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.

Aurum: A social history of English cricket, by Derek Birley (£9.99). Rev. by Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian, 26 July 2003.
I have only two problems with the book: its inadequate index, and the way it does not go as fully as I might have liked into the collapse of the South African tour of 1968.

Bantam Press: Arbella: England’s lost queen, by Sarah Gristwood (£20.00). Rev. by Min Wild, Independent on Sunday, 9 Feb. 2003.
This is a very handsome book indeed, and much care has been taken to make it visually pleasing, with a striking embossed golden dustjacket, colour plates and plenty of black-and-white illustrations. It carries also a good deal of scholarly apparatus: some notes, a – not very thorough – index, a select bibliography, appendices dealing with speculation over Arbella’s possible inheritance of the‘royal malady’ porphyria, and Christopher Marlowe’s hypothetical involvement with Arbella. [What a pity to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar, comments Derek Copson, who sent this item.]

Blackstaff Press: The Derry anthology, ed. by Sean McMahon (428 pp, £20). Rev. by Polly Devlin, Irish Times, 18 Jan. 2003.
And on a pedantic note the index is occasionally inaccurate: you search in vain for Thackeray on page 88 but there he is on page 8, pithy and contemptuous as usual.

Cambridge University Press: Handbook of north European plants, ed. by James Cullen (2001, £9.95 pbk, $35 hbk). Rev. by John Crothers, Journal of the Field Studies Council 10(2&3), October 2002.
I was disappointed not to find Aeonium in the Index. I have much admired plants of this genus growing in gardens on the Isles of Scilly and the Introduction claims to include such abnormally mild places; fortunately, the omission was only from the index. [But what good is that if you can’t find it?]

Cambridge University Press: Hegel: a biography, by Terry Pinkard (2000, 780 pp, $39.95). Rev. by Roger Kimball, New Criterion Online
One note of drama came in 1807 when Hegel fathered an illegitimate child, named Ludwig, with his landlady. Mr. Pinkard notes that after Hegel was married (in 1811) and had two other sons, he arranged for Ludwig to live with his family. It ended badly. Ludwig wished to study medicine, but Hegel refused to pay for his education. (In general, it seems that he treated Ludwig as a second-class citizen.) Ludwig broke with the family around 1826, commenting that ‘I always lived in fear but never in love of my parents.’ Mr. Pinkard deals fairly with the story of Ludwig in his text but, curiously, there is no sign of the child in the index, either in his own right or as an episode in Hegel’s life. Under ‘Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,’ we find entries for everything from ‘beer’ to ‘napping on sofa,’ but nothing under ‘illegitimate child’ or ‘Ludwig.’ A very Hegelian sense of priorities.

Cape: April blood: Florence and the plot against the Medici, by Lauro Martines (302 pp, £17.99). Rev. by Kate Lowe, Times Literary Supplement, 11 April 2003.
Less palatable is a decision, presumably taken by the publishers in the name of the elusive ‘popular’ reader, generally described as intelligent but uninformed, to allow the indexer to ape the illiteracy shown by the compilers of the telephone directory: Lorenzo de’ Medici (as though a brand name) appears not under ‘D’ or ‘M’ but under ‘L’, and another entry for his Letters appears not even under his name but under ‘Le’. [In a letter the following week, the author explained: ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici’s name appears in the bibliography (not the index) under L because he is first-named throughout the book.’]

Cape: Perkin: the story of deception, by Ann Wroe (534 pp, £25). Rev. by Eric Christiansen, The Spectator, 12 April 2003.
. . . there are no entries for places or things in the index, which is hard on elderly readers with imperfect memories.

Chatto & Windus: Do you, Mr Jones? Bob Dylan with the poets and professors, ed. by Neil Corcoran (378 pp, £17.99). Rev. by Robert Potts, Times Literary Supplement, 13 Dec. 2002.
In one essay we do, inevitably, encounter the ‘Bakhtinian carnival’ and ‘Michel Foucault’s idea of a “heterotopia”’, along with Debord, Baudrillard and Derrida. (Of these, only Bakhtin fails to appear in an index more ornamental than useful.)

Doubleday: Gallipoli, by L. A. Carlyon (608 pp, £20). Rev. by Kevin Myers, Irish Times, 4 Jan. 2003.
The Irish reader will struggle to learn here about the travails of the many Irish battalions which served on the peninsula, and one may consult the index in vain: for it is exactly what one has come to expect from modern publishers – an utter disgrace. The Royal Dublin Fusiliers are listed once in the index, but five times in the text – a rather niggardly tribute to a regiment which lost well over a thousand dead in Gallipoli.

