WESTERN EUROPE SINCE THE WAR

spite of his modest insistence that he has written an ""historical essay, not a history of contemporary Europe"", this almost achieves what he has disclaimed. This resurrection of ""Atlantic"", that is, non-Communist, Europe from the almost absolute disintegration of 1945, makes a fascinating but tremendously complex tale; Jacques Freymond has told it lucidly and fairly, up to the Cuban confrontation of 1962. American readers will find this volume doubly valuable, for besides relating the ins and outs of European--particularly French and British--politics, Freymond as constructed a candid portrait of U.S. policy and policy makers as seen through estern European eyes. He is especially astute and intriguing in his descriptions of the Suez and a Hungarian crises of 1956, the bitter end of colonialism, and the constantly deferred dreams of a truly unified third great power to end the tiresome tennis match of the Cold War. If there is any major fault to be found here, it is one which could scarcely have been helped, given the breadth of the subject and the limness of the book: personalities, even such central ones as Joseph Retinger's and ean Monnet's, remain blank names here in the press of large events.