Title:
Invitation to Politics
Author:
Publisher:
Blackwell
Date:
1984
ISBN:
0-631-15138-9
Description:
(Book blurb)
How do we decide if I hate something more than you like it? What is a collective decision? What is a community? And how can we run it? What are power and government and politics to begin with?
In a world where altruism and expediency jostle each other, where politics is too often treated as a dismal science, Michael Laver offers a lifeline to the baffled reader and the jargon-weary student. His clear, uncluttered arguments explore the processes and behaviour that make the institutions and systems of practical politics tick. He demonstrates how politics permeate our lives - in Britain, the West, the world and inner space - and outlines the politics of the future, now that the microchip revolution is set to change our everyday lives. His book dispenses with out-dated images of politics, and builds on today's conceptual approach to politics and political science, without sacrificing realism to theory. Invitation to Politics is behavioural, historical, philosophical, institutional... but above all, invitingly readable.
- Hmmm... you can safely ignore most of the hyperbole about the "microchip revolution" in the blurb, but it is true that this is a good introduction which plots a careful course between theory and real-life. I found it quite interesting and enjoyable -- MalcolmRyan