caxton to Cavazos, the romance of the 
ampersand, the clarity of Helvetica, the death 
and rebirth of German gothic, the politics of 
Gotham, the lore of hot metal, the typography 
of transportation, and a selection of the worst 
fonts in the world. $27.50. Gotham Books. 978-
1-592-40652-4.

Main Street Public Library: Community Places 
and Reading Spaces in the Rural Heartland, 
1876–1956, by Wayne A. Wiegand (244 pages, 
October 2011), looks closely at four midwestern 
public libraries—in Sauk Centre, Minnesota; 
Osage, Iowa; Lexington, Michigan; and Rhine-
lander, Wisconsin—and the roles they played in 
encouraging reading, providing safe civic spac-
es, and reinforcing local social values. Wiegand 
finds little evidence, however, that these librar-
ies existed to provide information to fuel po-