This is a must have book for anyone who studies European Integration. This is an excellent first look into the role of political parties at the European Union level. In addition to providing a description of organization and activity of parties in the EU, the authors' analysis of parties' positions is great. The authors provide a new framework for studying the EU through the lens of party politics.

George and Bache provide a very readable and informative overview of all the main questions connected with the EU. The layout is particularly well done and enhances the effectiveness of the text.

The authors start with a discussion of the main actors in the EU (Commission, Council, Parliament, Commitee of the Regions and Economic and Social Commitee) but also include such timely topics as the question of legitimacy or the concept of multilevel governance and other theoretical approaches to European integration. A separate chapter focuses on organised interests.

In part 2 the authors provide a well-structured overview of relevant policy areas. All in all, this book can be recommended as a well written introduction to European (EU) studies.

'St. Clair Blob' rekindled in new book

review written BY CALE COWAN Courier Press staff

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This is Environment Week. What better time to revisit the 10-year-old controversy that came floating down the St. Clair River? The issue of the infamous 'St. Clair Blob' that focused the country's environmental ire on the region came to a head in 1985 when Dow Chemical spilled 40,000 litres of dry-cleaning solvent into the river. The resulting 'blob' demonstrated just how poorly the St. Clair had been treated.

It's a decade later and things are better but not as good as they could be, according to some of the players who were around in the day. Adding to the nostalgia of the event is a book published earlier this spring by PhD Laurie E. Adkin that has a chapter dealing with the 'blob', along with the industry, government and media reaction. Some of the conclusions drawn in Chapter 11 of 'Politics of Sustainable Development -- Citizens, Unions and the Corporations' are less than flattering. An excerpt: "The story of the blob uncovered not only the extent of long-term chemical dumping in the river but also the degree of collusion between officials of the (Ministry of Environment) and the chemical industry."

Publicly revealed in 1984, Adkin said the blob was actually known to MOE officials since 1976. Adkin, who did extensive research in the area during the fallout of the discovery, also recounts how citizen groups and unions dealt with the environmental impact and how they dealt with industry in their desire to clean up the river and preserve jobs. Adkin writes: "Dow had undertaken a campaign to woo over to its point of view the citizen 'thought leaders' in communities downstream of the Chemical Valley. Shortly after the blob incident had broken in the media and had resulted in the shutdown of the water purification plants in downstream communities like Wallaceburg, Dow scientists and managers we! nt to Wallaceburg to reassure citizens that everything was under control. "They found that their audience was not prepared, this time, to accept either their assurances or their authority." Kris Lee, a member of the Wallaceburg Clean Water Committee at the time, has read Adkin's book and feels it's an accurate depiction of what happened here.

"It's a credit to Wallaceburg," she said of the book and the recollection of how citizens here stood up to protect a natural resource. Lee said interest in the problem has faded since spills have become less of a media event but also concedes that "Sarnia has really cleaned up" since the problems they had in the 1980s. Part of that has been due in no small part to a downsizing in the petro-chemical industry, but is also partly due to self-policing in the industry and a greater appreciation for protecting the environment, said Lee, who is a teacher at Wallaceburg District Secondary School.

There are still concerns today, however, like ICI Canada, which recently got permission from the environment ministry to discharge treated waste water into the St. Clair. And with cuts in all government agencies, Lee says it's just as important today for residents to remain diligent in keeping an eye on what's happening. "We can't stop them from discharging ... but we can make sure they monitor it and speak with ICI and find out what's going on. "People say that today there are not as many spills but you have to remember that every day tons of contaminants are allowed into that river. People seem to forget." Things are better now, Lee says, but there are signs that indicate a watch dog approach is necessary. With Wallaceburg's former town council taking an "arm's length" approach to the ICI issue and accepting a $1.5 million compensation package, more than ever it seems that environmental concerns are in the realm of the individual.

"We have to have people more aware of what's going on," Lee ! said.

To help understand the complexity of organized crime and how it effects all of us, this is a must read. Cleveland's roots in the Labor Unions, the Jewish Crime Syndicate and modern day Mafia runs deep and Friedman was bold enough to discuss his trials and tribulations within those ranks. Schwarz captures Friedman's struggles with betrayal amongst his "family" and his quest to ultimately do the right thing. Allen Friedman was not one to pull punches- he tells it like it was.

