This compelling contribution to contemporary debates about the banking industry offers a unique perspective on its geographical and conceptual 'placement'. It traces the evolving links between the two, revealing how our notions of banking 'productiveness' have evolved alongside the shifting loci of banking activity. An original contribution to the urgent debates taking place on banking sparked by the current economic crisis Offers a unique perspective on the geographical and social concept of 'placement' of the banking industry Combines theoretical approaches from political economy with contemporary literature on the performativity of economics Details the globalization of Western banking, and analyzes how representations of the banking sector's productiveness have shifted throughout the evolution of Western economic theory Analyzes the social conceptualization of the nature -- and value -- of the banking industry Illuminates not only how economic ideas 'perform' and shape the economic world, but how those ideas are themselves always products of particular economic realities

This book is a groundbreaking study of the historical reasons for the divergence in public health policies adopted in Britain, France, Germany and Sweden, and the spectrum of responses to the threat of contagious diseases such as cholera, smallpox and syphilis. In particular the book examines the link between politics and prevention. Did the varying political regimes influence the styles of precaution adopted? Or was it, as Peter Baldwin argues, a matter of more basic differences between nations, above all their geographic placement in the epidemiological trajectory of contagion, that helped shape their responses and their basic assumptions about the respective claims of the sick and of society, and fundamental political decisions for and against different styles of statutory intervention? Thus the book seeks to use medical history to illuminate broader questions of the development of statutory intervention and the comparative and divergent evolution of the modern state in Europe.

There is much heated rhetoric about the widening gulf between Europe and America. According to the American right, Europeans are lazy, defeatist and irreligious, while Americans are entrepreneurial, optimistic, and pious. And according to Europeans, America is harsh, dominated by the market, crime-ridden, violent, and sharp-elbowed. But are the US and Europe so different? Peter Baldwin, one of the world's leading historians of comparative social policy, thinks not, and in this bracingly argued but remarkably informed polemic, he lays out how similar the two continents really are. Drawing on the latest evidence from sources such as the United Nations, the World Bank, IMF, and other international organizations, Baldwin offers a fascinating comparison of the United States and Europe, looking at the latest statistics on the economy, crime, health care, education and culture, religion, the environment, and much more. It is a book filled with surprising revelations. For most categories of crime, for instance, America is safe and peaceful by European standards. But the biggest surprise is that, though there are many differences between America and Europe, in almost all cases, these differences are no greater than the differences among European nations. Europe and the US are, in fact, part of a common, big-tent grouping. America is not Sweden, for sure. But nor is Italy Sweden, nor France, nor even Germany. And who says that Sweden is Europe? Anymore than Vermont is America? Writing with flair and armed with an impressive stock of evidence, Baldwin paints a truly eye-opening portrait of Europe and America. Anyone interested in American foreign relations--or simply curious about American and European society--will want to read this revelatory volume.

Based on new and existing research by a world-class scholar, this is the first book in twenty years to examine the dynamics of the entire American-West European relationship since 1945. The relationship between the United States and Western Europe has always been crucial, and recent events dictate that it is becoming ever more so. In this important new work, Geir Lundestad analyses the balance between the cooperation and conflict which has characterized this relationship in the post-war period. He examines talk of transatlantic drift, and the strain now apparent between the USA and the nation states of Western Europe. In the concluding section, Lundestad offers a topical view of the future of transatlantic interaction. Throughout the work Lundestad's much cited 'empire by invitation' thesis is both put into practice and extended in time and scope. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in one of the most important and enduring international relationships of the last sixty years.

《西洋杂志》是[曾门四弟子]的桐城派著名作家黎庶昌任驻英、法、德、西使馆参赞五年闻关于欧洲的记述，通过细致的观察、深刻的体会与明洁动人的描写，作者翔实广泛地介绍日、德、意、奥、比、瑞士等西洋诸国经济发展、生产方式、政治制度、文化教育、科学技术、风俗民情等国情，呈现给人们一幅生动的西方社会全景，勾勒出近代中国人刚刚睁开双眼看世界时的认知过程与内心感受。全书共八卷，向国人详细介绍西洋各国实况，以其独特的史料价值和浓郁的文化兴味，并因顺应当时历史潮流，而深受国内外有识之士好评。

Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain’s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War—while he was secretly working for the enemy. And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s best friend and fellow officer in MI6. The two men had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same exclusive clubs, grown close through the crucible of wartime intelligence work and long nights of drink and revelry. It was madness for one to think the other might be a communist spy, bent on subverting Western values and the power of the free world.
But Philby was secretly betraying his friend. Every word Elliott breathed to Philby was transmitted back to Moscow—and not just Elliott’s words, for in America, Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton's and Elliott’s unwitting disclosures helped Philby sink almost every important Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading countless operatives to their doom. Even as the web of suspicion closed around him, and Philby was driven to greater lies to protect his cover, his two friends never abandoned him—until it was too late. The stunning truth of his betrayal would have devastating consequences on the two men who thought they knew him best, and on the intelligence services he left crippled in his wake.
Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, A Spy Among Friends is Ben Macintyre’s best book yet, a high-water mark in Cold War history telling.

