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Organized somewhat like a doctoral dissertation (which it is not), the book includes: a survey of the theoretical and descriptive literature in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Russian; an examination of the nature and quality of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese local statistical data; a frank discussion of the problems of using Ch’ing data; a study of age distributions, sex ratios, and household sizes of villages and cities in an area to the southeast of Beijing; a study of population growth and household size at county and prefectural levels; and an analysis of variations of marketing settlements by pre- fecture. The conclusions are followed by seven appendices which offer the reader tantal- izing glimpses into the range of Chinese source materials for demographic research.

Rozman’s book will inform China specialists in many disciplines and hopefully suggest to graduate students the utility and value of immersing themselves in Chinese local data. The study of the spatial differentiation of social indicators at the local level is hindered, according to Rozman, by the underdeveloped state of cartographic and historical geographic studies of China. In the absence of a coterie of American geographers ex- clusively pursuing these such themes, it is fortunate that the spatial approach is being advanced by others in the collateral social sciences in the United States, Canada, Japan, and China. Through these efforts at gathering and assessing local statistics as well as their variations, it may yet be possible to reach a point where one can generalize with confidence about China as a whole. Rozman’s research points the direction. State University of New York, New Paltz RONALD G. KNAPP

Shorter notices

G. F. ROGERS, Then and Now: A Photographic History of Vegetation Change in The Central Great Basin Desert (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1982. Pp. 152.) $1500

Matched photographs have become popular in the documentation of land-use changes and their physical and biological consequences. In the Great Basin, over a hundred years of photographs are available. Rogers relies heavily on the photographs by G. K. Gilbert from the U.S. Geological Survey Library and on those of H. L. Shantz from the Uni- versity of Arizona Herbarium. He has managed to match over 400 photographs from the Bonneville Basin. Forty-nine are presented here; forty-seven pairs, and two triples. The originals date between 1868 and 1916. The recent matches were taken between 1968 and 1980. The photographs, illustrating historical vegetation changes, are generally well reproduced. Each set has useful notes. The brief text includes a general description of the area, a summary of field and laboratory techniques, and a list of sources for the photo- graphs. Although this pictorial record is impressive, it might have been improved by the inclusion of more intermediate photographs. Some of Gilbert’s sites were re-photographed in the 1930s and 1940s. The lack of intermediate illustrations helps create an often false impression of progressive change and belies the short-term, catastrophic impact of disturbance. Although Rogers is concerned with documenting changes in vegetation related to overgrazing, to fire suppression, and to the introduction of alien plants, his photographs provide a valuable and often spectacular record of landscape changes that will excite others besides biogeographers. University qf Toronto A. M. DAVIS

STANLEY W. PAGE, The Geopolitics of Leninism (New York: Columbia University Press, East European Monographs, 1982. Pp. viiif238. $26.00) Neither of the two terms geopolitics nor Leninism have a single broadly-accepted meaning: their significance varies according to user and context. Thus it is to be ex- pected that an author will present his own interpretation of both, and this is certainly the case here. Professor Page’s chosen theme is the development of one aspect of Lenin’s political thinking: the question as to where the proletarian revolution would first occur

446 REVIEWS

and how it would then spread throughout Europe and the world. Focusing attention on the period from 1914 to Lenin’s death, the central argument is as follows: Lenin, in exile in Switzerland in the early years of World War I, firmly believed that the socialist revolution would begin in Germany, Russia being too backward for the task. His orientation, as he prepared to lead this revolution, was therefore entirely European. With the fall of the monarchy and Lenin’s return to Russia in 1917, he began to alter this, and by 1919-20 (sobered by the failure of proletarian revolutions in Europe) reasoned that it would be the revolutionary peoples of the colonial East who would begin the wave of revolutions which would ultimately engulf Europe. They would be spearheaded in this by the young Soviet Union, and led by himself. Thus relations with Asiatic countries- or a “focus on the East”-took on a dominant importance in Lenin’s thinking. The rise of the Georgian Stalin is ultimately related to this orientation, to which Lenin adhered until his death. The “geopolitics of Leninism”, therefore, consists in examining the factor of geographical location in Lenin’s thinking, and his changing geographical ideas for the course of the revolution over the globe. The book may be faulted for the fact that Lenin’s theories are presented as those of an opportunistic megalomaniac whose under- lying and really only concern is a theory in which he would be able to lead the world revolution. No real attempt is made at substantiating this important assumption, yet if one does not accept it, as I for example do not, then much of the book’s argument ceases to be convincing. Nevertheless, Professor Page has pointed to the importance of factors of location and a type of geopolitical thinking in one of the most important doctrines of the twentieth century, and thus has made a contribution towards an analysis of geography in political thought.

University of California, Berkeley MARK BASIN

P. R. S. MOOREY, Ur ‘of the Chaldees’. A revised and updated edition of Sir Leonard Woolley’s Excavations at Ur (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. London: The Herbert Press, 1982. Pp. 272. $24.95 and gll-95)

Woolley, with his flair for clear and lively writing pioneered the popularization of archaeology developed by Sir Mortimer Wheeler and others. His book on Ur, published in 1954 and based on his Ur of the Chaldees of 1929, is a classic. Now a leading authority, from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, has given it a new lease of life. Since Woolley wrote, knowledge of the first settlements in the Babylonian plain, on the Euphrates marshes, has advanced so that his presentation needs revision, to relate Ur to other sites. This is also true of his greatest discovery, the Royal Tombs, that are the subject of the longest chapter (pp. 51-103). Without introducing bewildering detail, the editor has blended essential new information into Woolley’s text, and added up-to-date bibliogra- phies at the end of each chapter. While keeping much of the excavator’s imaginative reconstructions of life in the city, Dr Moorey has unfortunately removed references to the Old Testament patriarch Abraham that Woolley had included, for this was a link for many readers with something familiar to them. True, the evidence may be lacking, but the tradition exists. Ur was a major centre of civilization for many centuries, and seat of an empire that briefly controlled much of the Fertile Crescent (c. 2100-2000 B.C.), her citizens traded by land and sea as far as India. With its colour and half-tone plates and plans, the remodelled account will keep its name alive.

University of Liverpool A. R. MILLARD

PETER GOULD and GUNNAR OLSSON (Eds), A Search for Common Ground (London: Pion, 1982. Pp. viii+277. E12.00)

This is a book for those geographers who have ceased to talk with their colleagues. Based on a gathering of deep thinkers at Villa Serbelloni beside Lake Como in 1981, it offers a collection of personal views on the divisions that have opened up in the subject over the