interviews with nearly all the local authorities on hops. Strausz's ability to read and converse in Russian helped him to gather accurate information. A most interesting and useful aspect of the book is its delineation of the wide variation in agricultural success achieved under communism, at least in the hop industry. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the author makes clear, have had outstanding success with widely different organizational approaches. Indeed, within Yugoslavia the differences

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... een the Savinja region and the Backi Petrovac area are marked, and the fact that both areas are of major importance in the world hop market receives deserved emphasis. Similarly, Strausz makes it clear that Poland and the Soviet Union have failed to meet the challenges of modern technology and are unlikely to win significant shares of the world hop market. The book is thoroughly researched, well documented, and highly accurate, so far as a nonexpert on hops can determine. Strausz's incidental information on agricultural activities in Yugoslavia is also discerning and accurate, and leads to the conclusion that he is a perceptive and informed observer. Though its immediate audience obviously is very limited, the book should be useful to a much wider readership for its penetrating insight into East European agriculture. It is to be hoped that similarly meritorious studies may soon be produced on the maize, wheat, oilseed, and livestock industries of the same countries. If the same degree of ability, scholarship, and information could be brought to bear on specific studies of these commodities, much light could be shed on the situation of Communist agriculture at the close of the 1960s.