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The Economic Integration of Europe
Richard Pomfret
Harvard University Press, 2021

The clearest and most up-to-date account of the achievements—and setbacks—of the European Union since 1945.

Europe has been transformed since the Second World War. No longer a checkerboard of entirely sovereign states, the continent has become the largest single-market area in the world, with most of its members ceding certain economic and political powers to the central government of the European Union. This shift is the product of world-historical change, but the process is not well understood. The changes came in fits and starts. There was no single blueprint for reform; rather, the EU is the result of endless political turmoil and dazzling bureaucratic gymnastics. As Brexit demonstrates, there are occasional steps backward, too. Cutting through the complexity, Richard Pomfret presents a uniquely clear and comprehensive analysis of an incredible achievement in economic cooperation.

The Economic Integration of Europe follows all the major steps in the creation of the single market since the postwar establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community. Pomfret identifies four stages of development: the creation of a customs union, the deepening of economic union with the Single Market, the years of monetary union and eastward expansion, and, finally, problems of consolidation. Throughout, he details the economic benefits, costs, and controversies associated with each step in the evolution of the EU. What lies ahead? Pomfret concludes that, for all its problems, Europe has grown more prosperous from integration and is likely to increase its power on the global stage.

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Edited Clean Version
Technology and the Culture of Control
Raiford Guins
University of Minnesota Press, 2009

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Educating for Wisdom in the 21st Century
Darin H. Davis
St. Augustine's Press, 2019
Contemporary higher education is in the midst of undeniable challenge and transformation. The cost of a college degree continues to increase by leaps and bounds as many students and their parents assume enormous student loan debt. Sweeping technological change, especially online instruction, is now forcing colleges and universities to re-envision how course content can be offered. Moreover, it is not clear what people expect colleges and universities to do in the first place. Should they be primarily devoted to preparing their graduates to enter the workforce? Should they at the same time advance innovative research across the disciplines in ways that expand the frontiers of knowledge? Should they seek to form their students intellectually, morally, and even spiritually, while preparing them for responsible citizenship and civic engagement? Should they also be the places where enthusiastic sports fans gather in grand arenas and stadiums to watch athletes pursue victory? A generation ago it was generally believed that the essential purpose of a university education was educating for wisdom — shaping the moral and intellectual character of students in ways that led them to live and do well over their entire lives. Although the mission statements and curricula of many small, private liberal arts colleges and even large state-supported universities still echo this commitment, it is by no means the defining mark of present day higher education. The contributors to this volume — which include some of the most thoughtful critics of the modern academy —contend that seeking, teaching, and cultivating wisdom remains the fundamental aim of university education. Neither lamenting the current state of affairs nor waxing nostalgic for bygone days, the authors in this volume reflect upon the nature of wisdom, its sources, and how it again might animate teaching and learning in 21st century. With essays from Anthony Kronman, Andrew Delbanco, Darin Davis, Celia Deane-Drummond, John Haldane, and Walter Brueggemann, this volume brings together a distinguished and diverse group of voices to consider this timely and important topic.
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The Educational Leadership Challenge
Redefining Leadership for the 21st Century
Edited by Joseph Murphy
University of Chicago Press, 2002
Part I of the National Society for the Study of Education's 101st yearbook explores the changing context of educational leadership in the twenty-first century through the lenses of school improvement, social justice, and democratic community. Authors discuss topics such as leadership roles for teachers, principals, and superintendents; rethinking professional development for school leaders; school improvement processes for building instructional capacity; and the evolving role of leadership in education over time.
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Emergency Deep
Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander
Alfred Scott McLaren
University of Alabama Press, 2021
Conveys in dramatic detail the high-risk, covert operations of a nuclear attack submarine during the zenith of the Cold War

Captain Alfred Scott McLaren served as commander of the USS Queenfish (SSN 651) from September 1969 to May 1973, the very height of the Cold War. As commander, McLaren led at least six major clandestine operations, including the first-ever exploration of the entire Siberian Continental Shelf: a perilous voyage detailed in his previous book Unknown Waters.

Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander conveys the entire spectrum of Captain McLaren’s experiences commanding the USS Queenfish, mainly in the waters of the Russian Far East and also off Vietnam. McLaren offers a riveting and deeply human story that illuminates the intensity and pressures of commanding a nuclear attack submarine in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

Relying on his own notes and records, as well as discussions with former officers and shipmates, McLaren focuses on operational matters both great and small. He recounts his unique perspectives on attack-submarine tactics and exploratory techniques in high-risk or uncharted areas, matters of leadership and team-building and the morale of his crews, and the innumerable and often unforeseen ways his philosophy of command played out on a day-to-day basis, with consequences that ran the gamut from the mundane to the dire and life-threatening.

Readers are also treated to significant new information and insight on submarine strategy, maneuvers, and culture. Such details illuminate and bring to life, with both great humor and gravitas, the intensity and pressures on those engaged in covert missions on nuclear attack submarines.
 
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End of Its Rope
How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice
Brandon L. Garrett
Harvard University Press, 2017

It isn’t enough to celebrate the death penalty’s demise. We must learn from it.

When Henry McCollum was condemned to death in 1984 in rural North Carolina, death sentences were commonplace. In 2014, DNA tests set McCollum free. By then, death sentences were as rare as lethal lightning strikes. To most observers this national trend came as a surprise. What changed? Brandon Garrett hand-collected and analyzed national data, looking for causes and implications of this turnaround. End of Its Rope explains what he found, and why the story of who killed the death penalty, and how, can be the catalyst for criminal justice reform.

