Perspective Books

The problem of homelessness is a systemic one. It has not been adequately addressed by public officials or by social scientists. This excellent commentary by two anthropological experts on homelessness shows the complexity of the problem as revealed in on-the-scene fieldwork. Glasser and Bridgman show homelessness as it really is, and point to solid directions for its solution as a social problem.

One of the best books on this topic because it not only examines Brazil's social and political problems but sees them as the legacy of past historical events and actions. The author knows Brazil intimately and conveys a sense of compassion for its people.

"Brethren" is the first in a projected four book series and it is historical fiction at its finest. A rich epic set in the Caribbean in the late 1600's, this is the story of the roguish William Marsdale. Readers will be hooked from the page one. Will left home to escape an abusive relationship, and to see the world. He becomes an accomplished swordsman and duelist, as well as a seasoned traveller. When he finally returns home to England, he is sent by his father to Jamaica to manage a new sugar plantation. Of course, he promptly puts someone in charge of it and joins a buccaneer crew! Buccaneer's have some "questionable" traditions, such at Matelotage. It is a partnership between two men to support each other in battle, share fiscal responsibilities and to provide company. These relationships were often sexual, but not always. Will unintentionally finds himself with a matelot. The bitter-sweet love that eventually develops between he and Gaston is believable and has great potential (which is explored in Matelots: Raised By Wolves, Volume Two).

The cast of supporting characters are all fully developed and help propel the storyline as well as provide humor. Stryker and Pete are especially fun, and integral to the plot. Hoffman has done a lot of research into the time period and subject matter and it shows. The dialog and language are representative of the time, and extremely well written - I never felt lost with the old-fashioned terminology or phrasing. Her descriptions of the world and people are detailed without bogging a reader down. With a a lot of action, and an engrossing plot, this is a fantastic adventure story. I read this massive novel in only two days and can hardly wait for the rest of the quadrilogy. Volume 3, "Raised by Wolves: Treasure" is due in April/May 2008, and the final volume, "Raised by Wolves: Wolves: is due in Spring 2009.

This provides a very nice summary of the process of decolonizliation that wrought the end of the British Empire. It looks at the when, how and why the empire fell breaking it into several pieces. These pieces focus on the reasons for the breakup including the metropole's lost interest in Empire and arguing that the empire was lost from London. The second group focuses on the loss of empire from the perspective of economics and showing that the colonies were no longer profitable. The British sterling was destroyed as a currency after the Second World War causing Britain to revaluate its position in the colonies. The third group argues that a changing dynamic in world politics caused the loss of empire with the USSR and US being antimperialistc it left the British without an option. Finally the last group argues that the empire was lost in the colonies with the budding nationalism that was occurring in the post world war II era. Each of these events has their supporting evidence with the two that tie them altogether being Suez and the "winds of change" that swept across Africa in the 1960's. Overall this is a wonderful summary of how the empire collapsed and provides a definitive timeline as well as explanations of the major events. It is a great place to start especially if coupled with John Darwin's book on the end of empire.

Rabbi Greenberg is one of the great Jewish thinkers and leaders of our generation. His deep love of the Jewish people and his unending work for their well- being is reflected in these meditations on the meaning of the Jewish Holy Days.

This is a solid treatise on how to construct perspective images of given objects, and there is also some discussion of inverse problems of perspective, notably to determine for a given painting where the artist would have wanted you to put your eye to best enjoy his perspective virtuosity. The modern mathematical reader may not be very interested in perfecting his skill in perspective drawing, but neglect of theory of perspective is unhealthy if only for the narrow reason that it creates a blind spot in our understanding of projective geometry (itself sadly neglected, but that's a different matter). For example, Desargues's theorem emerges from the construction of the perspective of a triangle (fig. 20 of the 1715 ed.) by means of one of Taylor's most elegant techniques, the "visual ray construction", where both the triangle and the eye-point are rotated into the picture plane (the triangle plane is rotated down about its intersection with the picture plane and the eye is rotated up about the horizon of the triangle plane). Taylor even manages to hint at the cross-ratio in the context of finding the perspective image of a line segment divided in a given ratio (p. 183; Andersen's commentary pp. 27-29).

M. Tim Jones does a great job in "BSD Sockets Programming" of showing the reader step by step how to develop network applications, what to keep in mind, and what to look out for. His explainations are clear and well written. The major strength of this book is that it covers so many languages so well. There are a good set of refrence for each language and then many example implemntations in the Software Patterns section.

This book does not cover IPv6, which is fine and the author states at the beginning. I would liked to have seen a little more coverage of threads and network programming, but as it is the reader will have a good foundation of network programming and a good refrence on their bookshelf.

Ruegg's work is a great synthesis of information derived from primary and secondary sources, and explores the ways in which important themes of Indian Buddhist thought (buddha-nature, conceptions of mind and enlightenment) were interpreted and adapted in the complex cultural matrix of early Buddhist Tibet. A must-read for anyone wanting a deeper take on the cultural history of Tibetan Buddhism, or the history of Tibetan Buddhist philosophical interpretations!

