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Indexes Praised and Indexes Censured are extracted from Indexes Reviewed, a regular feature in The Indexer.
These extracts from reviews do not pretend to represent a complete survey of all reviews in journals and newspapers. We offer only a selection from quotations that members have sent in. Our reproduction of comments is not a stamp of approval from the Society of Indexers upon the reviewer’s assessment of an index.
Blackwell Science: Muscles, nerves and movement in human
occupation, by B. Tyldesley and J. I. Grieve (2002, 280 pp, £24.99).
Rev. by Jo Jackson, International Journal of Therapy and
Rehabilitation, 10(4), April 2003.
The final test for a book of this kind is whether it is easy to navigate
by using the index. The index clearly directs the reader to the relevant
sections and is supported by a useful glossary.
Boydell: Letters and diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, ed.
Christopher Fifield (346 pp, £25/$39.95). Rev. by Hilary Finch, BBC
Music Magazine, January 2004.
Fifield’s collection is scrupulously edited . . . there are invaluable
indexes of personalia, letters, works and venues.
Butterworth/Heinemann: Veterinary oncology, by K.A.
Hahn, ed. S.P. Messonier (2002, 318 pp). Rev. by Mary K. Klein,
Veterinary and Comparative Oncology, 1(3): 168.
. . . it is often difficult to find your subject as some items such as
non-osteosarcoma bone tumours in dogs might not intuitively be looked
for under ‘N’ in this alphabetized system. The text, however, is indexed
well and with little difficulty readers should be able to find the
information they are looking for.
Cambridge University Press: Correspondence of Charles
Darwin (vols 11, 12 and 23), ed. Frederick Burkhardt et al.
(1038, 694 and 695 pp, £65, £60 and £65 respectively).
Rev. by Jim Endersby, Times Literary Supplement, 21 November
2004.
The index and extensive footnotes that accompany these volumes also
allow readers to learn more about all kinds of obscure aspects of
Victorian natural history. By starting with the index entries for
‘hothouse’, I found myself immersed for days in the minutiae of how much
a Victorian greenhouse cost to build, where to buy iron ventilators and
similar equipment, how exotic plants had to be packed for a five-hour
cart journey to prevent frost damage, and how the structure of the Bird
of Paradise flower, Strelitzia reginae, proves it to be bird-pollinated
. . .
CIP: Critical survey of poetry, ed. Philip K. Jason
(2002, 8 vols, 5029 pp, $475). Rev. by Mary Ann Carcich, School
Library Journal, April 2003.
Critical Survey provides original critiques by single reviewers .
. . and three indexes: geographical, categorized, subject – all useful
aids to student understanding. The category index is particularly
helpful: students can search by cultural identity, historical periods
and literary movements, and poetic forms and themes. Poets’ names and
poem titles are included in the subject index.
Faber: Collected poems of Ted Hughes, ed. Paul Keegan
(1333 pp, £40). Rev. by Ruth Padel, Financial Times, 20 December
2004.
These 1,333 pages, beautifully collated and indexed, let you track what
Ted Hughes did with his gift, which blazes even from the juvenilia.
Facet Publishing: Metadata applications and management,
ed. G. E. Gorman (2003, 384 pp, £60). Rev. by Olwen Terris,
Multimedia Information & Technology, 30(1), February
2004.
Managing and imposing structure on web resources is a daunting and
exacting task which is inviting worldwide professional scrutiny and
financial investment; for this reviewer, a traditional back-of-the-book
index serves as a quick and efficient road into the debate.
Fourth Estate: How mumbo-jumbo conquered the world: a short
history of modern delusions, by Francis Wheen (338 pp, £16.99). Rev.
by Philip Hensher, The Spectator, 31 January 2004.
Like Francis Wheen’s other books, this one ends in a deliriously funny
index, which is worth the cover price on its own. One entry:
Blair,
Tony: claims descent from Abraham; defends secondary picketing; defends
teaching of creationism; displays coathangers; emotional guy; explores
Third Way; likes chocolate-cake recipe; sneers at market forces; takes
mud-bath in Mexico; venerates Princess Diana; worships management gurus.
Or, on the other side of the political spectrum:
Thatcher, Margaret:
chooses market-minded Archbishop; economic delusions; enjoys ‘electric
baths’; quotes St Francis; quotes St Paul; revives Victorian values;
sides with good against evil; supports terrorism; thinks the
unthinkable.
Best of all, and something which tells you, as they say,
where Wheen is coming from, is an entry for God:
Accepted by Newton;
angered by feminists and gays; appoints American coal-owners; approves
of laissez-faire economics; arrives in America; asked by
Khomeini to cut off foreigners’ hands; believed to have created humans
10,000 years ago; could have made intelligent sponges; doesn’t foresee
Princess Diana’s death; helps vacuum-cleaner saleswoman; interested in
diets; offers investment advice; praised by Enron chairman; produces
first self-help manual. . . .
The enchantingly funny index . . . and the
book itself, make a serious point; anything worth saying should be
susceptible to rational summary. Anything else is deeply suspect.
Rev. by Martin Ince, New Scientist, 27 March 2004.
Francis Wheen’s book has the index of the year. The entry ‘Blair,
Tony: claims descent from Abraham, [page] 165’ gives the flavour.
