Power Energy and the New Russian Imperialism or And His Lovely Wife

Power, Energy, and the New Russian Imperialism (PSI Reports Series)

Author: Anita Orban

Russia is the world's foremost energy superpower, rivaling Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer and accounting for a quarter of the world's exports of natural gas. Russia's energy reserves account for half of the world's probable oil reserves and a third of the world's proven natural gas reserves. Whereas military might and nuclear weapons formed the core of Soviet cold war power, since 1991 the Russian state has viewed its monopolistic control of Russia's energy resources as the core of its power now and for the future. Since 2005, the international news has been filled with Russia's repeated demonstrations of its readiness to use price, transit fees, and supply of gas and oil exports as punitive policy instruments against recalcitrant states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, striking in turn the Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, and Lithuania. Orban reveals for the first time in Power, Energy, and the New Russian Imperialism Russia's readiness to wield the same energy weapon against her neighbors on the west, all of them former Soviet satellite states but now EU and NATO member nations: the three Baltic nations and the five East European nations of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. Orban shows how the Kremlin since 1991 has systematically used Russian energy companies as players in a concerted neo-mercantilist, energy-based foreign policy designed to further Russia's neo-imperial ambitions among America's key allies in Central East Europe. Her unprecedented analysis is key to predicting Russia's strategic response to American negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic to host the US missile shield. She alsoreveals the economic and diplomatic modus operandi by which Russia will increasingly apply its energy clout to shape and coerce the foreign policies of the West European members of the EU, as Russia's contribution to EU gas consumption increases from a quarter today to three-quarters by 2020. Orban proves that Russia's neo-mercantilist energy strategy in East Europe is not at all dependent on the person of Putin, but began under Yeltsin and continues under Medvedev, the former chairman of Gazprom.

See also: A Bloody Business or Immigrant Acts

. . . And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man

Author: Connie Schultz

The first time I heard it, I laughed.
Oh, come on, I thought. He didn’t just say that.
We were at a restaurant in southern Ohio, where a hundred or so Democrats and a handful of young campaign workers had gathered to hear my husband, Sherrod Brown, announce for the seventh time in two days why he was running for the United States Senate.
The party chairman of the county stood up at the lectern and in a loud, booming voice, introduced “Congressman Sherrod Brown–and his lovely wife.”
By Week 40 of the campaign, I had been introduced that way nearly a hundred times. I stopped counting once we hit the 50 marker. I knew I was not the point at these gatherings, and I was so proud of the man who was.
Also, I realized I was getting cranky about something I could not change. If I couldn’t rely on a sense of humor, I was in for one long year on the campaign trail.

Writing with her trademark warmth, wit, and common sense, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz reveals the rigors, adrenaline joys, and absolute madness of a new marriage at midlife and campaigning with her husband, now the junior senator from Ohio. She describes the chain of events leading up to Sherrod’s decision to campaign for Senate (he would not run without his wife’s unequivocal support) in a state where no Democrat had won statewide office for twelve years. She writes about the moment her friends in the press became not so friendly; the constant campaign demands on her marriage and family life; a personal tragedy that came out of the blue. She gives us a candid behind-the-scenes look at the often ludicrous trials and tribulations of being anopinionated columnist, a political wife, and a newly married woman in her forties, and the rigors of political life: audacious bloggers, ruthless adversaries, campaign fatigue, political divas, the no-small-planes agreement, and staffers young enough to be her children suddenly directing her and her husband’s every move.
Filled with eye-opening revelations about the election process, . . . and His Lovely Wife illuminates through one woman’s story a marriage, our political system, our working lives, and our nation. Connie Schultz is outspoken, passionate, and very public about her opinions–in other words, every political consultant’s nightmare, and every reader’s dream.

Publishers Weekly

Schultz (Life Happens) gives a frank and adoring account of standing by her man, Sherrod Brown, in his run for U.S. Senate from Ohio. Ashtabula-bred Schultz and Democratic Congressman Brown, both middle-aged, longtime divorced single parents, married in 2004, and by the middle of the next year had decided he would quit his congressional seat and oppose two-term Republican Sen. Mike DeWine. While a supportive and loving wife, Schultz is also a feminist, devoted to her work as a journalist (she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005); she reluctantly gave in to the pressure to take a sabbatical from her Cleveland Plain Dealercolumn during the course of the campaign. However, she became a valuable tool to her husband's success, from forcing his handlers to give the exhausted candidate time to recoup to trotting out her working-class family's hard-luck story when convenient. There are many funny moments (Brown was criticized for his unruly curls and his "cheap suits"), and DeWine's negative ads (led by Republican strategist Karl Rove) prompted Brown's team, in Hillary Clinton's words, to "deck him" with an ad of its own. (Schultz's own newspaper didn't endorse Brown.) Eventually, he won, and Schultz could happily return to her column. Her diary is upbeat, sometimes overly but affably composed. (July)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Joel W. Tscherne - Library Journal

Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is married to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio. In early 2006, she took a leave of absence from the newspaper both to work on her husband's campaign and to avoid any criticism for partisan writing. Here, she recounts the ups and downs of his eventually successful campaign, particularly in the face of new styles of journalism, mounting campaign costs, and the stress of running for office (Brown was long considered the underdog). She also discusses the campaign's effect on their personal lives, including the touching story of her father's impassioned support of her husband and the pain of his death early in the campaign. Finally, she assesses the complexity of appealing to a wide range of potential voters without sacrificing their own core beliefs, particularly in traditionally Republican sections of the state. While not meant as an academic study of modern political campaigning, the book does an excellent job of articulating the ordeal. Strongly recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ2/1/07.]

Library Journal

Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Schultz may have won a Pulitzer Prize, a Robert F. Kennedy Award, two National Headliner awards, and more, but during husband Sherrod Brown's successful run for Congress, she was just his "lovely wife." A smart insider's view of campaigning. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Is Ohio's junior senator planning a 2012 run for president?For someone who claims to have at one point been uncomfortable with campaigning, Schultz (Life Happens, 2006), a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and wife of Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), sure does enough of it in this book. The story of her life during election season opens two years after Schultz and Brown married, and two weeks after Brown decided to give up a safe congressional seat to run against Mike DeWine, a two-term Republican incumbent in 2004's most famous swing state. One morning, as Schultz watched, two men in bespoke suits leap out of a car and attempt to steal the family's garbage. They were thwarted by Schultz and her disabled dog, but, clearly, the stage was set for drama. The campaign only got dirtier from there: Soon DeWine's attack ads were using images of 9/11; critics demanded to know why Schultz kept her name; and Brown's ex-wife had to clarify that, though they may have endured a bitter divorce, Brown is neither a bad man nor a wife beater. While Schultz delivers a chilling account of the hits she, her family and her career took, giving the now-cliched term "battleground state" new life, she often dwells too lovingly on minor slights-it seems every reporter, every senior citizen, every blogger who slighted her or her husband is mentioned here-and wastes time establishing salt-of-the-earth credibility for herself and her husband when she could be bringing their characters to life. The book has all the elements we've seen in the autobiographies of politicians preparing a big run: canned home truths; hard-knock upbringings; genealogies proving a connection to the common man; and-most irritating of all-attemptsto humanize through small "quirky" details. We learn, for example, that Schultz likes Brown's hair curly, not cropped, and that Brown does romantic things for their anniversary-but Brown himself remains a cipher. A book disappointingly devoid of substance.