Understanding cultural patterns and meaning of symbols, that show academics from George H. Mead, through Ruth Benedict, to Cliff ord Geertz, enable the cognition of human behavior and disquisition on its social importance. Commonness and universality of the cultural studies prove that the Humanities’ center of gravity moved from describing the natural and material to explaining the cultural and inter-subjective.

The book I Volti Del Potere (Eng. The Faces of Power) is a collective work consisting of eleven chapters. The authors in an interesting way present the political fates and changes made by the great heroes of history, as well as the pros and cons of their governments, the stigma of which is often felt to this day. In the opinion of the author of the reviewed book, the most interesting is chapter VI dedicated to Benito Mussolini and Fascism.

A modern development of biological sciences, used by biomedicine with the help of biotechnology, has contributed largely to an artifi cial interference in natural life processes. Biotechnologies allow people a bigger and bigger control of their own nature, population and biosphere. Due to this fact, the character of traditional authority changes radically. In this context a notion of biopolitics has a growing popularity. The history and also the diversity of problems discussed in this fi eld is approached by the synthetic work of Thomas Lemke entitled Biopolitics. The author does a historical reconstruction of this concept, used for the fi rst time by Rudolf Kjellén in 1920. He dedicates a lot of time to the theme of antinaturalistic and antipolicistic interpretation of biopolitics, started in the seventies of the 20th century by Michel Foucault, and continued in the works of Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.

In 2010, Barbara Budrich Publishers (Germany) published a book titled Political Science in Central-East Europe. Diversity and Convergence on the development and state of political science in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. The book is a collection of 19 country reports (Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine), which, collectively, provide the much needed account on the discipline’s institutionalization throughout the region. Individual chapters – written by academic professors or lecturers – include such information as the state of research, teaching, major books and journals, international cooperation, public impact. The chapter on Polish political science was written by professor Teresa Sasinska-Klas, at the time of the publication, the President of the Polish Political Science Association.

In Poland’s most recent history, year 2009 was a time to celebrate a special anniversary. Twenty years ago, events that started a political transformation in Poland took place. They were connected with the Round Table Talks, elections to the so-called Contract Sejm and the fact that Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the Prime Minister. In 2009 Poland also celebrated 70th anniversary of II World War, 10th anniversary of its admission to NATO and 5th anniversary of joining the European Union. The celebrations of these events involved exhibitions, conferences and scientific seminars. Articles were written and television networks broadcast interviews and documentaries about the recent historical events that happened in Poland’s history.

€The most important ideologies of the XIX and the first half of the XX century took a stand on communities. €This was expressed not only in the liberal criticism of the communal lifestyle but also in the socialist commendation; in the conservative hierachy or communist absolute equality. Invariably a community constituted one of the central categories around which concepts of life of a human being and functioning of the society were created.

Great historical changes are not as a rule a result of single but long lasting series of events and coincidence of special circumstances. €That was the case with the appearance of the European integration. €This is how the author presents it in the discussed work. Namely, as a result of a long historical process. It makes the monograph valuable and its purpose is to serve as a scientifi c explanation of the sources, circumstances, reasons and proceeding of the fi rst integration in the history.

The expression (and concept) of “new media”, initially describing the facilities which permitted the spread of information in real time amongst many recipients, although present in western literature for sixty years, still merits thorough analysis. The rapid development of new media, signifying nowadays communication methods of a more digital nature, necessitates a thorough analysis of its infl uence on several aspects of social and political life. New media and politics. Internet, democracy, electoral campaigns, a work edited by Marek Jeziński, provides such an analysis in terms of political marketing, theories of political systems, ethics and other fields of interest of social and political studies. The book consists of two parts, one of which concentrates on relations between media and democracy. The second one covers the impact of the Internet on political life and the role of new technologies in providing information, shaping attitudes, changing the forms of political participation and exercising social control.

A widely held belief has it that mass media is the fourth power. A question arises, however, as to whether the media create information instead of simply providing it. The editor of the book under review indicates that this situation leads to a number of pathologies, such as sponsoring, lack of objectivity, manipulations etc. The media, especially those in the hands of private owners, are profi t-driven. Sensational journalism is aimed at attracting as wide audience as possible.

The freedom of speech and the right to information are essential human and citizenship rights, which are guaranteed in the constitution and numerous international conventions. The book under review focuses on widely understood issues of the free expression of views. The authors of the articles are either scholars who deal with the legal aspects of mass media or journalists, who are part of those media. As a result, the authors’ opinions and proposals for change not only deepen our knowledge, but also broaden the scope of thinking about the freedom of speech as practised by the media.

