This is the fourth in a continuing series of collected essays by the former editors of Monthly Review on the state of the U.S. economy and its relation to the global system. Like its predecessors, this volume focuses on the most recent phase of the development of U.S. capitalism, stressing the profound contradictions of the underlying processes of capital accumulation and pointing the way to the fundamental reforms that are the essential precondition for a real economic revival.

Few figures of interwar Germany were as influential as Leopold Schwarzschild, the brilliant editor of the liberal magazine 'Das Tage-Buch'. In the uncertain years of the Weimar Republic, Schwarzschild became famous for his perceptive political analyses and critique of the economic policies of successive governments in the twilight of Germany's first experiment with democracy. When he was forced to emigrate in 1933, following Hitler's rise to power, he pursued his analysis of developments in Germany from Paris, where he resumed publication of his journal under the new name 'Das Neue Tage-Buch', while also mounting a furious attack on the European powers taken by surprise by the Nazi ascendancy. 'One thing is already beyond question today...', he wrote in the spring of 1933, '...part of the new era is an unremitting descent into some kind of military conflagration'. Winston Churchill, a great admirer of Schwarzschild, made one of his later books required reading for the War Cabinet, yet his campaigning journalism has never before appeared in English. In bringing his writings to an English-speaking readership, Chronicle of a Downfall will restore Leopold Schwarzschild to his rightful place as one of the most poignant chroniclers of the fall of German democracy and the descent of Europe into World War II.

Thirteen essays by acknowledged economic experts explore the rapid changes in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, with discussions on political and economic freedom, monetary control and privatization, labor markets and social safety nets, and taxation and crime.

The unification of Germany and the decline of superpower conflict in Europe has heightened interest in the "new" Germany. From Bundesrepublik to Deutschland: German Politics after Unification examines how political scientists have historically treated Germany and explores the issues and approaches needed to accommodate the increased importance of the country within Europe. Structured by issue areas, this volume includes sections on political economy; women in politics; inner-German relations and the reintegration of the western and eastern regions of the country; political behavior; Germany and the European Community; security issues; and the role of Germany in the field of comparative politics. Each chapter examines the development of relevant literature and is followed by an essay that charts new areas for, and approaches to, research.

Governments have been taking control of activities - 'public' goods, 'public' utilities, welfare and local government services - which would have been better left to the private sector. Most of them were being privately provided before the state crowded out private initiatives. People will increasingly escape to non-state suppliers unless the government withdraws from many of these activities. Government should reduce its share of national income from 40 per cent to 20 per cent. Arthur Seldon, for many years the IEA's editorial director, argues that attempts to correct market 'imperfections' have created over-government. But the 'escapable power of political government' is up against the 'irresistible economic force of the market'. Sir Samuel Brittan contributes a comment in which he says that Seldon's paper reveals 'a deep belief in the superior ability of ordinary citizens to make their own choices and decisions better than governments or experts or committees'.

Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of a thousand years of Russian history. Encompassing all key periods in Russia's dramatic development, the book covers everything from early settlers, through medieval decline, Ivan the Terrible-the "English Tsar", Peter the Great, the Crimean War and the rise of capitalism, the revolution, and the Soviet period, finally ending with the return of capitalism after 1991. Setting Russia within the context of the "World System", as outlined by Wallerstein, this is a major work of historical Marxist theory that is set to become a future classic.

This is the second in the series of four collections of essays in which Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, the editors of Monthly Review, set out as it took place the development of U.S. and global capitalism from the late 1960s to the "financial explosion" age of the early 1990s and after. This second set of essays constitute in their totality a probing analysis of the condition of the United States economy in the 1970s, immediately after the end of the "golden age" of capitalism. The authors concluded, correctly, that a new period had begun-"one of sluggish capitalist accumulation and unemployment in the advanced capitalist countries on a scale not seen since the 1930s."

Book by Dowd, Douglas Fitzgerald

This is the fifth of seven volumes comprising the definitive scholarly edition of the works of Michal Kalecki, one of the most distinguished 20th-century economists. This volume contains Kalecki's studies on the theory and practice of economic development. It discusses general problems of economic underdevelopment, includes "Observations on Social and Economic Aspects of 'Intermediate Regimes'" and two other papers as equally important for the understanding of Kalecki's approach to problems of the underdeveloped non-socialist countries. This work includes his four empirical case studies on development problems of Israel, India, Cuba, and Bolivia. As in the case of his work on the capitalist and the socialist economies, his studies on the economic development of underdeveloped countries are deeply rooted in their specific social and political conditions.