We live in a fast-paced world. Looking over the last decade, the world has changed so radically - politically, economically and culturally - that it’s difficult to believe only 10 years have passed. Technology is certainly no exception. It’s easy to overlook the huge changes in the way technology is used in our daily lives - because technology tends to evolve in small little steps as opposed to one radical revolution. Looking backwards over a period of ten years provides a great perspective. The Internet has become so pervasive that the lives of many people today revolve around it throughout the day. They don’t have to be computer geeks to spend hours and hours online - the Internet, in its various forms of consumption is simply their second nature - much like the phone was in the past. Even people who don’t live their social lives on the Internet still use it as their medium of choice for performing many tasks - such as finding directions, buying goods, finding product descriptions or reading news. It is therefore quite obvious that the demand forWeb-based solutions is booming with the possibilities truly being endless.

PHP was created in a brink of this new era, and while I can’t say we knew exactly what was going to happen - I’m quite proud we took the right decisions that in turn made PHP one of the biggest enablers of this modern Web (r)evolution. I’ve heard many ideas from many people that tried to understand what is it about PHP that makes it so successful - its performance, excellent database support, support for protocols, its multi-platform support, and many other technical advantages. While there’s truth to all of them, in my opinion they are minor contributors. I believe that there are just two key ingredients to PHP’s success - Simplicity - being the technological advantage, and the Community that was built around it - that provided a huge social advantage.

"International Relations: A European Perspective" presents the main schools of international relations while underlining the added value of the European approach. Contrary to US or East Asian perspectives, a European viewpoint adopts a critical approach to traditional cleavages. The author demonstrates the added value of a European approach to international relations, taking into account both the shortcomings and achievements found within European history and current European unity. This title includes such key themes as: the evolution of state sovereignty, regional cooperation between previous enemies, political impact of economic integration, regimes building, international rule setting, institutionalization of international relations, and the weight of ideas and perceptions by transnational cooperation. This comprehensive assessment takes into consideration every school of international relations critically presented from this original perspective and as such makes the book ideal for courses on international relations.

Taking into account the popularity and variety of the genre, this collaborative volume considers a wide range of English Romantic autobiographical writers and modes, including working-class autobiography, the familiar essay, and the staged presence. In the wake of Rousseau's "Confessions", autobiography became an increasingly popular as well as a literary mode of writing. By the early nineteenth century, this hybrid and metamorphic genre is found everywhere in English letters, in prose and poetry by men and women of all classes. As such, it resists attempts to provide a coherent historical account or establish a neat theoretical paradigm. The contributors to "Romantic Autobiography in England" embrace the challenge, focusing not only on major writers such as William Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Mary Shelley, but on more recent additions to the canon such as Mary Robinson, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Mary Hays. There are also essays on the scandalous "Memoirs of Mrs. Billington" and on Joseph Severn's autobiographical scripting of himself as 'the friend of Keats'. The result is an exploratory and provisional mapping of the field, provocative rather than exhaustive, intended to inspire future scholarship and teaching.

The mystery of inheritance has captivated thinkers since antiquity, and the unlocking of this mystery—the development of classical genetics—is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. This great scientific and human drama is the story told fully and for the first time in this book.

Acclaimed science writer James Schwartz presents the history of genetics through the eyes of a dozen or so central players, beginning with Charles Darwin and ending with Nobel laureate Hermann J. Muller. In tracing the emerging idea of the gene, Schwartz deconstructs many often-told stories that were meant to reflect glory on the participants and finds that the “official” version of discovery often hides a far more complex and illuminating narrative. The discovery of the structure of DNA and the more recent advances in genome science represent the culmination of one hundred years of concentrated inquiry into the nature of the gene. Schwartz’s multifaceted training as a mathematician, geneticist, and writer enables him to provide a remarkably lucid account of the development of the central ideas about heredity, and at the same time bring to life the brilliant and often eccentric individuals who shaped these ideas.

In the spirit of the late Stephen Jay Gould, this book offers a thoroughly engaging story about one of the oldest and most controversial fields of scientific inquiry. It offers readers the background they need to understand the latest findings in genetics and those still to come in the search for the genetic basis of complex diseases and traits.

The Trouble with Higher Education is a powerful and topical critique of the Higher Education system in the UK, with relevance to countries with similar systems.  Based on the authors’ experiences that span over 30+ years of fieldwork, the issues discussed focus on the problems facing the principle responsibilities of universities: teaching, learning and research.

The first half of the book identifies a number of problems that have followed the growth of mass education.  It examines their causes and explains their damaging effects.  The second half of the book offers a broad vision and makes a number of practical suggestions for ameliorating the problems and improving higher education.  Supported by research, the suggestions include: ways of managing universities; proper inspection; better ways of organising students’ learning; improving teaching and learning; better approaches to assessment, and the proper use of ideas such as learning outcomes.

Topics discussed include:

• Chronic under-funding, the replacement of student grants with loans and the introduction of tuition fees.
• The growth of managerialism.
• The emphasis on accountability and decline of trust.
• The growth of a competitive, market ethos.
• Modular degrees, knowledge treated as a commodity and students seen as customers.
• The drift towards a two-tiered system, with teaching colleges and research universities.
• Casualisation of the academic profession.

