Arizona Books

How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Cultural Poetics Of The Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century by Michael D. C. Drout (Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College) re-examines "memetic" theory while contemplating the manner in which traditions are created, modified, perpetuated, and recognized. Especially focusing upon the Oral Traditional Theory as revealed in a case study of the longevity of classic Anglo-Saxon poetry from the tenth century, How Tradition Works is especially intended for specialists in evolutionary theory, memetics, and Anglo-Saxon studies. A serious-minded, college and graduate school-level discussion of the complexities of intergenerational human societal expression.

Do you remember how Steven Jay Gould used to make deep forays into other scholars' fields in order to find witty and profound explanations for biological phenomena? It does not often happen (at least not effectively) in the other direction, e.g. a Professor of English tramping around fearlessly and knowledgeably in various fields of science. Well, meet Michael D.C. Drout, an intrepid, medievalist and polymath who has embraced the teachings of evolutionist Richard Dawkins, especially the concept of "memes" (The Selfish Gene 1976) and who has applied it vigorously to the exegesis of certain Medieval texts. This is a bold, new "Theory of Tradition" that should be taken seriously as a rich source of brilliant ideas for theses, college courses, and further scholarly work. (e.g. See some of Drout's inspiring suggestions on page 295.)


A meme, according to Dawkins, is a unit of cultural replication such as a catchy song or memorable slogan. According to Drout, "Memes" are the answer to "How does tradition work?" Drout's book takes us convincingly through one example after another. The focus is tenth century English monasteries as exemplary meme-keepers by means of often repeated and copied rules and formats for documents. Drout cautiously coins three new words for his "Theory of Tradition" (recognitio, actio, justificatio) The humility with which he does this is worth reading in the footnote on page 13 and worth emulating by humanists and scientists alike who might be considering the coinage of some new jargon. By the way, if you are a fan of footnotes, you will love most of the others in this book. Each is its own little eloquent, opinionated essay. My only complaint is that some should have been raised into the text.

Critics of a memetic analysis of tradition might say that it ignores the contributions of individuals. This certainly is not the case with Drout's memetic modification of Dawkin's concept of "meme" (a "meme of a meme".) Drout's unique version is nicely mutated and appears to be well selected for its new function in literary criticism.

Itself divided into the sections Foremothers, Self and Identity, Self and Others, Spaces, Myths and Archetypes, Writers on Language and Writing, Growing Up, and Celebrations, this broadly inclusive anthology includes writers who need no introduction to anyone familiar with Chicana literature: Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldua, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Alma Villanueva, Cordelia Candelaria...and if you haven't read their poetry or pose, here's your chance.

Simply the most comprehensive collection of Mexican-American women's writing --both good and bad-- "Infinite Divisions" has enough jewels to understand why it would be required reading for anyone hoping to delve into Chicana literature.
"Little Miracles, Kept Promises" by Sandra Cisneros is a nice sample Mexican-American life condensed into a format so innovative that it merits being read twice... Prayers and petitions to God and all the saints, hopes and fears about sexuality and love and life, the traditional scraps of paper left as a religious offering in church become a touching prose piece.
The book thoroughly disects the sometimes-ghost-story, sometimes-feminist-symbol of La Llorona, the crying woman who murdered her children in some stories and who was the reincarnation of La Malinche (Hernan Cortes' lover) in others. "Aztec Princess" and "Malinche's Discourse" make for wonderful discussion pieces, not to mention reading.

Paul Lay's informative text is a perfect accompaniment to Richard Turpin's stunning, lovely, full color, tour-de-force photographic excursion through the appealing beauty of Ireland's landscape, cities, architecture, and people. Enchanted Ireland is an outstanding compilation of Irish images and a pure celebration of the natural wonder and folk charm of a vibrant people in a land bustling with vigor and cultural legacy. Highly recommended!

