This book is a useful tool designed as a companion to the study of Trotskyism, if not to the work of Trotsky himself (dealt with already by Louis Sinclair in his Leon Trotsky-A Bibliography). With an amazing conscientiousness it lists some 5000 items covering anti-Trotskyist polemics as well as matter written within the tradition. That the compiler is not without a sense of hurnour is shown by his omission of the word 'mass' from the title of Ian Birchall's The Smallest Mass Party in the World. If the book is open to criticism at all, perhaps it lies in the minute listing of academic research dissertations, some of them amazing in their triviality and obscurity, From a political standpoint we may also question the wisdom of identifying political pseudonyms, some of them adopted for very good reason, and wonder at the motives of those who co-operated with this part of the research.

Omissions are inevitable, given the task the bibliographer has set himself, but we may well ask why the entry on China fails to list either Harold Isaac's book or Wang Fan-Hsi's autobiography, the one on Vietnam omits Richard Stephenson's pamphlet, and none of Larry Moyes' work on Japan appears at all. The general section on the Fourth International makes no mention of one of the best short treatments of its history, Voix Ouvrière's Problems of the World Party of the Revolution and the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (1966).

But in a collection of such scope minor mistakes are bound to crop up. Comrade Stephenson's personal name is wrongly given wherever it appears. Rather more serious is the omission of the name of Sam Levy from the pamphlet Permanent Revolution Since 1945, here ascribed mainly to Frank Rowe with Ted Crawford's collaboration.

These, however, are spots on the sun, and the book remains the only compilation of its type, even if the price puts it out of reach for those without access to university libraries.

Al Richardson