Brussels Laid Bare

Marta Andreasen is an accountant who says the EU doesn't account for the money it disburses to the projects it approves and she has first hand evidence. She ought to have taken advice on the way her story is written but I cannot argue with the facts she presents. If we want to be ruled by a junta of spendthrift rogues everyone should know how they manage matters, if we don't, we may care to consider what we get out of this monstrous confidence trick. Neither of these alternatives will make you sleep better at nights and so I suppose her story will fall on deaf ears as bad news is never welcome. But you have to read this book if you are a European citizen, if only to discover why no-one knows where your money is going and who is lying about it.

The first English collection of the late poetry and prose fragments of literary icon Charles Baudelaire "[A] handsome new book . . . all this inchoate material is given context by Sieburth's learned, elegantly written commentary. He is the perfect guide."--Michael Dirda, Washington Post "[These] unfinished works written after 1861 . . . deliver what their titles seem to promise: a soul stripped of guises and illusions."--Ange Mlinko, New York Review of Books While not as well known as his other works, Charles Baudelaire's late poems, drafts of poems, and prose fragments are texts indispensable to the history of modern poetics. This volume brings together Baudelaire's late fragmentary writings, aphoristic in form and radical in thought, into one edited collection for the first time. Substantial introductions to each work by Richard Sieburth combine the literary context with formal analysis and reception history to give readers a comprehensive picture of the genesis of these works and their subsequent fate. Baudelaire's turn toward fragmentary writing involved not only a conscious renunciation of his aesthetics of perfection and unity, but a desertion of the harmonies of the traditional lyric in favor of the disjunctions of prose. These are daring works, often painful to read in their misanthropy and unconventional beauty.

What the love of wisdom is and how it enables us to live in today`s world are explored in this ambitious work. Rich insights into what human maturity means and how it is reached have become too easily lost or confined to the world of high academia. Well-being, the true goal of human being, has been tragically reduced to `happiness` and its meanings lost. No subject could be more important, and few modern works deal with it that are not religious, dogmatic and furtively proselytising. Profound ideas are here applied to such unlikely things as skateboarding, love-making, getting rich, tourism and playing cricket, all of which can become a means to the development of mental strength and genuine love. Post-religious spirituality, clarified here, is the development of the psyche, which is as important as finding or losing oneself, and winning or losing in the arena of living. In the age of fiction our lives are enriched by myriad vital stories, personally loved, and also endowed with wider meanings through living in the shared master story for today, the incomplete saga of the salvation of the planet. Radical implications for education, human communication, politics and a sustainable future permeate the text, which calls upon authoritative voices from recent times and the deeper past, from Socrates to Habermas. from Judaism and Christianity to Islam and the traditions of the East. This is no mere history, but the building of a radical approach to human spirituality, lifestyle, communication and life-goals. Although the way is hard, deliverance from the darkness of consumerism, the pressure of rivalry, and confusion about ultimate goals is offered in this book. The thorough bibliography and referencing enable the reader to pursue a wide range of topics, and render the work suitable for the hard-pressed student as well as readers-for-leisure.

This book tells the story of the thousands of corpses that ended up in the hands of anatomists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Composed as a travel story from the point of view of the cadaver, this study offers a full-blown cultural history of death and dissection, with insights that easily go beyond the history of anatomy and the specific case of Belgium. From acquisition to disposal, the trajectories of the corpse changed under the influence of social policies, ideological tensions, religious sensitivities, cultures of death and broader changes in the field of medical ethics. Anatomists increasingly had to reconcile their ways with the diverse meanings that the dead body held. To a certain extent, as this book argues, they started to treat the corpse as subject rather than object. Interweaving broad historical evolutions with detailed case studies, this book offers unique insights into a field dominated by Anglo-American perspectives, evaluating the similarities and differences within other European contexts.

Belgian Museums of the Great War: Politics, Memory, and Commerce examines the handling of the centennial of World War I by several museums along the Western Front in Flanders, Belgium. In the twenty-first century, the museum has become a strategic space for negotiating ownership of and access to knowledge produced in local settings. The specific focus on museums and commemorative events in Flanders allows for an in-depth evaluation of how each museum works with the remembrance and tourist industry in the region while carving a unique niche. Belgian Museums of the Great War writes the history of these institutions, analyzes the changes made in advance of the anniversary years, and considers the site-specificity of each institution and its architectural frame. Since museums not only transmit information but also shape knowledge, as Eileen Hooper-Greenhill has noted, the diverse narratives and community programs sponsored by each museum have served to challenge prior historiographies of the war. Through newly revamped interactive environments, self-guided learning, and an emphasis on the landscape, the museums in Flanders have a significant role to play in the ever-changing dialogue on the meaning of the history and remembrance of the Great War.

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Seven decades after the liberation of Europe, the strongmen of global politics are back, dominating not only the headlines but international relations, the global economy, and the world's security. The strongman has a style and strategy of leadership that is anathema to the liberal democratic norms and practices of Europe. He (it is always he) challenges principles of consensus and collaboration, willingly tears up trade agreements, invades territory, and seeks to provoke and disrupt the status quo in order to achieve advantage. Such behaviour confounds and frustrates his counterparts abroad and yet, as this book shows, it can be anticipated, even understood, offering hope for dealing with and neutralizing it. Hans Kribbe draws on a range of political ideas to provide insight into the strongman's seemingly irrational and idiosyncratic behaviour and to better understand how he wields power and to what end. With the world's largest economies, including Europe's key ally, as well as strategic neighbouring states controlled by strongmen - Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan - Europe must learn to adapt and respond if it is to beat them at their own game.

The EU’s single currency crisis and the ensuing human costs have led to Europe’s biggest disaster since 1945. This book examines each of its stages and the political and social impact, and reveals the longer-term origins of the crisis, particularly the failure of elites to promote a genuine European partnership grounded in democratic values and a desire to co-exist with a national outlook. The author defends an orderly retreat from the existing model of monetary union, arguing that an alternative is needed in order for countries enduring a prolonged slump to recover, and recommending that EU chiefs should also treat the nation-state as a partner in a common emergency that needs to be overcome. This jargon-free, insightful and long-term analysis of a dangerous crisis is an invaluable book for academics and students alike. It is also an effective tool for policy-makers, citizens and business people who require an accessible and in-depth appraisal of a continuing catastrophe.