Hoarding is not collection development
Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
World Leaders Past & Present series
Butson
1986
Submitter: Out of date and a B&W format. What could be more appealing in a YA book? I am loathe to buy hardcover contemporary biographies because they are out of date by the time they hit library shelves. This book circulated once, twenty years ago, and most likely it was for the required biography book report. My library also has another title in the series on Anwar Sadat. They are both going to book purgatory. From the collection of [a] middle school.
Holly: This book was published in 1986, before any of the most important aspects of Gorbachev’s career as a world leader happened. It’s perfectly reasonable for a middle school library to have a book about Gorbachev, but it should really tell the whole story of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Fun facts: Gorbachev appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial in 1997, and also recorded an album of Russian ballads in 2009. (Source)
Predicting Russia’s Future
Predicting Russia’s Future: How 1,000 Years of History Are Shaping The 1990s
Lourie
1991
Submitter: The title alone makes this book an automatic weed for our public library. This book is part of the Whittle Communication’s Larger Agenda Series, which “presents short books by distinguished authors on subjects of importance to managers and policymakers in business and the public sector.” A weird and interesting element of this series is that each book has a corporate sponsor. The publishing company intersperses each chapter with an advertisement, in this case Federal Express. The New York Times has a number of articles on Whittle Communications and/or Chris Whittle if you’re interested in researching this any further!
Holly: Someone should tell them that “going to the dogs” means it is not as good as it used to be. The ad for Air-Vet (last two pictures, below) says “Thanks to me, Air-Vet’s business is going to the dogs.” I get that they meant that their business is literally for dogs (and other animals, as they spell out in the fine print below), but it’s kind of an unfortunate play on words.
This book is so old that we now know what Russia’s future held. This book must have been published just shortly before the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Also, Whittle Communications fell on hard times in 1994.