Joining others in the 'Religion in Contemporary Cultures' set is a survey of Buddhist belief in cultures around the world, offering fascinating comparisons in how Buddhism is perceived and recognized differently around the world. Both high school and college-level readers will enjoy a discussion that surveys how local cultures change religion, with different stages of adaptation and practice contrasted throughout. Buddhism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives is very highly recommended as a welcome and informative addition to academic and community library Buddhist Studies reference collections.

In Building a Bigger Europe: EU and NATO Enlargement in Comparative Perspective, Martin A. Smith and Graham Timmins adopt a refreshingly neutral (not pro-American) tone. Both authors teach at British institutions--Smith at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, and Timmins at the University of Huddersfield. They explain that the book developed from the realization that a gap exists in the comparative literature on the EU and NATO enlargement processes, which is surprising, given the number of countries that belong to both organizations. No single state, except perhaps Germany, has tried to forge policy or to try to link the EU and NATO policies, they explain (p. 21). Although both the EU and NATO are under the rubric of European Studies, few scholars have an equal depth of knowledge about both the EU and NATO" (pg. viii).
The authors stress the need for a broader definition of security than the one that prevailed during the Cold War bipolar military division of Europe. Military security alone will not suffice. Citing Barry Buzan's five-dimensional definition (military, political, economic, societal, and environmental), they stress that more diffuse security challenges will emerge in the twenty-first century, within which economic issues will play a more vital role (p. 14). In 1989 the Cold War security order was suddenly transformed. It altered the structure of the European state system, intensified the relationship between military and economic security and possibly inverted their relative importance, they explain. Overcoming the continuing division of Europe and assuring the future stability of the European security order are contingent, they claim, upon the successful transition of the central and eastern European states to the market economy and multi-party democracy (p. 11).
Some aspects of the formal democratization process can be externally supported and directed, such as the constitution, party-system, elections, and marketization. However, establishing a civil society as a whole is a different story. The authors claim that the creation of a "public participatory and supportive political culture depends upon the political legitimacy that Central and Eastern European electorates afford to the post-communist regimes." (p. 5). Smith and Timmins aver that the EU can foster political legitimacy and economic stability-i.e. "comprehensive security"---better than NATO can. They believe that a security community in Western Europe was developed within the common military structure of NATO, but "is politically and societally distinct from it" (p. 16). It is much easier to earn membership in NATO than in the EU, since the former insists only upon civilian control of the military. According to the authors, NATO does not actually restrict its membership to countries with democratic regimes; member countries such as Portugal and Turkey both had dictatorial regimes, for example.
From the EU's perspective, the end of the Cold War represented a great opportunity to continue the process of trading and building pan-European unity as envisaged by its founding fathers in the 1940s and 1950s (p. 1). NATO, on the other hand, was established in 1949 out of European division. Western states viewed it as a necessary means of resisting the Soviet military threat. Unlike the EU, NATO was compelled to justify its continued existence after the collapse of the USSR amidst expectations of a "New World Order" and the anticipated peace dividend it would yield (p. 1).
Efforts after the Cold War to broaden NATO's functions beyond the military arena have met with no significant success, according to the authors. They write:
Since the deployment of NATO-led international forces to police and supervise the implementation of the Dayton peace accords in Bosnia at the beginning of 1996, and the deployment of a similar force to Kosovo in June 1999, it has become clear that NATO's future utility lies mainly in a revised, but still essentially military, role of deploying and commanding peace enforcement operations in conjunction with the UN in Europe, and perhaps elsewhere (p. 16).

Hence, as a fundamentally military-based institution, NATO cannot address the full range of security needs, either of its existing members or of prospective new ones, the authors claim. NATO thus falls shy as the sole institutional foundation of a European security community (p. 15).
Smith and Timmins adopt the controversial view that both NATO and the EU need to expand to the east if a wider European security community can be developed (p. 14). That is, a pan-European security order will be based on both NATO's "hard security" or military role, and the EU's "soft security" or economic and diplomatic roles (pp. 11, 14). Neither of these two institutions, however, can provide the other two types of security Buzan listed, societal or environmental security.
The authors ominously warn of a so-called "expectations gap" among the electorates of the CEE states. Just as in 1989 the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe collapsed because the command economic system imploded and the political elites failed to satisfy the material aspirations of the masses, so also in the early 21st century, the masses could become disillusioned if their countries are not admitted into the EU and/or NATO soon enough, or if membership in either of these institutions does not benefit the given country as much as previously imagined. According to Smith and Timmins, "The danger is that an expectations gap will develop that cannot be satisfied by pro-western post-communist political elites and that disenchantment will foster the creation of less amenable and undemocratic political systems (pp. 5-6)." ---Johanna Granville, Ph.D.