An Industrialist in the Treasury: The Postwar Years by Edwin PlowdenReview by: William Diebold Jr.Foreign Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Summer, 1989), p. 168Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20044032 .

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168 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

than defining them away. But his case often sounds too good to be true? and not everyone will like the future world he describes.

AN INDUSTRIALIST IN THE TREASURY: THE POSTWAR YEARS. By Edwin Plowden. London: Andr? Deutsch, 1989, 220 pp. ?15.95.

The failed Labour Party effort to plan the British economy, the collapse of a Tory proposal to plunge into convertibility with a floating pound, the

long haul to bring about the first devaluation of sterling, recovery under the Marshall Plan and the setbacks caused by the Korean War and rear

mament, and the British rejection of the Schuman Plan: these are among the high points of these memoirs of 1947 to 1952 by Lord Plowden, who

began the period as Chief Planner. Basically a spare, authoritative account, it has a few excellent stories and personality sketches, not least of Sir

Stafford Cripps and Ernest Be vin.

EEC-EFTA: MORE THAN JUST GOOD FRIENDS? Edited by J. Jamar and H. Wallace. Bruges: College of Europe, 1988, 374 pp.

If the European Community carries out its plans for 1992, what will be the effect on the European Free Trade Area, which comprises the other countries of Western Europe? Perhaps, says Helen Wallace of Chatham

House, "an experiment in living together has to be made, with a decision about marriage later." Other participants in the proceedings of a confer ence at the College of Europe in Bruges in 1988 are more skeptical about

any general arrangement. Bilateral approaches may be more promising since, as P. Wijkman of the EFT A secretariat says, "Several EFT A countries are more integrated with the Community than are most Community mem

bers." Though inconclusive, the material in this book is rich and goes well

beyond familiar economic issues.

THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COFFEE: FROM JUAN VALDEZ TO YANK'S DINER. By Richard L. Lucier. New York: Praeger, 1988, 332 pp.

Commodity studies are somewhat out of fashion but this one reminds us

how interesting and enlightening they can be. Starting with the fall in coffee sales in Yank's Diner in Scranton in late 1976, which followed the rise in prices caused by a frost in Brazil the previous year, this analysis looks into the way coffee is produced and sold, its place in economic development, clashes and agreements between producing and consuming countries, and the political dimensions of their interdependence. Without being definitive, and focusing mainly on Brazil, Colombia, the Ivory Coast and the United

States, Professor Lucier of Denison University shows us how useful it is to

get behind the statistics and at least part way into the real world.

WHEN NATIONS CLASH: RAW MATERIALS, IDEOLOGY AND FOREIGN POLICY. By Ronnie D. Lipschutz. Cambridge: Ballinger, 1989, 344 pp. $34.95 (paper, $19.95). STRATEGIC MINERALS: THE GEOPOLITICAL PROBLEMS FOR THE UNITED STATES. By Ewan W. Anderson. New York: Praeger,

1988, 176 pp. $39.95.

Applying an original, complex and rather labored approach to the

policies of Britain, the United States and the U.S.S.R. in the postwar period, Mr. Lipschutz shows that conventional ideas about the vital importance of

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