Duke University Press: Foundations of world order: the legalist approach to international relations (1898–1922), by Francis Anthony Boyle (1999, ix + 220 pp, $54.95 hbk, $18.95 pbk). Rev. by Gary B. Ostrower, American Historical Review 106(1), Feb. 2001.
And yet, this should have been a better book. It is editorially challenged, filled with long, rambling sentences and stylistic inconsistencies. . . . Boyle’s fondness for generalizing about his legalist heroes tends to flatten an understanding of their differences. Legalists often disagreed in respect to American policy. Unfortunately, their disagreements are mostly hidden in this account. Some of them, like Edwin Borchard and Quincy Wright, do not even appear in the index (an index missing sections from x to z in my copy) because their individual contributions are too often subsumed under the generic term ‘legalists.’

Facet: Getting and staying noticed on the web: your web promotion questions answered, by Phil Bradley (2002, 224 pp, £29.95). Rev. by Karin Dearness, CILIP Health Libraries Group Newsletter 19(4), Dec. 2002.
One would hope that the publishers decide to introduce sub-headings within chapters or increase the indexing in future editions to make the text more accessible. [The author is presumably not related to our Reviews Editor.]

Flamingo: Counting sheep: the science and pleasures of sleep and dreams, by Paul Martin (£7.99). Rev. by Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian, 24 April 2003.
I am surprised not to see ‘myoclonic jerk’ in the index, but you can’t have everything.

Harvard University Press: The gospel of germs: men, women and the microbe in American Life, by Nancy Tomes (1998, 648 pp, $35). Rev. by Martin S. Pernick, American Historical Review 106(1), Feb. 2001.
The four-page index is too skimpy for such a broad-ranging book and does not include several key figures discussed by name in the text.

Hodder & Stoughton: Steps along Hope Street: my life in cricket, the church and the inner city, by David Sheppard (£17.99). Rev. by Kenneth Leach, Church Times, 10 Jan. 2003.
(Incidentally, the index is a mess, confusing Chris Smith the government minister with Canon Chris Smith of Sheffield Cathedral, and also being taken up with names of people, not with ideas – as the book is.)

Hordern House (Potts Point, NSW): Encyclopedia of exploration to 1800: a comprehensive reference guide to the history and literature of exploration, travel and colonization from the earliest times to the year 1800, by Raymond John Howgego (2003, xv + 1168 pp, $A295 hbk). Rev. by Colin Steele, Rare Books Newsletter, 68, winter/spring 2002–2003.
Within the volume there are 2327 major articles, 4000 cross-references, 20,000 bibliographical citations and 7500 index entries for persons or ships…. The book would perhaps have benefited from a more analytical approach in terms of geographical surveys and more flexible and extensive indexing.

Kalmbach Publishing Co. (Wisconsin): The writer’s handbook 2002 (66th edn), ed. by Elfrieda Abbe (2001, 1056 pp, $29.95), and Macmillan (London), The writer’s handbook 2002 (15th edn), ed. by Barry Turner (2001, 842 pp, £12.99). Rev. by Barbara Horn, LOGOS 13(4), 2002.
. . . the single index of company names and magazine titles in [the American volume] will not help readers to access it. . . . the extensive subject index, in addition to a company index, makes [the British edition] the more helpful book.

Kent State University Press: A fighter from way back: the Mexican war diary of Lt. Daniel Harvey Hill, 4th artillery, USA, ed. by Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr, and Timothy D. Johnson (2002, 320 pp, $39). Rev. by Robert K. Krick, MHQ The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Spring 2003.
The index . . . would serve better if it included more entries under subjective headings, instead of almost exclusively proper nouns.

Macmillan: Seeds of wealth, by Henry Hobhouse (272 pp, $30). Rev. by Polly Pattullo, The Guardian, 5 April 2003.
There is much delightful detail . . . Shame, then, about the really feeble index.

Miramax Books/Hyperion: Leadership, by Rudolph W. Giuliani (2002, 407 pp, $25.95). Rev. by Clyde Haberman, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2002.
Leadership is the first of two books that Giuliani agreed to do for a $3 million advance. The second is to be a memoir. This one gives barely a nod to messier parts of his private life, notably his bitter divorce from Donna Hanover (who is fleetingly mentioned but then denied a reference in the index).

Oxford University Press: Oxford illustrated companion to medicine, ed. by Stephen Lock, John M. Last and George Dunea (2001, 881 pp, £39.50). Rev. by Richard Bayliss, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 95, Jan. 2002.
There are some apparent omissions because of poor indexing. Anthrax, for example, is not included among the As nor does it appear in the index. It is, however, to be found under Biological weapons. Nor could I find a clear account of the various types of fever.

