BOOK REVIEW

• Published date: 01 September 1990
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1714.1990.tb00838.x
• Date: 01 September 1990

BOOK

REVIEW

THE

LEGAL

ENVIRONMENT

OF

INTERNATIONAL

BUSINESS:

A

GUIDE

FOR

UNITED

STATES

FIRMS.

Don Alan Evans.

United States

Firms,

McFarland

&

Company, Inc.,

1990.

Pp.

258.

Smaller is the burden of the modern business law professor who

teaches a course in international business transactions due to the

publication of Professor Evans’s excellent, up-to-date minitreatise.

“Minitreatise” is

the

appropriate term for this book despite its

relatively short length, because the breadth and depth of coverage

in those few pages is impressive. An eight-page glossary and six-

page bibliography also attest to the book’s breadth and depth.

Its

contemporaneity is shown by Professor Evans’s anticipation of the

recent political and economic changes in Eastern Europe and his

inclusion of a few sentences about the December

1989

revolutions,

both

of

which are impressive for a book published in early

1990.

One could classify this work

as

three books in one. Although

primarily devoted to the law affecting business transactions between

firms in different nations, it gives substantial, separate treatment to

comparative law and adequate coverage of international law.

The five comparative law chapters are especially good, setting a

foundation for understanding the legal and practical problems in

international business transactions.

For

example, the chapter on

Islamic law, which dominates in Iran, describes the practices

of

riba

and

Gharar.

Riba,

in its most severe form, forbids the charging of

interest on loans, and thus prevents the practice of banking

as

we

in America know it.

Gharar

forbids gambling

or

engaging in any

other practice whose outcome is unforeseen.

Its

strict interpretation

forbids the use of insurance. Thus, some of

the

financial aspects of