Book Description
John McCormick's Understanding the European Union provides a uniquely broad-ranging but concise introduction to the EU, covering in one volume all major aspects of European integration. The third edition is systematically revised and updated throughout reflecting the major changes brought about by the 2004 enlargement round. It also includes a full assessment of the EU constitution, the impact of the Euro, and much expanded coverage of EU policies and policy making.
Customer Reviews:
Great introductory book to think about the FUTURE of EUROPE!!!!!.......2006-02-23
Do you live, or are you planning to live in Europe? Then, this is a must read book.
I am very pleased that I had the chance to read this book. I have recently moved to U.K. and realized the huge impact that the EU had on each European country. You as a citizen of European Union need to understand how EU works and how it can affect your life. If you have not been following the EU development as I (I had been living outside Europe all my life), this book is a great tool to catch up. This book will guide you through the history, issues, and policies of EU which will help you understand the current situation. In the introduction and through out the book the author mentions that so many of the European people do not understand how the EU works... well, lets read this book and learn. This is an introductory book to EU and it is not difficult to read. I am a non native speaker of English but I did not have any problem understanding the content. This is a well researched book giving you up to date information with interesting data represented in figures.
Now that I have caught up with the up to date information about the EU, I am feeling very excited about the future of European Union and individual European countries (sometimes referred as "the states" of the United States of Europe). As I am studying future forecasting, this book not only helped me to understand the history and the current situations in Europe but also gave me hints and ideas about the future of Europe. With the knowledge I gained from this book, now I will understand the news better than I did before, and know what I need to look for in the development of the EU. What policies will be made to integrate the European market? Will it be "single market"? How will the EU's economic power change the balance of the world's economy? Is it going to be NO1 economic power? Cultural and political issues are more difficult to forecast... What will be identified as the culture of EU? What is the balance between the national and EU culture? Is the European Parliament (this is the only European institution that have direct influence from European voters) going to have more influence on EU policy making? Is EU heading towards federalism? The author asks "will it happen, should it happen, what form will it take, what impact will it have if it succeeds, and what impact will it have if it fails?"
I have learnt that it is important to have the right questions when you forecast about the future. This book has definitely provided me with the chance to think about questions that I should be asking for.
As I did, you will have some idea or wishes about the future of Europe by the end of the book. This is the third edition of the book, and I am sure there will be more editions to come.
Excellent Overall Review.......2005-10-24
I'm currently taking a course on the EU in which the professor gave us carte blanche to purchase our own books on the EU. I was delighted to find out that this book was written by a professor who understands what and how to communicate this information to students. Plus, since the writer is a British immigrant, he could incorporate the European perspective of the EU from first-hand experience as opposed to a vicarious one. This book was very good at providing background info (without harping too much on history) and bringing the reader up-to-speed with current events as well as personal thoughts on the EU's future. Kudos to the writer. Thank you very much. Your book was very helpful. Cheers!
Amazon.com
While the United States flexes its economic and military muscles around the world as the dominant global player, it may soon have company. According to the Washington Post's T.R. Reid, the nations of Europe are setting aside differences to form an entity that's gaining strength, all seemingly unbeknownst to the U.S. and its citizens. The new Europe, Reid says, "has more people, more wealth, and more trade than the United States of America," plus more leverage gained through membership in international organizations and generous foreign aid policies that reap political clout. Reid tells how European countries were willing to discontinue their individual centuries-old currencies and adopt the Euro, the monetary unit that is now a dominant force in world markets. This is noteworthy not just for exploring the considerable economic impact of the Euro, but also for what that spirit of cooperation means for every facet of Europe in the 21st century, where governments and citizens alike believe that the rewards of banding together are worth a loss in sovereignty. Reid's most compelling portrait of this trend is in the young Europeans known as "Generation E" who see themselves not as Spaniards or Czechs but simply as Europeans. To illustrate America's obliviousness to this trend, Reid tells of former GE CEO Jack Welch, who never bothered to factor European objections into a proposed multi-billion dollar merger with Honeywell, leading to the deal being torpedoed and Welch disgraced. But what is most striking in The United States of Europe is the contrast between the new Europe and the United States. The Europeans cannot match the raw military size of the U.S., but by mixing wealth with diplomacy and continental unity (helped along by antipathy toward George W. Bush's brand of Americanism), they are forming an innovative and powerful superpower. --John Moe
Book Description
To Americans accustomed to unilateralism abroad and social belt-tightening at home, few books could be more revelatory—or controversial—than this timely, lucid, and informative portrait of the new European Union.
