I certainly hope it's available, because I'm putting it as a key text on my
course, beginning January, 2000.

Yikes, I'd better get writing those letters.

Dan Malleck
Brock University

At 03:17 PM 10/20/99 -0400, you wrote:
>From Rod Phillips, Carleton University, Ottawa
>[log in to unmask]
>
>I have decided to use the Blocker & Warsh collection for my course
>starting in January, but I anticipate having better luck because it
>is published in Ottawa, where I am located.  The volume was published
>by a journal, Histoire sociale/Social History, that is based at the
>University of Ottawa. I suspect that it is the lack of familiarity
>of the journal's office in dealing with large and/or international
>orders that is the problem.
>
>There might be more extensive problems, though:  book bears the
>copyright date  of 1977, although many of the articles were first
>published in a 1994 issue of the journal, and the collection appeared,
>I think, this year.
>
>There might also have been delays at the border, which, for all that
>it is vaunted as the world's longest,unguarded frontier, can be a
>formidable obstacle for printed matter travelling in either direction.
>I think customs officers have taken some of my books home to read or
>lend to their neighbours before approving them for entry to Canada.
>
>Whatever the reason, it's too bad that Geoffrey Giles's experience
>has put him off the collection, because the essays are very
>good for teaching purposes.  Even so, I quite understand how
>frustrating it is not to get the material on which you plan a course.
>
>I will take advantage of my location to contact the journal to see
>if I can get any clarification of what went wrong in this case.
>
>Rod Phillips
>
>>Geoffrey Giles:
>
>.....
>
>> I must pass on a warning about the book of essays that I have chosen as a
>> substitute for Barrows and Room this semester, namely the Blocker/Warsh
>> collection, "The Changing Face of Drink", published by Histoire
>> Sociale/Social History.  I remember a discussion here a long while back
>> about the difficulty of obtaining copies of it, but I assumed that
>> everything had been cleared up by now.  Alas, that is not the case.   We
are
>> now in the ninth week of a sixteen-week semester, and my students and I are
>> still waiting for the book, ordered in July!   The valiant efforts of my
>> local bookstore to hurry things up have proven fruitless.   Their  phone
>> call this week to the publisher got them nowhere, for example, because they
>> were told that the person dealing with our order only works on Monday
>> mornings!!   It is rumored that the books were shipped a couple of weeks
>> ago, but no-one at the publishers knew for sure.  Since I had planned to
>> assign almost weekly readings from this book, it has disrupted my plans for
>> the course considerably.   Needless to say, I shall NEVER deal with this
>> publisher again, and I can only recommend that you do not do so either.
>>
>> Geoffrey Giles
>>
>>
>>
>> Professor Geoffrey J. Giles
>> Department of History, PO Box 117320
>> University of Florida
>> Gainesville FL 32611-7320
>>
>> Office phone: (352)-392-0271
>> Home phone: (352)-375-3587
>> Home fax: (352)-379-0935
>> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>> Home page: www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ggiles
>>
>
>
>
>Roderick Phillips
>Editor, Journal of Family History/
>Professor, Department of History
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Carleton University
>Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6
>Tel: (613) 520-2600 ext 2824; fax: (613) 520-2819
>Email address: [log in to unmask]
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
================================================================
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"It is not because things are difficult that we do not try them, it is
because we do not try them that they are difficult."  --Seneca