Over the past 30 years, much has been written about the direct relationship between board composition and firm performance. However, the final results of the quest for empirical proof to measure the impact of this relationship are inconclusive. This is partly due to differences in operationalizing board composition and also partly due to the fact that various definitions of the term performance are used, including financial performance, firm performance, and market performance. More fundamentally, however, it is because a firm's performance, no matter how narrowly this word is defined, is the end result of a large number of factors, of which board composition is only one. More meaningful, therefore, is the study of the various ways to improve board performance. Effective boards are those in which the strengths and expertise of the members match the needs of the organization at any given time. Therefore, in today's fast-changing environment, the present research suggests a need for a proactive management of the board composition in anticipation of major external/internal organizational changes as well as during the various phases of a firm's life cycle. The theoretical review of the extant research on board role and composition that is covered in this book is comprehensive not only in terms of the use of major theories relevant to corporate governance but also in terms of the analysis of business scenarios that could affect the role and composition of the board throughout an organization's life cycle. This research, which was undertaken over many years, delivers valuable insights on directors' motivations to join a board and on the meaning of two key directors' selection criteria (i.e., required board experience and independence). When the pool of candidates is limited, more competence and more independence become contradictory objectives, and this dilemma has not been adequately addressed by policy makers. The board of directors represents a core component of the corporate governance system in the western economies. Anyone interested in corporate governance and research in this field would benefit from the theoretical framework developed in this book. Qualitative researchers would also be interested in the methodology used during the fieldwork. Senior executives and board members represent a notoriously challenging population to observe and interview.

Little is known of Anna Hume except as the translator of the first three of Petrach's Trionfi and also as the daughter of David Hume of Godscroft whose History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus she edited in one of its troubled versions. This volume reprints her translation of Petrarch's The Triumphs of Love - a series of six poems celebrating Petrarch's purported devotion to Laura. The poems tell a tale of Love's triumph over the poet, superseded by the triumph of chastity (in that Laura did not yield to Petrarch's love) which is in turn superseded by the triumph of death over Laura. Hume's 1644 translation is reproduced here with five related texts as appendices - an emblem and poem by Robert Farley; the translation of The Triumph of Eternitie by Elizabeth I; the translation of The Triumph of Death by Mary Sidney Herbert; illustrations from Il Petrarcha con l'espositione di M. Alessandro Vellutello...and the translation of lines 102-172 of The Triumph of Death by Barbarina Ogle Brand, Lady Dacre.

E. L. Cooper The Immunodefense System Because invertebrates are exceedingly diverse and numerous, estimates reveal nearly 2 million species classified in more than 20 phyla from unicellular organisms up to the complex, multicellular protostomes and deuterostomes. It is not surprising to find less diverse defense/immune responses whose effector mechanisms remain to be completely elucidated. Of course, I am not advocating that the few of us devoted to analyzing invertebrate immunity attempt the Herculean task of examining all these species to uncover some kind of unique response As these two volumes will reveal, we are doing fairly well in examining in depth only the most miniscule examples of invertebrates, some of which have great effects on human populations such as edible crustaceans or insect pests. This is in striking contrast to the mass of information on the mammalian immune response which has been derived essentially from the mouse, a member of one phylum, Vertebrata, an approach, reductionist to be sure, but one that has served well both the technological and conceptual advances of immunology as a disci pline. The essential framework of immunology, the overwhelming burst of results since the 1960s, have emanated primarily from this single animal. We should not forget the thymus and the bird's bursa of Fabricius, without which we might have been slower to recognize the bipartite T /B system."

Scholars have often felt that Books III and IV of Spenser's Faerie Queene were loosely, almost carelessly, structured. Thomas P. Roche, Jr., seeks to show by a close examination of the text that all four books have a logical structure, and that the apparently randomly selected episodes form one complex allegory. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Scholars have often felt that Books III and IV of Spenser's Faerie Queene were loosely, almost carelessly, structured. Thomas P. Roche, Jr., seeks to show by a close examination of the text that all four books have a logical structure, and that the apparently randomly selected episodes form one complex allegory. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.