Economic-union Books

Michael Haydock provides a significant addition to the history of the cold war. This book is a seamless review of the role Berlin played during the critical years that ran from the end of World War II until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Haydock mirrors Berlin against the larger global events of the period. The central focus of the manuscript is, simply, how a city the size of Philadelphia survived complete destruction by the Soviet Army and rose again from the ashes in search of self determination.

With Berlin as the backdrop, the author uses three themes in weaving the story. The first theme outlines the strategic decision making which contrasts the leadership of the Allies and the Soviet Union during the Berlin crisis. A stark difference emerges immediately. The democratically elected leaders of the Allies set the strategy. For example, President Truman said, "we stay," and turned the formation of policy over to his appropriate cabinet members. General Marshall, Secretary of State and James Forrestal, Secretary of Defense, set broad policy which protected the strategic interest of the United States and delegated operational decisions to command officers in the field. Generals Clay, LeMay, Tunner, and their staffs made the tactical decisions while keeping Washington briefed. The author goes to great lengths to show how those in the field made the big decisions with minimal interference from the highest level.

Decision making by the Soviet Union was the opposite. Haydock uses extensive documentation from a variety of sources to illustrate Soviet decision making as a highly rigid, centralized system that required all matters to be cleared with Moscow - that is, with Stalin. Such tightly controlled decision making begged for delay as every action went back to Moscow for a reaction.

The second theme is operational or tactical. Haydock goes to great lengths to describe the birth, growth, and triumph of the Berlin Airlift. As the Soviets closed the surface routes to Berlin, a hasty effort to supply the city by air was made by the area commanders. The question, "can it be done?" was not addressed; however, the question, "how can we do it?" was a constant for the next six months. One could classify the beginning air supply effort as long on optimism and short on reality. On Saturday, July 26, 1948, a collection of C-47s made thirty-four flights into Templehof with 80 tons of food and medicine. The Berlin Airlift had commenced.

Manpower and material began to flow to the operational bases in West Germany. General Tunner arrived to provide leadership. The C-54s began to arrive from bases all over the world. The "bicycle chain" was applied to the corridors which kept a steady stream of aircraft moving toward the landing fields in Berlin and back to the supply airfields. January, 1949, was a critical month. The weather was bad and the City was down to twelve days of food and coal. On Easter Sunday, 1949, flying at one minute intervals, 1,398 flights, lifted 12,941 tons into Berlin in a twenty-four hour period. The Soviets lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949, but air operations continued until September. One could argue that the Airlift was the greatest humanitarian effort the world has seen, demonstrating good leadership, diplomatic steadiness, and peaceful use of airpower can advance the strategic interests of a nation.

The third theme weaves human interest stories into the larger mosaic of the Airlift. Into every day of this monumental effort, Haydock finds a story that brings this huge operation down to the human level. For example, Lieutenant Gail Halverson's dropping little parachutes containing chocolate candy to the chldren of Berlin - and going down in history as the "Candy Bomber." Or Ruth Andreas-Friedrich describing the Soviet sacking of the city and the associated fear as the survivors hovered in the bombed out buildings.

City Under Siege is a well documented, clearly written description of one of the great events of the century. Highly recommended reading for those interested in history, foreign policy, humanitarian efforts, and especially for those who participated.

What a disappointment this book was. A subject so rich and so poorly presented. It was an empty account of history. For a layman hard to group into one of the greatest accomplishments of the United States. Too many loose ends, stories start and in the middle another subject is injected, a couple pages later you find the conclusion. The conditions of the city and the people from 1945 to 1948 not researched enough to give an understanding what really happen in the years before the Blockade. The currency reform was the final straw, but not the whole picture. The Kommandatura meetings the author refers to with the 4 powers don't shine any light on the subject. Also he never took the time to question the population of the city, the feelings, the hardships and how we accomplished our daily lives under conditions beyond imagination. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich was the only person to express some opinions, but she was not the mainstream of the 2 1/2 million people that lived in the city. She left Berlin in the middle of the Airlift for "Freedom", we had freedom in Berlin because of the support of the free world. I'm a born Berliner and lived through every phase. I worked for USGroupCC, Omgus and Special Troops in Onkel Toms Huette, also attended the performance of Bob Hope in the Titania Palast, what lasted over 4 hours, well past midnight. Have several excellent books on the subject to remind my children what was my life experience, but this one was written without understanding the whole picture, the sacrifices the men made to save a city and keep the iron curtain from descending all over Europe.