Now comprising 25 nations and 450 million citizens, the EU has more people, more wealth, and more votes on every international body than the United States. It eschews military force but offers guaranteed health care and free university educations. And the new “United States of Europe” is determined to be a superpower. Tracing the EU's emergence from the ruins of World War II and its influence everywhere from international courts to supermarket shelves, T. R. Reid explores the challenge it poses to American political and economic supremacy. The United States of Europe is essential reading.
Customer Reviews:
js.......2007-06-10
This is a well written book which is very enlightening. As a US citizen it is important to recognize our diminishing stature worldwide. Its time for America to take some cues from Europe to improve our standard of living, save America's middle class, and become globally competative.
Poorly researched and overly sympathetic........2007-06-01
T.R. Reid's "The United States of Europe" doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The basic premise seems sound enough, but the book sounds like it was lifted from an EU pamphlet. Reid doesn't engage in analysis, he engages in pure praise without any visible criticism of the EU. Does he mean to say that the EU and its member states have absolutely no problems? That's hard to believe.
Furthermore, his theory doesn't hold up when looking at the Iraq war. In fact, Reid hardly mentions this critical event except in a handful of pages in his book. If Europe is as united as he claims and sees itself as such a counter force to American power, then why did so many European states support invasion including Italy, Spain, and Denmark among others? Surely the EU would have been able to exercise influence over its members if the book's claims were true. Reid hardly even considers the event.
In fact, France and Germany's prominent resistance to the war was, as is usually the case in the face of American militarism, helpless to do anything. Reid explains this by saying that Europe goes for diplomacy and deals mainly with reconstruction and nation building (the "peacekeepers"). So essentially Europe is powerless to stop military aggression, even from a close ally and instead picks up the slack after the damage is done proving that "soft power" still cannot match military might.
You can get a good feel for this book's academic content by flipping to the notes/works cited section. Most scholarly books have at the least a dozen pages, often a chapter purely for citations. Reid has a total of roughly 5 sources that he used to write a 300 page book on. In other words, Reid seems to have done no academic research which would explain the poor content and analysis of this book.
The underlying idea is promising, but without substantial research to confirm his claims, Reid's book is useless.
The United States of Europe is a must-read........2007-03-24
The United States of Europe is an intelligent, well-written and eye-opening look at the European Union; its history, its euro, its ever growing market and political muscle. Although the book is clearly aimed at the US, Europeans will certainly benefit from reading it.
T. R. Reid writes in a strong and confident style, submits names, dates and numbers with authority, and anecdotes like a belly-laughing buddy on a Saturday night over a couple of Heinekens.
The United States of Europe is a must-read.
great book!.......2007-02-20
The book is great in content, and it gives readers a sense of how contemporary Europeans think of their current union and how that will challenge United State's role as superpower in today's world. The author uses great analogies and it's a very down to earth book that anyone with a college degree can appreciate.
The Other Side of the Ocean.......2007-01-22
This is a great book. Reid spells out the ascendancy of Europe from the ashes of WWII into a corporate nanny state - no politics in that statement, it just seems like a deliberate choice on the part of the Europeans.