Having just returned from a 2-week visit to Ireland I was eagerto get my hands on anything related to the places I saw. So, I took alook at several photography books on Ireland and was losing hope of finding the "right" one, when I started flipping through "Enchanted Ireland." I was stunned by the wonderful photographs, and the great range of both landscape and city/town pictures. There are also some beautful people pictures, including--to my astonishment--Paddy, an accordion player and resident of Inishmor, whom I saw on my trip to the Aran Islands. If you're looking for a wide range of photographs and a good idea of what parts of Ireland look like (and they're stunningly beautiful) then this is *the* book to have. You'll want to leave for Ireland tomorrow!

We got this book out of the library and ended up buying a copy as the tales are worth many repeat visits. The stores about different kinds of friendship are charming but what really catches our attention is the language. It is clear for young children to understand but is ever so slightly different -- as if spoken by someone translating into English or someone using a different 'flavor' of English. It really adds to the sense that these are Native American tales.

The illustrations are detailed and very attractive with lots of things for listner to explore while letting the words soak in.

"In the evening the Sun touches the ocean in the west and climbs down the long ladder to the underworld. Then he sets out on his underground journey to the sunrise place in the east. Up above, now that the world is dark, the time has come for people to light fires and tell stories." Join John Bierhorst at the crackling campfire as he retells seven Pueblo fireside tales. These are stories that just beg to be read aloud. Each short and engaging tale centers around the theme of friendship, and is rich in Native American insight, wisdom, and humor. Wendy Watson's charming and expressive cartoon-like artwork, in quiet, subdued desert earth-tones, complement each story beautifully, and bring the endearing cast of animal characters to life. Find out why Coyote has short ears, how Snake lost his only friend, why peaches are sweet, and how Bee learned to fly... Perfect for youngsters 5-10, Is My Friend At Home? is a marvelous collection the entire family can read and share together. "The Sun has come to the end of his underground journey. As he climbs up the ladder to the sunrise place, he puts on the skin of a gray fox, and white dawn comes up. "Ha!" he cries and he puts on the skin of a yellow fox, and yellow dawn comes up. He steps out of the underworld. It becomes morning. No more storytelling until nightfall."

Singer is always interesting whether you agree with him or not. He has a clear and definite idea of Literature as storytelling, and he is one of the great storytellers. He has the idea that the reader must be entertained and not confounded with impossible intellectual puzzles aimed to show the writer's skill. His life - wisdom grows out of a rich Jewish experience of worlds no longer here, and out of his not easy life- journey as a writer. His humor and intelligence shine through everywhere, and make him a delight to read even when he is just ' talking'.

Isaac bashevis singer

Strongly recommended reading from first page to last, The Keepsake Storm showcases the lyrical talents of academician and poet Gina Franco who draws upon an impressive tradition of storytelling in Latino literature to explore the transformative power of compassion. Dealing with such diverse themes as cultural alienation, lost family roots, the ambiguous nature of the self, Gina Franco uses her poetry to reaffirm the power of self-awareness, history, and places. Everything Goes Down a Changeling: A great cloud of tiny insects--ingenious,/the summer light sifted through all those wings/like that, like a thought shifting/over a bog veined in bright water./The air was coming down/with an imminent rain--I could feel it./And you were there, shaking your head,/smiling at the camera though I felt slighted./Everything goes down a changeling, you said./You've got to have it how you can./So it was hopeless already when I noticed/that my legs were running/with blood, with mosquitos thickly drowning,/when you turned from me saying,/well, it's what you wanted.

To say Gina Franco's "The Keepsake Storm" marks an "auspicious debut" flouts the work's wizened eye and immaculate intonation, as well as the balance it creates between self-invention and its reverence for the ancient. This may be a new voice, but its wisdom is ancient and its compassion bottomless in its mastery. There is nothing more boldly American than this poet's celebratory public-letting of sangre mestiza unleashed, harnessed and rivened through the lenses of Romantic and Victorian poetic sensibilities, Chicano cultural narrative and regional legend as it inundates-washes clean-transfuses, annihilates as much as it resuscitates, our notions of poetic form and ethnicity.

