United Kingdom Books

For decades now books and articles have theorized on british industrial decline (or "relative decline"). Culprits have been pointed: unions, poor management, nationalization, the education system and more. Geoffrey owen names all them but with the insight of distance he presentes a more balanced view. Failure to enter the EEC with consequent focus on the commonwealth and government mismanagement of nationalized industries and constant bail out of lame ducks drove to a loss of competitiveness on the world stage with consequent market loss. The entrance to the common market in 1973 and the thatcher reforms of the eighties forced firms to adapt and become international players on a globalized economy with the success we today now. But what makes this book stand out most is its analysis of industry by industry, ilustrated with real stories of dozens of firms, wich gives a vivid picture tha lacks so much in other texts. A good book, lucid, concise, recomended.

This excellent, thorough and generally very readable study of Britain's manufacturing industry since World War II well exceeded my expectations of it on first picking up the book at the library. This book attempts to analyse the reasons for the failures and successes of a variety of industries, and puts all the case studies in a historical context which is meticulously researched. Given the subject matter, the author could easily have opted to grind the axe for one political ideology over another, but refrains from doing so, which I found refreshing. All-in-all I came away from reading this book with a much clearer understanding of why manufacturing in Britain has fared as it has since 1945. This book is impressive, and I recommend it highly.

This book is very useful for practitioners interested in using economy wide models for planning or in particular for the energy sector. Explanations are clear, there are many practical data and analysis and the application is elaborate. There are many scientific and economic details which will be useful for most readers. The survey of literature is still very useful.

The book consists of the following chapters: 1.British Energy Problem and its Solution; 2. A Discovery Model of Oil Reserves in the UK Sector of the North Sea; 3. The Multisectoral Econometric Model including the energy system; 4. State-Variable Form of the Econometric Model, Stochastic Simulation and Control; 5. Stochastic and Deterministic Solution of the Model.

Given the lack of reviews I suspect this book has not been given the attention it deserves.

Tony Thompson is a fabulous author, and writes very candidly and openly about the gang issues plaguing Britain. However, these issues are not just the UK's problem, rather, it's a microcosm of what's happening everywhere on the planet! Tony delves right into the thick of things, interviewing many criminals and researching many events -hands on - to bring together an excellent book covering many gang issues (listed below). Each event is told to us through vignettes; interesting stories that could easily spin off to be books of their own, or movies even!

I really encourage people to read this book. It's a fascinating fast read that keeps you glued from beginning to end. I was particularly fascinated with the Nigerian 419 Scam; if you can't relate to any of the other issues, you can probably relate to those annoying e-mails received trying to get you to assist some helpless soul (typically from Nigeria) with retrieving their non-existent money from a foreign bank. The author recounts a first hand experience that's quite interesting.

Unfortunately this book does leave you feeling a bit unsettled with no resolutions to the crime problems.

1. Introduction
2. Armed Robbery
3. Cocaine
4. Crack
5. Fraud
6. Hi-Tech Crime
7. Bikers
8. Cannabis
9. Money-Laundering
10. Heroin
11. Synthetic Drugs
12. People-Smuggling
13. Kidnap
14. Guns
15. Index

This guy has to be nuts. He researched all his material by going face to face with real criminals who have ties to the underworld. He even smokes crack with a prostitute..

By far the most interesting section was the weed smuggling chapter. I am fascinated by the drug trade in general, and its interesting to see just how similiar things are over here in the states.

There's a chapter on crack, and how it was created to market to lower class society as cocaine sales were declining. Its interesting to view crack by a business standpoint, and as someone who has come from a troubled past and having grown up in a lower income San Antonio neighborhood, it really is quite frightening.

Overall, this was indeed a good read. I bought this book for about 15 USD in the Hong Kong airport, and it has been worth every cent. I have to admit I was surprised by how many things are linked to the underground.

I first viewed this book at my local library and after going over it, decided to purchase it for my own personal library. The book covers a wide expanse of gardens in Britain, Ireland and not mentioned in the title, Scotland. Book does not give in depth information about layouts of gardens and such, but does contain one or two pics of mentioned gardens and locations in write ups. The photographs are simply beautiful.
The gardens in England are broken down into sectors, such as south-east England or North England for those who may be going to visit. Often, they contain pictures of the manor houses, cottages, castles or architectural elements in the gardens.The book also includes antedotal information about past occupants of houses, gardens or historical events surrounding the houses and gardens. For me, that added immensely to the overall enjoyment of the book. It's a winner.

This large and attractive book is a reference book on over 1,700 of the most beautiful gardens in the British Isles. The largest part of the book is the Guide, in which public-available gardens are discussed, complete with colorful pictures. Grouped by region, each of the gardens is given a quick introduction, a more in-depth description, and important information, including location, size and when open. After the Guide comes the Gazetteer, in which the author looks at many different gardens, including some still privately held and those belonging to cemeteries and hospitals.

