As the nation witnesses a distinct decline in civic engagement amongyoung adults, political science instructors across the nation facethe formidable task of engaging students in lower-level, generaleducation courses outside students' primary domain of interest. Theresearch presented here seeks to understand if visually enhancedlecture material can effectively engage such students better thanmore traditional methods of classroom delivery. The project utilizesan experimental design involving two different sections of the sameintroductory American government course. By exposing the sections todifferent visual presentations, and controlling for a variety ofpotentially confounding factors, the impact that simple visualimages have on student engagement both inside and outside theclassroom are isolated. Findings suggest that the use of simplevisual images can enhance students' impressions of the discipline ofpolitical science and boost their interest in and knowledge ofpolitics and public affairs more generally.

Experiments designed as an election simulation involve participantsin an investigation of strategic voting. Participants assignedpolitical preferences and informed of candidate/party positions onan ideological dimension respond to and learn the results of twopublic opinion polls before voting. When given two alternatives, theparticipants vote sincerely. Confronted with three or morealternatives, participants make tactical decisions to narrow thefield. Strategic behavior quickly reduces the number of alternativesto two. Consistent with Duverger's law, candidate/party viabilityencourages strategic voting and the development of a two-partysystem. The election simulation serves as a useful tool to teachabout electoral behavior and to explore topics such as strategicvoting.

A simulation of the foreign policy decision-making process, asdescribed in this article, can assist an instructor in linkingstudents' abstract understanding of complex political events,circumstances, and decision making to the real-world interplay ofthe multiple factors involved in decision making. It is this type ofactive learning that helps bring a student's abstract understandinginto the concrete world. Instead of being passive learners relyingon an instructor's knowledge, students are active participants inthe learning process.

This section lists upcoming book publications across the broad fieldof political science. This list is fully reader generated. If yourfirst-edition book is scheduled for publication in the three monthsbefore publication of the next issue of PS, enterthe details of publication in the box found at thePS Web site: http://www.apsanet.org/section_223.cfm. We hope thatspreading word of upcoming work will help keep our members even moreattune to new scholarship within the discipline.

Robert E. Agger died at age 80 in September 2007.

Dr. Harold Guetzkow, professor emeritus of political science,psychology, and sociology at Northwestern University, passed away onNovermber 11, 2008, in San Jose, California, at age 93. His wife,Lauris, whom he had married in 1944, preceded him in death. He issurvived by sons James (Charolette) and Daniel (Diana) Guetzkow, andhis daughter Gay (Howard) Ben Tré. In his seven decades of activescholarship, he distinguished himself as a vibrant and path-breakingscholar as well as an incredibly talented mentor.

Harry S. Hall, emeritus professor of political science, died at theage of 86 from natural causes on October 4, 2008.

Vivien Hart, professor of American studies, died on February 2, 2009,aged 70.

Sam Huntington's works were taken seriously by political leaders andinformed publics around the world. He served in government andadvised administrations, both Republican and Democratic. But if youasked Sam who he was, professionally, he would have said, I am sure,“I am a social scientist.”

William W. Kaufmann died on December 14, 2008, in his sleep, at theage of 90. During the cold war, he was a key figure among the“defense intellectuals”—less famous but more influential thanmost—who moved freely from think tanks to the Pentagon to academiaand back again, crafting the theories of nuclear deterrence andtranslating them to policy. Yet by the '80s, in the final, rococophase of the standoff, he'd come to reject much of his old thinkingand emerged, quite publicly, as one of the defense establishment'smost accredited critics.

Duncan MacRae, Jr., was appointed Kenan Professor of PoliticalScience and Sociology at the University of North Carolina in 1972and served in that capacity until his death as emeritus professor inJuly 2008.

Clara Penniman, emeritus professor of political science, Universityof Wisconsin–Madison, died on January 30, 2009. Penniman was born onApril 5, 1914, in Steger, Illinois, to Alethea B. and Rae E.Penniman.

John Stanga, our highly esteemed Wichita State University colleague,died on December 30, 2008, at the age of 69. He is survived by histhree sons—Tomas, Joseph, and John Peter. As colleagues, werespected him as a unique scholar, teacher, and friend. In an eraoften characterized by narrow specialization, he was a trueRenaissance man—not only publishing and teaching in several fieldsof our discipline, but also demonstrating a deep mastery ofliterature and music, particularly jazz.

Dr. Bruce M. Unger, professor of political science at Randolph-MaconCollege, died of cancer at his home January 31, 2008. A native ofBrooklyn, and life-long Brooklyn Dodgers fan, Brucereceived his BA at Queens College in 1964, MA at Tulane Universityin 1967, and Ph.D. at Tulane in 1973. He joined the faculty atRandolph-Macon in 1968, and served 39 years on the faculty. He wasCharles J. Potts Professor of Social Sciences when he retired in2007.

C. Sylvester Whitaker, Jr., passed away on November 29, 2008, inWaterville, Maine, after a long battle with cancer. He was 73 yearsold.

For the first time in its history, the APSA Annual Meeting andExhibition will be held outside of the continental United States.Held September 3–6, 2009, in Toronto, this marks the 105th assemblyof the world's largest annual gathering of political scientists. Themeeting will feature over 800 panels organized by 49 thematicdivisions, 66 related groups, APSA committees, and presidential taskforces, as well as more than 200 meetings and receptions. Inaddition to division and related group panels, program chairs SimoneChambers of the University of Toronto and Bruce Jentleson of DukeUniversity will present a series of theme panels and plenarysessions that will focus on the meeting's theme, “Politics inMotion: Change and Complexity in the Contemporary Era.”

This report was the first to be prepared by the UCLA-based team ofco-editors that took over leadership of the Reviewin July 2007 from Lee Sigelman, who had edited it for the previoussix years. Here we report on the journal's operations during theyear from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008, including both decisionsmade during the early months by Lee, as he closed up shop, and thosemade by the new team. Because revisions often take authors manymonths to complete, the time span between original submission andfinal acceptance of an article can be long. As a result, the issuesof the journal published between mid-2007 and mid-2008 owe at leastas much to Lee as they do to us—indeed, of the articles acceptedduring those 12 months, 83% either had been accepted by Lee or cameto us as revised versions of papers he had initially handled, almostall of which we accepted. So our first task is to acknowledge theextremely important contribution Lee made to the publication in thistransitional year, even as he was beginning a well-deserved rest. Weare grateful to Lee for all his help, and our respect for hismanagement skills only increases with time.

Unlike most APSA CFP participants, I am not a mid-career academic,journalist, federal employee, or health care professional. I am aPh.D. candidate in political science, smack in the midst of mydissertation research, which generated job-search needs that arequite a bit different than my colleagues. Most are here on a sort ofsabbatical from their current career or even seeking to explore apossible career change. They are looking for positions that willimmerse them in the life of a congressional staffer, some evendesiring the 70-hour-a-week “Hill lifestyle.”