The World Bibliographical Series is a project that will eventually cover every country in the world, according to its publisher, each in a separate volume comprising annotated entries on a broad range of topics. They are intended primarily as introductions to the study of each country, and Woodman Franklin’s Guatemala conforms to this model. Since no individual compiler can be expected to be a seasoned specialist in all disciplines, some unevenness is probably inevitable in these volumes. Franklin has included more books and articles on politics (42) than on history (30), reflecting his own expertise, although a number of historical works, such as Lanning’s important studies of the colonial university, are hidden in other sections without adequate cross-referencing. While more complete cross-referencing would have made the bibliography more useful, it is well indexed and the annotations, although brief, are generally accurate and helpful.

This sort of selective bibliography will always omit certain works that individual reviewers might have included, but the omission of such major contributions to Guatemalan history as Bill Sherman’s Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America or the compilations of Guatemalan laws by Manuel Pineda de Mont and Rosendo Méndez are unfortunate, as is the inclusion of only a tiny selection of the large number of informative and fascinating travel accounts written on nineteenth-century Guatemala. Thus, the principal fault of this bibliography is its failure to be more comprehensive. It includes only 327 entries, a small number considering the rather extensive literature in many fields of Guatemalan studies. This compares with more than twice that many in the volume on Belize, the only other volume on Latin America yet published in the series.

This bibliography, then, is useful as a guide for beginning students and for those seeking introductory materials in fields other than their own. Perhaps subsequent volumes in the series will be somewhat more comprehensive.