A Dictionary of International Affairs. By A. M. Hyamson. (Methuen.
8s. 6d.) THIS is a useful book. Any dictionary (or rather encyclopaedia as this is) dealing with international affairs in 35o pages is bound to have some omissions—even when the author limits himself to events important in the last generation and presumably important in the next, and concentrates on places and occurrences and avoids biography. But the range here is wide and the information nicely potted. The reader can roam, for example, from Federal Union (in one page) through the Fertile Crescent (in three lines) to the Fifth Column (in seven lines)—and so on to the Fiji Islands. The book will grow out of date in time, but it will be a long time before it ceases to be useful, since events are included up to the end of the war and a large amount of back information is given. The presentation is also clear and concise enough to attract the reader to stray from entry to entry, realising how little he knows about what is taking place in the world of his day, and in what a half-baked way he is reading the newspapers.
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