Scholars of history, women's studies, anthropology, literature, and other disciplines look at infanticide from the perspectives of race and colonialism, European lawmakers, case studies, and macroanalysis. Among their topics are infanticide and infant abandonment in the New South, Soviet criminologists and infanticide in revolutionary Russia, abominable twins and mission culture in Nigeria during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the relative economic valuation of female and male offspring in 19th-century France. Some of the 13 essays are new, and other reprinted. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)