Future Books

The Federal Future of Europe describes the formation of the European Community and also its turning to a Union, particularly thoroughly. Professor Sidjanski convinces the reader that federalism is a solution to help lower nationalism in Europe.

I advise this book to all who are involved in the European Union and/or have developped an interest towards it as analysis of the European Community and the European Union. The book is illuminating and helpful for both students in science politics and for those working towards an improved Europe.

From the Introductory Note by Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission: "Dusan Sidjanski's particularly opportune analysis in the framework of European federalism casts a clear light on one of the deepest and most permanent mainsprings of European action.

However, if this analysis is not a unique source of my reflection, it is certainly quite clear that it is one of the most illuminating and enriching analysis for the future of Europe which will doubtless be both difficult and exciting.

I wish English-speaking readers of this new edition the pleasure of discovering the major work in European integration".

From the Foreword by Harold K. Jacobson, Professor of International Relations, University of Michigan: "The Federal Future of Europe is a marvellous addition to the English literature on the European Union.

Curiously, given the United States own proud history of federalism, Americans have particularly ignored the federalist position. The English version of The Federal Future of Europe fills a major gap in the literature. It will stand with Haas-s and Moravcsik's works as a seminal statement about Europe.

The Federal Future of Europe was written with insight, knowledge, and passion. Readers will be informed and moved. I strongly commend it to everyone interested in Europe and to those more broadly interested in contemporary international affairs".

This major study of the development of the European project, informed by a thorough knowledge of the Community and Union over the years and by deep understanding of the relevant literatures in political science and political economy is important for all who study the European Union or work with it as officials and business people.

Statement by Ernst B. Haas, Robson Research Professor Emeritus of Government, University of California, Berkeley Dusan Sidjanski's The Federal Future of Europe is remarkable for two reasons. It offers a comprehensive but eminently readable summary and analysis of the institutions of the European Union and of its main policies. This is no mean feat, considering the complexity and sweep of both. But in addition, the discussion is placed in the context of an unwavering commitment to federalism and to a federal future for Europe. Even if we do not agree with the desirability or certainty of that outcome, it is vital that this vision remain on everyone's agenda along with other possible

options, and that it be intelligently defended. Sidjanski succeeds brilliantly in so doing.

Dusan Sidjanski is founder and Professor Emeritus of the Department of Political Science, University of Geneva and Professor emeritus, European Institute. He has authored numerous publications, most recently, The ECE in the Age of Change (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, United Nations), 1999.

Professor Sidjanski's main publications include: Fédéralisme amphictyonique,

Lausanne, 1956; Dimensions européennes de la science politique, Paris, 1963; L'Europe des affaires (with Jean Meynaud), Paris 1967; "Pressure Groups and the European Economic Community", (C. Cosgrove and K. J. Twitchett, Ed), The New International Actors, New York and London, 1970; Les groupes de pressions dans la Communauté européenne, (J. Meynaud), Brussels, 1971; "The Left, the Right, the Establishment and the Swiss Electorate" with R. Inglehart, Party Identification and Beyond, (I. Budge, et al., ed.), London, 1976; The Role of executive heads in regional economic integration, with H. K. Jacobson, Geneva, 1978; De la démocratie européenne, Paris, 1979; "Regional Patterns of Economic Cooperation", with H. Jacobson, Comparative Regional Systems, (W. J. Feld & G. Boyd, ed.), New York, 1980; The Emerging International Economic Order, H.K. Jacobson & D. Sidjanski, ed., London & Beverly Hills, 1982; L'Europe du Sud dans la Communauté européenne, (with U.

Ayberk et al.), Paris, 1990; Union ou désunion de l'Europe?, Geneva, 1991 and The ECE in the Age of Change, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, United Nations, New York and Geneva, 1998.

Avital Ronell strikes again!! With this marvellous book of essays she forays where so few critical thinkers venture: the precise confluence between low&high-brow thinking. Smoothly switching gears from literary to street-wise to philosophical to pop-cultural registers without losing depth, force or velocity, this author encourages the kind of radical thinking that virally invests itself into consciousness, producing more of the same. The Experience of reading Ronell is not always encouraging, or "safe". There is a real-time risk taking in terms of what tracks your train of thought will switch on (the text taking nothing from you, still, being so rich you can only follow various threads of its labyrinthine deconstructions @1time). An absolute thrill.

