Indiana Books

The Detroit Piston's stunning five-game upset of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2004 NBA finals is about the only reason that this volume from "Above the Rim: The NBA Library Series" needs to be updated. There has not been as much turnover in the "Central Division" as there have been in the rest of the NBA (except for Rasheed Wallace joining the Pistons), but then the off season is still young and who knows what will happen before and during the NBA draft this week. In telling the history of the teams in this division one of the points of emphasis is winning championships and what the Pistons did would certainly qualify.

The chief value of this series is that it gives young fans of the NBA a look at the history of each team in the league. "Central Division" tells the story of the Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks, New Orleans Hornets, and Toronto Raptors. Robert E. Schnakenberg provides a brief history of the division, the teams that make it up and their greatest coaches and players. Fans of the Chicago Bulls who grew up watching Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen get to learn about Bob Love, Norman Van Lier, and Jerry Sloan. Even long time NBA fans might learn something new (Red Auerbach coached Atlanta at some point?).

Fans of each team will find that Schnakenberg does a good job of providing a basic history of the franchise so they can at least know the highlights. If you are a fan of the Atlanta Hawks and only know Sharif Abdur-Rahim and not Bob Pettite and Dominique Wilkins, then this book will explain why you need to expand your knowledge of NBA history. "Central Division" is illustrated with photographs of superstar NBA players, with both black & white shots of the likes of Bob Lanier and Oscar Robertson along with color shots including Reggie Miller and LeBron James. The back of this book includes all time team records, as well as the career leaders in points and rebounds for each franchise, and members of the Naismith Memorial National Basketball Hall of Fame from each team. There is also a Glossary of terms from "All-American" to "role players," along with a Time Line of when teams were founded and won championships, Books and Web sites for additional information about the Central Division and the NBA, and an Index.

A well written and nicely illustrated book on the history of Easter Europe's Jews, from their days with the Czar (starts with 1881) to their days under the Soviet Union including their brief terror under the nazis during the Great Patriotic War.

A good read.

For Chaplin fans this book is pure joy. Prof Geduld's has created a joyful narrative of Chaplin's early filims. His insughtful comments on eliments of the filims adds texture to the filims. While originally planned to be a 3 part set, only volume 1 has been completed. I was fortunate to meet the Professor at his Indiana Univ office a few years ago and for all of the Chaplin fans I would like to thank him for this book

Charles Johnson is a major American novelist, profound, delightful, and challenging. In Byrd, he has found an ideal expositor. This book has the twin virtues of being both very learned and very readable. Readers of Johnson, like myself, will learn a great deal. Newcomers could not have a better guide

The CHEREMIS LITERARY READER, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok, appeared in 1978 and was one of the last entries in Indian University's important Studies in Cheremis series. Resources on the Mari language (formerly called Cheremis) for the English-speaking student are unfortunately still rather hard to come by, and the CHEREMIS LITERARY READER along with the other entries in the series is very helpful indeed.

The material in Sebeok's reader is collected mainly from literary material the editor possessed in his home library, sent by Soviet scholars or bought during two trips to the USSR. All selections are presented in the original Cyrillic alphabet, transliteration is not used at all. There's a good mix of genre, from factual writing about Mari El to original fiction and poetry. One imagines, however, that the book took a long time to publish; the selections are all from the decade between 1950 and 1960.

There's a substantial glossary at the end of the book, which will help the English-speaking student even with many texts outside of the reader, especially if his Russian is still too shaky to comfortably use the major Russian-Mari dictionaries. As far as the grammatical demands of the texts, any student who has gotten through the first volume of the MARIJSKIJ JAZYK DLJA VSEX course should find most of these selections fairly easy and enjoyable reading, even if occasionally some matters must be understood through context.

The other major reader of Mari for students is Alho Alhoniemi's MARIN KIELEN LUKEMISTO (Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, 1986). Alhoniemi's reader differs from Sebeok in including some lighter material (e.g. dialogues from school textbooks), in using Latin transcription for some items, and of course in having a Mari-Finnish glossary. Cheap copies used and new of Alhoniemi's reader abound in Finland, and even if the student cannot necessarily make use of its FInnish glossary, that reader is nonetheless worth buying.

