To highlight the wide range of publications reviewed in Choice, each month Choice editors feature some noteworthy reviews from the current issue. 
 
Baggott, Jim.  Higgs: the invention and discovery of the ‘god particle’.  Oxford, 2012.  277p bibl index ISBN 0-19-960349-9, $24.95; ISBN 9780199603497, $24.95.
50-4495  QC793   MARC
 
This is one of the first books of many, no doubt, seeking to explain the significance of the discovery of the Higgs boson, nicknamed the “God particle.” Baggott, a well-known science writer, relates in ten short, readable chapters the history of this fundamental physics mystery, the quest to find the source of mass. The book attempts to explain to laypersons how the Higgs boson became the focus of interest through the acceptance of the standard model of the structure of the atom. It delves into the history of experimental efforts in the US and the European Union, with the latter, at the Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN), prevailing in an experimental coup in the summer of 2012. The work is a good mix of history and physics related to this monumental effort and discovery. It will appeal more to audiences that have some background knowledge of basic physics. Nonetheless, the story is exciting and readable, comparable to the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity some decades ago. The book includes useful diagrams, some pictures, and very few equations. The glossary and notes are welcome additions to readers unfamiliar with the terminology and those who wish to further explore the topic. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; informed general readers. — N. Sadanand, Central Connecticut State University 
 
Baumol, William J.  The cost disease: why computers get cheaper and health care doesn’t, by William J. Baumol with David de Ferranti et al.  Yale, 2012.  249p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780300179286, $30.00.
50-4547  HB235   MARC
 
About 50 years ago, economist Baumol coined the term “cost disease” (others subsequently labeled it eponymously the “Baumol effect”): the tendency of costs in certain sectors, mainly personal services, to rise disproportionately because productivity in these “handicraft” areas is stagnant. Baumol (New York Univ.) now applies his theory and its implications, for all practical purposes, to health care. (Education and other services are mentioned, but health care gets more than the lion’s share of the treatment.) The good news, according to Baumol, is that progressive sectors churn enough purchasing power for people to be able to afford rising health care bills; the bad news is that he sees these other sectors, with sizable productivity gains and lower costs, as also making weaponry and environmental “bads” increasingly affordable, and thus posing significant threats to human welfare. This is a valuable, thought-provoking, and well-written volume. Yet one also has the feeling of something being not quite right. Readers and public policy officials would be better served had Baumol applied the “cost disease” to lawyers’ and therapists’ prices; not limited it to a sector with significant public financing; and eased up on the not-so-subtle ideological undertones. Ample notes and references. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.
— A. R. Sanderson, University of Chicago

Brubeck Oral History Project.  Internet Resource.
50-4342

http://www.pacific.edu/Library/Find/Holt-Atherton-Special-Collections/Digital-Collections/Brubeck-Oral-History-Project.html 
[Visited Jan’13] This is an invaluable primary source on the life and career of American jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck (1920-2012). The collection consists of 35 excerpts, from more than five hours of footage, of Brubeck, along with his wife Iola Brubeck, being interviewed on a range of topics. These topics include their performances, memories of other musicians, music theory, his compositions, and jazz in general. Brubeck discusses these topics in depth and illustrates many of his points at the piano. The entire interview is housed in the Brubeck Institution at the University of the Pacific, Brubeck’s alma mater. The sound and picture quality of the videos is good; the interview is well conducted and paced; each excerpt is accompanied by a transcript. Descriptions are hyperlinked for cross-searching among all the digital collections available online from the Holt-Atherton Special Collections, but keyword searching is far more profitable. In addition, there are thousands of audio and video materials, photographs, scores, and papers in the Brubeck collection and multiple related collections, including those of performers in Brubeck’s quartet and octet. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. — M. O’Brien, Binghamton University 

Burden, Ernest.  Illustrated dictionary of architecture.  3rd ed.  McGraw-Hill, 2012.  564p afp ISBN 0071772936 pbk, $60.00; ISBN 9780071772938 pbk, $60.00.
50-4177  NA31  2011-534273   MARC
 
