Conferences Books

This 5-volume series covers all aspects of heavy oil and tar sands recovery. The reader who is gathering information for a literature survey may find that much of the required information has already been gathered. For our purposes, I found Volume 5 (upgrading, recovery) to be the most useful.

From Potsdam to Cold War: Big Three Diplomacy 1945-1947 is James Gormly's second book on the topic of the transition from cooperation to confrontation of the three key allies that united to win World War II. The focus is on the Potsdam Conference and the succession of meetings between foreign ministers, their deputies, and the delegates to the Paris Peace Conference over a period from mid-1945 to late 1946. The book is a detailed, ground level account of the major diplomatic participants and their maneuverings. It describes the interactions of those involved, as well as roles that the central government figures and opinion leaders played, as all the parties marched down the path to Cold War. In addition, there is an overlay of selected concurrent events, which are included as additional ingredients in the mix of factors that precipitated the devolution of the relationship between the West and the Soviet Union.

It is a balanced and detailed narrative that waits until the very end in its Epilogue to provide any substantive analysis. That analysis is short, qualifies itself by saying that without access to Soviet archives any analysis may be impossible, yet comes down on the side that the US probably got what it deserved by assuming the posture it did with the Russians. Maybe so, but the analysis does nothing to incorporate events outside of the negotiating room that may have been reactive or proactive on the part of the Soviets. These events included forcing concessions from Iran and Turkey with the threat of invasion; Sovietization of Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary; and increasingly hostile acts of Tito against US border forces. Since these items were important components of Gormly's narrative, but not mentioned in his Epilogue, the analysis seems incomplete.

Gormly is the Department Chair of History at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, and has authored one other book and several articles on the period. Two contemporary book reviews of Potsdam to Cold War, one by A. E. Campbell of Oxford and the other by Keith Eubank of Queens College , echo two themes, a competent detailed account of the diplomatic back and forth that begs additional analysis. In addition, Campbell does not see how the book adds any new material to an already well-covered topic. In Campbell's view, Gormly essentially delivers a slice of the same picture, without adding any additional color or depth. The book does rely on both derivative and primary sources, with over 300 attributions, several of which are to his previous book, Collapse of the Grand Alliance . In particular he makes repeated use of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity.

What the book does do is walk the reader down an interesting path that focuses on individuals and their roles, in what becomes an increasingly personal conflict between Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet Foreign Minister; Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Minister; and James Byrnes, US Secretary of State. We come to learn their approaches to achieving policy objectives and their negotiating styles. What emerges from the narrative are both the overt and covert objectives of the principal participants, and the countries that they represent. We see how the objectives of each government mutate as the diplomatic process unfolds, and hints of feints and double feints, particularly by Molotov, slowly reveal the ultimate goals of the three powers. The book provides an interesting insight into how grand diplomacy really works. As Gormly admits at the beginning and the end, without access to Soviet primary sources we don't know what Molotov's directions were, how much Stalin was directing Molotov, what demands were firm and what ones were used solely to be traded away for concessions by the West.

As mentioned earlier in this review, Gormly doesn't fully address how the external events at the time may have contributed to the deterioration in relations. Russian rifle diplomacy in Iran, Turkey and Tito's actions in Yugoslavia couldn't have helped. Were they testing or were they reacting? Were the Soviets advancing an unthinking agenda to narrowly pursue their interests? Or was Stalin attempting to catch up with the British and US global presence by moving forward along key lines it wanted to pursue, without thinking through the repercussions? Or were the Soviets playing their own game of armed reconnaissance, determining where the West would retrench, thus supporting the conservative's contention of their expansionism? These would have been interesting questions to explore.

Potsdam to Cold War is a solid and detailed narrative of the diplomacy between the leading powers of the post WWII world, with sufficient context to provide a broader view of events during the years of 1945 to 1947. Unfortunately, Gormly stops short of exploring the interaction of diplomacy and these contextual issues. He misses an opportunity to add to our understanding of the crucial post-war peace conferences initiated at Potsdam, and the new era they introduced to the rest of world.

"Gates of Mitzvah" proves that Reform Jews were talking about mitzvot long before the "Pittsburgh Principles" were written. This book is a nice introduction and reference volume outlining the most common mitzvot in the Jewish lifecycle, such as brit, bar mitzvah, putting up a mezzuzah, get, etc. The most interesting reading comes at the end of the book, where several essays are presented which discuss the role of mitzvot in the lives of liberal Jews. This is only an introductory volume of course, and anyone who wants the mitzvot to play a more important role in their lives will quickly outgrow it.

I no longer affiliate with the Reform Movement, but putting personal beliefs aside, this is a pretty standard Reform siddur, all of the important liturgy included (though after experiencing more traditional services I found out just how much liturgy is missing from this book!), a lot of great songs to choose from in the back, much more Hebrew than the Union prayerbook which was in usage before this, and a great selection of quotes from Pirkey Avot in the beginning. The reason I no longer think as highly of this siddur as I used to is because of all of the mistranslations (as well as a horrible cut and paste job of the Aleynu; for my first two years after my conversion I had no idea how long the Aleynu actually is and had a very hard time getting all of the words in the authentic unaltered prayer right!).

