Numitorius’ Parody of Vergil,Ecl. 3. 1–2.

Numitorius’ line should be read: non, verum Aegones nostri sic rure locuntur (instead of Aegonis), i.e. a generic plural ‘(people like our Aegon’).     

Tulio Halperín Donghi,et al,eds. Sarmiento. Author of a Nation. Los Angeles

Abstract

Danielle Marx-Scouras. The Cultural Politics of Tel Quel: Literature and the Left in the Wake of Engagement. (Penn State Studies in Romance Literatures.) The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. x + 24 pp. $40 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).

John C. O'Neal. The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment. (Literature and Philosophy Series). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996. xi + 284 pp. $45.00.

Victor Dixon and David Johnston, eds. El teatro de Buero Vallejo: Homenaje del hispanismo brit$dAnico e irlandés. (Hispanic Studies TRAC, 9) Liverpool University Press, 1996. 200 pp.

Steven Ungar. Scandal and Aftereffect: Blanchot and France since 1930. University of Minnesota Press, 1995. xxv + 199 pp.

Brian Powell and Geoffrey West, eds. Al que en buen ora naçio: Essays on the Spanish Epic and Ballad in Honour of Colin Smith. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press/M.H.R.A., 1996. viii + 207 pp.     

Own-child estimates of U.S. white fertility, 1886–99

Abstract

The collapse of empires is exceedingly difficult to understand. The author examined the distribution of imperial lifetimes using a data set that spans more than three millennia and found that it conforms to a memoryless exponential distribution in which the rate of collapse of an empire is independent of its age. Comparing this distribution to similar lifetime distributions of other complex systems—specifically, biological species and corporate firms—the author explores the reasons behind their lifetime distributions and how this approach can yield insights into empires.