This revised and expanded edition of a standard lexicon (2nd ed., 2002; 1st ed., CH, Oct’98, 36-0672) contains twice the number of new entries as the last edition, along with some definitions that are completely rewritten. A modest redesign makes for some improvement in the layout. Published in full color for the first time, this dictionary also features 1,000 more images than the second edition and twice as many as the first. Architect Burden explains that the images add another level of quality to his definitions by illustrating the position of elements within their structures. The photographic images (though uncaptioned) also serve to illustrate major design variations, both historical and contemporary. Burden has eliminated the index, instead integrating cross-references throughout; to find “Gable roof,” readers are now directed to the “Roof” section. Also included are many newer concepts related to environmentalism and sustainability (e.g., “Agenda 21”). This is an economically designed but surprisingly comprehensive dictionary. It encompasses famous buildings, styles, and architects’ biographies, along with materials and individual architectural elements. Chock-full, this all-in-one lexicon will be the basic reference book of choice for both architects and students. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-level undergraduates through professionals/practitioners.
— L. C. Duhon, The University of Toledo
  
Cantor, Paul A.  The invisible hand in popular culture: liberty vs. authority in American film and TV.  University Press of Kentucky, 2012.  461p index afp; ISBN 9780813140827, $35.00; ISBN 9780813140834 e-book, $35.00.
50-4332  PN1995  2012-29585 CIP
 
This sweeping, inclusive survey of American popular culture in the 20th and 21st centuries is a masterwork. Cantor (English, Univ. of Virginia) touches on everything from Edgar G. Ulmer’s noir films of the 1930s-40s to Tim Burton’s film Mars Attacks!, the foul-mouthed denizens of the popular animated TV show South Park, John Ford’s classic film The Searchers, the television series Have Gun, Will Travel as a predecessor to Star Trek (Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry served as a writer on Have Gun), The X-Files, and a great more besides. Cantor considers how Americans embrace a can-do, self-reliant ethos, yet also create, cherish, and enshrine larger political systems that may infringe on the personal freedom that comes with independent action. How is this conflict played out on the screens of popular culture, from cartoons, television series, and elsewhere, contrasted with the writings of such philosophers as Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville? Cantor offers thoughtful readings, detailed analyses of the works in question, and an authoritative overview of the ways in which pop and classical culture mesh to create the fabric of contemporary American consciousness. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. — W. W. Dixon, University of Nebraska—Lincoln 
 
Chevrier, Marie Isabelle.  Arms control policy: a guide to the issues.  Praeger, 2012.  204p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780275994570, $48.00; ISBN 9781567207118 e-book, contact publisher for price.
50-4675  JZ5625  2012-16709 CIP
 
Chevrier (Rutgers Univ., Camden) provides an excellent analytical survey of crucial areas of arms control. Most importantly, the work focuses on the implementation of the agreements rather than the negotiations that led to them. The author selects four areas for study: US-Soviet (and Russian) nuclear weapons agreements; multilateral nuclear weapon agreements; multilateral chemical and biological weapons agreements; and multilateral agreements that banned land mines and cluster munitions. The choice of case studies is deliberate. The approach takes the reader through an evolution of arms control since the 1940s and the ways the end of the Cold War has changed the agenda, the process, and the politics of implementation. Chevrier reaches several important conclusions regarding the future of arms control. First, the interplay of agreements is a neglected aspect of arms control. Lessons learned from negotiation and implementation of one agreement play a large role in future agreements. Second, the advance of technology, as both a problem and solution for future agreements, needs further study. Third, and most important, the range of actors in arms control has changed. What once was mainly a nation-state process has expanded to include the private sector and civil society. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.
— W. W. Newmann, Virginia Commonwealth University  
 
Genovese, Michael A.  A presidential nation: causes, consequences, and cures.  Westview, 2013.  238p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780813347219 pbk, $27.00; ISBN 9780813347226 e-book, contact publisher for price.
50-4707  JK516  2012-2584 CIP
 
The American president is sometimes considered “the most powerful man on earth.” Reading Article II of the Constitution would leave one puzzled; it invests relatively few powers in the executive. The framers of the Constitution, most of them, were instinctively suspicious of executive power, seeking to create an office that was a handmaiden to the legislative branch. In this concise book by one of the leading presidential scholars in the country, readers learn how the US became a “presidential nation,” a country whose politics are principally considered “presidential” politics. Genovese (Loyola Marymount Univ.) describes the rise of the presidency pre-Civil War, and the triumph of the office in the post-Civil War era. He then describes arguments over presidential supremacy in the wake of September 11, neatly and usefully comparing the unitary theory of the executive that was promoted by acolytes in the Bush administration against more traditional interpretations of presidential power. Genovese offers suggestions for reforming the presidency and considers the presidency in the context of the American experience with representative government. Included readings from primary sources increase the appeal for undergraduate courses on the presidency, and for readers generally interested in US politics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and undergraduates, all levels. — S. Q. Kelly, California State University Channel Islands 
 
