reviews 282 College & Research Libraries May 1997 the beginning of the book, resulting in some garbled words and faulty sen- tence structure. These criticisms aside, the book is well worth reading by any- one involved in selecting, buying, sup- plying, or publishing library materials. As Martin summarizes so well: “all par- ticipants in the collection management process would benefit from having more information about the other play- ers. They are not in a zero-sum game where someone must lose and some- one win, but in a partnership where all can do better by knowing more about the other partners. By improving com- munication and taking a broader view, publishers, vendors, and librarians can improve the ways in which information and knowledge are packaged, distrib- uted, and used. This is particularly de- sirable in what promises, for some time to come, to be a very tight financial set- ting for libraries.”—Maija M. Lutz, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachu- setts The Social Role of Higher Education: Com- parative Perspectives. Eds. Ken Kempner and William G. Tierney. New York: Garland Pub. (Garland Reference Li- brary of Social Science, 988; Garland Studies in Higher Education, 7), 1996. 215p. $40 alk. paper. ISBN 0-8153- 1765-4. LC 96-16423. This is a book of case studies of higher education in different national contexts. The cases are taken from seven coun- tries and one region (Central America), and many are written by scholars from the countries themselves. The editors begin with a chapter that outlines a theo- retical perspective on what they define as the “organizational culture” of higher education. An ambitious description of the organizational culture is quickly pro- vided on the very first page of the book: it consists of the missions, symbols and communication, strategy, environment, and knowledge production within uni- versities. This framework leads one to expect a strongly comparative volume, but the editors note that the articles are, for the most part, focused on the na- tional political context of education, es- pecially the way academic work inter- acts with different national histories and agendas. Some of these histories and agen- das are described as cultural themes or values, especially in the case of Ja- pan and Thailand. Although they pro- vide interesting reading, national and cultural themes are difficult to pin down, as scholars of “national character stud- ies” during the Second World War found. For example, the intuitive in- sights of Japanese culture described by Ruth Benedict in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) enthralled readers dur- ing and after the war, yet such studies were soon abandoned. Characterizing the national character of any country was too often only a repetition of the values and ideals expressed by the up- per classes and the ideal literary heri- tage of a country. Still, there is a temp- tation, given into in this book, to charac- terize Mexican, Finnish, or Japanese culture as having core values, even to- day in a world of nation-states that sometimes come apart at the seams. The editors foresaw criticisms of the cultural theme approach of many chap- ters, and so refer to the case studies as “interpretive” social science. Reading interpretive work is always fascinating, and this book is no exception. Each chap- ter is like a new journey to a distant land, though the itinerary to these different lands is not very clear. The cases were chosen by opportu- nities of scholarship rather than by a theoretical logic because there is no common theme or structure that relates them together. Some cases are from Latin America (Mexico, Chile, Central America, and Costa Rica), and the oth- ers are from disparate countries around the globe, including Japan, Thailand, Australia, and Finland. Although each Book Reviews 283 case seeks to analyze higher education in light of the way knowledge and aca- demic work are created in a national context, the cases are not easily com- pared. The size of the countries, their economies, their centrality to European higher education traditions, and the relative importance of indigenous popu- lations all differ so much as to make comparisons across the chapters diffi- cult. This is no doubt why the editors chose not to write a concluding chapter that could have put the cases in order. As it is, one has the impression that more and more cases could be added to the end of the book, expanding it like an accordion. One chapter does stand out in bold relief because it is very com- parative. Gary Rhoades and Don Smart describe the way that U.S. and Austra- lian institutions have developed differ- ent entrepreneurial approaches to at- tracting international graduate stu- dents. This fascinating chapter points out the tremendous profit-making ma- chine that became international gradu- ate student education in Australia. In comparison, the system that evolved in the United States was based much more on international political diplo- macy than the bottom line of university funding. The four chapters on Latin America range from Tierney’s review of Central American universities with a call for more local relevance, to Susan Twombly’s study of women in Costa Rican higher education. Her article is based on inter- views with women administrators and attempts to understand why there are more of them in the University of Costa Rica than found in most U.S. institutions, even though Costa Rica is character- ized as a country with a strong male hierarchy and “Machista” culture. An- other Latin American case, described by Rollin Kent, is that of higher educa- tion change in Mexico. This chapter ex- plores the astounding increase in higher education in Mexico in the past twenty years and the