Princeton Weekly Bulletin December 14, 1998

In print

• Multiuser Detection
by Professor of Electrical Engineering Sergio Verdu. (Cambridge University Press, 1998 )

"The development of multiuser detection techniques is one of the most important recent advances in communications technology, and this self-contained book gives a comprehensive coverage of the design and analysis of receivers for multiaccess channels, while focusing on fundamental models and algorithms. The author begins with a review of multiaccess communications, dealing in particular with code division multiple access (CDMA) channels. Background material on hypothesis testing and the effect of multiuser interference on single-user receivers are discussed next. This is followed by the design and analysis of optimum and linear multiuser detectors. Also covered in detail are topics such as decision-driven multiuser detection and noncoherent multiuser detection. The book contains over 300 exercises and is a suitable textbook for practicing engineers, as well as a valuable reference volume for researchers in communications and signal processing." (from the book cover)

• Cross-Cultural Encounters and Conflicts
by Bayard Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Charles Issawi. (Oxford University Press, 1998)

"Charles Issawi's collection of essays, Cross-Cultural Encounters and Conflicts, has been written in the belief that a study of the past encounters and conflicts between the world's major cultures can shed light on their nature and importance. Though the emphasis is on the Middle East, the subjects covered here range in scope from the great ancient civilizations to Shelley's passion for the Middle East, from the failures of the Greeks as empire builders to the predominance of English as an international language today." (from the book cover)

• Freedom of Association
edited by Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics Amy Gutmann. (Princeton University Press, 1998 )

"Americans are joiners. They are members of churches, fraternal and sororal orders, sports leagues, community centers, parent-teacher associations, professional associations, residential associations, literary societies, national and international charities and service organizations of seemingly all sorts. This volume explores the individual and civic values of associational freedom in a liberal democracy, as well as the moral constitutional limits of claims to associational freedom. Beginning with an introductory essay on freedom of association by Amy Gutmann, the volume includes essays by George Kateb, Michael Walzer, Kent Greenawalt and Nancy Rosenblum, Will Kymlicka, Yael Tamir, Daniel A. Bell, Sam Fleischacker, Alan Ryan and Stuart White." (from the book cover)

• Ventures Into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales and Femininity
by William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature U.C. Knoepflmacher. (University of Chicago Press, 1998)

"Behind the innocent face of Victorian fairy tales such as Through the Looking Glass or Mopsa the Fairy lurks the spectre of an intense 19th-century debate about the very naturethe ownershipof childhood. In the engagingly written Ventures Into Childland, U.C. Knoepflmacher illuminates this debate. Offering brilliant rereadings of classics from the 'Golden Age of Children's Literature' as well as literature commonly considered 'grown-up,' Knoepflmacher probes deeply into the relations between adults and children, adults and their own childhood selves and between the lives of beloved Victorian authors and their 'children's tales.'" (from the book cover)

• Conversation Pieces
by Professor of Music Paul Lansky. (Bridge Records, 1998)

"Conversation Pieces is a collection of works loosely joined by the idea of musical journeys to new places in the company of familiar friends. Relatively unaltered piano sounds, the rhythms and contours of casual conversation, some straightforward string and orchestral sounds, and a generally uncomplicated harmonic language accompany us into realms where, with the help of the computer, musical ways of speaking and understanding combine in unusual patterns." (from the CD cover)

• Annals of the Former World
by Ferris Professor of Journalism John McPhee. (Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998)

"About 29 years ago John McPhee decided to tackle something big; planet Earth. More specifically, he set out to describe the structure and dynamics of the lithosphere (that is, the planet's stony crust and the fluid mantle that lies beneath) as understood by the science of geology. 'Basin and Range' appeared in 1981; 'In Suspect Terrain,' two years later; 'Rising From the Plains' in 1986; and 'Assembling California' in 1993. Those four deal with the more overtly dramatic rock of America's eastern and western extremesthe tectonically rumpled mountains, valleys and faults of the Appalachian region, the Rockies and the Far West. Characters and ideas reappear among them. Annals of the Former World now gathers all four together into the Gondwanaland they were always meant to be." (review by David Quammen, New York Times Book Review, July 5, 1998)

• My Heart Laid Bare
by Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor in the Humanities Joyce Carol Oates. (Dutton, 1998 )

"In her new novel, Oates attempts to light up the vicious corners of the heartnot her own heart, but America's. Greed and racism are her subjects, and Oates suggests that these sins stem from one key national foible: a vanity of the soul. We Americans need to believe that our lives are bound up in a grand destiny. As a result, we're absurdly gullible, too often putting our savings, our vote, our desire for divine protection in the hands of crooks. Oates' latest hero is just the kind of schemer who takes us for a ride." (review by Sarah Kerr, New York Times Book Review, January 5, 1997)

• Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629
by Professor of History Theodore Rabb. (Princeton University Press, 1998 )

"Rabb presents here the first full-scale biography of the influential English parliamentarian, colonizer and religious thinker Sir Edwin Sandys (1561-1629). Sandys sat in the House of Commons from the 1580s to the mid-1620s, be-coming its elder statesman and most influential voice on economic affairs, constitutional issues, and parliamentary procedure. He was a leader of the Virginia Company and the Bermuda Company, which established and settled these two early English colonies, and was also a director of the East India Company. And in an age beset by religious extremism, Sandys wrote a book on religious toleration that was widely read and discussed throughout Europe. In following Sandys's political career, this book provides a valuable reassessment of parliamentary politics on the eve of the English Civil War." (from the book cover)