This volume, the 21st since the inception of Culture & Tradition  in 1975, is unusual in being largely a special issue.  Most of the articles that make up this issue are the end product  of several people's efforts, at Memorial University, to produce  a book on the cycles of life, birth, marriage, death and the emotional and material ways people celebrate and respond to these events.

 The Illicit Latex Glove: Condoms as Material Culture
 Adrienne Roberts

 For Better or For Worse?
 A Case Study of a Newfoundland Wedding as Feminine Self-expression
 Wendy Welch

 Virtue Rule Affection: Reading Rings in Contemporary Contexts
 Holly Everett

 The Baby Shower: Celebrating (Ex)changes in Birth and Motherhood
 Contessa Small

 When Death is a Family Tradition:
 Barry Skinner, Genealogist, A Legend in His Own Time and Space
 Lara Maynard

 An Investigation of Jigg's Dinner
 Niki George 

BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

 On the Trail of Spider Woman: Petroglyphs, Pictographs and Myths of the Southwest. 
 By Carol Patterson-Rudolph
 Julia Kelso

 The Way of the Pipe:  Aboriginal Spirituality and Symbolic Healing in Canadian Prisons
 By James B. Waldram
 Julia Kelso

 From Red Hot to Monkey's Eyebrow: Unusual Kentucky Place Names
 By Robert M. Rennick
 Lara Maynard

 American Elves: An Encyclopedia of Little People from the Lore of 380 Ethnic Groups 
 of the Western Hemisphere
 By John E. Roth
 Niko Silvester 

 Popular Religion in Late Saron England: Elf Charms in Context
 By Karen Louise Jolly
 Niko Silvester

 Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript (British Library Additional Ms 71158)
 Edited by Stephen Knight, with a manuscript description by Milton Kelliher
 Niko Silvester

 Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870-1900
 By Annmarie Adams
 John Bodner 

 Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art 
 Edited by Thomas A. Green
 John Bodner 

 The Enigma of the Gift
 By Maurice Godelier 
 Translation by Nora Scott
 John Bodner 

 Storytelling Encyclopedia: Historical, Cultural, and Multiethnic Approaches to
 Oral Traditions Around the World 
 Edited by David Adams Leerning and Marion Sader
 Ranald Thurgood

MULTIMEDIA REVIEWS

 Songs of the Nunamiut:  Historical Recordings and Transcriptions of an Alaskan 
 Eskimo Community 
 Collected by Helge lngstad
 Edited by Sigvald Tveit with transcriptions by Eivind Groven
 Brahm Gawdan 

 Time Travel to the 18th Century
 Sydney: Folkus Atlantic, 1995
 Rachel Gholson 

 l Feel Like Singing Today
 By Jim Lauderdale and Ralph Stanley
 Justin Partyka 

 Dorman Ralph
 By Dorman Ralph
 Douglas Jole