Unfortunately, like nearly all of Routledge's reprints of Finno-Ugrian resources, the edition of CHEREMIS LITERARY READER that this Amazon listing describes is wildly overpriced, just consider that the reader is a mere 138 pages. It's rather obscene to see a work meant for the ordinary student priced so high only libraries could easily obtain it. One would do better to seek out a copy of the original edition (Louvain: Editions Peeters, 1978) on the used market, or make do with just Alhoniemi's reader.

There always seems a new way of looking at the Farm Security Administration photos of the Depression. I've already got `Plain Pictures of Plain Doctoring: Vernacular Expression in New Deal Medicine and Photography' (MIT 1985) and `An American Journey: Images of Railroading During the Depression' (Hot Box Press 2000) and this excellent book is the first to show dozens of great photos of children (and teenagers).

The author's explain in the intro that at the nadir of the Depression about a quarter of the workforce were unemployed and because no child labor laws had been passed this huge number included some children, especially in agriculture. Most of the photos in this book show children in a rural setting, where it was expected that they would help their parents increase the family income.

Sixteen of the FSA photographers work is included and the author's have searched for photos that are seldom or have never been published before and this is one reason I liked the book, another is the large format landscape size. All the images have a short caption, date, photographer's name and Library of Congress negative file number. There are a couple of slightly annoying production points: the lack of page numbers, even though there is a contents page with a page number for each of the seven chapters and the ten pages of introduction are numbered but with roman numerals.

Fortunately not all the photos show hard times and despair, one chapter, called Playing, shows kids having fun, another, Living, has a 1940 Marion Post Wolcott shot of five laughing teenagers folding newspapers on a front lawn in Natchitoches, Louisiana. As you would expect though most of the rest of these sensitively taken photos do show children just having to make do in those extraordinary years.

If you collect books of FSA output or just want to see some great descriptive photos of the past `Children of the Depression' is well worth owning. Another book on the same subject (and written for the younger market) is 'Children of the Great Depression' (ISBN 0618446303) which uses FSA photos to back up the text.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Mr. Predovich has done an outstanding job compiling innovative and create ways to organize children's programming. She has insight and clarity not often seen in books of this nature. She is obviously an expert who commands the respect of all of those in her field. A must read for anyone who cares about children!

This book surveys the literature and drama produced about and for children and their parents during the Harlem Renaissance, the period associated with the flowering of the arts not only in Harlem but in other urban centers as well. Believing that the "New Negro" would ultimately arise from black youth, W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Langston Hughes, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and other major figures took an impassioned interest in the literary models offered to children.

Smith explores the period's vigorous exchange about the nature and identity of black childhood and uncovers the networks of African American philosophers, community activists, schoolteachers, and literary artists who worked together to transmit black history and culture to the next generation. She also explores how various leaders forged bonds of cultural, economic and aesthetic solidarity even though they often disagreed over popular vs. elite constructions. This process is fascinating to watch, and is amply documented throughout the book with images and excerpts.

The book is lively and readable...not words I frequently associate with such an exhaustive study. I particularly enjoyed the chapter about Carter G. Woodson's publishing house, which issued a dozen children's texts during the 1930's and 1940's. I hope this book finds its way beyond the African American Studies bookshelves, as it deserves to be read by anyone interested in the evolution of American children's literature.

This book is an essential first step in the research of the Choctaw people and culture. Clara Sue Kidwell, herself a Choctaw Indian, has collected some hard-to-find but useful sources in the annotated bibilography

"Cincinnati Ghosts" is for everyone who loves a good ghost story...especially REAL ONES. I've read several fictional ghost stories that spook the daylights out of me and several real life accounts that are interesting but not very spooky. Well, this book combines the first-hand actual accounts WITH all the spine tingling story telling! The end result is one great book. Ms. Laven does an excellent job of giving you all the facts and research but also keeping you on the edge of your seat. It's everything you hope for in a ghost book. Ghost-Hunters all over the nation will want to move to the tri-state area after reading it. I hope there's a sequel! WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE HOME ALONE AT NIGHT!