Michael Loriaux is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. He studies European unification from the perspectives of political economy and critical theory. His books include France After Hegemony: International Change and Financial Reform (Cornell University Press, 1991) and Capital Ungoverned (co-authored, Cornell University Press, 1997). European Union and the Deconstruction of the Rhineland Frontier won the Charles Taylor Prize for best book of political interpretation. Professor Loriaux's current book project is entitled 'European Union and the Aesthetics of Power'.

• 1. Myth and geopolitics of the Rhineland frontier; 2. Trans Rhenum incolunt: the inauguration of the Rhineland frontier; 3. A 'principality of priests': the inauguration of Europe; 4. Anonymity and prosperity; 5. The great antecedent cracking; 6. Coups de force: Ossian and the département; 7. Wacht am Rhein: the Ossianic fracture of Rhineland space; 8. Carolingian discourse and Rhineland pacification; 9. Spatial representation and the political imagination.

'European Union and the Deconstruction of the Rhineland Frontier is nothing short of a reinterpretation of European history since pre-Roman times. It is a work of tremendous thought and scholarship, involving research in at least four languages, that gives us an entirely new way to think about national and European identity. This book is not only brilliant, it is path-breaking, and likely to be a landmark in its field.' Harvey B. Feigenbaum, The George Washington University