Here is an amazing Patriotic War diary of a world-renowned Russian heart surgeon. As a young medical graduate, Dr. Amosov volunteered for the front, where he was given charge of a horse-drawn mobile field hospital (PPG). The inexperienced young surgeon and his newly arrived staff of physicians and nurses were immediately innundated by masses of wounded. Working up to eighteen hours a day, they developed new lifesaving techniques under the most appalling aseptic and primitive conditions. As they continuously relocated with the fluctuating front, their "hospital" was hurriedly established in dugouts, peasant huts, barns, and burned-out buildings. Wounded arrived stacked on carts, packed into trucks and boxcars, or by ambulance-biplane, after having received only the most basic treatment from battlefield aidwomen. Under the roaring of artillery and aircraft, Dr. Amosov fought his own four-year war against hemorrhage, gaseous gangrene, frostbite, and lice. His grim accounts of injuries, suffering, and death are at times almost unbearable. But overall, his memoir is a tribute to the courage and determination of his Soviet people: his patients and overworked staff, heroes all. This is a truly inspiring book. It reads like a fast-paced novel. Those who enjoy true-life medical adventure stories will appreciate it. History buffs will recognize the locales and various defeats and victories of the Red Army, as PPG-2266 follows the front lines. From Barbarossa to the Fall of Berlin, Dr. Amosov's journal provides an unforgetable, physician's view of the Eastern Front and its cost in human lives.

For those who grew up under that shadow of the iron curtain, the changes that took place around the globe in the late 1980's and early 1990's were truly amazing, none more so than the splintering of the Soviet Union. Journalist Philip Yancey writes an exciting account of his visit to the former USSR with a group called Project Christian Bridge. Formerly an atheistic society, the Soviets had actually extended an invitation to the Christian group because of the moral erosion in their society, finding that they lacked an ethical foundation for rebuilding. PRAYING WITH THE KGB tells a remarkable story. The book is short enough to be read in one sitting. Exciting and highly recommended.

Poor Ivan Goncharov! He was fated to become the Salieri of 19th century Russian literature. Thematic similarities between _The Precipice_, which he regarded as his masterwork, and _Fathers and Sons_, which Turgenev rightly regarded as his, led to a falling-out between the two authors, friends until then.

Yet _The Precipice_ is, perhaps because of its slightly campy air to modern audiences, a very enjoyable read today. It features:

--characters with programmatic names decodable to those with a basic knowledge of Russian (for example, the heroine is "Vera," or "Faith"; the bad-boy protagonist is "Volkov," or "Wolf");

--a plot containing seduction, betrayal, redemption, and secrets of the generation of elders (there's more implied sex here than in all of Turgenev);

--serious discussion of ideas that were to set Russia afire within fifty years, much as did _Fathers and Sons_.

Not as challenging, perhaps, as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Goncharov is far from a waste of time for the reader with an interest in the impact of philosophy on literature in the nineteenth century. Read it if you can find it.

A Present Of Things Past is a careful selection of ten essays about the military and political aspects of American and world history, ranging from Second World War and the Dwight Eisenhower administration through Ronald Reagan's presidency, and the former Soviet Union's reformers from Lenin to Gorbachev. Written acerbically and persuasively by noted critic and historian Theodore Draper, A Present Of Things Past is especially recommended for students of political science, the Cold War era, and twentieth century American history as a powerful, thought-provoking view of the people and events that shaped nations, and through nations the world. Includes such attention-grabbing essays as "American Hubris", "Reagan's Junta", and "Neoconservative History".

A fascinating photo study of how two nations used photography to push their own political agenda. Author Bendavid-Val sums it up as...'The moral Russian individual was called upon to yeild unselfishly to his people. Americans on the other hand believed that the individual had a basic right to act aggressively on his own behalf, to make his own future...'.

The book starts with a super twenty-four pages of photos, each spread has a Soviet photo facing an American one, both dealing with the same subject, children, street scenes, farm workers, power stations, in a bar, shop windows etc. They do look very similar, least at first glance!

The essence of the book are two portfolios of black and white photos, first the Soviets with seventy-seven then the Americans with seventy-four, they are mostly one to a page and beautifully printed.

The author explains in an illustrated essay the thinking behind taking pictures for propaganda, this could turn out to be a bit of a hazard in the old Soviet Union where creative folk could become non-people as happened to photo-editor Lazar Mezhericher, declared a saboteur in 1937 and photographer Yakov Khalip who had the misfortune to take portraits of NKVD boss Nikolai Yezhov who vanished one fine day, also in 1937. Khalip's work was suddenly tainted!
Incidentally 'The Commissar Vanishes' by David King is an interesting book about the falsification of photos in Stalin's Russia

What the author does not cover is why the American photos are technically so much better than the Soviet ones. I assume this has to do with Roy Stryker's very tight shooting scripts that he made his photographers follow. Also the output of the FSA had to compete with commercial images from ad agencies and the like. The Soviet photographers would hardly have had to worry about such competition and so their photos were much more subjective and creative. Strangely a lot of the American photos were taken in the early forties, despite the book title refering to photography in the 1930s.

Unfortunately there is no index or bibliography, which I would have expected. In the 'Listomania' section of my...'see more about me' page I have made a Top-Ten list of books about about FSA photographs.

Leah Bendavid-Val is to be congratulated on producing an excellent book about documentary photogrphy during the 1930s. These photographs are some of the greatest ever taken.

The Psalty character is awesome, Psalty always finds the right things to do. He turns to the Bible and usually fixes his problems. They also have a great line of videos for kids, children love Psalty.