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Sociologists tend to downplay the role of accidents, circumstance, serendipity, and luck. This essay describes three times that history derailed Michael Kimmel's research agenda, and how he "recovered."

Travel is a powerful force in shaping the perception of the modern world and plays an ever-growing role within architectural and urban cultures. Inextricably linked to political and ideological issues, travel redefines places and landscapes through new transport infrastructures and buildings. Architecture, in turn, is reconstructed through visual and textual narratives produced by scores of modern travellers — including writers and artists along with architects themselves. In the age of the camera, travel is bound up with new kinds of imaginaries; private records and recollections often mingle with official, stereotyped views, as the value of architectural heritage increasingly rests on the mechanical reproduction of its images. Whilst students often learn about architectural history through image collections, the place of the journey in the formation of the architect itself shifts. No longer a lone and passionate antiquarian or an itinerant designer, the modern architect eagerly hops on buses, trains, and planes in pursuit of personal as well as professional interests. Increasingly built on a presumption of mobility, architectural culture integrates travel into cultural debates and design experiments. By addressing such issues from a variety of perspectives, this collection, a special Architectural Histories issue on travel, prompts us to rethink the mobile conditions in which architecture has historically been produced and received.

The advent of AIDS has led to a revival of interest in the historical relationship of disease to society. There now exists a new consciousness of AIDS and history, and of AIDS itself as an historic event. This provides the starting-point of this collection of essays. Its twin themes are the 'pre-history' of the impact of AIDS, and its subsequent history. Essays in the section on the 'pre-history' of AIDS analyse the contexts against which AIDS should be measured. The section on AIDS as history presents chapters by historians and policy scientists on such topics as British and US drugs policy, the later years of AIDS policies in the UK and the emergence of AIDS as a political issue in France. A final chapter looks at the archival potential in the AIDS area. As a whole the volume demonstrates the contribution that historians can make in the analysis of near-contemporary events

Abstract
The paper summarizes my dissertation, submitted to the Geneva Graduate Institute. I constructed a novel database of the currency composition of European foreign exchange reserves during the Bretton Woods period, from central banks' archives. The first paper studies the determinants of the composition of the foreign exchange portfolios. The second paper compares the British pound's international role in Europe and the sterling area. I argue that its persistence as a reserve currency was due to threats and economic sanctions. The final paper focuses on 19th Bank of France, and shows that data was used as collateral at the discount window.