The Caribbean basin has been the scene of international rivalries and conflict throughout the 20th century. This book provides coverage of the entire Caribbean region, including Central America and the Caribbean coast of northern South America, as well as an analysis of the role of international intervention. It includes discussion of the complex interaction among major world powers in the area, from the British, Dutch, French and Spanish clashes through the Latin American wars of independence to the emergence of the United States as a colonial power in the late 19th century. The book also surveys conflicts over colonial possessions, trade routes and Soviet-American confrontation in the Cold War years. This study integrates the recent political, economic and social history of the Caribbean basin with its military and diplomatic past. It charts this zone's emergence from colonialism during the course of the 20th century.

The sexual revolution is justly celebrated for the freedoms it brought--birth control, the decriminalization of abortion, the liberalization of divorce, greater equality between the sexes, women's massive entry into the workforce, and more tolerance of homosexuality. But as Pascal Bruckner, one of France's leading writers, argues in this lively and provocative reflection on the contradictions of modern love, our new freedoms have also brought new burdens and rules--without, however, wiping out the old rules, emotions, desires, and arrangements: the couple, marriage, jealousy, the demand for fidelity, the war between constancy and inconstancy. It is no wonder that love, sex, and relationships today are so confusing, so difficult, and so paradoxical.

Drawing on history, politics, psychology, literature, pop culture, and current events, this book--a best seller in France--exposes and dissects these paradoxes. With his customary brilliance and wit, Bruckner traces the roots of sexual liberation back to the Enlightenment in order to explain love's supreme paradox, epitomized by the 1960s oxymoron of "free love": the tension between freedom, which separates, and love, which attaches. Ashamed that our sex lives fail to live up to such liberated ideals, we have traded neuroses of repression for neuroses of inadequacy, and we overcompensate: "Our parents lied about their morality," Bruckner writes, but "we lie about our immorality."

Mixing irony and optimism, Bruckner argues that, when it comes to love, we should side neither with the revolutionaries nor the reactionaries. Rather, taking love and ourselves as we are, we should realize that love makes no progress and that its messiness, surprises, and paradoxes are not merely the sources of its pain--but also of its pleasure and glory.

."."don't read this review, just log on to Amazon and buy this book" - Flyer Magazine .."this book is well-written and engaging" - Pilot Magazine. All author proceeds donated to the Douglas Bader Foundation. A desire to become a professional pilot against the odds and without the benefit of wealthy relatives leads to a journey through some unusual jobs including theft investigator, car salesman, loans agent, and finance company repo man. When the opportunity to join an airline is abruptly halted by bureaucracy, a determination to continue flying results in an accidental career as one of the busiest oceanic ferry pilots in the world. Fly along on nine very different delivery flights and experience the literal highs and lows of these dangerously exciting journeys across our oceans. Read about flights from dirt tracks in Russia, fuel leaks in Iceland, mechanical issues in war-torn Africa, low fuel across the Pacific and flying through the waves of the Atlantic Ocean!