I usually find Samir Amin extremely compelling but his prose style is elusive and cloudy and maddeningly so: maybe it is the translation from the Arabic or French, or maybe it is a hangover from 1970's structuralism. I remember an otherwise powerful book of his from the mid-1990's (the one on the failure of Bandung era national developmentalism, I forget its name) where he rationalizes his lack of concrete referents as a refusal to concede to banal bourgeois empiricism... but Tahir Wood's cafe society mise en scene seems to sum it up just as well. John G. Yuwa-town Tohoku JP 010-1211 _________________________________________________________________ Your smile counts. The more smiles you share, the more we donate. Join in. www.windowslive.com/smile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_Wave2_oprsmilewlhmtagline