This is the cover of a book written by Tony Judt, published by Penguin Books Ltd. in 2005. Entitled Postwar: A Study of Europe Since 1945, it is beautifully written and is very rich in detail. Judt was a professor of history at New York University and he was a prolific author. Two of his more famous titles include: The Memory Chalet and Ill Fares the Land. He wrote extensively for the New York Review of Books and the NY Times. He died in 2010.
The edition I have contains 831 pages of dense text. The first two chapters are full of statistics about WWII that are woven into the narrative, in a way that is very readable. Imagine my surprise then, upon trying to establish which sources Judt had used, to discover that this text does not have "... a full apparatus of references..." (xiii). This book probably should have been printed in two volumes. Instead, it is printed in one, and the reader is invited to visit the website of the Remarque Institute to read information on sources. On testing the link today, I find that the site is "down for maintenance."
My grumble is this; finding source materials is hard enough, especially when you add a few years between the publication date and attempted retrieval. To have split the notes and/or bibliography off from the text, and then expect the reader to try and re-join the two is crackers. What happens a hundred years from now, when a reader tries the same experiment? As of today, I am disenfranchised from information that would have been useful to me and should have been easily available. Not essential. Not earth-stopping. But, that is not the point.
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/CoverImagePopup/0,,9781436283526,00.html
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