Anthony Andrews Books

I Gm for two different gaming groups and have run this with both now (and played it once as a player - my introduction into WFRP). Playing the adventure, I thought it was exciting and intriguing - things are not handed to players, and they really have to work to put the pieces together. However, my GM modified the adventure a fair amount (I realized once I started to run it myself), and I have modified it both times I ran it as well. The first half to two-thirds is GREAT stuff. Even your "tank" players will feel the pressure of long treks, strenuous paces, multiple tough combats in the span of a short period (not allowing them time to fully recover), and thus they will have to start planning their combat strategies better just to survive. It really is a nice challenge. Once you get past a certain point and start heading back to the city, the story line meanders around for a bit and loses a lot of its momentum. I have heavily altered these chapters prior to the climax to make them go quicker and be less involved, instead focusing on the time-crunch to make the adventurers concerned. The climax, if planned well by the GM and set up with appropriate encounters, will be one the adventurers never forget! Even if the story line stayed on path, I would still give this 4 stars just because it can't touch Shadows over Bogenhafen, but I feel it is more exciting and challenging than Death on the Reik, which I would give 3 stars.

As a longtime player of Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay (WFRP) I was very happy to see Hogshead pick up the rights to WFRP after Games Workshop abandoned this great product. This is the first new adventure material produced by Hogshead and while welcome, is not neary as good as some of the older adventures in the Enemy Within campaign (Death on the Reik, Power Behind the Throne).

In this adventure, the players are racing against time to forstall an ancient prophecy about the return of a Daemonic entity in and around the city of Marienburg. The problem is in trying to maintain a coherent storyline when each chapter is being plotted by different authors. In the end, the adventure comes across as a mish-mash of interesting ideas but the coherency is lost. It is still a good book, however, just not great. There is a good balance of investigation and action and would suit pretty much any gaming group.

Very useful for business managers. The steps could be confusing at first for non-quants. But the datasets from www.duxbury.com makes following a breeze! I would recommend this book to all those interested in making better judgement using excel tools.

This book is a little difficult to follow. The editoral review said that you only need some familiarity with excel but I found this to not be the case. You will need to be at least at the intermediate level with excel to follow some of the examples and many of the problems in the book. Some examples are unclear and no answers are given to the questions. However if you are able to follow the book, the practical applications will be benefical to managers.- Even though there are better applications than excel that managers can use.

Increasing worldwide economic integration, with its less regulated flows of capital,
goods and services, has resulted in more intense commercial competition between nations,
with often profound effects on domestic and international politics. "Globalisation,"
shorthand for these and related trends, proceeds in a geographically uneven manner.
Reduced restriction on trade among neighboring countries in a given region is often the first
step in what is a politically and economically difficult process. Regionalism and World
Order offers essays on the growth and dynamics of political and economic regionalism in
Europe, the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean, Japan and East Asia. It is
difficult to imagine a more momentous national and international issue.

Payne and Gamble define regionalism as an undertaking to "reorganise a particular
regional space along defined economic and political lines" (p. 2), which they interpret as
consistent with the process of globalisation (p. 250-51). In an unnecessary attempt to
highlight this sensible view, they contrast it with that of nameless analysts who, the editors
assert, argue that globalisation is "the diametric opposite" of regionalism (p. 2). "Many
observers," we are told, go so far as to view regionalism as "inimical to the existence of
world order": according to this interpretation, trade blocs lead to trade wars and then real
wars (pp. 1; 21). The hegemonic stability thesis argues that hegemonic powers act to keep
a degree of world order. Payne and Gamble assert, again without citation, that some
interpret this thesis as predicting that, in a post-hegemonic world, conflict will result
between regional blocs of states (p. 1-2). Unsurprisingly, the editors are able to report in
the concluding chapter that their investigation shows regionalism has not sought to close
off nations from trade (p. 251), and therefore they do not predict "a war of all against all"
(p. 264). It is a frail, anonymous straw man that Payne and Gamble needlessly set up and
knock down.

The theoretical approach of the volume as a whole is the "new international
political economy" (IPE), whose contribution is, the editors claim, a fresh alternative to
analyses that only serve to support the political and economic status quo. The last 25
years of neo-realist and neo-liberal international relations scholarship, according to Payne
and Gamble, has accepted the world as it was, and indeed has focused on "making the
existing relationships and institutions work more smoothly" (p. 7). This is of course as
inaccurate as it is unfair, and only serves to allow the authors to pose as battlers against
defenders of capitalism. To this end, they utilize the vocabulary and political orientation
of dependency and world systems analysis but carefully only imply the attendant
arguments. Analysis of "cores" and "peripheries" is a major theme of the book (p. 17), in
which one finds depictions of international trade, investment and aid as a "corrupt
pipeline" and as "external penetration" leading to "economic control" (pp. 183; 101; 177).
In this volume, multinational corporations have "spreading tentacles," the West has
"gravely distorted" eastern European development, and states--not markets--generate
wealth (pp. 107; 73; 71). When an author admits that Reagan and Thatcher were highly
popular in eastern Europe, he claims that citizens there "lacked objective information" (p.
63). Upon noting that leaders in the U.S. and Latin America term the relationship between
their countries as one of partnership and cooperation, Payne claims "the notion of
partnership is evidence of the existence of hegemony" (pp. 124-5). This weak echo of
dependency and world systems analysis retains none of the absorbing and striking claims
of its forebears, keeping only the cant.

