Amazon.co.uk Review
In the post-war period, the CIA funded not just the right-wing bits of European intellectual life but also the centre, in order to detach intellectuals from the Left, and this book tells us how. It is touching on the career of Michael Josselson, the principal intellectual bagman who in 1950 became the Congress' Administrative Secretary, and his eventual betrayal by various people like Stephen Spender who scapegoated him. Sanders demonstrates that, in the early days, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the emergent CIA were less dominated by the far right than they later became, and that the idea of helping out progressive moderates--rather than being Machiavellian--actually appealed to the men at the top.
Many intellectuals were still drawn to Stalin's Russia. Saunders superbly traces the crisis of conscience that McCarthyism and its associated bookburning in US libraries caused, and the subsequent rise of more moderate ideals. Saunders does not discuss the way the cult of Kennedy grows out of the same soil as a lot of this stuff--he was an excuse to love America after all. This is an exhaustive account, which, despite neglecting some important side issues, is an essential book. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Synopsis
During the Cold War, writers and artists were faced with a huge challenge. In the Soviet world, they were expected to turn out works that glorified militancy, struggle and relentless optimism. In the West, freedom of expression was vaunted as liberal democracy's most cherished possession. But such freedom could carry a cost. This book documents the extraordinary energy of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West were instruments - whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not - of America's secret service.

"Amexica" provides the first full account of the terror unfolding along the US-Mexico border. An area of land more than 2,000 miles long and 100 miles wide - effectively a country in its own right - has become a battleground. Drugs, guns and killings are the currency of everyday existence as an ever-escalating narco-war explodes out of control. In the last three years more than 23,000 people have been murdered in Amexica as criminal drug cartels fight each other - with ever more inventive twists of violence - for pre-eminence in the 'plazas' - the rivers of narcotics flowing into America, and for consumption in Mexico itself. The war is a grotesque pastiche of the globalised economy: the cartels are inextricably bound up with sweatshop factories, with the smuggling of guns south from the US, with the entertainment industry and with the mass abduction and exploitation of women. This is both the busiest and most deadly frontier in the world, studded with guard-posts, infra-red searchlights and heavily armed patrols. It's a war that's scarcely reported - a war that's being fought, with thousands dying and millions of lives blighted, so that Europe and America can get high. Journalist Ed Vulliamy has long had a love-hate relationship with Amexica - the place and its people. For four months he went on a road trip zigzagging along the entire border. This is the story of that journey and of the visits that preceded it; of the causes and consequences of the war and its impact on the everyday life which somehow goes on around it.

This well-accepted introduction to computational geometry is a textbook for high-level undergraduate and low-level graduate courses. The focus is on algorithms and hence the book is well suited for students in computer science and engineering. Motivation is provided from the application areas: all solutions and techniques from computational geometry are related to particular applications in robotics, graphics, CAD/CAM, and geographic information systems. For students this motivation will be especially welcome. Modern insights in computational geometry are used to provide solutions that are both efficient and easy to understand and implement. All the basic techniques and topics from computational geometry, as well as several more advanced topics, are covered. The book is largely self-contained and can be used for self-study by anyone with a basic background in algorithms. In this third edition, besides revisions to the second edition, new sections discussing Voronoi diagrams of line segments, farthest-point Voronoi diagrams, and realistic input models have been added.

In order to thoroughly understand what makes Linux tick and why it works so well on a wide variety of systems, you need to delve deep into the heart of the kernel. The kernel handles all interactions between the CPU and the external world, and determines which programs will share processor time, in what order. It manages limited memory so well that hundreds of processes can share the system efficiently, and expertly organizes data transfers so that the CPU isn't kept waiting any longer than necessary for the relatively slow disks. The third edition of Understanding the Linux Kernel takes you on a guided tour of the most significant data structures, algorithms, and programming tricks used in the kernel. Probing beyond superficial features, the authors offer valuable insights to people who want to know how things really work inside their machine. Important Intel-specific features are discussed. Relevant segments of code are dissected line by line. But the book covers more than just the functioning of the code; it explains the theoretical underpinnings of why Linux does things the way it does. This edition of the book covers Version 2.6 , which has seen significant changes to nearly every kernel subsystem, particularly in the areas of memory management and block devices. The book focuses on the following topics: * Memory management, including file buffering, process swapping, and Direct memory Access (DMA) * The Virtual Filesystem layer and the Second and Third Extended Filesystems * Process creation and scheduling * Signals, interrupts, and the essential interfaces to device drivers * Timing * Synchronization within the kernel * Interprocess Communication (IPC) * Program execution Understanding the Linux Kernel will acquaint you with all the inner workings of Linux, but it's more than just an academic exercise. You'll learn what conditions bring out Linux's best performance, and you'll see how it meets the challenge of providing good system response during process scheduling, file access, and memory management in a wide variety of environments. This book will help you make the most of your Linux system.

Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013
In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives.
The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment-subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends-provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point.
A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.

In his thousand-day presidency, John F. Kennedy led America throuh one of its most difficult and potentially explosive areas. With the Cold War at its height and the threat of communist advances in Europe and the Third World, Kennedy had the unenviable task of maintaining US solidarity without leading the western world into a nuclear catastrophe. In 'Kennedy's Wars', noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents to illuminate Kennedy's approach to war and his efforts for peace. He recreates insightfully the political and intellectual milieu of the foreign policy establishment during Kennedy's era with vivid profiles of his top advisors - Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Robert Kennedy - and influential figures such as Dean Acheson and Walt Rostow. Tracing the evolution of traditional liberalism into the Cold War liberalism of Kennedy's cabinet, Freedman evaluates their responses to the tensions in Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. He gives each conflict individual attention, showing how foreign policy decisions came to be defined for each new crisis in the light of those that had gone before. Readers will follow Kennedy as he wrestles with the succession of major conflicts - taking advice, weighing the risks of inadvertently escalating the Cold War into outright military confrontation, exploring diplomatic options, and forming strategic judgements that would eventually prevent a major war during his presidency. 'Kennedy's Wars' offers a dynamic and human portrait of Kennedy under pressure: a political leader shaped by the ideas of his time, conscious of his vulnerability to electoral defeat but also of his nation's vulnerability to nuclear war. Military and Kennedy enthusiasts will find its balanced consideration of the president's foreign policy and provocative 'what if' scenarios invaluable keys to understanding his accomplishments, failures, and enduring legacy.

本书为菲利普·内莫《古典与中世纪政治思想史》的第三卷。作者系法国当代著名哲学、政治学教授，毕业于法国圣克鲁高师，现为巴黎高等商学院一欧洲管理学院的教授兼巴黎高等商学院经济哲学研究中心的负责人。1998年，《古典与中世纪政治思想史》作为“基础丛书”的分册出版。此后，本书与该丛书中2002年出版的《现当代政治思想史》组合为“战车（Quadrige）丛书”。自此以后，“政治观念史教程”便成为法国各个大学、研究机构经典的教学用书。 本书首先详尽地论述了居住于古代近东地区的希伯来人的历史，以及包含在他们的古代经典中的政治思想。作者认为希伯来人的古代经典中的政治思想迥异于古代希腊、罗马人的政治思想，由于经历了中世纪，来自“耶路撒冷”的新的道德因素与来自雅典和罗马的公民遗产终于真正融合在一起；于是欧洲致力于科学及社会进步的现代才有可能取得长足进步，并以自由民主制为典范组织起来，国家的权力受到限定与限制。本书最值得瞩目之处在于作者对《圣经》中所包含的政治思想的详细、深入而准确的论述。

《民主与城邦的衰落》为法国政治学教授菲利普·内莫《古典与中世纪政治思想史》的第一卷。民主与城邦的兴衰是探究古希腊政治历史的潜在线索，也是古希腊寡头派思想家们思索的一项主题。《民主与城邦的衰落》详尽地阐述了柏拉图、亚里士多德、色诺芬、伊索克拉底、德谟斯提尼等古希腊思想家的生平、作品、各自学说中的主要论点及其架构。

本书为菲利普·内莫《古典与中世纪政治思想史》的第二卷。作者系法国当代著名哲学、政治学教授，毕业于法国圣克鲁高师，现为巴黎高等商学院一欧洲管理学院的教授兼巴黎高等商学院经济哲学研究中心的负责人。1998年，《古典与中世纪政治思想史》作为“基础丛书”的分册出版。此后，本书与该丛书中2002年出版的《现当代政治思想史》组合为“战车（Quadrige）丛书”。自此以后，“政治观念史教程”便成为法国各个大学、研究机构经典的教学用书。 本书首先围绕着罗马共和国的兴盛与罗马帝国的崛起，线条鲜明地勾勒了整部罗马人的历史。在向读者论述罗马历史的同时。本书作者着重介绍了罗马法的各项重要内容，包括其起源发展，各个历史阶段的诉讼程式，以及罗马公法和私法的各项内容。