Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke, London, Minerva, 1992

Conor Cruise O’Brien, Irish politician, author and polemicist (1917-2008), has written an unorthdox life and anthology about Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish stateman of the late eighteenth century, best known perhaps for his lengthy pamphlet, written in 1790, “Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the proceedings in certain societies in London relative to that event”. Burke was an active member of the Rockingham Whigs, who objected to Lord North’s policies towards America, took the lead role in the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and warned his fellow-countrymen against what he discerned as the disaster unfolding in France. The originality of O’Brien’s biography is that he places Burke in his Irish context, mother and wife being Catholic and his father a convert to Anglicanism. O’Brien takes his lead from W.B.Yeat’s poem, The Seven Sages”: American colonies, Ireland, France and India Harried, and Burke’s great melody against it”–the it, O’Brien argues, was the abuse of power. My review is forthcoming.

About Jonathan Story, Professor Emeritus, INSEAD

Jonathan Story is Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at INSEAD. Prior to joining INSEAD in 1974, he worked in Brussels and Washington, where he obtained his PhD from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has held the Marusi Chair of Global Business at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Graduate Schoold of Business, Fordham University, New York. He is preparing a monograph on China’s impact on the world political economy, and another on a proposal for a contextual approach to business studies. He has a chapter forthcoming on the Euro crisis. His latest book is China UnCovered: What you need to know to do business in China, (FT/ Pearson’s, 2010) (www.chinauncovered.net) His previous books include “China: The Race to Market” (FT/Pearsons, 2003), The Frontiers of Fortune, (Pitman’s, 1999); and The Political Economy of Financial Integration in Europe : The Battle of the Systems,(MIT Press, 1998) on monetary union and financial markets in the EU, and co-authored with Ingo Walter of NYU. His books have been translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Arabic. He is also a co-author in the Oxford Handbook on Business and Government(2010), and has contributed numerous chapters in books and articles in professional journals. He is a regular contributor to newspapers, and has been four times winner of the European Case Clearing House “Best Case of the Year” award. His latest cases detail hotel investments in Egypt and Argentina, as well as a women’s garment manufacturer in Sri Lanka and a Chinese auto parts producer. He teaches courses on international business and the global political economy. At the INSEAD campus, in Fontainebleau and Singapore, he has taught European and world politics, markets, and business in the MBA, and PhD programs. He has taught on INSEAD’s flagship Advanced Management Programme for the last three decades, as well as on other Executive Development and Company Specific courses. Jonathan Story works with governments, international organisations and multinational corporations. He is married with four children, and, now, thirteen grandchildren. Besides English, he is fluent in French, German, Spanish, Italian, reads Portuguese and is learning Russian. He has a bass voice, and gives concerts, including Afro-American spirituals, Russian folk, classical opera and oratorio.

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