The best of the papers in this loose collection concern demographic changes in Europe, the representation of business interests in Brussels and the national capitals, and some possible implications of American federalism for European integration.
In The Flight of the Intellectuals, Paul Berman argues that it is not violent Islamists who pose the greatest danger to liberal societies in the West but rather their so-called moderate cousins, such as Tariq Ramadan. Such a reading of contemporary Islamism, however, misses the many nuances of the movement and the real battles between reformers and Salafists.
Can Louis XIV's consolidation of power in seventeenth-century France guide the way for state builders in Afghanistan today? Sheri Berman defends her case.
Germans always knew that their foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, had been a leftist activist in the 1960s and 1970s. More controversial were recent disclosures that he had once assaulted a police officer and may have had links to terrorists. Fischer's evolution is the tale of a generation that changed Germany -- and then itself.
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