No single factor put the death penalty on the road to extinction, Garrett concludes. Death row exonerations fostered rising awareness of errors in death penalty cases, at the same time that a decline in murder rates eroded law-and-order arguments. Defense lawyers radically improved how they litigate death cases when given adequate resources. More troubling, many states replaced the death penalty with what amounts to a virtual death sentence—life without possibility of parole. Today, the death penalty hangs on in a few scattered counties where prosecutors cling to entrenched habits and patterns of racial bias.

The failed death penalty experiment teaches us how inept lawyering, overzealous prosecution, race discrimination, wrongful convictions, and excessive punishments undermine the pursuit of justice. Garrett makes a strong closing case for what a future criminal justice system might look like if these injustices were remedied.

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Ends of Empire
Asian American Critique and the Cold War
Jodi Kim
University of Minnesota Press, 2010
Ends of Empire examines Asian American cultural production and its challenge to the dominant understanding of American imperialism, Cold War dynamics, and race and gender formation.
 
Jodi Kim demonstrates the degree to which Asian American literature and film critique the record of U.S. imperial violence in Asia and provides a glimpse into the imperial and gendered racial logic of the Cold War. She unfolds this particularly entangled and enduring episode in the history of U.S. global hegemony—one that, contrary to leading interpretations of the Cold War as a simple bipolar rivalry, was significantly triangulated in Asia.
 
The Asian American works analyzed here constitute a crucial body of what Kim reveals as transnational “Cold War compositions,” which are at once a geopolitical structuring, an ideological writing, and a cultural imagining. Arguing that these works reframe the U.S. Cold War as a project of gendered racial formation and imperialism as well as a production of knowledge, Ends of Empire offers an interdisciplinary investigation into the transnational dimensions of Asian America and its critical relationship to Cold War history.
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Energy
The Worlds Race for Resources in the 21st Century
Hermann-Josef Wagner
Haus Publishing, 2009
The future of our energy supplies is an explosive topic. Unprecedented global population growth means that energy consumption will certainly continue to increase dramatically, and the worldwide political structures will be reordered. Finding alternative energy sources to avoid a climate catastrophe is a major priority for the 21st century.
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Engaged Humanities
Rethinking Art, Culture, and Public Life
Aagje Swinnen
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
What is the role of the humanities at the start of 21st century? In the last few decades, the various disciplines of the humanities (history, linguistics, literary studies, art history, media studies) have encountered a broad range of challenges, related to the future of print culture, to shifts in funding strategies, and to the changing contours of culture and society. Several publications have addressed these challenges as well as potential responses on a theoretical level. This coedited volume opts for a different strategy and presents accessible case studies that demonstrate what humanities scholars contribute to concrete and pressing social debates about topics including adoption, dementia, hacking, and conservation. These “engaged” forms of humanities research reveal the continued importance of thinking and rethinking the nature of art, culture, and public life.
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EU Development Policy in a Changing World
Challenges for the 21st Century
Edited by Andrew Mold
Amsterdam University Press, 2007
On many fronts, European Union development policy is at a critical juncture: in the face of new obstacles, the EU has been forced to rethink trade, security, and its relationship with neighbors in North Africa and the Middle East. Contentious questions have centered on the effects of EU expansion, agricultural protectionism, and development-friendly trade policy in the EU and its member nations. To answer these questions and others, this expertly edited volume draws on analysis from well-known specialists in fields such as public policy and economic development, providing a critical overview of EU development policy and the challenges it must confront in an increasingly volatile and changing world.
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Eureka!
European Research Universities and the Challenges of the 21st Century
Edited by Bart Funnekotter
Amsterdam University Press, 2005
European universities currently face a dire financial crunch: governments throughout Europe are slashing their budgets for higher education, and fund-raising organizations are far less developed in European universities than in their American counterparts. €ureka! examines how European universities are rapidly adjusting to the situation, drawing on interviews with professionals and students from institutions in the League of European Research Universities. The contributors discuss ways in which European universities can raise funds and whether they will continue scholarly research or transform into research laboratories. €ureka! is a fascinating look at the state of higher education in a global context.
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The Expert Library
Staffing, Sustaining, and Advancing the Academic Library in the 21st Century
Scott Walter
Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2011

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Exploring the Caucasus in the 21st Century
Essays on Culture, History and Politics in a Dynamic Context
Edited by Françoise Companjen, László Marácz, and Lia Versteegh
Amsterdam University Press, 2011
Although the name Caucasus has been around for some 2000 years, and may suggest unity and coherence, the region these days is best known for the ethnic and religious divides resulting in recurrent bloody conflicts between the various minorities and the post-Soviet independent states. Geographically, the Caucasus has traditionally been a buffer between Russia, Turkey and Iran. Part Russian Federation, part Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the area has a tradition of fast-shifting partnerships, of rich and varied cultural heritage, and fierce ethnic tensions going back centuries. This fascinating volume creates an illuminating perspective on the politics, history and culture of the Caucasus: it includes an account of how several 19th century Hungarian linguists fascinated by the region’s famously difficult languages conducted field research still used by politicians to prove or disprove ethnic links ; an analysis of the recurring forcible movements of the people; a study of the region’s Russian Imperial past; an exploration of the Muslim North/Christian South division in the context of the recent conflicts and their international ramifications; the elite-driven nature of the region’s politics; finally, the role of art as a medium of freedom in the war-torn zones of the region. Necessary reading for everyone with an interest in the history of one of the world’s tinderboxes.
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