Best of
European-History

1981

God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present


Norman Davies - 1981
    Abandoning the traditional nationalist approach to Polish history, Norman Davies instead stresses the country´s rich multinational heritage and places the development of the Jewish German, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian communities firmly within the Polish context. Davies emphasizes the cultural history of Poland through a presentation of extensive poetical, literary, and documentary texts in English translation. In each volume, chronological chapters of political narrative are interspersed with essays on religious, social, economic, constitutional, philosophical, and diplomatic themes. This new edition has been revised and fully updated with two new chapters to bring the story to the end of the twentieth century.

God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 1: The Origins to 1795


Norman Davies - 1981
    The writing of Polish history, like Poland itself, has frequently fallen prey to interested parties. Professor Norman Davies adopts a sceptical stance towards all existing interpretations and attempts to bring a strong dose of common sense to his theme. He consequently presents a comprehensive survey of this frequently maligned and usually misunderstood country.

The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias


W. Bruce Lincoln - 1981
    Its reign ended with the execution of Nicholas II and Alexandra in the early 20th century. Noted Russian scholar W. Bruce Lincoln has portrayed the achievement, significance and high drama of the Dynasty as no previous book has done. His use of rare archival materials has allowed him to present a portrait of the Romanovs based on their own writings and those of the persons who knew them.PrefaceAcknowledgmentsA Note on Russian Names and DatesPrologueMuscovite beginnings (1613-1689)Tsars and tsarinas In the eye of the storm The politics of Muscovy The rise of an empire (1689-1796) Eighteenth-century emperors & empresses An imperial city in the makingFrom debauchery to philosophy Imperial aspirations Empire triumphant (1796-1894) The imperial dynasty The new faces of St. PetersburgFrom golden age to iron ageThe colossus of the north The last emperor (1894-1917) Nicky and Sunny: the last Romanovs The approach of disaster Days of war and revolution The last days of the RomanovsNotes and ReferencesWorks CitedIndex

Princess Alice: Countess of Athlone


Theo Aronson - 1981
     Princess Alice was the daughter of Queen Victoria's youngest son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. She grew up under the watchful eye of Queen Victoria and in 1904 married Prince Alexander of Teck, afterwards known as the Earl of Athlone, Queen Mary's brother. Renowned for her beauty, elegance and vivacity, she was for the remainder of her long life one of the most popular and energetic members of the Royal Family. In 1923 Lord Athlone was appointed Governor General of South Africa and his wife was at his side through some of that country's most turbulent years. When he was appointed Governor General of Canada during the Second World War, Princess Alice won the hearts of Canadians as well. For many years she was Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and until her death in 1981 at the age of 97 she remained lively and interested in a great variety of social and cultural events.

My Longest Night


Genevieve Duboscq - 1981
    She and her family, including an illiterate, abusive, alcoholic but resourceful father, rescued and sheltered scores of them. In a childlike style that reflects the excitement of those dramatic, danger-filled days, she relives the emotions of the irrepressible and plucky young heroine as she and her mother nursed the wounded and comforted the dying, both American and German, while her father salvaged precious stores from the water. Duboscq, severely injured and disfigured in a land-mine explosion that killed her brother, credits surviving five years of surgical procedures, and the tribulations of later life, in part to the inspiration she derived from the suffering and bravery of the soldiers she met during this childhood experience, an act of courage for which she was awarded France's Legion of Honor.

Winston Churchill, the Wilderness Years


Martin Gilbert - 1981
    Hardcover with dust jacket, 279 pages, published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan


Chaim Aron Kaplan - 1981
    It ends in August 1942, when Kaplan realized that the Nazi noose was around his neck. Today Kaplan's diary stands as an extraordinary record of the Nazi destruction of Warsaw's Jewish community. It is as timely as ever.

Mr. Kipling's Army: All the Queen's Men


Byron Farwell - 1981
    The battles it fought are household words, but the idiosyncracies and eccentricities of its soldiers and the often appalling conditions under which they lived have gone largely unrecorded. Byron Farwell explores here the lives of officers and men, their foibles, gallantry, and diversions, their discipline and their rewards.

Everest: A Mountaineering History


Walt Unsworth - 1981
    This complete history tells the truth about many of those who have attempted to climb to the roof of the world.

The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual


Katerina Clark - 1981
    It sends one back to the original texts with a whole host of new questions.... And it also helps us to understand the place of the 'official' writer in that peculiar mixture of ideology, collective pressure, and inspiration which is the Soviet literary process." --Times Literary Supplement"The Soviet Novel has had an enormous impact on the way Stalinist culture is studied in a range of disciplines (literature scholarship, history, cultural studies, even anthropology and political science)." --Slavic Review"Those readers who have come to realize that history is a branch of mythology will find Clark's book a stimulating and rewarding account of Soviet mythopoesis." --American Historical ReviewA dynamic account of the socialist realist novel's evolution as seen in the context of Soviet culture. A new Afterword brings the history of Socialist Realism to its end at the close of the 20th century.

