Challenging Neighbours provides wide coverage of the German and Dutch economies, from an institutional point of view. Pensions, competition policy, labour relations, corporate governance, and health care are among the topics for which the institutional setting and performance of Germany and the Netherlands are compared. The difficulties and successes the countries have in facing pressures from aging population, developments in technology, and global competition are traced back to their institutional roots, and lead to mutual lessons for institutional reform for German and Dutch policy makers.

A reclusive woman opens up her home to her neighbors in the wake of a devastating earthquake, setting off events that reveal secrets, break relationships apart, and bring strangers together to forge powerful new bonds.

Neighbours are a lively topic of everyday conversation and interest. Neighbours Around the World takes a comparative look around the world at our relationships and interactions with the people living next door, analysing the ways in which these relationships are changing in the face of large-scale macro social and urban processes.

Should the European Neighbourhood Policy stop at the borders of the European Union’s immediate neighbouring countries? This book is the first full length study of the ’neighbours of the EU’s neighbours’, a concept originally introduced by the European Commission with reference to Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. These regions in the EU’s broader neighbourhood are often perceived as an ’arc of crisis’ from which manifold challenges emanate for Europe. This timely book takes stock of the state of the EU’s cooperation with the neighbours of its neighbours and explores how the concept might help promote security, stability and prosperity beyond the countries which are formally part of the European Neighbourhood Policy. How can the EU create bridges between these regions? What instruments does the EU have at its disposal and how can it link them in order to respond to the challenges and overcome the current fragmentation? One of the conclusions is the suggestion to consider a pragmatic ’EU Strategy for the Neighbours of its Neighbours’ which addresses the needs of the broader EU neighbourhood in a more systematic and consistent manner and helps transform in the long run the ’arc of crisis’ into another ’ring of friends’.

Becoming Free Have you ever dreamed of just clearing your desk, packing up your life and heading across Europe into the sunset for an adventure, not knowing where it’s going to take you? Well, Kay did just that. She was maybe naïve, but she was determined to follow her dream of living free. After being made redundant from the fifth largest employer in the world, she made that jump into the unknown, knowing that she couldn’t stay on these shores any more. We join her in a real-time journey of adventure, self-discovery and awakening as she as she escapes to an old friend’s yoga retreat in rural Portugal. We meet the characters she encounters along the way, all leading an alternative lifestyle outside the normal social order. And for a while, she too is part of this. But what brought her back to the UK so soon, to re-enter the society she had fled on six months earlier, and from which she had been so desperate to escape? A week before Christmas, she finds herself back, in sub-zero temperatures, to a homecoming not fit for a fairytale. Back in the rat race she had left behind, stripped of all material possessions and with no home or job to fall back on. But with the compassion of friends and the kindness of strangers, she started to rebuild her life. Then God dealt her a blow that would change her life forever. And out of the fear came hope. The fairytale had to end happily ever after, now!

As a young girl climbs the seven stories to her own (very boring!) apartment, she imagines what’s behind each of the doors she passes. Does the door with all the locks belong to a family of thieves? Might the doorway with muddy footprints conceal a pet tiger? Each spread reveals—in lush detail—the wilds of the girl’s imagination, from a high-flying circus to an underwater world and everything in between. When the girl finally reaches her own apartment, she is greeted by her parents, who might have a secret even wilder than anything she could have imagined!