Since World War II critics have been predicting the decline of the novel. This book argues that the novel is not dead. Looking at American and English fiction it claims that the novel can not only change the possibilities of art, but also contribute to awareness of life's possibilities.

Offering a comprehensive introduction to the comparison of governments and political systems, this new edition helps students to understand not just the institutions and political cultures of their own countries but also those of a wide range of democracies and authoritarian regimes from around the world. This new edition offers: -A revised structure to aid navigation and understanding -New learning features, 'Using Theory' and 'Exploring Problems', designed to help students think comparatively -Empirical global examples, with increased coverage of non-Western scholarship and analyses -Coverage of important contemporary topics including: minorities; LGBTQ+ issues; identity politics; women in politics; political trust; populism; Covid-19. Featuring a wide range of engaging learning features, this book is an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Comparative Politics, Comparative Government, Introduction to Politics and Introduction to Political Science.

Acid rain was one of the major environmental issues of the 1980s. But while industrialized countries have taken measures to reduce the emissions that lead to acidification, the problems have not gone away. Trees are still dying, lakes are still being made uninhabitable; buildings are still corroding; and human health is still suffering. The most worrying trend is the repetition in the industrializing countries of Asia and Latin America of the problems that have long afflicted Europe and North America. More than 10 years after it was first published, the highly acclaimed Acid Earth still provides the only global view of acidification, and remains the standard text on the subject. Chapters on the causes, effects and growing scientific understanding of acid pollution, and the possible solutions, are followed by detailed studies of the political struggles involved in responding to acid damage in western and eastern Europe, the US and the newly industrializing countries. Written in non-technical language for people interested in the problems of the environment, Acid Earth calls for a renewed sense of public and political will to bring the problems of acid pollution under control. The book also makes valuable reading for specialists and students. Originally published in 1992

Britain has an immense range of environmental law and the reputation for largely ignoring it. John McCormick describes the fascinating story of the political growth of that law, and the pressures, the compromises, the parliamentary and civil service opportunism that allowed the edifice to grow over the greater part of a century. He tells the story of the absolute change in political climate over the last ten years and deciphers the nature of Thatcher's ''conversion'' to greenery. He explains why everyone who cared about the environment became embattled and, above all, how the old methods of sensible compromise were banished, probably for ever, not least because of the government's obsession with secrecy. What, then, are the new political means of compelling change on a reluctant parliament? Everything is at stake from welfare to water, from forests to fishing. Where are we now? What are the likely pressures, both internal and from Europe and the rest of the world, to make Britain pass more environmentally sound laws and, perhaps more importantly, to observe them? McCormick provides a gripping picture of the central issues, of the system and of the battleground. Originally published in 1991

This is the only book to provide an account of how popular theatre developed from the fairground booths of the eighteenth century to become a vehicle of mass entertainment in the following century. Whereas other studies offer a traditional approach to the theatres of high culture, John McCormick takes the role of impartial historian, uncovering the popular theatres of the boulevards, suburbs and fairgrounds. He focuses on the social and economic context in which vaudevilles, pantomimes and melodramas were performed, and explores the audiences who enjoyed them.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203168119

The second edition of Introduction to Global Studies offers a succinct and authoritative introduction to the important issues and events of our rapidly changing world. It covers all of the key topics in the field, including introductions to history, culture, science, politics and economics, alongside focused surveys on pressing global matters such as human rights, migration, the climate emergency, and health and disease. With learning features that hone in on key themes and debates, such as Global and Local and North and South boxes, this essential text will help you to navigate challenging issues. Full-colour photographs, figures and maps bring the subject to life. Ideal for students beginning courses on and related to global studies, this second edition offers: -A brand new chapter on health and disease, with additional coverage of Covid-19 incorporated throughout the book. -Increased coverage of inequality and gender, with a thematic focus on how inequalities are compounded across global society -Contemporary Debates: a new feature outlining the pros and cons of controversial topics -A comprehensive companion website, offering an array of resources for both students and lecturers, including a testbank, illustrated lecturer slides, interactive quizzes, and an online media library

