The search for effective immunization against pneumonia was a principal avenue of investigation before the advent of The search for effective immunization against pneumonia was a principal avenue of investigation before the advent of antibiotics made such an effort appear unnecessary. Recently, however, the limitations of antibiotic therapy have become increasingly evident, and interest has been renewed in many of the threads of research which have all but lain dormant since the 1930s. In 1978, a pneumococcal vaccine was licensed by the F.D.A., merely as evidence of a renaissance in pneumococcal research which is now taking place. We are pleased to be reissuing two classic volumes which provide a unique repository of data amassed prior to the time when penicillin precluded further exhaustive observation of the unmodified infection.

Heffron’s Pneumonia is a compilation and analysis of all aspects of pneumococcal disease, including the distribution of pneumococcal types, the pathology of pneumonia, its epidemiology, symptoms, signs, complications, diagnosis, prognosis, and immunology. With a complete cross-reference index and an extensive bibliography, Heffron’s book is still the definitive work on pneumococcal infections.

White’s Biology of Pneumococcus contains the wealth of information acquired in the first six decades following the discovery of the pneumococcus. With a bibliography drawing together some 1593 papers, White’s volume is of unquestionable significance as a historical record and the basis for further study.

Beginning its narrative in 1961, when Albanian King Zog I died in a Paris hospital after 22 years in exile, this book tells the colourful story of this Balkan country's first and only monarch. The road to becoming Europe's youngest president in 1925 and then king of Albania in 1928 was paved with feuds and assassinations, a political career-path common in the region. He craved the throne for several reasons; the Balkans were mostly run by kings, and Zog wanted to impress his mother and also give his six sisters an easy social rise. 

Once king, his accomplishments were decidedly meagre. He spent most of his time keeping up appearances as a monarch despite the obvious fraud he had imposed on an illiterate and uninterested population. His one great success was that he had almost all his opponents assassinated, usually in broad daylight abroad. 

Zog retained his power until his "friend" Mussolini ousted him in 1939. On the surface a Westernizer, this self-proclaimed ruler left Albania almost as he found it, with almost no roads or trains, thoroughly uneducated and utterly impoverished. 

In his book, Robert Austin combines Zog’s adventurous life story with a studious analysis of Albania's political history from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the threshold of Euro-Atlantic integration.