-Resonance, The Bert Seager Trio, Accurate Records, 1997. Jazz pianist Bert Seager '77 teams up with Ian Froman (drums), and Dan Greenspan '77 (bass) for a mix of Seager's original work and interpretations of songs by Thelonious Monk ("Trinkle Tinkle"), Irving Berlin ("What'll I Do"), and Miles Davis ("Solar"). Seager has won acclaim for four previous recordings and has been a prominent player on the Boston jazz scene since 1981. Trained as a classical cellist, Greenspan developed an interest in jazz as a teenager and performs regularly with his wife, renowned vocalist Mili Bermejo, in duo and expanded formats. Seager and Greenspan have playing together for twenty years, and the Bert Seager Trio gave a 1995 concert in Marshall Auditorium, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Haverford Music Department.   -Guinnane, Timothy W. '81, The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration, and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850-1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. In the years between the Great Famine of the 1840s and the First World War, Ireland experienced a drastic drop in the population: the percentage of adults who never married soared from 10 percent to 25 percent, while the overall population decreased by one third. What accounted for this? For many social analysts, the history of the post-Famine Irish depopulation was a Malthusian morality tale where declining living standards led young people to postpone marriage out of concern for their ability to support a family. The problem here, argues Yale University Associate Professor of Economics Timothy Guinnane, is that living standards in post-Famine Ireland did not decline. Rather, other, more subtle economic changes influenced the decision to delay marriage, or not marry at all. In this engaging inquiry into the "vanishing Irish," Guinnane explores the options that presented themselves to Ireland's younger generations, taking into account household structure, inheritance, religion, cultural influences on marriage and family life, and especially emigration. Guinnane focuses on rural Ireland, where the population changes were most profound, and explores the way demographic patterns reflect the rural Irish economy, Ireland's place as a small part in a much larger English-speaking world, and the influence of earlier Irish history and culture. Particular effort is made to compare Irish demographic behavior to similar patterns elsewhere in Europe, revealing an Ireland anchored in European tradition and yet a distinctive society in its own right.   -Gross, Jonathan David '85, ed. Byron's "Corbeau Blanc": The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne. Houston: Rice University Press, 1997. "What famous letters your own are...I never saw such traits of descernment, observation of character, knowledge of your own sex, and sly concealment of your knowledge of the foibles of ours," wrote the twenty-four-year-old Lord Byron to Lady Melbourne. More than one hundred previously unpublished letters of Lady Melbourne are included in this scholarly edition which vividly re-creates the late Georgian age. Lady Melbourne's controversial letters to Lord Byron are published in their entirety for the first time, revealing her significant influence on his masterpiece, Don Juan. Scholars of the Romantic period will welcome these carefully annotated letters written by one of the age's most ambitioius and captivating personalites. John David Gross is an assistant professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago and is currently Director of the M.A. Program in Literature at DePaul.   -Mollenkamp, Carrick, and Levy, Adam '84 et. al. The People vs. Big Tobacco. Princeton: Bloomberg Press, 1998. In the first full account of the landmark tobacco settlement, Haverford alum Adam Levy '84 and his fellow Bloomberg News reporters who combined to break the story, outline the course of events that ended in the record tobacco settlement. The tobacco industry, until recently unbeatable in court was hobbled by a combination of ambitious state attorneys general, defections by whistle-blowers, and leaks of confidential information among others, and was forced to settle in June 1997. The industry agreed to an enormous $368.5 billion to settle lawsuits, a figure that might go even higher in the near future. Based on in-depth reporting by Bloomberg News and extensive interviews with more than one hundred key participants in the tobacco settlement, The People v. Big Tobacco presents the complete story of the people who crafted the largest legal payout in history, and in the process brought one of the world's most powerful industries to its knees. Showing how and why the players came to the terms they did, the Bloomberg team exposes the remarkable influence of Big Tobacco on the political and social landscape of American, take the reader inside the heads of some of the nation's top corporate executives as they battle a sea of rising public outrage, illustrate how a bunch of unknown southern lawyers engineered the ultimate back-room deal, and reveal how the tobacco settlement changed the way other vital public policy issues are resolved.   -Kidney, Walter C., Pittsburgh's Landmark Architecture. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, 1997. This is the most comprehensive account of the architecture of Pittsburgh and its county published to date. Pittsburgh's Landmark Architecture has two main sections. The first, "The Poplar and the Ailanthus," is an essay on the architectural history of Allegheny County. The title alludes to an image found in the essay: the contrast between the Lombardy poplar, an "architectural" tree, elegant and orderly, and the awkward, pragmatic ailanthus, which grows with rude vigor wherever it has a chance. The ailanthus, indeed, can symbolize much of what has come to be in and around Pittsburgh: rough industrial resident settlements on the river plains and hilltops. Yet poplars have been planted too, handsome buildings, elegant engineering, good places to show off or to live in, such as the Oakland Civic Center, Edgeworth, Aspinwall, Evergreen Hamlet, Thornburg, or Chatham Village. The essay is illustrated with 63 color photographs of the region and 210 duo tone photographs, many of them archival prints showing buildings and scenes long gone. The second section, "A Guide to the Landmark Architecture of Allegheny County," based on a county-wide architectural survey conducted by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, discusses pre-1950 buildings, neighborhoods, and engineering works whose preservation the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation wishes to advocate. There are over 1,300 black-and-white photographs in this section.