Reviews of Books The author may rightly say of his work that "a more elaborate work could have been constructed with less time and labor." This volume will prove a valuable he p to give ready access to the law I suretyship and guaranty. L. M. F. WOODWARD'S QUASI-CONTRACTS The Law of Quasi-Contracts. By Frederic Campbell Woodward, Professor of Law in Leland Stanford Junior University. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. Pp. lxi, 477 + 20 (index). ($3 net.) TWENTY years ago when Professor Keener published his work a separate text-book on the law of quasicontracts appeared for the first time. Many of the older practitioners of that day were inclined to scoff at the subject as some new-fangled theories of the Harvard Law School. Since that time, however, the subject has found a place in the teachings of all law schools and the quasi-contract idea is familiar to the profession at large. As modern courts have developed the law of quasi-contracts, many interest ing and instructive cases have settled important principles that were without precedents ten and twenty years ago. No adequate text-book has handled this subject since Professor Keener's. There is no recent edition of that work, so there is a real place for a good up-todate work on this subject. Professor Woodward has given the profession an adequate and intelligent treatise that will prove of real value to the bench and bar. His method of presentaion is clear, concise and illu minating. This book is a model of the best method of handling precedents and theories. Decisions are discussed so as to leave the reader in no doubt as to what the law is. Where there is a conflict of authorities or where a decision does not meet with the author's approval, the different view-points are so pre
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sented that each reader may form an opinion of his own on the merits of the controversy. There is no padding, no mass of indigested citations, and no dreary hack work. The whole book gives the impression of thoughtful com petency of a master of the subject. This is just the kind of book that is helpful alike to bench, bar and law student. It is to be regretted that in the large output of law books today, we meet so few that have so high a standard of excellence as Woodward's QuasiContracts. L. M. F. STEDMAN'S MEDICAL DICTION ARY A Practical Medical Dictionary. By Thomas Lathrop Stedman, A.M., M.D., editor of Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine and of the Medical Record. Second revised edition. William Wood & Co.. New York. Pp. 1028. (Thumb-indexed, $5 net; plain, $4.50 net.) LAWYERS have to know a little of everything, and one of the hardest subjects they have to absorb in preparation for trial is the medical dialect. This book is very comprehen sive, but by use of thin paper and small but distinct type the book is kept with in a compass which can be conveniently handled. Bound in flexible covers and thumb-indexed on the margin, it is a thoroughly useful hand-book. For this second edition, appearing one year after the publication of the first edition, new plates were made, and all typographical and other errors insep arable from a new work have been cor rected. Between two and three thou sand new titles and sub -titles have been added, a table of symbols has been added in the appendix, and the biographical data have been brought down to date. The secondedition is bound in red leather, it having been found that the green color used for the first edition was liable to fade and discolor.
