Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Leonard, Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century (2005)

Mark Leonard.
Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century.
New York: PublicAffairs / Perseus Books Group, 2005; paperback reprint 2006.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; Book webpage at author's website.

This book provides an excellent explanation of the motivations and goals of the European Union project. On the other hand, it was published before the economic weaknesses of the European Monetary Union became apparent after the various financial crises that began in 2008.

Some Mark Leonard links:
Mark Leonard .net, author's website.
Mark Leonard, Wikipedia.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Laqueur, After the Fall (2012)

Walter Laqueur.
After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent.
New York: Thomas Dunne Books (an imprint of St. Martin's Press, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group), 2012.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; Author's website; Walter Laqueur, Wikipedia.

I do not recommend this book. The book contains absolutely no economic analysis, something Laqueur ignores completely. Instead, Laqueur attributes European nations' problems to the European Union and his anxieties about the presence of too many Muslim and brown-skined people. Only readers interested in superficial Euroskeptic and Islamophobic analysis should consider this book; it does contain an extensive bibliography of the Islamophobic literature of several countries and in several languages.

Monday, March 05, 2012

Varoufakis, The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy (2011)

Yanis Varoufakis.
The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy.
London: Zed Books, 2011.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; Book webpage at author's website; Author's website; Wikipedia on the Author.

Varoufakis says The Global Minotaur popularizes an analysis presented in greater detail in Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World:

Yanis Varoufakis, Joseph Halevi and Nicholas J. Theocarakis.
Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World.
London: Routledge, 2011.
[Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; Book webpage at author's website.]

Euro Crisis, Yanis Varoufakis.