From antiquity to the present, many have written on the subject of beauty, but precious few have done so with the capacity themselves to write beautifully. The Sense of Beauty is that rare exception. This remarkable early work of the great American philosopher, George Santayana, features a quality of prose that is as wondrous as what he had to say. Indeed, his summation remains a flawless classical statement. "Beauty seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility. If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty. Be'auty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good." The editor of this new edition, John McGormick, reminds us that The Sense of Beauty is the first work in aesthetics written in the United States. Santayana was versed in the history of his subject, from Plato and Aristotle to Schopenhauer and Taine in the nineteenth century. Santayana took as his task a complete rethinking of the idea that beauty is embedded in objects. Rather beauty is an emotion, a value, and a sense of the good. In this, aesthetics was unlike ethics: not a correction of evil or pursuit of the virtuous. Rather it is a pleasure that resides in the sense of self. The work is divided into chapters on the materials of beauty, form and expression. A good many of Santayana's later works are presaged by this early effort. And this volume also anticipates the development of art as a movement as well as a value apart from other aspects of life. The work is written without posturing, without hectoring. Santayana is nonetheless able to give expression to strong views. His preferences are made perfectly plain. Perhaps the key is a powerful belief that beauty is an adornment not a material necessity. But that does mean art is trivial. Quite the contrary, the good life is precisely the extent to which such "adornments" as painting, poetry or music come to define the lives of individuals and civilizations alike. This is, in short, a major work that can still inform and move us a century after its first composition.

This book is a direct product of World War II, of the long years at sea that gave the author the feeling that the past was no more than an illusion. He compares past with present, one nation with another, to clarify the conviction that the nature of imaginative fiction had been altered by our wars.

From the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, George Santayana was a highly esteemed and widely read writer of philosophy, poetry, essays, memoirs, and even a best-selling novel, The Last Puritan. After a period of relative neglect, interest in his work has revived. A complete edited edition of his works is in progress and he has become the object of renewed scholarly activity. Contributing significantly to the renewal was John McCormick's 1987 biography, the first full-scale volume to treat an elusive figure's life and thought in the detail they deserve. Santayana's life was rich in its interior and outer associations. There was his birth and early childhood in Spain followed by a move to Boston, where he came under the influence of William James at Harvard. This led to his career at Harvard as a professor, where Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Conrad Aiken, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Walter Lippmann were among his devoted students. We see Santayana in correspondence and conversation with Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Ezra Pound, and Robert Lowell. Predominant in Santayana's life was his philosophical work. Hostile to the dominant empiricism of Anglo-American philosophy, he left the academy and remained detached from both the political and ideological movements of early decades of the twentieth century. McCormick relates his skepticism and materialism to a form of idealism deriving from his classical education in Plato and Aristotle, together with his readings in Descartes and Spinoza. He presents Santayana as a supreme stylist in English, who lived a long life always consistent with his stoic epicureanism.

Acid rain was one of the major environmental issues of the 1980s. But while industrialized countries have taken measures to reduce the emissions that lead to acidification, the problems have not gone away. Trees are still dying, lakes are still being made uninhabitable; buildings are still corroding; and human health is still suffering. The most worrying trend is the repetition in the industrializing countries of Asia and Latin America of the problems that have long afflicted Europe and North America. More than 10 years after it was first published, the highly acclaimed Acid Earth still provides the only global view of acidification, and remains the standard text on the subject. Chapters on the causes, effects and growing scientific understanding of acid pollution, and the possible solutions, are followed by detailed studies of the political struggles involved in responding to acid damage in western and eastern Europe, the US and the newly industrializing countries. Written in non-technical language for people interested in the problems of the environment, Acid Earth calls for a renewed sense of public and political will to bring the problems of acid pollution under control. The book also makes valuable reading for specialists and students. Originally published in 1992

Britain has an immense range of environmental law and the reputation for largely ignoring it. John McCormick describes the fascinating story of the political growth of that law, and the pressures, the compromises, the parliamentary and civil service opportunism that allowed the edifice to grow over the greater part of a century. He tells the story of the absolute change in political climate over the last ten years and deciphers the nature of Thatcher's ''conversion'' to greenery. He explains why everyone who cared about the environment became embattled and, above all, how the old methods of sensible compromise were banished, probably for ever, not least because of the government's obsession with secrecy. What, then, are the new political means of compelling change on a reluctant parliament? Everything is at stake from welfare to water, from forests to fishing. Where are we now? What are the likely pressures, both internal and from Europe and the rest of the world, to make Britain pass more environmentally sound laws and, perhaps more importantly, to observe them? McCormick provides a gripping picture of the central issues, of the system and of the battleground. Originally published in 1991

