The return of infectious disease is one of the most pernicious collective action problems that policymakers face in the post-Cold War era.  Given the rapid and continuing spread of diseases once thought to be controlled (such as malaria and tuberculosis) and the emergence of legal new disease agents (HIV/AIDS, ebola), policy-makers must consider the implications for economic prosperity, general well-being, and national security in affected societies.  Despite significant variance in the power of states across the international spectrum, all will remain vulnerable to the consequences of resurgent and emerging pathogens.

This work represents a collection of articles from the premier authors in the field on the ramifications of disease for international development, international law and national security.  Disease emergence is placed within the context of accelerating global environmental change which can only exacerbate the problem.  This book is a primer for understanding the relationship between global change, human ecology and socio-political outcomes, all viewed through the lens of public health.

"MY NAME WILL SURVIVE AS LONG AS MAN SURVIVES, BECAUSE I AM WRITING THE GREATEST DIARY THAT HAS EVER BEEN WRITTEN.  I INTEND TO SURPASS PEPYS AS A DIARIST."

When John Frush Knox (1907-1997) wrote these words, he was in the middle of law school and his attempt at surpassing Pepys, part scrapbook, part social commentary, and part recollection - had already reached 750 pages.  His efforts as a chronicler might have landed in a family attic had he not secured an eminent position after graduation as law clerk to Justice James C. McReynolds - arguably one of the most disagreeable justices to sit on the Supreme Court - during the tumultuous year when President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to "pack" the Court with justices who would approve his New deal agenda.   Knox's memoir instead emerges as one of the most fascinating periods in American history. 

The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox offers a candid, at times naive, insider's view of the showdown between Roosevelt and the Court that took place in 1937.  At the same time, it marvelously portrays a Washington culture now long gone.  Although the new Supreme Court building had been open for a year by the time Knox joined McReynolds' staff, most of the justices continued to work from their homes, each supported by a small staff.  Knox, the epitome of the overzealous and officious young man, after landing what he believes to be a dream position, continually fears for his job under the notoriously rude (and nakedly racist justice).  But he soon develops close relationships with the justice's two black servants:  Harry Parker, the messenger who does "everything but breathe" for the justice, and Mary Diggs, the maid and cook.  Together they plot and sidestep around their employer's idiosyncrasies to keep the household running while history is made in the Court..

This edited volume brings together the work of eleven distinguished scholars and leading experts on Korean politics to analyze critically the key factors and issues that are shaping a newly emerging security regime on and around the Korean peninsula.  The Korean security regime is undergoing a swift structural change at the beginning of the twenty-first century.  South Korea's policy toward North Korea has fundamentally changed under the Kim Dae Jung government, and the North, which has long been isolated, is aggressively reaching out to the international community.  The United States, China, and Japan changed their approach to the Korean peninsula in response to these initiatives by the two Koreas.  The historic summit meeting in June 2000 between the two Koreas, Ki Jong Il's rare foreign visits, the resumed diplomatic normalization talks between North Korea and Japan, and the U.S. engagement policy toward North Korea are all the result of new approaches to the Korean peninsula.  All these developments will restructure the security dynamics on the Korean peninsula in the coming years.  Using first-hand knowledge and personal observations gleaned from visits to North Korea, Japan, South Korea, and china, the contributors examine emerging inter-Korean security relations, U.S.-Korean security relations, and the dynamics among major powers that affect the security of both Koreas. 

Lawrence Walsh credits his exciting and untraditional legal career on - of all things - his lack of self-confidence, resulting from his status as a self-described C student from a middle-class background.  Ironically, his career placed him squarely among the social and academic elite in law, politics, and business...and Judge Walsh met his challenges with success.  In many ways, he personifies the American Dream.

In this book, Judge Walsh calls his self-doubt a gift of insecurity that served him well throughout his long career.  While some people are forever held back by their feelings of self-doubt, Judge Walsh's doubts actually fired his ambitions and freed him from the constraints felt by his more pedigreed colleagues to follow a safe and traditional career path.

While Lawrence Walsh is perhaps best known as the Independent Counsel who investigated the Iran-Contra scandal, he had an exciting and varied legal career during a time when it was unusual for a lawyer to change jobs over the course of his entire working life.  In the 1920s, before becoming a lawyer, Walsh worked as a seaman on freighters and ocean liners.  And during the course of his career, before Iran-Contra, he served as:

• Prosecutor of the New york mob for District Attorney Tom Dewey
• Litigation partner in a Wall Street law firm
• Deputy Attorney General in the Eisenhower Administration
• Deputy Head U.S. Negotiator at the Paris Peace Talks with North Vietnam

Questions of religious freedom continue to excite passionate public debate.  Proposals involving school prayer and the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools and courtrooms perennially spur controversy.  But there is also a sense that the prevailing discourse is exhausted, that no one seems to know how to think about religious freedom in a way that moves beyond our stale, counter-productive thinking on this issue.

In Getting over Equality, Steven D. Smith, one of the most important voices now writing about religious liberty, provocatively contends that we must get over our presumption -- mistakenly believed to be rooted in the Constitution -- that all religious are equally true and virtuous and "authentically American."  Smith puts forth an alternative view that the courts should promote an ideal of tolerance rather than equality and neutrality.  Examining such controversial examples as the animal sacrifice case, the peyote case, and the problem of aid to parochial schools, Smith delineates a way for us to tolerate and respect contrary creeds without sacrificing or diluting our own beliefs - and without pretending to believe in a spurious "equality" among the variety of diverse faiths.

Schools, welfare agencies, and a wide variety of other vital state and local institutions are actually controlled by attorneys and judges rather than by governors and mayors.  In this valuable books, Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod explain how this has come to pass, why it serves the public so badly, and how to restore control of these programs to democratically elected -- and accountable -- officials.

Sandler and Schoenbrod tell how the courts, with the best intentions and often with the approval of elected officials, came to control ordinary policy making through decrees.  These court regimes, they assert, impose rigid and often ancient detailed plans that prove ineffective and wasteful.  Elected officials cannot respond to changing realities unless attorneys, court-appointed functionaries, and lower-echelon officials agree.  The result is neither judicial government nor good government, say Sandler and Schoenbrod, and they offer practical reforms that would set governments free from this stranglehold and allow courts to do their legitimate job of protecting rights.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Congress enacted a vast body of legislation to protect the environment and individual health and safety.  Collectively, this legislation is known as "risk regulation" because it addresses the risk of harm that technology creates for individuals and the environment.  In the last two decades, this legislation has come under increasing attack by critics who employ utilitarian philosophy and cost-benefit analysis.  The defenders of this body of risk regulation, by contrast, have lacked a similar unifying theory.

In this book, the authors propose that the American tradition of philosophical pragmatism fills this vacuum.  They argue that pragmatism offers a better method for conceiving of and implementing risk regulation than the economic paradigm favored by its critics.  While pragmatism offers a methodology in support of risk regulation as it was originally conceived, it also offers a perspective from which this legislation can be held up to critical appraisal.  The authors employ pragmatism to support risk regulation, but pragmatism also leads them to agree with some of the criticism against it and even to level new criticisms of their own.

In the end, the authors reject the picture, painted by risk regulation's critics, of widely excessive and irrational regulation, but they do not entirely exonerate risk regulation either.  The pragmatic perspective leads them to propose a number of ideas about how risk regulation might be usefully reformed.