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Film buffs & poster collectors, take note. Film historian Ira M. Resnick has just published Starstruck: Vintage Movie Posters from Classic Hollywood, which features the best of Resnick's personal collection of more than 2,000 vintage movie posters and 1,500 stills. It contains 250 posters and forty stills from the golden age of Hollywood -- 1912 to 1962.  The publishers bills it as "A one-of-a-kind art book, Starstruck combines cinematic history, a guide to poster collecting, firsthand account, and dramatic full-color artwork--a blend of genres that is unlike any other movie poster book. Resnick offers entertaining anecdotes about how he managed to acquire such stellar examples of movie poster art, as well as historical information about the stars and films shown on the pieces he collected. Bonus material includes a list of Resnick's fifty favorite one-sheets, advice for the movie poster collector, and a glossary of terms and poster sizes. A must-have book for every collector and film buff, Starstruck offers a beautifully illustrated, personal tour of a bygone age of the motion picture advertising industry."

An exhibit of vintage posters from his collection will be on view at the Furman Gallery at Walter Reade Theater through March 9.

Below, Resnick's book signing at Rizzoli Bookstore in Manhattan, last month.

The news this week that the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris had acquired the manuscript memoirs of the great eighteenth-century Venetian lothario known to one and all as Casanova--Tiger Woods can only dream of walking in this guy's remarkable footsteps--brought to mind a very nice book published a decade ago by Louisiana State University Press, Casanova Was a Book Lover: And Other Naked Truths and Provocative Curiosities about the Writing, Selling, and Reading of Books. This smart collection of bibliophilic essays was written by John Maxwell Hamilton, an occasional commentator on NPR and dean of LSU's School of Mass Communications; you have to love a book that is dedicated to "all reviewers," and includes the explanation that "only ungrateful asses would pan a book after having it dedicated to them."  

Hamilton's title piece took irreverent note of the fact that Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) spent the final years of his eventful life as a librarian in the household of Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein of Bohemia, and it was in that dreary castle that he took pen to paper and wrote Histoire de ma vie, the racy memoirs for which he became famous, and which an anonymous benefactor acquired on behalf of the French National Library (BNF). Though the actual purchase price was not disclosed, the figure was widely reported to be five million euros, about $9 million, which, if correct, would qualify it as the costliest manuscript transaction on record. The papers--comprising 3,700 pages of yellowing sheets--were transfered Monday to the BNF in thirteen boxes, and represent the complete, uncensored account of Casanova's amorous adventures. The material had been owned since 1821 by the Brauckhuas publishing company in Germany, and was once thought to have been destroyed in World War II; it was later found safely stored in a bank vault.

For those truly interested in the role of librarians, especially those coping with so many seismic changes brought on by the twenty-first century, I heartily recommend a new release from HarperCollins, This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, $24.99, by Marilyn Johnson. A staff writer for Life magazine. Johnson says that she first became interested in the subject while doing research for her first book, a well received examination of obituaries wryly titled The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. "With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former solder in Hitler's army who had a sex change and took up professional whistling, the most engaging obit subjects were librarians."

Before long she was fully involved in the world of these wonderful professionals whose sole goal in life, it seems, is to provide knowledge and information to others. Johnson's coinage of the word "cybarian" takes note of the changing nature of the business, and of the many ways the people she proceeded to spend so much time with have adapted to the new technologies. She describes the modern librarian as a person whose job is to "create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future."

The result is a most enthusiastic book that is great fun to read (and one which, I feel bound to disclose, makes generous mention of several books that I have written.) Its greatest contribution, I think, is that it pays tribute to an essential public service that so many government officials blithely feel can be cut at will during budgetary crises, reductions made especially easy for them to impose since these temples of wisdom have no well-heeled lobbyists throwing corporate money around to champion their cause. The epigraph to one of Johnson's chapters says it best: "In tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste."

Ever see the effects of rubber cement on an old book? Scotch tape? Spilled coffee? It's not pretty. For some basic advice on how to handle such problems, try Joyce Godsey's Book Repair for Booksellers (April, 2009). Godsey, a bookseller herself, describes it as "A handy guide for booksellers and book collectors offering practical advice on how to improve the quality and look of your books and ephemera ... Clear, easy to follow directions for repairing books at home or in the shop. Includes torn pages, shaken spines, library pockets, bookplates, stickers, crayon, writing, insects, leather care and much more. 88 pages." It's one for the reference shelf. 

