News and Reviews Books

This book is structured into four essays. The first addresses the development of globalized capitalism within Chile; the second, very briefly, addresses the "Indian Problem" (quotes used by Frank as well as me); the third is on the development of globalized capitalism in Brazil, and the last is on the role of foreign aid generally.

This is one of the more prominent authors on the subject of underdevelopment theory, and I give the book four stars because it is fairly essential to any student of alternative economic theory.

The two shorter essays, on American Indians of Latin America and on foreign aid to Latin America by the rich countries, were generally unsatisfactory to me. In particular, the first did not address the challenges posed by American Indian populations to conventional populist politics, and generally avoided specific case analysis--Frank's principle strength as an economic thinker. The second, on the foreign aid, was vital since this book was published just around the time that a large foreign aid package to Latin America was in its early stages--the Alliance for Progress. Unfortunately, the book scarcely mentions the Alliance for Progress, and instead merely discusses foreign direct investment (FDA) as if it were not structurally distinct from civil aid programs like US AID. Considering that an impartial history of the Alliance (such as *The Alliance that Lost its Way*) is extremely supportive of Frank's thesis, this is disappointing and a missed opportunity.

The longer essays--on the cases of Chile and Brazil--are concerned with the early years. For Chile, Frank's story is pretty much about the years 1541-1826, when the country was a part of the presidency of Peru. The essay on Brazil is more thematic, and extends up to the 1964 military junta. A core theme in Frank's analysis is that Brazil and Chile--as well as the other countries of Latin America--were never feudalist at all, but rather, from the very beginning, were exemplary capitalist economies. The institution of slavery (as practiced in the Americas) was perfectly compatible with modern conceptions of capitalism, and was only abolished when more powerful industrial interests prevailed.

Frank introduces the ideas of capitalism as an inherently global system, involving a hierarchy of centers (metropoles) and peripheries (regions of underdevelopment). The center is served by a large number of subordinate "centers," as, for example, Madrid was served by Lima, which was served by Santiago, which then had subordinate centers of capitalist expropriation in the countryside. Each of these subordinate centers was both a focal point of accumulation, and a target of exploitation by the one higher up. At the same time, the process of capital accumulation creates underdevelopment by draining each region of the means of production.

Frank argued that the calamity of underdevelopment, exploitation, and the racial violence that characterized the history of the Americas was an inherent outcome of capitalism. Frank was very much aware of the philosophical controversy this position aroused: if he claimed that capitalism was identical to all the negative things that coexisted in space and time with it as a system, he later conceded, then it ceased to have any analytical value. The socialist system was later acknowledged by him and others on the hard left as having been in reality another distortion of capitalism; which meant that no control group existed, except perhaps extremely tiny isolated societies in Africa or the South Pacific.

He was also aware of the more urgent controversy of equating a system of economic organization that was virtually inescapable with certain large historical events that occurred in societies that hosted it. It's rather like saying the use of SQL relational database management--now universal--is to blame for the late invasion of Iraq and global climate change. While a technical feature of computer software may not be as significant as capitalism, they both require some distinction from contemporary events if they are to have any usefulness as conceptions. Otherwise they become merely lamentations of the human condition. Unfortunately, this awareness came later than the book itself, and I was never convinced that it was capitalism per se that was underdeveloping Latin America, and not the outcome of historical struggles peculiar to the European and North American metropoles.

This Captain's Log follows on from the original book detailing all of the original series, The original crew movies and TNG up to the end of season 5. This new book features DS9's first four seasons and Voyager's first two in more detail than the earlier work and is one of the few insights available into these shows. The authors aren't known as these series' greatest fans but they don't let it show and its a credit to them that you neither feel this is a studio puff piece nor a poison review book. It's objective, and that's something few Trek non-fiction books have. What's refeshing is the writers are interviewed more than in most publications so you get an insight as to how they perceived their work. Stories you or I may have liked aren't always the ones they are most proud of and vice versa. A must for anyone interested in Star Trek as a whole or just wishing to re-evaluate their stance on the 'younger' shows.

Worth reading to view another perspective of a film festival. Written like a documentary with interviews from participants in the festival. Good for other student filmmakers and anyone who wants to become a filmmaker. The dvd alone has enough to give you an eyeful of original filmmaking.

this is the first book in the "Jacques Vingtras" trilogy, which is the Roman-a-clef tale of Jules Valles's childhood from hell.



(The middle book in the series "The Graduate", which describes the 1848 Revolution, the 1851 coup by Napoleon III, and the struggle of Jules Valles and his friends to keep the socialist movement alive during the repressive period of the second empire, has, as far as I can tell never been translated into English. Or at least my search of the Internet reveals neither current nor used copies available for sale, nor in any library.)



Interestingly enough, although "The Insurrectionist" has long been out of print, and "The Graduate" never translated into English, "The Child" has recently been republished by the New York Review Books in 2005, and should be much more easily available for anyone interested.



