The Annual Register: World Events 2006.

• Author: McKinnon, Malcolm
• Position: Book review

THE ANNUAL REGISTER: World Events 2006 Edited by: D.S. Lewis and Wendy Slater Published by: ProQuest Journal Division, Bethesda, 2007, 661pp, US$233.

The Annual Register is a product of the 18th century drive for disseminating knowledge which also saw the Encyclopédie project in France and the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Gentleman's Magazine in Great Britain. The Register was first produced in 1758 by Edmund Burke, a theorist of conservatism and critic of the French Revolution, and Robert Dodsley.

In 2007 the Register is the sum of the efforts of multiple contributors, who provide both country reports and thematic coverage on the economy, science, law, religion, culture, sport, international organisations and obituaries.

Like the Encylopaedia Britannica, the Register has now crossed the Atlantic--it is published by ProQuest, from near Washington DC. But it retains a strong British flavour in its advisory board and its contributors. Most of the country entries are by UK-based writers; the exceptions are those on the old Commonwealth countries, which have local contributors--Victoria University's Stephen Levine on New Zealand, for example--who are also allocated nearby areas: Levine covers mainland South-east Asia and the South Pacific, a fair part of Africa is covered by South African writers and a Canadian contributes the United States entry.

The content also has a British focus. The United Kingdom is the first country entry, with 24 pages; the United States gets 20 pages, starting at page 119. And like many British publications the Register does not know what to do with the European Union, which gets eight and a half pages in a section on international organisations, 300 pages distant from the entries of its various member countries, which are themselves not grouped.

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One of the strengths of the Register is its thoroughness in addressing every part of the world, for instance Caribbean microstates and every country in Africa, although its coverage of such places is not as exhaustive as that of the Britannica Book of the Year, which has individual entries for every country and is indeed generally a...