The Times Literary Supplement, published monthly in the UK, comes out in late November with its Books of the Year edition.  I don't subscribe to the publication because I enjoy eating so much and the U.S. subscription price of $189 would mean several meals per year would probably have to be exchanged for some form of protein originally intended for cats.

But a friend of mine was kind enough to share his copy with me. (Thank you, Gary!)

In it, 57 authors of world-renown are asked to write about some of their favorite reading experiences of the preceding year.  Among the 57 writers this year were Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, etc.  Opening this annual issue is akin to a circus car arriving in your mailbox that opens up and, instead of clowns, deposits some of the greatest writers into your living room all in a tumble where they proceed to hold a grand salon.

A consistent theme runs through many of the entries: everyone seems a bit pea-green with envy over Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.  They complain about its intelligence, the hype, about the Man Booker Prize - but everyone eventually manages to get over themselves and it seems to have been cited most often by this august group of 57, who have the good manners to refrain from wishing they'd written it themselves.

Another favorite seems to be The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1940.  (There are three more volumes to come.)

Julian Barnes devotes his two paragraphs to a gracious salute to John Updike, who died in 2009.  Barnes feels that Updike's final works, My Father's Tears and Endpoint were grotesquely misunderstood. "Death afforded him no courtesy, and the stories received several reviews of impudent stupidity."  He reminds us all of Updike's Herculean contribution to letters by noting that Everyman has published Updike's final reworking of the Rabbit quartet as Rabbit Angstrom and calls it "the greatest American novel of the second half of the twentieth century.

Reading the TLS Books of the Year edition is not for the faint of heart, because whatever books you've read this year suddenly seem like Miss Piggly Wiggly.

Marjorie Perloff would like you to try out a 700-page bilingual edition of The Poetry of Rilke, translated by Edward Snow. David Wooten urges you to pick up the 13 lb. (yes, 13 lb.) The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Also be prepared to thank Michael Hofman for suggesting a novel from 1970 (Metropole), which has just been translated into English from the Finnish.

The TLS year-end summary may be the most satisfying and the most challenging of the "Best Books of the Year" genre.  It will inspire you to stretch your reading habits; to read harder. It's the literary equivalent of feeling compelled to go to the gym. I am perfectly willing to have these 57 writers serve as my personal coaches. I look so much better sitting on a sofa than I do on the treadmill.

I have a couple more gift-book suggestions to propose, each one a recent arrival that came in too late to make my holiday roundup published earlier this month in Fine Books & Collections, but which I offer now as last-minute recommendations.

Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540-1640, by Mark Girouard; New Haven, Yale University Press, 516 pages, $65.

Mark Girouard is internationally admired for several accessible books on architecture, most famously the best-seller Live in the English Country House. This latest effort of his has all the makings of monumentally about it--a grand subject, handled by an acknowledged authority in the field, and published sumptuously in a beautiful edition. The many considerations take in social structure, craftsmanship, patronage, continental influence, and of course execution. This copiously illustrated production is published in conjunction with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith From 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965, by Sam Stephenson; Alfred A. Knopf, 268 pages, $40.

The New York jazz scene that burst forth in a constellation of brilliance in the 1950s and '60s, with such names as Miles Davis, Theolonius Monk, Johnny Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, and Bill Evans, is at the heart of this rich selection of material culled from the archive of the photographer W. Eugene Smith, who spent eight years documenting the rich culture, exposing 1,447 rolls of film comprising some 40,000 images, in the process. His base of operations was 821 Sixth Avenue, in the heart of the flower district. Sam Stephenson spent thirteen years going through the archive, now housed at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame: A Celebration of the Greatest Toys of All Time, by Scott G. Eberle; Philadelphia, Running Press, 264 pages, $29.95.

