This book is the answer of the moment to the query -- ""Is there anything that gives, in readable form, a quick survey of our relations with Latin-America, and the present status, political, economic, in relation to defense?"" -- I learned a lot -- most people will. The text is compact, clear-cut, authoritative. And yet, at the end, it left a sense of superficiality, due to the occasionally flippant style, rather than to the content. Mr. Wertenbaker is Fortune Magazine authority on matters South American. He does not attempt to give an impression of the individual countries, but, in streamlined reporting, he surveys the steps by which we put ourselves, in the wrong through a hundred years of mistakes, and the processes by which we have started the reverse in the last decade. It is not a definitive book, in any sense. A good bibliography, suggesting supplementary reading, may give it the position of a groundwork book for those who would go deeper.