The history alone is worthwhile but Reid has several sections which should be taught in schools as Things We Should Have Paid Attention To Instead Of Our Usual Pop Culture Navel-Gazing:
1. The rise of the EU as a force deliberately created as a counterbalance to American hegemony;
2. The implied racism of seeing China/Japan/India ascendancy as a threat to our livelihoods while cheerfully accepting European ownership of significant elements of American commerce and standards because they're white and our Nanna (or Nanna's nanna) lived there once;
3. The invasion of Iraq and the whole "Freedom Fries" and Rummy's dismissal of the "Old Europe" still resonates over there and will color American/European relations for a good long while after 43 goes back to brush-cutting;
4. America arguably has the world's strongest military in some part because the Europeans choose not to compete with us, not because they couldn't. They are happy to let us pay for the carrier battle groups and 4,000 casualties in Iraq. They're only invested in Afghanistan because that's relevant to their interests;
5. How the rise of the euro currency is a threat to American dominance and if it is successful in replacing the dollar as the investment of choice (and things appear to be heading that way) that will be the beginning of a possible slide into Argentina-like currency devaluation. Then we will find out that all of the yellow ribbons in the world imploring God's support of America don't amount to a whole heck of a lot vis-a-vis international currency market speculation;
6. Jack Welch was a God-like figure in Corporate America, but after he met the Europeans they were the ones wearing the pants.
Great powers stay great because they hunger for greatness. That sounds like an idiotic maxim from a strategic planning offsite, but it's true.
The leaderships of Europe, China and India hunger for it. Do we? Read this book and form your own answer.
Book Description
Old Europe’s new crisis.
Europe, the charming continent of windmills and gondolas. But lately, Europe has become the continent of endless strikes and demonstrations, bombs on the trains and subways, radical Islamic cells in every city, and ghettos so hopeless and violent even the police won’t enter them. In Spain, a terrorist attack prompts instant capitulation to the terrorists’ demands. In France, the suburbs go up in flames every night. In Holland, politicians and artists are murdered for speaking frankly about Islamic immigration.
This isn’t the Europe we thought we knew. What’s going on over there?
Traveling overland from London to Istanbul, journalist Claire Berlinski shows why the Continent has lately appeared so bewildering—and often so thoroughly obnoxious—to Americans. Speaking to Muslim immigrants, German rock stars, French cops, and Italian women who have better things to do than have children, she finds that Europe is still, despite everything, in the grip of the same old ancient demons. Anyone who knows the history can sense it: There is something ugly—and familiar—in the air.
But something new is happening as well. Indeed, Europe now confronts—and seems unable to cope with—an entirely new set of troubles. Tracing the ancient conflicts and newly erupting crises, Menace in Europe reveals:
• Why Islamic radicalism and terrorist indoctrination flourish as Europe fails to assimilate millions of Muslim immigrants
• How plummeting birthrates hurtle Europe toward economic and cultural catastrophe
• Why hatred of America has become ubiquitous—on Europe’s streets, in its books, newspapers, and music, and at the highest levels of government
• How long-repressed destructive instincts are suddenly reemerging
• How the death of religious faith has created a hopeless, morally unmoored Europe that clings to anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and other dangerous ideologies
• Why the notion of a united Europe is a fantasy and what that means for the United States
In the end, these are not separate issues. Berlinski provocatively demonstrates that Europe’s political and cultural crisis mirrors its profound moral and spiritual crisis.
But this is not just Europe’s problem. Menace in Europe makes clear that the spiritual void at the heart of Europe is ultimately our problem too. And America will pay a terrible price if we continue to ignore it.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
great.......2007-09-27
This is a good book for anyone interested in the immigrant experiences and more importantly why they differ. She uses anecdotal writing which to my mind makes it more entetaining.
Brilliant social and historical analysis.......2007-07-30
Menace in Europe provides brilliant insights into the current social crisis in Europe. Exploring topics such as immigration and nationalism, it provides American readers with pointed, thoughtful and well-documented observations about the social and political climate in Europe. We should all be concerned about the destructive forces ripping apart the European continent. As a footnote, the chapter on the German rock band Rammstein is absolutely brilliant as it depicts the underground rise of nationalism in a nation that has tried to stamp out Aryan tendencies. This book is highly, highly recommended.
