Sweden Books

This first rate study of the struggles of pre-WW 2 democratic parties in Europe casts an illuminating light on the problems of emerging democratic societies in the post=Soviet period. It is thoughtful and well written.

If you want to know what political science can and should be, read this book. It takes important questions and answers them clearly and intelligently, with learning but not jargon. I wish all scholarly books were like this.

very detailed map and laminated to preserve it....however, every hotel in Stockholm has a free map of the city!

This map is a genuine working tool for one who is about to take their first trip to Stockholm. It is small enough to be handy, detailed enough to be a valuable navigational aid and rugged enough (with foldable laminated construction) to withstand the whims of the weather. Details include neighbor-hood names, public transportation stops and points of interest which are cross referenced to panels containing richly descriptive information in English. Supplemental data is provided on taxis, public transit, tipping, telephones and all sorts of things that one wouldn't think of asking about until it was too late. Also included are larger scale maps that place the city and country in their surrounding geographic areas.

This book is just amazing! It's really creative and includes everything about Sweden. A great book!

"Sweden," by Monica Rabe, is part of the "Festivals of the World" book series. This book combines a very readable text with many full-color photographs to educate readers about the festivals of the title country. Included are a map, a short glossary, and an index.

The king's birthday, Walpurgis Night, Midsummer's Day, and other festivals are discussed. Related topics covered include the role of the Swedish royal family, traditional superstitions, and Viking mythology. The book describes such interesting customs as leaving out a bowl of porridge for the "hustomte" (a gnome who guards one's house), or having a sour herring party. And of course, the book discusses the traditional Swedish smorgasbord.

The book gives instructions on how to make a Julangel (a decorative Christmas angel), as well as a recipe for coconut chocolate balls (I haven't tried the recipe, but it sounds delicious!). Throughout the book are many colorful images: children in traditional costumes, the royal family in elegant dress, a field of beautiful daffodils, etc.

Swedenborg's Dream Diary is one of the earliest known records of an individual's dream life: Swedenborg not only notes his dreams, but applies observational and analytic skills to consider their interpretation - two hundred years before Freud developed his own interpretation of dreams theory. Swedenborg's Dream Diary was originally published in Sweden in 1859 and this new edition will provide new generations with timeless insights.

Swedenborg kept the longest running dream diary ever recorded. He had a profound influence on practically everyone who shaped our modern world, including Freud. But since he wrote only in Latin, most of the translations of his works are difficult to read. Not this one.

In this book Swedenborg explains his dreams and then gives his interpretation of them. The author also gives some insight into the dreams by explaining what was going on in Emanuel's life at the time, and how the dreams meshed with his personal Spiritual transformation.

Excellent book on a very unique and remarkable man. (In a Stanford University study to determine the most brilliant people to have ever lived, Emanuel Swedenborg tied for first place.)

An outstanding retrospective of one of the most important and prolific artists of our time. Jean Christophe Bailly's prose-like narrative takes you on a journey through the maturation of Tanning's diverse creative oeuvre. This book includes over 300 full colour plates of her pencil drawings, oil paintings, etchings, lithographs, sculptures and collages, which all exhibit her typical fervour, and her exploration and depiction of the human form with her liquefying strokes. A must read for art lovers and fans of the surrealist movement.

Dorothea Tanning shows an incredibly wide range of artistic styles in this compilation of her works. Some of the most intruiging and inspiring paintings I have ever seen!

Amidst all the necessary scholarship in this first volume of the series, the authors have also painted a vivid picture of the background, from the conception of the grand ship to its demise, including the various salvage attempts over the ages. It is incredible that, in the 17th century, men were willing and able to descend 30m into the pitch dark in a bell partially filled with air, and salvage guns weighing over a tonne each by first unfastening them from their carriages within the ship, and then wiggling them out of the gun ports. Their courage was matched by that of the 20th century copper helmeted divers digging tunnels under the ship for the lifting cables, never being totally certain that the enormous weight above would not press the hull further into the mud, and them with it. That the divers, in zero visibility, wearing thick rubber mittens recovered almost all of the wooden ornamentation which fell off the hull is equally impressive. Following this is the challenge to excavate the interior, an enormous task, even without the pressure placed upon the archaeologists by the salvage master to lighten the ship NOW. One of the authors was a senior member of this team, and his record of these historic events has an unmatched immediacy.

This is an adventure story for the layman, as well as being a scholarly work for the academic. When will the next volume appear?

For those not familiar with the history of this great ship, it is the best preserved ship of the 17th century. In part, one may jest, because it was "only used once and never driven hard". Back in 1628 Naval Architecture took a bold step forward when the order for topsails taught the pressing need for proper ballast. As the King's fortune sunk into the wood preserving mud of the harbor the Vasa was lost from view, flash forward three hundred years Vasa is rediscovered at the turn of the century, last century, and raised in the seventies.

Vasa I: The Archaeology of a Swedish Royal Ship of 1628 is the first of what will be four volumes published roughly one year apart or so.[....] to view the ship as it is today in Stockholm and you will buy the book.

If you are a ship model maker with tens of thousands of hours of free time rejoice the plan set offer by the Vasa museum is about to be surpassed at light, of the day, speed. Of course as a four volume set the detail will be extensive, easily on a par with the great works of A.N.C.R.E. published in France which many consider the benchmark of ship dsign and history. Future volumes will cover sailing the ship and tactics, rigging, and hull construction.

Vasa I is a flawless start to what will be a warm friendship with the past over the next few years, we are all very lucky.

