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A history of flood control in the United States shows an undying affair with levees. This love affair, however, was put severely to the test by the record flooding in the summer of 1993. About 70 percent of levees in the upper Midwest failed during this time, leading to extensive damage to both farmland and urban areas. Consequently, there were repeated calls to re‐assess the nation's floodplain management policies. The report of the Intera‐gency Floodplain Management Review Committee is one outcome of this and it forms the basis of this commentary on levees. In many respects, levees are effective flood control measures, being relatively cheap to implement and easy to build. At the same time, levees have negative impacts, affecting the hydrological regime both up and down stream, and often exacerbating flooding in other places. Furthermore, technical weaknesses in design, planning, construction, and maintenance have all contributed to levee failures. While the report recommends changes in floodplain management to address some of these issues, it is difficult to see how these will materialize given the current political, economic, and social climate.

This volume provides a useful survey of the theory, practice and techniques of calorimetry as applied to the study of energy metabolism in humans and animals. Calorimetry is used to estimate nutritional requirements of man and farm livestock and to evaluate different foods. It is also a powerful tool used in research into fundamental nutritional and physiological life-processes and to evaluate stresses imposed by abnormal or severe environments. It is currently being applied in various branches of medical research and can be used as a diagnostic tool in hospitals for investigation of metabolic disorders. The volume encompasses both direct calorimetry, which measures heat loss directly, and indirect calorimetry, where heat loss is inferred by measurement of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism. In addition, guidance is provided to the instrumentation, technical problems and precautions necessary to obtain accurate calorimetric measurements. The volume will be essential for those scientists who practise or study calorimetry as part of their research: food scientists, clinical and non-clinical nutririonists, physiologists, veterinarians and agriculturalists.

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