New Towns of the Middle Ages: Town Plantation in England, Wales, and Gascony. By Maurice Beresford. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967. Pp. xx, 670. $18.50

The Origins of Modern Town Planning is, to put it generously, a non-book. The volume has the format and pretensions of a serious interpretive work, yet is more superficial than a textbook on the two major subjects it covers— Utopian socialism and public health-planning legislation. No small portion of the slim text is consumed by lengthy quotations (indeed pages 23-30, inclusive, consist of a description of Manchester written by Engels). The book is filled with pictures and diagrams which often have a rather loose connection with the text. Finally, the main theme—the separation of planning from political action and ideology after 1848—is unconvincing because of the superficiality of the research and documentation.