One good thing about trends is that they tell you how good things are, and how better things are going to be. One bad thing about trends is that they tell you how bad things are, and how worse things will turn out to be. The Vital Signs series of Worldwatch Institute has been doing just that for nine years now. Some trends are good, some are bad, and others ugly. But which will change and which will not depends on policymakers and their enforcing agencies. To see for ourselves what has changed and what has not, we might have to wait for the 2001 issue of Vital Signs next year, says Subir Ghosh

Vidal once lamented that contemporary readers should prefer literary biography to literature. Only those who believe, as an adjunct instructor once told a student of my acquaintance, that "literature is good only for conversation at dinner parties" will make that mistake in this case. If used judiciously, this biography may serve as a very effective reference work and guide to further reading, but it will not serve as a guide to the perplexed, writes Myron Noonkester

As his more recent Chronicle piece makes clearer, Simon has a notion of popular culture inseparable from the classroom. Because the kids need something-the argument goes-it needs to be taught. "Trash Culture" shows what follows: because it needs to be taught, the subject will be defined in a pedagogy-driven manner, audience-friendly, context-free, and in-your-face, feels Terry Caesar

Stephen Cushman should be congratulated for breathing new life into a tired genre, for this is unlike any other Civil War battle book. Nevertheless, it is hard to see who will ultimately benefit. His thesis that memories of the past are tricky things will come as no surprise to serious students of the Civil War, while readers who possess only a casual familiarity with the war will doubtless find this book difficult and confusing. "Bloody Promenade" is an entertaining but rather curious foray into Civil War history, points out Brian Dirck

Readers in the United States who patronise Barnes & Noble or Borders may notice that their history sections are strangely proportioned: world, Asian, African, European and ancient history combined account for about a quarter of the books, another fourth are American history, and all the rest, fully half the titles, are military. But they will search this vast selection for quite a while before finding any work there as intelligent as Williamson Murray and Allan Millett's new operational history of World War II, asserts Jonathan Beard