Contemporary Review back issues from May 2004:
Homeland security: suggestions from the best practices in America.
May 01, 2004; ... MERIDEN, Connecticut, is a city of just under 60,000 located in the middle of the state between New Haven and Hartford. I serve as the city manager and, like other public officials across the United States, I have in the last three years paid much greater attention to emergency response ...
Haiti's tradition of curious tyrants.
May 01, 2004; ... THERE had been a French presence on the western third of the island of Hispaniola since the early seventeenth century. In 1697 Spain ceded this western part of the island to France. With an economy based on sugar and forestry, Saint Dominique (later to be known as Haiti), became one of the ...
Signs, impressions, shadows: reflecting on French culture.(The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004; ... Chez Bertrand was a restaurant like no other. Hidden in a narrow alley of the old quarter of Nice, one discovered it by chance or word-of-mouth. Bertrand hired no publicists. In fact he hired no-one. Somehow he managed to take orders, answer the telephone, cook and serve his delicious ...
The problem of Europe's ageing population.
May 01, 2004; ... There's no denying it--the world is getting older. 36 per cent of the EU's 380 million people are currently over the age of fifty and this figure is set to rise to 50 per cent in the next twenty-five years. The current median age in the EU is 37.7, but by 2028 the average age of an EU ...
Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, 1909-2004.(Obituary)
May 01, 2004; ... QUEEN Juliana of the Netherlands, who reigned from 1948 to 1980, died at the age of ninety-four early on the morning of Saturday, 20 March 2004. Although she abdicated in 1980, when she assumed the title, Princess, and although she had not appeared in public since 2001, she was still well ...
Russia's nuclear cities end plutonium production.
May 01, 2004; ... RUSSIA is lifting its ban on foreigners at two secret military settlements in Siberia as a first step to retiring the most dangerous surviving, Soviet-designed nuclear power plants on earth. This is a ground-breaking accord reached by Russian and American negotiators in Moscow ....
Untouchables in the world of it.
May 01, 2004; ... 'IN Pune they just assume that anyone working in computers is a Brahmin', says a young man from a small town near our home in Western India. He, like many Dalits (ex-Untouchables), is trying to break into the new world of Information Technology, but fears to reveal his origins to his ...
Liverpool: Capital of Culture.
May 01, 2004; ... IT came to many people as a very great surprise, not only that Liverpool could be considered as a serious contender for the title of 'European Capital of Culture 2008', but that the city that straddles the Mersey should actually have won it. To me, as a Liverpudlian born and bred, it came ...
El Greco at the National Gallery.
May 01, 2004; ... IN its latest exhibition the National Gallery has mounted, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the most comprehensive display of El Greco's paintings since Le Greco: de la Crete a Tolede in Bordeaux in 1953. A particular success has been in bringing together ...
The Six Days War revisited.(Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004; ... Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East. Jeremy Bowen. Simon & Schuster. [pounds sterling]16.99. ix + 420 pages. ISBN 0-7432-3095-7. The Israeli battle orders for the Six-Day War read as if they have come from the Book of Joshua, not from a grimy concrete block in Tel ...
Post-war Europe as seen through the E.U.(The Struggle for Europe: The History of the Continent since 1945)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004; ... The Struggle for Europe: The History of the Continent since 1945. William I. Hitchcock. Profile Books. [pounds sterling]25.00. 513 pages. ISBN 1-8619-7233-4. There has been no shortage of excellent histories of Europe from 1900 to 1945. They have all found it easy to choose ...
An authoritative life of Stalin.(Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004; ... Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Simon Sebag Montefiore. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. [pounds sterling]25.00. 690 pages. ISBN 1-842-12726-8. Sebag Montefiore has produced the authoritative account of Stalin the man, and of his circle, his relationships and his working methods. A ...
Sir Roy Porter and the sense of self.(Flesh in the Age of Reason)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004; ... Flesh in the Age of Reason. Roy Porter. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]25.00. xviii + 574 pages. ISBN 0-713-99149-6. Sir Roy Porter, sometime professor of the social history of medicine, is already known and highly regarded for works such as English Society in the Eighteenth ...
Sir Peter Hall and Shakespeare.(Shakespeare's Advice to the Players)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004; ... Shakespeare's Advice to the Players. Peter Hall. Oberon Books. [pounds sterling]19.99. 218 pages. ISBN 1-84002-372-4. 'He is an iambic fundamentalist!' exclaimed a young actor of Sir Peter Hall, damning him for extremist views. The author quotes him with relish at the end of ...
