It never ceases to amaze me how academics like Marer will dare to take a pile of dead statistics and edit them into texts which libraries feel obliged to snatch up, due to their well-considered titles. This is yet another opus in this tradition. Marer and his co-author tell us absolutely nothing new about management -- it seems that Marer is an economist and never managed anything in his life, in Europe or elsewhere -- and very little about the region the duo are allegedly producing a spendy book about. This book is a total waste of the serious scholar's or casual book-buyer's money. If you want to learn something about management in Eastern and Central Europe, track down the web sites of the English-language newspapers and business periodicals for Budapest, Bucharest, Warsaw, or wherever else you need to learn how to do business. Don't waste your time with this drab and intellectually hollow compilation of stale ideas and data.

This collection purports to be a scholarly study of the moral teaching of His Holiness Pope John Paul II. But all the authors dissent from the teaching of the Church on morals. The result is a trashing of the Pope's teaching: not very fair, not very convincing, not very noble. Give me Humanae Vitae any day.

More than a book it is a collection of papers, not always easy to understand and written in academic language. It could be used as a reference by one who knows already the subject. Not recommended for beginners