Recent works by historians and biologists have called into doubt whether the great epidemic of 1348/49 in England was the plague. Examination of the biological evidence, however, shows their arguments to be faulty. The great epidemic of 1348/49 may have included other diseases, but it was clearly yersinia pestis .

In Cannibal Talk , Gananath Obeyesekere sets out to expose cannibalism as racist slander and anthropologists' perpetuation of a mistaken sense of “identity.” In the very act of denying its existence, however, he employs it as sheep's clothing for the beast of genocide and other atrocities, implying that they, too, can be classified as slander or treated as aberrations outside the bounds of social rules or analysis. In claiming to deconstruct centuries of falsehood and defamation, Obeyesekere paradoxically opens the door to revising real crimes-the global horrors that he compares with cannibalism-lending them the same aura of unreality.

David Currie's four volumes about constitutional interpretation in Congress from 1789 to the Civil War provide historians, political scientists, and legal scholars with important insights into American political development. The books shed light on the gradual erosion of Congress' capacity to interpret the Constitution and offer a solid basis for provocative speculation about the strength of the normative case for judicial review.