Gibson, James L.  Electing judges: the surprising effects of campaigning on judicial legitimacy.  Chicago, 2012.  226p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780226291079, $85.00; ISBN 9780226291086 pbk, $27.50.
50-4708  KF8776  2012-1904 CIP
 
Gibson (Washington Univ.) has written a very intriguing book about the value of judicial elections in US politics at the state level. His most beneficial contribution is providing more empirical evidence to the hotly contested debate regarding these elections. Many people have very strong opinions about whether independence, impartiality, and legitimacy are truly available for the many judges who are selected in that manner. The author shows that these elections may not be as problematic as their opponents argue. The other valuable contribution is the comparison between judicial and legislative elections because more attention needs to be paid to low-salience elections in order to understand what, if anything, makes judicial elections different. The book is clearly not targeted for everyone because it is filled with complex wording, and graduate study is probably necessary to comprehend the advanced statistics used to draw conclusions. The author tries to explain everything more simplistically, which is commendable, but this also leads to periodic repetition. Overall, it is an outstanding book for students of judicial politics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections. — B. W. Monroe, Prairie View A&M University 
 
Gutjahr, Paul C.  The Book of Mormon: a biography.  Princeton, 2012.  255p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780691144801, $24.95.
50-4388  BX8627  2011-44063 CIP
 
Gutjahr’s contribution to the “Lives of Great Religious Books” series is a concise and eminently teachable history of the most important American-made world scripture. In a welcome departure from most such accounts, Gutjahr (Indiana Univ.) gives as much space to the Book of Mormon’s 20th-century life as he does to its ancient or 19th-century origins, presenting in a compact, readable form a great deal of relatively recent history about its cultural and religious significance. The recent life of the Book of Mormon includes the printing of 350,000 copies per month by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a dizzying number of languages. That recent history also includes the visual adaptation of the Book of Mormon’s story of pre-Columbian inhabitants of the New World in paintings, films, and even comic books, as well as attempts by believers to use archaeology and DNA analysis to prove the historicity of that story (attempts that Gutjahr addresses with care and fairness). Gutjahr’s coverage of this material in one small volume will be a boon to teachers and students. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. — S. Perry, University of Washington 
 
Kerrigan, William.  Johnny Appleseed and the American orchard: a cultural history.  Johns Hopkins, 2012.  231p index afp; ISBN 9781421407289, $50.00; ISBN 9781421407296 pbk, $25.00.
50-4430  SB63  2012-12916 CIP
 
The legend of Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman, 1774-1845) is a fundamental component of American folklore. Disney created a cartoon that captured the legend in caricature in 1948. By contrast, Kerrigan (Muskingum Univ.) provides a book that brings reality to the myth(s) and, in doing so, paints a compelling picture of the social dynamics of the period both prior to and during John Chapman’s life. Readers will feel transported back to those days, as Kerrigan describes the religious, geographic, and economic environment. Like quality biography, this is good history, with a well-told story and excellent scholarship. Chapman was dedicated to providing seedling apples for fermented cider for settlers at the front edge of the expanding US territories of the 18th and 19th centuries, the present regions of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Kerrigan debunks many Chapman myths, including his vegetarianism, unwillingness to hunt or kill animals, or commitment to pacifism. This book takes away the dross of mythology, but replaces it with the realistic humanity of a most fascinating, unique American. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic and general audiences, all levels. — G. S. Howell, emeritus, Michigan State University 
 
Key, Stephen.  One simple idea for startups and entrepreneurs: live your dreams and create your own profitable company.  McGraw-Hill, 2012.  234p index afp; ISBN 9780071800440, $22.00; ISBN 9780071800457 e-book, contact publisher for price.
50-4535  HD62  2012-32961  MARC
 
While the arc of this informative work follows the usual stages of entrepreneurial business development, the emphasis on simple but rigorous concept testing and bootstrapping sets it apart as an invaluable, commonsense resource. Key (CEO, InventRight, and a product development expert) correctly notes that we are living in a golden age of innovation. Innovation can either be an invention or a new application of an existing invention, brought to fruition through a process of constant product simplification, testing, and market testing/analytics. The author further underlines the importance of a flexible and robust dialogue with the market to guide the innovation and piloting/market test processes. While none of this is exactly new, Key offers a clear-voiced, thoughtful guide through the entrepreneurial process. He provides case studies and advice from other successful entrepreneurs to clarify and reinforce his arguments and presentation. This text is an easy, important read for practitioner and academic alike, given the rapidly accelerating cycle of innovation and entrepreneurial development occurring today. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Aspiring entrepreneurs and anyone interested in small business development. — S. A. Schulman, CUNY Baruch College 
 
