Sanford Jacoby. The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. xi + 216 pp. ISBN 0-691-11999-6, $35.00.

This is a very interesting examination of the fate of humanrelations (HR) departments within Japanese and U.S. corporations.Its focus is on the contemporary period and on the pressuresfor change facing both the U.S. and Japanese systems. But italso spends some helpful time situating the current processesof change in historical context. In general, Jacoby is veryinsistent that the changes that occur within the corporationregarding the relative power and function of HR cannot be understoodwithout first understanding the position of     

Julie Hessler. A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. xvi + 366 pp. ISBN 0-691-11492-7, $39.50.

Julie Hessler’s work is the first comprehensive historyof the first thirty-five years of Soviet trade written afterthe opening of the Soviet Union’s archives following thatnation’s collapse. It will, without doubt, become a standardwork of reference. Hessler gives due credit to the Soviet historianG. A. Dikhtiar’s three-volume work on Russian and Soviettrade published in the 1960s (in Russian). Despite the book’sobvious ideological overtones, it deserves to be read alongsideHessler’s work. Hessler’s