Harassowitz Verlag (Wiesbaden, Germany): Erwin Panofsky:
Korrespondenz 1937 bis 1949, ed. Dieter Wuttke (2003, 1391 pp,
E180). Rev. by Horst Bredekamp, Süddeutsche Zeitung,
14/15 February 2004.
The editor’s foreword hints at the immense demands an edition of this
type makes. The commentaries leave hardly a single gap, and the index of
names and subjects is a work of art in itself. [Translation by
Michael Robertson, who sent this item.]
Haworth Information Press: aspects of cataloging and
classification, ed. Martin D. Joachim (2003, 604 pp). Rev. by J. H.
Bowman, Library & Information Update, 3(3), March
2004.
Indexes to these Haworth special volumes vary considerably, but this
is one of the good ones, being very full; in fact there is rather more
duplication of entries than one would be entitled to expect. [A good
thing, surely?]
Hutchinson: My life, by Bill Clinton (2004, 1024 pp,
£25). Rev. by Boyd Tonkin, Independent, 2 July 2004.
So here’s some advice for public figures who would like their books
to be read on publication, rather than just toted and cited. Remember to
forget a proper index. Future scholars and students will curse you, with
good reason. But your central arguments will run a lower risk of being
drowned out by the sound of a legion of page-riffling pundits as they
look up – let us say – ‘Lewinsky, Monica’, and take it from there. My
Life, by the way, contains a truly magnificent index: 38 exemplary
pages, with all the major topics minutely subdivided as well.
Iowa State Press: Prasse’s veterinary laboratory medicine:
clinical pathology (4th edn) (2003, 473 pp, $49.99). Rev. by Julia
E. Stickle, Veterinary Clinical Pathology, 32(4),
2003.
For optimal value as a reference, an extensive index for rapid
location of information is beneficial. The index of this 4th edition,
expanded by more than 250%, along with the basic outline format bodes
well for its future value as a quick source of information for the
practicing veterinarian.
Iowa State Press: Pathology of pet and aviary birds, by
R. E. Schmidt, D. R. Reavill and D. N. Phalen (2003, 234 pp, $149.99). Rev.
in Veterinary Pathology, 41, 199–200, 2004.
The index is very thorough, including broader subjects such as
infectious diseases as well as specific diseases and pathogens.
Methodist Conference 2003, Conference Arrangements Committee:
Methodism in Wales: a short history of the Wesley tradition, ed.
Lionel Madden (2003, 137 pp, £6). Rev. in Methodist Recorder, 29
January 2004.
. . . the 137-page book also has a good index . . .
Microsoft Press: Easy Web graphics, by Julie Adair King
(2001, 279 pp, $19.99). Rev. by Ginny Hudak-David, Technical
Communication, 50(4), November 2003.
Her expertise shows
in this book, with its nicely done index (including hot pink
cross-references!).
Oxford University Press: Aulus Gellius: an Antonine scholar
and his achievements (revised edn) (460 pp, £70). Rev. by Jane
Lightfoot, Times Literary Supplement, 16 April 2004.
There are (in response to complaints from the first reviewers) new
indices [sic] of Greek and Latin words, and of passages cited
from Gellius and other authors; and, finally, the subject index is much
improved, not least because Oxford University Press have used their
customary system of subheadings, thus avoiding a rebarbative list of 101
undifferentiated entries on M. Terentius Varro. [Why does the
reviewer apparently assume that OUP is alone in using
subheadings?]
Palgrave Macmillan: Women
writing modern fiction: a passion for ideas,
by Janice Rossen (2003, 193 pp, £45). Rev. by Hazel K. Bell,
Green Leaves (journal of the Barbara Pym Society), September
2004.
All
authors and novels cited, and concepts, are traceable through the
excellent index (by Janey Fisher) . . . . I feel sure that Pym would have
approved the book and the index.
University
of California Press: Becoming
Marianne Moore: the early poems,
1907–1924, ed. Robin G. Schulze (504 pp, $50).
Rev. by Fiona
Green, Times Literary Supplement,
23 January 2004.
One
of the joys of a full facsimile of Observations [included in this volume]
is the index Moore prepared for her book. If you use it in the
ordinary way to find a particular poem, you will meet some curiosities: not
only such conventional reversals as ‘FISH, THE’, but ‘COUSINS,
MY APISH’ and ‘GARDENING, INJUDICIOUS’. This
is an index of subjects as well as titles, and you can use it to navigate
the poems, following up references to ‘Texas’ or ‘toadyism’. Better
still, read from top to bottom the index almost seems a poem
itself, a catalogue equivalent in quirkiness and character to Moore’s
verse. Just as alphabetical sequence will bring about unforeseen
juxtapositions – Tolstoy, torso, tortoise, trivial (of marriage
or parakeets), Trollope, trousers, truths – so in Moore’s verse
unexpected felicities issue from the marriages between different
species of language.
Wiltshire Buildings Record: Wiltshire
town houses 1500–1900, by Pamela
L. Slocombe (2001, 112 pp, £6). Rev. by Robert Currey and
Bill Keir, Vernacular Architecture, 33, 2002.
It will be of immense value, not only to those studying buildings in
Wiltshire, but also to others looking for parallels for features in
townhouses elsewhere. To aid such comparative work, there is an
admirably thorough index which covers the whole series of Wiltshire
Records publications . . .
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