Morton, Lisa.  Trick or treat: a history of Halloween.  Reaktion Books, 2012.  229p bibl index; ISBN 9781780230474, $29.00.
50-4587  GT4965   MARC
 
Morton offers the first comprehensive history of the “misunderstood festival” of Halloween. She playfully sets the record straight on the origins of Halloween, explores its migration from the Old World to the New and back again, discusses the role of consumer culture in establishing supposedly ancient traditions, and concludes with an observation that Halloween’s ever-changing nature has allowed it to be adapted for countless purposes around the globe. Using a wide variety of written and visual sources, Morton sees Halloween as a lens through which to look at global history. Key topics include mass production (candy corn); gender studies (sexy, pin-up style costumes for women that appeared during WW II); race (the Ku Klux Klan’s 1921 insistence before Congress that their white uniforms were innocent, Halloween-like costumes); and global appropriation of traditions (the Japanese integration of “cosplay”–“costume play”–into the holiday). This book is an excellent example of the scholarship on holidays as a means of accessing many facets of history (see Joe Perry, Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History, 2010). Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. — B. Blessing, University of Vienna 
 
Pantsov, Alexander V.  Mao: the real story, by Alexander V. Pantsov with Steven I. Levine.  Simon & Schuster, 2012.  755p bibl index; ISBN 9781451654479, $35.00.
50-4605  DS778  2011-53113 CIP
 
This major new biography of Mao by Pantsov (a Russian émigré professor at Capital Univ. in Columbus) and Levine (a China expert at the Univ. of Montana) is based on access to extensive Russian archives (15 volumes in Mao’s dossier) and on accounts recently published. It relates in detail how Mao joined the Communist Party and rose to his leadership in China. The authors make sensible judgments on Mao’s achievements and crimes. The new materials from archives improve understanding of Mao’s constructive relationship with Stalin and the Soviet Union. Like previous biographers, Pantsov and Levine continue the trend of displaying Mao’s ruthlessness, but they also distinguish their work from Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story (CH, Sep’06, 44-0489) by conveying a balanced image of Mao’s complex personality as revealed by the contradictions in his beliefs and actions. As one of the most important China books of recent years, this will be of interest to biographers of Chinese leaders and to students and scholars of China studies and political science specialists in general. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries.
— X. Li, York College of Pennsylvania 
 
Raitiere, Martin N.  The complicity of friends: how George Eliot, G. H. Lewes, and John Hughlings-Jackson encoded Herbert Spencer’s secret.  Bucknell, 2012.  383p bibl index afp; ISBN 9781611484182, $95.00; ISBN 9781611484199 e-book, $94.99.
50-4300  PR4682  2012-30762 CIP
 
In this groundbreaking work, Raitiere (a practicing physician with a PhD in English literature) argues that the eminent Victorian philosopher Herbert Spencer suffered from a debilitating psychiatric illness but that his condition was known only to a few. This secret was betrayed in coded fashion by one of his closest friends, George Eliot, in her novella The Lifted Veil and to some extent in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. Eliot was advised and counseled by her partner, George Henry Lewes, “who had developed a serious interest in neuropsychiatric illness” partly through his friendship with Spencer. The fourth person in Raitiere’s account, Hughlings-Jackson, was a brilliant neurologist. Raitiere provides a detailed account of the work of all four, arguing that “Spencer’s illness functions as the nidus round which George Eliot, Lewes, and Hughlings-Jackson organized certain of their key works.” Providing a thorough examination of the writings of each and areas of their work hitherto neglected or ignored, the book is truly interdisciplinary and one of the most fascinating (albeit dense) studies to emerge for many decades on the interconnections between Victorian literature, psychology, and allied areas. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. — W. Baker, Northern Illinois University 
 
Safko, Lon.  The social media bible: tactics, tools & strategies for business success.  3rd ed.  Wiley, 2012.  622p index ISBN 1118269748 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9781118269749 pbk, $29.95.
50-4540  HF5415  2012-418217 MARC
 
As in earlier editions of The Social Media Bible (1st ed., CH, Sep’09, 47-0374), Safko provides readers with a tool kit for incorporating social media into corporate marketing. Basic and advanced concepts are defined in the first section of the book along with instructions and guidelines for utilizing specific media tools such as web pages, Internet forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and virtual worlds. Throughout, discussion of each social media tool focuses on how it is used and why it is successful. This edition includes a completely new “Strategy” section outlining five steps for successfully integrating social media with conventional media marketing. Decision makers are encouraged to calculate return on investment (ROI) for current conventional marketing strategies and compare that to future ROI for social media marketing. Each chapter includes a summary and action points designed to assist readers in immediately developing social media. Supplemental vodcasts (video podcasts) by the author are available via QR codes located at the beginning of each chapter or at http://www.theSocialMediaBible.com/ after registering for a free account. While the sheer size of the volume (600-plus pages) may intimidate some, this work is a good beginning point for those new to social media in a business environment. Summing Up: Recommended. All collections and readership levels. — R. J. Erlandson, University of Nebraska Omaha 