This is the only book to provide an account of how popular theatre developed from the fairground booths of the eighteenth century to become a vehicle of mass entertainment in the following century. Whereas other studies offer a traditional approach to the theatres of high culture, John McCormick takes the role of impartial historian, uncovering the popular theatres of the boulevards, suburbs and fairgrounds. He focuses on the social and economic context in which vaudevilles, pantomimes and melodramas were performed, and explores the audiences who enjoyed them.

Critics of fiction have long been aware that the romantic movement in Europe and America gave a powerful impulse to the art of fiction. The exact nature of that impulse has resisted analysis like so much associated with romanticism. In Fiction as Knowledge John McCormick reaches for precision, proposing that much of the vitality of modern fiction derives from romantic conceptions of history which made available to fiction not merely historical subject matter, but new perceptions of reality, present and past, that pervade the work of many of the greatest writers of the post-romantic period. Beginning with Herder and Hegel, McCormick describes those qualities in historical thought that were revolutionary in the early nineteenth century and rich in meaning for the future. Most prominent of these was the emergence of the idea of individuality, not only in society but also in history. The author demonstrates the vitality of the romantic impulse in the work of seven major novelists of the twentieth century. Marcel Proust's apprehensions of nature in his great novel are seen as Wordsworthian, while as the novel unfolds, history in the form of event and system of organization comes to dominate and to offer a paradigm of the workings of the post-romantic historical imagination. William Faulkner and Andr Malraux are shown to confront history directly, although they do not write "historical" fiction. Herman Broch, Robert Musil, and Henri de Montherlant, uncomfortable with traditional romantic attitudes, still make fullest use of Romantic historical insight to extend the range of fiction as knowledge. Ernest Hemingway, by contrast, is seen as intuitive, a pure product of his novelist's intelligence as opposed to his latter-day romantic anti-intellectualism. Fiction as Knowledge supplies critical insight into the form of the novel as well as into the seven novelists under discussion. Not least, the book is a warning against contemporary anti-historical bias and an appeal to the cultivation of historical consciousness. John McCormick is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, and Honorary Fellow of English and Literature at the University of York. He is the author of George Santayana: A Biography, Catastrophe and Imagination, and The Middle Distance, by Transaction.

The literature on policy strategies, instruments, and styles is impressive. Still, a complex variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches and analytical tools hamper a good overview. "Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons "proposes such a framework for the field and clearly shows how public policy instruments are classified, packaged, and chosen, while highlighting the role evaluation plays in the instruments-choice process.

"Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons "offers a comprehensive analysis of categories and typologies of policy instruments. It classifies sticks, carrots, and sermons--or, more specifically, regulation, economic means, and information. Readers are offered a comparative perspective of evaluation practice in foreign contexts. Special attention is paid to the examples of Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Canada, the United States, and the Republic of Korea. As such, this volume crosses language barriers that stand in the way of dispersing research results among the international community of theoreticians and practitioners. As nations become increasingly interdependent, problems of implementation and evaluation of policy choices will become issues of increasing gravity.

"Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons "provides insights into the traditional and current practice of policy and program evaluation in various contexts. The book's theory of comparative public policy will produce understanding and guidance in designing better policies. It will be of wide interest to those in the fields of public policy, particularly policy design, policy implementation, policy evaluation, comparative politics, and economics.

