Book Reviews.

Readers may recall an earlier venture by Oxford University Press, the Past Masters series of short accounts of significant figures from intellectual history. The series of Very Short Introductions includes some volumes from that earlier venture. One novelty is that it includes also volumes, like those under review, which attempt to do for subjects what the Past Masters volumes attempted to do for individual thinkers. Another novelty is typographic: both these new volumes come with plenty of illustrations, paragraphs displayed in boxes, and the like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]