Book Reviews

Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations Used in American Law Books by Doris Bieber The proliferation of legal sources and abbreviations poses two related problems--first, the need for standardized citation forms,and second, the need for guides to commonly used abbreviations. The first problem has been difficult to solve, and universal acceptance of standard citations is unlikely to be achieved. A Uniform System of Citation, published by the Harvard Law Review Association, in collaboration with the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal, has attained wide acceptance and has become the authoritative guide for legal citations in this country. Unless future editions increase in complexity or deteriorate in clarity and scope, the influence of the Bluebook (as it is popularly known) should grow, and it should become as close to an effective standard as seems possible. Web of Violence: A Study of Family Violence by Jean Renvoize Every so often someone rediscovers a horrible aspect of the human condition and brings it to public attention. Thus, Professor C. Henry Kempe rediscovered child abuse in America in 1961 and conducted a symposium on the subject.\u27 A similar rediscovery occurred in England about 12 years later when a public inquiry was held on the fatal beating of eight-year-old Maria Colwell by her stepfather. From the American symposium came the now familiar term battered child. \u27 From the English inquiry came the catch slogan Remember Maria. \u27 Since these events, the subject of child abuse has been discussed constantly in both countries. In the course of the discussion, other battered family members have turned up.It seems that children also batter parents, parents batter grandparents,\u27 siblings and spouses batter each other.\u27 Lumped together under the rubric violent families, these attackers and victims are now in the limelight, a fashionable subject for the ministrations of social workers,\u27 lawmakers, and commentators