In the Ruins of the Reich


Douglas Botting - 1981
    Botting concentrates on the defining events that took place in the period between the collapse of the Third Reich and the foundation of the new Germanys to create the prevailing atmosphere of a most unusual and little-charted time in history. This was a period when four of the strongest industrial nations to emerge from World War Two attempted to work together to govern the once strong Germany, now prostate, impoverished and devastated by war and defeat. Telling the story of the dynamics between occupiers and occupied, the crimes perpetrated by both and the Imperial tendencies of the occupiers, Botting shows that the plan to bring democracy to Germany was far from flawless or straightforward. Timely republication of a classic book on a fascinating but often overlooked period in the history of the Second World War. Published to Coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II. 'Graphic and moving...the Germans paid a frightful price for their sins of conquest' Desmond Albrow, Sunday Telegraph

Joan of Arc: Her Story


Régine Pernoud - 1981
    From the French peasant girl who led an army to the icon burned at the stake, Joan has been a blank slate on which thousands have written. Pernoud and Clin clear away the myths so that modern readers can see Joan as she was and include a glossary of important individuals, historical events and interpretations of Joan through the ages. Joan of Arc: Her Story is the thrilling life of a woman who obsesses us even to this day.

Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages


André Vauchez - 1981
    Hagiographical texts and reports of the processes of canonisation - a mode of investigation into saints' lives and their miracles implemented by the popes from the end of the twelfth century - are here used for the first time as major source materials. The book illuminates the main features of the medieval religious mind, and highlights the popes' attempts to gain firmer control over the wide variety of expressions of faith towards the saints in order to promote a higher pattern of devotion and moral behaviour among Christians.

Uprising! One Nation's Nightmare: Hungary 1956


David Irving - 1981
    But this fluttering of a national spirit was brief: the Soviet Union crushed the uprising with a brutality that shocked the western world.The full story has never before been told. David Irving's search for material and documents took him to the great cities of the northern hemisphere. He questioned survivors in Moscow, Munich, Geneva, Paris, London, New York, Verona, Rome and Madrid - he obtained clearance of previously un-obtainable records in Washington relating to the role of the CIA, Radio Free Europe, and United States diplomacy. In Kansas he worked through the records of Eisenhower, American president at the time. In Toronto he found and interviewed Budapest's police chief, who had been recently amnestied from life imprisonment by the Hungarians.

The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest: A Selection of Ancient Sources in Translation


M.M. Austin - 1981
    This new and enlarged edition of Michel Austin's seminal work provides a panoramic view of this world through the medium of ancient sources. It now comprises over three hundred texts from literary, epigraphic and papyrological sources which are presented in original translations and supported by introductory sections, detailed notes and references, chronological tables, maps, illustrations of coins, and a full analytical index. The first edition has won widespread admiration since its publication in 1981. Updated with reference to the most recent scholarship on the subject, this new edition will prove invaluable for the study of a period which has received increasing recognition.

The Finnish Revolution 1917 - 1918


Anthony F. Upton - 1981
    

Revolutionary Empire: The Rise of the English-Speaking Empire from the Fifteenth Century to the 1780s


Angus Calder - 1981
    Calder interweaves English, Irish, Scottish and colonial events into a single pattern. He concerns himself with social and intellectual history, as well as with political and economic developments.

Too Long A Sacrifice: Life and Death in Northern Ireland since 1969


Jack Holland - 1981
    

Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great


Isabel de Madariaga - 1981
    "Magisterial and authoritative.a panoramic view of Russia's social, political, economic and culture development."--The New York Times Book Review. "Reads with the excitement of good fiction.a sparkling story."--Chicago Sun-Times. "Highly recommended."--Choice. "Engrossing narrative is rich with human interest and transports the reader back into 18th-century Russia."--Publishers Weekly. "A well-balanced scholarly treatment.meticulous research."--Library Journal.

The War in the Channel Islands: Then and Now


Winston G. Ramsey - 1981
    Besides being the only British territory occupied by the Germans in the World War II, it is perhaps less generally known that the Channel Islands were fortified out of all proportion to the rest of Hitler's Atlantic Wall: a legacy that is explored in individual chapters on Alderney, Guernsey, Jersey and Sark.

France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion


Christopher Andrew - 1981
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A Concise Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance


J.R. Hale - 1981
    237 illus., 3 maps, 11 family trees and a chronological chart. "Broad in scope and rich in content...with many illustrations, maps, family trees and comparative tables of succession...pithy and stimulating...a unique encyclopaedia." --Italian Studies

Tale of A Guinea Pig


Geoffrey Page - 1981
    In and out of hospitals for the following two years and undergoing plastic surgery, Page recovered sufficiently to pursue a distinguished war and post-war career.Told with remarkable candor and not a trace of self-pity, Page tells of his war exploits and goes into great detail of the effects of his injuries and his subsequent return to flying. He also writes about becoming a founding member of The Guinea Pig Club, formed by badly burned aircrew, who continue to fly to this day.