'Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had' Financial Times From the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, a stunning history of our present, examining the first two decades of this most fragile and fraught new millennium. How did the great European dream turn sour? And where do we go from here? In this illuminating book, Geert Mak - one of Europe's best-loved commentators - charts the seismic events that have shaped people's lives over the past twenty years. He moves through the rocky expansion of the EU, the aftermath of 9/11 and terrorist attacks across Europe, the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, and on to the rise of right-wing populism and Brexit. Like no other, Mak blends history, politics and culture with the stories and experiences of the many Europeans he meets on his travels. He brings this continent to life, and asks: what role does Europe now play, and how might we face our fresh challenges together? 'A powerful, humane and serious mind' Guardian 'Mak is a truly cosmopolitan chronicler' Independent

This major contribution to the idea of Europe sweeps the continent from its Celtic and German origins through the influence of the Greeks and Romans to the fruitful--and sometimes bloody--contacts with other cultures. Peter Rietbergen portrays Europe's history as a series of four grand phases of continuity and change set in the context of political, social and economic developments. These phases are new forms of: surviving; believing; looking at man and the world; and consumption and communication. Rietbergen's descriptions are supported by a selection of illuminating excerpts such as: Chaucer's description of London in 1378; Michelangelo on Italian art; and popular music lyrics of Iron Maiden and Sting.

This book is the result of a symposium of researchers and specialists in children's and youth literature from European Institues and research centres organised by The Charles Perrault International Institute. These partners met to reflect on picture books published in the last three years of the twentieth century in fourteen different countries.

This outstanding compendium of articles on Europe's militarysituation as we enter the new millennium has been compiled under the aegis of the GeorgeMarshall European Center for Security Studies. The leading analysts of military studies in everymajor nation of Europe are included, along with three overview pieces that set the tone andcontent for this nicely integrated volume. The opening pieces, by Martin Shaw on the evolutionof a "common risk" society, Christopher Dandeker on the military indemocratic societies, and Wilfried von Bredow on the re-nationaliation of military strategy setthe tone for the work as a whole. Althoughthe Cold War is now a decade removed from the new Europe, the challenges of transition to newdefense systems and institutional structures still confront those who plan the future for themilitary establishments of Europe. The individual country studies contained in this volume, aswell as the final analysis of the trends and probable future developments in Europe, should berequired reading throughout the national security structure, for politicians and decision makersseeking to understand the dilemmas facing European militaries and the societies they defend. The country chapters cover a wide range ofnations. Jean Callaghan examines the Bulgarian armed forces after its 1997 elections. MarieVlachova and Stefan Sarvas review civil-military relations in the Cech nation. Jano Sabo studiesthe role of the defense sector in Hungary. Adriana Stanescu sees Romania as a case of delayedmoderniation. Paul Klein and Jurgen Kuhlmann review the German armed forces in the context of apeace dividend. Bernard Boene and Didier Danet consider France in the light of the post draftsituation. Marina Nuciari and Giuseppe Caforio consider the Italian military in a democraticcontext. Finally, Jan van der Meulen and his colleagues, look upon the Netherlands military as acase study in post-moderniation. The final contribution is a summary report by the editors onthe lessons that have been learned in assessing the contemporary civil-military complex. In all,this is a state of the art volume on the state of the armed forces in Europe.

NATO.s enlargement represents a watershed event in European security. It closes the so-called .post-Cold War. epoch that began with the fall of the Soviet empire and opens the way to a new stage in European and American history. The tendencies that are now pushing Europe towards greater integration have received a new injection of energy. NATO has not only proven itself the only truly effective security provider among European institutions, it has also shown itself to be the moving force behind Europe.s other security agencies, particularly the European Union (EU). After NATO decided to take in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland at its Madrid Conference in July 1997, the European Union, meeting at Amsterdam, decided to begin accession talks with those three states, Estonia, Cyprus, and Slovenia. Thus concurrent and coinciding waves of integration throughout the continent are going to transform Europe.s security map and agenda beyond recognition. But this does not mean either that past history is now utterly irrelevant or that Europe has attained a kind of security Nirvana. The Bosnian crisis, and to a lesser degree the Albanian crisis of 1997, as well as the recent problems in Kosovo show that many challenges confront Europe, and that Europe is reluctant to confront them.1 Insofar as out-of-area issues in the Middle East are concerned, the Iraqi crises of 1997-98 demonstrated that Europe remains divided, unable to forge a common security policy for those issues in that region or to assume a leadership position in the resolution of international crises.

This book calls for a philosophical consideration of the development, challenges and successes of the European Union. The author argues that conceptual innovation is essential if progress on the European project is to be made; new meanings, rather than financial or institutional engineering solutions, will help solve the crisis. By applying a philosophical approach to diagnosing the EU crisis, the book reconsiders the basic concepts of democracy in the context of the complex reality of the EU and the globalised world where profound social and political changes are taking place. It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in EU politics, political theory and philosophy.

On the centenary of Fontane’s death and at the turn of the century these essays take a new look at this supreme chronicler of Prussia and of the Germany that emerges after 1871. Written by scholars from different countries and disciplines, they focus on novels and theatre reviews from the perspectives of philosophy, sociology, comparative literature and translation theory, and in the contexts of topography and painting. Connections and crosscurrents emerge to reveal new aspects of Fontane’s poetics and to produce contrasting but complementary readings of his novels. He appears in the company of predecessors and contemporaries, such as Scott, Thackeray, Saar, Ibsen, Turgenev, but also in that of writers he has rarely, if ever, been seen beside, such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Stendhal, Trollope, Henry James and Edith Wharton, Beckett and Faulkner. The historical novel and the social position of women are each a recurring focus of interest. Fontane emerges as receptive to other voices, as a precursor of developments in modern narrative, and confirmed as the novelist who brings the nineteenth-century German novel closest to the broad traditions of European realism.

Uniquely, critically interrogates the concept of 'civilization' by asking whether it is still valid in the globalized world economy of the twenty-first century. Includes case studies on the Arab world, Islam, China and Japan.

The Nobel Prize–winning poet and man of letters Octavio Paz was also a brilliant reader of other writers, and this book selects his best critical essays from over three decades. In the sixteen pieces collected here, Paz discusses a wide range of poets and writers, both American and international, from Robert Frost and Walt Whitman to William Carlos Williams; from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Luis Buñuel to Alexander Solzhenitsyn; and from Charles Baudelaire to Jean-Paul Sartre, André Breton, and Henri Michaux. Paz writes, “I believe that a writer’s attitude to language should be that of a lover: fidelity and, at the same time, a lack of respect for the beloved object. Veneration and transgression.” When this original thinker meets these writers, each essay is an adventure of the mind.