Customer Reviews

Demystifying the European Union: The Enduring Logic of Regional Integration

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If you want to learn about the EU without your eyes beginning to bleed from inhuman boredom, turn to other material. It is unfathomable how a man could spend so many pages producing such utterly unreadable writing. I would rather re-read my car's owner manual than try to cipher through another of Ginsberg's half-coherent paragraphs.

This was one of three required textbooks for an upper-division Political Science course and by far my least favorite. It wasn't coherent and sometimes repetitive with too many summaries within a chapter. At the end of each chapter, there is a list of key words and questions; however, by the time I finished a chapter, I often forgot what I should be able to answer and had to re-read certain passages for clarification. Ginsberg certainly needed an editor. The information is there (somewhere), but not in a reader friendly format.

If this is required for a class, opt to share it with someone (so you're not completely disappointed by wasting money on this book).

Bought this book for a 3000 level Political Science class about the European Union. The few times I was forced into reading it were quite painful. Although if you are merely skimming to find out how many members European Parliament has, or when such and such organization was formed you will be fine, any deeper reading is like dragging your nails across a chalkboard. Buy it if you have to, definitely buy it used, and don't expect it to inspire a love for studying the European Union.

This is a marvelous book. The nation's leading scholar on the Europpean Union, Professor Roy Ginsberg of Skidmore College, has filled in an enormous gap about what Americans do not know about the 27 member nation, European Union. The EU, as Professor Ginsberg sets out with great clarity, is one of the world's leading democratic organizations and a significant agency for peace. Professor Ginsberg carefully traces the history of the EU, describes in detail its various agencies, and balances it against our own United States government as well. Informed Americans should be aware of the EU, and its importance in the world. Professor Ginsberg shows us the way, brillantly, comphrensively and eloquently in this work. Jerome Wilson, Essex, CT