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This paper provides an extended review of Randolph T. Hester's Design for ecological democracy (2006). Initially, a brief introduction to the book, its author and the works position in the literature is given, before a broad summary of the book's central argument is provided. The paper then considers the three key themes Hester explores: enabling form, resilient form and impelling form. Through this discussion, linkages are made to wider concepts of ecology in planning practice as well as political and planning theory. The paper concludes that Design for ecological democracy provides not only an engaging philosophy for the future, but also a series of case study-supported interlinked practical methods for change for the way the built environment is shaped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the American books reviewed in this paper - Nicholas Carr's The shallows. What the Internet is doing to our brains, and David Weinberger's Too big to know. Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren't the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room - deal with the issue of how the internet is changing the way we learn and communicate. Still, they come at diametrically opposite conclusions. Carr claims that the excessive use of the Internet may limit our concentration and understanding abilities, making it more and more difficult for many of us reading and writing those long and complex texts that are the basis of human culture. On the other side Weinberger thinks that the Internet - thanks to the multiplication and celerity of its communication channels - is unfolding new and exciting perspectives for human knowledge, no longer adequately supported by traditional documents and "experts". In the author's opinion both these theories are erroneous, being too radical and sharing a number of fallacies, e.g. a technological determinism, and the tendency to consider certain characteristics as peculiar of a very few media, while they actually belong to a lot of different media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I review three books on the notion of partnership working. In Problem-oriented policing and partnerships and Crime reduction partnerships the authors explore partnership working in an informative way for practitioners, whereas in the edited collection. Fighting crime together, the authors combine empirical, theoretical and methodological understandings of the notion of security networks. The books provide a useful starting point for exploring wider issues. I examine the involvement of the police, as a dominant partnership participant; the existence of co-operation and contest in police partnerships, as a manifestation of contradictions in the wider socio-political climate; the role of the state, empirically and normatively, in policing through partnerships. My argument is that the state does and should have a vital role in police partnerships, although not without it being regulated through an independent and socially representative body, such as a community safety or policing commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael McLure. The Paretian School and Italian Fiscal Sociology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 363 pp. $95 (cloth). ISBN 1-4039-9953-8 Conrad Swartz and Edward Shorter. Psychotic Depression. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 327 pp. $85 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-521-87822-7 Mark Patton. Science, Politics and Business in the Work of Sir John Lubbock. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. 270 pp. $99 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-7546-5321-9 Erik Banks. Ernst Mach's World Elements. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003. 289 pp. $119 (cloth). ISBN 1-4020-1662-X Philip Zelazo, Morris Moscovitch, and Evan Thompson (Eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 981 pp. $70 (paper). ISBN 978-0-521-67412-6 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David Brendel. Healing Psychiatry: Bridging the Science/Humanism Divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 208 pp. $26 (cloth) ISBN 0-262-02594-9. David Livingstone and Charles Withers. Geography and Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 440 pp. $45 (cloth) ISBN: 0-226-48733-4. Sanford Schram and Brian Caterino. Making Political Science Matter. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 304 pp. $24 (paper) ISBN: 0-8147-4033-2. Dieter Borchmeyer. Drama and the World of Richard Wagner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. 391 pp. (cloth) ISBN 0-691-11497-8. Arnold Goldberg. Moral Stealth: How “Correct Behavior” Insinuates Itself Into Psychotherapeutic Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 144 pp. $32 (cloth) ISBN 0-226-30120-4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews the microfilm `The Papers of Carlos Montezuma,` from Scholarly Resources.