DEMOCRACY HAS LOST ITS SOUL .......2007-06-15
"That roots must be defended in the full knowledge that `those who subscribe to Islam are aliens, regardless of their clothes, their professions or their places of residence'. They sense Western weakness and expect that if Islam supplies the only old religious tradition left standing fifty years hence, it may attract mass conversions. That would indeed be the end of the West, its final surrender to the spirit masterfully depicted by Jean Raspail in the preface to the 1985 French edition of his Camp of Saints: "The West has no soul left. At every level - nations, race, cultures as well as individuals, - it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles." "...monstrous cancer implanted in the Western conscience." `Its roots are in the loss of faith and in the arrogant doctrine - rampant in the `the West' for three centuries now - that man can solve the dilemma of his existence by his unaided intellect alone. If that loss is not reversed the game is over anyway, proving yet again that where God retreats, Allah advances." (Srdja Trifkovic, The Islamic Conquest of Britain)
Horribly Biased.......2007-06-12
It seems that when Ms. Berlinksi decided to write this book, her goal was to try and equate the mistakes of europes past (recent and not so recent) to the blunders of the Bush administration. This book is a book for republicans, thinly veiled in "facts". It does present a few good points, but on the whole if it were any more biased it might as well have been called "Dubyas guide to the rest of the world". Not worth the money.
Good read .......2007-05-13
Finally, a simple but profound and right on analysis of the European psyche vis-vis the United States, written by an American who has lived most of her adult life in Europe. Excellent!!!
Book Description
This definitive work about the Templars and their presumed hidden knowledge addresses many fascinating questions, with rare photos from the Rosslyn Chapel Museum (Scotland) included.
Customer Reviews:
the templars and the grail.......2006-08-03
the book is too especulative not mush scientific information can be obtained.
Interesting Read.......2006-07-02
An Interesting read and a good compliment to
Holy Blood Holy Grail. It could be a bit more
in-depth and a bit less academic.
neat websites.
The dramatic story of the Knights Templar.......2005-06-05
The Knights Templar was a monastic order of Christian warriors that grew out of the medieval campaigns to free Jerusalem and Palestine from the domination of the Muslims in several waves of invasion known collectively as the Crusades. These warrior monks were believed to conduct mystical rites, guard the famed Holy Grail, and possess the lost treasures of Jerusalem. The order's wealth and political activities evolved to provide banking services to kings, act as trusted diplomats, engage in far flung business enterprise, and even work as navigators. The order was ultimately doomed to succumb to political intrigue and the malevolent greed of kings. In The Templars And The Grail: Knights Of The Quest, Oxford-based medieval historian Karen Ralls presents the dramatic story of the Knights Templar, presenting the many beliefs and theories about their presumed powers and arcane knowledge. Drawing upon both popular and academic sources, this impressive, exceptionally well written, and thoroughly accessible history is especially recommended to students of Metaphysical Studies and Medieval History.
A must-have book on the Templars.......2004-08-10
Every now and then a book comes along and you think 'thank God someone has done this!' This book really works on several levels -- firstly, the author is solid and credible, being a professional medieval historian, but also someone who has had previous curator experience at the museum exhibition at Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland --a place now known to many more of us, as it is featured in the last chapter of the Da Vinci Code novel. However, this book is a solidly-researched, nonfiction work and a fascinating read on the history of the medieval Order, the Grail, and Rosslyn Chapel, etc. For those who may already have read a bit about the Templars, it still has a lot of intriguing new stuff, yet it's backed up with solid, factual documentation and good references and footnotes-- again, something you often don't see nearly enough in popular books on the Templars. This is not the usual 'one theory book' on the Templars, which I found refreshing to say the least. But it's easy to read and follow overall, and this author doesn't attempt to 'take sides'. A variety of research and views are presented, and then, we, the readers, can take it from there. What seems to be unique here is that this author takes great care to distinguish between fact and speculation -- something in my opinion that is a problem with many of the existing books on the Knights Templars. But although I'd already read some on the Templars and still learned a lot more, a friend of mine who had read nothing at all about them also found this book really intriguing, which says something, too. The photos of the carvings of Rosslyn Chapel were great, and I especially liked the various intriguing bits here and there in each chapter -- like material on the Black Madonna, geometry, St Bernard's role, the medieval origins of traveller's checks, the Jolly Roger pirate flag and medieval Templar naval warfare, various excavations under the Temple Mount, Templar symbolism, and so on. A good resource to have around, and it's not surprising this book is on its fifth printing in a year...it's also easy to 'dip into' when you like. Definitely worth getting.
