bookstores in time for Christmas.

"Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture'' and "An Area of Conquest: Popular Democracy and West Indies Cricket Supremacy'' are both edited by Professor Hilary Beckles and will be available in time for the 1995 domestic season in the Caribbean.

Liberation Cricket has a foreword by former West Indies captain Viv Richards, and connects and embraces the diversity of West Indies social and political life, suggesting the relevance of cricket research for an understanding of the making of the modern West Indies.

An Area of Conquest was first presented as a series of lectures this year to mark the 40th anniversary of Sir Garfield Sobers' Test debut.

The various presentations trace the development of West Indies cricket from its origins as a white planter-elite pastime, through the struggles to gain recognition for cricketers from the Windward and Leeward Island and the campaign which led to the appointment of a black captain of the Test team.

A recurring theme in all the papers is the importance of West Indies cricket as a unifying force amidst the regional tendency towards insularity and disintegration.

Professor Beckles not only teaches history at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies, but is also Director of the Centre for Cricket Research which is located in the history department of the Barbados campus.

Both books, published by Ian Randle Publishers, will be priced at around $US15.00.