College and Research Libraries 582 College & Research Libraries ing the environmental crisis could be po- tentially helpful for the conversion of the unconcerned and/ or ~esser concerned scholars, whose numbers are not incon- siderable. These folks are admittedly not the audience for whom this book was prepared. However, they are arguably the ones who most need to examine the vol- ume and ponder the proposals presented. Despite this complaint,ยท Greening the College Curriculum is an important book. Providing, as it does, a fairly comprehen- sive plan for the integration of environ- mental education into the liberal arts cur- riculum, it is unique. Hopefully, it will reach a wide audience in the academic community and have a beneficial impact on the presentation of topical materials to the current generation of students.- James W. Williams , University of fllinois at Urbana-Champaign . Lanham, Richard. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts . Chicago and London: University of Chicago Pr., 1994. 285p. $14.95. (ISBN 0-226-46885-2.) LC 93-13884. This volume is a polished rhetorical per- formance by an unabashed and distin- guished rhetorician, president of Rhetorica, Inc. (the note on the jacket does not explain the nature of this enter- prise) and former director of the Writing Programs at the University of California- Los Angeles, who welcomes the com- puter as the means by which Western education will return to "a rhetorical pedagogy" and to the rhetorical paideia. Lanham is long on promise and enthusi- asm but short on specifics, to some ex- tent understandably so because much is yet to be discovered about how the com- puter will influence Western education. The first seven of Lanham's ten chap- ters have appeared elsewhere (in shorter forms, in two cases) between 1989 and 1992, and many of them began life as lec- tures at various learned venues, as the author freely informs us in headnotes that detail the past lives of each chapter. November 1996 The headnote to chapter 8 explains the argumentative structure that Lanham has been building in the preceding chapters, and this is probably the best place for a reader to turn before reading the earlier material. In fact, given that the first seven chapters often cover the same ground in different ways and rehearse what Lanham sees as the polarities of Western culture several times, reading it and perhaps dip- ping and skimming the earlier chapters would be a practical response to the book. Two of the chapters (3 and 7) are pivotal and deserve more than "dip-and-skim"; in the former, he argues for the rhetori- cal convergence of disciplinary thought in all areas of learning, and in the latter, he explores "The 'Q' Question" about "what the arts are good for, about how moral and formal truths can be related to one another in human life." In the latter portions of the book, chap- ters 8 to 10, after he has set forth his ar- gument, Lanham takes on alternative views, specifically those in recently pub- lished works. He is very good at sniffing out the extravagant statement and using it to flog the author of an opposing view, sometimes with an arrogance matching and even surpassing that of his adver- sary. With an attentiveness to rhetorical effect, Lanham ends the book on a more moderate note-a Socratic dialogue of sorts in which he takes on Curmudgeon, something of an alter ego but also a be- loved former teacher to whom Lanham allows a few points but whom he wins over, more or less, to his own position in the end. By this time, his own position also is more cautiously stated, though still overwhelmingly optimistic. One of the dangers in writing about technology is that it changes so fast, as do attitudes toward it. Lanham launches his argument with the assertion that "hu- manists are such natural Luddites and have become so used to regarding tech- nology-and especially the computer- as an enemy that it takes some temerity to call the personal computer a possible friend." The Luddites, if that is what they were, have for the most part left the field now, and those of us who remain can scarcely imagine how we ever taught writing or carried out our own research without the computer. However, as we become more familiar with this technol- ogy and become increasingly reliant on it, we also are troubled by potential prob- lems-for example, the expense of main- taining it and of keeping up with rapid developments. Will material on CD- ROMs still be accessible when that tech- nology is displaced? Can we be confi- dent, in times of financial restraints such as we now experience, that CD-ROM readers will be maintained or that infor- mation now stored on CD-ROMs will be transferred to newer forms? Lanham argues that the computer will produce a more active/ interactive reader and create an active/interactive social community of readers and researchers. Possibly, but the question remains whether that active reader's activity will include reflection and deliberation or merely be a response to what is on the screen. And recognition that the social activity in which the computer user en- gages is, at times, unproductive and even antisocial is leading more and more edu- cational institutions to limit the amount of time per week a student may spend on the Internet. (Visiting a few white power Net sites will persuade anyone that the social aspects of the computer can be frighteningly antisocial.) For some of us, computer time is being limited by the fact that our institutions are billing us for using home modems to connect with the university's mainframe. Such concerns may seem niggling in the face of the optimism and breadth of Lanham's generalizations, but they are the reality tempering all grand hopes and dreams. Anyone searching for a vision of the future electronic library in this book will be disappointed. Apart from very gen- eral statements that online publication has great potential for the future and that Book Reviews 583 books cannot be the (sole) basis for fu- ture planning of libraries and the educa- tion of librarians, Lanham has little to say. With apparent implications for the rest of us, he quotes a recommendation from a large law firm that the periodicals in its library "should be sold and replaced with their CD-ROM equivalents." How wonderful it would be, for those of us in literature, to have on searchable CD- ROMs the contents of those massive vol- umes of Publications of the Modern Lan- guage Association and other journals Visiting a few white power Net sites will persuade anyone that the social aspects of the computer can be frighteningly antisocial. whose high-acid paper crumbles as we turn the pages! Would that our libraries had the budgets of large law firms! Rhetoricians are a feisty lot, deter- mined to assert their place in the acad- emy-and rightly so. Lanham is certainly better at this than almost any other rheto- rician with whom I have had contact. When he goes after his Curmudgeons and Luddites, he does so with impres- sive vigor and, at times, a bit of slipperi- ness, too. Will rhetoric be the means by whi.ch all intellectual enterprise will con- verge and permit us to live in Lanham's idealized world of oscillations and bistability? Probably not, but it is fun to watch Lanham argue the point.-George R. Keiser, Kansas State University, Manhat- tan. Mantovani, Giuseppe. New Communica- tion Environments: From Everyday to Virtual. London, England, and Bristol, Penn.: Taylor & Francis, 1996. 152p. $69.95 cloth (ISBN 0-7484-0395-7); $29.95 paper (ISBN 0-7484-0396-5). LC 96-20158. In graduate school, I had occasion to at- tend a dinner party hosted by a re- nowned poet and critic for several of his