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CHOICE Review

The authors, an American political scientist and his graduate student, have compiled a work consisting of 20 short articles, speeches, and passages from a few key documents on the European Union. It is intended to help students by supplementing standard textbooks on the history, theory, and practice of European integration. The readings are divided into three sections. The first set, ranging from Winston Churchill's speech in Zurich in 1946 to the preamble of the Maastricht treaty of 1992, offer explanations for the impetus to unite. The authors, including Charles de Gaulle, Jean Monnet, and Margaret Thatcher, obviously differ on their views of and recommendations for the European future. The five readings in the second set, written in the 1950s and 1960s, provide theoretical analyses of the development of European union in those decades. The third group, the most recently written, concentrates on the impact of domestic policies, organized interests, political elites, and the mass public on the decisions and working of the European Union. The work will be, as the authors suggest, of some value for introductory students in courses on the European Union. Upper-division undergraduate.