Tag: Europe

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The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

The Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end.

This is not just an analysis of demographic and political realities; it is also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes accounts based on travels across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who pretend they want them to the places which cannot accept them.

Murray takes a step back at each stage and looks at the bigger and deeper issues which lie behind a continent’s possible demise, from an atmosphere of mass terror attacks to the steady erosion of our freedoms. The audiobook addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel’s U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation, and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, Lampedusa, and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away.

This sharp and incisive audiobook ends up with two visions for a new Europe – one hopeful, one pessimistic – which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next. But perhaps Spengler was right: ‘civilizations, like humans, are born, briefly flourish, decay, and die’.

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Motivation in War: The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe

This book fundamentally revises our notion of why soldiers of the eighteenth century enlisted, served and fought. In contrast to traditional views of the brutal conditions supposedly prevailing in old-regime armies, Ilya Berkovich reveals that soldiers did not regard military discipline as illegitimate or unnecessarily cruel, nor did they perceive themselves as submissive military automatons. Instead he shows how these men embraced a unique corporate identity based on military professionalism, forceful masculinity and hostility toward civilians. These values fostered the notion of individual and collective soldierly honour which helped to create the bonding effect which contributed toward greater combat cohesion. Utilising research on military psychology and combat theory, and employing the letters, diaries and memoirs of around 250 private soldiers and non-commissioned officers from over a dozen different European armies, Motivation in War transforms our understanding of life of the common soldier in early modern Europe.

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Motivation in War: The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe

This book fundamentally revises our notion of why soldiers of the eighteenth century enlisted, served and fought. In contrast to traditional views of the brutal conditions supposedly prevailing in old-regime armies, Ilya Berkovich reveals that soldiers did not regard military discipline as illegitimate or unnecessarily cruel, nor did they perceive themselves as submissive military automatons. Instead he shows how these men embraced a unique corporate identity based on military professionalism, forceful masculinity and hostility toward civilians. These values fostered the notion of individual and collective soldierly honour which helped to create the bonding effect which contributed toward greater combat cohesion. Utilising research on military psychology and combat theory, and employing the letters, diaries and memoirs of around 250 private soldiers and non-commissioned officers from over a dozen different European armies, Motivation in War transforms our understanding of life of the common soldier in early modern Europe.

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The Euro: How A Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe

Can Europe prosper without the euro?

In 2010, the 2008 global financial crisis morphed into the “eurocrisis”. It has not abated. The 19 countries of Europe that share the euro currency – the eurozone – have been rocked by economic stagnation and debt crises. Some countries have been in depression for years while the governing powers of the eurozone have careened from emergency to emergency, most notably in Greece.

In The Euro, Nobel Prize-winning economist and best-selling author Joseph E. Stiglitz dismantles the prevailing consensus around what ails Europe, demolishing the champions of austerity while offering a series of plans that can rescue the continent – and the world – from further devastation.

Hailed by its architects as a lever that would bring Europe together and promote prosperity, the euro has done the opposite. As Stiglitz persuasively argues, the crises revealed the shortcomings of the euro. Europe’s stagnation and bleak outlook are direct results of the fundamental challenges in having a diverse group of countries share a common currency – the euro was flawed at birth, with economic integration outpacing political integration. Stiglitz shows how the current structure promotes divergence rather than convergence. The question, then, is: Can the euro be saved?

After laying bare the European Central Bank’s misguided inflation-only mandate and explaining how eurozone policies, especially toward the crisis countries, have further exposed the zone’s flawed design, Stiglitz outlines three possible ways forward: fundamental reforms in the structure of the eurozone and the policies imposed on the member countries; a well-managed end to the single-currency euro experiment; or a bold, new system dubbed the “flexible euro”.

With its lessons for globalization in a world economy ever more deeply connected, The Euro is urgent and essential listening.

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The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe

Can Europe prosper without the euro?

In 2010, the 2008 global financial crisis morphed into the “eurocrisis”. It has not abated. The 19 countries of Europe that share the euro currency – the eurozone – have been rocked by economic stagnation and debt crises. Some countries have been in depression for years while the governing powers of the eurozone have careened from emergency to emergency, most notably in Greece.

In The Euro, Nobel Prize-winning economist and best-selling author Joseph E. Stiglitz dismantles the prevailing consensus around what ails Europe, demolishing the champions of austerity while offering a series of plans that can rescue the continent – and the world – from further devastation.

Hailed by its architects as a lever that would bring Europe together and promote prosperity, the euro has done the opposite. As Stiglitz persuasively argues, the crises revealed the shortcomings of the euro. Europe’s stagnation and bleak outlook are direct results of the fundamental challenges in having a diverse group of countries share a common currency – the euro was flawed at birth, with economic integration outpacing political integration. Stiglitz shows how the current structure promotes divergence rather than convergence. The question, then, is: Can the euro be saved?

After laying bare the European Central Bank’s misguided inflation-only mandate and explaining how eurozone policies, especially toward the crisis countries, have further exposed the zone’s flawed design, Stiglitz outlines three possible ways forward: fundamental reforms in the structure of the eurozone and the policies imposed on the member countries; a well-managed end to the single-currency euro experiment; or a bold, new system dubbed the “flexible euro”.

With its lessons for globalization in a world economy ever more deeply connected, The Euro is urgent and essential listening.

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Midnight in Europe

The latest novel from New York Times bestselling author and the “modern-day master of the genre” (Newsday), Alan Furst.

From the New York Times bestselling author and the acclaimed “grandmaster” of espionage (Boston Globe) comes the taut, suspenseful story, set in Paris and Spain, of a man caught in the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, and an operation that—with the help of FDR’s secret operatives—will determine Europe’s fate in the coming world war.

New York City, autumn 1938. Gregorio D’Alba, a minor noble descended from the Spanish Bourbons, is awaiting passage on a freighter to Paris after a failed attempt to convince American oil companies to support the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. In Paris, surrounded by shifting political allegiances and prying spy services, D’Alba does whatever he can to support the Spanish Republic–smuggling, gathering intelligence, running arms. But the stakes quickly escalate when D’Alba, along with the British and the Americans, undertakes a mission to infiltrate the highest levels of the Spanish government, and to determine the alliances of his country and forever alter the course of the coming world war.

With his signature gripping, heart-pounding story, Alan Furst’s new novel confirms his status as “the most talented espionage novelist of our generation” (Vince Flynn).