Fascinating and evocative yet balanced.......2004-02-11
Written by an academic medieval historian, this is one of the best history books on the Knights Templar to come out for some time -- it is balanced (many academic but also some popular sources used, but carefully) and thoughtful, yet still manages to be readable and very intriguing. An ideal combo. The sources are reliable, so this author simply does not need to resort to mere sensationalism, which is so often the case with books on the Templars. The material on Scotland is great, especially the chapter on the enigmatic carvings of Rosslyn Chapel, a place that was also featured in the novel The Da Vinci Code. I would have liked a bit more on medieval Templar naval strategies and warfare and the Jolly Roger, but overall, if you are looking for a solid, reliable book that still has compelling research, admitting that there are still some important unanswered questions about the 'White knights' of the Crusades -- it's a valuable reference book to have around, plus a great read!
Book Description
The underground has been a dominant image of modern life since the late eighteenth century. A site of crisis, fascination, and hidden truth, the underground is a space at once more immediate and more threatening than the ordinary world above. In Subterranean Cities, David L. Pike explores the representation of underground space in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period during which technology and heavy industry transformed urban life.
The metropolis had long been considered a moral underworld of iniquity and dissolution. As the complex drainage systems, underground railways, utility tunnels, and storage vaults of the modern cityscape superseded the countryside of caverns and mines as the principal location of actual subterranean spaces, ancient and modern converged in a mythic space that was nevertheless rooted in the everyday life of the contemporary city. Writers and artists from Felix Nadar and Charles Baudelaire to Charles Dickens and Alice Meynell, Gustave Doré and Victor Hugo, George Gissing and Emile Zola, and Jules Verne and H. G. Wells integrated images of the urban underworld into their portrayals of the anatomy of modern society.
Illustrated with photographs, movie stills, prints, engravings, paintings, cartoons, maps, and drawings of actual and imagined urban spaces, Subterranean Cities documents the emergence of a novel space in the subterranean obsessions and anxieties within nineteenth-century urban culture. Chapters on the subways, sewers, and cemeteries of Paris and London provide a detailed analysis of these competing centers of urban modernity. A concluding chapter considers the enduring influence of these spaces on urban culture at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Book Description
This is Jurgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.
Customer Reviews:
Indispensable for Understanding Contemporary Culture.......2007-08-10
Okay, perhaps I've got the social-theory-geek gene, but when I first read this book some fourteen years ago (during grad school), I was able finally to put together a lot of things that had been swimming around in my brain. I'd already read a good bit of Adorno before a professor (with whom I was doing an independent study on Adorno) recommended that I read this. Habermas's historical analysis was so compelling that I simply couldn't put the book down. Moreover (all this may seem hard to believe), the lucidity of his presentation also helped me put a lot of what was going on in Adorno's writings in a clearer light.
While I don't agree with the directions in which Habermas later went--I strongly resist the notion of recuperating the modern project--this book provides a compelling analysis of how Western society and culture got to where it is now.
Habermas: The Public in History.......2005-09-17
In this monograph, Habermas tracks the origination, the evolution, and the dispersal of an informed "public sphere" among democratic Western nations. He defines public sphere as "private people com[ing] together as a public" (27). Once these individuals, gathered as reading groups or as aficionados of theatre, the arts, and politics, the individuals melded into a public capable of debating the government. Habermas locates these fledgling "publics" primarily in eighteenth-century France, England and to a lesser extent in the areas of Europe designated as German. Tellingly, Habermas strongly links the formation of the public sphere with the rise of capitalism and a continuing bourgeois revolution. Comprised of literate individuals governed by the principals of the Enlightenment, these "publics" eventually challenged the validity and legitimacy of governments, most notably in France during the French Revolution and England during the English Civil War.
