Reviews

Susan Gross Solomon (ed.), Beyond Sovietology: Essays in Politics and History. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1993, 254 pp., £38.00.

Alice H. Amsden, Jacek Kochanowicz & Lance Taylor, The Market Meets Its Match. Restructuring the Economics of Eastern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, 250 pp.

Robert E. Ebel, Energy Choices in Russia. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994, xii + 152 pp., $16.95.

Michael Waller, The End of the Communist Power Monopoly. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993, viii + 287 pp., £35.00 h/b., £9.99 p/b.

Minxin Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, 253 pp., £29.95.

William G. Rosenberg & Lewis H. Siegelbaum (eds), Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialisation. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, xix + 296 pp., £12.99 p/b.

Taras Kuzio & Andrew Wilson, Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence. Basingstoke: Macmil‐lan Press, 1994, xiv + 260 pp., £40.00.

Russell F. Farnen (ed.), Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Identity. Cross National and Comparative Perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction, 1994, xiv + 538 pp., £49.95.

Edwin Thomas Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of Archives. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994, xii + 190 pp.

Robert S. Ross, China, the United States and the Soviet Union: Tripolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, x + 204 pp., £42.00.     

Post-mortem cooling of the human head: an infrared thermology study

The post-mortem cooling of the human head, over the first fifteen hours after death, was measured by infrared thermology. A detailed temperature map of the head and face was obtained by the use of image processing techniques and the cooling behaviour of twelve preselected facial features was observed. The two main findings of the study were a difference in cooling pattern between the upper and the lower part of the head, and a consistency in the cooling pattern of the lower part of the head in all the cases studied. A comparison of various model fits to the raw data was undertaken and the "best" bodies, models and features were determined on a statistical basis. The formula that best fitted the raw data was a novel double application of Newton's law. The features with the least error in data fitting were the chin and zygoma; that with the most error was the mouth.     

Social welfare functions when preferences are convex,strictly monotonic,and continuous

The paper shows that if the class of admissible preference orderings is restricted in a manner appropriate for economic and political models, then Arrow's impossibility theorem for social welfare functions continues to be valid. Specifically if the space of alternatives is R ₊ ⁿ , n ≥ 3, where each dimension represents a different public good and if each person's preferences are restricted to be convex, continuous, and strictly monotonic, then no social welfare function exists that satisfies unanimity, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and nondictatorship.     

Gender Differences in Self-Perceptions and Academic Outcomes: A Study of African American High School Students

There is increasing divergence in the academic outcomes of African American males and females. By most accounts, males are falling behind their female peers educationally as African American females are graduating from high schools at higher rates and are going on to college and graduate school in greater numbers. Some have suggested that school completion and performance is associated with how students feel about themselves. The purpose of this study was to explore gender differences in the relationship between self-perceptions and 2 academic outcomes among a sample of 243 African American high school sophomores. The results suggest that, overall, females are more favorably oriented toward high school completion. Both male and female students with more positive self-perceptions have stronger intentions to complete the current year of high school. Higher grade point averages were more strongly associated with greater self-efficacy for females than for males. Given these findings, increased attention to educational programming, societal messages, and future research is warranted.