SOME TOPICAL BOOKS

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23203, 14 December 1940, Page 14

SOME TOPICAL BOOKS

, Professor A. P. Newton’s.&jjL dred Years of the British (416 pp. 15/- net.), issued Duckworth’s admirable HgSJ Years Series, admirably place there. The story ity% embarrassingly wide in crammed in content; but.PliiLz Newton’s methodical mind.^SyCT all demands for compression, opd arrangement, and elucidation, 2 ables him to succeed without:*! sign of strain. He is relieved, C ever, of a major difficulty by J ing strictly as a narrator and mentator. A much smaller, y less resolutely applied to the W of events and more philosophy and constructive in the search tj their active causes, would have * gaged him upon problems which ® here barely attempted. The gw*# of the Empire can be traced« material evolution; that is Profess Newton’s task, well done. ■ tyo also be traced as an evolutioi i ideas, still continuing; that is'dm much less adequately. No book, within the limits set byfilj distinction, can be recommended) the student or to the general-r«&

The Right Book Club now Jssi* to members at the usual amaanrij low rate a special edition of.Rosfo Forbes’s These Men .1 Knew (31! pp.)—personal studies of the “makers and shakers” of; the mod ern world. Hitler, GoennjiQojh bels, Stalin, Voroshilov, Admin Horthy, King Boris of Bh Kemal Ataturk and General®*® King Leopold of Bdgiuml|f«i dent Roosevelt, Gandhv MopWißi Smuts, Field-Marshal these are some of her aabhcfe Chiefly she relies on . , rtwp. forward interview, the WMpi! which is heightened by. crigplW sonal impressions. She knewpi to draw and even to provoke*)* lions, tigers, and hyenas. Onfe the most interesting things jgfe book is her record of the changed Hitler’s views and in himself during the years, 1933-38, in whM|Ss conversations with him occu^eq. Mr H. R. G. Greaves, lectuffck political science at the Load* School of Economic and Pwitwl Science, has written in Feden)|laia in Practice (Allen and Unwin, 1 pp. 5/- net.) a study to whJ& i advocates of European (or wide) federation should apply themsplvd It is an admirable short account i the origins and developments existing federations and of ditions which, as are required for success. Mr CraMves devotes only a few pages at tnkod to the problems which others.iiave more elaborately treated Without his thorough preparation.

Mathematics for Airmen and Robertson, Ltd. 197 pp.'l2w, by F. B. Brown, 8.A., B.Sc., more than its title implies. It attains some pure mathematics, gilding ratio, logarithms, and the i# tion of right-angled, triangles. The chapter on logarithms and wes is very well done. The greater'art of Mr Brown’s book may be divided into two parts, one dealing vmh tte mathematics of statics, dynamics, heat, and electricity, and the otiet with navigation. The use of graphs and charts, the determinatioßjCt courses, and the factors “influenOTS speed and direction are qtt*dearly explained. It is a that the absence of should limit the usefulnepg-a boot otherwise so compreh ensivfef. i • ■- The methods . German, Government tovemng# the national life of, Czechojtlovap are graphically describedrii Barbarism in CzechasldvaKi*,. (Alto and Unwin. 32 pp. 6d net;) by*. Eduard Benes, former President apt Prime Minister and now chairn® of the Gzechr National Committee|i London. This brochure is expand from a lecture delivered to thePrgs Club, London, during March of tp year. No man is better placed speak movingly on the attempts spiritual destruction of his cop® than the author. Dr. Benes does.Jjp despair.

In the limited space of Militaff Map Reading for the New Army!AWheaton and Co. 59 pp. 2s 6d), Captain W. Stanley Lewis has provided a clear and comprehensive survey ot his subject. The diagrams are excellent. A small book of exercises bj the same author has also been published containing a set of 49prob* lems with their solution. Junior oncers and those preparing for conani*sions will find these volumes use® '—New Zealand editions, WlutpomM and Tombs, Ltd.