Anyone familiar with Ronell?s name would probably not be reading this review. You either hate her or ?
But if you do not already know her work, no review is really going to help you because a true review would have to be almost as complex as Ronell?s own writing to say something meaningful, and this is not the place for such an attempt. So I?ll pass, but say only what can be said in everyday language and include the content of the book below.

Ronell is to scholarship what Bruce Lee was to (traditional) kung-fu: 2 good-lookin? people exceeding the limits of standard practice after undergoing the rigorous training of the prerequisite discipline. Bruce did not disdain hitting below the belt, biting and scratching even: the point is to win the fight if you?re in one. Avital is the same when it comes to fighting the enemy: stupidity marinating in the warm formaldehyde of ignorance. The essays collected here are from the early 80?s to late 90?s, previously published in various journals. Her references are, well, everything ? from canonic texts (Kant, Freud, Goethe, Heidegger, etc) to Headline news. The richness of her ?multi-media? work using words (sentence?collages) alone is quite something: proof that only smart people can really art (used as a verb). And to enjoy her work, you really do need to read her stuff as a ?thinking artist? yourself.

Her writing is ferocious, fast, feline, fanged; and?friendly--not. She fences with a pen. Her language moves with the jaguaresque prowess of the English language at full throttle. She confesses she is writing, out of necessity, for those who fly more-or-less at her altitude of discourse. She also explains why she (or any writer) thinks/writes the way she does: she is, as a writer, not so much a manipulator of language so much as a medium by and through which language dictates what it wishes to say (think). She says, ?A text?s gotta do what a text?s gotta do.? Like Derrida, Ronell is interested in acts of questioning that do not necessarily take recourse to discursivity. If this makes no sense, then you might want to pass on Ronell.

Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Hegel, Lyotard, etc ?you?ll need to have at least a cursory familiarity with their work to know what Ronell is saying. In other words, the book is inhospitable to the average undergraduate.
But she is not out to show-off or intimidate. It?s just her way of thinking that requires this kind of language and speed. She rarely loses clarity in order to achieve some pointless cleverness the way 2nd rate academic obscurantists so often do. (Okay, so lost me on a couple of essays.) Hers is the thought of one who has experienced the fire of her material, and understands the impossibility of ?mastering? it.

Some say she represents the best of the new scholarship. Yes and no. She is neither a product of a given system nor a representative of future education. She is just a rare bird, a brilliant comet, an exceptionally intelligent and insightful scholar who also has the uncommon ability (and balls) to use her OWN language which is a mellifluous m?lang(e)uage of all styles of speech.

She is, as always, all style. And that offends a lot of people, apparently. But in her case, there is no division between style and substance ? and there is a lot of it. Such is the sweet fruit of years of intensive knuckle-bruising cultivation and practice of literary kung-fu.

By ?finitude,? Ronell means the sense of humanity as shaped and delimited by our mortality, which is to say the ethical struggles to define our fragile humanity. She speculates whether ?we have gone too far this time, as terrestrials? in the process of pushing the Western logos to its potential (but logical) extreme. The one general concern that ties all these disparate essays together is the immanent problem of the ubiquity of the police: even without their physical presence, they are everywhere with their surveillance from afar. She has some very interesting things to say about technology as the field of infinite Tests and Testing, whereby the real is by necessity deferred, waiting for ?confirmation.? And when the entire world has become a testing ground, what becomes of our ability to experience that which makes us human?