yet-undefined role the newly educated students will play in Mexico. A chapter on higher education in Chile by Figueroa and Valle is less insightful because it becomes entangled in a discussion of academic decentrali- zation in a world of political centraliza- tion. The discussion of Japanese higher education by Kempner and Makino con- trasts the traditional idea of creating a well-educated leadership class (such as the samurai) with a need for more flex- ibility today. The linear, elitist model is described as modernist, and may not be as useful at the end of the century as it was during the past fifty years of Japan’s rapid economic growth. This chapter calls for reform in light of postmodern social needs, especially in terms of the “cognitive maps” of Japa- nese students in the future. The chap- ter on Thai culture by Bovonsiri, Uampuang, and Fry is less polemical. It describes Thai higher education as a syncretic system of Western and Thai values, or as a triangle. Having said that, the chapter portrays the university sys- tem only as a result of these forces, rather than as an entity that shapes and changes national history and values. The last chapter by Jussi Valimaa on intellectuals in Finland concludes the book on a pensive note. Valimaa notes that the characteristic role of public in- tellectuals—who see their contributions to media and politics as important as they do those in the classroom, a role so prominent in other European univer- sities—is mitigated by a strong populist ideology among Finnish university aca- demics. Although intellectuals partook in the development of a national iden- tity in Finland at the beginning of the century, the “decentering” of Finland and other European countries at the end of the century leaves both private and public intellectuals at a loss for what to do. Vilamaa expresses it well: “pub- lic intellectuals are not able to create 284 College & Research Libraries May 1997 national visions, and private intellectu- als are not motivated to try.” Missing from the different cases is any discussion of the exchanges be- tween universities and the international “invisible” university structures that have evolved. What role do educational travelers, Fulbright scholars, interna- tional graduate training programs, and powerful authors such as Paulo Friere play in the way that higher education institutions evolve in different coun- tries? How do connections between countries, real connections that result in concrete educational practices and cultures, create organizational cultures of dependency, resistance, or isolation? But even given this, the book would be very useful in a course on comparative higher education. The cases invite dis- cussion, and each provides the starting point for projects and comparisons, es- pecially within the theoretical frame- work suggested in the introductory chap- ter.—Allan F. Burns, University of Florida, Gainesville Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. New York: Viking Penguin, 1996. 372p. $26.95 alk. paper. ISBN 0-670-84302-4. LC 96-2703. It probably is not too soon for the ALA to begin preparing a dossier on Manguel in support of his canonization as patron saint of reading. In the meantime, free life membership in the association would be appropriate. Alberto Manguel is one of those rare individuals of today: learned, urbane, self-aware, demo- cratic, and generous. And he is passion- ately committed to readers (whoever, wherever), reading (whatever, how- ever), and books (never met one he did not like). If, as a librarian and a reader, you are feeling a bit lonely in this, the twilight of the book, take heart: here is someone you should meet. Manguel will lead you on a delightfully idiosyncratic tour of his world—a world crowded with readers and crammed with books. At the end of his tour, he comments: “Among the books I haven’t written— among the books I haven’t read but would like to read—is The History of Read- ing.” No, this is not the history of read- ing; it is not even history in any recog- nizable sense. Rather, it is a series of Montaigne-like essays on aspects of reading that draw on the author’s own reading and experiences. Like Montaigne’s classic, A History of Read- ing is deliberately autobiographical. It is the story of the author’s reading. For Manguel, we are what we read: “The association of books with their readers is unlike any other between objects and their users. . . . Books inflict upon their readers a symbolism far more complex than that of a simple utensil.” Manguel is the dinner guest who spends the evening scanning the spines of your books and accumulating observations about their owner, just as he wants his readers to do. A noted writer—as well as noted reader—Manguel probably is not our “common reader.” He read Kipling and Stevenson to the blind Borges after school in Buenos Aires; he attended secondary school in France at a lycée outside Strasbourg where Wimpfeling and Beatus Rhenanus went to school; and he has his heroes—Augustine, Whitman, Proust, among other heavy- weights. He is fluent in several foreign languages and even cites Hildegard of Bingen from Migne. He is as comfort- able with the classics as he is with con- temporary literary criticism. His cul- tural formation is broad. A History of Reading is Manguel’s own curiosity cabinet of specimens of read- ing culled from literature and history, a capacious room strewn with examples of any and every type of reading expe- rience one could imagine. It is non-nar- rational and defies easy summary. It moves deftly back and forth from Mesopotamia to the present, and con- siders such topics as reading aloud, si- << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. 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