Serge Lang 
Challenges 

I am very thankful to Springer-Verlag for publishing a collection of some of my non-mathematical works-I call them political works. in the broad sense of the word political. Three of these have appeared in print: – My article on the Ladd-Lipset s UIvey. which appeared in the New York Review of Books. 18 May 1978; and also in The File (Springer-Verlag. 1981). – My article on the Baltimore case. which appeared in the Jour- nal of Ethics and Behavior. February 1993. – My articles on HIV and AIDS. which appeared in the Yale Sci- entific (Fall 1994 and Winter 1995). reprinted updated in the book AIDS: Virus-or drug induced? Kluwer Academic Pub- lishers. 1996. pp. 271-307. The first item. "Academia. Journalism. and Politics." is itself a book based on my Huntington file. The "Background and Motiva- tion" section of this sub-book can be used as a foreword for all my "political" works. and also contains an explanation of how I use the word "political." In that section. readers will find a general discussion of the way I process information and some criteria I use in discourse.