Book Shelf
Penn State Intercom......August 8, 2002

John W. Bagby, professor of business law.
• e-Commerce Law: Issues for Business, published by West Publishing Co.
This book integrates traditional law with the emerging law of cyberspace to provide a perspective to help readers see how and why business decision-makers may seek legal assistance before their transactions become irrevocably fixed or their costly actions become irreversible.
• The Legal and Regulatory Environment of e-Business: Law for the Converging Economy, published by West Publishing Co. Co-authored with F. William McCarty of Western Michigan University, the book integrates both e-commerce and traditional legal environment issues, serving as a bridge between the two by covering the legal environment of business and its extension into e-commerce.

Stephen Beckerman, associate professor of anthropology.
Cultures of Multiple Fathers: The theory and practice of partible paternity in lowland South America, published by the University of Florida Press.
The book contains 13 chapters dealing with the phenomenon of partible paternity, a system of ideology and practice widespread in aboriginal South America, in which it is believed that every man who has sex with a woman around the time she gets pregnant, or at any time during her pregnancy, contributes to the development of the fetus. Thus children are believed to have more than one biological father. Beckerman co-edited the book with Penn State alumnus Paul Valentine, now an associate lecturer at the University of East London. They co-authored the introduction, in which they underline the challenge that partible paternity poses for the standard model of the evolution of the human family. Each of the 13 subsequent chapters, by North American, South American and European authors, examines the manifestation of partible paternity in a particular aboriginal society in South America studied by that anthropologist. The book makes the case that this "exotic" view of conception and fetal development informs a range of long-term practices in marriage and raising children that are unanticipated by standard Western thinking.

Barbara Cantalupo, associate professor of English at Penn State Lehigh Valley.
Emma Wolf's novel Other Things Being Equal, published by Wayne State University Press.
Cantalupo edited this re-issue of Emma Wolf's novel, which was first published in 1892 and revised in 1916. The book includes a substantial introduction by Cantalupo in which she re-introduces Wolf and analyzes the social and cultural contexts for her novel.

Priscilla Ferguson Clement, professor of history at Penn State Delaware County.
Boyhood in America: An Encyclopedia (two volumes), published in 2001 by ABC/ CLIO as part of The American Family series.
Ferguson and Jacqueline S. Reinier, professor emerita of history at California State University-Sacramento, co-edited this book, which includes nearly 150 entries from many scholars throughout the country. The 767-page book picks up with topics that date back as far as the 17th century and follows the development of boys in America through the present day.

Robert R. Edwards, distinguished professor of English and comparative literature and fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities.
Chaucer and Boccaccio: Antiquity and Modernity, published by Palgrave/Macmillan.
Edwards' book examines how Chaucer rewrites Boccaccio's narratives in the 1380s and 1390s. Chaucer's revisions explore the particular view of the ancient world that lay behind medieval institutions such as chivalry and provided models of conduct and identity. Like Boccaccio's Decameron, the Canterbury Tales reflect the emergence of modernity, but their portrayal is ambivalent and tempered by a nostalgia for earlier medieval social forms.

Richard Fitzsimmons, Penn State Worthington Scranton director of the library/professor.
Censorship in Russia: History and Actuality, published by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Fitzsimmons is the author of a 17-page article, "Censorship, Intellectual Freedom, Librarianship and the Democratic State," which is published in the book. The book includes the work of 21 authors, who represent prestigious institutions from the United States and abroad.

Henry Gerhold, forest genetics professor.
Our Heritage of Community Trees, Pennsylvania Urban and Community Forestry Council, Mechanicsburg.
Gerhold and Stacy Frank, a former graduate student, teamed up on the 70-page volume that includes historical scenes of trees in communities.

Laurie Grobman, assistant professor of English at Penn State Berks.
Teaching at the Crossroads, published by Aunt Lute Books.
Grobman offers a pedagogy that is designed to counter the kinds of omissions and distortions often unwittingly created when literature by women of color is included in the curriculum. The "crossroads" model developed here encourages teachers to approach these texts from multiple perspectives, connecting them to a wide range of cultural, social, political and literary contexts. The book is designed to place texts by women of color in the center of the curriculum, not just in classes specifically designated "ethnic" or "women's" literature, but in all U.S. literature classes, in both university and high school settings.

