Only an Ocean Between. By Leila Secor Florence. (Harrap- 6s.)
Tills is the first volume in a series planned as a comparative study of British and American life. The reader is offered three types of information through the media of text, photographs and pictorial charts. Mrs. Florence, the author of the text, is no stylist, but her contribution is informative and interesting, particularly about the contemporary scene and the immediate past. Her excursions into history are rather too sketchy to be of much use. The photo- graphs are well chosen to point the contrasts between the two countries. The usefulness of the Isotype charts is more question- able. The literate and adult reader may be irritated by having to work out, by a laborious process of totting up, statistics he could follow far more quickly in a table of figures ; the semi-literate reader will inevitably lack the mental acumen to work out their signifi- cance at all. To whom are they meant to appeal? Their informa- tion—with the exception of the simplest charts—can certainly not be taken in at a glance, and who among the readers will stop to work them out and will remember what he so discovers ten minutes later? The series, however, is topical and should, as a whole, prove useful.
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