"The great virtue of McCormick's memoirs is their blunt honesty. He writes with a persuasive directness about what happened to him and what he believes..."--Arts and Letters The title of John McCormick's autobiographical book, may be taken both literally and symbolically. In a literal sense, going to sea was an early and powerful ambition, while seagoing is also a metaphor for the twists and turns in a rootless life, a long voyaging. This is not a conventional autobiography. It is personal only as necessary for continuity, and never confessional. The essays center upon telling episodes in the author's life and strive for objectivity and accuracy about the recent past, both personal and historical. He does so, as he writes, without "any pretension of producing a true history." The events of his life are necessarily unique to him, thus he finds uniqueness in the events that impinged upon him. McCormick begins with his early years, growing up in the American mid-West during the Depression, a time of broken family relations and random jobs. He relates his falling away from religious faith. He describes his first experience as a sailor in a tanker, which gave him physical liberation, a world free of constrictions, as with Hemingway. In discussing his early teaching experience, he gives a vivid portrayal of Germany in the immediate postwar years, along with observations of residual pro-Hitler sentiment and the awkward circumstances (for Germans) of the immediate past. He devotes a chapter to a moving memoir of his friend Francis Fergusson, eminent Rutgers University scholar. McCormick also relates his experience as an amateur bullfighter and reiterates his defense of bullfighting as an art. He paints a vivid picture of an adventure at sea while working on a definitive biography of George Santayana, reflecting also on changes in the genre of biography, with its prevailing emphasis on trivia and sensationalism. In describing his retirement to England, McCormick describes the conflict between nationalism and expatriation. He punctuates details of his naval war experiences with thoughtful observations on military combat. Finally, in his closing chapter, "Coda: Closet Space," McCormick attempts to make sense of old age and death. This autobiographical account of a well-lived life encompasses far more than a splendid teaching and literary career. It will provide insight and good reading for those who know McCormick's scholarly work, for students of the humanities, and for the general public interested in vivid prose. John McCormick is professor emeritus of comparative literature at Rutgers University, and honorary fellow of English and literature at the University of York. He is the author of George Santayana: A Biography, Catastrophe and Imagination, The Middle Distance, and Fiction as Knowledge.

From the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, George Santayana was a highly esteemed and widely read writer of philosophy, poetry, essays, memoirs, and even a best-selling novel, "The Last Puritan." After a period of relative neglect, interest in his work has revived. A complete edited edition of his works is in progress and he has become the object of renewed scholarly activity. Contributing significantly to the renewal was John McCormick's 1987 biography, the first full-scale volume to treat an elusive figure's life and thought in the detail they deserve. Santayana's life was rich in its interior and outer associations. There was his birth and early childhood in Spain followed by a move to Boston, where he came under the influence of William James at Harvard. This led to his career at Harvard as a professor, where Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Conrad Aiken, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Walter Lippmann were among his devoted students. We see Santayana in correspondence and conversation with Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Ezra Pound, and Robert Lowell. Predominant in Santayana's life was his philosophical work. Hostile to the dominant empiricism of Anglo-American philosophy, he left the academy and remained detached from both the political and ideological movements of early decades of the twentieth century. McCormick relates his skepticism and materialism to a form of idealism deriving from his classical education in Plato and Aristotle, together with his readings in Descartes and Spinoza. He presents Santayana as a supreme stylist in English, who lived a long life always consistent with his stoic epicureanism.

From antiquity to the present, many have written on the subject of beauty, but precious few have done so with the capacity themselves to write beautifully. "The Sense of Beauty is "that rare exception. This remarkable early work of the great American philosopher, George Santayana, features a quality of prose that is as wondrous as what he had to say. Indeed, his summation remains a flawless classical statement. "Beauty seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility. If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty. Be'auty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good."

The editor of this new edition, John McGormick, reminds us that "The Sense of Beauty is "the first work in aesthetics written in the United States. Santayana was versed in the history of his subject, from Plato and Aristotle to Schopenhauer and Taine in the nineteenth century. Santayana took as his task a complete rethinking of the idea that beauty is embedded in objects. Rather beauty is an emotion, a value, and a sense of the good. In this, aesthetics was unlike ethics: not a correction of evil or pursuit of the virtuous. Rather it is a pleasure that resides in the sense of self. The work is divided into chapters on the materials of beauty, form and expression. A good many of Santayana's later works are presaged by this early effort. And this volume also anticipates the development of art as a movement as well as a value apart from other aspects of life.

The work is written without posturing, without hectoring. Santayana is nonetheless able to give expression to strong views. His preferences are made perfectly plain. Perhaps the key is a powerful belief that beauty is an adornment not a material necessity. But that does mean art is trivial. Quite the contrary, the good life is precisely the extent to which such "adornments" as painting, poetry or music come to define the lives of individuals and civilizations alike. This is, in short, a major work that can still inform and move us a century after its first composition.

