This book contrasts the approaches of Australia and the Federal Republic of Germany to problems of federal government, with special reference to political and administrative aspects of federalism, provisions for constitutional review and the administration of justice, the organisation of educational and cultural affairs, the role of local government, and fiscal and economic aspects of federalism.

In November 1960 the Australian Government brought in emergency economic measures to avert a balance of payments crisis. The stock market collapsed, unemployment rose sharply, and for the two next years there were signs of recession. The episode has been described as Australia{u2019}s {u2018}first independent slump{u2019}, and the government was strongly criticised. Dr Waterman was deeply sceptical of the explanations put forward at the time, some of which have passed into folklore, and began a detailed investigation into the sources and history of the 1961 recession.

'South Sea Islanders and the Queensland Labour Trade' was first published in 1893. It is an exciting first hand account of a trade never free from violence and controversy and at the same time a valuable document on inter-racial contact and race relations. Wawn recruited or repatriated island labourers in every area - the New Hebrides, the Solomons, New Britain, New Ireland, the New Guinea off-shore islands and the Gilberts. He encountered every hazard of the trade from shipwreck to murder and wrote a vivid account of his voyages. But his book is not just an adventure story.

Nauru: Phosphate and Political Progress is the story of David and Goliath in a modern political setting in the South Seas. Controlled, protected, or occupied successively by Germans, Australians, British, and Japanese and then again by Australians under U.N. Trusteeship, all (except Germany) for the purpose of exploiting the island{u2019}s one resource - phosphate - Nauru is one of the smallest and most isolated islands in the Pacific, with a mere 3000 inhabitants.

"From the eighteenth-century accounts of Captain James Cook to the writings of James A. Michener, enraptured descriptions of the Pacific islands have identified the term 'South Seas{u2019} with visions of a blissful life in perpetual summer on white beaches shaded by swaying palm trees.

This book takes a multidisciplinary and multicultural approach to studying the relationship between human societies and food- yielding tropical palms. A joint effort of four people whose special ties complement each other, it provides a broad and thorough examination of palm sago, a starch that has potential for small-scale, low-cost development in marginal areas of the tropics. Information on the extraction and production of palm sago in insular and mainland Southeast Asia, the tropical Americas, Melanesia, South China, and South Asia is presented here.

This book of essays honours Professor O.H.K. Spate of The Australian National University. Occupying the second University Chair of Geography to be created in Australia, Oskar Spate built a Department in the Research School of Pacific Studies there. Later, after serving for five years as Director of that School, he moved to its Department of Pacific and South Asian History where, as a Visiting Fellow, he is writing a three- volume history of the Pacific. The first volume, The Spanish Lake, was published by the ANU Press in mid- 1979.

To survive as a species man must adapt. But genetically he is largely the same as his Stone Age ancestors. It is not surprising that drastic modifications of the environment which have taken place have given rise to many signs of man's maladjustment. The impact of civilisation on the biology of man, evidenced by the effects of diet, crowding, noise, the changing nature of disease, and the stress of modern living, was the subject of critical examination by distinguished scientists at a symposium sponsored by the Australian Academy of Science in 1968.