Laboratories of Faith in the Fortean Times

The April 2008 edition of the Fortean Times features a 9/10 review of John Warne Monroe’s Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France. An excerpt appears below:

“A mesmerizing overview of a foreign field. Monroe has immersed himself in the ferment of ideas going on in this period and analyzes what they meant to people then, however naïve they may now seem. He stresses just how widely read the publications of some of the figures that he discusses were, making them a crucial factor in any balanced assessment of French intellectual life.”—Tom Ruffles, Fortean Times, April 2008

Recent Releases

Recent arrivals in our warehouse include:

Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile by Lewis H. Siegelbaum

The End of the West?: Crisis and Change in the Atlantic Order, edited by Jeffrey Anderson, G. John Ikenberry, and Thomas Risse

Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar, edited by Li Zhang and Aihwa Ong

Stephen W. Kress at Mann Library, Cornell University

Just received this announcement for an event featuring the author of The Audubon Society Guide to Attracting Birds: Creating Natural Habitats for Properties Large and Small:

Chats in the Stacks book talk at Mann Library

Stephen Kress
The Audubon Society Guide to Attracting Birds: Creating Natural Habitats for Properties Large and Small
March 12, 4:00 pm
Albert R. Mann Library
Room 160
Landscapes rich in native plants are not only beautiful, they also attract large numbers and many different kinds of birds. A book talk by Cornell Lab of Ornithology author Stephen Kress will provide tips on how to foster native plant communities that yield a variety of foods and shelter for birds across the seasons. Gardeners, land stewards and owners of properties large and small are invited to come learn more about creating thriving natural landscapes filled with color and bird song the whole year through. Refreshments and book signing to follow talk (books will be available for purchase from The Cornell Store).

Think you might have to miss this talk? No worries—just catch it via pod- or webcast at http://mannlib.cornell.edu/podcasts/ Expected availability: March 31.

Awaiting the Heavenly Country in Library Journal

Great Library Journal review (in the February 15, 2008 issue) of Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America’s Culture of Death by Mark S. Schantz:

“Schantz makes a compelling case that Americans’ experiences with, and ideas about, death before the Civil War made it possible for them to understand—and even celebrate—death caused by the war. By closely reading landscapes, images, and all manner of writings on the ‘culture of death,’ Schantz discovers that Northerners and Southerners alike came to believe that how one approached death and how a people honored the dead revealed, even decided, matters of faith, community, and national identity. Schantz is especially perceptive at describing mourning rituals, the literature on heaven as a place of family reunion with full bodily restoration, the rural cemetery movement, and the illustration of death in lithographs, photography, and painting. He finds a strong strain of Greek revival and ancient mythology in Americans’ representation of what death demanded of men and women. When read in tandem with Drew Gilpin Faust’s recent This Republic of Suffering, we learn that for 19th-century Americans the ‘unifying power of death’ defined how one must live, and when the war came, it also made it easier to kill and to die. A sobering assessment for anyone who imagines war as a purifying process.”

Recent Releases

Recent arrivals in our warehouse include:

A Bird-Finding Guide to Panama by George R. Angehr, Dodge Engleman, and Lorna Engleman
Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation by David M. Edelstein
European Unions: Labor’s Quest for a Transnational Democracy by Roland Erne
British Vision: Observation and Imagination in British Art, 1750–1950 edited by Robert Hoozee
China’s Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change by Andrew C. Mertha

Okinawa

The United States finds itself once again exceedingly unpopular on the Japanese island of Okinawa; an American marine has been accused of raping a 14-year-old girl—see “Rice Offers Regret After Marine Is Accused of Rape on Okinawa” in the New York Times. Cornell University Press has two books that might be helpful in understanding this story from two different angles:

Women of Okinawa: Nine Voices from a Garrison Island by Ruth Ann Keyso
Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas by Alexander Cooley (forthcoming)

Leland de la Durantaye talks Nabokov on the radio in Australia—and online

Leland de la Durantaye, the author of Style is Matter, took part in a radio discussion with Brian Boyd and Ron Rosenbaum regarding Nabokov’s “final, unfinished, unpublished, flame-menaced book ‘the Original of Laura.’” The discussion took place on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Book Show on February 15, 2008, and the whole thing is available online, along with a transcript: Should Nabokov’s unpublished manuscript be burned?

Kosovo

International recognition of the independent nation of Kosovo continues apace. For background on Kosovo’s slow journey to independence, see Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo by Iain King and Whit Mason.

Background on East Timor

CNN reports that East Timor has declared a state of emergency (2/12/0 after a new wave of violence, including a brace of assassination attempts on President Jose Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao; Australia is sending security forces to the country. A Not-So-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor by Joseph Nevins is a definitive and chilling account of East Timor’s terrible struggles for independence from Indonesia. In the Japan Times, Jeff Kingston wrote of this book:

“This is a gripping and powerful saga rooted in the horrible atrocities and deprivation endured by the East Timorese following Indonesia’s invasion in 1975. Indonesian security forces ruled ruthlessly until 1999, causing nearly 200,000 conflict-related deaths, imprisoning and torturing thousands more, while raping and plundering with abandon. A generation of East Timorese grew up where the rule of law was a distant rumor and human rights were routinely violated. Joseph Nevins briefly recapitulates this history, focusing on international complicity in these crimes against humanity, but mostly dwells on the troubling failure to secure justice.”

Another Cornell University Press title that puts this conflict into context is In the Shadow of “Just Wars”: Violence, Politics, and Humanitarian Action, by Médecins sans Frontières (edited by Fabrice Weissman). In the Virginia Quarterly Review, Patrick LaRochelle wrote:

“With insightful case studies of conflicts ranging from East Timor and Afghanistan to Sudan and Colombia, and thoughtful considerations of issues such as the responsibility of humanitarian aid workers in war crimes trials and the growing tension between Islamic, Christian and secular humanitarian NGO’s, In the Shadow of ‘Just Wars’ is a significant and sobering work that should be engaged by humanitarians, politicians, and responsible global citizens alike.”

Nicolas Véron in the Financial Times

Nicolas Véron, author of Smoke & Mirrors, Inc.: Accounting for Capitalism, and Thomas Philippon have an editorial in the February 12, 2008 edition of the Financial Times: Europe’s Saplings Need Financial Fertiliser.