Book Reviews

2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1140-1142

Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University reviews, “The Prosperity of Vice: A Worried View of Economics” by Daniel Cohen. The EconLit Abstract of this book begins: “English translation of La prospérité du vice: Une introduction (inquiète) à l'économie (2009). Examines the immaterial globalization of information technology as an answer to the risks of perpetual economic growth. Discusses genesis; the birth of the modern world; Malthus's law; unbound Prometheus; perpetual growth; the economic consequences of the war; the great crisis and its lessons; the golden age and its crisis; the end of solidarities; war and peace; the return of India and China; the end of history and the West; the ecological crash; the financial crash; and the weightless economy. Cohen is Professor of Economics at the École Normale Supérieure and the University of Paris I. Index.”

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Zaprulkhan Zaprulkhan

Abstract: In 1989 Francis Fukuyama with his article The End of History? In the journal The National Interest revolves a speculative thesis that after the West conquered its ideological rival, hereditary monarchy, fascism and communism, the constellation of the world of international politics reached a remarkable consensus to liberal democracy. A few years later, Samuel P. Huntington came up with a more provocative thesis that ideological-based war would be a civilization-based war in his article, The Clash of Civilizations? In the journal Foreign Affairs. It reveals that in the future the world will be shaped by interactions among the seven or eight major civilizations of Western civilization: Confucius, Japan, Islam, Hinduism, Orthodox Slavs, Latin America and possibly Africa. Huntington directed the West to pay particular attention to Islam, for Islam is the only civilization with great potential to shake Western civilization. Departing from the above hypotheses, this paper will specifically discuss the bias of Fukuyama and Huntington's thesis on Islam, and how its solution to build a dialogue of civilization by taking the paradigm of dialogue from Ibn Rushd and Raghib As-Sirjani. Abstrak: Pada tahun 1989 Francis Fukuyama dengan artikelnya The End of History? Dalam jurnal The National Interest revolusioner tesis spekulatif bahwa setelah Barat telah menaklukkan lawan-lawan ideologisnya, monarki herediter, fasisme dan komunisme, konstelasi politik internasional mencapai konsensus yang luar biasa untuk demokrasi liberal. Beberapa tahun kemudian, Samuel P. Huntington muncul dengan tesis yang lebih provokatif bahwa perang berbasis ideologis akan menjadi perang berbasis peradaban dalam artikelnya, The Clash of Civilisations? Dalam jurnal Luar Negeri. Ini mengungkapkan bahwa di masa depan akan dibentuk oleh interaksi antara tujuh atau delapan peradaban utama peradaban Barat: Konfusius, Jepang, Islam, Hindu, Slavia Ortodoks, Amerika Latin dan mungkin Afrika. Perhatian Huntington pada Islam adalah potensi terpenting untuk mengguncang peradaban Barat. Berangkat dari hipotesis di atas, makalah ini akan secara khusus membahas bias tesis Fukuyama dan Huntington tentang Islam, dan bagaimana mereka akan mengambil paradigma dialog dari Ibn Rushd dan Raghib As-Sirjani.


2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-792

Edwin S. Mills of Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University reviews “Lectures on Urban Economics” by Jan K. Brueckner. The EconLit abstract of the reviewed work begins: Presents a rigorous but nontechnical treatment of major topics in urban economics. Discusses why cities exist; analyzing urban spatial structure; modifications of the urban model; urban sprawl and land-use controls; freeway congestion; housing demand and tenure choice; housing policies; local public goods and services; pollution; crime; and urban quality-of-life measurement. Brueckner is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine. Index.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-130
Author(s):  
Helga Druxes ◽  
Christopher Thomas Goodwin ◽  
Catriona Corke ◽  
Carol Hager ◽  
Sabine von Mering ◽  
...  

