ISSUE: Spring 1999
First published in the early 1990’s, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society became a national bestseller. A revised and enlarged edition of The Disuniting of America is now available as a Norton paperback [$11.95]. Chicago is offering a paper edition of Caroline A. Jones’ Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist in which Ms. Jones takes a fresh look at the art world in the 1960’s and argues that those artists of that decade identified their work with postwar industry and culture [$27.50]. Princeton has reprinted Wayne D. Moore’s Constitutional Rights and Powers of the People, one of Choice’s Outstanding Academic Books of 1996 [$18.95 paper]. Another Princeton reprint is Charles M. Harr’s Suburbs Under Siege: Race, Space, and Audacious Judges which Senator Edward M. Kennedy deemed “invaluable to everyone concerned about the future of civil rights” [$16.95 paper]. Robert J. Norrell’s Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee won the 1986 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. A new edition with a new concluding chapter by the author has been issued by North Carolina [$16.95 paper]. South Carolina has reprinted James I. Robertson Jr.’s Soldiers Blue and Gray, the story of Johnny Reb and Billy Yank as told by one of the country’s most eminent Civil War historians [$14.95 paper]. Alabama has a paper publication of The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil, a collection of essays probing the experiences of a group of Southerners who emigrated to Brazil because of their dissatisfaction with the outcome of the Civil War, edited by Cyrus B. Dawsey and James M. Dawsey [$19.95]. Louisiana is out with a new edition of Daniel E. Sutherland’s Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community, 1861—1865, that community being Culpeper County, Virginia, nestled between the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers and one of the most strategically significant locations of the Civil War [$19.95 paper]. Louisiana also has a new edition of The South to Posterity: An Introduction to the Writing of Confederate History by noted historian Douglas Southall Freeman with a new introduction by Gary W. Gallagher in which Freeman assembled a bibliography that provides a good introduction to literature on the Lost Cause [$15.95 paper]. The Civil War is also the subject of Thomas Lawrence Connelly’s and Archer Jones’ The Politics of Command: Factions and Ideas in Confederate Strategy, another recent Louisiana reprint [$14.95 paper]. Louisiana is also offering a new edition of Emory M. Thomas’ The Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital with a new introduction by the author [$14.95 paper].
Originally published in 1988, Fred Kaplan’s Dickens: A Biography was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times and one of the best biographies of that year by Publishers Weekly. Kaplan’s account of Dickens’ life is now available as a Johns Hopkins paperback with a new preface by the author [$19.95]. Counterpoint Books has republished in paperback M.F.K. Fisher: A Life in Letters, Correspondence 1929—1991, letters by a prolific writer renowned for her ability to transform thoughts and observations about food into literature. Selected and compiled by Norah K. Barr, Marsha Moran, and Patrick Moran, the new edition has a foreword by by Anne Lamott [$21]. My Brother Bill is John Faulkner’s account of his life with the Nobel Prize winning writer, William Faulkner. A redesigned edition of this memoir with 17 rare photos and a new foreword is now available as a Hill Street Classic paperback [$16.50], Herbert S. Parmet’s Eisenhower and the American Crusades follows the career of General Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1952 when he decided to run for the presidency to his retirement at Gettysburg nearly nine years later. A new paper edition of Parmet’s study of Ike’s presidency is available from Transaction Books [$29.95]. A Belgian psychoanalyst, Lydia Flem, is the author of Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women, an interpretation of the famed lover’s History of My Life. Farrar, Straus & Giroux recently issued a paper edition of The Man Who Really Loved Women [$13], In George Washington Williams, John Hope Franklin reconstructed the life of a controversial self-made black intellectual who wrote the first history of African-Americans in the U.S.A paper edition of Franklin’s biography is now available from Duke [$18.95]. Norton has republished Rainer Maria Rilke’s Diaries of a Young Poet, translated and annotated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler [$15 paper], A recent addition to Penguin’s 20th Century Classics series is Marianne Moore: Selected Letters edited with an introduction by Bonnie Costello [$15.95 paper]. Louisiana has reprinted The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd, 15th Iowa Infantry, 1861—1863, edited by Mildred Throne with a new introduction by Earl J. Hess [$12.95 paper]. Other recent Louisiana paper reprints include Daniel Hoffman’s Poe, Foe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, an