Oxford University Press: Shakespeare criticism in the twentieth century, by Michael Taylor (2001, 278 pp, $39.95). Rev. by Christopher J. Fassler, Sixteenth Century Journal 34, Spring 2003.
The book indexes several references to Freud and Jung and lists Freud’s collected works among its works cited, yet the same index and bibliography include no reference to Marx. The index for Taylor’s book, in fact, would prove unhelpful for many of the reference purposes that readers might have. While the index logs the appearance of personal names, some literary works, and a handful of institutions (e.g. the King’s Men and the Malone Society), it does not index character names (though an entire chapter examines character criticism) nor critical movements. And while the ‘List of Works Cited’ contains more than 550 entries, it is not a general bibliography and so it does not include such monuments as G. E. Bentley’s The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare’s Time (1971), M. C. Bradbrook’s The Rise of the Common Player (1962), or Geoffrey Bullough’s Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (1957–75). Since most anthologies of Shakespeare’s works contain fairly exhaustive general bibliographies and since Taylor’s project here is more narrative than bibliographical, perhaps these omissions are both understandable and forgivable. The bibliographic limitations combined with the curiously selective index do, however, greatly reduce the book’s value as a reference.

Oxford University Press: Oxford textbook of endocrinology and diabetes, ed. by John A. H. Watts and Stephen M. Shalet (2002, 1952 pp, £245).Rev. by Gareth Williams, The Lancet, 6 Feb. 2003.
Accurate indexing and cross-referencing are essential in a book of this size [and at that price!]. It is, therefore, disconcerting to discover that ‘testicular volume index’ is followed (in sequence) by‘the clitoris’, ‘the diabetic foot’ and, after diverting into ‘the nephron’ and elsewhere, ‘testis maintenance’. Perhaps I have missed something here – or maybe a computer did the indexing?

Praeger Press: Born to crime: Cesare Lombroso and the origins of biological criminology, by Mary Gibson (2002, 272 pp, $37.50). Rev. by Anthony Walsh, Human Nature Review 3, 13 Jan. 2003.
Apart from lacking the kind of pre- and post-Lombroso chapters I would have liked to have seen, I find only one fault in the book – its lack of a comprehensive index. Quite a number of individuals (e.g., Emile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde) and concepts (e.g., biogenetic law, brain) mentioned in the text are not included in the index. Nevertheless, anyone wishing to be informed about the Italian school of criminology is not likely to receive a more thorough education from any other single source anytime soon.

Terra: Wokken met Ming (Wok Recipes with Ming), by Marc Declerq (€29.95). Rev. in De Volkskrant, 14 June 2003.
Register, onzinnig, op ingredient, niet op gerecht: tientallen verwijzingen naar rijstwijn en zetmeel. (The index is nonsensical, ordered by ingredient not by dish: dozens of entries for ricewine and cornstarch.) [Translation by Caroline Diepeveen, who submitted this item.]

University of Alabama Press: United States–Latin American relations, 1850–1903: establishing a relationship, ed. by Thomas M. Leonard (1999, 303 pp, $44.95). Rev. by David M. Pletcher, American Historical Review 106(1), Feb. 2001.
The index is inadequate as it is limited to proper names, with no subject headings, making economic relations especially difficult to trace.

University of California Press: Doing the town: the rise of urban tourism in the United States, 1850–1915, by Catherine Cocks (2001, xiii + 287 pp, $37.50). Rev. by Jon Sterngass, American Historical Review 107(5), Dec. 2002.
The index, however, is a disappointment; the entry for tourism contains sixty separate subheadings, and a check on hotels sends the reader to more than forty.

University of Hawai’i Press: Defining Chu: image and reality in ancient China, ed. by Constance A. Cook and John S. Major (1999, ix + 254 pp, $59). Rev. by Rafe de Crespigny, American Historical Review 106(1), Feb. 2001.
There are two weaknesses in an otherwise fine publication. First, there is no general map; there are regional ones, on eccentric scales, but nothing that gives a picture of Chu as a whole. Second, although there are characters in the bibliography, there are none in the index. As a result of these basic omissions, the book is harder to read than it should be, but it is nonetheless a substantial and indeed fascinating contribution to the study of early China.

University of Hawai’i Press: Passages to modernity: motherhood, childhood, and social reform in early twentieth century Japan, by Kathleen S. Uno (1999, x+237 pp, $47.00 hbk, $24.95 pbk).Rev. by Sally A. Hastings, American Historical Review 106(1), Feb. 2001.
This book is by no means perfect. There are mistakes in the indexing. Every scholar’s nightmare, that the reference numbers in the text should fail to match the appropriate passage in the ‘Notes’ section, has actually occurred in notes 15 to 34 of chapter six.

Yale University Press: The journals of Mary Butts, ed. by Nathalie Blondel (2002, £30). Rev. by Mark Bostridge, Independent on Sunday, 19 Jan. 2003.
Blondel, who published a biography of Butts in 1998, has produced a well edited, but poorly indexed selection from Mary Butts’s journals, though it must be said that the fractured, fragmentary, almost diffuse quality of the writing will not attract many new adherents to Butts’s cause.