Lord Longford revised.(The Outcast's Outcast: Lord Longford)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004; ... The Outcast's Outcast: Lord Longford. Peter Stanford. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. 512 pages. ISBN 0-7509-3248-1. Peter Stanford's 1994 authorized life was considered by at least one associate to be 'so well-balanced that it may be little to Longford's taste'. This ...
New and noteworthy.
May 01, 2004 ... THAMES & HUDSON have added two new volumes to their highly successful World of Art series. The first is Timothy Hyman's Sienese Painting: The Art of a City-Republic (1278-1477) ([pounds sterling]8.95). To the author, 'no other art has engaged so imaginatively with the experience of moving ...
The World of paperbacks.
May 01, 2004 ... OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS continues its publication of Jane Austen's novels in its World Classics' series with new editions of three novels originally edited by the late Prof. James Kinsley. Sense and Sensibility now has an introduction by Prof. Margaret Anne Doody and notes by Prof. Claire ...
The National Army Museum Book of Wellington's Armies: Britain's Campaigns in the Peninsula and at Waterloo 1808-1815.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... The National Army Museum Book of Wellington's Armies: Britain's Campaigns in the Peninsula and at Waterloo 1808-1815. Andrew Uffindell. Sidgwick & Jackson. [pounds sterling]30.00. xxi + 362 pages. ISBN 0-283-07348-9. The author's aim is 'to add to existing knowledge by describing his ...
Emperor and Priest: the Imperial Office in Byzantium.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Emperor and Priest: the Imperial Office in Byzantium. Gilbert Dagron. Jean Birrell, translator. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]50.00 (US$75.00). xiii + 337 pages. ISBN 0-521-80123-0. This impressive study, part of the Past and Present Publications, was first published in ...
Rivers of Gold: The Rise of The Spanish Empire.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Rivers of Gold: The Rise of The Spanish Empire. Hugh Thomas. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]25.00. xix + 604 pages. ISBN 0-297-64563-3. Spain's American empire was for 300 years one of the dominating aspects of world history. In this survey the author, who combines wide-ranging ...
The Motoring Age: The Automobile and Britain 1896-1939.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... The Motoring Age: The Automobile and Britain 1896-1939. Peter Thorold. Profile Books. [pounds sterling]20.00. x + 294 pages. ISBN 1-86197-378-0. The author begins his survey on 14 November 1896 the day when the Locomotives on Highways Act removed all legal restraints on the motor car, 'an ...
Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney and Debra Barrett-Graves, editors. Ashgate. [pounds sterling]45.00. xii + 282 pages. ISBN 0-7546-0797-6. This collection of twelve essays is designed to give readers 'a collective understanding of the wealth of ...
Europe Reborn: A History, 1914-2000.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Europe Reborn: A History, 1914-2000. Harold James. Longman. [pounds sterling]15.99 p.b. xx + 492 pages. ISBN 0-582-21533-1. The final volume in the Longman History of Modern Europe traces the largely regrettable influence of ideologies, of the nation-state in the tragic break-up of the ...
Rome and Her Empire.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Rome and Her Empire. David Shotter. Longman. [pounds sterling]19.99. x + 453 pages. ISBN 0-582-32816-0. As interest in the Classics declines, so interest in the Roman Empire increases, in part due to popular fascination with archaeology. Likewise, more people realise that empires do not ...
Visions of the World: A History of Maps.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Visions of the World: A History of Maps. Jeremy Black. Mitchell Beazley. [pounds sterling]25.00 176 pages. ISBN 1-84000-834-2. In his introduction Prof. Black shows how complex is the world of maps by referring to a New Zealand tea towel which showed the world with New Zealand at the ...
God's General: Cromwell the Soldier.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... God's General: Cromwell the Soldier. Simon Robbins. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. xii + 244 pages. ISBN 0-7509-2879-4. With the weakening of our conscious sense of being a Protestant nation, the catastrophic decline in Nonconformity and our changing attitude to English ...
Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa. Nicholas Shrady. Simon & Schuster. [pounds sterling]12.99. xxiii + 165 pages. ISBN 0-7432-3169-4. As the author writes, the Tower of Pisa 'is one of those singular monuments which beauty and a sense of bewilderment have conspired to transform ...
The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. Paul Strathern. Jonathan Cape. [pounds sterling]20.00. xiii + 431 pages. ISBN 0-224-07106-8. The Medici family dominated Florence and its mediaeval Republic and eventually spread its influence through much of Europe. Though not originally a noble ...
Scotland's Empire 1600-1815.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Scotland's Empire 1600-1815. T. M. Devine. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]25.00. xxviii + 474 pages. ISBN 0-713-99498-3. As Prof. Devine writes, one of the ironies of this country's eighteenth-century imperial expansion was that as it expanded 'it steadily became less English and more ...
