Provides background information on the countries of Western Europe along with recommendations on accommodations, restaurants, sights, shopping, and transportation.

In just three months in 1940, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France fell to the Nazis. The German occupation of Western Europe had begun—but a brave few rose up in defiance. National resistance has long been celebrated in remembrances of World War II, depicted as making significant contributions to the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, the so-called army of shadows drew heavily on the support of London and Washington, a fact often forgotten in postwar Europe. The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945 is a sweeping analytical history of the underground anti-Nazi forces during World War II. Examining clandestine organizations in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy, Olivier Wieviorka sheds new light on the factors that shaped the resistance and its place in the grand scheme of Anglo-American military strategy. While national actors played a leading role in fomenting resistance, British and American intelligence services and propaganda as well as financial, material, and logistical support were crucial to its activities and growth. Wieviorka illuminates the policies of governments in exile and resistance actors regarding cooperation with the British and Americans, pointing to the persistence of national self-interest and long-standing historical tensions. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources and bringing together the political, diplomatic, and military dimensions of the conflict, this book is the first account of the resistance on a continental scale and from a trans-European perspective.

This is the first history of finance - broadly defined to include money, banking, capital markets, public and private finance, international transfers etc. - that covers Western Europe (with an occasional glance at the western hemisphere) and half a millennium. Charles Kindleberger highlights the development of financial institutions to meet emerging needs, and the similarities and contrasts in the handling of financial problems such as transferring resources from one country to another, stimulating investment, or financing war and cleaning up the resulting monetary mess. The first half of the book covers money, banking and finance from 1450 to 1913; the second deals in considerably finer detail with the twentieth century. This major work casts current issues in historical perspective and throws light on the fascinating, and far from orderly, evolution of financial institutions and the management of financial problems. Comprehensive, critical and cosmopolitan, this book is both an outstanding work of reference and essential reading for all those involved in the study and practice of finance, be they economic historians, financial experts, scholarly bankers or students of money and banking. This groundbreaking work was first published in 1984.

More than a decade after the breakdown of the Soviet Empire and the reunification of Europe, historiographies and historical concepts still stood very much apart. This book talks about how there were no common efforts for joint interpretations and no attempts to reach a common understanding of central notions and concepts.

What are the consequences of globalization for the structure of political conflicts in Western Europe? How are political conflicts organized and articulated in the twenty-first century? And how does the transformation of territorial boundaries affect the scope and content of political conflicts? This book sets out to answer these questions by analyzing the results of a study of national and European electoral campaigns, protest events and public debates in six West European countries. While the mobilization of the losers in the processes of globalization by new right populist parties is seen to be the driving force of the restructuring of West European politics, the book goes beyond party politics. It attempts to show how the cleavage coalitions that are shaping up under the impact of globalization extend to state actors, interest groups and social movement organizations, and how the new conflicts are framed by the various actors involved.

Why are traditional nation-states newly defining membership and belonging? In the twenty-first century, several Western European states have attached obligatory civic integration requirements as conditions for citizenship and residence, which include language proficiency, country knowledge and value commitments for immigrants. This book examines this membership policy adoption and adaptation through both medium-N analysis and three paired comparisons to argue that while there is convergence in instruments, there is also significant divergence in policy purpose, design and outcomes. To explain this variation, this book focuses on the continuing, dynamic interaction of institutional path dependency and party politics. Through paired comparisons of Austria and Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands and France, this book illustrates how variations in these factors - as well as a variety of causal processes - produce divergent civic integration policy strategies that, ultimately, preserve and anchor national understandings of membership.

Chronological history of medieval Western Europe, provides the political, religious, intellectual, and economic history of the time.

"What makes a city endure and prosper? In this masterful survey of a thousand years of urban architecture, Wolfgang Braunfels identifies certain themes common to cities as different as Siena and London, Munich and Venice ... Braunfels describes scores of cities, classifying them as cathedral cities, city-states, imperial cities, maritime cities, "ideal cities" (those towns which, planned by often absent rulers for a specefic purpose, failed to develop independent lives) ... Lavishly illustrated with city plans, bird's-eye views, early renderings, and modern photographs, Urban Design in Western Europe will both delight and instruct architects, urban planners, historians, and travelers."--Page 4 of cover

People were once restricted to food native to their region and produced locally. Today, however, food from any place in the world is available, or can be made available, anywhere else. Often there is no or very little information about the nutritional and health aspects of these foods. Nutrition and Health of Western European Foods: Traditional and Ethnic Diets is part of series that will cover the entire globe and is aimed at filling the knowledge gap from traditional and scientific points of view. This volume provides an analysis of traditional and ethnic foods from Western Europe, including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany. It also addresses the history of use, composition, preparation, ingredient origin, nutritional aspects, and health effects of various foods and food products in each of these countries. Nutrition and Health of Western European Foods: Traditional and Ethnic Diets ultimately presents both local and international regulations, providing suggestions to harmonize these regulations and promote global availability of these foods. - Analyzes nutritional and health claims related to western European foods - Includes traditional and ethnic foods from Ireland, the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany - Explores both scientific and anecdotal diet-based health claims - Examines if foods meet regulatory requirements, and how to remedy noncompliance - Reviews the influence of historical eating habits on today's diets

Politics and Society in Western Europe is a comprehensive introduction for students of West European politics and of comparative politics. This new edition has been extensively revised and updated to meet with the new needs of undergraduate students as they come to terms with a changing social and political landscape in Europe. This textbook provides a full analysis of the political systems of 18 Western European countries, their political parties, elections, and party systems, as well as the structures of government at local, regional, national and European Union levels. Throughout the book, key theoretical ideas are accessibly introduced and examined against the very latest empirical data on civil society and the state.