David D. Kim, Cosmopolitan Parables: Trauma and Responsibility in Contemporary Germany (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2017) Johann Chapoutot, Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe’s Classical Past, trans. Richard R. Nybakken (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016) Kimberly Mair, Guerrilla Aesthetics: Art, Memory, and the West German Urban Guerrilla (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016) David B. Audretsch and Erik E. Lehmann, The Seven Secrets of Germany: Economic Resilience in an Era of Global Turbulence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Craig Morris and Arne Jungjohann, Energy Democracy: Germany’s Energiewende to Renewables. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016) Peter Polek-Springer, Recovered Territory: A German-Polish Conflict over Land and Culture, 1919-1989 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015) Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, ed., Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar Germany and France: Comparative Perspectives (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brantly Womack

AbstractAs many distinguished academics and officials have pointed out, the current rise of China is not a completely new phenomenon, but rather the return of China to a position of regional centrality and world economic share that were considered normal less than two hundred years ago.1 This fact underlines the importance of history in putting the present into perspective, and at the same time, to the extent that all history is history of the present, it requires a reevaluation of the structure of China's traditional relationships. Hitherto, China's place in modern social science has been in an exotic corner, a failed oriental despotism. To be sure, traditional China did collapse, and today's China is a different China rising in a different world. We might assume that China is rising now precisely because of its differences from traditional China, that it is the last step toward the end of history rather than a resonance with the past. However, the convenience of such an assumption makes it suspect. If China is simply the latest avatar of Western modernity, then it requires of the West some readjustment, but not rethinking. However, the only certainty about China's rise is that it is a complex phenomenon, and the convenience of constructions such as China-as-Prussia or China-as-Meiji Japan derives from their preemption of open-ended study rather than from their insight into complexity. To the extent that China is China, both past and present require reconsideration.


2011 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1234-1237

Stephen L. Parente of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reviews “Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World” by Deirdre N. McCloskey. The EconLit abstract of the reviewed work begins, “Presents an alternate perspective on the story of modern economic growth focusing on the ideas and rhetoric surrounding markets and innovation. Provides critiques of commonly held beliefs and stories about economic history. McCloskey is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Index.”


2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1165-1167

Steven Horwitz of St. Lawrence University reviews “F. A. Hayek and the Modern Economy: Economic Organization and Activity”, by Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Ten papers, resulting from the ""Hayek and the Modern World" conference held at the University of Richmond in April 2013, explore the role of human agency in Friedrich Hayek's thought and consider his writings as they relate to economic organization and activity, particularly to assess what role he assigns to leaders in determining economic progress. Papers discuss Hayek's unsentimental liberalism (Peter McNamara); Hayek and the ""individualists" (Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy); the evolution, evaluation, and reform of social morality--a Hayekian analysis (Gerald Gaus); Hayek and the conditions of freedom (Kenneth Minogue); Hayek and the early foundations of spontaneous order (Emily Skarbek); Hayek and the nomothetes (Christopher S. Martin); the control of engagement order--Clement Attlee's road to serfdom? (Ekkehard A. Köhler and Stefan Koler); Hayekian perspectives on Canada's economic and social reforms of the 1990s (Jason Clemens and Niels Veldhuis); the conjoint quest for a liberal positive program--""Old Chicago," Freiburg, and Hayek (Andrew Farrant and Nicola Tynan); and Hayek and Václav Klaus's life (Klaus). Peart is Dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. Levy is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society.”


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 442-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
SERGEY CHUGROV

It seems that everyone has already realized that our world enters a period of fundamental changes and the formation of a new world order. Today, the question of how the modern world will develop is one of the most vital problems of international relations. Therefore, I want to once again prudently refer to the books by J. John Ikenberry and Acharya Amitav on the American World Order (AWO)? Both books represent a lucid, intelligent, and thought-provoking analysis of tectonic transformations in the world as well as a subtle foresight of certain trends.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

The writing and eventual publication of The Hasinais by Herbert Eugene Bolton, the founder of Spanish borderlands studies, has had a long and storied journey that is well-laid out in an introduction by Russell Magnaghi, the editor of the original 1987 hardback and 2002 paperback editions of the book. Bolton became interested in the Hasinai Caddo peoples of East Texas shortly after he arrived at The University of Texas at Austin in 1901, as he became aware “that American history had always involved the Indians and that, as he began to study southwestern history, he also had to study the ethnology of the region." Through various twists and turns, he had the present book-length manuscript virtually completely written and ready for submittal to the Smithsonian Institution in 1907. Unfortunately, the manuscript was then put aside by Bolton as he moved on to other borderlands historical work on the West Coast and California and he never completed it. Parts of it were used by William J. Griffith, one of Bolton’s students, in his 1942 dissertation “The Spanish Occupation of the Hasinai Country, 1690-1737,” and then in a later monograph on the Hasinai, but it was Russell Magnaghi who took up the task of editing the book manuscript in 1971.


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