The Trouble with Higher Education is aimed primarily at a professional audience of academics, educationalists, managers, administrators and policy makers, but would interest anyone concerned about higher education.  It is suited to professional development courses, and Master’s and doctoral level studies.

This book provides both a comprehensive introduction and a perceptive examination of Britain’s relations with the European Community and the European Union since 1945, combining an historical account with political analysis to illustrate the changing and multifaceted nature of British and European politics.

Few issues in British politics since 1945 have generated such heated controversy as Britain’s approach to the process of European integration associated with the European Union. The long-running debate on the subject has not only played a major part in the downfall of prime ministers and other leading political figures but has also exposed major fault-lines within governments and caused deep and rancorous divisions within and between the major political parties. This highly contested issue has given rise to bitter campaigning in the press and between pressure groups, and it has bemused, confused and divided the public at large.

Key questions addressed include:

• Why has Europe had such an explosive impact on British politics?
• What impelled British policymakers to join the European Community and to undertake one of the radical, if not the most radical, changes in modern British history?
• What have been the perceived advantages and disadvantages of British membership of the European Union?
• Why has British membership of the European Union rarely attracted a national consensus?

Engaging with both academic and public debates about Britain and the European Union, this volume is essential reading for all students of British history, British politics, and European politics.

Touching on the work of philosophers including Richardson, Kant, Hume, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Dewey, this study examines the history of what philosophers have had to say about "Shakespeare" as a subject of philosophy, from the seventeenth-century to the present.  Stewart's volume will be of interest to Shakespeareans, literary critics, and philosophers.

This book demonstrates how representations of the Victorian suburb in mid- to late-nineteenth century British writing occasioned a literary sub-genre unique to this period, one that attempted to reassure readers that the suburb was a place where outsiders could be controlled and where middle-class values could be enforced. Whelan explores the dissonance created by the differences between the suburban ideal and suburban realities, recognizing the persistence of that ideal in the face of abundant evidence that it was hardly ever realized. She discusses evidence from primary and secondary sources about perceptions and realities of suburban living, showing what it meant to live in a "real" Victorian suburb. The book also demonstrates how the suburban ideal (with its elements of privacy, cleanliness, rus in urbe, and respectability), in its relation to culturally embedded ideas about the Beautiful and Picturesque, gained such a strong foothold in the Victorian middle class that contemplating its failure caused intense anxiety. Whelan goes on to trace the ways in which this anxiety is represented in literature.

Relations between the European Union and China have grown at a sustained pace across the board in recent times, transforming the relationship from one of previous neglect into a matter of global strategic significance. This book offers an examination of the evolution of contemporary EU-China relations in the economic, technological and high politics dimensions, including implications of the high-tech and security-related elements of the relationship (space and satellite navigation cooperation; advanced technology transfers; arms sales, including the proposal to lift the EU arms embargo on China) for the United States and its East Asian allies. The analysis of EU-China relations is placed in the context of evolving dynamics in transatlantic relations on the one hand, and East Asia's major powers' changing security perceptions on the other. With this approach, this study intends to provide the reader with a better understanding of the global significance acquired by Sino-European relations, while also raising the question as to whether, and to what extent, the promotion of EU space and defense interests in China has made the EU a novel strategic factor in East Asia.

This book contributes to current debates on the emerging global order, including discussions of how European and Chinese policy makers would perceive the post-Cold War international system, evaluate the place and role of their countries in it, and appraise the policies to be adopted to maintain global competitiveness in key strategic industrial sectors and increase political autonomy in an international environment characterized by US primacy.

To understand theGuise is to understand the profound transformations that shook sixteenth-century Europe. So it is mystifying that outside France they are all but forgotten. For in their day theGuisewere held in awe throughout Europe. Admiring or appalled, none could ignore them. Enemies at one time or another of the great dynasties of Tudor, Habsburg, Valois, and Bourbon, the Guise were one of the most powerful princely houses of sixteenth-century Europe. With dreams of empire and aspirations to rule several kingdoms, they were the greatest non-royal house of their age. There may have been richer German princes and more cultured Italian dukes, but none had the astonishing range of dynastic interests which they possessed, ranging from Scotland to Sicily and from Ireland to Jerusalem. Their story requires retelling and it is fitting that the first comprehensive biography of the family for a century and half should fall to an Englishman, and not just because Elizabeth I considered for most of her reign that it was the Guise, and not Philip II, who was her foremost enemy.

Gunther Martin examines the references to religion in the speeches of Demosthenes and other Athenian orators in the 4th century BC. In Part I he demonstrates the role religion plays in the rhetorical strategy of speeches in political trials: his main argument is that speakers had to be consistent in their approach to religion throughout their career. It was not possible to change from being a pragmatic to a `religious' speaker and back, but it was possible, when writing for others, to use religion in a way one would not have used it when delivering a speech oneself. In Part II Martin deals with assembly speeches and speeches in private trials, in which religious references are far scarcer. In the assembly, unless genuinely religious matters are discussed, religion seems to have been practically inadmissible, while in private trials it is procedural elements that supply the majority of religious references.