The ISPS Journal, which will be produced every other year and will be used both to highlight our scholars' publications and as a development piece for foundations and interested donors, was inaugurated in 1997 with the publication of Volume I. This first issue and the follow-up Volume II, which will be published in April 1999, offer an inside look at ISPS fellows and their new books. The selected books span a broad spectrum of policy concerns and perspectives. Some focus on domestic issues; others are cross-national. Some address contemporary problems; others, historical. Some are qualitative, others quantitative. All have won acclaim and will greatly shape the way others think about how to address the problems they discuss in years ahead. Volume I authors and their works include Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (Yale University Press); John Wargo, Our Children's Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Failed to Protect Us from Pesticides (Yale University Press); James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press); and Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). Some of the contributors to Volume II include Arthur Galston, Professor Emeritus, Botany, and Professor Emeritus, School of Forestry & Environmental Studies; Alan Gerber, Assistant Professor, Political Science; Donald Green, Professor, Political Science, and Director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies; Theodore Marmor, Professor, School of Management, and Professor, Political Science; and Eric Patashnik, Assistant Professor, Political Science. A characteristic common to all the works chosen is the attempt to link academic research to policy problems of pressing concern: how we manage children's health risks, or understand incentives in complex institutions, or interpret historical struggles over ethnic diversity represent problems that are at once topical and enduring. The authors for each volume were chosen because their works represent the aspirations of ISPS. For three decades, ISPS has been home to scholars and practitioners who seek to inform contemporary policy debates by stepping back and gathering insights from a wide array of perspectives. Each of the books leavens its analysis with insights drawn from history, sociology, economics, and political science. The result is scholarship that alters fundamentally the way in which we understand the policy problems before us.