College and Research Libraries 484 College & Research Libraries members as mere tools for the organiza- tion). Nowhere are there proven specif- ics about how to improve nonacademic writing or how to better manage its ex- panding technology. Nor are there any rules or hints for those of us who would like to make our everyday writing of e- mail, technical manuals, and administra- tive evaluations more efficient and effec- tive. Instead, one of the chapter authors, Dorothy Winsor, concludes that it can- not be taught by rules-although she of- fers no practical, tested alternatives. (Cu- riously, experts who go unmentioned in this and the other chapters have demon- strated the worth of simple principles for improving nonacademic writing; e.g., Anthony Trollope, working to improve the reports written by officials of the postal system a century ago, brought about significant changes in the clarity of, and time invested in, administrative writing.) So would Nonacademic Writing make worthwhile reading? Perhaps only to ยท those interested in the theories and phi- losophy of nonacademic writing and its technology. To me, a psychologist with a private practice for academic and non- academic writers, this book offered no returns for a difficult read. Those of us who want to "get things done" (to para- phrase the editors) might want to wait for a more nonacademic account of non- academic writing.-Robert Boice, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Poverty: A Global View: Handbook on In- ternational Poverty Research. Eds. Else Oyen, S.M. Miller, and Syed Abdus Samad. Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Pr., 1996. 620p. $59 (ISBN 82-00-22649-2.) The United Nations has proclaimed 1996 the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. This fifth publication from the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) compiles a prodigious amount of information on alternative poverty conceptualizations, theories, September 1996 policies, and research, although it is not a handbook in the customary sense of the term nor strictly a comparative treatise on methodologies of poverty research, as the title might suggest. The Programme itself was created through the collabora- tion of the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and UNESCO's Sector for Social and Human Sciences, both of which provided funds for this mono- graph along with the Deutsche Gesell- schaft fur Techcnische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and the Centre for Health and So- cial Policy Studies of the University of Bergen, Norway. Poverty: A Global View is appropriate to both social sciences I social welfare and area studies collections. Its twenty-five chapters are organized into six parts, the first and last of which are composed of a total of six chapters providing a com- parative review of poverty concepts and theories. The analysis reveals the politi- cal nature of social research in general, and how political regimes and institu- tional bases of research support influence the characterizations of the poor and the etiologies constructed to explain poverty within developed and developing coun- tries. The diffusion of Western (especially U.S.) definitions and measures of pov- erty around the globe is particularly in- teresting given the lack of consensus for a standard among researchers and policymakers here. Having adopted the notion of a "poverty line," which demar- cates the poor and nonpoor, researchers in other countries have waded into this intractable measurement mire. Taken to- gether, these chapters elucidate the many different conceptions of poverty from ab- solute to relative need, and from personal to structural explanations. The remaining central parts of the book provide country-specific poverty research approaches and findings. These four parts focus on, respectively, the Asian region (South Asia, Korea, India, "Southeast Asia, China, and New Zealand); the African region (Egypt, Anglophone West Africa, and South Af- rica); the Western region (Western and Eastern Etiropean countries, Israel, and North America); and the Latin American region (Latin America, Brazil, and Mexico). Individual chapters vary in comprehensiveness based on the history and volume of poverty research in a country. Although adhering to a stan- dardized format, each chapter stands alone as a description of the individuals and/ or institutions engaged in poverty research, their theories and methodolo- gies, and the resulting research programs and data sets. Unfortunately, the chapter focusing on the U.S. and Canada foot- notes the two leading national data col- lection agencies rather than specifically identifying poverty research initiatives (with the exception of reports emanating from the University of Wisconsin- Madison's Institute for Research on Pov- erty and the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center's Panel Study of Income Dynamics). Although they allude to their results, specific reference to ma- jor studies such as the Seattle/Denver Income Maintenance Experiments and the Survey of Income and Program Par- ticipation would have been appropriate for a "handbook." Although the editors are to be com- mended for assembling an internation- ally representative panel of contributors, the predominance of sociologists and economists has limited the range of dis- ciplinary perspectives and methodolo- gies. An integrative, cross-national dis- cussion of inequality, such as found in geographer David M. Smith's Where the Grass Is Greener: Living in an Unequal World (1979), as well as in his subsequent publications, would have added balance. So, too, would a thorough review of the contributions of applied anthropologists to our understanding of poverty through ethnographies undertaken in developed and developing countries, rather than re- peatedly lamenting the paucity of quali- tative work. Finally, the absence of any Book Reviews 485 mention of some of the better-known left- ist writers (from liberal to Marxist, e.g., Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven to Ralph C. Gomes) suggests that some views are less well represented in the political debate over the causes of poverty. But then the Far Right is too of- ten presented as conservative, leaving conservatives and centrists to share the label "liberal." Overall, Poverty: A Global View fills two gaps in the reference literature. First, it brings together in one volume summa- ries of the major poverty research efforts and findings for regions and countries worldwide. Second, it conceptually and analytically integrates this information through introductory and closing chap- ters. Furthermore, the detailed subject in- dexing across all chapters readily enables comparisons across countries by topic (e.g., concepts, definitions, and measures of poverty, and construction of poverty lines; data sources; and the roles of vari- ous international organizations) and by subpopulation (e.g., aged, children, women, rural/urban residents). Ironi- cally, it is the quality of the indexing that revealed the paucity of specific attention given to the role of ethnic, racial, and political violence, as well as internal mi- gration and immigration, in regard to the prevalence and persistence of poverty. Nevertheless, the strengths of the volume far outweigh its weaknesses, and it is hoped that the latter will be addressed in either regularly updated editions or separate topical monographs within the CROP series.-Gary McMillan, Howard University, Washington, D.C. Schiller, Herbert I. Information Inequal- ity: The Deepening Social Crisis in America. New York: Routledge, 1966. 149p. $55.00. (ISBN 0-415-90764-0.) LC 95-46613. Herbert Schiller, professor emeritus of communication at the University of Cali- fornia at San Diego, is sounding an alarm regarding a lurking social crisis that has