Habermas builds a compelling argument based upon his interpretation of Rousseau, Kant, Locke, Hegel, and Marx. He links the works of these philosophers and sociologists in a credible chain stretching back to the eighteenth century. However, he only deals thoroughly with the educated, propertied elite of society. Habermas views the "unpropertied" and illiterate as a separate from and incapable of participating in a true public sphere. To do this he must dismiss a plethora of lower class uprisings found throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Even when the various governments quickly quashed these rebellions, the Ludites in England and the various rebellions of 1848 come to mind, it is difficult to dispute the effect these rebels and rebellions had upon the public discourse. As an early work on the subject, it is almost certain that Habermas had to amend his arguments following E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, published in 1963 a scant year after this work. His exclusion of the great press of society from a functioning public sphere seems arrogant at best and naïve at worst.
One of the most influential studies on the subject.......2004-11-01
Habermas' work, though written more than four decades ago, still retains most of its original relevance for the study of the public sphere. If you are interested in this subject, and if you are into critical thinking, then this book is certainly worth reading. Why? Well, if you take in consideration the fact that no other book has been written so far on the subject that has been able to surpass Habermas' account both in depth and originality, then you begin to get my point. As to a critical reading of the argument put forth by Habermas, one should read "Habermas and the Public Sphere", edited by Craig Calhoun. This book includes an appendix by Habermas where he revises some of his original positions.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.......2002-04-04
When you talk about the public sphere in front of intellectuals, Jürgen Habermas's name is bound to come up. Habermas's 1962 study, "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere," examines the creation, brief flourishing, and demise of a public sphere based in rational-critical debate and discussion. The feasibility of a true public sphere, which is inclusive of anyone who would participate, is for Habermas of utmost importance. Habermas follows a methodology similar to the one Michel Foucault takes in "Discipline and Punish," which analyzes the abolition of public displays of power, and the process by which the structures of power are inculcated in the individual from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Habermas analyzes historical, economic, and political conditions from classical antiquity through his own historical moment, tracing the circumstances in which the public sphere arises, how it functions, and ceases to function over time.
Habermas begins with a delineation of the terms 'public' and 'private,' orienting them philologically from their roots and meanings in classical antiquity. From here, he traces the adoption of the words and their synonyms into the European Middle Ages and the era of feudalism. Habermas says that in this period, the feudal lord and the monarch, for whom `representative publicness' functioned as a display of power before their subjects, dominated the public. Authority figures embodied virtues and powers in a public fashion. Public representation of political and economic power continued, unabated until the Reformation, at which time, the privatization of religious faith signaled a separation between society and the state. Economically, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the spread of trade necessitated the spread of news from various locales. As news outside of the home became relevant to home economy, the private individual begins to take an interest in public events. Consolidation of 'national' financial administration and state-controlled taxation, along with the rise of print culture, facilitated the dissemination of news, initially in the form of governmental decrees, market conditions, and happenings at court. Through this, the actions of the authorities came under the scrutiny of a reading public.
The 18th century is the key moment for Habermas. In this period, the government, along with private individuals, made use of the press, for the first time, in persuasive appeal to a public made up of private people. The press now presented the public with information, with which they were to use reason and discussion to determine what was in the public's interest. Habermas emphasizes the theoretical parity that this brings about - the rise of the coffee houses and salons, in which merchants met with gentility and engaged in rational-critical debate over issues of public import. Stretching this into the realm of the franchise, Habermas is careful to point out the problematics of a situation in which actual decision-making was restricted to those with money and land, but stresses that the opportunity for anyone to acquire these prerequisites was, again, theoretically, open to all.