"...very clear work, each chapter of which is matched with a full bibliography." -European Library, Bulletin Quotidien Europe

"Is ABB a model for other organizations?...Indeed, Percy Barnevik does have particular views on this question. In an interview in India, he said: 'More and more companies will see the need to develop this multidomestic combination for global coordination. The big American companies used to have a domestic and an international division. You cannot have an international division. In my company, the word does not exist because if you are foreign, you are foreign everywhere. The whole meaning of being domestic or foreign has lost its meaning. When I am sitting here in India, I am not an Indian citizen, but I represent an Indian company just like I represent a Spanish company when I am in Spain'...Is ABB a model for nations?...Warren Bennis says: 'The ability to align, create, and empower will characterize successful leaders well into tht twenty-first century. But there is another theme that surfaces provocatively in some of the interviews..., most notably in the remarks of Percy Barnevik of ABB. That is the emergence of federation as the structure uniquely suited to balancing the seemingly incompatible drives toward global cooperation and the putting down of deep local roots. This paradox is evident in world politics, where intense ethnic and national identities coexist with the widespread recognition that new economic and political alliances must be forged outside one's borders'...So, what are the lessons that other organizations and managers facing the challenges of globalization can learn from ABB's experience so far? We think that there are many lessons that are both explicit and implicit throughout this book. However, we asked Percy Barnevik for his views. He says: 'I do not believe that you can mechanically copy what another company has done. ABB itself has several variations on its organization and management depending on products and customers...However, there are some general principles to learn from and adapt to your own business: the need to be global-local, big-small, and decentralized-central control' "(from the Introduction).

In this context, Kevin Barham and Claudia Heimer summarize their objectives in writing this book: document the story of the merger, ABB's growth and global expansion; catch more than a glimpse of the real story behind the company's ongoing success; raise some key questions for the future of ABB; highlight some lessons from ABB's experience for managers in other organizations facing international and global challenges. And thus they organize their book into three main parts:

I. The Birth of A Modern Giant - In this part, by telling the story of the two main partners-ASEA of Sweden and BBC of Switzerland, and by outlining Percy Barnevik's concepts regarding the strategy, structure, control mechanisms and people development of the newly merged/emerged company, they describe early days of ABB.

II. Giant Steps to the Globally Connected Corporation - In this part, by defining ABB as a 'globally connected corporation' (global and local, big and small, and radically decentralized with central reporting and control), they show the stages of global expansion.

III. Reaping the Harvest - In this part, they look at the organization a decade after the merger to find out how the masterplan has worked out to date and at how ABB has started to reap the harvest resulting from all the hard work it has put into building its structure and implementing its strategy. And they also focus on CEO Goran Lindahl and his priorities for ABB in the future-innovation in human resources and information technology.

Finally, end of this invaluable study, they list 15 giant steps to a global organization. I briefly summarize these steps as follows:

1. You don't need to have all the answers when trying to achieve change on such grand scale as the ABB merger.

2. Decentralization to profit centres around the world is the key to creating an entrepreneurial mindset.

3. Stay close to customers around the world during a merger to reassure them and not lose market share.

4. Don't delude yourself that you can forecast the future-you can only see breaks in trend lines, and you won't always see those.

5. Understand which parts of the business are more global and which are more local and act accordingly.

6. Multiculturalism is not an ethical issue, it is a practical business need.

7. Set challenging targets, but don't keep changing the formal organization.

8. Communicate, communicate, communicate to 'fire people up'-even at the risk of competitors listening.

9. Globalization requires transparency and connectivity accross time zones and geography.

10. Every manager, including the CEO, should aim to have two to three succession candidates ready at all times.

11. You don't necessarily need lots of global managers-not everybody has to be global-but you do require a pool of cross-culturaly capable people from which you can draw your global managers.

12. Results-oriented learning on the job gives management development credibility and makes line management take responsibility for developing people.

13. Don't assume that all your organizational values are fully applicable across the world.

14. Keep it practical. Concepts are only 5 per cent of the building of a global organization. Execution and the ability to engage people around the world are 95 per cent.

15. Long-term shareholder value is the ultimate measurement of performance in a global company.

Highly recommended.

This book is an ABBA fan's dream: lots of arcane details with some gossipy tidbits tossed in, all rolled together with a list of every ABBA song ever recorded. Even though my ABBA-fandom was at its heights about 30 years ago, it's still a pleasure to read about each of ABBA's many songs. This book tells the reader what the lyrics are really about, what the atmosphere in the studio was during recording, and other information which lets me listen to the songs in a new light. The book also made me nostalgic, and even a bit sad - ABBA did have material for a "goodbye" album in them, but they just didn't have interest in recording it. Their departure always seemed so premature, and now that I have more insight into the lyrics of songs like "Cassandra" and "The Day Before You Came", it's obvious that their non-existent final album would have been one of their best.

Had the benefit of seeing the author and subject at a DC event , so must say from the outset, that this may have an unfair advantage.
Shaw does a fine job, capturing the essence of Eliasson's modus operandi and how that translates into cognitive and situational connectedness.
The book is a "how to" and ""why you should" parlay networking skills to enable a greater good.
Though written from the POV of an Ambassador in international settings and circumstances, I got the impression that if one picks up on the themes and techniques - one could improve one's lot in life personally, career, and in business, overall.
Enjoyed the blunt, straight forward, A-political nature of the discussions, and picked up (learned ) where the Ambassador stopped short of going to far, after he had made his point.
Excellent insite into how/why certain international situations happenned, and gives suggestions as to how some may have been avoided, without sounding like a monday morning quarterback. More. like lesssons for us to observe for the next time.