The author uses everything that has been written on Greece to present an image of Greece as hopelessly backward and certainly not worthy of entering into the European Union. It underestimates to a laughable point the danger of Turkey to Greece. It could have been written by the Turkish propaganda ministry.

The authors of this novel have clearly NOT done their homework on the modern Greek state. For country which has been seiged by Ottoman Rule and genocide, which has been kept "in the dark" by brutal Turkish rule while other countries in Europe experienced such events as the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, and whose people have been used as political toys by countries such as the United States and Great Britain, Greece has come a long way in the last twenty years. After the dictatorship, which consequently was installed by the United States government, the country was crippled. For a country with so few resources and even fewer allies, I have the tendency not to agree with the viewpoint of the authors. The only true way to comment on the modern Greek state is to take all previous history into account. The authors clearly did not do that. For anyone interested in reading a more non-biased on the modern Greek state,a great source would be Richard Clogg's book, "A concise History of Modern Greece".

I grant the point of the earlier reviewer that this is a very detailed book in some ways and not of tremendous interest to a general reader. As a writer, Schweitzer is "workmanlike." However, the value of his book is in recording details of a small but important part of post-Cold War history. As of 2003, the ISTC process is still alive. The threats the organization was formed to combat are still significant.

Although this is more a personal account than an attempt at "objective historical reporting" he does not try to gloss over the problems, shortcomings and frustrations his team encountered initiating this important international organization.

This book is worth a read for those involved in any kind of transnational or international organization formation.

This book is not a techno-thriller, but it documents in excruciating detail the process whereby the Russian govt. agreed to establish the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) in Moscow. Note: continued US funding for the ISTC remains in doubt, given the budget hawks in the US Congress

Poorly written account of the life of Joseph Franco, basically spends the whole book tooting his own horn. He is "friends" with every one from politicians to movie celebrities...do we care? Other than using Jimmy Hoffa's name in the title to boost sales, the actual book has very little to do with JH.

After reading only the first chapter, I reluctantly decided to close the book. It is simply not believable.

Fascinating account of the history of the early labor movement. Great story telling from a man who was close to Jim Hoffa, Sr. His personal accounts take you back in time to an era lost forever.

What a disappointment! I managed to make it through 5 chapters before throwing it into the living room wall. I have read my share of mafia/organized crime books and for the most part if they are written by ex cops, or crime writers, they are usually well written. Unfortunately that cannot be said for those written by the "figures" themselves, and this little collection of "tall tales" is no exception. I simply couldn't find anything believable. Franco would have you believe that the labor wars were won with a stick of dynamite at every turn. The book reads like a John Wayne script, except this time Wayne is the "bad guy" getting the best of every situation. The only consolation is that I bought it used. And it's getting cool even in Texas, nothing like a little kindling for the fireplace.

How could a book about labour ignore the most important issues of social class, race, and gender? The book is really a collection of rah-rah essays on unions in America lacking in any analysis and rigor about the lives of workers in the U.S. An obsequious effort to gather all perspectives without taking a position. Why is there no critical examination of issues of race in this work? The work does not have any essay by rank-and-file workers and seems to see the unions moving ahead by continuing in their old ways.

