My desire for an overview of the year 1913 in book form being so far unsated, I was very happy to find someone else had had a go at it, and didn’t stop for 500 pages. It feels very much like the author had enough material for 1000 and had to cut it down, such is the density of information. On the plus side I feel almost overwhelmed with information, but on the minus side it did all feel a bit disjointed – a trip around the important cities of the world without any real sort of narrative to link it together. This is being picky, though – if you look at it as a series of essays on different places in a single year then it serves as a very readable reference work. When we get onto 1914 the narrative will be naturally stronger, though the scope may be much more narrow.