Cambria Press
The Italian Americans, 3d ed.
Iorizzo (history, State U. of New York, Oswego) and Mondello (history, Rochester Institute of Technology) offer a survey of Italian immigrants and their descendants on the farms, in large cities, and in small towns of the U.S. from the colonial period to the present. The authors have endeavored to present the Italian- American experience as an integral part of American history rather than as an isolated social phenomenon, with a focus on Italian- American immigrants' impact on and reaction to American society. The third edition reprint of the 1980 second edition now makes the publication available in paperback. Academic but accessible to the general reader. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Jin Yong phenomenon; Chinese martial arts fiction and modern Chinese literary history.
Jin Yong, his martial arts novels, and his newspaper empire are well known in China, but few English speakers have heard of him or read his works. Writers and scholars of Chinese literature working in China or the US explore such aspects as transcending high and low distinctions in literature, the labyrinth of identity, gender politics, and the construction of an imaginary China. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The local economic impact of Wal-Mart.
Hicks (economics, Graduate School of Engineering and Management, Air Force Institute of Technology) supplements a critical review of over 200 studies on the local economic impact of the chain big-box store Wal-Mart with his own empirical statistical analysis findings. Following a discussion of the history of the rise of the big-box store and an introduction to Wal-Mart's current market penetration, he discusses Wal-Mart's impact on labor markets, the markets for goods and services, and the aggregate local economy. He then explores the impact of Wal-Mart stores on local tax revenues and expenditures and on antipoverty and health care programs. He also address social impacts, including factors such as sprawl, union participation rates, poverty, income inequality, and local philanthropy. Finally he reviews the legal environment within which Wal-Mart operates and evaluates the political economy of anti-Wal-Mart legislation. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Margaret H'Doubler; the legacy of America's dance education pioneer.
Wilson (U. of Arizona) et al. present 17 chapters by dance scholars from the US who consider the work of modern dance pioneer Margaret H'Doubler, who established the first dance major in higher education. They discuss her legacy, life and career; critically analyze her work; and reminisce as colleagues, students, and friends. Her pedagogy, ideas about rhythm, and philosophy of education and attitude toward human creativity in dance therapy are explored, as are parallels to Rudolf Laban, and analysis of her mottos in historical, social, and intellectual contexts. Interviews with those who knew her are included. Within each chapter, writings, quotes, and mottos by H'Doubler are incorporated. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Mussolini's cities; internal colonialism in Italy, 1930-1939.
A geographer working in Britain but interested in Italian fascism and the technologies of totalitarianism, Caprotti describes a program to reclaim marshes and create New Towns along fascist lines that would be populated by selected colonists from northern Italy. Before 1930, he says, the Pontine Marshes, between Rome and Naples, were avoided by people because of the malarial mosquitoes. With much publicity, the government launched an extraordinary national land reclamation and urbanization project that featured massive national investment, internal migration that was not always voluntary, and engineering work. The towns, the fields, the canals, and the northern accents remain today. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The online customer; new data mining and marketing approaches.
Yang (management, U. of California-Davis) focuses first on using behavior patterns for customer segmentation with a novel pattern- based clustering approach. Then she turns to free-shipping promotions on the Internet. The study was part of her 2004 Ph.D. dissertation in operations and information management for the University of Pennsylvania. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Processing Web ads; the effects of animation and arousing content.
Study after study has shown how advertising on the web attracts and excites us, but here Chung (mass communication, Dongguk U.) works on understanding why we cannot tear ourselves away. Therefore his research works two ways: we can understand why we respond to such features as, for example, animation or banners, and we can understand why our using those features is so effective in others. Chung establishes his theoretical framework, then introduces his take on a limited capacity model of mediated message processing, a dimensional view of emotion, and the effects of certain advertisement features on orienting, arousal, encoding and storage. He clearly explains his methods and his results, and then applies them to his theoretical framework. The results are startling. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Race and the Assemblies of God Church; the journey from Azusa Street to the "Miracle of Memphis".
