Bookpedia : Library WWWisdom : Author : E

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Summary: At the World Economic Forum in 2007, author William Easterly gave the audience some distressing news: The $2.3 trillion in aid sent to Africa since the 1950s had done nothing to increase Africa's GDP. It had been largely a waste of money. Bill Gates, who was sitting next to Easterly that day, admonished the author for focusing on narrowly economic benchmarks: "You don't eat GDP," Gates said petulantly. Easterly's riposte came a few days later in The Wall Street Journal, where he chided the world's richest college dropout for missing "the economics class that listed the components of GDP, such as food." Readers who enjoy such debates will love this acerbic, clearheaded book. Easterly, a former World Bank economist who is fervently committed to global prosperity, demolishes the myths that prop up ineffective efforts to help developing nations. He points his wrecking-ball at photo-op celebrities and utopian economists who feel that big plans and big aid budgets will eventually build big economies (the last 50 years of contrary evidence notwithstanding). Ah, you say, at least they are trying to do something good, while many others simply watch the impoverished world's agony in dismay. Instead, the author argues, only alternative, pinpointed aid tactics can succeed, but only if they use local knowledge and implementation. We recommend this to anyone interested in economic development and emerging markets, and to lovers of intelligent polemic on issues that matter.

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Summary: Atti del simposio tenuto al British Museum (Natural History) a Londra dal 21 al 22 ottobre 1963

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Summary: Well, this book is simply fantastic! We can read it very easily, and althoug it is very deep, it goes to every detail, in the construction of a dissertation or a Ph.D.

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Summary: Nella "Memoria vegetale", Eco racconta l'importanza del libro fin dalla sua apparizione per quanto riguarda l'evoluzione delle civiltà e per la nascita delle grandi religioni monoteistiche. "Il libro è un'assicurazione sulla vita, una piccola anticipazione di immortalità." L'essere bibliofili, e collezionisti di libri, non necessita di grandi capitali, tutti possiamo sfruttare le bancarelle presenti nelle strade delle nostre città e acquistare libri, forse non preziosi come certe prime edizioni di grande pregio, ma sicuramente interessanti e sempre più interessanti col passare degli anni. La bibliofilia, quindi, è soprattutto l'amore per l'oggetto libro. Attenti, però, a non farla divenire malattia. Con l'abituale acutezza, humour e competenza, Eco passa in rassegna alcune opere, racconta aneddoti, traccia un criterio di valore, insomma ci guida nel magico mondo della bibliofilia. Perché Eco non si rivolge prevalentemente a chi è già un bibliofilo, ma a tutti gli altri, ai potenziali amanti del libro, che sono innumerevoli e che forse non sanno ancora di esserlo.

Summary: La storia di un'illusione e di un fallimento: la ricerca di una lingua unica e perfetta, capace di affratellare tutti gli europei. Un sogno perseguito tenacemente, dal VI secolo dopo Cristo a oggi, attraverso i più diversi codici e linguaggi: dalla matematica al computer, dalla magia all'astrologia, dall'esperanto ai moderni ibridi tra le diverse lingue. Ancora una volta Umberto Eco offre ai lettori la propria capacità di spaziare nei più diversi campi del sapere (dalla filosofia alla letteratura, dalla matematica alle scienze) con felice vena narrativa.

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Summary: Text + Maps

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Summary: Among the political ideologies generally considered to be of continuing significance, anarchism alone has never been implemented. Perhaps its rigors are too strong and its advocates are too weak. That it is still considered worth studying is testimony to its intellectual credibility, particularly its single-minded emphasis on individual liberty. Obsession with liberty and skepticism of government are as alive today as they were in the nineteenth century. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to anarchism in the United States, revealing its historical roots and relevance to today's problems. The relationship between anarchy and individualism in the nineteenth century is well known. How this affected the larger system is what the bulk of the anthology is about./n/n "Liberty "was a magazine featuring some of the outstanding anarchist thinkers in America at the turn of the century. This anthology offers a selection of writings spanning the magazine's twenty-seven year life and features some of its major writers: Benjamin Tucker, Victor Yarros, Steven Byington, John Beverley Robinson, and Gertrude Kelly. The chapters are divided into four sections: political theory, economic theories and reforms, social implications, and strategies of individualist anarchism. The authors criticize censorship, state support of patriarchal marriage, and the general invasion of privacy. Though quite radical, the writers were not revolutionaries in a conventional sense; they emphasized passive resistance, rather than violent assault, as proper./n/n The Individualist Anarchists is not merely of historical Interest, but offers a fundamental critique of government and authority--one that remains a relevant part of today's libertarian movement. It will be of Interest to political theorists, economists, sociologists, and scholars of American history; above all, to those who may not yet have appreciated the worth of an analysis made so many years ago./n/n

Summary: Collection of readings with commentaries.

