Family Law in Louisiana is designed for use in law school courses that involve the study of the distinctive family law of Louisiana, a law that represents a unique blend of Continental ("civilian"), Anglo-American, and autochthonic legal principles. Topics covered include those that would be covered in a standard textbook on American family law, including prerequisites for and the nullity of marriage; the dissolution of marriage; the incidents of divorce, such as interspousal alimony, child custody, and child support; filiation (paternity); parental responsibility and authority; care for children outside of marriage (tutorship); care for incapacitated adults (curatorship); choice of law; and constitutional constraints on state regulation of family relations. About the authors: Katherine Shaw Spaht is the Jules F. and Frances L. Landry Professor of Law (Emeritus) and former Vice Chancellor (1990-1992) at Louisiana State University's Paul M. Hebert Law Center. Since 1972, she has taught courses in the areas of family law and marital property law. In addition to overseeing the revision of Louisiana's community property law in 1978 and drafting Louisiana's covenant marriage legislation in 1997, she has worked with the Louisiana legislature on such varied topics as needs of women, rights of illegitimate children, "assisted conception," and child support, no-fault divorce, and same-sex marriage. She has been the Reporter of the Louisiana State Law Institute's "Persons & Family Law" Committee since 1981 and also serves on the American Law Institute's Committee on the Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution. Through the years she has produced a significant corpus of publications pertaining to family and marital law, including a treatise on Louisiana marital property law (co-authored with Lee Hargrave), which forms part of the Louisiana Civil Law Treatise Series, and most recently, Who's Your Momma, Who Are Your Daddies? Louisiana's New Law of Filiation, 67 LA. L. REV. 307 (2007). J. Randall Trahan is the James Carville Alumni Professor of Law at Louisiana State University's Paul M. Hebert Law Center. In each of the past ten years, he has taught courses in "family" or "marital property" law. During that same time he has produced several publications related to family or marital property law, including Glossae on the New Law of Marital Donations, 65 LA. L. REV. 1059 (2005); Glossae on the New Law of Filiation, 67 LA. L. REV. 387 (2007); and Prerequisites to Marriage in Scotland and Louisiana: An Historical-Comparative Investigation, in MIXED JURISDICTIONS COMPARED: PRIVATE LAW IN LOUISIANA AND SCOTLAND (Vernon Valentine Palmer and Elspeth Christie Reid eds., Edinburgh Univ. Press, forthcoming 2009); has spoken as a lecturer on "recent developments" in family law at a number of continuing legal education conferences; and has participated in the drafting of reform legislation in Louisiana that has addressed such matters as covenant marriage, no-fault divorce, filiation (paternity), marital donations, and same-sex unions. For the past five years, he has served as a member of the Louisiana State Law Institute's "Persons & Family Law" Committee.

The legal and commercial importance of the tort of Conversion is difficult to overstate, and yet there remains a sense that the principles of the tort are elusive. Most recently, this was illustrated by the difficulties posed for the House of Lords by the Conversion issue in OBG v Allan [2007] UKHL 21, on which it was closely divided. Conversion, as we now recognise it, has a complex pedigree. Showing little regard for received taxonomies, it has elements which make lawyers think in terms of property, despite its eventful descent from actions in personam. Conversion is, therefore, something of a hybrid creature, which perhaps explains the paucity of scholarly analysis of the subject to date, property lawyers and tort lawyers each regarding it as the other's concern. This book is the first comprehensive appraisal of the modern tort of Conversion. It offers a coherent and accessible rationalisation of the subject, supported by rigorous analysis of all aspects, from title to sue to the available remedies. The principal thesis of the work is that the development of Conversion has somewhat stagnated, and in consequence the tort has so far been unable to fulfil either its theoretical or its practical potential as a legal device. Whilst this is partly a result of historical factors, it is also a consequence of the fact that no systematic examination of the tort in England appears ever to have been carried out. The primary objectives of the book, therefore, are to provide such an analysis, to present Conversion as a useful and important tort, well suited to the demands of contemporary law and commerce, and to offer a principled framework for its future development.

The central theme of this book is the study of self-dual connections on four-manifolds. The author's aim is to present a lucid introduction to moduli space techniques (for vector bundles with SO (3) as structure group) and to apply them to four-manifolds. The authors have adopted a topologists' perspective. For example, they have included some explicit calculations using the Atiyah-Singer index theorem as well as methods from equivariant topology in the study of the topology of the moduli space. Results covered include Donaldson's Theorem that the only positive definite form which occurs as an intersection form of a smooth four-manifold is the standard positive definite form, as well as those of Fintushel and Stern which show that the integral homology cobordism group of integral homology three-spheres has elements of infinite order. Little previous knowledge of differential geometry is assumed and so postgraduate students and research workers will find this both an accessible and complete introduction to currently one of the most active areas of mathematical research.

Here, for the first time in one volume, are Scaring the Crows and On the Edge of Twilight, Gregory Miller's first two collections of powerful, often wondrous short stories. Together, these 43 tales create a dusky landscape where, in part, the elderly are gifted with otherworldly youth, spiders hide in human form, and ghosts outlast the Earth...where trees remember past lives, scarecrows walk at midnight, and millions of people live through one man's breath. It is a magic place. And a haunted one. Effortlessly spanning numerous genres and styles, Miller imbues his tales with terror and warmth, malevolence and nostalgia...the reason Ray Bradbury once wrote, "Gregory Miller is a fresh new talent with a great future."