Shelton, Jason E.  Blacks and whites in Christian America: how racial discrimination shapes religious convictions, by Jason E. Shelton and Michael O. Emerson.  New York University, 2012.  279p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780814722756, $85.00; ISBN 9780814722763 pbk, $28.00.
50-4741  BR563  2012-16651 CIP
 
Sociologists Shelton (Univ. of Texas, Arlington) and Emerson (Rice Univ.) offer a critical sociological perspective on religion and racialization in the US. The complexity of this subject matter is borne out in the fact that all “Christians” follow a religion supposedly based on love for one’s fellow man (and woman), but rarely has this been a reality, due to the persistence of racism in the Christian church. Moreover, the writers provide viable empirical data to strengthen their perspective that historical forms of racism have had, for example, a significant impact on how African Americans go about their daily prayers. At bottom, blacks and whites view Christianity in very dissimilar ways, and this has roots clearly in the way both communities have experienced life in the US. The history of racial oppression obviously has tentacles in all institutions, but, sadly, it has been ubiquitous in Christian circles. This book will prove to be required reading for those that seek to comprehend the nuances in why religion and “race” have historically created and shaped an outcome that now distinguishes different forms of Christianity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates, graduates, researchers, and faculty. — M. Christian, Lehman College 
 
Silver, Nate.  The signal and the noise: why most predictions fail–but some don’t.  Penguin, 2012.  534p index; ISBN 9781594204111, $27.95.
50-4405  CB158  2012-27308 CIP
 
This lively, informative, multivalent romp through the history of data accumulation and its uses, leading to today’s refined ability to predict the outcome of a future event with considerable accuracy, appeared in the closing months of the 2012 presidential election campaign. During the campaign, statistician/blogger Silver (The New York Times FiveThirtyEight), in articles and interviews, proffered increasingly confident opinions about its outcome, opinions at odds with those of most of the pundits, poll takers, and statisticians examining the same data. His vindication by the actual results of the election lends his book that much more interest. Though it does not trace new ground, its auspicious message is, in an era of bigger and bigger “Big Data,” that it is possible, with objective judgment and sophisticated statistical tools, to make ever more reliable predictions on which the future of the species and the security of the country may depend. Silver pays particular homage to the well-known Bayes’s theorem as fundamental to the proper application of statistical theory to actual situations. Individual chapters deal with the 2008 financial meltdown, earthquakes, baseball, chess, poker, the weather, climate change, and terrorism. Abundant endnotes and references. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic and general audiences, all levels. — M. Schiff, CUNY College of Staten Island 
 
Stooke, Philip J.  The international atlas of Mars exploration: the first five decades: v.1: 1953 to 2003.  Cambridge, 2012.  359p bibl index ISBN 0-521-76553-6, $140.00; ISBN 9780521765534, $140.00.
50-4190  G1000  2012-7339 CIP
 
This is the golden age for Mars exploration. Stooke (Univ. of Western Ontario), a cartographer and imaging expert, has sifted through thousands of historical documents, images, and cartographic data from the world’s space agencies to assemble the single most comprehensive visual atlas of the Red Planet available–at least to the general public. Here readers will find, chronologically laid out, the history of Mars exploration from roughly 1953 to 2003. Each mission is presented in story form, richly illustrated with carefully selected maps and annotated black-and-white images. The activities conducted by each flyby, orbiter, or lander are presented in convenient chronological tables. Landing sites and the routes explored by various surface rovers are mapped in exquisite detail. Ground-based and Hubble Space Telescope studies of Mars, as well as spacecraft investigations of its moons, Phobos and Deimos, are also included. The atlas even documents missions that were planned but never launched. A final section details current plans for human visits to Mars. This is without question the definitive reference work on Mars exploration. It is a must for anyone interested in the planet–from laypersons to practicing planetary scientists. If Mars had its own family scrapbook, this would be it. This reviewer can hardly wait for volume 2. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. — T. D. Oswalt, Florida Institute of Technology     

© American Library Association. Contact [email protected] for permission to reproduce or redistribute.