College and University Books

Reviewed by David Olvera for Reader Views (5/07)

If ever there was a Bible of quotes on the subject of The University of Texas Longhorn's football, "Longhorn Madness" is it. You'll be hard pressed to acquire a more comprehensive group of quotations on UT football as Wilton Sharpe has managed to corral. Sharpe does a good job of avoiding a shotgun approach by arranging his cornucopia of quotes into relevant chapters and themes. Sharpe includes some ancient, old, and new school. From the 1890s (I'm not kidding...) to Darrell Royal on up to Vince Young, Sharpe leaves no stone unturned. He even reaches across the aisles to sworn enemies to get their take on the Burnt Orange phenomenon.

Sharpe could have left it at that and would have pieced together a decent sports book, but he takes it one step further. In between all the pigskin talk he includes short narratives of key historical and legendary events. So in case you're overwhelmed by the Longhorn quotes stampede you can rest your eyes on a quick story here and there. Sharpe also includes nifty rosters of all the UT Championship teams at the end of the book.

"Longhorn Madness" also includes some pictures along the way. Most of the portraits are pretty good for black and white paperback copy, but others leave something to be desired. All in all, the only downside of the book is couple of grainy pictures here and there. The cover is appropriately burnt orange with a great shot of Vince Young running through a pack of Mizzou Tigers.

Now I'd say that this book could be destined to any fan's Lavatory Readers Club, but it has more practical applications. "Longhorn Madness" presents the reader with a great tool for research. Any kid writing about the Longhorns for a school paper or a sports writer looking for some good copy can use the book to their advantage. Sharpe has done a lot of work and people can take advantage of his research. To sum it up, it's a great archive of all things Longhorns from the guys who walked the walked.

College boxing as a national experiment lasted only a few decades. Its most popular and most successful team was coach John Walsh's University of Wisconsin Badgers, and this book is their story. They demonstrated all of boxing's fascinating contradictions, and exemplified the reasons for the college sport's boisterous birth and sudden death. While boxers were the most lionized athletes on campus, Walsh discouraged his students from thinking in terms of pro careers. Despite the fact that boxers enjoyed great camaraderie,even with their opponents, nothing in sport really parallels the personal physical attack of a hard punch to the face. And while boxing, with a blow heard round the college world, brought death to Wisconsin's Charlie Mohr in the ring in 1960, it brought a richer and fuller life to almost every other one of its participants. For some, it turned pretty dismal prospects into an open highway to success and fulfillment, and to all it offered a family of brothers that survived the decisions to pull the plug on boxing after the Mohr tragedy in 1960, and exists to the present day. Doug Moe's dogged resarch has yielded up a tale that paints the sunrise and the sunset of this most intimate of athletic competitions at the college level and, along the way, lays to rest what the Smithsonian Magazine was recently calling the "controversial" dispute concerning whether Mohr's death was really caused by a blow in the ring. All of the men whose memories went into this book are old now, and while they are going down swinging, they are leaving us. Anyone who has ever been captivated by the dizzying mysteries of the sweet science owes Doug Moe a debt for realizing that this story had to be told now if it were going to be told at all, and for telling so well that readers can shut their eyes and feel the excitement of 15,000 fans packing the old Fieldhouse as the house lights go down and two spotlit figures enter the ring.

Carl Bridenbaugh examines three major cultures of the eighteenth-century colonial South. Bridenbaugh examines the individual characters of the Chesapeake, the South Carolina Lowcountry and the Southern Backcountry. A thorough and colorful portrait of life in each culture is offered.

There were multiple cultures in the South. Bridenbaugh examines three Southern societies, and the contrasts between them are illuminating. The book concentrates on developments after the formative seventeenth century, and before the tumult of the Revolution.

Great book and a must have for any fan of Louisville Athletics and fans of NCAA football. Gives great insight in the difficulties the program has gone through and the amazing strides it makes yearly.

Lower Moments in Higher Education tells selected stories of the author's experiences throughout his higher education career. The true stories provide a framework which tactfully leads to the question of ethics related to the story. I liked the way each story had a message. This book is a must read for the novice and seasoned alike. The book would also be a great required reading for higher education students as well as sitting executives

This novel surpasses all Lentricchia's other efforts thus far. Playful, but obsessively serious, this book teaches us more than anything else. For this the professor comes through, as well as my understanding.

