Book Shelf
Penn State Intercom......September 19, 2002

Stephen Beckerman, associate professor of anthropology.
Cultures of Multiple Fathers: The Theory and Practice of Partible Paternity in Lowland South America, University of Florida Press.

Beckerman and Paul Valentine edited this collection of 14 essays dealing with the phenomenon of partible paternity -- the belief, widespread in lowland South America, that a child can have more than one biological father. Partible paternity is an ethnographic finding that has major implications for thinking about human evolution and sex differences.

Randall A. Fegley, lecturer in history at Penn State Berks.
The Golden Spurs of Kortrijk: How the Knights of France Fell to the Foot Soldiers of Flanders in 1302, McFarland and Co. Inc.

Fegley's book is the first major English-language study of the historic 14th century battle between the French and the Flemish, a conflict whose repercussions linger in modern Belgium. It analyzes the battle that ensued in 1302, when the French cavalry faced the Flemish soldiers of the foot at Kortrijk (Courtrai). It explores the battle's origins, consequences, and legacy; and examines the lives of the inhabitants of Flanders.

Randall E. Newnham, assistant professor of political science at Penn State Berks.
Deutsche Mark Diplomacy: Positive Economic Sanctions in German-Russian Relations, Penn State University Press.

Deutsche Mark Diplomacy draws support for its theoretical arguments from a careful study of Germany's efforts to gain political leverage over Russia via economic means from 1870 into the 1990s. Focusing on two major powers over a long period, during which regimes changed and issues varied, Newnham finds strong evidence to show that positive forms of linkage such as foreign aid and trade or credit incentives are more effective than negative types such as embargoes. This book expands understanding of the role played by economic sanctions in international politics at the same time that it offers a more systematic way of explaining German foreign policy.

Donna Peuquet, professor of geography.
Representations of Space and Time, Guilford Press.

This book examines how spatio-temporal knowledge can be represented in a manner that not only is accurate and coherent, but also makes intuitive sense to the end user. Concepts from a range of disciplines, including geography, computer science, cognitive psychology and philosophy, are integrated to explore the processes by which people acquire, represent and utilize spatio-temporal knowledge. Arguing that the human user and the computer must be viewed as interrelated components of a single system, the book provides principles and recommendations for improving the design of geographic information systems and other geospatial modeling tools.

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