Briefly Noted

Concord, N. H., newspaperman Stephen W. Winship '41 is the author of At theBend in the River, a 138-page history of Concord prepared for that city's Bicentennial celebration. Printed by the Evans Printing Co., the Winship book is a lively presentation, condensing other available histories of the Capital City into three dozen short chapters.

Introduction to Knot Theory by Associate Professor of Mathematics Richard H. Crowell and Ralph H. Fox has been brought out in a second printing by Blaisdell Publishing Co., a division of Ginn & Co., Boston (182 pp., $8.00). MathematicalReviews, Vol. 26, 1963, contained the following on the book at its first printing: "This book is in many ways a surprising work ... it places topology, algebraic topology and knot theory in the position of solving a 'practical problem' . . . for a very innocent task, namely distinguishing knots, a respectable amount of interesting and sophisticated mathematics is introduced .. . while there is great emphasis on practicality . . . there is no sacrifice of rigor. This book is on the side of formality for necessity's sake, rather than formality for its own sake."

Associate Professor of English Peter A. Bien is the author of Constantine Cavafy, No. 5 in the soft-covered Columbia Essays on Modern Writers, published by the Columbia University Press (48 pp., $.65). Poet Cavafy lived and worked for most of his life in Alexandria yet, according to Bien, was "proudly conscious of his identity as a Greek." Cavafy, Bien writes, was "truly a man with a stance at a slight angle to the universe." The author sets out to make Cavafy's stance understandable through this work on "his life and background: about his psychological disposition, social and economic circumstances, about Alexandria itself, and about the specific technical problems Cavafy had to work out before he could become a truly great poet" .. . and especially through an analysis of Cavafy's poems.