ISSUE: Spring 1997
Transaction has come out with a 30th anniversary edition of a book hailed upon its publication in 1966 as “fascinating” by a Saturday Reviewcritic and “masterly” by a New York Times Book Review observer. The book is Stephen Hess’s America’s Political Dynasties in which Hess examines how Americans have turned for leadership to certain families during the course of our history, people who qualify in Steward Alsop’s phrase as “people’s dukes,” the dukes being the Kennedys, Longs, Tafts, and Roosevelts [$24.95 paper]. Transaction has also reissued Alain Touraine’s The Academic System in American Society with a new introduction by former California president Clark Kerr. In The Academic System, Touraine argues that higher degrees have become less and less valuable on the labor market and that the demand for academic reform has become more intense. He also compares U.S.student movements with those of other countries [$22.95 paper]. The American academic system is also the subject of a third recent Transaction reprint; this is Robert A. Nisbet’s The Degradation of the Academic Dogma, with a new introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb, in which Nisbet accuses universities of having betrayed themselves by abandoning the ideal of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake [$21.95 paper]. Louisiana is offering a paper edition of William C.Davis’s A Way Through the Wilderness; The Natchez Trace and the Civilization of the Southern Frontier in which Davis recounts the southward journey made by pioneers from the end of the Revolutionary War through the 1830’s along the most traveled course through a vast wilderness, a path teeming with adversity and hazards running from Nashville to Natchez [$16.95]. A standard source for more than three generations of Civil War scholars, Albert Burton Moore’s Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy remains the authoritative study of the Confederate draft. South Carolina has a new edition of Conscription and Conflict with a new introduction by William Garrett Piston [$18.95 paper]. A recent addition to Random House’s Modern Library series is Hunter S.Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stones which was first published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971.Fear and Loathing is Thompson’s savagely comic account of what happened to this country in the 1960’s as told through the writer’s account of an assignment he undertook with his attorney to visit Las Vegas and “check it out” [$15.50 cloth]. Wisconsin has published a revised edition of Ivan L.Preston’s The Great American Blowup: Puffery in Advertising and Setting [$50 cloth, $17.95 paper]. Now available in paper from Yale, is Lea Brilmayer’s American Hegemony: Political Morality in a One-Superpower World [$35 cloth, $17 paper]. A recent Perigee book is Daniel B.Botkin’s Our Natural History: The Lessons of Lewis and Clarkwhich Sierra Magazine deemed “provocative and interesting reading” [$14 paper]. Bison Books has reprinted Paul Raeburn’s The Last Harvest: The Genetic Gamble That Threatens to Destroy American Agriculture by the science editor of the Associated Press [$12 paper]. Also available as a Bison Book is Stanley Vestal’s The Missouri with an introduction by Dayton Duncan [$15 paper].
First published by California in 1995, Robert D.Richardson Jr.’s Emerson: The Mind on Fire was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award that year and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 1995.Writing in the Washington Post Book World, critic Michael Dirda called this biography of Emerson “one of those exciting books that flash bolts of lightning across an entire intellectual era and up and down modern history.” California has now published a paper edition of Richardson’s Emerson [$16.95]. California also has a paper edition of Letters of Wallace Stevens, edited by his daughter Holly Stevens with a new foreword by the poet Richard Howard [$24.95 paper]. Frederick R.Karl’s George Eliot: Voice of a Century, a biography of one of the most famous Victorian writers, was acclaimed in the New York Times Book Reviewas “a biography as civilized as it is sensible and well informed.” Norton recently issued a paper edition of George Eliot [$18]. An earlier 19th-century British woman writer is the subject of Park Honan’s book Jane Austen: Her Life which Newsweek hailed as “the best biography Jane Austen has ever received.” St. Martin’s is out with a paper edition of this biography [$15.95], Yale has reissued Melissa Knox’s Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide, the first full length psychoanalytic biography of the English writer and playwright [$30 cloth, $14 paper]. Another recent Yale paperback is Denis Mack Smith’s Mazzini, namely Giuseppe Mazzini, a pre-eminent figure in the struggle for Italian independence in the mid-19th century [$35 cloth, $16 paper]. Addison-Wesley is out with a paper edition of Tim Severin’s The China Voyage: Across the Pacific by Bamboo Raft, the story of how Severin and his crew made maritime history by sailing across the Pacific on such a raft [$12]. South Carolina is offering a paper edition of George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly: The Letters of Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, 1794-1851 edited by Patricia Brady. Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis was Martha Washington’s granddaughter by her first marriage and George Washington’s adopted daughter. She corresponded for most of her life with her childhood friend, Elizabeth Bordley Gibson [$14.95 paper]. Massachusetts has reprinted Peter Grose’s Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles, Dulles being the first director of the Central Intelligence Agency which he headed for more than eight years (1953-61) [$19.95 paper]. Transaction Books is out with a revised, expanded edition of Rebel With a Cause: The Autobiography of Hans Eysenck, one of the world’s leading and most controversial psychologists [$21.95 paper]. Bison Books has republished Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times: Some Personal Recollections of War and Politics During the Lincoln Administration by A.K. McClure, a Republican power broker and later editor of the Philadelphia Times [$19.95 paper]. Also available as a Bison Book is Sylvanus Cadwallader’s Three Years with Grant, Cadwallader having been a war correspondent for the Chicago Times and later for the New York Heraldwho was assigned to General Grant’s headquarters from 1862-65 [$15 paper]. Louisiana has reprinted John R.Alden’s George Washington: A Biography, a work which Library Journal considered “The best single-volume biography of Washington ever written” [$14.95 paper]. Other recent Louisiana paperbacks include Thomas E. Schott’s Alexander H.Stephens of Georgia, a biography of the vice president of the Confederacy [$19.95]; George Gary Eggleston’s A Rebel’s Recollections with a new introduction by Gaines M.Foster [$10.95]; and Christopher Phillips’s Damned Yankee: The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon, the first Union general to die in the Civil War [$12.95].
Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets has new editions of Poems, by John Milton and by Rainer Maria Rilke [$12.50 each cloth]. In its Voices of the South series, Louisiana is offering a new edition of Robert Penn Warren’s Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices involving the 1811 murder of a young slave by Thomas Jefferson’s nephew [$9.95 paper]. Bison books is offering a new edition of Poems of Ambrose Bierce, edited by M.E.Grenander [$12]. Georgia has a second edition of John Elder’s Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature[$19.95 paper]. Massachusetts has reprinted After Frost: An Anthology of Poetry From New England, edited with an introduction by Henry Lyman including (in addition to Frost) Wallace Stevens, Archibald MacLeish, Stanley Kunitz, Elizabeth Bishop, and Richard Wilbur [$14.95 paper]. California has republished The Selected Poetry of Dan Pagis, translated from the Hebrew by Stephen Mitchell, Pagis having been one of the most vibrant voices in modern Isralie poetry before his death in 1986 [$14.95 paper]. Harvard has a paper edition of Helen Vendler’s Soul Says: On Recent Poetry, a series of essays on recent American, British and Irish poetry by the distinguished Harvard critic [$14 paper]. Penguin is offering the Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited and translated by T.Carmi, the first collection of its kind in English or in Hebrew in which the poems are presented in the original Hebrew and in English translation [$16.95]. Penguin also has published The Penguin Book of Nonsense Verse, selected and illustrated by Quentin Blake [$12.95], In the Penguin Classic series is Martial in English, almost 1600 epigrams written in styles ranging from the lyrical to the pornographic by Martial, a Roman poet who painted a definitive picture of everyday life, society and sexuality in ancient Rome [$14.95], Penguin also has a new edition of Malcolm Budd’s Value of Art: Pictures, Poetry and Music, a series of essays in which philosopher Budd ranges across the arts [$12.95].
The Crusades which affected Western society for half a milennium were a potent mix of salvation and adventure. In England and the Crusades, 1095-1588, historian Christopher Tyerman offers the first book-length study of the role of England in the Crusades focusing on the court room and council chamber rather than the battlefield. Chicago recently published a paper edition of England and the Crusades [$18.95]. On Easter Sunday 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family’s house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested 18 Jewish men and one Jewish woman on the charge of ritual murder, the killing of a Christian child to use his blood and thereby, launching one of the most notorious chapters in the history of anti-Semitism. It is recounted by R.Po-Chia Hsia in Trent, 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial, a paper edition of which was recently published by Yale [$30 cloth, $13 paper]. Louisiana has republished George Worthington Adams’s Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War, a work originally published more than 40 years ago and now available for the first time in paperback. It remains the definitive work on the medical history of the Union Army [$12.95]. Johns Hopkins recently came out with new editions of two studies of Roman civilization, both by J.M.C.Toynbee. The first is Death and Burial in the Roman World, the most comprehensive book on Roman burial practices [$16.95 paper] and the second is Animals in Roman Life and Art, a study of the Roman obsession with animals [$16.95 paper].
Riverhead Books has republished Brooks Hansen’s The Chess Garden, a novel about the spiritual life of a 19th-century Dutch physician which was named a New York Times Notable Book [$14 paper]. Georgia has issued its 10th and final reprint of the best works of Erskine Caldwell from a list of more than 60 books by the author, the final selection being The Stories of Erskine Caldwell, a collection of 96 stories first published in 1953 [$24.95 paper]. As’part of its Mary Lee Settle collection, South Carolina, which is publishing the collected novels of West Virginia author Mary Lee Settle, has come out with a new edition of Settle’s novel Charley Bland with a new introduction by the author [$12.95 paper]. Alabama has reprinted the first novel of William Bradford Huie, one of that state’s prominent and most controversial writers. The novel is Mud on the Stars and is set in the years 1929—42 [$22.95 paper]. As part of its Paperback Fiction series, Scribner has reissued Paula K.Gover’s White Boys and River Girls, a collection of stories, the title story of which first appeared in VQR [$11]. Bison Books is offering the authorized edition of Frank B.Linderman’s Old Man Coyote, a collection of stories told by the Crow Indians of present-day southeastern Montana [$11.95 paper]. Recent editions to Louisiana’s Voices of the South series include Fred Chappell’s novel It Is Time, Lord, about a North Carolina family [$10.95] and Shirley Ann Grau’s The House on Coliseum Street about a young New Orleans woman and her tragic love life [$11.95].
Addison-Wesley has issued a paper edition of Richard E.Michod’s Eros and Evolution: A Natural Philosophy of Sex [$13]. Among the new Riverhead Books is Neil Asher Silberman’s The Hidden Scrolls: Christianity, Judaism, and the War for the Dead Sea Scrolls [$14 paper]. Chicago has published a second edition of Arthur Fine’s The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism and the Quantum Theory [$45 cloth, $17.95 paper]. Chicago is also offering a third edition of Thomas S.Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [$10.95 paper]. Random House has reprinted Richard Preston’s First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe which has been praised as the “best book about astronomy ever written” [$24 cloth]. New England has published a collection of essays by the literary and cultural critic Samuel R.Delany entitled Longer Views: Extended Essays [$50 cloth, $20 paper].