An award-winning biographer's penetrating portrait of the most glamorous branch of the international family, the one that came to prominence under Napoleon, and has ever since been locked in a turbulent relationship with that country. Of the many books written about the Rothschilds, this is the first to focus so closely on the French branch--perhaps the most fascinating side of this astonishing family. 8-page black-and-white inserts.

Before they achieved renown as patrons of the arts and de facto rulers of Florence, the Medici family earned their fortune in banking. But even at the height of the Renaissance, charging interest of any kind meant running afoul of the Catholic Church's ban on usury. Tim Parks reveals how the legendary Medicis-Cosimo and Lorenzo "the Magnificent" in particular-used the diplomatic, military, and even metaphysical tools at hand, along with a healthy dose of intrigue and wit, to further their fortunes as well as their family's standing.

In this magisterial study, Michael Smith explains how France left behind small-scale merchant capitalism for the large corporate enterprises that would eventually dominate its domestic economy and project French influence throughout the world. Arguing against the long-standing view that French economic and business development was crippled by missed opportunities and entrepreneurial failures, Smith presents a story of considerable achievement. French companies made major contributions to the Second Industrial Revolution of 1880 - 1930, especially in ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, electrochemicals, industrial gases, and motor vehicles. Rejecting the notion that France took a separate route to economic modernity, Smith argues that it tracked other industrial nations along a path dominated by large-scale production and corporate enterprise. Technological and organisational capabilities acquired by French companies prior to 1930 played a key role in the country's rapid economic recovery after World War II and its broader economic success in the second half of the 20th Century. Smith also addresses the distinctive characteristics of French economic and business development, including the pivotal role of the French State, the pervasive influence of French financiers, and the significance of labour conflict. This superb account is an invaluable contribution to business history and the history of modern France.

Attali's essential argument in Noise: The Political Economy of Music is that music, as a cultural form, is intimately tied up in the mode of production in any given society. For marxist critics, this idea is nothing new. The novelty of Attali's work is that it reverses the traditional understandings about how revolutions in the mode of production take place:
[Attali] is the first to point out the other possible logical consequence of the “reciprocal interaction” model—namely, the possibility of a superstructure to anticipate historical developments, to foreshadow new social formations in a prophetic and annunciatory way. The argument of Noise is that music, unique among the arts for reasons that are themselves overdetermined, has precisely this annunciatory vocation; that the music of today stands both as a promise of a new, liberating mode of production, and as the menace of a dystopian possibility which is that mode of production’s baleful mirror image.[1]

When the cataclysm of the First World War impacted on British society, it particularly affected the landed classes, with their long military tradition. Country houses, as in a variety of popular TV dramas, were turned into military hospitals and convalescent homes, while many of the menfolk were killed or badly injured in the hostilities. When the war ended efforts were made to return to the pre-war world. Pleasure seeking in night-clubs, sporting events and country-house weekends became the order of the day. Many of the old former rituals such as presentation at Court for debutantes and royal garden parties were revived. Yet, overshadowing all were the economic pressures of the decade as increased taxation, death duties and declining farm rentals reduced landed incomes. Some owners sold their mansions or some land to newly enriched businessmen who had prospered as a result of the war. Others turned to city directorships to make ends meet or, in the case of the women, ran dress shops and other small businesses. The 1920s proved a decade of flux for High Society, with the light-hearted dances, treasure hunts and sexual permissiveness of the 'Bright Young People' contrasting with the financial anxieties and problems faced by their parents' generation. Pamela Horn draws on the letters and diaries of iconic figures of the period, such as Nancy Mitford and Barbara Cartland, to give an insight into this new post-war era.

Edwardian Britain is the quintessential age of nostalgia, often seen as the last long summer afternoon before the cataclysmic changes of the twentieth century began to take form. The class system remained rigidly in place and thousands were employed in domestic service. The habits and sports of the aristocracy were an everyday indulgence. But it was an age of invention as well as tradition. It saw the first widespread use of the motor car, the first aeroplane and the first use of the telegraph. It was also a time of vastly improved education and the public appetite for authors such as Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster was increased by greater literacy. There were signs too, of the corner history was soon to turn, with the problematic Boer War hinting at a new British weakness overseas and the drive for Votes for Women and Home Rule for Ireland pushing the boundaries of the social and political landscape. In this major work of history, Roy Hattersley has been given exclusive access to many new documents to produce this magisterial new appraisal of a legendary age.