Philobiblon

Definitely going on the summer reading list is Social democracy and the making of Europe’s twentieth century, which looks to be that rare thing, a piece about (relatively) contemporary history offering original thought and original thesis, as reviewed in the TLS:

….the social democratic era is over. It corresponded, just as liberalism had done, to a particular phase of European history. Like its mortal enemy, Fascism, it rested on the primacy of the nation state. It finds it difficult to survive the advent of globalization and the EU. That, perhaps, is why Norway has not joined the EU, why Sweden remains a distinctly sceptical member, and why Gordon Brown is sceptical about the euro. For social democrats fear, and rightly fear, that the European Union deprives member states of the policy instruments which they need to construct a social-democratic society.