Ernest Hemingway, best-known to layman and aficionado alike, in his fiction described bullfighting, or toreo, as a cross between romantic risk and a drunken party, or as an elaborate substitute for war, ending in wounds or death. Although his descriptions of the "beauty"in toreo are lyrical, they are short on imaginative creation of how such beauty, through techniques and discipline, comes about. Hemingway may have sculpted a personal mystique of toreo but, in the opinion of some, he ignored or slighted the full, unique nature of the subject. In Bullfighting: Art, Technique, and Spanish Society John McCormick sorts through the complexities of toreo, to suggest the aesthetic, social, and moral dimensions of an art that is geographically limited, but universal when seen in round. While having felt the attraction of Hemingway's approach, McCormick knew that he was being seduced by elements that had little to do with toreo. To try to right Hemingway's distortions, he named the first edition of this book The Complete Aficionado, but then realized that the volume was directed at more than just the spectator: BullFighting is written from the point of view of the torerro, as opposed to the usual spectator's impressions and enthusiasm. With the help of a retired matador de toros, Mario Sevilla Mascarenas, who taught McCormick the rudiments of toreo as well as the emotions and discipline essential to survival, the authors rescue 'toreo from romantic cliches. They probe the anatomy of the matador's training and technique, provide a past-and-present survey of the traditions of the corrida, and furnish dramatic portraits of such famous figures as Manolete, Joselito, Belmonte, and Ordonez. Here then is an informed analysis and critique of the origins and myths of toreo and a survey of the novels it has inspired. Defending the faith in a lively as well as clear and discerning manner, this volume provides a committed and vivid approach to the rich history, ritual, and symbolism of the bullfight as it currently exists.

Western culture is composed of a subtle and complex mixture of influences: religious, philosophical, linguistic, political, social, and sociological. American culture is a particular strain, but unless European antecedents and contemporary leanings are duly noted, any resulting history is predestined to provincialism and distortion. In his account of American literature during the period 1919 to 1932, McCormick deals with the extraordinary work of artists who wrested imaginative order from a world in which the abyss was never out of sight.

McCormick's volume is intended as a critical, rather than encyclopedic history of literature on both sides of the Atlantic between the end of World War I and the political and social crises that arose in the 1930s. Although he emphasizes American writers, the emergence of a vital and distinctly modern American literature is located in the cultural encounter with Europe and the rejection of national bias by the major figures of the period.

McCormick deals with Gertrude Stein and the mythology of the "lost generation," the tensions and ambivalences of traditionalism and modernity in the work of Sherwood Anderson and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the effect and qualities of Hemingway's style as compared to that of Henry de Montherlant, and the provincial iconoclasm of Sinclair Lewis juxtaposed with the more telling satire of Italo Svevo. The formal innovations in the work of John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, and William Faulkner, the poetic revolution against cultural parochialism and genteel romanticism is given extensive consideration with regard to the work of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore are also discussed. The concluding chapters discuss literary and social criticism and assess the influence of psychoanalysis, philosophical pragmatism, and radical historiography on the intellectual climate of the period.

Teachers and students in English and American Literature, American History, and Comparative Literature, and the general reader interested in the writing of the period, may gain new insights from these valuations, devaluations, and re-evaluations.

