This is the second edition of a work, first published in 1994 under the aegis of the International Bar Association, “to co-ordinate the judicial characteristics and peculiarities of different jurisdictions in which agency and distribution agreements are performed” (p. ix). It now appears in looseleaf format, will be updated with regular supplements, and incorporates studies of 12 jurisdictions not covered in the first edition. Its editor stresses that it is intended as “a reference resource of an eminently practical character” which, it is hoped, will have a place in many professional offices. The authors of the 35 national contributions are professional lawyers, employed in major commercial law firms, and their writing has a strong practical flavour. The tone of the book is clear, succinct, matter-of-fact, and the objective is to state accurately and concisely the basic principles governing agency and distribution agreements in the relevant jurisdictions. Judged by this yardstick, the International Encyclopedia is a useful compendium of foundational knowledge. However, its limitations must be emphasized. This is not a scholarly document, and it offers little more than thumbnail outlines of the national laws covered. The structure of the various contributions also vary somewhat, although one senses that all contributors may well have been asked to address their minds to a specific list of issues.

Without underestimating the difficulty of co-ordinating a project on this scale, collating contributions penned by busy professionals rather than by leisured scholars, a couple of points might be borne in mind by the editor when he comes to compile any future edition of this work. The encyclopedia, it seemed to me, suffered from a certain unevenness. First, the length of some contributions, and hence the depth into which the various resumes went in exploring the law, varied considerably. While the vast majority of national reports tended to be between 10 and 20 papers in length, one or two did appear unexpectedly perfunctory. The law of Slovakia, for instance, was compressed into just over three pages of print. It seems unlikely that this reflects an absence of complexity in the law of this jurisdiction. The law of Korea was missing entirely from the compilation, although the “Filing Instructions” do indicate that a new chapter will appear in the first supplement. Secondly, there did not seem any clear editorial policy on a number of issues—for instance, whether or not a bibliography of further reading or a list of references were required of contributors. The Turkish and Finnish sections conclude with a long list of works, all in Turkish and Finnish—languages with which, one assumes, few readers of this encyclopedia will be fully conversant—and the Japanese section also refers to further sources, only one of which is in English. Most contributions omit a bibliography entirely. Another source of unevenness is whether or not to footnote. The Mexican and Greek sections are replete with footnotes. The Israeli ends with a short list of Supreme Court decisions referred to in the text. The South African section concludes with both a list of cases and a short bibliography. The French section makes copious reference to relevant