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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Karl Marx could only pen the memorable line, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” because he was heir to the sanitary and public health reforms of the nineteenth century (Marx [1848] 1972, p. 335). The Black Death, which had wiped out much of fourteenth-century Florence and which had regularly decimated sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London, was now but a faint memory. Yet had a historian of some earlier period of European history thought to pen a line as presumptuous as Marx's, it might have read: “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of struggle with plague or pestilence.” Epidemics and pandemics have haunted human societies from their beginnings. The congregation of large masses of humans in urban settings, in fact, made the evolution of human infectious disease microorganisms biologically possible (McNeill, 1976; Porter, 1997, pp. 22–25). Epidemics have been as determinative of the course of economic, social, military and political history as any other single factor – emptying cities, decimating armies, wiping out generations and destroying civilizations.

Most academic libraries probably have in their collections, either in reference or as circulating titles, several of the works generally and rather imprecisely known as library handbooks or guides. These may include such standards as Jean Key Gates' Guide to the Use of Books and Libraries, now in its fourth edition, as well as more ephemeral efforts produced in‐house by the staffs of individual libraries and made commercially available to other institutions.

To the initiate in French studies, the term “French Literature” might be understood to mean anything — and everything — written in the French language. Etymologists would no doubt support this interpretation wholeheartedly. To scholars of French literature, however, the term has a very different meaning. Professors in the field generally consider French literature to be that written in France since the Middle Ages, a literature which stands apart from other written works in the French language. This is not to say that there is not a very substantial body of literature written, for instance, in French‐speaking Canada, or Algeria, Tunisia, Haiti, or a myriad of other places. Certain individuals specialize in the literature (French) of those countries, but they do not refer to those writings as “French Literature”; they label them “French‐Canadian Literature,” “French‐African Literature,” and the like. This essay will be limited to a discussion of French literature — the major literature of France, considered worthy of special attention or acclaim by readers and scholars worldwide.

This volume of essays is based upon the proceedings of a conference on “Ethics and Epidemics” hosted in March 2004 by Albany Medical College and the Graduate College of Union University in the wake of the SARS epidemic. The SARS epidemic was a stark reminder of how quickly infectious disease can spread in our era of fast and frequent worldwide travel. Furthermore, it reawakened interest in and debate about major ethical, policy, political and social issues that arise as societies respond to such acute threats to health, life and liberty. Current concerns about the threat of avian influenza, due to the H5N1 virus, and its potential to evolve into a worldwide pandemic highlight the urgent need to address these issues.

November 26, 1969 Damages — Personal injuries — Assessment — Successive independent tortfeasors — Action for damages for injuries to leg sustained in road accident — Subsequent amputation of leg before trial due to injury by person other than defendant — Effect on assessment of damages for injuries inflicted by defendant — Disabilities due to concurrent causes — Whether damages to be diminished.

December 10, 1968 Damages — Personal injuries — Assessment — Subsequent independent injury — Injuries to left leg — Subsequent amputation of leg before trial owing to other causes — Whether to be taken into account — Whether damages to be reduced — Apportionment — Principles on which Court of Appeal will interfere.

There are at least two ways to get published. The first and probably more commonplace is to work diligently on a project, and then seek an interested and willing publisher. Most who aspire to the lofty state of authorship probably follow this path.

Introduction The nature of this paper is expository, its purpose being to suggest a method for empirically determining indifference boundaries. The fundamental procedure that will be presented is the design and coding of Trade‐off Reject‐Acceptance (TRA), a computer program analyzing decisions involving trade‐offs.