The publication of the fifteenth volume of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences brings to completion the most ambitious effort ever made to synthesize social studies. No previous dictionary or handbook of law, government, or economics can compare with it in scops, in catholicity, or in the scale of cooperative effort. The product of plans drawn by ten learned societies and the handiwork of almost two thousand contributor, the Encyclopaedia cuts across of recognized areas through centuries the content of recognized areas of scholarship and at the same time often enters untried or controversy-beset territories. Combining biographical and sociology, but in addition with penology, social work, history, ethics, with biology and medicine.