Briefly Noted
Author or co-author of 16 textbooks in Sociology, including revisions, which deal with introductory sociology, social problems, marriage and the family, Prof. Francis E. Merrill '26 is being read in Spanish universities. Now in its fourth edition with cumulative sales of various editions running to about 250,000 copies, the basic text in several hundred colleges and universities and a number of foreign countries, Society andCulture has been translated into Spanish. Mr. Merrill is already well known in France. In 1959-60 he was a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Rennes and the University of Aix en Provence and addressed his audiences in their native language on American Sociology. He was again chosen a Fulbright Lecturer in 1966-67 and continued his lecturing at the University of Nice. For some years be has been devoting himself to a study of sociological ideas in French realists, Flaubert and Zola withjiie main emphasis on Balzac and La Comedie Humaine, first published in 1842 and posthumously in 47 volumes, and publishers have already approached him about the book he is writing.
Counsel for the New York Foreign Freight Forwarders and Brokers Association, Gerald H. Ullman '3B has written a unique book about ocean-shipping laws and regulations. In a foreword Admiral John Harllee, Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission, calls it a handy and valuable compilation of forwarder-and-shipper responsibilities under federal regulatory statutes and agency rules and interpretations. Published by the Cornell Maritime Press, the volume costs $5.00.
The violent financial speculation boom from 1823 to 1825 in England, when one company was founded on expectations of exporting snow shovels and ice skates to Central America, ended in the major panic of 1825. A friend of the Duke of Wellington, Mrs. Arbuthnot, confided only to him and her journal, December 17, that the Bank of England with only 100,000 sovereigns remaining would probably suspend Payments. "In the manufacturing districts 'hey do not know how to pay the wages and serious riots are expected." "The banks are breaking in every direction." England was within 24 hours of a state of barter. The currency crisis was solved by the discovery of a mysterious box in the basement of the Bank of England. It contained 700,000 unused pound notes of the 1821 issue. On December 16 they were put into circulation. By Christmas the crisis was over. As Alexander Baring, the well known private banker, summed up, "The one Pound notes saved the country's credit." James C. Risk '37 tells the story in "Early Pound Notes and the Mystery of 1825" published in TheNumismatic Review, Vol. VIII, Number 3, 1967. In the same issue Mr. Risk discusses in "A Question of Diamonds" the confusion frequently manifested in the American press about Orders and Decorations and the erroneous descriptions in American periodicals of dukes, barons, ambassadors, and other "Royalty" splendidly equipped with "diamond sunbursts" and "jewelled medals."
Gregory L. Rabassa '44, Professor at Columbia University, who translates contemporary Latin American literature, including Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar for which he received the National Book Award in 1967, has translated Mulata by Miguel Angel Asturias published by the Delacorte Press, New York. The Spanish author, born in Guatemala in 1899, a lawyer, teacher, writer and Ambassador to France, has been compared to Faulkner, Kafka, and Joyce because of the vigor of his imagination, daring interior structure, and violent and tender lyricism. The dust jacket describes Mulata as "a rich and gaudy novel.. . steeped in Indian mythology, eroticism, and surrealistic adventure."
"Archaeological Investigations at the Ross Hammock Site, Florida" by Ripley P. Bullen, Adelaide K. Bullen, and William J. Bryant '25 indicate that the Indian River Lagoon was heavily inhabited for several centuries about the time of Christ and that the occupants built elaborate burial mounds. Although the mounds have been damaged by treasure seekers and pot hunters for years, the careful excavations of the Bullens and Bryant reveal much scientific data still available. Fortunately, the Ross Hammock Mound, now part of the National Aeronau- tics and Space Administration at Cape Kennedy, comes under the protection of the ' Federal Antiquities Act. Unfortunately, vast quantities of evidence of prehistoric life all across the country are being destroyed by suburbanization and increased industrialization, despite the best efforts of federal and state organizations. Published and financed by the William L. Bryant Foundation, the booklet is Report Number Seven in American Studies.
Walking home one dark spring afternoon, Robert Frost, only 16, a sophomore in the Lawrence High School, found himself composing a long poem about the battle between Cortez, the Spanish conqueror, and the Aztec Indians. The poet's literary career may be considered to have begun when the Bulletin, the school magazine, printed it in the April 1890 issue. Published by The Grolier Club of New York in a limited edition of 1200 copies, Robert Frost and the Lawrence,Massachusetts, "High School Bulletin" tells the story of Rob Frost's two-year association with this magazine. During his senior year (1892) he became Editor-in-Chief but resigned in a burst of indignation and anger after presiding over four numbers. The volume containing four numbers of the Bulletin which he edited, with 56 pages of full facsimiles, is edited by Edward Connery Lathem '5l, Associate Librarian of Dartmouth College, and Prof. Lawrance Thompson of Princeton, Frost's official biographer. The Stinehour Press is the designer and printer, and the price is $2O.
It is news when a woman is chosen at Dartmouth College to be a resident Lecturer in English. It is also news when she, Marilyn Austin Baldwin, edits a book and writes a scholarly introduction, especially if the book is about Mark Twain. But it is not surprising, for Mrs. David A. Baldwin, wife of an assistant professor of Government at Dartmouth, holds a B.A. from Indiana University and a Ph.D. from Rutgers, and was formerly an English instructor at Augusta College. Published by the Louisiana State University Press at $7.50, My MarkTwain, Reminiscences and Criticisms byWilliam Dean Howells gives the reading public an opportunity to know what Howells and Twain had to say about Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, and Holmes, not to mention such matters as Christian Science, Oxford University and Twain's adoration for his Oxford gown which he put on for every possible occasion.
Editor-in-chief of McGraw-Hill's Engineering Manual, second edition, is Dr. Robert H. Perry '45. Engineering Manual: APractical Reference of Data and Methods inArchitectural, Chemical, Civil, Electrical,Mechanical, and Nuclear Engineering ($11.75, 770 pages plus index, 303 illus- trations) provides in one compact volume all of the essential working concepts, tables, formulas and facts needed to answer the questions that arise in day-to-day engineer- ing assignments. Dr. Perry, who has been visiting expert of the United Nations at Middle East Technical University as well as a program director of the National Science Foundation, is also editor-in-chief of the Chemical Engineers' Handbook, Fourth Edition.