John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman. Robert Skidelsky. Macmillan. [pounds sterling]30.00. xxxi + 1021 pages. ISBN 0-333-90312-9. The author's massive, three-volume biography of Keynes was published between 1983 and 2000 and this abridgement is made up of 60 per ...
The Coming of the Third Reich.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... The Coming of the Third Reich. Richard J. Evans. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]25.00. xxxiv + 622 pages. ISBN 0-713-99648-X. This title is the first of a three-volume history of the Third Reich and takes the story up to Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The book is aimed at readers who know ...
King James VI and I: Selected Writings.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... King James VI and I: Selected Writings. Neil Rhodes, Jennifer Richards and Joseph Marshall, editors. Ashgate. [pounds sterling]49.50. xiv + 413 pages. ISBN 0-7546-0482-9. The 'revision' of James I among historians and biographers has been a marked feature during the last decade or so. Once ...
Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius. William R. Shea and Mariano Artigas. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]16.99. xi + 226 pages. ISBN 0-19-516598-5. Galileo's difficulties with the Vatican are part of our history as was his 1633 condemnation for teaching ...
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. Caroline Alexander. HarperCollins. [pounds sterling]20.00. xviii + 491 pages. ISBN 0-00-257221-4. The story of the mutiny on HMS Bounty in 1789 has reached millions through the medium of the Hollywood film world. In this detailed, ...
The Courtesan's Revenge: Harriette Wilson, the Woman who Blackmailed the King.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... The Courtesan's Revenge: Harriette Wilson, the Woman who Blackmailed the King. Frances Wilson. Faber and Faber. [pounds sterling]20.00. xv + 359 pages. ISBN 0-571-20504-6. Harriette Wilson, born Harriette Dubochet (1786-1845) remains one of the most notorious women in late eighteenth and ...
Democracy Defended.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Democracy Defended. Gerry Mackie. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]60.00 xvi + 483 pages. ISBN 0-521-82708-6. Prof. Mackie, who teaches in Notre Dame University in the U.S., argues that as democracy makes progress round the world, it has come under attack among U.S. academics ....
The Stasi: Myth and Reality.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... The Stasi: Myth and Reality. Mike Dennis. Longman. [pounds sterling]19.99. xviii + 269 pages. ISBN 0-582-41422-9. The Stasi, the East German secret service, for which about one in every fifty East German adults worked as an officer or an informer in the 1980s, gave the Communist ...
Bacchus: A Biography.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Bacchus: A Biography. Andrew Dalby. The British Museum Press. [pounds sterling]14.99. 166 pages. ISBN 0-7141-2242-4. Bacchus (or Dionysus in Greek mythology) was the god of wine, said to have been born of a union between Zeus and the human, Semele and raised on Mount Nysa in the company of ...
Civil Society in British History.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Civil Society in British History: Ideas, Identities, Institutions. Jose Harris, editor. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]50.00. xi + 319 pages. ISBN 0-19-926020-6. This collection might be called a study in the resurrection of a term, in this case, 'civil society'. The chapters ...
Capital of the Mind.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh Changed the World. James Buchan. John Murray. [pounds sterling]20.00. xi + 436 pages. ISBN 0-7195-5446-2. The author's position is made crystal clear in the Prologue: from the 1740s to the French Revolution 'Edinburgh ruled the Western intellect [and] ... ...
Hitler's Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence.(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Hitler's Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence: Allied Interrogations of Walter Schellenberg. Reinhard R. Doerries. Frank Cass. [pounds sterling]35.00. xvii + 382 pages. ISBN 0-7146-5400-0. SS Brigadefuhrer Walter Schellenberg was the most important official in Nazi Germany's foreign ...
Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car. L. J. K. Setright. Granta Books. [pounds sterling]25.00. ix + 405 pages. ISBN 1-86207-628-6. This title was first published by Palawan Press in 2002. As the author writes in his Preamble, 'the social history of the motor car is infinite in its ...
The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860-1930.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860-1930. Laura E. Nym Mayhall. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]30.00. xiii + 218 pages. ISBN 0-19-515993-4. The aim of this study is to look at 'suffrage militancy as a political idea and a range of ...
Television Policies of the Labour Party 1951-2001.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2004 ... Television Policies of the Labour Party 1951 - 2001. Des Freedman. Frank Cass. [pounds sterling]18.50 p. b. xv + 224 pages. ISBN 0-7146-8387-6. The background to this history is twofold: for the period covered, Labour were only in power for fifteen years and when in power it took none of ...