The editor provides a wide selection of essays on the subject of the potential growth of American labor in the United States without substantiating any real insurgency. While hindsight is always 20-20, we now see that labor has declined since the publication of this book, perhaps the book's optimism and lack of critical analysis is its major weakness. The labor movement cannot rely on empty phrases. The writers are drawn from well known new left academics and labor leaders that optimistically predict a rosy future for a new revitalization of the American labor movement. Unfortunately, the editor takes for granted the writers' assertions that are unsubstantiated without a critical analysis. Labor has clearly changed from the cold war era. However, no nuance is detected here, given that exhortation does not bring about revival nor does it make it true that organized labor has emerged from its past bureaucratic and territorial character. The book is interesting, but larded with hubris and hopeful expectations. More helpful would be a prospective assessment of labor's problems. If readers are interested in what labor intellecuals were thinking in the aftermath of Sweeney's rise to power, this book provides interesting commentary. To understand how a new labor movement is constructed, the editor and authors must understand how capital remakes labor.

The labor movement in the U.S. in 1994 was reeling from at least two decades of shrinking membership and loss of political and economic influence. The election debacle in the Fall of 1994 was the final blow that forced an acknowledgement that their leadership and manner of operation were hopelessly ineffectual. The new "New Voice" leadership of the AFL-CIO, elected in 1995, hit the ground running with ambitious aims for a labor turnaround. In a decided change from past practice, John Sweeney, the new president of the AFL-CIO, called for open debate and a critique of the labor movement from both within and without the labor movement. This volume contains the input of 27 individuals who participated in a labor symposium in anticipation of the transition. If not officials in labor unions, almost all of the contributors work within the labor movement in some capacity.

These contributors all see the traditional union approach of firm-centered collective bargaining conducted by union officials and staffers as a guaranteed prescription for further union decline. But what do they think the labor movement should be doing or become? Their emphasis is on organizing both for workplaces and within communities, on the inclusion and expansion of opportunities for ethnic and gender minorities both in terms of membership and leadership positions in unions, on the impact of globalization and its main strategic initiative neoliberalism on working people throughout the world, on the need for renewed and independent political action, and on counterpoising worker democracy and solidarity against what amounts to the class warfare of capitalism.

There is a great deal of idealism and optimism but unfortunately not a lot of realism and pragmatism that permeates this collection. Of course, that is somewhat understandable in that the New Voice leadership has given the labor movement renewed hope of a turnaround.

Perhaps the vaguest notion put forward in these essays is the notion that unions, or the labor movement, need to become some sort of society-wide institution concerned with issues of the working class in general regardless of union membership. This concept is termed social movement or community unionism. One tactic proposed is for the labor movement, itself a rather vague concept, to form coalitions with social and political groups. Except in a few inner-city areas there is hardly any overlap between specific workforces and geographic communities. Despite the fact that some union-community coalitions have been successful, there is no discussion of the feasibility or the mechanics of unions becoming broad social institutions in most communities.

There is general recognition from most of the authors that political power is essential to advance the position of working people. Disassociation from the Democratic Party and independent political action is urged. But what is lacking is any real assessment of the political orientation of the working class. One author comments on the lack of coherent political thinking among working people. It seems that the notions of social movement unionism and political power are intertwined in some manner but at this point this seems to be more of a partially formulated ideal than a possibility.

Advocacy of greater inclusion of immigrants and ethnic and gender minorities can hardly be disagreed with. But the huge increase in semi-professional and technical workers, who are largely unrepresented, is ignored by these authors. What little overlap there is between workplaces and communities most probably exists among immigrants and ethnic groups. Perhaps the labor movement, as a practical matter, sees the potential for recruitment of members as far greater in these urban areas.

Given the background of the contributors, it is understandable that there is no commentary on the entire structure of workplace representation. Much union representation is based on fairly sizeable groups of workers with common functions, a situation that does not pertain in hundreds of thousands of workplaces. The European system of legislated workplace-based works councils that are in turn of a part of supra-works councils makes a lot of sense. The consultation and codetermination aspects of works councils go a long way toward the workplace democracy that some of the authors advocate. Throw in tri-partite discussions at the highest levels of the works councils and the potential exists for a representation system that exceeds the sparse, rather ad hoc, and limited system of union representation in the U.S.

