ISSUE: Summer 1996
Robert S. McNamara’s In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam became a number one bestseller after it was published in 1995. It also became a source of national controversy, as 20 years after the end of the Vietnam War the former secretary of defense tried to answer lingering questions that surround the greatest military defeat in American history. In Retrospect is now available as a Vintage Book [$15]. Vintage has also reprinted Alan Brinkley’s The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War, a work the Boston Globe deemed “a masterful study of the transformation of the New Deal” [$14]. Norton has republished the late Christoper Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy in which Lasch made his most accessible critique of what is wrong with the values and beliefs of America’s professional and managerial elites [$12.95]. Norton is also offering a paper edition of Hiller B. Zobel’s The Boston Massacre which the William and Mary Quarterly said “combines meticulous research with a taut, readable style . . . The definitive study” [$12.95]. Iowa has available a paperback edition of a book chronicling African-American contributions to baseball. The book is Larry Moffi and Jonathan Kronstadt’s Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947—1959 [$11.95], North Carolina has a new edition of the only book ever published by Thomas Jefferson. The book is Notes on the State of Virginia and the new edition is edited by William Peden [15.95 paper]. Johns Hopkins is out with a paper edition of The Betrayed Profession: Lawyering at the End of the Twentieth Century by Sol M. Linowitz with Martin Mayer [$15.95]. Random House has reprinted Sue Hubbell’s A Country Year: Living the Questions in which the author lends the reader her eyes and ears to explore her peninsula between two rivers in the Ozark Mountains from one springtime to the next [$11 paper]. Yale has reprinted in paper Nicholas Fox Weber’s Patron Saints: Five Rebels Who Opened America to a New Art, 1928—1943 [$17]. Another recent Yale paperback is John Brinckerhoff Jackson’s A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time in which the author takes the reader on a tour of American landscapes past and present [$25 cloth, $12 paper]. Addison-Wesley has republished Marcy Houle’s The Prairie Keepers, an account of the author’s search for three species of hawks in northeastern Oregon [$11]. Georgia has a new edition of Richard H. King’s Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom which Choice described as a “well documented, scholarly analysis of the impact of ideas on activists” [$19.95]. Transaction Books has issued a second expanded edition of Oscar Handlin’s The Distortion of America [$34.95 cloth]. Recent Transaction paperbacks include E. Digby Daltzell’s Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia [$24.95]; Michael Novak’s Unmeltable Ethics: Politics and Culture in American Life [$21.95]; and Richard Hofstadter’s Academic Freedom in the Age of the College [$22.95]. Among the new Ivan R. Dee paperbacks are Edward A. Shils’ The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American Security Policies [$12.95]; John Prados’ revised and updated edition of Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations From World War II Through the Persian Gulf [$17.95]; and Gilbert Osofsky’s Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York 1890-1930 [$14.95]. Television critic Newton N. Minow collaborated with Craig L. Lamay to produce Abandoned in the Wasteland; Children, Television, and the First Amendment, a paper edition of which was recently published by Hill and Wang [$11]. Louisiana has a new edition of Geoge C. Wright’s Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865—1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings” [$14.95 paper]. A recent Wisconsin paperback is Michael Tadman’s Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South [$17.95].
Failure Is Impossible brought together—for the first time—a wide-ranging collection of Susan B. Anthony’s speeches, letters, and quotes linked by contemporary reports and author Lynn Sherr’s biographical commentary. This portrait of the solemn sister of suffrage is now available as a Times paperback [$15]. Pittsburgh has issued a paper edition of Matthew J. Bruccoli’s The O’Hara Concern: A Biography of John O’Hara [$24.95]. Missouri recently published paper editions of two books about that state’s most famous 20th-century citizen, Harry S. Truman. The first is Robert H. Ferrell’s Harry S. Truman: A Life [$19.95] and the second is Ken Hechler’s Working With Truman: A Personal Memoir of the White House Years [$16.95]. Transaction is offering a paper edition of diplomat Robert Strausz-Hupe’s In My Time with a new introduction by the author [$21.95]. Vintage Books has printed a new edition of David S. Reynolds’ Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist [$19]. A recent Nebraska Bison Books paperback is Dorothy M. Johnson’s All the Buffalo Returning, the story of a family of Indians who fled to Canada with Sitting Bull after the Battle of Little Bighorn [$11]. Princeton is offering a paper edition of the first comprehensive biography of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin’s notorious police chief and for many years his most powerful aide. The book is Amy Knight’s Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant which author John Le Carre praised as “A milestone and invaluable achievement” [$14.95]. Norton has reprinted Peter Davison’s The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston From Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath [$14 paper]. Sam Houston’s years with the Cherokees are chronicled in Jack Gregory and Rennard Strickland’s Sam Houston with the Cherokees, 1829-1833, a paper edition of which was recently published by Oklahoma [$14.95]. Toronto has issued a paper edition of David MacGregor’s Hegel, Marx, and the English State [$19.95]. Massachusetts is out with a second edition with a new introduction of Paul Mariani’s Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman [$19.95 paper].
Historian Eugen Weber’s The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s describes how passivism swept the country and paralyzed its leaders during what has been called “the long weekend between the two world wars.” Norton has a paper edition of The Hollow Years [$14.95]. Knopf is offering a second edition, revised and updated, of Howard M. Sachar’s A History of Israel From the Rise of Zionism to our Time which the Times of London called “a magnificent achievement . . .readable and rewarding” [$30 paper]. Yale is out with a revised edition of Leonard Thompson’s A History of South Africa which Archbishop Desmond Tutu has hailed as “accurate and authentic” [$17 paper]. The Smithsonian Institution has reprinted The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States edited by Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter [$19.95 paper]. Chicago has reissued A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in 17th Century England by Steven Shapin [$16.95 paper], A recent Cornell paper reprint is Dena Goodman’s The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment [$15.95], Illinois has a second edition of Stephen Mennell’s AH Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present [$18.95 paper]. St. Martin’s has republished David M. Crowe’s A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia [$14.95]. Addison-Wesley has put out a new edition of Kirkpatrick Sale’s Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution with a new preface by the author [$13 paper].
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise brought him instant fame as a novelist. Originally published in 1920, the novel captures the rhythm and feel of the era that followed World War I in America. This novel is now available in the Cambridge edition of the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by James L.W. West III [$34.95 cloth]. Since his nautical novels about the British Navy of the Napoleonic Wars started appearing at the beginning of this decade, Patrick O’Brian has become a bestselling Norton novelist. Norton recently published a paperback edition of The Commodore in which Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to England, go to the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade, and eventually wind up fighting the French off the coast of Ireland [$11.95 paper].