This is a remarkably interesting series of science essays (the author calls them 'short stories'). Even if I had not read the back of the book's dust jacket, I would have known that Nigel Calder was a former writer for the ebullient British weekly, "New Scientist." He's got their opinionated, breezy, clear style of writing. "Magic Universe" scintillates. It is easy to understand. The author does not linger overly long on even the most fascinating topics (actually, this brevity is sometimes frustrating).

There are several ways of working through the book. There is the 'spider-web' method as illustrated by the book's end-papers, where all of the subjects are ultimately linked together. For instance, I started onto a subject path with "Volcanic Explosions (where will the next big one be?)" which led to "Hotspots (are there really chimneys deep inside the Earth?)" which pointed to "Plate Motions (what rocky machinery refurbishes the Earth's surface?)" which sent me back to "Extremophiles (creatures that thrive in unexpected places)."

According to the author, his spider's web "celebrates a reunion of the many subdivisions of science that is now in progress..." but I'm getting dizzy flipping back and forth. Let's try an alphabetic read-through for awhile, starting at "Extremophiles" --> "Flood Basalts (can impacting comets set continents in motion?)"--> "Flowering (colourful variations on a theme of genetic pathways)" --> "Forces (a pointer entry)."

Wait a minute, here's an interesting entry about something called the 'Casimir force (the attractive force between two surfaces in a vacuum).' I've never heard of it, even though I'm a faithful cover-to-cover reader of "New Scientist." Where does Casimir's force point? To "Plasma Crystals." What is a Plasma Crystal? Isn't that an oxymoron? Just let me just follow this topic a little further...

Warning: if you like good writing, especially concerning outré, outer-edge-of-science topics, you might not be able to put down "Magic Universe" until you've read every 'short story' in this book. From first-hand experience, the author knows that "thrilling discoveries can tip-toe in, almost unnoticed to begin with."

This book held many thrilling discoveries for me. Consider those plasma crystals. They opened up many new windows in astronomy for me, including a fresh look at the method by which planets form.

Nigel Calder also believes that the surest way to shorten this book's life would be to "report only the consensual opinions of the late 20th century." To drive home this point, read what he has to say about superstrings: "A scandalous fact was not lost on the bystanders. This was the lack of even the smallest shred of direct evidence for the validity of either superstring or M-theory as a description of the real world."

What can a good science writer like the author do with an unproven theory?

Quote Lewis Carroll, of course: "But I was thinking of a plan/ to dye one's whiskers green, /And always use so large a fan /That they could not be seen."

Do superstrings exist? Are they composed of green whiskers? Read, "Magic Universe" and you'll be pondering similar, mind-bending theories.

I came across this book at a library whiledoing a paper for class about the struggle for integration at Ole Miss. This is one library book I wanted to steal.An invaluabe resource to those wanting to read on the history of Mississippi higher education. Along with Nadine Cohodas' The Band Played Dixie, history doesn't get any better or easier to read than this.

Impressive analysis. Conclusions are objective and based on in-depth research. Reuben's work is pointed toward the serious reader and thinker who is concerned with the climate within our educational and cultural institutions. Her work is an historical study that draws attention to the modern imbalance of a society that has asked materialistic science to be a savior while dismissing the role of morality in maintaining boundaries that insure intellectual, emotional and spiritual health. The book is the best of this genre that I have read. Very readable. I strongly recommend it.

My definition of a "keeper" of a non-fiction book is one where I can read the notes like a seperate book; and don't need to read the notes to keep track of what the author has said. This book makes no attempt to find the historical "Malinche." Its focus is on the circumstances and historical knowledge we do have and how that would affect a person in her position.
Chock full of data; it suggested over 20 new books for me to add to my already extensive reading list. in addition, I solved two conundrums that had been nagging me for years and clarified where certain actions had taken place. I found, thanks to the clarity of the text a very important book written during the conquest years that had information I thought was not obtainable.
Camilla Townsends strictly academic approach and care in the use of non-english records deserves a very strong round of applause.