Michael Sommer – författare

Explore the latest groundbreaking e-government insider information! The World of E-Government investigates how electronic communication is helping to revolutionize democracies across the globe. Using case studies, cutting-edge research, and commentary from some of the field’s foremost researchers, practitioners, and industry leaders, this first-of-its-kind volume explores the enormous future potential of e-government as it links all world citizens locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. This pioneering text offers the experiences of many leading countries using electronic government, showing you what mistakes they made, the benefits they’ve reaped, and the impact of e-government to democracy, traditional government, and international commerce. Contributors to this timely book include some of the world’s leading practitioners in e-governmentpeople who were actually involved in establishing and shaping the experiences of countries now ranked as leaders in e-government projects. These authorities reveal how their countries successfully implemented e-strategies to directly benefit their citizens. The World of E-Government details how electronic government is being used to govern and change the lives of citizens online in such areas of the world as:

This book will give you a better understanding of:

The World of E-Government is an essential book for all elected officials and their staffs, e-government practitioners, researchers, and information specialists to use in order to stay up-to-date with the growing needs of the general public. The advice offered in this text can help you improve service delivery, provide vital information to the public, and enhance public participation online. This volume contains useful bibliographies, additional readings, tables, and figures to further your career or research studies in public administration, government, political science, law, education, or information technology.

Explore the latest groundbreaking e-government insider information! The World of E-Government investigates how electronic communication is helping to revolutionize democracies across the globe. Using case studies, cutting-edge research, and commentary from some of the field’s foremost researchers, practitioners, and industry leaders, this first-of-its-kind volume explores the enormous future potential of e-government as it links all world citizens locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. This pioneering text offers the experiences of many leading countries using electronic government, showing you what mistakes they made, the benefits they’ve reaped, and the impact of e-government to democracy, traditional government, and international commerce. Contributors to this timely book include some of the world’s leading practitioners in e-governmentpeople who were actually involved in establishing and shaping the experiences of countries now ranked as leaders in e-government projects. These authorities reveal how their countries successfully implemented e-strategies to directly benefit their citizens. The World of E-Government details how electronic government is being used to govern and change the lives of citizens online in such areas of the world as:

This book will give you a better understanding of:

The World of E-Government is an essential book for all elected officials and their staffs, e-government practitioners, researchers, and information specialists to use in order to stay up-to-date with the growing needs of the general public. The advice offered in this text can help you improve service delivery, provide vital information to the public, and enhance public participation online. This volume contains useful bibliographies, additional readings, tables, and figures to further your career or research studies in public administration, government, political science, law, education, or information technology.

Palmyra: A History examines Palmyra, the city in the Syrian oasis of Tadmur, from its beginnings in the Bronze Age, through the classical period and its discovery and excavation, to the present day. It aims at reconstructing Palmyra’s past from literary accounts – classical and post-classical – as well as material evidence of all kinds: inscriptions, coins, art and of course the remains of Palmyra’s monumental architecture.

After exploring the earliest inhabitation of Tadmur, the volume moves through the Persian and Hellenistic periods, to the city’s zenith. Under the Romans, Palmyra was unique among the cities of the empire because it became a political factor in its own right in the third century AD, when the Roman military was overpowered by Sassanian invaders and Palmyrene troops stepped in. Sommer’s assessment of Palmyra under Rome therefore considers how Palmyra achieved such an exceptional role in the Roman Near East, before its demise under the Umayyad Empire. The volume also examines the century-long history of archaeological and historical research at Palmyra, from its beginnings under Ottoman rule and the French mandate in the 1920s to the recent satellite based prospection carried out by German archaeologists. A closing chapter examines the occupation of the site by ISIS during the Syrian conflict, and the implications of the destruction there on the ruins, the archaeological finds and future investigations, and heritage in Syria more broadly.

Palmyra offers academics, students and the interested reader alike the first full treatment in English of this fascinating site, providing a comprehensive account of the city’s origins, rise and fall.

Palmyra: A History examines Palmyra, the city in the Syrian oasis of Tadmur, from its beginnings in the Bronze Age, through the classical period and its discovery and excavation, to the present day. It aims at reconstructing Palmyra’s past from literary accounts – classical and post-classical – as well as material evidence of all kinds: inscriptions, coins, art and of course the remains of Palmyra’s monumental architecture.

After exploring the earliest inhabitation of Tadmur, the volume moves through the Persian and Hellenistic periods, to the city’s zenith. Under the Romans, Palmyra was unique among the cities of the empire because it became a political factor in its own right in the third century AD, when the Roman military was overpowered by Sassanian invaders and Palmyrene troops stepped in. Sommer’s assessment of Palmyra under Rome therefore considers how Palmyra achieved such an exceptional role in the Roman Near East, before its demise under the Umayyad Empire. The volume also examines the century-long history of archaeological and historical research at Palmyra, from its beginnings under Ottoman rule and the French mandate in the 1920s to the recent satellite based prospection carried out by German archaeologists. A closing chapter examines the occupation of the site by ISIS during the Syrian conflict, and the implications of the destruction there on the ruins, the archaeological finds and future investigations, and heritage in Syria more broadly.

Palmyra offers academics, students and the interested reader alike the first full treatment in English of this fascinating site, providing a comprehensive account of the city’s origins, rise and fall.

Around the turn of the century, anti-fascism in Germany underwent a transformation. Instead of denouncing the prevailing social order as the natural breeding ground of fascist movements, the focus of the critique shifted onto regressive, unenlightened, or "abridged" forms of anti-capitalism. Asserting that capitalism is "abstract rule," it set out to accuse its various adversaries of easily sliding into antisemitism, construed by anti-fascists as a "hatred of the abstract."

The theory behind this new type of anti-fascism was originally devised by Moishe Postone in his seminal essay "Anti-Semitism and National Socialism." However, as Michael Sommer convincingly demonstrates, Postone''s arguments are based on a misreading of Marx and are theoretically unsustainable. What is more, they have provided the groundwork for an "uncritical critique", aiding in the degeneration of anti-fascism from a left-wing endeavor into an ideology that is fully affirmative of liberal capitalism.

This translation of Sommer''s German-language text of 2014 comes with an extensive new introduction by Mike Macnair that links these changes to more recent developments in the Anglophone world, as well as situating Postone''s theory in a broader historical context.