American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1963

The volumes in this series, published annually since 1956, have not been noted before in HAHR, but they are worth the attention of Latin Americanists interested in current and recent international relations. Each volume covers the whole world and naturally devotes only a small part to explicitly Latin American affairs (in this case 154 pages), but there are a number of general categories, such as foreign economic policy and foreign aid programs, in which one might expect a rewarding search. Also the documents include many items probably not to be found in Foreign Relations or the series of presidential papers. In this volume, for example, are briefings and other communications issued by the State Department in the wake of the missile crisis; memoranda from various inter-American agencies; and fragments from bilateral negotiations of that year. An interesting device used by the compilers is that of placing at the head of many documents an arresting quotation from the document.