This is a magisterial narrative of the most turbulent decade in Anglo-Irish history: a decade of unleashed passions that came close to destroying the parliamentary system and to causing civil war in the United Kingdom. It was also the decade of the cataclysmic Great War, of an officers' mutiny in an elite cavalry regiment of the British Army and of Irish armed rebellion. It was a time, argues Ronan Fanning, when violence and the threat of violence trumped democratic politics. This is a contentious view. Historians have wished to see the events of that decade as an aberration, as an eruption of irrational bloodletting. And they have have been reluctant to write about the triumph of physical force. Fanning argues that in fact violence worked, however much this offends our contemporary moral instincts. Without resistance from the Ulster Unionists and its very real threat of violence the state of Northern Ireland would never have come into being. The Home Rule party of constitutionalist nationalists failed, and were pushed aside by the revolutionary nationalists Sinn Fein. Bleakly realistic, ruthlessly analytical of the vacillation and indecision displayed by democratic politicians at Westminster faced with such revolutionary intransigence, Fatal Path is history as it was, not as we would wish it to be.

The topic of electoral reform is an extremely timely one. The accelerated expansion of the number of new democracies in the world generates increasing demand for advice on the choice of electoral rules; at the same time, a new reformism in well established democracies seeks new formulae favouring both more representative institutions and more accountable rulers. The Handbook of Electoral System Choice addresses the theoretical and comparative issues of electoral reform in relation to democratization, political strategies in established democracies and the relative performance of different electoral systems. Case studies on virtually every major democracy or democratizing country in the world are included.

The NAB Engineering Handbook provides detailed information on virtually every aspect of the broadcast chain, from news gathering, program production and postproduction through master control and distribution links to transmission, antennas, RF propagation, cable and satellite. Hot topics covered include HD Radio, HDTV, 2 GHz broadcast auxiliary services, EAS, workflow, metadata, digital asset management, advanced video and audio compression, audio and video over IP, and Internet broadcasting. A wide range of related topics that engineers and managers need to understand are also covered, including broadcast administration, FCC practices, technical standards, security, safety, disaster planning, facility planning, project management, and engineering management. Basic principles and the latest technologies and issues are all addressed by respected professionals with first-hand experience in the broadcast industry and manufacturing. This edition has been fully revised and updated, with 104 chapters and over 2000 pages. The Engineering Handbook provides the single most comprehensive and accessible resource available for engineers and others working in production, postproduction, networks, local stations, equipment manufacturing or any of the associated areas of radio and television.