Handbook on the World

Scan page 8

'World View 1984'. Pluto Press £7.95.

LIKE two previous issues this is a useful and handy reference book.

It gives basic economic and social statistics for almost every country in the world, short articles about most countries, and regional maps.

A few words of criticism, though. This year's edition is slightly larger and more expensive than last year's. But the extra space has been given mostly to expanding the range of short articles in the book - on issues ranging from world banking to African influences in popular music - rather than expanding the statistical information.

I would have preferred it otherwise. Some of the articles practically all would be better- but placed in a magazine than in a reference book. A reference book should either give bare facts and figures, or provide fairly comprehensive summaries, encyclopaedia-style. The articles in book fall between two stools.

What the book gives in the way of facts and figures could be improved, too. The choice is very conventional.

Most of the figures given can be found (more cheaply, rather better presented and together with a lot of others) in the World Bank World Development Report. Wouldn't it be worth making an" effort to provide the sort of facts and figures which take much searching to find in the standard official reports?

The stocks of foreign investment in various countries; statistics for multinationals and for particular industries, as well as for nation-states; shares of profits in national income; trade union membership in various countries; wage rates; indications of whether big factories or small dominate in different countries; systems of land tenure and figures for distribution of land; long-term historical comparisons as well as figures for recent years...

A yearbook including all that would take a lot of work to compile. But it would be immensely valuable to socialists.