What kind of great stuff is in the National Toy Hall of Fame--yes, Virginia, there is such a creature, happily installed in the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York--is the subject of this evocative treat. G. I Joe, the Hula Hoop, the Radio Flyer, Barbie dolls, Crayola crayons and Monopoly games, of course, but Erector sets, Play-Doh, Lincoln Logs, and Jumbo Jacks as well, quite a feast here for the young at heart. A nice text puts it all in context; a very useful reference for toy collectors, needless to say.

The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present, edited by Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley, and Karen van Dyck; New York, W. W. Norton, 692 pages, $39.95.

A rich canon of Greek poetry, epic, drama, and lyric--even some few precious lines that survive only in fragments--are gathered in this fat anthology of 1,000 poems that spans the centuries, many of them newly translated, and appearing in English for the first time. Four eras are defined: Classical Antiquiry, Byzantium, Early Modern, and Twentieth Century. Some 186 artists in all, Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides at one extreme, Nikos Gatsos, Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos, George Seferis at another. Quite a bounty.

China, principal photography by Ming Tan, edited by Guang Guo; New York, Abbeville Press, 244 pages, slipcased with a numbered print, $235.

Of all the books you might pick up showcasing the natural wonders and architectural landmarks of China, you will be hard pressed to top this truly panoramic effort, which really has pulled out all the stops in pursuit of elegance. Yes, the book is enormous--12 pounds, 18 inches by 12 inches, with a dozen gatefold spreads that open up to 44 inches, almost four feet in width, and is justified by the subject matter--the Himalayas, the Great Wall, the terracotta army of the First Qin Emperor among them. It is an amazing piece of bookmaking, not many of examples of which you are likely to see these days. The photography is crisp and beautifully reproduced, a generous gift for anyone whose passion is the history and culture of the Middle Kingdom.

The Vatican and Saint Peter's Basilica of Rome, by Pavl Letarovilly; New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 320 pages, $125.

First published posthumously in three volumes in 1882, this remarkable suite of intricate architectural drawings of the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica was executed by Paul-Marie Letarovilly (1795-1855), "an acute, opinionated architect and a superb draftsman who devoted most of his professional life to a single massive enterprise: drawing and publishing the architecture of Rome from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries,"  Ingrid Rowland writes in the forward to this elegant new facsimile edition; it is published in conjunction with the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America, and the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame.

Flora Mirabilis How Plants Have Shaped World Knowledge, Health, Wealth and Beauty, by Cahterine Herbert Howell (National Geographic Books, 256 pages, $35.) Yes, this is a title that will certainly interest gardeners, but of far greater import is the appeal it undoubtedly will have to collectors of botanical books, and people who are interested in various special collections devoted to the genre in general. How plants have figured in history is the essential theme--rice, maize, flax, wheat, cotton, opium poppy, pepper, coffee, grape, potato, passionflower, date, olive, bamboo --use your imagination, the likelihood is that it's here. But making this presentation a special bouquet of wonders for bibliophiles is the 200 illustrations, all of them reproduced from a remarkable rare book collection maintained by the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, established in 1859, and the beneficiary in 1893 of an outstanding library of pre-Linnaean works on medical botany, agriculture, and edible or otherwise useful plants gathered by Edward Sturtevant, a major collector. The earliest work represented in the volume is the Gart der Gesundheit (Garden of Health), a compendium of medicinal botany printed in Germany in 1487. The text is arranged in ten chapters, and follows an arc of botanical exploration and trade throughout the world. Quite a nice book, and ideal as a gift. My forthcoming piece for this month in Fine Books & Collections, incidentally, will showcase my top choices for holiday giving.

And while we're at it:

Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, by Christopher Andrew; Alfred A. Knopf, 1,032 pages, $40.

This is my kind of book--big, fat, packed with fascinating detail on an irresistible subject, in this instance the 100-year history of the British Security Service, better known as MI5, which opened its archives to the scrutiny of an independent historian. I won't pretend I've read the whole thing yet--it just came in a couple days ago--but what I have dipped into so far, I have devoured. Christeopher Andrew, a professor of modern and contemporary history at Cambridge University, is the author of 14 previous books, including two volumes of The Mitrokhin Archive. "The Service," he writes in the preface here, "like the rest of the intelligence community, was to stay as far from public view as possible." This little bit of sunshine should open a lot of eyes.

