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.

Allen Lane: The secret power of beauty: why happiness is in the eye of the beholder, by John Armstrong (2004, 192 pp, £12.99). Rev. by Henry Hardy, Times Higher Education Supplement, 22 October 2004.

The index is a bad joke (try looking up ‘happiness’ or ‘Gainsborough’). Is it meant to be a parody?

Birlinn: The oilmen: the North sea tigers, by Bill Mackie (2004, £14.99). Rev. by George Rosie, The Sunday Herald, 28 November 2004.

I enjoyed Mackie’s account of the North Sea oil industry. But I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it had included a decent index (something that publishers seem increasingly reluctant to include). The book would also have benefited from a glossary of technical terms and maybe a map or two. They would have added hugely to the usefulness of what is a loosely written but very readable history [of the industry] that saved Britain’s (and certainly Thatcher’s) bacon in the storm-tossed 1980s.

Brill: Nicholas of Cusa and his age: intellect and spirituality, ed. by Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (2002, 282 pp, $85). Rev. by Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, Sixteenth Century Journal, 34 (2004).

Despite a very useful bibliography (and an almost useless index) at the end, the work of two editors might have been more justified had a little more effort been expended to smooth out the wrinkles presented by multiple citations and redundancies.
While, with a solid introduction, a full index, and attention to the flow of the essays to justify the book form, this volume might and should have been very interesting to scholars in general, as it stands, it will probably be of more limited use – as a collection of papers for specialists already in the know.

Cambridge University Press: The reading nation in the Romantic period, by William St Clair (765 pp, £90). Rev. by H. J. Jackson, Times Literary Supplement, 23 July 2004.

Dense with information as the appendices are, it would not be easy to use [this book] as a reference book. The index is short and quirky. (Who is going to look for the brief copyright window under ‘B’?)

Citadel Press: Turning points in rock and roll, by Hank Bordowitz (2004, 320pp, £11.99) Rev. by William Keogan, 21 September 2004, www.celebritycafe.com

One small problem— the book’s index leaves much to be desired. Before I started reading, I checked the index for some favorite groups such as the Mamas and the Papas and the Byrds, but neither was listed. While going through the book, however, I saw references to both groups. Some further spot checking also indicated that certain mentions in the text of the Beach Boys and the Who were not noted in the index. I have a strong suspicion that this is also true for other performers. But this is a quibble. In sum, this book is an informative stroll down the road of Rock history that fans will find entertaining.

Continuum: Hope the archbishop, by Rob Marshall (£16.99). Rev. by Michael Brown, Church of England Newspaper, 12 November 2004.

There are other eyebrow-raisers here, too. At least twice, there’s the gaffe of the Church of England having an Archbishop’s Council when, as everyone in the land knows, it’s an Archbishops’ Council (the apostrophe after the s). Then, in the index, the Queen is said to be HRH. Oh dear.

Countryman Press: The essential Eating Well cookbook, ed. by Patsy Jamieson (2004, 400 pp, $29.95). Rev. by Kim Davaz, The Register-Guard, 27 October 2004.

(I have a quibble with the index of this book. Quick Cassoulet isn't listed under ‘Cassoulet,’ but you can find it as ‘Quick Cassoulet’ and under ‘Beans,’ ‘Chicken’ and ‘Turkey.’)

Fitzroy Dearborn: Encyclopedia of the Romantic era, 1760-1850, ed. by Christopher John Murray (2004, 2 vols, 1,277 pp, £225). Rev. by Nora Crook, Times Literary Supplement, 17 September 2004.

… this ambitious work would have benefited from a firmer hand … cross-referencing is patchy and the index inadequate.

Harvard University Press: Shakespeare, Einstein and the bottom line: the marketing of higher education by David L. Kirp(2003, 328pp, $29.95). Rev. by Allen B. Veaner, College & Research Libraries, January 2005.

On the minus side, Kirp provides no consolidated bibliography or list of references—a considerable disservice to researchers. The endnote apparatus is frustrating, with numerous instances of incomplete citations. What is one to make of endnote 38 to chapter 10, with its maddeningly uninformative reference ‘Marginson, “Going Global”’, especially if the reader has not been consulting all the endnotes? A backward search through the earlier endnotes to chapter 10 does not immediately produce the Marginson citation even though it is actually quite nearby. Why? Because the full citation is buried within a long comment in endnote 36. The index, rich in personal names, is of no help: it does not list Marginson …

The index, eleven pages in length, more generous than in many other academic works, suffers from very serious deficiencies that mark the work of an amateur indexer. Several major topics, e.g., economic issues, higher education, marketplace, are overbroad, duplicate the book’s main topics, and carry far too many locators that should have been properly subdivided. Marketplace comprises but a single, unsubdivided entry running to three-quarters of a column. Economic issues, about two-thirds of a column, is similarly arranged. Both entries are cumbersome and time-consum­ing to use: their subentries are merely entered according to their page number sequences, and thus are next to useless. These arrangements defy the most elementary principle of arranging large numbers of subentries: to be serviceable, they must be alphabetized by subtopic, not sequenced by page number. In one instance, a locator purports to point to a page referring to the magazine U.S. News and World Report, but the magazine actually discussed on that page is Time. Yet Time magazine itself has no index entry. Although the index contains a great many personal names, there is no entry for Rupert Murdoch, the well-known publishing magnate, and none for James Neal, Columbia’s University Librarian and Vice President for Information Services. Neal’s highly cogent comment on Columbia’s failed Fathom project is buried in an endnote on page 295, accessible only under Fathom, not under Neal. Several personal name entries lack their full complement of locators.

Houghton Mifflin: The Gourmet cookbook, ed. by Ruth Reichl (2004, 1040 pp, $40). Rev. by Jane Dornbusch, Boston Herald, 22 September 2004.

Reichl's faith in this book is evident in some of the hyperbole around the recipes. You'll find ‘the world's best sticky bun recipe,’ ‘the best mac and cheese on the planet’ and the ‘ultimate chocolate birthday cake'’ among the dishes here. (But you might have to search harder than you'd like; the index has some odd quirks. You won't, for instance, find that sticky bun recipe under ‘sticky,’ ‘bun,’ or ‘pecan,’ but rather at ‘breads - buns, pecan currant sticky.’)

Frances Lincoln: Dangerous garden, by David Stuart (2004, 208 pp, £25). Rev. by Deni Bown, The Garden, September 2004.

Another gripe is that the index is patchy and – surprisingly for a book that draws some controversial conclusions – there are no footnotes.

Oxford University Press: The Oxford dictionary of proverbs, ed. by Jennifer Speake (2002, xiii + 375 pp, £14.99). Rev. by Laura Hicks, Editing Matters, September/October 2004.

The citations giving the origin and development of many proverbs are excellent and very useful. I was less convinced by the Thematic Index at the back of the book, as I could not imagine an occasion where I would want to trace a quotation in this way, and the headings seemed rather strange, as if someone had had the idea that such an index would be useful and then had to strain to find appropriate entries.

Wright Elsevier: Periodontics (5th edn), by B. M. Eley and J. D. Manson (396 pp, £44.99). Rev. by Roger Mosedale, Dental Update, November 2004.

I and several colleagues felt the index would be difficult to use by undergraduates or other users who have not yet acquired a reasonable knowledge of periodontal terminology. There is, for instance, no direct lead to ‘Risk Factors’, although all are well described and discussed under various headings.