There is no doubt that these authors are well aware that the labor movement is at best only minimally serving the working class in the U.S. They point out many of the problems and make considerable effort to describe where the labor movement needs to be. But the optimism engendered by the New Voice leadership seems to have clouded and limited the perspectives on what is attainable. Perhaps those authors would have a different assessment from today's vantage point. More recent works such as "State of the Union" or "The Future of Private Sector Unionism" offer somewhat more sobering accounts of the labor movement in the U.S.

an important subject as aspects of socialism again come into popular discussion, in a nearly unreadable and excessively wordy account.

The book is a collection of papers from a 1997 workshop. The main objective of the workshop was to integrate research results on pesticides, minerals, global warming, and landscape and nature into practical methods to identify and operationalize environmental indicators within the European Union (EU). Moreover, the editors emphasize in their introduction (preceding the individual contributions that are presented as chapters) that cross-national and long-term comparisons of environmental indicators require consistent methodologies.

Although this is certainly not the first time that the central idea of "...we need one consistent methodology to identify and operationalize indicators..." is expressed, the introduction to the book raises hope that, finally, a book is published that at least attempts to formulate such a methodology.

The book is divided into five parts: a general introduction to environmental indicators in the European Union, a discussion on biodiversity and landscape indicators, a discussion on pollution indicators, different perspectives on the relation between policy and sustainable development, and a discussion and conclusions.

The quality of the paper varies widely. Only few papers are well-written and contain clear practical illustrations. Several papers are too general to be translated into practical methods. Others are too wordy and too muddled to even finish reading them at all. In general, more accurate articles and books on qualitative and quantitative aspects concerning identification, selection, and operationalization indicators have been published.

What especially attracts attention while reading the various papers in this book is that there is no general agreement on how to identify and operationalize environmental indicators. Recalling that the editors hold out the prospect for a "consistent methodology," the discussion of the individual contributions is a disappointment. It is certainly not easy to integrate the wide variety of opinions expressed, but this book provides no new outlook at all on a consistent methodology. Moreover, the discussion refers more to external literature than reviewing contributions in the book itself.

The publisher's claim on the back of the book that "it is essential reading for agricultural and environmental economists and policy makers," therefore, is out of proportion. Although some chapters are well worth reading, "Environmental Indicators and Agricultural Policy" at best is a reasonable reference work on the current status of environmental indicators in the EU.

My advice: borrow, don't buy...

If you have not yet read/bought this book, it is unlikely that you will now, for this book is 10 years old and a lot has changed in the literature since it was published. Nevertheless, a few comments may be worth making:

1) This is not a terribly interesting book, but it does offer some interesting insights, particularly regarding facts on specific EU public policies.

2) Apart from that, it is poorly organised (there is no common thread to the different approaches), the theoretical approach is confusing (is it principal-agent, or historical institutionalism, or so-called soociological institutionalism?), and the methodology to which the authors refer in order to produce new knowledge is ... your guess.

Having said that, the book does deserve two starts, for it is testimony to what was the state of the art in EU studies in the late 1990s. A sorry state of affairs, but not one for which this book bore exclusive responsibility...

The authors are two Austrian diplomats who have worked extensively in and with the European Union. In this book, they provide a blow-by-blow account of the negotiations over the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. That enlargement added eight formerly-Communist countries to the East, as well as Malta and Cyprus.

The narrative here is full of facts and the detailed back-and-forth of diplomacy. If you need to know who said what to whom, this would be a good source. But the book lacks a strong narrative and doesn't try to synthesize this raw material. You also won't find evaluation or critique here since the authors are still diplomats and have to be, well, diplomatic.

this book is very good if you are interested in to russian history