For a brief time during the 18th century, Habermas sees the flourishing of a public sphere, born out of a reading public, that began to interact with the processes of public policy, legally, and morally. The purpose of this public sphere, according to Habermas, is to eliminate the domination of authoritative power, and establishing a government that is actually representative of the public will and contingent upon public opinion. Unfortunately, in the 19th century, with the stratification of party politics, the proliferating press encouraged less rational-critical discussion. Increasingly, debate moved into parliamentary circles, and the public was asked only to approve of party measures, not participate in the formation of the rules that governed them. In the 20th century, along with the creation of the welfare-state, consolidation of moneyed interests, and the expansion of universal suffrage (ironically), the public sphere disintegrated even further. New media - radio, television, etc. - turned its addresses to the public into mere advertising. Even the illusion of a private people engaged, as a public, in matters of their own governance, was gone, and the public became vessels for mass media.
To recuperate a true participatory public sphere, Habermas takes a guarded approach. He indicates that some kind of elite could be formed. These private individuals would undertake the responsibility of rational-critical debate, determining the public interest. The general public, then, would give their approval or disapproval to the measures decided on by this elite. This is kind of a bleak outlook, and one I don't much care for myself. Of course, this is a horribly limited review of Habermas's "Structural Transformation". I haven't even noted the break he takes to outline the historical-philosophical evaluation and critique of the public sphere by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, and Tocqueville. Nor did I note the extensive use Habermas makes of political and economic changes in his key nations - England, France, and Germany - and the contributions these make to the disintegration of the public sphere. At any rate, "Structural Transformation" is an exhaustive (and exhausting) study, as relevant now to the study of literature, economics, government, history, etc., especially of the last three centuries, as it ever was. Even though it is a pain to read, you'll be glad you finally read it. Think of it as theoretical medicine - it may not taste good, but in the long run, it's good for you.
Habermas puts me to sleep.......2000-07-23
... This is Habermas' dissertation, but his writing is so poor, in English or in German, that it really doesn' matter. The book is a response, in my opinion, to Carl Schmitt, and specifically to Schmitt's argument that the core of liberal democracy is debate in parliament, that liberal democracy is rule by discussion (or, as its called now, "political discourse"), but that that discussion is now more real than painted flames on a radiator. Liberal democracy is in fact the triumph of aliberal, private, hidden powers, who rule from the shadows and through the true organs of power, the media, and through the hidden power of the private vote cast in the illicit privacy of the voting booth, where the bourgeois individual is free to exercise his worst prejudices and basest motives. So argues Schmitt. Habermas gives an interesting historical account of the rise of "Offentlichkeit" (which translates into the all-too-easy abstraction "public sphere," whatever that is), from the letters passed in the mail relating the news from town to town, to French salons, to newspapers, to television and radio. Habermas, like Schmitt, seeks to unmask the illiberal powers lurking behind the good liberal prejudices, but he, like Schmitt, mistakes liberalism for a debating society when in fact it is much more sophisticated than that. Habermas needs to read the Federalist Papers and the debates (!) at the constitutional convention to understand how little the founders of one liberal democracy thought of the power of discussion.
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European Religion in the Age of Great Cities: 1830-1930 (Christianity and Society in the Modern World)
Hugh McLeod
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Book Description
Europe in the nineteenth century saw spectacular growth in the size and number of cities and in the proportion of the population living in urban areas. Many contemporaries thought that this social revolution would bring about an equally dramatic change in religious life. This book, written by an international team of specialists, provides an authoritative account of religious change, both at the institutional and popular level, in Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox cities, in seven European countries.
