Book review: British foreign policy: the new Labour years

Matthew Partridge finds that Oliver Daddow and Jamie Gaskarth’s strong collection of essays on Blair and Brown’s foreign policy highs and lows is strong enough to justify its place on reading-lists, covering the Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War on Terror

Book review: Blair’s just war: Iraq and the illusion of morality, by Peter Lee

When is it right to go to war? Peter Lee argues that Tony Blair’s “illusion of morality” evaporated after the 2003 Iraq invasion because the ideas he relied upon were taken out of their historical context. Dr Matthew Partridge is not convinced by the author’s arguments, and finds that exaggerations make the book into a polemic, rather than a serious academic study

[Review of] George J. Leonard (ed.). The Asian Pacific Heritage: A Companion to Literature and the Arts

In this large volume of essays, general editor George J. Leonard aims to produce a tool kit for the multicultural classroom that will unlock the greatest number of (Asian-Pacific American-APA) authors and artists (xiv) for students and teachers. In many ways he hits the mark. Readers who once skipped over the Chinese phrases in Amy Tan\u27s The Joy Luck Club can now find them explained in Molly H. Isham\u27s Reader\u27s Guide to the novel. Those who want to know the meaning of no-no boys or FOBs, or Mestizos or the date when the Queue Ordinance was passed can find them in the book\u27s Cultural Lexicon and Chronology

Book review: optimism about the Arab Spring has gone too far

Violence and political instability remain across Tunisia, Egypt, and the Arab region as old regimes continue to be challenged by protesters seeking justice and fresh elections. In After the Arab Spring, John R. Bradley argues that what we think we know about the uprisings is wrong - political change has destroyed a stable order and that the new “moderate” parties are myths designed to fool both voters and the West. Dr Matthew Partridge looks closer. After the Arab Spring: How Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolts. John R. Bradley. Palgrave. January 2012

Book review: the Labour party and the world: Labour’s foreign policy since 1951

Rhiannon Vickers should be congratulated for delivering a concise, balanced, and accessible account of how left of centre thinking on foreign policy has evolved over the last sixty years, writes Matthew Partridg

Book review: the struggle for Egypt: from Nasser to Tahrir Square

Steven Cook’s master-class in Egyptian political history since the military coup in 1952 is essential to understanding the political tensions between militarists, Islamists, and democrats which persist up to the present day, finds Matthew Partridge

Dromes, Phones and Graphs

Early in September in this year of quadrennial madness, I had written to Dr. H.K. Wombat at his retreat in the Alpujarras in Spain for his prediction of the outcome of the Reagan-Mondale contest. Weeks elapsed without an answer, and I supposed that the worthy marsupial had either gone walkabout or was again engaged in the matters of international intrigue which had taken him to Spain in the first place

\u27Or\u27 Son Visits The Escorial

I wended my way down the walk to The Wombat\u27s winter wickiup overlooking the Wrapahammock River. It had stormed the night before and the landscape was covered with what Iranians (the whilom Persians) call barf, but when we English-speakers more sensibly refer to as snow. The Wombat\u27s chatelaine, Pocahontas-like in a feather chaplet, purringly raised the weighty woolen blanket serving as a door to admit me. Gazing on her feline svelteness and chrysoberyl eyes I reflected that my friend must be a secret Encratite or Hieracite not have married this direction descendant of the Marquis de Carabas\u27 right bower

Generalized Virial Theorem and Pressure Relation for a strongly correlated Fermi gas

For a two-component Fermi gas in the unitarity limit (ie, with infinite scattering length), there is a well-known virial theorem, first shown by J. E. Thomas et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 120402 (2005). A few people rederived this result, and extended it to few-body systems, but their results are all restricted to the unitarity limit. Here I show that there is a generalized virial theorem for FINITE scattering lengths. I also generalize an exact result concerning the pressure, first shown in cond-mat/0508320, to the case of imbalanced populations.Comment: 5 page