Content:
1. Finitude?s Score
2. 2. Queens of the Night
3. Hitting the Streets: Ecce Fama
4. Street-Talk
5. The Sujet-Suppositaire: Freus, And/Or, the Obsessional Neurotic Style (Maybe)
6. Taking it Philosophically: Torquato Tasso?s Women as Theorists
7. Namely, Eckermann
8. Doing Kafka in _The Castle_: A Poetics of Desire
9. Starting from Scratch: Mastermix
10. The Worst Neighborhoods of the Real: Philosophy ? Telephone ?Contamination
11. The Walking Switchboard
12. The Differends of Man
13. Support Our Tropes: Reading Desert Storm
14. Activist Supplement: Papers on the Gulf War
15. Trauma TV: Twelve Steps Beyond the Pleasure Principle

A very concise how-to book on strategic planning for today's fire department whether it is volunteer or paid. Step by step plans as well as forms and other useful information to use. Very helpful for first time strategic planners as well as those updating their plans.

More often than not, we look to business and industry for answers to fire service problems. Most business strategic planning models have limited application to our profession. Mark Wallace has developed a fire department specific model that provides an excellent template in identifying medium and long range strategic planning issues. I have read this text and highly recomment it to the proactive planners of the future.

...because this adventure is definitely taking you for a ride! A wonderfully entertaining childrens book for all ages with vivid illustrations and fascinating characters. It's a breath of fresh air to find an author that delivers a wholesome message with a mega-dose of excitment; Carter has nailed this one! When do get episode 2?

Book was very different from antyhing else I have read,when recalling my younger days. I found it exciting and held my interest throughout.
The book should certainly be a best seller with young readers
especially those with imaginative minds and dreams for a world where the future will be safe and bright.

All credit to the author Mr Harold Carter.

In a world of deceit, excess, killing, lying and stealing, the present moment works with faith FOR A FUTURE TO BE POSSIBLE by enlightenment from the Buddha, the practice of love and understanding, and ever bigger and greater numbers of communities seeking wisdom, harmony and awareness. Art and meditation send energy into cell nutrition and nervous system health. Mindfulness teaches respect for all life, generosity, responsibility, careful speech and healthy diet for concentration and insight. Nobel Prize winner Thich Nhat Hanh's book is a beautifully reader-friendly steppingstone to THE GOOD HEART by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, AWAKENING THE BUDDHIST HEART by Lama Surya Das, and LOVINGKINDNESS by Sharon Salzberg.

Thich Nhat Hanh has updated the traditional Buddhist precepts in this book. His version goes beyond "do not kill," for example, to be mindful of that we might be killing inadvertently. He makes us aware of the broadness of the precepts and thus encourages us to be more mindful. If we are not mindful, we break the precepts. Therefore, he calls them Mindfulness Trainings. Thay's approach frames the precepts in a way that is helpful in our daily life. He makes them relevant.

Porter like Bob Dylan crafts a superb detailed synopsis of one of the strangest inexplicable events in recent history. Is the government behind this weather phenemenon? Chapter 4 is very well written, detailing all of the catastrphies in California. Check this out!!!

I'm an earth science teacher and initially shied away from the mass market nature of this text, but I looked over a couple of pages at the pharmacy one afternoon and was hooked. A thorough and thoroughly engaging book about El Nino - everything you need to know. And believe me. YOU NEED TO KNOW.

I first learned about this book when I read that Ridley Scott was going to Adapt Forever War to film. I am a big fan of his films so I had to find this book. This book was simply science fiction in it's purest form. Halderman writes at a great pace and about half way through I just couldn't put it down. It's one of those books that will keep you up late into the early morning because you can't stop reading.

University student William Mandella, an exceptionally bright university student with an IQ well north of 150 has been drafted. After a thoroughly modern and terrifyingly brutal boot camp with very deadly and very live modern weapons conducted in deep space conditions beyond Pluto's orbit, he'll be part of an interstellar war against the enigmatic Taurans, an alien species discovered when they supposedly attacked human ships.

Sci-fi fans know that most authors have a tendency to favour the hard or soft side of the genre. Clifford Simak, for example, is well known for his pastoral writing style that takes eager fans by the hands and lovingly guides them on astonishing tours through the soft side of science philosophy. Robert Sawyer, on the other hand, a talented and thoroughly modern Canadian author, grabs his readers by the throat and pulls them deep into the other side of the sci-fi spectrum through the implications of modern hardware and scientific discovery. Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War" cleverly straddles BOTH sides of the fence and beyond all expectations deals brilliantly with four separate themes, two soft and two hard, combining them into a single compelling but surprisingly short novel!

