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126 Reviews (pp. 16—17) and does not provide pictures of instruments. The description of "mode" is also incomplete—the reader is not helped to imagine what a song sounds like. A discography would have filled these gaps, especially some reference to the wonderful series of Greek folk song recordings produced by the Society for the Dissemination of National Music (Athens). The reader will appreciate Watts' unbiased, cross-cultural approach to the material. Her analysis of songs in Part II, albeit brief, does whet the appetite. Especially interesting is Watts' discussion of women, both as singers of folk song and as portrayed within the folk narrative. The discussion of songs about ksenitiá invites the student to investigate further. An overview such as this one will provide the student of modern Greek with a sorely needed basic text in folk and oral traditions. If used in the American college classroom, however, it should be supplemented with a variety of other materials, including sound recordings . Nancy Sultan Harvard University Ioannis lonas, La Maison rurale de Chypre (XVIHe-XXe siècle), aspects et technique de construction. Nicosia: Publications of the Scientific Research Centre. No. 12. 1988. Pp. 228 + 200 photographs. Cyprus £14. This impressive book provides splendid documentation and a thoughtful analysis of the technical side of rural houses in Cyprus. It is based on site visits to over 200 villages in the Greek-controlled "south" of Cyprus. Although its analysis of historical and folkloric sources makes passing mention of Turkish Cypriots and features of their customary life, the author devotes no systematic attention to them, passing over in silence the interesting question of how far, if at all, there were systematic differences in house-construction between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Nevertheless, this is a source book of great value. The rate of change in Cyprus is so breakneck that a book like this provides a timely documentation of what will be bulldozed and disappear before the end of the century. Great pains have been taken to illustrate the book handsomely. The paper is high quality; the typography and lay-out Reviews 127 (by Denise lonas) are not merely pleasing, but done to very high standards. The book is likely to become a "collector's item" in addition to its value to scholars. Anyone who has traveled in Cyprus will have noticed how designs and materials change from region to region. This matter is given systematic attention, its characteristics being explained by the nature of production systems and available resources in the localities in question . Not only is this a work of solid documentation and analysis; it is also a labor of love by one whose eye is sensitive to the very great beauty of many rural houses, with their idiosyncratic design features, often chosen in order to make use of a particular slope, or an orientation to the sun. lonas has a sense of the how satisfying are the arches, the steps, the contrasts of light and dark, the pools of cool shade in cloistered courtyards. The author's self-defined task is to emphasize architectural features and their relation to the practicalities of economic life. Had he broadened his scope to include the social and symbolic distinctions expressed in the design of Cypriot rural houses, the volume would have been even richer. I am thinking of the work of anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu on the Kabyle peasant house as one starting point, and that of Kostas Ioannou as another. There is also the work of various anthropologists and sociologists who have written about Cypriot peasant life over the last 20 years. This limitation has to be mentioned, but all scholarly works have limitations, and this one should not detract from the very solid achievement of this book, for which all lovers of Cyprus and students of rural life should be deeply grateful. Peter Loizos London School of Economics Nikos Bakounakis. Πάτϕα, 1828-1860. Μια ελληνική πϕοτεϕουσα στον 19ο αιώνα. Athens: Kastaniotis. 1988. Pp. 285, including maps and plates. The subject of this book is the history of the town of Patras from 1828 to 1860. The reader would do well to ignore the subtitle, "a Greek capital in the 19th century," and instead read this as an introduction...

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