Alpha-1-antitrypsin Deficiency: Biology, Diagnosis, Clinical Significance, and Emerging Therapies is the authoritative reference on AATD, providing standards for diagnosis, monitoring, treatment and appropriate avenues of research. The book covers the disease from basic biology and epidemiology, to clinical impact, and includes the understanding of the natural history of the disease and the significant advances that have been made in the last 20 years, including the three-dimensional structure of the molecule, its broad biological activity and improved therapeutic options, including replacement therapy and gene therapy. The editors have recruited international experts in the field to contribute evidence-based chapters and insights on future developments in the understanding of this disease.

This is the first comprehensive study of the peace negotiations which ended the American War of Independence. It challenges traditional views and uses a wide range of sources to provide a detailed analysis of the treaties signed between Britain and France, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States. It shows that American independence, rather than being the important issue of the negotiations, was consistently subordinated to European balance of power considerations. The book demonstrates the importance of personality and popular prejudice in determining foreign policy, and new insights are offered into the personalities and objectives of the leading political figures of the time, including George III, Louis XVI, Benjamin Franklin, Lords Shelburne, Grantham and North, Charles James Fox, the Comte de Vergennes, John Jay, John Adams, Catherine the Great and Frederick the Great. The result is a significant study of eighteenth-century diplomatic and political history which overturns previously established views.

A new assessment of the life and political career of Lord Shelburne, prime minister 1782-83, and of the context in which he lived. Lord Shelburne, Prime Minister in 1782-83, was a profoundly important politician, whose achievements included the negotiation of the peace with the newly-independent United States. This book constitutes a major and long overdue reappraisal of the politician considered by Disraeli to be the "most neglected Prime Minister". The book indicates, caters for, and leads the revival of interest in high politics, including its gendered aspects. It covers Shelburne's friends, his finances, and his politics, and places him carefully within both an international and a national context. For the first time his complicated but compelling family life, his satisfying relations with women, andhis Irish ancestry are presented as essential factors for understanding his public impact overall. Shelburne was a politician, patron, and cultural leader whose relationship to many of the ideas, influences, and individuals of the European Enlightenment are also emphasised. The book is thoroughly up to date, written by leading authorities in the field, and predominantly based on unpublished primary research. Shelburne and his circle constituted oneof the most important [and progressive] elements in British and European politics during the second half of the eighteenth century, and the book will appeal to all readers interested in the Enlightenment. NIGEL ASTON isReader in Early Modern History in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Leicester; CLARISSA CAMPBELL ORR is Reader in Enlightenment, Gender and Court Studies at Anglia Ruskin University.