The Statesman’s Year Book provides annual updates of pertinent information country by country. It is published by Macmillan and in 1992-3 was in its 29th edition. Another immensely useful reference work providing good factual accounts of a year’s events country by country is The Annual Register of World Events, which was first edited by Edmund Burke in 1758 and since then there have been many distinguished editors; vol. 245, 2003 was edited by D. S. Lewis; specialists cover the events of the previous year in every country of the world. For contemporary events there are the press and documentary programmes on television, but for good consistent reporting The Economist is invaluable, as are the US weeklies Time and Newsweek. The German version is Der Spiegel.
A number of compendiums periodically updated provide detailed statistical information and more. The Europa Publications are excellent; a series of volumes devoted to institutions such as A Dictionary of the European Union (2004) and on Arab-Israeli relations. They are revised at regular intervals. The major encyclopaedias also add annual volumes to their most recent editions. Also available is B. R. Mitchell and B. Redman, International Historical Statistics. Europe 1750-2000 (5th edn, Macmillan, 2003).
Convenient brief accounts of political and economic conditions with useful statistical data are published in a handy paperback series, Spotlight on Politics, covering a number of countries including Britain, the United States, China, France and West Germany: I. Derbyshire, Politics in West Germany from Schmidt to Kohl (Chambers, 1987); I. Derbyshire, Politics in France from Giscard to Mitterrand (Chambers, 1987); J. D. Derbyshire and I. Derbyshire, Politics in Britain from Callaghan to Thatcher (Chambers, 1990).
An invaluable guide to bibliographies is R. H. Fritze, B. E. Coutts and L. A. Vyhnanek, Reference Sources in History: An Introductory Guide (ABC-Clio, 1990). For current affairs there are an increasing number of internet sites too numerous to list.
World History