The book by Andrzej Antoszewski consists of three parts. The first of them is of a theoretical character. The author analyses the concept of liberal democracy, trying to present the problems connected with this issue. In the second chapter, he discusses the idea of a party as a political institution and presents how the social and cultural changes infl uence its activity. In a very interesting way, he describes the conditions in which political parties in Central and Eastern Europe were established. He wonders whether the diff erent circumstances in which they were formed have aff ected the way they operate and their mutual relations.

The signifi cance of the Weimar Triangle as a platform for cooperation and solving the most important problems of continental Europe has been changing since the day it was established. Despite a number of signifi cant and spectacular achievements and answers given to the most crucial questions, there are still a lot of controversial issues in which the agreement cold not be achieved.

The publication is another title falling into the subject: Common European Safety and Defense Policy. However, it diff ers from previous depictions of European Union’s activity in the second pillar. €The author’s aim was an analysis of a development of European identity in the fi eld of safety and defense from its origins, that is activities taken and decisions made in the second half of the 1940s. € e author has followed through the European safety and defense policy from the moment of shaping its conception (Pleven plan) and setting up the European Defence Community until setting up the European Defence Agency. €The treaty instituting the European Defence Community deserves a special attention. It is the first presentation of such important Western Europe’s striving for creating the European armed forces in the literature of the subject.

The beginning of the 21st century was a period in which the international order was still in the phase of transformation. The bipolar system, which fell into disintegration along with the end of the Cold War, did not trigger the end of history as some had expected.  e international community faced new challenges which will probably require new, more effective instruments. The new conditions of the evolution of the international order pose difficult questions to be answered by analysts of international relations. The questions relate to the analysis of the present order as well as the directions of its short, middle – and long-term development.  e international order, as with most of the elements in the theory of international relations, may be analysed from the perspective of various research schools. In Polish literature on the subject it has been viewed mainly from the angle of the classical paradigms: realistic, liberal or normative.

The publication “What kind of information?” was written a€ er conference at the same title took place in Lublin at 26 of May 2008. It was organized by Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski (Catholic Uniwersity of Lublin). Leon Dyczewski is the editor of this collection of lecture which were delivered during this conferences. This publication tries to answer the question how do we use diff erent kinds of information in media, PR, advertisements and other areas of human activity. Everyday everyone gets a lot of different information, so it is really important to make sure that this information came from safe sources. So we should demand from people who are taking, collecting, transforming and publicizing, a good quality of this product, which the information certainly is.

The work is a compilation of well-chosen and documented works on local governments in the states of Central and Eastern Europe. The timeline that the authors have assumed has its starting point in the beginning of the 1990s, when the transformation processes of the states of the former Soviet block had begun. This also marks the beginning of the process of forming of democratic state structures, including local governments.

In 2008, a very interesting and modern work published by the Institute of Public Affairs, could be noticed, entitled Subwencje z budżetu państwa dla partii politycznych. Jawność i kontrola [Subsidies for Political Parties from the State’s Budget: Transparency and Control]. As the editor of the book, Jarosław Zbieranek, states in the introduction, the ISP [the Institute of Public Affairs] has been initiating research for years, as well as organising academic sessions, whose core is an analysis of the Polish solutions as to the fi nancing of political parties passed by an amendment of the political parties act of 12 April 2001. Resultingly, the reviewed work constitutes an outcome of these activities. It is a conclusion from the research project Transparentność fi nansów partii politycznych [Transparency of Finances of Political Parties] of 2008, whose members devoted their research predominantly to the evaluation of two, considerable from the point of view of proper and clear functioning of democracy, issues, namely the case of transparency of the parties’ use of fi nancial means from the state’s budget, as well as the control of their expenditure.

The processes of international integration have been noticed for years. The inconvenience with currency exchange has been perceived long ago by the representatives of classical economic thought – David Ricardo and the father of the common currency idea – J. Stuart Mill. He thought there is so much barbarism in many transactions in civilized countries that almost all independent states protect themselves by keeping their own currency. Although there is some inconvenience for those countries and their neighbours.

The discussed book by Stephen Tanner is not the author’s debut. He has been analyzing various issues of military history for a long time. He is the author of works on the great retreats of armies during various periods of history, the fortunes of American airmen operating in Switzerland during World War II and the history of Afghanistan. Tanner’s book can be considered as the author’s personal opinion on the military policy of the United States a! er the Cold War.

In times we live the system of social communication is developing much faster than other fi elds of social life. Attempt to describe this phenomenon in the context of the media is the book of Stanisław Michalczyk –  e Media Society. The book is written in form of an academic elaboration it consists of eight chapters. Each of one is dedicated to separate issues.