History in the grand tradition--including one new edition of a classic written 2,500 years ago--comprise my choices for this current batch of new releases, each one worthy of your attention.

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, by Gordon S. Wood; New  York, Oxford University Press, 778 pages, $35.

Gordon S. Wood, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for The Radicalism of the American Revolution, here offers a painstaking account of the United States of America during its first quarter-century, a continuum that takes in the formation of the Republic and the beginning of nationhood under the Constitution, and follows through to the War of 1812. It is a period, as David M. Kennedy, general editor of the Oxford History of the United States--of which this is the latest installment (three earlier titles in the series have also won Putlizers)--was an "astonishingly volatile, protean movement that lay between the achievement of national independence and the emergence of a swiftly maturing mass democracy and modern economy in the Jacksonian era." Wood's approach takes in politics, law, the economy and popular culture, and anticipates the great battle that will divide the country by the middle of the nineteenth century. One ominous note at book's end is the realization that despite Northern opposition, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Wood's effort--30 years in the making--has all the earmarks of being a standard work.

The American Civil War: A Military History, by John Keegan; New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 396 pages,$35.

In more than twenty books over the past half-century, the British scholar John Keegan has established himself as the outstanding military historian of his generation, with several of his works, most notably The Face of Battle, The Second World War, The Mask of Command,  The Price of Admiralty and A History of Warfare, acclaimed as classics in their own time. In his last book, Keegan offered a cogent analysis of the Iraq War; now, he applies his outstanding grasp on the nature of human conflict to offer a fresh evaluation of the American Civil War. He opens thusly: "I began an earlier book with the sentence 'The First World War was a cruel and unnecessary war.' The American Civil War, with which it stands comparison, was also certainly cruel, both in the suffering it inflicted on the participants and the anguish it caused to the bereaved at home. But it was not unnecessary." Among the numerous areas he explores are psychology, ideology, and demographics, but most tellingly, the role of geography in the unfolding course of the war. One of the more astonishing findings: "about 10,000 battles, large and small, were fought in the United States between 1861 and 1865. This enormous number of battles, seven for every day the war lasted, provides the principal key to the nature of the war. Americans fought as frequently as they did in the Civil War because they could find no other way to prosecute the conflict. Economic warfare, excepting blockage, was not an option."

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, by Morris Dickstein; New York, W. W. Norton, 598 pages, $29.95.

A great deal has been written about the long national nightmare of the Great Depression, with numerous interpretations offered as to its causes, concerns made especially relevant by the recent downturn in the economy that has had many people recalling the bad old days. But none, to my knowledge, have taken on the subject in a true cultural sense--the films, the novels, the architecture, the music, the photography, the penetrating images that continue to resonate of those dark days. Morris Dickstein, professor of English and theater at CUNY Graduate Center in New York and author previously of Gates of Eden and Leopards in the Temple has fashioned a remarkable narrative of the times that is a model of interdisciplinary technique, and a true joy to read. The Empire State Building, Citizen Kane, the Yellow Brick Road, Scarlett O'Hara, the Rockettes, the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell, James Agee, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Richard Wright, Bing Crosby's White Christmas--it all fits in, and is all handled seamlessly. Dip into this, and you will quickly appreciate why Norman Mailer called Dickstein "one of our best and most distinguished critics of American literature."

The Red Flag: A History of Communism, by David Priestland; New York, Grove Press, 676 pages, $30.

The official publication date for this big book is Nov. 9, the twentieth anniversary of when the Berlin Wall began to come down, the first vital sign that the twentieth century's thunderous experience with Communism was entering its final stages. David Priestland, a lecturer in modern history at Oxford University, offers a sweeping overview of the phenomenon, tracing its roots to the  French Revolution, and carrying it forward into its continuing applications today in China, Cuba, and Korea. All the big names are here--Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara--and many others who are lesser known, but just as compelling. Drawing generously on the wealth of archival materials that have become available in recent years, he is able to offer fresh insights that do not rely entirely on the published works of others. Just as important, he writes in a lively, accessible style that never loses sight of the continuing drama. A massive, admirable effort.


The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika, translated by John Marincola, edited by Robert B. Strassler. New York, Pantheon, 579 pages, $40.

