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MEDIA CENTER Who Knew Divorce, Disease, and Disaster Could Be So Interesting? NEW YORK (31 January 2005) — The Encyclopedia of Population, edited by the Population Council's Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll, was named an “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2004 by Choice, the magazine of the American Library Association. Choice magazine included the encyclopedia in its annual selection of the “best of the best in published scholarship.” Only a small proportion of the thousands of books it reviews each year are given that designation. The Encyclopedia of Population is the first comprehensive appraisal of the field of population studies in more than two decades. Population issues are often defined narrowly, with an emphasis on rapid population growth and measures to curtail it. While the encyclopedia gives full coverage to such topics, the editors sought a much broader scope. Areas covered include the retreat from marriage and the diversification of family forms; new medical technologies affecting reproduction and longevity; new or resurgent infectious diseases; South to North migration and refugee movements; the press for women's equality and fuller reproductive rights; population-related environmental change; the evolutionary bases of demographic behavior; and new findings in population history and prehistory. Important ethical debates related to population are also treated—issues both longstanding, like eugenics and asylum-seeking, and new, like genetic engineering and animal rights. Both editors have had long associations with the Population Council. Paul Demeny, who holds the position of Distinguished Scholar, is founder and editor of the Council journal Population and Development Review. He is a past president of the Population Association of America and the 2003 Laureate of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. Geoffrey McNicoll is a senior associate at the Council and a former professor of demography at the Australian National University, Canberra. Both have written widely on population and development issues. The nearly 300 contributors to the encyclopedia are from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds in the social, biological, and environmental sciences; more than one-third of them are from outside the United States. Other Population Council contributors to the encyclopedia are: John Bongaarts, Peter J. Donaldson, Cynthia B. Lloyd, Barbara S. Mensch, James F. Phillips, and Sheldon J. Segal. Demeny, Paul and Geoffrey McNicoll (eds.). 2003. Encyclopedia of Population. New York: Macmillan Reference USA.
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