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The European Parliament, the National Parliaments, and European Integration
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ASIN: 0198296606 |
Book Description
European integration is progressing at an even more rapid rate. Accompanying this progress is an increasing debate about the institutional shape and legitimacy of this new political order. This debate is driven in part by conflicting values, and in part by uncertainty. This book addresses the question of parliamentary involvement in the emerging European political system by looking at both national and European levels of parliamentary representation. In doing this, it gives greater attention to the role of national parliaments than is usual in discussions about democracy in the European Union. Based on interviews and surveys among members of parliament at the European level, and in eleven member states, it analyses the role of parliaments and parliamentarians, the linkages between national citizenry and the European level, and the problems and perspectives of institutional change. The book is provides analyses of the views from within concerning European integration and concentrates of three dimensions: the MPs themselves; their embeddedness in the process; and their perspectives on institutional structures. These views from within offer new insights and answers to institutional problems in the European Union and the so-called democratic deficit.
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Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War
Daniel Levy ,
Max Pensky , and
John Torpey
Manufacturer: Verso
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Beyond Paradise and Power: Europe, America, and the Future of a Troubled Partnership
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The Idea of a European Superstate: Public Justification and European Integration
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Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West
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Emerging European Union, The (4th Edition)
ASIN: 1844675203 |
Book Description
World-renowned philosophers debate the future of Europe in light of the influence of the US and propose new political understandings of the transatlantic alliance.
Shortly after the hostilities of the Iraq War were declared to have come to an end, the renowned philosopher Jürgen Habermas, with the endorsement of Jacques Derrida, published a manifesto invoking the notion of a “core Europe,” distinct from both the British and the “new” European candidates for EU membership, and defined above all by its secular, Enlightenment and social-democratic traditions. A key component of the manifesto was its insistence on the need for a counterweight to the perceived influence of the US, a theme that also resonates in recent discussions about the establishment of a European military force outside the command structures of NATO.
On the same weekend in May 2003, a number of other leading intellectuals, among them Umberto Eco, Gianni Vattimo and Richard Rorty, published essays addressing these themes in major European newspapers, and almost immediately responses to these essays began to appear. The writings sparked a lively debate about the nature of “Europe” and transatlantic relations that reverberates through contemporary discussion.
This volume provides readers in the Anglophone world the opportunity to gain access to the debate. As the fallout from the Iraq war continues to rumble and EU expansion continues apace, this is compelling reading for anyone interested in the future of Europe and the transatlantic alliance.
With contributions by Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Adolf Muschg, Richard Rorty, Fernando Savater, Gianni Vattimo, Susan Sontag, Timothy Garton Ash, Iris Marion Young, Ulrich Beck, Adam Krzeminski and others.
Customer Reviews:
Superb collection.......2005-11-19
A group of writers as diverse as Europe itself contribute to this fantastic collection of essays. Some were better than others. The usual suspects include Jurgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Richard Rorty, and Susan Sontag. The topics range from European identity, the EU and international relations, and the contested defintion of "continental" in "continental philosophy." As the riots in Paris have shown this past few weeks, the defintion of a "true" or "core" European is imploding. This book is a better guide than any "Europe in 60 days" or "Your guide to 'the grand tour'" and should be a travelling companion sold alongside zagat guides.
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People and Parliament in the European Union: Participation, Democracy, and Legitimacy
Jean Blondel ,
Richard Sinnott , and
Palle Svensson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0198293089 |
Book Description
The power of the European Parliament has been steadily and visibly increasing in recent years. This arises from EU treaty changes and from the fact that more and more decisions are being made at the European level. At the same time, however, the already low rate of turnout in European elections has actually been declining. This powerful new study examines a seemingly paradoxical situation which has raised deep concern about the democratic deficit in the European Union. The authors analyse the concepts of participation, democracy, and legitimacy and their applicability at the European level and develop a typology of voter participation and abstention in the European context. Combining extensive new data from specially commissioned surveys in all 1994 member states with a searching review of the existing evidence, they provide a comprehensive account of the legitimacy of the European Union and examine the images of the European Parliament, citizens experiences of the 1994 campaign and their perceptions of the parties and the candidates. In an analysis that challenges existing interpretations, the institutional, demographic, and attitudinal sources of participation and abstention are fully explored. The study concludes by considering how participation and democratic representation might be enhanced, acknowledging forthrightly the obstacles and inherent limits that such efforts are likely to face.
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