The nations of the free New World have produced but seven sovereigns; all have been deposed. Some were ridiculous and cruel, but Haiti’s third and last monarchical attempt was the most ludicrous and probably the bloodiest of them all. This drama of strangely mingled comedy and tragedy was directed by an equally paradoxical man, Faustin Soulouque.

A foreign reader of the North American press inevitably receives the impression that the majority of our feminine citizens are breadwinners if not actual career women, and that the much-noted independence and aggression of the American woman is, in a large measure, based on this fact—that she is economically self-sufficient or could be so if it should become necessary through a marriage wrecked by death or divorce, or desirable for any other reason. A glance at the statistics, however, immediately proves that a maximum of no more than 14 percent of our women are constantly employed outside the home, though it must be granted that a larger proportion has worked before marriage and presumably could do so again. In any case, the total in no wise approaches that which might be deduced from the amount of attention that the American working woman receives in the press and films which, supposedly, reflect the American scene.

Amado nervo’s affection for religious themes is projected so frequently and so intimately in all his work that literary critics have constantly classified him among the number of the mystical poets—those privileged beings who aspired to union with God through love, and who expressed their sublime thoughts in poetic form.

John Lloyd Stephens was a remarkable man in his day and probably would have been remarkable at any time in American history. Lawyer, politician, traveler, author, diplomat and entrepreneur, he made his contribution to American life. Because of the heritage which he left, now as the centenary of his death approaches, the presses of two leading American universities have enriched their list of titles with books relating to Stephens. Rutgers University Press, located in Stephens’ native state, has brought out a new edition of Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, & Yucatan (New Brunswick, 1949. 2 vols., Pp. xx, 346; xiv, 340. Illus., map.) under the able editorship of Richard L. Predmore. In the West, the University of Oklahoma Press has offered to the reading public Maya Explorer: John Lloyd Stephens and the Lost Cities of Central America and Yucatan (Norman, 1948. Pp. xviii, 324., illus.), a delightful biography by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen.

The cutting and shipment of wood is one of the oldest and most important aspects of Brazilian trade with Portugal. The rich red dye produced from the tree called pau brasil or Brazil wood was esteemed so highly that at first it outweighed in importance all other products of the colony. Most historians agree that the very name of Brazil is derived from this wood. Guarded as a royal monopoly throughout the colonial period, the wood trade ranked with the sugar, tobacco and gold of Brazil as one of the principal sources of revenue of the Portuguese crown. When woods for building were added to the exportation of pau brasil, the trade assumed a new importance, for these woods furnished the mother country with the sinews both of war and commerce, providing the hulls and masts of countless vessels that defended and brought together the distant domains of the Portuguese empire.