10 JANUARY 1969, Page 18

Shorter notice

The Nett. Cambridge Modern History Volume XII edited by C. L. Mowat (cue 60s). The New CMH may have been slow in appearing, but it is fast in revising. Volume XII which came out in 1960 as The Era of Violence now re-emerges as The Shifting Balance of World Forces. Not only is the new edition a third as long again as the old one, containing in all seventeen new chapters, but it now includes important studies on the years leading up to the Second World War, and indeed on the war itself, all of which had been almost completely neglected in the previous edition. Among the welcome additions is a chapter by Elizabeth Wiskemann on 'Germany, Italy, and Eastern Europe.'