An ordained minister and a principal in an Assembly school in Memphis, Newman explores the impact of racial issues on the history of Pentecostalism, and particularly the Assemblies of God church, in the US. He describes how men of God joined together without regard to racial differences during the early years of the 20th century, how many white ministers created a segregated denomination — the Assemblies of God — in 1914, how over the years particular ministers and congregations began to recognize and accept African Americans, and how changing attitudes during the 1950s and 1960s led to the church's official disavowal of its racist past in 1994. Despite efforts since then, he says, little headway has been made reconciling the mostly rural white and mostly urban black parts of the community. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Seeing red; a pedagogy of parallax, an epistolary bildungsroman on artful scholarly inquiry.
In a didactic novel of personal development journeying in the form of letters, Sameshina (education, Washington State U.) highlights an object's apparent change of location due to a change in observer position or perspective shift. She argues that sharing stories encourages reflexive inquiries in ethical self-consciousness, that form determines possibilities for content and function, and that transformational learning may be significantly deepened by developing an embodied aesthetic wholeness and eros in the dynamic space between teacher and learner. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The shaping of popular consent; a comparative study of the Soviet Union and the United States, 1929-1941.
Freedom and oppression, light and dark, good and evil: how could anyone find any point of comparison between the opposing superpowers of The Cold War? McGregor (history, École Active Bilingue Jeannine Manuel, Paris) does. He asks to what extent the establishments in both countries believed they needed the people to have faith and trust in the system, and to what extent they similarly employed visual cultural media to win hearts and minds. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A Sicilian in East Harlem.
Mondello (emeritus, Rochester Institute of Technology) presents an autobiographical portrait of the relatively short-lived New York community of Italian East Harlem. He anecdotally describes the cultural milieu that he experienced growing up in the neighborhood and presents descriptions of significant individuals in his life that represented the vitality of the uptown "Little Italy." (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Theatre and the good; the value of collaborative play.
Occasionally and lightly throughout his career, Fearnow (theatre, Hanover College) had asked whether theater mattered. Only when he arrived at that common threshold in life when people ask themselves why in the world they are doing what they do, did he take the time and trouble to think deeply about it. He reports on what he found at the interface of his professional and emotional lives. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
To vary or not?; the effects of ad variation on the Web.
Lee (advertising, West Virginia U.) and Sundar (media effects research, Pennsylvania State U.) describe the background, results, and implications of recent research on the effectiveness of ad variation on the web. The empirical and theoretical discussion examines how study participants responded psychologically to the repetition vs. the variation of ads from the same company that shared a central advertising concept. Appendices include questionnaires used in research. Intended audience includes students of media studies and students and professionals in advertising. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Value congruence and trust online; their impact on privacy and price premiums.
Cazier (business, Appalachian State U.) examines the role of value congruence — the perception by customers that a company shares their values — in creating trust among electronic patrons, and conversely the role of values conflict in destroying such trust. His study is based on surveys mostly of college students about how value congruence influences their willingness to disclose personal information online, and how much more they might be willing to pay at a company they believe is doing good compared to one they believe is not. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Veblen in plain English; a complete introduction to Thorstein Veblen's economics.
This short introduction to the economics of the Norwegian-American sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) has been written by McCormick (economics, U. of Northern Iowa) to be easily accessible to students and non-specialists. The aim of the work is to highlight the contributions available in Veblen for the development of systematic evolutionary economics, however incomplete and contradictory Veblen's insights may have sometimes been. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Virtual charter schools and home schooling.
Klein, a consultant for a school district in Anaheim, presents her study of California Virtual Charter Schools (CAVA) as part of a movement to provide alternatives to traditional schooling. CAVA is said to be unique in serving elementary as well as middle-school students. Following an overview of the relationship of virtual education to home schooling and charter schools, she presents her findings (for example, nearly all parents were satisfied with the program) and recommendations for further research on this model. Appendices include informed consent and other forms for parents and school personnel, screen captures showing the Online School learning management system, and sample online student schedules. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Virtual destinations and student learning in middle school; a case study of a biology museum online.
As an educator with a special interest in innovative methods of teaching science, Donaldson (Ed.D., Portland State U.) promotes an inquiry-based rather than fact-based "banking" model of student learning. In presenting her case study of Museum Explorer, an online museum resource (developed by her husband) — a school/ museum partnership involving a field trip and e-mail follow-up — she discusses its enhancement of students' content knowledge, learning engagement, and attitudes toward computers. She then makes recommendations about school multimedia requirements. The student and teacher questionnaires are appended. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