Although I hold out some hopes that this may signal a plan to republish all of Jules Valles's works, the publishers introduction states that they wanted to bring "The Child" to a larger audience because they believed this book, unlike the rest of Jules Valles work, is of interest to everyone whether they are political or not.



The book begins with the words: "I dedicate this book to all those who were bored stiff at school or reduced to tears at home, who in childhood were bullied by their teachers or thrashed by their parents." Although this story is certainly anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment, it is largely apolitical (except for the last few chapters when Valles becomes interested in the history of the French Revolution).



Because of the excessive misfortunes of Jules Valles (or Jacques Vingtras, his Roman-a-clef counterpart), and the humorous way in which they are related, this work has often been compared to Charles Dickens.



No doubt if Jules Valles had lived today, no one would begrudge him years of therapy after this childhood. As it was, it is small wonder that this man grew up to become a lifelong rebel and outsider. And the tone of the book is set right from the beginning:



Was I breast-fed by my mother? Did I get my milk from some peasant wet nurse? I just don't know. But whatever breast I may have gnawed at, I don't remember, when I was tiny, ever being cuddled, made a fuss of, pampered, indulged, given little kisses...I was given lots of beatings.

My mother says: spare the rod and spoil the child. And every morning she gives me a beating; and if she doesn't have time in the morning, she'll save it until the afternoon, hardly ever later than four o'clock.

Madame Balandreau...is a kindly old spinster of fifty. She lives downstairs. In the beginning, she was quite pleased: not having a clock, she used me to tell the time. "Slap! Bang! Wham! Whack! Whack! It's that youngun upstairs getting his walloping, time to make my coffee."



And from this beginning, Valles continues through the rest of the book to detail every cruelty his parents ever inflicted on him.



As a child who was beat regularly by both parents, some of Valles's complaints are no doubt valid. But as the book continues, some of the things he chronicles seem to be almost petty, such as the ridiculous clothes his mother sent him off to school in, or how his paranoid mother, fearing for his safety, was always forbidding him to do anything the other children regularly enjoyed.



Especially for a man who, in his adult life, lived on the streets, was imprisoned, shot at, and witnessed the massacres at the end of the Paris Commune, it seems a bit strange that near the end of his life he was still obsessed with chronicling everything that was denied to him as a child. It's amazing how deep the wounds of childhood can be.



This book could have ended up being a very depressing read, but fortunately Jules Valles keeps his sense of humor with him as he writes it, and so I found myself mostly laughing as the young Jacques Vingtras goes from one childhood misadventure to another. The tone does occasionally darken, such as when Valles describes a childhood friend of his who was beaten to death by her father, and how this incident convinced him the rest of his life he would stick up for the defenseless. But on the whole, it was one of the funniest books I've read in a long time.



The mother in the book is described by some reviewers as a sadist for all the ways she thinks up to torment her husband and her child. Her stubbornness in the various battles of wills she gets into reminds me a lot of the mother from "Malcolm in the Middle". Consider this scene from one of the family's journeys.



"You're not hungry?" my father inquired on the way.

"Why should I be hungry?" my mother retorted.

I have to tell you that in the course of the previous evening, my father had suggested eating at the buffet in Vierzon, in case we weren't able to find anywhere to eat later on. My mother had turned down this suggestion and she had no intention of letting her decision be questioned by being asked if she was hungry now....

My father didn't argue...because his hands were tied; when we left, he acted most unwisely: he handed over all our money to his wife.

My mother had said in an innocent voice, "I've got bigger pockets than you, they'll hold the money better. I can pay for everything on the journey."

Initially my father didn't appreciate the full extent of his misfortunes of the seriousness of his error; but at the first change of horses, the blow struck home: he had no money at all, not a single franc, not even a couple of sous. He'd given away all his small change in tips to railway porters and such. Now he didn't even have enough to buy a glass of currant brandy....



This battle over money continues over the rest of the chapter, with the father and son continually trying to find ways to get some food or drink.



Aside from his parents, Valles's second target is his education. Valles details all the ridiculous antics that go on during his thoroughly classical education. Some of this seems straight out of Monty Python, like the Latin poem they are supposed to write about the death of a parrot:



We'd been told to write about the death of a parrot. I'd said everything anyone could say when confronted by such a calamity: that I'd never find consolation; that when he saw the cage-now transformed into a coffin-Charon would drop his oars; that moreover I'd be burying him myself-triste ministerium-and that we'd be scattering flowers-manibus lilia plenis.

In one of my ingenious lines, I'd exclaimed: "Now, alas, you can plant parsley on the tomb!"

The teacher compliments me on this last subtle touch, but I've come second to Bresslair, who showed even deeper emotion and more sincere grief...He hit on the idea, borrowed from hymn tunes, of introducing a repeated refrain:

Psittacus interrit! Jam fugit psittacus, eheu!-The Parrot has died! It has already passed away, alas!