Although many articles are written each year on the subject of the "death of American Poetry," hundreds of books of poems by American authors go into print each year that test readers abilities to understand what is meant by "a sequence of poems," as if the words "sequence" and "poem" were some strange abstraction. Like a river, the trajectory of "The Keepsake Storm" however is crystalline from its beginning. It is a mistake to read "precious" into the sequence's seductively deceptive title: first separate "keep"-meaning: to honor; to store; to prevent; to maintain--from the Old English "sake"-meaning: a fault; a contention; an offence-and you only begin to touch on the enormity of Franco's ruminations on ethnicity, gender, abuse, longing, as well as a hopefulness coupled with a fear that hopelessness, real hopelessness, exists.

These poems tell as much of time and place as they undo conventional notions of each: in one poem, the poetic figure who has read, and understands the image created by Mary Shelley "Frankenstein," conflates-or folds-over, as if looking through a transparency-it's childhood notion of Frankenstein's castle as it rises up out of a mining town in Arizona. A flood clears a path and lays bare root and future in a poem called "Del Rio," yet is sustained by a premonitory voice-"The Spirit that Comes When You Call"-that, in its invocation of self, articulates core and derivation older than time, older than Western History, that encompasses Christianity, Indigenous traditionalism, and Colonial mythology as God, La Llarona, and an inextricable force align as one. "You want real?" "Fishing," the first sonnet of the sequence shouts, and then it dares you to look "real" in the eye, dares the reader to go where "God is mean and fresh." And through to the last, the collection holds up its end of the bargain by offering reflected and refracted images of human frailty at times in its most glorious pathos and at others in its most indecorous humor.

Read this book! Get a new enhanced education. It is like no other of the many wonderful and exciting collections published by the University of Arizona Press under its Camino Del Sol imprint. In many ways in differentiates itself from the others in that there are no robosos, tortillas, no borders erected as symbols of obstinacy in the face of oppression or change. If they are there, they are there: simply part of the landscape of a people and a place. Franco has pushed opened a new political and cultural arena for latina letters as her work seems to ask the questions, What do we do with the languages and images that we learn away from home; How are we to talk about ourselves once we've read the Shelleys? Onces we know more of the world than when we left, what do we do to tell those we now live with about where we have come from? This work brings fresh understanding to the notion of "mezclar," Without apology or sentiment, Franco has boldly and intelligently stated with grace and wisdom of formalist training, "I am Latina and this too is what it can sound like!"

John Alcock's status as the dean of animal behaviour studies is delightfully illustrated by this excellent book. A collection of over two dozen essays on the conduct of various animal [and one plant] species relate the findings of an Australian sabbatical. Using his own and other's research he poses questions arising from a medley of animal antics. How have these behaviours come about? He shows how these queries have adaptive evolutionary roots. The beauty of Darwin's idea, he reminds us, is that it provides us with "an adaptationist foundation" for testing hypotheses, arguments and ideas. Adaptations are subtle, often requiring careful perception and analysis. With careful study and cautious speculation he provides some stimulating ideas about the things he observed.

The examples are chiefly birds and insects. The first is Kookaburra, the "alarm clock" of Australian mornings, is famous for its raucous wake-up call. When other birds may sing, caw or carol throughout the day, why does Kooka limit himself [and it's the males doing the laughter] to this brief, but delightful, period? Put simply, it's an energy saving device! Once the territorial claim has been vocally established, he can go on to feeding or courting. Other birds exhibit the immense variation evolution has produced. The Mallee Fowl, a bush dweller may seem "a dream come true" for some. This turkey-sized bird upsets gender patterns. The male bird spends weeks building a five-metre wide nest, enticing a mate to join him, "allowing" her to deposit thirty eggs, then lets her wander off while he meticulously controls the nest environment ensuring a successful hatch. Further north, Bowerbird building is also the male's role. He constructs complex and gaudy structures, although not to the Mallee Fowl's immensity. Here, however, the bower is merely the conjugal boudoir, with the impregnated female left to wander away for both nest building and chick rearing.