The titles gives away the obvious fact that war is an issue. "The Forever War" was published in 1974 and Haldeman is writing his story in the politically turbulent aftermath of the US experience in Vietnam. Whether Haldeman is vilifying warfare or simply presenting it as a fact of life and leaving it up to his readers for their own decisions will, of course, be a moral judgment that you will have to make for yourselves. (Comparisons will be made between this novel and Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" and Scalzi's "Old Man War" which also touch on the same topic of war with slightly different approaches).

Also on the softer side of the sci-fi genre, Haldeman has postulated a future in which asexual cloning has replaced normal reproduction and world governments have encouraged homosexuality as a solution to the world's population problems. In a clever twist on the world's current prejudices, Haldeman ultimately creates a world in which homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is perceived to be a perverted deviation. I've no doubt in my mind that a reader's current comfort level with alternative sexual orientations will also determine their reaction to this particular theme in the novel and whether or not they find it amusing or deeply disturbing!

On the hard side of the science spectrum, Haldeman deals imaginatively but realistically with two realities - the hard core rigors of deep space travel and the realities of relativistic effects such as time dilation.

No matter which side of the sci-fi spectrum you favour, you owe it to yourself as a fan to read Haldeman's novel. Unequivocally recommended as I go out to the second hand book stores to seek out the other books in the series, "Forever Peace" and "Forever Free".

Paul Weiss

A wealth of new ideas and ways to consider doing business! In this economy, all business owners need to access their goals on an accelerated basis..this is a Must"!

A very eye-opening view of the ever-changing business world. Challenges your current assumptions and forces you to "think out of the box" in regards to your company goals and personal ambitions. A must read for anyone considering opening their own business or looking to keep an existing endeavor afloat!

This profoundly learned and balanced book draws on the geatest minds (Tocqueville being only one, also Nietzsche, Augustine, Rousseau, etc.) to identify and weigh issues with which America now ought to be concerned. One may return again and again to "ruminate" over any part from cover to cover, even a paragraph, always coming away with insight into today's world. One of its many strengths lies in revealing how conventionally-accepted formations of social and political problems only mask deeper issues that require real attention. With the the "problem" of racism, for example, the deeper, thornier issue is the memory of slavery. Mitchell holds great thinkers to great scrutiny, but with great respect. The insights in the footnotes alone are worth the price of the book.

If you are reading Democracy in America and attempting to come to terms with Alexis de Tocqueville as he pertains to 21st century America, there is no better book I could suggest to you than Joshua Mitchell's The Fragility of Freedom.

Professor Joshua Mitchell, of Georgetown University, is indeed gifted at breathing life into what many students too often and mistakenly view as "dry" political theory. It was through Mitchell's guidance that I began to see Tocqueville's ideas - the need to fill the void within ourselves; America's ever expanding boundaries; self definition by action and acquistion - not only existing but thriving in America today. Political theory and philosophy came alive! It was exciting and that had never happened to me before.

For a student of Political Science, Philosophy or American History, this book is a must read. It's been over five years since I purchased this book and I still refer to it on a weekly basis.

I have to agree with the other reviewer: this is a great book for understanding how to present the Gospel to others. But it is also a great book for understanding what the doctrine of salvation is. Mr. Moyer uses the Scriptures to present the foundation of the Gospel (especially repentance), and explains the original Greek clearly and effectively. And I can't stress too much: read the Notes! Those notes for each chapter, presented in the back of the book, contain a wealth of information! I highly recommend this book.

This is the most awesome book iv'e ever read on communicating the Good News to the lost,or even to new believers who need a clearer understanding of who they are in christ.
I f you apply yourself to these principals even the most inexperienced person will have sucess,I myself only have an 8 th grade education but was able to lead someone to christ as they were in the hospital at the time, and another one right there at the ... snack bar!. Hallelljuiah! useing this method,and of course using my own words to make this simple for me.
I highly recommend this book if you want to overcome the fear of sharing our faith with others.