Relying on internal sources, Wilfried Loth analyses the birth and subsequent development of the European Union, from the launch of the Council of Europe and the Schuman Declaration until the Euro crisis and the contested European presidential election of Jean-Claude Juncker. This book shines a light on the crises of the European integration, such as the failure of the European Defence Community, De Gaulle’s empty chair policy, or the rejection of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands, but also highlights the indubitable successes that are the Franco-German reconciliation, the establishment of the European common market, and the establishment of an expanding common currency. What this study accomplishes, for the first time, is to illuminate the driving forces behind the European integration process and how it changed European politics and society. “An enlightening work. Arequired reading for all who doubt the unfinished history of Europe.” – Rolf Steininger, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “This book will become an indispensable standard work.” – Jörg Himmelreich, Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Complete reference book, beautifully illustrated, of the world's tall buildings.

The development of the European Union has been one of the most profound advances in European politics and society this century. Yet the institutions of Europe and the 'Eurocrats' who work in them have constantly attracted negative publicity, culminating in the mass resignation of the European Commissioners in March 1999. In this revealing study, Cris Shore scrutinises the process of European integration using the techniques of anthropology, and drawing on thought from across the social sciences. Using the findings of numerous interviews with EU employees, he reveals that there is not just a subculture of corruption within the institutions of Europe, but that their problems are largely a result of the way the EU itself is constituted and run. He argues that European integration has largely failed in bringing about anything but an ever-closer integration of the technical, political and financial elites of Europe - at the expense of its ordinary citizens. This critical anthropology of European integration is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the culture and politics of the EU.

The period of the baroque (late sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries) saw extensive reconfiguration of European cities and their public spaces. Yet, this transformation cannot be limited merely to signifying a style of art, architecture, and decor. Rather, the dynamism, emotionality, and potential for grandeur that were inherent in the baroque style developed in close interaction with the need and desire of post-Reformation Europeans to find visual expression for the new political, confessional, and societal realities. Highly illustrated, this volume examines these complex interrelationships among architecture and art, power, religion, and society from a wide range of viewpoints and localities. From Krakow to Madrid and from Naples to Dresden, cities were reconfigured visually as well as politically and socially. Power, in both its political and architectural guises, had to be negotiated among constituents ranging from monarchs and high churchmen to ordinary citizens. Within this process, both rulers and ruled were transformed: Europe left behind the last vestiges of the medieval and arrived on the threshold of the modern.

This book is the first devoted to the important innovations in architecture that took place in western Europe between the death of emperor Justinian in A.D. 565 and the tenth century. During this period of transition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, the Early Christian basilica was transformed in both form and function.Charles B. McClendon draws on rich documentary evidence and archaeological data to show that the buildings of these three centuries, studied in isolation but rarely together, set substantial precedents for the future of medieval architecture. He looks at buildings of the so-called Dark Ages—monuments that reflected a new assimilation of seemingly antithetical “barbarian” and “classical” attitudes toward architecture and its decoration—and at the grand and innovative architecture of the Carolingian Empire. The great Romanesque and Gothic churches of subsequent centuries owe far more to the architectural achievements of the Early Middle Ages than has generally been recognized, the author argues.

Europeans are in denial. Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, they are increasingly distancing themselves from their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But while the legacy of Islam and the Middle East is in danger of being airbrushed out of Western history, its traces can still be detected in some of Europe's most recognisable monuments, from Notre-Dame to St Paul's Cathedral. In this comprehensively illustrated book, Diana Darke sets out to redress the balance, revealing the Arab and Islamic roots of Europe's architectural heritage. She tracks the transmission of key innovations from the great capitals of Islam's early empires, Damascus and Baghdad, via Muslim Spain and Sicily into Europe. Medieval crusaders, pilgrims and merchants from Europe later encountered Arab Muslim culture in journeys to the Holy Land. In more recent centuries, that same route through modern-day Turkey connected Ottoman culture with the West, leading Sir Christopher Wren himself to believe that Gothic architecture should more rightly be called 'the Saracen style', because of its Islamic origins. Recovering this overlooked story within the West's long history of borrowing from the Islamic world, Darke sheds new light on Europe's buildings and offers rich insights into the possibilities of cultural exchange.

“From such well-known and long-vexed sites as the Athenian Acropolis to more contemporary locales like the Space Age Modernist capital city of Brasília, the conflicting and not always neatly resolvable forces that bear upon preservation are addressed as clearly and thoughtfully as the general reader could hope for.”—New York Review of Books “...an astonishing feat of research, compilation and synthesis.”—Context The book delivers the first major survey concerning the conservation of cultural heritage in both Europe and the Americas. Architectural Conservation in Europe and the Americas serves as a convenient resource for professionals, students, and anyone interested in the field. Following the acclaimed Time Honored, this book presents contemporary practice on a country-by-country and region-by-region basis, facilitating comparative analysis of similarities and differences. The book stresses solutions in architectural heritage protection and the contexts in which they were developed.