Wasps display contrasting practices. With these insects, nest building is nearly uniformly a female task. Males, however, make contributions to mating and reproduction in many other ways. One wasp will bring nectar to a potential mate, then take her wingless body around from flower to flower as they seek a nest site. Other males are even more energetic. They will grab a moth or other large insect, then hang from a twig using the capture as bait. Wasp nesting behaviours offer yet more varieties in practice. One species employs a "housemaid" to guard and clean a ground nest. Such maintenance allows the food-bearing mother to fly directly into the nest, thereby avoiding predators.

Alcock's easy style in this book keeps you at his side. His text is enhanced by Marilyn Stewart's fine drawings. Good maps provide location reference and ranges of the subjects. His science is presented in a conversational, almost friendly manner. He wants you to share his awe, his interest, and his conclusions. We must be grateful to him for this, since we're all aware that others, who are as earnest and knowledgeable as he, don't manage to impart that with the same verve. He also notes that his findings aren't confined to the wonders of the island continent. The rules of life he outlines for us apply to the biosphere we inhabit. Read this book and find out what sort of world you live in. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Written by American biologist John Alcock (along with excellent illustrations by Marilyn Hoff Stewart), this book chronicles Alcock animal observations throughout the land Down Under. Alcocok observed the intimate details of the birth, breeding habits, feeding habits, and sometimes death of a large variety of Australian birds, insects, and mammals. Each chapter devoted to a particular species, he covers not only well known species such as the kookaburra, flying fox, and platypus, but lesser known ones (at least to Americans), such as the northern logrunner, resin wasp, and silver gull.

Alcock not only covers the life habits of a number of species, but also during the course of the book, using these species as examples, explores many concepts in biology. Why do birds sing so early in the morning? Are marsupials really primitive and not able to compete with placental mamamls (such as dogs and horses)? Particulary interesting are his speculations on adaptations on animals. Do all the features of an animal, from the cooperative efforts by grey-crowned babblers to raise a brood of young to the red tail feathers in the otherwise black red-tailed cockatoo all surve useful purposes in species (and individual) survival and were the results of evoultion, or is it wrong to atttribute every feature and behavior an animal to direct survival of individuals and the production of new offspring?

A highly worthwhile and readable book, I recommend it.

This books rocks. It is one of the few books we actually carry in our backpacks on month-long NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) expeditions in the Rockies. We generally appreciate anything Zwinger does, but this book stands by itself as both a classic in nature writing and a definitive nature reference for wilderness travellers in the alpine tundra.

If you have any interest in alpine tundra this is a must read book! If you have even a general interest in natural science and ecology this book is a classic. I was amazed at how the authors were able to integrate a crisp scientific exposition with an almost poetic writing style that left me with such vivid mental images. Even if you are not going to visit the tundra, this book is an experience. If you are hiking these areas it will expand the experience. Read this book!!!

This is the funniest, cleverest, most enjoyable book I have ever read. I recommend it unequivocally.

Read it, Loved it, Saw Others do the same! Want more from Wallace

_The Little Dinosaurs of Ghost Ranch_ by Edwin H. Colbert is a delightful, well-illustrated, and informative book written by the man most responsible for what we know about _Coelophysis bauri_, an important early dinosaur. Writing that one can view this book as a "paleontological case history," Colbert recounted not only the discovery and excavation of the famed mass burial of these little dinosaurs in New Mexico but also what is know of their anatomy, physiology, environment, and what the study of these animals has revealed about dinosaurs in general.

Originally on his way to prospect for fossils in Petrified Forest National Park in June of 1947, George Whitaker and the author (both working for the American Museum of Natural History in New York) and Tom Ierardi decided to investigate a promising fossil deposit on some privately owned land in New Mexico known as Ghost Ranch. The area was known to have produced phytosaur fossils and they only expected to spend a few days there. What instead happened was the beginning of decades of work as Colbert and others over the years came to work on a mass concentration of not "the huge bones of the giant dinosaurs of song and story" but instead the tiny bones of "ancestral dinosaurs."

