These essays look at key social, economic, and political issues of the times and show how they influenced the developing legal system.

In 1944 the Canadian Social Science Research Council, with the financial support of the Rockefeller Foundation, organized a series of studies of northern Canada to stimulate public interest in the development of the region and to provide a background for more extensive investigation. In The New North-West, this series of articles and others dealing with northwestern Canada have been brought together in one volume, and the result is a comprehensive description and analysis of the western half of the Canadian northland. The book contains twelve parts. They discuss respectively: administration, Mackenzie and Yukon domesdays (two parts describing in detail the geographical setting and plan of settlements in these areas), mineral industry, fur production, northern agriculture, transportation, health conditions and services, education, the Eskimos and the new north-west. The last section is a bibliography which covers the whole of northern Canada and lists about four hundred selected titles in alphabetical order. It will be of interest to both American and Canadian readers.