This new translation of the ancient historian Xenophon's Hellenika joins earlier editions in the Landmark series of Greek histories by Thucydides and Herodotus, and includes a fabulous selection of maps, annotations, photographs, illustrations and sixteen appendices written by notable classical scholars. This work covers the years between 411 and 362 B.C., a time when relations between Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Persia were extremely volatile. A student of Socrates, Xenophon was an Athenian who first served in the expedition against the Persian King Artaxerxes II, and later joined the Spartan army.

A little bit of something for everyone with this quartet--solid nonfiction, a scholarly biography, a charming novel, a new selection of poetry from the work of a grand master. Fall, indeed, is here, and the new releases not only are plentiful, but remarkably rich, surprisingly so, given all this noise we've been hearing lately about good books being in decline, and publishers cutting back on their lists. Can't prove it by me.

Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness, by Tracy Kidder; Random House, New York, 277 pages, $26.

Tracy Kidder has to be ranked among the best writers of literary nonfiction out there, one of the few authors who you can pretty much say, time after time, is not going to disappoint you with his latest effort. No surprise, then, to report that this, his eighth book, may well be his best--which is saying quite a bit, when you consider that his earlier efforts have included The Soul of New Machine, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Home Town, and Old Friends, and that his honors include the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Robert F. Kennedy Award. The story can be summarized briefly--a young man comes to New York from Burundi in 1994 with $200 in his pocket, a survivor of the horrific civil wars that have decimated his country, no English-speaking skills at all, but filled with hope and grit. Two years later, he enrolls in Columbia University without so much as a green card to his name, his story not only one of survival and hope, but one of tenacity, decency and good will that will lead him on to medical school and a life filled with purpose. It's a great tale, of course, and Kidder is one terrific reporter.

The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc, by Larissa Juliet Taylor; New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 251 pages, $30.

As historical figures go, I can think of no other individual who has achieved the kind of iconic stature accorded in death to Joan of Arc (1412-1431), the peasant girl from Domremy variously cast as saint, sorcerer, soldier, lunatic, witch, gifted leader, and martyr in the seven centuries that have elapsed since her execution by the English, and her subsequent passage into sainthood. Larissa Juliet Taylor, a history professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, has written a splendid  biography of the young woman that takes a fresh look at the original sources--which survive in abundance--and presents a full, rich examination of the person and the many myths that grew around her. Just as interesting is the informed look Taylor offers into medieval life.



The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker; New York, Simon & Schuster, 243 pages, $25.

I was planning on taking this one along with me on a flight I'm making tomorrow out to Columbus, Ohio--I'm speaking at a meeting of the Ohio Preservation Council on Thursday, and will file a report here in due course--but wound up getting absorbed in it beforehand, and read it straight through. So it goes. What impresses me most about Nicholson Baker, I think, is the easy facility he has for going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction, sort of the way David Halberstam used to do one big work of cultural history, then treat himself to a change of pace with a book about sports. I don't know which form is more relaxing for Baker, though I would suspect it is the novel. His latest here is a fun book, especially for those among us who are fascinated by the creative process. Baker's narrator is a middle-aged poet named Paul Chowder who is trying like the dickens to write an introduction to a new anthology of poetry--rhyming poetry, no less--and finds himself blocked. The ruminations are witty, as always, a delight to read, and the celebration it offers of poetry most welcome. The voice is spot on here, vintage Baker.

Wallace Stevens: Selected Poems, a new selection edited by John N. Serio. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 326 pages, $30.

With this volume we go from a novel that considers the creation of poetry to an actual poet who not only excelled at the craft, but tried his level best to explain it to others. "No other poet I  know of has written so elegantly and so persuasively about the beauty and significance of poetry in everyday life," writes John N. Serio, a noted scholar of the great American poet, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). "The imagination--frequently synonymous with the act of the mind, or poetry, for Stevens--is what gives life its savor, its sanction, its sacred quality." This generous selection of the Reading, Pennsylvania, native's work--published to mark the 130th anniversary of his birth--will delight those familiar with his work, and encourage newcomers to thirst for more. Kudos to the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, for its commitment to publishing great poetry in beautiful, superbly edited editions.