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Summary: The second in the "What Your Professors Won't Tell You" series of essays on political economy, this collection includes thirteen essays; authors include Nobel Prize winners Mario Vargas Llosa and Vernon Smith, Whole Foods Market CEO and founder John Mackey, and scholars from across the globe.This book series is a project of the campus organization Students for Liberty and is intended to "offer the other side of the debate, the side that is rarely acknowledged to exist" in college courses on economics and political science. Students are encouraged to "read the best criticisms of free market capitalism ... Marx, Sombart, Rawls, Sandel" and then "wrestle with the arguments offered in this book, think about them, and make up your own mind." The first book in this series The Economics of Freedom: Selected Works of Frederic Bastiat, includes a foreword by Nobel Prize economist F. A. Hayek.

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Summary: State sovereignty is an inherently social construct. The modern state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the production of a normative conception that links authority, territory, population, and recognition in a unique way, and in a particular place (the state). The unique contribution of this book is to describe and illustrate the practices that have produced various sovereign ideals and resistances to them. The contributors analyze how the components of state sovereignty are socially constructed and combined in specific historical contexts.

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Summary: Albert Einstein's 'Ideas & Opinions' is a collection of insightful, creative and rich essays which reflect upon a variety of issues. Einstein's unparalleled genius for the Sciences is reflected upon every page of this book. He covers many subjects which are of growing importance to this day, such as pacifism, the role of the USA in the world, sociology, scientific and religious coexistence and so on, forthrightly, with convincing clarity.
I have found this book to be an excellent way of understanding the world's entropy through the eyes of one of the greatest thinkers we shall ever know.

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Summary: Beyond Sovereignty reveals a vision of the future, now unfolding, where technological developments, especially in areas of electronics and telecommunication, have shifted the balance away from purely territorial political forms to a greater role for non-territorial organizations and identities. The result of this shift that David Elkins foresees is 'government a la carte,' in which there will be greater diversity of governmental forms and a wider range of choice for groups and individuals.

Elkins begins with a brief history of ways in which technological changes contributed to the creation of nation-states as we have known them since the seventeenth century. He also considers some of the ways in which political organization in the past has been non-territorial (for example, the Roman Catholic Church). Though nationalism has been part of non-territorial organization throughout most of human history, it has been embodied in territorial states only for three hundred years at most, and is now finding expression in political units which cannot be territorial in the way most existing states are, as may be inferred from observing most aboriginal nations and the diaspora of many ethnic groups.

Elkins then examines trends which weaken the exclusive and all-purpose nature of the territorial nation-state, such as the globalization of trade, finance, research and development, and marketing, which has created transnational corporations. He then switches his focus to political institutions and instruments of governance, many of which have already been decoupled from their territorial roots. In exploring a non-territorial political future, however, the line between political and social or economic realms has blurred, and thus an inquiry into the state system necessarily leads to a consideration of democracy, community, identity, and postmodern conceptions of individuality, among many other topics.

Beyond Sovereignty endeavours to make visible the forces and actors now in the background, partly by calling attention to them, partly by putting them in a novel and imaginative framework, and partly be redefining some of the concepts which have become commonplace but which no longer reflect as accurately as they once did what occurs in our daily lives. Part of Elkins aim, therefore, involves a challenge to redefine concepts, to question assumptions, and to try to force discourse to catch up with reality.

Summary: Legal scholars tend to assume that law matters; i.e., that people seek to comport their behavior with applicable rules of law. In what is probably the best sociological study of the role of law in dispute resolution, Robert Ellickson demonstrates that disputes are often resolved without recourse to law and, even more important, in ways different than they would have been resolved in court.
Ellickson begins with a richly detailed case study: Boundary and cattle trespass disputes in Shasta County, California. After reviewing the Shasta County experience, Ellickson relates his findings to a theoretical framework grounded in economics and psychology. The book thus combines the best of both theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of law.
Legal scholarship is increasingly concerned with the way social norms control behavior. This is the book that started that debate. It deserves to be read by anybody who is interested in law, economics, or dispute resolution.