Colbert described in detail the excavation of these 200 million year old fossils in the "colorful rounded badlands" that so entranced famous painter Georgia O'Keefe (who by the way lived nearby and befriended the scientists). The fossils were "exceedingly fragile," not only because the bones were very small and slender and the leg bones and vertebrae hollow, but because of the nature of their fossilization. They could disintegrate easily into tiny fragments if mishandled. The fossils had to be removed in huge sections instead of relatively thin slabs as the sandstone and siltstone that comprised the Chinle Formation at Ghost Ranch was very friable and liable to collapse. They had to be carefully, painstakingly, and sometimes dangerously removed in huge blocks, coated in thick plaster, burlap bandages, and a supporting framework of wood and then laboriously hauled out of the quarry. Eventually close to thirty blocks were removed from Ghost Ranch.

Of course removing the blocks from the quarry was just the start, as years were spent preparing the blocks. Though generally the lab preparation time and labor on a fossil takes more than ten times the work expended in the field, Colbert estimated that it took something "on the order of twenty to one" for _Coelophysis_. The fossils had to be removed from the rock by hand using jeweler's hammers and small chisels and treated with hardener; even the small, electric vibrating tools, commonly used in paleontology, would quickly reduce the fossils to powder.

Very early in the preparation stage the scientists made discoveries. Some fossils preserved the stomach contents of some of the dinosaurs, only the second time this was known from a carnivorous dinosaur and fascinatingly it revealed that _Coelophysis_ was a cannibal! Other interesting tidbits include the discovery of a "giant" _Coelophysis_ eleven feet long (most were usually six to eight feet; what was the ultimate size limit for this species?) and the fact that in almost all the specimens the lower jaw was tightly locked in place against the skull (evidence that the animals were buried so soon after death that muscles still held the lower jaws tightly in place rather than the skull and jaws becoming separated as is common with dinosaurs).

Colbert provided information about the history of the study of this dinosaur before the Ghost Ranch excavations, centering on David Baldwin of Abiquiu, New Mexico, who found the original _Coelophysis_ fragments in 1881 and Edward Drinker Cope of Philadelphia who first described them in 1887 (first it was placed in genus _Coelurus_ and later in genus _Tanystrophaeus_ before Cope named it _Coelophysis_ from Greek koilos meaning "hollow" and physis meaning "form, nature").

A chapter is spent on a quarry survey, describing the nature of the deposit, the climate at the time, and how the animals might have died and then been quickly buried. Though they apparently died in such numbers due to some catastrophe, there is much disagreement on its nature. Colbert discussed theories relating to volcanic activity (there are no volcanic sediments anywhere near the fossil deposit), poisoning perhaps from drinking water from a highly alkaline pond (unlikely as their bones indicated being deposited and buried by stream currents, not in the still waters of a lake), predator trap (unlikely also, as few individuals are maimed and there is very little disarticulation), and asteroid impact (Ghost Ranch "hardly qualifies for a "Wagnerian twilight"" as it was a local event). Most likely it was due to hunger or thirst from a drought or from drowning while crossing a flooding river.

Another chapter is spent on the anatomy of _Coelophysis_, notably on the key features of its skull and jaws, its vertebra, its tail and the role it played in balance and movement, and its bird-like feet with five toes, only three of which were functional.

A chapter on its lifestyle showed us what tracks attributed to the animal revealed about its physiology and speed (it seems to have been able to reach maximum speeds of fifteen to twenty miles an hour), what analysis of Haversian canals in the bones revealed about its growth rate and physiology, the complicated issue of just what it means to be "warm-blooded," and discussed issues relating to diet, cannibalism, possible congregation in age groups, the size and shape of their eggs, and what their senses might have been like.

Colbert also discussed the ancestors and descendents of _Coelophysis_, how it was one of a very few late Triassic dinosaurs, residents of a largely non-dinosaurian world, and how it established the pattern followed by later small coelurosaurs, ostrich-like struthiomimosaurs, dromaeosaurs, and the tyrannosaurs.

Colbert does not neglect the animals that shared the world with _Coelophysis_ and discussed contemporary amphibians, reptiles, other dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and early mammals.

This is a well-written book that covers the discovery, excavation, and reconstruction of a dinosaur (coelophysis). Discussion centered on this small therapod incorporates broader material, so that the reader gets an understanding of the life and times of other prehistoric creatures in addition to a detailed account of coelophysis