Overall, I found this to be a very enjoyable book. I really liked reading the descriptions of the gardens, and the interesting historical notes. The one thing that would have made this book better would have been more pictures. But, it is already a pretty hefty book, and I do realize that adding more pictures would have made it huge.

But, that said this is a very interesting book, especially for anyone who plans on being able to visit these wonderful gardens themselves.

Whether you are an armchair traveler who loves gardens or international traveler in search of the most beautiful gardens in England and Wales, this book both satisfies the craving for reading about this topic and whets the appetite for more. These private gardens, opened to visits to help raise funds for this charitable organizaton, are described in detail with dates and times they are open, admission fees, directions, parking and what is available to partake of, such as teas and music. There are several pages of beautiful color photographs. This is one book that will be packed in the suitcase or tucked by the garden lover's chair. It's a book I love and never tire of going through time and again.

If you are planning a trip to England and/or Wales and want to know which gardens are open on what days, plus which of those days selected gardens are open for charity, this is the book to buy. GARDENS OPEN FOR CHARITY (2003) is updated every year. The 2003 version is sponsored by "Carr Sheppards and Crosthaite" and contains every thing the avid gardener and/or garden lover and/or visitor will want to have on hand to plan a vacation, a weekend excursion, or a day out. I ordered the 2003 version of the "yellow book" from Amazon-UK and received it very quickly.

Gardens open almost every day through the year, or the growing season plus those only open for special events are included. You can obtain information about all kinds of gardens including the Botanic Gardens (Oxford University) and Hidcote Manor Garden in Chipping Camden (National Trust) that are accessible most of the time to privately owned gardens such as Lambeth Palace (Archbishop of Canterbury) that are only open to the public on special occasions.

England and Wales are divided into shires and maps are shown for each jurisdiction. The gardens discussed in the catalogue are noted on the map. This is one of the best if not the best guide you will find to gardens in the U.K.

It seems to be commonly believed that Alexander the Great was sexually attracted to both young men and to women. (In fact I've heard that the Greek govenment is suing the recent TV production for claimin this.)

In this book Professor King traces the transition of a society which had subordinated all men, women and boys to higher ranked males to one founded in sexuality. He explores the subject through literature, through the actors on stage, and in portraits from the time.

I found particularily interesting his intrepretation of the many times in Shakespeare's plays that a woman and/or young man exchange identities. (It is perhaps significant that the author worked as a stage manager in Chicago before his teaching career.) This is likely to be a seminal book in gender studies for some years.

King historicizes male sexuality in the Gendering of Men and in so doing challenges those histories that have treated masculinity and male sexuality as a transhistorical given and not as a social construct/ideology that serves specific political (patriarchal) purposes.

Gender theorists, like Judith Butler, have long assumed that gender is performative. That is to say one might be born with a particular sex organ but "gender" is not determined by that sex organ. Thus Butler maintains that gender is not what one is; its what one does. In short "gender" is not a natural category but a practice. Butler argues that gender identity is performative because one constructs what one is in specific social-historical contexts. And those contexts are always changing. In Butler's account new contingencies are always emerging and thus new selves are always emerging in response to new conditions of possibility. However, this does not mean that the individual has any kind of agency in the process for the performativity of masculinity and femininity can be coerced. In fact Butler and King argue that notions of gender (as well as gendered notions of privacy) are underwritten by patriarchal structures.

King argues that in early modern England (1600-1750) body practices were strictly regulated by a pederastic social structure; and that different social spaces/places required the enactment of different body practices. And that because body practices were enacted within a power continuum sexuality was not seen to indicate a particular subjectivity or agency or privacy but rather ones body practices were determined by where one happened to be placed in that power continuum. According to King in a pederastic order (courtier society) both male and female subjects presented themselves as objects for the Kings gaze in hopes of gaining favor. Since a pederastic society is one where status is everything masculinity per se was not yet the marker of privacy, subjectivity and autonomy that later epochs would construe it to be.

Many historians mark the long eighteenth century as the moment when two things emerged: privacy and heteronormative sexuality. (Many Renaissance scholars would argue that these things existed long before the long eighteenth century). The key argument of Kings book, however, is that "privacy", "sexuality" and "gender" (including notions of interiority, masculinity, feminininity, and the companionate marriage) emerge in resistance to courtly pederastic practices. In Kings account these things all arise as one emergent historical regime defines itself against another residual one.

The most prominent history of the rise of the middle class in early modern England is Jurgen Habermas's. King finds Habermas's widely accepted account whereby (mostly male) subjects become aware of themselves as newly autonomous subjects while reading novels in private to be suspect. King finds that Habermas's account tends to assume that reading practices allow men and women to reflect upon an already existent heterosexual subjectivity. King, on the other hand, sees subjectivity as an effect created and determined by new market relations. This is a key difference between Habermas and King because King, after Butler, believes men and women do not simply read to reflect upon an already existent heterosexual subjectivity but that reading practices, body practices, cultural practices etc...are constitutive acts.