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Summary: This book is a highly significant and most important treatise on the cold, hard demonic presence that constitutes the role of technique in our world, and how it birthed "The Technological Society."
I would refrain from using such an easily miscontrued and loaded term as "demonic presence" to attempt to encapsulate what Ellul delineates in this book with consumate skill and near faultless powers of reason; but I think it pretty much fits the bill.
I would recommend Ellul's "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" to accompany this book as they dovetail superbly. Perhaps The Technological Society first as it paves the way for Propaganda; one can't exist without the other. And Robert Merton's translation of the former seemed to be more fluid and easier to digest then Kellen & Learner's version of Propaganda. It also introduces key concepts towards an understanding of Ellul's complex analysis of how men's attitudes are "formed."
The Technological Society is a book of immense insight, clarity of thought and mesmerising, profound passages on reality as it is shaped by technique. He presents a world inhabited by the "mass man," in a massified societal complex, which of necessity dictates techniques devoid of humanity to manage it effectively. Technique constitutes a kind of perfect intelligence, whose only point of reference is itself and whose focus is on the efficient integration of the soft, warm, and weak creatures that are mankind. Too wilful, chaotic and numerous are we that techniques of management; organization; regulation; health; information; etc, are inevitable to achieve a universal "best practice" for our own benefit. Or really for the interests of that thing known as society. This phenomenon even births techniques to soothe and placate the soul of man lacerated by the cold, efficient scalpel of the technical apparatus.
It is both the poison and the antidote.
These two quotes from the book will suggest something of Ellul's thought here:
Definition of technique-
"In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given state of development) in every field of human activity."
Machine and Technique-
"All-embracing technique is in fact the consciousness of the mechanized world.
Technique integrates everything. It avoids shock and sensational events. Man is not adapted to a world of steel , technique adapts him to it. It changes the arrangement of this blind world so that man can be a part of it without colliding with its rough edges, without the anguish of being delivered up to the inhuman. Technique thus provides a model, it specifies attitudes that are valid once and for all. The anixiety aroused in man is soothed by the consoling hum of a unified society."
The Characterology of Technique-
"Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into means. More than science, which limits itself to to explaining the 'how,' technique desacrilizes because it demonstrates (by evidence and not by reason, through use and not through books) that mystery does not exist. Science brings to the light of day everything that man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of everything and enslaves it. The sacred cannot resist. Science penetrates to the great depths of the sea to photograph the unknown fish of the deep. Technique captures them, hauls them up to see if they are edible - but before they arrive on deck they burst. And why should technique not act thus? It is autonomous and recognises as barriers only the temporary limits of its action. In its eyes, this terrain, which is for the moment unknown but not mysterious, must be attacked. Far from being restrained by any scruples of anything sacred, technique constantly assails it. Everything which is not yet technique becomes so. It is driven onward by itself, by its character of self-augmentation. Technique denies mystery a priori. The mysterious is merely that which has not yet been technicized."
As has been noted by many, and addressed by Ellul in the forward to the book, his views seem essentially fatalistic, pessimistic, with no potential for escape from the virtual prison he presents here.
I view it far more as an essentially honest and unflinching record of his gaze at the world we live in, perhaps even more relevent now than when it was first published in 1954.
And it is also a challenge: what can we do to counter this presentation of a world encircled by an almost otherworldy phenomena that cares not for humankind?
What is technique? Why has it birthed a world of machines, of technology?
I believe that this book has a huge piece of the puzzle to answer those questions. Technique may seem a boon to our current state of civilization, a saviour of humanity even; this book may reveal that it has a secret undiagnosed pathology that results in it being mightily inimical to man.

Summary: As usual the lonely planet West Africa is full of details, which enable a traveller to travel around West Africa, ranging from the best hotels in small towns to bus schedules. From the fertile coast to the sandy deserts it provides a good but brief overview of the nature, history and present sights. The only weak point is the limited amount of information on regional cultural differences or history, which is probably caused by the number of countries covered

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Summary: Gli antagonismi nei rapporti economici internazionali

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Summary: Dai pionieri settecenteschi ai grandi rocciatori di oggi, una narrazione avvincente per la singolarità dei protagonisti e l'eccezionalità delle loro imprese

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Summary: Logica dialettica e teoria della conoscenza

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Summary: In rapporto alle indagini di Lewis H. Morgan

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Summary: Ludwig Feuerbach e il punto di approdo della filosofia classica tedesca

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Summary: Whilst the book is not written for the enjoyment of the reader it is written with purpose. This purpose was to formulate and summarise the ideas and ideals of the so called communist movement at the time. However, I believe if one reads the book they will have to concede that Marxs ideas of communism do not mirror those which were brought about by the revolutions of the Twentieth century. To blame Marx for these failed implications of an idealsitic system is to blame Nietzche for the attrocities of the Nazis. Both write with a positive intent and a posiitve message for mankind and neither deserve criticism for this. However, due to their unswerving belief in themselves and their often harsh / revolutionary ideas they were bound to attract it.
This book is as pertinent today as it was when it was written. The huge changes in the political scene, the growth of capitalistic society, the failed attempts at the implication of so called communism and the oversights the authors freely admitted do not retract from the message running through the text.

