British and US scholars of German literature and culture assess the nature of public communications and the molding of public opinion in historical situations ranging from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. In particular they look at the representation of the public sphere in literary writing a half century after the German original of Jürgen Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere was published. Their overall themes are publics before the public sphere, thinking about Enlightenment publics, and cultural politics and literary publics. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

This volume offers a comprehensive view of posters presented at the VIIth International Conference on Event Perception and Action. Arranged in order of appearance of their corresponding symposia on the conference program, this collection of 80 miniature articles on event perception and action represents the work of 136 researchers from 13 countries.

Cross-Cultural Risk Perception demonstrates the richness and wealth of theoretical insights and practical information that risk perception studies can offer to policy makers, risk experts, and interested parties. The book begins with an extended introduction summarizing the state of the art in risk perception research and core issues of cross-cultural comparisons. The main body of the book consists of four cross-cultural studies on public attitudes towards risk in different countries, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, Japan, and China. The last chapter critically discusses the main findings from these studies and proposes a framework for understanding and investigating cross-cultural risk perception. Finally, implications for communication, regulation and management are outlined. The two editors, sociologist Ortwin Renn (Center of Technology Assessment, Germany) and psychologist Bernd Rohrmann (University of Melbourne, Australia), have been engaged in risk research for the last three decades. They both have written extensively on this subject and provided new empirical and theoretical insights into the growing body of international risk perception research.