Maurie Caitlin Kelly, senior research assistant at the Environmental Resources Research Institute and coordinator/state geographic information systems librarian for the state geospatial data clearinghouse, Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access.
Making the Grade: Academic Libraries and Student Success, published by the Association of College and Research Libraries of the American Library Association.
The book, which was co-edited by Andrea Kross, presents analyses that look at the many factors that can impact student success, such as technological capability, diversity and information literacy. The importance of libraries' partnership with other members of the higher education community in working toward a common goal of student success is examined.

Sridhar Komarneni, professor of clay mineralogy in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and Materials Research Institute.
Nanophase and Nanocomposite Materials IV, published by the Materials Research Society.
Komarneni is the lead co-editor of the book along with John C. Parker, CirQon Technologies Corp., Richard A. Vaia, Air Force Research Laboratory, G. Q. Lu, University of Queensland, and Jun-Ichi Matsushita, Tokai university. A total of 86 papers on various aspects of nanophase and nanocomposite materials have been published in this volume. These are some of the papers that were presented at the 2001 fall meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston.

Jeremy F. Plant, professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg.
Western Maryland Trackside, published by Morning Sun Books.
The 128-page hardcover book, co-authored with George M. Leilich, chronicles the last years of the Western Maryland Railroad through more than 200 color photographs taken by Leilich, its vice president-operations. The book is part of an ongoing series documenting American railroading through the eyes of pioneer color photographers.

Thomas Rogers, professor emeritus of English.
Jerry Engels, published by Xlibris Corp.
Jerry Engels is the story of a young man in search of love. Set in the fraternity world at Penn State in 1951, the story follows the uncertainties and complexities of a young man more interested in love than academics or the continuing Korean War.

William J. Rothwell, professor of human resource development in the Department of Adult Education, Instructional Systems and Work-force Education and Development.
Building Effective Technical Training: How to Develop Hard Skills Within Organization, published by Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
This 351-page hardcover book, which includes a CD-ROM, is a hands-on guide for new and veteran trainers. Rothwell and co-author Joseph A. Benkowski from the University of Wisconsin include illustrative, real-life examples of techniques that can be applied to technical-training sessions. The book offers a blueprint for creating a technical-training strategic plan and shows how to identify key technical-training management players and their responsibilities.

Jorge Reina Schement, professor of telecommunications and co-director of the Institute for Information Policy.
Encyclopedia of Communication and Information (three volumes), published by MacMillan, Reference USA.
Schement was editor in chief of the encyclopedia, which includes 281 original articles that address all aspects of communications from Benjamin Franklin to the V-chip. Each article is signed by the author and includes a list of articles, books or Web sites for additional information. The encyclopedia features concise biographies of notable pioneers, theorists and entrepreneurs, in-depth study of information management issues; strong coverage of communication technologies; and career information for many different fields.

Jennifer Parker Talwar, assistant professor of sociology at Penn State Lehigh Valley.
Fast Food, Fast Track: Immigrants, Big Business and the American Dream, published by Westview Press.
The book addresses how the fast-food industry works with today's new generation of order-takers, burger-flippers and basket-fryers who are newly arrived immigrants. For four years, Talwar went behind the counter and listened to immigrant fast-food workers in New York City's ethnic communities. They talked about balancing their low-paying jobs and monotonous daily reality with keeping the faith that these very jobs could be the first step on the path to the American Dream. Talwar shows that contrary to those arguing that the fast-food industry only represents an increasing homogenization of the American work force, fast-food chains in immigrant communities must and do adapt to their surroundings. Rather than focusing on how ethnic communities become relatively sealed off from the larger economy, Talwar explores the interplay between globalizing mainstream forces like fast-food chains and the immigrant communities of the largest and most diverse cities.

Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky, professor of kinesiology and director of the Biomechanics Laboratory
Kinetics of Human Motion, published by Human Kinetics, Champaign, Ill.
Zatsiorsky authored this 653-page hardcover book that is a sequel and companion to the previously published Kinematics of Human Motion (1998). The book is written for graduate students; the readers are expected to have grounding in Newtonian mechanics, calculus and matrix algebra. Kinetics is the branch of mechanics dealing with the forces and their effects on the bodies, namely the bodies at rest (statics) and bodies in motion (dynamics). Chapters cover the interaction of the human body with the immediate environment; the statics of the kinematic chains; the transformation analysis; the equilibrium of kinematic chains and related topics, including joint stiffness; the mass-inertial characteristics of the human body; the dynamics of human motion, specifically with the inverse problem of dynamics; and the mechanical work and energy in human motion.

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