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Summary: Band 1 Philosophie
Band 2 Politische Ökonomie
Band 3 Geschichte und Politik 1
Band 4 Geschichte und Politik 2

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Summary: Montaigne, The Essays

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Summary: This is one of the all-time key texts on emotional development throughout the lifecycle, as relevant today as when first published in the early 1950's. At the heart of it is Erikson's encapsulation of the life cycle within the famous 8 ages. Each of these ages identifies two simultaneously opposing pulls, for example between basic trust and basic mistrust [infancy] or generativity and stagnation [mid adulthood]. They are not alternatives to each other in the sense that one will ultimately overcome the other: rather it is how the tension between each pair is resolved that influences the development of each individual personality.
The conceptual underpinning is firmly psychodynamic, but by no means Freudian, belonging, if anything more to the Object Relations school than any other.This approach allows for ambivalence and ambiguity in individuals in ways which more social learning based approaches fail for the most part to accommodate. He provides insights into the irrational as well as the rational aspects of human relationships and functioning and recognises the child inside the adult.
If any part of Childhood and society is showing its age, then perhaps the strictures of adult sexual union in the age of intimacy versus isolation which are predicated upon relations with a loved partner, of the opposite sex reflect a pre 90's attitude to gay relationships.That aside, this is a wise, thought provoking work which is firmly grounded in the author's own clinical practice in psychotherapy. It is cross cultural to the extent that he includes findings from cultures outwith contemporary Western society.This is a classic in its field and of immense value to all who work or teach in the human relations field

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Summary: I meccanismi che sono alla base della produzione di "carta stampata"

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Summary: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda

Summary: The Works of Archimedes
Introduction to Arithmetic by Nicomachus

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Summary: Ifigenia in Aulide
Elettra
Oreste
Ifigenia fra i Tauri

Summary: Ifor Evans presents english literature as an art form interacting with political streams and movements of society, and still with an eye to how and why a writer writing in 1590 can move and tell the modern reader something about himself.
Other writers may do that, too, but this book is really to the point.
Ifor Evans does not criticize without giving due respect to the experiences of other readers.
I was especially happy to see Evans mentioning that some poets of older times, "literary classics" like e.g. Edmund Spenser, are names only, not likely ever to be popular again, whereas other authors, in particular Shakespeare (but Ben Jonson too) have quite another quality when depicting a character.

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Summary: An extensively illustrated collection of essays by noted scholars which examine in depth six aspects of the medieval life and culture of Europe: the monastic world; the cathedrals, courts and castles; death and the afterlife; scholarships and universities; and industry, money and trade.

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Summary: Until recently, dominant theoretical paradigms in the comparative social sciences did not highlight states as organizational structures or as potentially autonomous actors. Indeed, the term 'state' was rarely used. Current work, however, increasingly views the state as an agent which, although influenced by the society that surrounds it, also shapes social and political processes. The contributors to this volume, which includes some of the best recent interdisciplinary scholarship on states in relation to social structures, make use of theoretically engaged comparative and historical investigations to provide improved conceptualizations of states and how they operate. Each of the book's major parts presents a related set of analytical issues about modern states, which are explored in the context of a wide range of times and places, both contemporary and historical, and in developing and advanced-industrial nations. The first part examines state strategies in newly developing countries. The second part analyzes war making and state making in early modern Europe, and discusses states in relation to the post-World War II international economy. The third part pursues new insights into how states influence political cleavages and collective action. In the final chapter, the editors bring together the questions raised by the contributors and suggest tentative conclusions that emerge from an overview of all the articles. As a programmatic work that proposes new directions for the analysis of modern states, the volume will appeal to a wide range of teachers and students of political science, political economy, sociology, history, and anthropology.

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Summary: The art and science of high protein vegetarian cookery

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Summary: 1. La città
2. La città 1900-1960
3. La città 1960-1983

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