September is right around the corner, and the new books for fall are starting to trickle in from the publishers. Among those that have caught my fancy--and which, I believe, are richly deserving of your attention--are the following:

The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels, by Janet Soskice; New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 316 pages, $27.95.

This meticulously researched effort takes what for decades has been an intriguing footnote in the history of textual serendipity, and gives it the full examination it so richly deserves. Janet Soskice, a professor in philosophical theology at Cambridge University, tells the story of Agnes and Margaret Smith, identical twin sisters from Scotland, and their discovery in 1892 at St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt of what was then the earliest known copy of the Gospels--it was a palimpsest that had escaped earlier detection--and how against all accepted convention for two women in Victorian times without university degrees, translated the document from Syriac into English, and secured for themselves a place in the history of biblical scholarship. The story of their spirited adventure on camelback to Mount Sinai where the ancient Greek Orthodox monastery is located makes for an exciting adventure, which Soskice accomplishes with style and aplomb. I am reminded, in this effort, of Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman, in which a theretofore ignored interlude in literary history (in that instance an institutionalized killer's manifold contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary), became a breakthrough bestseller. All in all, this is a welcome addition to the books-about-books bookshelf.

The F Word, edited by Jesse Sheidlower, foreword by Lewis Black; New York, Oxford University Press, 270 pages, $16.95.

This release is a real challenge to write about in a public forum, but I'm going to give it my best shot because I rather like it, number one, and because the word in question--no ambiguity at all, by the way, about which word we are talking about--is an integral part of our language, and one of the very few I know of that works variously as a noun, verb, adverb, and adjective. (Feel free, please, to use your imagination.) That a compilation like this should come from such a distinguished publishing house as Oxford University Press gives me all the cover I need; that it should now be in its third revised edition, moreover, makes it all the more irresistible. So what, you might ask, is there to learn from this compendium? The word's etymology, for starters--no, it's not an acronym, it's far to old a coinage for that, with roots going back to the fifteenth century, Germany being the likely origin, though the precise progenitor is vague at best. That master wordsmith of all time, William Shakespeare, never used it--the word was decidedly vulgar, even then--though there are numerous allusions and puns in the canon that leave no doubt about what the old rascal had in mind. All in all, this is a scholarly work, though unquestionably with a light tough, and includes dozens of definitions presented in traditional OED style, with illustrative quotations drawn from myriad published sources. Jesse Sheildlower's introductory essay is a superb overview of this truly phenomenal word.

Darwin's Armada: Four Voyages and the Battle for the Theory of Evolution, by Iain McCalman. New York, W. W. Norton, 423 pages, $29.95.

This has been the bicentennial year of Charles Darwin's birth, an occasion that has brought forth numerous books, a few of which I have noticed in earlier postings. This one, a later release, should not be lost in the deluge. Iain McCalman, a professor at the University of Sydney in Australia, and a past president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, has written an energetic, lively account of evolution that casts a wider net, as it were, and takes in the contributions of Darwin's principal champions, the botanist Joseph Hooker, the the biologist, Thomas Huxley, and the zoologist Alfred Russel Wallace, whose support in the early going was crucial to the reception of his monumental work. McCalman begins with a most engaging account of Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, and describes in highly accessible prose the intellectual process that led to formulation of his theory. Some excellent illustrations are included.

Raymond Carver: Collected Stories, edited by Maureen Carroll. New York, The Library of America, 960 pages, $40.

Every time I think I have exhausted my inventory of superlatives when it comes to the Library of America and what this essential publishing initiative means to our shared culture, a new release comes along that forces me to dig deeper and come up with another. I admit, I am bragging a bit here--but I have every book issued in this series going back to when it started in 1982, close to a150 of them, all kept together in their own book case. It's both a collection for me, and an indispensable resource that I turn to on a regular basis. This latest effort gathers all of Raymond Carver's published stories--"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please", "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," and "Cathedral" among them--along with many of his early sketches, and pieces that were discovered after his death in 1985. A thorough chronology of Carver's life and accomplishments--more like a mini-biography--is included in one of several appendices. Like all the others from LOA, this one's a keeper.