I don't have any problem with creative translations; some things even sound more poetic in such a translation over how they sounded in the original, or sometimes it's done to make them rhyme in translation also, if it's a poem or song. But the mistranslations here go beyond that. The best example of this is on page 256, "Praised is the God whose gift is life, whose cleansing rains let parched men and women flower toward the sun." The Hebrew actually says "Praised is the God whose gift is life, who grants eternal life to the dead." That's probably the only instance in this entire siddur where the Hebrew word meytim is used in that prayer instead of hakol (which means "the world"). Resurrection of the dead isn't part of Reform doctrine, so maybe the original Hebrew made them uncomfortable. A lot of similar mistranslations, which are worlds away from what is being said in the Hebrew, are really lovely sentiments, but they should be in a section devoted to an alternate service or alternative readings, not as pretended translations of things which are worlds away from this lovey-dovey "We are all one" stuff.

It was a good prayerbook for the era when it came out, but today it just reads like the creation of a bunch of flower children and makes it so obvious it came out in the Seventies. A good prayerbook should be for all time, not an embarrassing reminder of a bygone era.

_Gates of the House_ gathers in one volume the vast bulk of Jewish prayers and rituals for places other than the sysngogue. The translations into English will suit most English speakers, but those who prefer Hebrew as the language of prayer and home ritual will probably find _Gates of the House_ wanting.

Non-Jews who want a richer spiritual life at home might consider useing this prayer book as a point of departure from which to create home rituals for their own faith. Non-Jews interested in the _Pesach Seder_ service should consult a _Haggadah;_ that service has long since become substantial enough to require its own prayer book.

As an undergraduate political science major, I've learned that research on the institution and person of the President of the United States of America deals primarily with general theories of leadership and governing. Dr. Han narrows the field of research to the topic of White House communication-- specifically television-- strategies, beginning with Kennedy and ending with Clinton.
The book focuses on which strategies failed and which strategies succeeded, by examining the various media communication strategies applied by each administration towards their certain domestic policies. These case studies provide the reader with a look at the various consequences an administration must consider when "going public" with a policy. This book could be used in teaching mass media or political science.

As some one who has lived in NYC for 12 years, and just returned from a year in England, I was astonished by how much more violent crime exists in that seemingly placid country. As Professor Joyce Malcom describes, robbery, burglary, assault and motor vehical theft in England have risen far higer (per 1000 population) than in the United States since the mid 1990s. This in spite of the fact that to minimize this shocking increase in violent crime, the British government has re-ordered the way crime statistics are collected. Car thefts are no longer investigated by Police; you call them to report a theft; they give you a report number for the insurance company. (A man called the police to report he was witnessing his car being stolen, and if they hurried over, they could catch the theft. They were "too busy.")

What is most fascinating about Prof. Malcolm's book is what you can read between the lines. The wilful blindness of anti-gun people has become so overwhelming, that it induces the most bizarre behavior in these otherwise intelligent people. As she amply demonstrates, it is just not possible to find ANY statistics put out by the anti-gunners that are not flawed, misleading, or just plain false. This strange behavior has become an unquestioned religion to many, and opposition is not simply a difference of opinion, it is heresey. Malcom relates how in 1966 a thug shot 3 policemen with a handgun, causing the British Home Secretary Jenkins to slap on the public a new ban--on shotguns!! (Handguns were already illeagal.)

The book is rather long detailing the history of gun use in Great Britan, but the second half paints a surprising picture of the rapid decline of public safety in almost perfect sync with a draconian reversal of previously liberal gun laws. Malcom makes an interesting effort to compare US crime statistics with those of England, but, given our culture--where more than half the population owns guns--this is often a stretch. Nevertheless, this book will certainly be the other shoe to the rancorous gun debate going on in the US, and should do much to buttress the fact that more guns do seem to result in less crime.

A good text to see what was going on in the early 1900's in music education. It should be supplemented with another, more comprehensive text, however. I recommend Mark's text.

I like this hymnal because it has the old standards (ie doxology) as well as new, fun hymns, from all over the world. It does NOT have "blood" songs, and is written, where applicable, in four-part harmony.

The conference proceedings demonstrate the importance of modelling and improving existing computer networks. Many of the papers discuss possible improvements in the usage of the Internet. Without much difficulty, you could envisage practical applications for most of the papers.

For instance, take Nebat and Sidi's look at parallel downloads of a file from different computers that hold copies of that file. Their method offers the prospect of faster overall downloading. With the possible drawback of getting out of order packets from the different source machines. Still, the paper describes how these might be minimised. Clearly, the prospect of improving p2p networks built on top of TCP/IP is the allure.

Lower level, hardware papers are also present. Some talk about WDM over non-Internet circuits, like SONET. Or over ATM. While other papers look at the innards of TCP/IP and suggest improvements at that level.