"The great virtue of McCormick's memoirs is their blunt honesty. He writes with a persuasive directness about what happened to him and what he believes..."--"Arts and Letters"
The title of John McCormick's autobiographical book, may be taken both literally and symbolically. In a literal sense, going to sea was an early and powerful ambition, while seagoing is also a metaphor for the twists and turns in a rootless life, a long voyaging. This is not a conventional autobiography. It is personal only as necessary for continuity, and never confessional. The essays center upon telling episodes in the author's life and strive for objectivity and accuracy about the recent past, both personal and historical. He does so, as he writes, without "any pretension of producing a true history." The events of his life are necessarily unique to him, thus he finds uniqueness in the events that impinged upon him.
McCormick begins with his early years, growing up in the American mid-West during the Depression, a time of broken family relations and random jobs. He relates his falling away from religious faith. He describes his first experience as a sailor in a tanker, which gave him physical liberation, a world free of constrictions, as with Hemingway. In discussing his early teaching experience, he gives a vivid portrayal of Germany in the immediate postwar years, along with observations of residual pro-Hitler sentiment and the awkward circumstances (for Germans) of the immediate past. He devotes a chapter to a moving memoir of his friend Francis Fergusson, eminent Rutgers University scholar. McCormick also relates his experience as an amateur bullfighter and reiterates his defense of bullfighting as an art. He paints a vivid picture of an adventure at sea while working on a definitive biography of George Santayana, reflecting also on changes in the genre of biography, with its prevailing emphasis on trivia and sensationalism. In describing his retirement to England, McCormick describes the conflict between nationalism and expatriation. He punctuates details of his naval war experiences with thoughtful observations on military combat. Finally, in his closing chapter, "Coda: Closet Space," McCormick attempts to make sense of old age and death.
This autobiographical account of a well-lived life encompasses far more than a splendid teaching and literary career. It will provide insight and good reading for those who know McCormick's scholarly work, for students of the humanities, and for the general public interested in vivid prose.
John McCormick is professor emeritus of comparative literature at Rutgers University, and honorary fellow of English and literature at the University of York. He is the author of "George Santayana: A Biography, Catastrophe and Imagination, The Middle Distance, " and "Fiction as Knowledge."

Ernest Hemingway, best-known to layman and aficionado alike, in his fiction described bullfighting, or "toreo, "as a cross between romantic risk and a drunken party, or as an elaborate substitute for war, ending in wounds or death. Although his descriptions of the "beauty"in "toreo "are lyrical, they are short on imaginative creation of how such beauty, through techniques and discipline, comes about. Hemingway may have sculpted a personal mystique of "toreo "but, in the opinion of some, he ignored or slighted the full, unique nature of the subject.

In "Bullfighting: Art, Technique, and Spanish Society "John McCormick sorts through the complexities of "toreo, "to suggest the aesthetic, social, and moral dimensions of an art that is geographically limited, but universal when seen in round. While having felt the attraction of Hemingway's approach, McCormick knew that he was being seduced by elements that had little to do with "toreo. "To try to right Hemingway's distortions, he named the first edition of this book "The Complete Aficionado, "but then realized that the volume was directed at more than just the spectator: "BullFighting "is written from the point of view of the "torerro, "as opposed to the usual spectator's impressions and enthusiasm. With the help of a retired "matador de toros, "Mario Sevilla Mascarenas, who taught McCormick the rudiments of "toreo "as well as the emotions and discipline essential to survival, the authors rescue "'toreo "from romantic cliches. They probe the anatomy of the matador's training and technique, provide a past-and-present survey of the traditions of the "corrida, "and furnish dramatic portraits of such famous figures as Manolete, Joselito, Belmonte, and Ordonez.

Here then is an informed analysis and critique of the origins and myths of "toreo "and a survey of the novels it has inspired. Defending the faith in a lively as well as clear and discerning manner, this volume provides a committed and vivid approach to the rich history, ritual, and symbolism of the bullfight as it currently exists.

The literature on policy strategies, instruments, and styles is impressive. Still, a complex variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches and analytical tools hamper a good overview. Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons proposes such a framework for the field and clearly shows how public policy instruments are classified, packaged, and chosen, while highlighting the role evaluation plays in the instruments-choice process.Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons offers a comprehensive analysis of categories and typologies of policy instruments. It classifies sticks, carrots, and sermons - or, more specifically, regulation, economic means, and information. Readers are offered a comparative perspective of evaluation practice in foreign contexts. Special attention is paid to the examples of Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Canada, the United States, and the Republic of Korea. As such, this volume crosses language barriers that stand in the way of dispersing research results among the international community of theoreticians and practitioners. As nations become increasingly interdependent, problems of implementation and evaluation of policy choices will become issues of increasing gravity.Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons provides insights into the traditional and current practice of policy and program evaluation in various contexts. The book's theory of comparative public policy will produce understanding and guidance in designing better policies. It will be of wide interest to those in the fields of public policy, particularly policy design, policy implementation, policy evaluation, comparative politics, and economics.

