This is an important albeit not uncontroversial contribution to the field of international political economy. The book tries to answer the question whether the world capitalist system is in crisis and the paths available for future world development. The works are firmly located within the world system thesis expounded by Wallerstein in many of his previous works.

The book intoruduces the concept of 6 vectors within which future paths can be examined. These are the inter-state system; world production; world labour force; human welfare; cohesion of states; and the structures of knowledge.

The book displays the weaknesses inherent in the world system thesis. These include overstating the degree of integration of the economies of the world and thus not taking into account the emergence of "non-states" run either by armed bandits or by organised crime.

The book does not deal adequately with the current state of the state. Given the debate around MNCs and their increasing expansion into areas which were the domain of the state this is an issue needing serious appraisal.

The depiction of this era as being a post US hegemonic era is also an area which will be contested by many writers, not least of all the Fukuyama's of the world.

Wallerstein concludes that the future depends onm how the following factors develop: * the extent to which there is loyalty to citizenship;

* the level of security through police order; the extent to which military orders are maintained; * level of welfare especially in relation to health and food distribution; * stability of religious institutions.

Holt studies Jamaica,from the emanicpation of the slaves to the labor problems faced by ex-slaves in the 1930s. But the narrow focus is misleading - really Holt writes about "the problem of freedom:" the tast of socializing ex-slaves into becoming productive laborers - the problem of convincing freedpeople that it's in their best interest to labor for tiny wages, for the profit of the wealthy. Another major focus is the inherent contradictions of classical liberalism - economic freedom does and always has required brutal and blatent inequalities in the political and social spheres.

Certainly not everyone will agree with Holt, but his argumentation and analysis are impeccable. If you believe that self-determination and free enterprise are practically the same thing - or if you think that capitalism and democracy are one and the same - you must read Holt's book.

Hi,

I bought this book as well as all other books on the topic AND took the training at Apple. Conclusion:

If you want/need to learn WebObjects, take the course at Apple (become good in Java first !) because no book available on the market today will really allow you to get passed the many subtilities of this environment. The learning cure is very steep. Get ready to become a Java guru otherwise you'll be totally lost.

As for this book, the Authors intent are very good, but I could not complete any of the very good techniques described. It gives you an idea of the potential WebObjects has, but it's not a HOWTO kind of book. The examples used are full of errors an ommissions which makes it impossible to fully understand the otherwise valuable techniques the authors are trying to explain. As a proof, I could not compile any applications by doing the exercices, only when downloading it from Wrox's very poor website. When analysing the downloaded source with the book's explanations, I discovered all the hidden java code required to compile the application. That's very frustrating because what they were describing was exactly what I wanted to learn.

The chapters on Direct2Web were great but a whole book would be required on the subject. The D2W apps I've tried with it generated too many errors and no one to turn to for help. D2W potential sounds very good, but it's ONLY for experts in Java I guess.

Anyway, it's still worth buying it, hopefully an errata page will eventually be publish or a second edition to finish the otherwise excellent effort. This book is really for experts only with a very good experience in WebObjects, Java, HTML and sql.

I found Ruzek's book much easier to read.

Regards,

I started coding WO almost 2 years ago now and I sure wish I had this book sitting on my shelf when I started! To be honest I have not read this book from cover to cover, but I did browse all the chapters and the earlier chapters would have turned on the light bulb a lot quicker for me when starting out.

Having said that, this book is not limited to beginners. I have recently started the process of learning DirectToWeb and this book has already paid for itself with just the couple of D2W chapters there are. These chapters are especially important because D2W documentation is sorely lacking in the WO world.

A must have for any WO developers shelf.

The very eager to have my own web site that helps me organize many lab chores made me buy WO software. I was shocked at nice interfaces of tools first, and more shocked at little tutorial resources of provider, Apple(though it is very often the case with this company, good product, poor documents/resources) . I've read through this book, which made me a near-intermediate WO programmer. (though becoming a wizard is another-actually learning curve for this framework-especially EOF-seems sigmoidal)

Frankly, I think any book like this should be included in the sw package. Vendor should provide much reading/practicing material, I think. This book is well organized, and teaches much of the basic concept and coding/structuring techniques. But, as for me, a novice in this WO field, this book is somewhat hard to follow at first. So I've read whole documents the Apple provided, and then I could follow the way this book points out.

Though making distinction is somewhat obscure, this book is for from 1/2 beginners to 3/4 intermediates. To make a long story short, this book won't disappoint you.