Content area
Full Text
RR 2011/52
Europa World Plus
Routledge
London
URL: wwweuropaworld.com/pub/
Last visited September 2010
Contact publisher for pricing information
Keywords Countries, Directories, Statistics
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121111113938
Europa World Plus (last reviewed in these columns as Europa World seven years ago (RR 2004/15)) has a long and distinguished history. It was originally published by Routledge in 1926 as The Europa Year Book: An Annual Survey of European Politics, Art, and Literature, A European Who's Who and Directory, and a Statistical Review of Europe (quite a mouthful). As the world has moved from the Eurocentric view of the 1920s to one in which (in the words of Tony Blair) "We have to co-operate with each other across nations", the original publication has morphed into Europa World Plus - the online version (on the Routledge/Taylor & Francis database platform) of what is now the World Year Book covering countries alphabetically from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and the nine-volume Regional Surveys of the World, these including Africa South of the Sahara and Central and South-Eastern Europe.
The review of the first edition in the TLS in April 1926 described it as "an ambitious and useful publication [which] [. . .] tries to put not merely the proverbial quart but several gallons into a pint pot", damning with faint praise maybe, but an indication of the ambitious criteria which the Year Book set itself.
Apologies for the digression - this is not a review of pre-war editions. 84 years on,...