Search

Frantz Leander Hansen has written a brilliant book about Otto Stein (Martin Zerlang, University of Copenhagen, reviewing the Danish edition in Scandinavian Studies, University of Illinois Press, Vol. 92, No. 2). Jacob Paludan's Danish classic novel Jørgen Stein (1933) includes the subordinate character Otto Stein, a man about town in the roaring 1920s and a promising barrister. Involvement in small-time crime leads to large-scale confidence trickery which ends in decline, fall and suicide. This literary portrait of an epoch of deceit and fraud as a cultural phenomenon brings to the fore the economics and criminal psychology of the period. Otto Stein is viewed as an ultra-topical figure of our time, someone whose impact on the modern world is important and felt within the spheres of literature, philosophy, jurisprudence, and criminal investigation of contemporary fraudulent behaviour. Inquiry focuses on the path that leads to his suicide. Literary sources of inspiration that contributed to the moulding of the character of Otto Stein are investigated, especially those of Herman Bang, Thomas Mann and Fjodor Dostojevskij. Relevant are Jacob Paludan's other five novels that were published prior to Jørgen Stein, where seeds to Otto's character are sown. Critical to understanding the novel and the character is the scam that deprived Paludan of a financial inheritance. Herewith a superb novelistic example of how a writer merges the historical with the contemporary to reveal a psychology of exploitation dangerously meaningful to us all.

Is more economic growth the solution? Will it deliver prosperity and well-being for a global population projected to reach nine billion? In this explosive book, Tim Jackson? a top sustainability adviser to the UK government? makes a compelling case against continued economic growth in developed nations. No one denies that development is essential for poorer nations. But in the advanced economies there is mounting evidence that ever-increasing consumption adds little to human happiness and may even impede it. More urgently, it is now clear that the ecosystems that sustain our economies are collapsing under the impacts of rising consumption. Unless we can radically lower the environmental impact of economic activity? and there is no evidence to suggest that we can? we will have to devise a path to prosperity that does not rely on continued growth. Economic heresy? Or an opportunity to improve the sources of well-being, creativity and lasting prosperity that lie outside the realm of the market? Tim Jackson provides a credible vision of how human society can flourish? within the ecological limits of a finite planet. Fulfilling this vision is simply the most urgent task of our times. This book is a substantially revised and updated version of Jackson's controversial study for the Sustainable Development Commission, an advisory body to the UK Government. The study rapidly became the most downloaded report in the Commission's nine year history when it was launched earlier this year.

'Published for the World Bank.'

This extraordinary history of the Bruderhof shows how its commitment to religion, family, and community has enabled it to maintain its way of life since its inception over ninety years ago. Although Yaacov Oved identifies social tensions in the movement, he still considers it to be a shining example of communal stability. After the horrors of World War I, German adolescents sought new directions in the form of youth movements. Young people from bourgeois families rejected materialism, celebrated nature, and longed for a simpler life. Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, a couple from an affluent background who identified fully with radical pacifist youth circles, fused the German Christian socialist youth into a new movement. They settled a commune in Sannerz known as'The First Bruderhof,'whose members shaped their lives according to their faith. The Bruderhof supported itself by publishing, printing, and providing reliable child care services. In 1937, responding to Nazi harassment, and to escape conscription, they fled to Liechtenstein and England where they provided shelter for many Jewish refugees. World War II forced them to emigrate further afield. They went to Paraguay and, eventually, to the United States. Sociologists, theologians, anthropologists, and psychologists alike will find The Witness of the Brothers to be a valuable resource.