New Releases by Leszek

Starting in the early 1980s, people using the tools of nonsmooth analysis developed some remarkable nonsmooth extensions of the existing critical point theory. Until now, however, no one had gathered these tools and results together into a unified, systematic survey of these advances. This book fills that gap. It provides a complete presentation of nonsmooth critical point theory, then goes beyond it to study nonlinear second order boundary value problems. The authors do not limit their treatment to problems in variational form. They also examine in detail equations driven by the p-Laplacian, its generalizations, and their spectral properties, studying a wide variety of problems and illustrating the powerful tools of modern nonlinear analysis. The presentation includes many recent results, including some that were previously unpublished. Detailed appendices outline the fundamental mathematical tools used in the book, and a rich bibliography forms a guide to the relevant literature. Most books addressing critical point theory deal only with smooth problems, linear or semilinear problems, or consider only variational methods or the tools of nonlinear operators. Nonsmooth Critical Point Theory and Nonlinear Boundary Value Problems offers a comprehensive treatment of the subject that is up-to-date, self-contained, and rich in methods for a wide variety of problems.

The post-communist transition in Europe and the former Soviet Union is one of the most important transformations in modern history. Changes were exceptionally large and it was not only political and economic systems which were affected: there were changes in social structures, new territorial boundaries in some cases had to be established and new institutions had to be constructed. Moreover, market-oriented reforms were introduced under democratic regimes. Leszek Balcerowicz, President of the National Bank of Poland and former Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, one of the leading reformers in eastern Europe, discusses the varying outcomes of transitions in different countries, showing that it was policies, more than initial conditions, which produced the differences. He argues that the larger the scope of market-oriented reforms the better the performance in terms of growth, low inflation and environmental improvement. The presence of competent and determined reformers has also been a crucial factor in successful transformations.

''A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan, '' writes Leszek Kolakowski at the start of this endlessly stimulating book, ''must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.'' For over a century, philosophers have argued that philosophy is impossible or useless, or both. Although the basic agenda dates back tot he days of Socrates, there is still disagreement about the nature of truth, reality, knowledge, good and God. This may make little practical difference to our lives, but it leaves us with a feeling of radical uncertainty described by Kolakowski as ''metaphysical horror''. Is there any way out of this cul-de-sac? This trenchant analysis confronts these dilemmas head on. Philosophy may not provide definitive answers to the fundamental questions, yet the quest itself transforms our lives. It may undermine most of our certainties, yet it still leaves room for our spiritual yearnings and religious beliefs. Kolakowski has forged a dazzling demonstration of philosophy in action. It is up to readers to take up the challenge of his arguments.

In this volume, which was originally published in 1996, noisy information is studied in the context of computational complexity; in other words the text deals with the computational complexity of mathematical problems for which information is partial, noisy and priced.

Professor Balcerowicz is highly regarded in both policy-making and academic circles. Most of the essays are based on his first-hand experience in stabilizing the Polish economy at an early stage of hyperinflation, and transforming it into a competitive capitalist market economy. This volume gathers together a collection of essays integrated by two central themes: the comparative economic performance of different economic systems (centralized socialism, reformed socialism, competitive socialism), and the transition from socialism to capitalism under newly established pluralistic political systems in Central and Eastern Europe.

Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1992. In this landmark study, two eminent geographers present the first comparative, cross-national analysis of emergency evacuations engendered by every sort of disaster: military, natural, and industrial. Zelinsky and Kosinski have selected 27 evacuations of cities due to actual or anticipated emergencies during the past fifty years, from the Ohio River Flood of 1937 to the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.

The seeds of this volume were contained in a series of lectures delivered by Leszak Nowak to his co-interned activists of Solidarity in a Polish prison in 1982. From the stance of a political philosopher, Nowak suggests statements about power; as a social theorist, he proposes a systematization of hypotheses into idealized models of increasing realism. Most books on socialism are based on either radical or conservative ideologies; Power and Civil Society, however begins with radical assumptions but reaches rather conservative conclusions. Nowak''s discussion of the three independent main social divisions--owners/producers, rulers/ruled, and priests or mass-culture-media/believers--reveals the separation of these divisions in class societies and their integration into a triple class of rulers-owners-priests in real-socialism societies. Nowak contends that triple-class rulers wrest control of political power from both owner and priest classes and undergo regularities of political power in its pure form. The thrust of the book is an elaboration of a proposal of the general theory of political power that confronts it with its classic area of application--the history of the Soviet Union--by offering a series of models beginning with the most abstract. Each subsequent model presents a more complicated network of interconnections that characterize the phenomenon of political power. The sixteen-chapter volume is structured into five major divisions that begin with a discussion of some basic assumptions on the nature of power and the non-Christian model of man. Part Two considers some elementary models of power by focusing on idealizing conditions, revolution, the organization of civil society, and citizens'' utopia. Global Models of Power, Part Three, treats the mechanism of aggression, the structure and development of an empire, and a block of countries. Special models of power are surveyed in Part Four. The book concludes with an attempt to confront the modeling construction with the history of the socialist world both at the level of the relations between rulers and ruled, political institutions, political doctrines, and international relations within the Soviet empire. Here Nowak seeks to locate both those trends which can be approximately explained by a certain model of the presented hierarchy and those which can not. Six appendixes deal with such phenomena as The Conception of Class Loop and the Rotating Elites Theory, Social Consciousness as a Hypostasis, and more. This book will be excellent reading for Sovietologists, Political Theorists, Social Philosophers, and Philosophers of History.

A highly original discussion of the philosophical argumetns for and against the existence of God.

"Kołakowski discusses the origins, philosophical roots, golden age and breakdown of Marxism, and the various schools of Marxist philosophy. He describes Marxism as "the greatest fantasy of the twentieth century", a dream of a perfect society which became a foundation for "a monstrous edifice of lies, exploitation and oppression." He argues that the Leninist and Stalinist versions of communist ideology are not a distortion or degenerate form of Marxism, but one of its possible interpretations. Despite his rejection of Marxism, his interpretation of Marx is influenced by Lukács."