As the essays in this book attest, in a time of specialization John McCormick chose diversification, a choice determined by a life spent in many occupations and many countries. After his five years in the U. S. Navy in the Second World War, the academy beckoned by way of the G. I. Bill, graduate training, and a career in teaching. Prosperity in the American university at the time meant setting up as a "Wordsworth man," a "Keats man," or a "Dr. Johnson man" all chilling to the author. He chose self-exile in which he disguised himself as an "Americanist" saleable in Europe, and lectured happily in comparative studies: literature, history, and philosophy. Thus the broad range of this volume, both in subject matter and in the span of time it covers.

The essays are divided into three sections. First are general and personal essays on a variety of topics, followed by work on individual writers, and third, writings on criticism and theory. A section on Santayana reflects his eight years of research for Santayana's biography. The writings on Spain and "toreo" (bullfighting) result from another long-held interest, together with the author's attempt to alter some of the romantic nonsense about the running of the bulls in Pamplona, too often the entire substance of what the general public knows about Spain. McCormick has long been convinced that without knowledge of bullfighting, the foreigner cannot comprehend arcane and wonderful aspects of the Spanish character.

The coda, "Another Music," is an old man's attempt to solve the mysterious algebra of how the world turns now, and how the young appear to the aged. While the volume is diverse in its range of writers--from Whitman in America to Santayana in Europe, taken as a collectivity, these essays provide a sense of the grandeur as well as the decadent in twentieth century politics and aesthetics alike. Written with the literary taste and political non-conformity that still characterizes McCormick, the volume is a treat for the specialist (perhaps) and for the generalist (certainly).

"John McCormick" was professor of American Studies in the Free University, Berlin, and is at present professor emeritus of comparative literature at Rutgers University. He is the author of "Bullfighting, American and European Literary Imagination, Catastrophe and Imagination, Fiction as Knowledge, George Santayana" and "Seagoing."

Critics of fiction have long been aware that the romantic movement in Europe and America gave a powerful impulse to the art of fiction. The exact nature of that impulse has resisted analysis like so much associated with romanticism. In "Fiction as Knowledge" John McCormick reaches for precision, proposing that much of the vitality of modern fiction derives from romantic conceptions of history which made available to fiction not merely historical subject matter, but new perceptions of reality, present and past, that pervade the work of many of the greatest writers of the post-romantic period.
Beginning with Herder and Hegel, McCormick describes those qualities in historical thought that were revolutionary in the early nineteenth century and rich in meaning for the future. Most prominent of these was the emergence of the idea of individuality, not only in society but also in history. The author demonstrates the vitality of the romantic impulse in the work of seven major novelists of the twentieth century. Marcel Proust's apprehensions of nature in his great novel are seen as Wordsworthian, while as the novel unfolds, history in the form of event and system of organization comes to dominate and to offer a paradigm of the workings of the post-romantic historical imagination. William Faulkner and Andr Malraux are shown to confront history directly, although they do not write "historical" fiction. Herman Broch, Robert Musil, and Henri de Montherlant, uncomfortable with traditional romantic attitudes, still make fullest use of Romantic historical insight to extend the range of fiction as knowledge. Ernest Hemingway, by contrast, is seen as intuitive, a pure product of his novelist's intelligence as opposed to his latter-day romantic anti-intellectualism.
"Fiction as Knowledge" supplies critical insight into the form of the novel as well as into the seven novelists under discussion. Not least, the book is a warning against contemporary anti-historical bias and an appeal to the cultivation of historical consciousness.
"John McCormick" is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, and Honorary Fellow of English and Literature at the University of York. He is the author of "George Santayana: A Biography, Catastrophe and Imagination, and The Middle Distance," by Transaction.

Nine revolutionary algorithms that power our computers and smartphones Every day, we use our computers to perform remarkable feats. A simple web search picks out a handful of relevant needles from the world's biggest haystack. Uploading a photo to Facebook transmits millions of pieces of information over numerous error-prone network links, yet somehow a perfect copy of the photo arrives intact. Without even knowing it, we use public-key cryptography to transmit secret information like credit card numbers, and we use digital signatures to verify the identity of the websites we visit. How do our computers perform these tasks with such ease? John MacCormick answers this question in language anyone can understand, using vivid examples to explain the fundamental tricks behind nine computer algorithms that power our PCs, tablets, and smartphones.