To judge from the proliferation of them in my tutorials, books in the Cavendish Lecture Notes series are very popular among students, and there is no reason to suppose that Indira Carr’s textbook on International Trade Law will be an exception to this trend.

Of the 270 pages, just 219 are devoted to text, and, although the book looks substantial, there are wide margins and quite large blank areas. I doubt, therefore, whether the text exceeds 80,000—90,000 words, which is pretty short, even by introductory textbook standards. There are, however, quite useful appendices, containing the full text of the Marine Insurance Act 1906, Carriage of Goods by Sea Acts 1971 and 1992, and the Hamburg Rules. There is also an eight-page list of recommended reading, ranging from other short textbooks, such as Atiyah’s Sale of Goods and Wilson’s Carriage of Goods by Sea, through to substantial articles in respected academic journals. Thus, a student who wishes to read further is directed where to look, but there is no tie-in between these references and any particular part of the book, there being neither footnotes nor a bibliography at the end of each chapter (although to be fair, there are occasional references, particularly to other textbooks, within the main text).

Although the book is short, the coverage is broad. International trade is widely defined, as encompassing not only sale contracts and bills of lading (including five pages on EDI) but also carriage contracts, including the Hague-Visby and Hamburg Rules (but excluding charterparties), marine insurance, letters of credit and dispute resolution. The result of attempting to fit so much into so small a space is inevitably a compressed style, with little context or explanation, or detailed analysis. Each chapter is then further compressed into a two-page summary, set out at the end, which contains little more than trigger notes and case names.

The series is clearly popular with students, but I am sure that when I was a student I would, at least at an early stage of my study, have been dissatisfied with a book of this type. Not only would there have been too little depth to satisfy my curiosity, but the lack of any real explanation as to why, for example, c.i.f. contracts have developed as they have (Chap. 1), why delivery orders are used (p. 15), or why the Hague-Visby Rules were internationally adopted (Chap. 3), would have left me with little real understanding of the subject. I can see that nearer to the exam, however, a book of