Habermas assumes a sameness and consistency in all male desire throughout history and he assumes that all male desire is always already heterosexual and thus Habermas fails to read gender and gendered notions of privacy as historically constituted categories. Habermas also fails to account for the fact that a diverse population of emergent male and female subjectivities may respond to the same historical conditions and each other in vastly different ways. Kings takes into consideration both residual and emergent gender differentials and so his account allows for much more subtle and nuanced (and much more interesting) readings of seventeenth and eighteenth century texts and the residual and emergent subjectivities that they describe.

It is to the theatre (instead of the novel, Habermas's form of choice) that King looks for evidence of an ongoing attempt to produce/evolve/negotiate/regulate/disrupt/enforce notions of subjectivity (ie gender practices, gendered notions of privacy); it is also to the theatre that King looks for the political causes/implications of these new practices.

A fascinating book.

Gentleman Spies: Intelligence Agents In The British Empire And Beyond by historian John Fisher is a truly fascinating and informative look at political undermining between nations since before the first world war. The evolution of a British foreign intelligence bureau, originally called SIS and which later evolved into the legendary MI6, whose mission was to specifically provide vital information about activities stemming from the furthest corners of the British empire, is presented with incredible anecdotal tales of intrigue and deceit. An amazing, deftly researched look at the cutthroat machinations of international history, Gentleman Spies is totally absorbing reading from first page to last!

Gentleman Spies: Intelligence Agents In The British Empire And Beyond by historian John Fisher is a truly fascinating and informative look at political undermining between nations since before the first world war. The evolution of a British foreign intelligence bureau, originally called SIS and which later evolved into the legendary MI6, whose mission was to specifically provide vital information about activities stemming from the furthest corners of the British empire, is presented with incredible anecdotal tales of intrigue and deceit. An amazing, deftly researched look at the cutthroat machinations of international history, Gentleman Spies is totally absorbing reading from first page to last!

I read a Hard back copy from the local library and could not believe it. I loved this bio. I have read many other biographies and books on the Stuart and Hanover Dynasties of Britain but most were from Charles II and the pretenders and George III through Victoria. George I seems to be remembered as the British King who really didn't care; He took his time accepting the throne, refused to learn English, ran away to Hanover every chance he got and only wanted English money proven by the South Sea Bubble scandal. This book gives us more. A lot more. It shows the who and why, it dispels the stories I have listed above and gives us the man, flesh, blood and emotions. He becomes a real and more understood human than just an uncaring figure from history. I highly recommend this book. It is a great read. I didn't want to put it down. It flows easy and gives enough detail and background to keep you moving through history and his life without bogging you down. All those, Jacobites included :) who do not know George I outside of the usual should read this book. I can't say enough about it.

The author's writing style is easy to follow, without being simplistic and her grasp of the historical issues of the period is excellent.

She presents a great deal of information about the women involved in the history of George, which is unusual for a historian of the Hanovers.

The book is approachable without an in-depth knowledge of the German principalities (though this obviously helps).

Solidly recommended.

This is a fine introduction to the problems of 1688/89. The discussion of quite contentious issues is admirably judicious, and Miller is very sensitive to the long-term implications of the events he describes. In addition, Miller provides a very strong collection of supporting documents: while each of the "Seminar Series" includes some primary sources, this is one of the best collections in the series. 1688 is a crucial event in political history, and Miller provides an excellent way to begin a study of the subject.

This is the best short introduction to England's 1688 revolution and the consequences that flowed from it. It is an updated version of an earlier edition, and it pays greater attention than its predecessor to the revolution in England's public finances that stemmed from 1688. It also has new material on Scotland and Ireland. The choice of original documents to accompany the text is excellent.

Volume 7 of the "Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier", Gold Rush Saints is an extensively researched history drawing heavily upon documents and primary sources to chronicle the role that Mormons played and the effect they had in California during the Gold Rush era. The text is scholarly in tone yet accessible to lay readers as it presents exciting stories of travel, cooperation, success, and destitution. Focusing especially upon influential and charismatic Mormon personalities, the hardships they endured and the legacies they contributed to, Gold Rush Saints is a welcome and seminal contribution to American and California history shelves.

From 1846-1857 Mormons shaped events in California: they were the first American settlers of San Francisco. Narrative history blends with documentary accounts on California Mormon history: first-person accounts of early pioneers provide new insights on gold rush history and experiences. Chapters survey social and political controversies of the time between Mormons and between Mormons and other groups, examine the roles they played in settling California and overcoming the state's isolation, and include insights from the pioneers themselves. An excellent addition to California history.