The second major contribution of the new IPE, as seen by the editors, is the
recognition that "the separation of subject and object and fact and value" is problematic (p.
6), which translates into practice as a focus on "the ideological aspects of region building
and region definition" (p. 17). Fair enough, but the danger in such an approach, exemplified
by several essays in the volume, is that writers will replace "unquestioning positivism" (p.
6) with fustian jargon. One chapter, for example, takes "as its referents the national space
`Japan' along with the non-Western cultural space `Asia' and the oceanic space `Pacific'"
(p. 169). In this essay, the author interprets Japanese wartime imperialism as an invasion
of "the geographic space identified as `Greater East Asia' in order to impose a congruence
between physical and ideological space" (p. 171). Another author notes that high-tech
plants may soon be "spatially distributed" in Mexico, yet does not identify the type of
space at issue (p. 142). In the essay on (what this reviewer will term) East Asia, the focus
is on "imagined regions" with different possible identities (p. 208). "Each of these
identities employs different signifiers to redefine/map/recall some or all of the NICs
[Newly Industrialising Countries] into its strategic orbit" (p. 240). These authors make the
reasonable argument, albeit in an often bombastic manner, that ideology and power
influence political definitions of regions. Their essays demonstrate, however, that it is
easier to make this point than to use it as a tool to advance our understanding of the current
dynamics of regionalism.

The contributors seek to use this new IPE to explain the origins of regionalism. In
so doing, Payne and Gamble assert, first, that the world is in a "post-hegemonic phase,"
the U.S. having declined from its previously hegemonic status. They offer no supporting
argument for this claim, despite acknowledging that the debate over U.S. "decline" has
neither been resolved nor added clarity to our understanding of hegemony (p. 5). Second,
the editors abruptly posit that regionalism is related to periods of post-hegemony, again
without sharing their reasoning (p. 16). A clue in this regard is Payne and Gamble's
comment that regionalism is "intended to help achieve [globalisation] in a world where
there is no longer a [hegemon]" (p. 253). One can interpret this as a functional argument:
because there is no global hegemon, regionalism is necessary to foster globalisation, and
therefore regionalism has spread. Even if the reader furnishes such an explanation in lieu of
one from the authors, however, the empirical content of the six region-specific essays
provides it no support. Among these, only Payne goes as far as to claim that the
Enterprise for the Americas Initiative "can be interpreted as" a response to declining U.S.
hegemony (p. 104). Payne never supplies such an analysis; he only notes that one is
possible (p. 125). While the back cover informs the reader that "regionalism has to be
understood in the context of the weakening of the position of the United States," none of
the contributors offer the reasoning that could support such a contention, much less an
empirical basis for it.

A pronounced characteristic of the volume as a whole is the lack of supporting logic
and often even scholarly citation for the authors' many assertions and asides. This is not
only true of the framing arguments the editors make against those who allegedly predict
regionalism will lead to armed conflict. Assertions, for example, that the U.S. desires a
"new cold war identity" for East Asia (p. 218; 220; 240) seem perfunctory and political.
The issue of footnoting is more serious. One author, highly skeptical that freer trade brings
any economic advantages to developing nations, confidently attacks "proclamations that
`take off' is right around the corner" in Latin America (p. 162). The same contributor tells
us that the "general thrust of research" regarding Latin America and the Caribbean has been
that free-market capitalism "led consistently to authoritarianism" (p. 157). If only to
provide scholars with possibly helpful sources, and certainly not least for the purposes of
demonstrating intellectual honesty, citations following such assertions are obligatory. It is
of course possible that these are merely sloppy oversights.
Overall, this volume is stronger on historical sketches of the growth of regionalism
than in careful comparative analyses regarding its dynamics and development, which indeed
are absent. Regionalism and World Order does not well serve the crucial topics with which
it is concerned.

Great book for the novice to professional regionalist. Keep your capitalist and socialist theories near, as these two editors battle to describe how tomorrows world order will be best organized at a level higher than the nation-state.

I think it is about time Anthony Robbins get sued. This man uses hoaxes and all sorts of deceptions to make money. But the real problem is not touched. His possession of one credential ie a high school diploma is not something to be proud about or admired. On the contrary, it is frightening. He should get at least a BA from a fully accredited university and we will feel better about him. Dr Jusuf Hariman

Edited by William O. Einwechter and containing chapters by some of the Christian Right's most unstable extremists, Explicitly Christian Politics is nauseating. Attempting to deny what Christ said about his kingdom not being of this world, these devils would substitute Christ's heavenly kingdom for their own dictatorship.

The book's premise is straightforward: Jesus Christ is both Creator and King, and therefore all of life, both private and public, is subject to the author's interpretation. That is, the authors are pretending to be god. The implications of this should be obvious, but alas are not: today 1/2 of the U.S. Senate would sleep soundly at if the reigns of goverment were turned over to Pat Robertson- or, e.g., if John Ashcroft were to become attorney general.

Every ideology is inherently hubris, since it inevitably makes assumptions concerning creation and the nature of reality and the source and meaning of right and wrong.

Hopefully Americans will learn of the diabolical nature of these Reconstructionist theocrats before it's too late.