Customer Reviews

Europe Adrift: The conflicting demands of unity, nationalism, economic security, political stab ility, and military readiness now facing a

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For the average American this book will teach you a few things. Unfortunately a lot of the things you learn will be misleading, "americentric", or outright false. Let us not forget, as the first customer/reviewer of the book mentioned, the countless typographical errors, which do not lend themselves to credibility. Overall, the book provided an interesting overview and presents a few issues that are of note, for example, Turkey's desire to join the EU but its lack of "high profile" preventing it from doing so. Also the ongoing problems in Cyprus are described. Unfortunately Newhouse does not provide a thorough analysis of the future/growth of the EU and completely neglects the facts, particularly with the regard to the realities of many Eastern and Central European countries' economic situations. One particularly irritating problem is Newhouse's overemphasis on what the Czech Republic predicts about itself and its future, not relying at all on unbiased fact and "hard numbers". The book depicts Czech Republic as a progressive and dynamic economic reform success story. The number will tell a different story. The economy of the Czech Republic is dismal. This may be lack of research on the author's part or perhaps a question of the material growing outdated, as the previous reviewer stated.

Certainly, read this book if you are interested in the state of European affairs, but read it skeptically and critically.

This book was a wonderful reference to me when I was taking my 20th Century Europe Class at the University I attend. Although the information is out of date now that is in it, but the history isn't out of date. We build on history, which is the foundations, so I recommed this book to get a firm foundation on Europe from after the Cold War to the present (1998). THIS BOOK GETS AN A+ IN MY OPINION. Plus it is an easy read and not hard on the eyes or mind.

These books get out of date very fast. However, the background information and analyses of the relationships between countries were very informative. I do think that the copy editor of this book was 'adrift', though. Lots of typos and grammatical errors that even the simplest word processor should have caught. PLUS some glaring factual errors. Not right, especially for a non-fiction book.