And my favorite part was the commotion young Vingtras caused in his examination when he stated that there were 8 (instead of 7) properties of the soul.



All in all, a very funny and moving book. Definitely worth reading.

I bought this book hoping to use it in some of my political science and women's studies courses. Little did I realize that it's more of a guide than a book to read.

Nonetheless, I've found the book incredibly useful and suggest that other read it. This book is for both a lay and academic audience. I think the keen videophile will find the array of movies listed worth looking at and discussing w/ others for video nights/events.

One of the strongest points of the is guide is that after the descriptions of each movie there is a short list of suggested readings. This rounds out this superb book, which lists movies that span virtually every region across the globe.

I found this book to be a great refresher. It is not mathematically intense and instead focuses mainly on theory. There is not a very heavy reliance on Calculus, but it is often implied by talking about areas and changes instead of integrals and derivatives. So if you're in a Calc-based physics class, you can still get the basics down.

My only criticism is that there are very few sample problems and no problems at the end of chapters. That keeps the book from being a 5 star in my opinion..

This book isn't "by" H. P. Lovecraft: rather it's a collection of stories of what he would call "cosmic horror" assembled by D. Thin based largely on Lovecraft's personal favorites in the horror fiction genre and including what Lovecraft considered his very best short story, "The Colour Out of Space" (which must have been inspired by accounts of radium poisoning at the time). The choices are fine, and several famous and forgotten horror classics, such as Arthur Machen's wonderfully disorienting "The White People," which seems to anticipate the fiction of Angela Carter, and Algernon Blackwood's splendidly eerie "The Willows," which must have been an inspiration behind THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, are included. There are a few missteps in inclusion, such as Bram Stoker's piece of Grand Guignol "The Squaw"--which, though quite gruesome, seems to have nothing to do with the collection's theme--and also displays his irritating fascination with American Western accents which he poorly imitates, as he also does in DRACULA. And where are the illustrations to the stories advertised?

Harvard Business Review article, published in March-April 1992, by three Vice Presidents from management consultancy firm The Boston Consulting Group. Philip Evans is co-author from recent bestseller 'Blown to Bits' (2000).

The article starts with a case study on the reversal of fortunes represented by Kmart and Wal-Mart from 1979 to 1989. This example serves to explain the four principles of capabilities-basded competition: (1) the building blocks of corporate strategy are business processes; (2) competitive success depends on providing superior value to the customer; (3) strategic investments in support infrastructure that links units and functions; and (4) the CEO is the champion of a capabilities-based strategy. The authors conclude that the key to competitive advantage has moved from strategic positioning to anticipation of market trends and quick response to customer needs. "The prize will be companies that combine scale and flexibility to outperform the competition along five dimensions: (1) speed; (2) consistency; (3) acuity; (4) agility; and (5) innovativeness." So the challenge is to become a capabilities-based competitor. This challenge requires managers to see their business in terms of strategic capabilities, then, to identify and link together essential business processes to serve customers, and, finally, reshape the organization to encourage the new kind of behavior. Thankfully the authors introduce a four-step guide for this process, using Medequip - the medical-equipment company - as an example. The main advantages of competing on capabilities is that it provides a way for companies to gain the benefits of both focus and diversification, it enables growth by transferring essential business processes, and advantages built on capabilities are easier to transfer georgraphically. The authors make greate use of examples, such Kmart vs. Wal-Mart, Wachovia vs. Banc One, and Honda.

Although the authors disagree, this article expands on Prahalad & Hamel's core competence-theory (1990): "But whereas core competence emphasizes technological and production expertise at specific points along the value chain, capabilities are more broadly based, encompassing the entire value chain." Strong point of this article is that it makes the core competennce-theory more practically understandable and provides good insights into the implementation of that theory into organizations. Although somewhat outdated it is a great, clear article which I recommend to managers and MBA-students. The authors use simple US-English.

For many years, Jean-Marc Lofficier was the only Who fan putting together good non-fiction books on Doctor Who. The Databank is an encyclopedia on all the people and places found in the Whoniverse (pre-novels, anyway). Well researched and complete. Casual Who fans will enjoy learning about obscure characters and place names.

Then this book is for you! "The Guide to The Greatest Movies Ever Made" is a wonderful journey by the editors of the popular magazine "Entertainment Weekly" through the best films of our time. The great thing is that most of the titles recomended here are on video and available to rent - and if you can't find them it lists places where you can find them. A worthy read for anyone who wants the best drama, comedy, fantasy, sci-fi, western or any other genre of film. It even includes a worthwhile section on Laserdisc. The nice thing would be if the editors would update this book soon - by including not only the great films of the last three or four years, but also include a section on the latest electronic revolution - the arival of DVDs.