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] >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > ================================================================ [log in to unmask] "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