explanation by the distinguished American poet of his life long fascination with the work of Poe [$16.95] and Jerry E. Strahan’s Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats That Won World War II of the boat builder who designed the landing craft vehicle, personnel (LCVP) that played such a vital role in the invasion of Normandy as well as the first effective tank landing craft [$18.95]. Yale is out with a paper edition of Jean-Nicolas Perlot’s Gold Seeker: Adventures of a Belgian Argonaut During the Gold Rush Years, a 26-year-old Belgian’s experiences in the gold fields of California [$18 paper]. Yale has also republished Jaroslav Pelikan’s Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture, selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of 1996 [$30 cloth, $14 paper],
Noonday Press has a new edition of Andrew Delbanco’s Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now [$12 paper]. Da Capo Press has reprinted Lilian Feder’s The Handbook of Classical Literature, a reference book aimed at anyone exploring ancient Greek and Roman culture [$17.95 paper], Oxford is offering a paper edition of Jeremy Hawthorn’s A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory, a 3rd edition of a critically acclaimed work [$18.95]. Counterpoint has a paper edition of Gary Paul Nabhan’s Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story, a collection of essays about nature and conservation and culture [$15 paper]. Yale has a new edition of George Steiner’s Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman by this noted critic [$18 paper].
George Chapman’s translations of Homer are the most famous in the English language. This renaissance dramatist and poet was immortalized by Keats in the sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” A new edition of Chapman’s Homer: The Illiad has been published as a paperback by Princeton with a new preface by Carry Wills [$19.95], Penguin 20th Century Classics has a new edition of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Early Poems edited with an introduction and notes by Holly Peppe [$12.95 paper]. A new edition to the Penguin Classics series is Thomas Hardy’s Selected Poems [$8.95 paper].
Harry Brown’s novel A Walk in the Sun about a platoon on a mission in Italy was called “one of the most honest books to come out of the war” by the New York Times. A Walk in the Sun was made into a 1946 movie starring Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, and Lloyd Bridges. A new edition of this WW II classic is available as a Bison Book [$12], A recent Quill paperback is Rumer Godden’s Cromartie: The God Shiva Acting Through the Government of India, a novel about South India’s simmering Coromandel coast [$13], Virginia has republished Cathryn Hankla’s A Blue Moon in Poorwater, a novel set in the summer of 1968 in a small Appalachian mining town, its narrator being an inquisitive 10-year-old [$14.95 paper]. Hamilton Basso’s most popularly acclaimed novel was The View From Pompey’s Head. Originally published in 1954, the novel spent 40 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, was translated into seven languages, and made into a major movie. As part of its Voices of the South series, Louisiana has republished Basso’s novel [$16.95], Other additions to the Voices of the South series include Fred Chapell’s The Inkling, a novel of rural North Carolina [$12. 95]; Richard Bausch’s Take Me Back, a novel taking place in a small trailer court in Virginia [$15.95 paper]; and Marianne Gingher’s Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit set in North Carolina in 1961 [$14.95 paper].
Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind was first published in 1921 and since translated into 18 languages. It begins with the origins of human life and sweeps forward to illuminate all of history. It is described as “the classic history of all ages, for all ages.” A new version updated for the millennium by John Merriman was recently published by Norton [$32.95 cloth]. James H. Billington is not only the Librarian of Congress, he is also a noted Russian scholar and the author of Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, a study of revolutionary ideologies ranging from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution. Transaction Books recently published a new paper edition of Billington’s book [$29.95]. Princeton has a paper edition of Peter Liberman’s Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies [$11.95]. Another recent Princeton paperback is Peter Partner’s God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam ranging from the Crusades to the Gulf War [$16.95 paper]. Yale has republished Edward S. Reed’s From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology, from Erasmus Darwin to William James [$30 cloth, $16 paper]. Another recent Yale reprint is Anthony Pagden’s Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination, an analysis of the lasting influence of the Spanish empire in the history of early modern Europe and of its place in the European and Spanish American political imagination [$35 cloth, $18 paper].
