Jeff Stacey has written a richly informative book that offers a whole new perspective on how most of the world's former great powers--superpowers during their imperial days--have been actually giving up power as partners in the boldest geo-strategic gambit in modern history: integrating through the European Union (EU). But here's the catch: they are doing this in a technically illegal way, as well as a way that many would consider undemocratic. Most experts on the concept of giving up national sovereignty assume that France, Germany, the UK and others give up power via treaty negotiations in the EU context, the results of hard core bargaining by Prime Ministers sitting late into the night around some international conference table. But Stacey is like some detective assigned to get the real story on how this happens, and what he's uncovered is some pretty illuminating stuff: these governments actually give up many of their powers long before these high profile negotiations of national leaders, through informal bargains with the European Parliament that create informal rules that re-allocate power away from governments to EU institutions like the Parliament. I was particularly bowled over to read Stacey's evidence that every time one of these non legal informal rules contradicts EU law from long ago treaties, the EU's policy making actors actually adhere not to the law but the newer informal rule! I wonder how much of the European public knows this is going on...fascinating. Also like any good detective, Stacey has to persuade his audience that his evidence is legit--a clear highly readable text is put to good use here--and I recommend this book to anyone interested in today's Europe.