This short and highly compact book derives from Paul Ricoeur’s lectures at Texas Christian University in fall 1973. After the expansiveness of earlier works on evil, Freud, and metaphor, this book moves to consolidate and sum up this previous work, and to chart a certain shift in Ricoeur’s standpoint that has occurred within it.

Rood’s intention is two-fold: to expose the strategic intention and design of the Soviet Union, and to show how "the dangerous inclination democratic peoples have of discounting the likelihood of war" has rendered the West blind to the danger posed by Soviet strategy. The first part of the book chronicles the at first clandestine and then, under Hitler, public rearmament of Germany in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In support of Churchill’s claim that the Second World War was an (...) unnecessary war, Rood shows, through contemporaneous documentation, the surprising extent to which German political and military activities between the wars were known to the British government. The great failure of British leadership in that period was therefore not one of intelligence; the facts were available. Rather, it was one of interpretation, a failure to see German activity for what it was—preparation for war. (shrink)

This addition to the Oxford Companion series is meant to "complement rather than duplicate existing legal works of reference." David M. Walker, Regius Professor of Law in the University of Glasgow, has endeavored to provide, within the confines of a single volume, information on virtually every aspect of Western legal institutions and jurisprudence likely to be encountered by "any person whose work or reading in any way touches on legal matters." Written and arranged in a referential format, the book is (...) distinguished from available legal dictionaries and encyclopedias by virtue of its comprehensive scope and interdisciplinary appeal. It covers general legal history, jurisprudence, comparative and international law, and the legal orders of English-speaking and Western European countries, though it should be noted that it is far and away most thorough in regard to subjects particular to the legal system of the United Kingdom. (shrink)