Best of
European-History

1982

Europe and the People Without History


Eric R. Wolf - 1982
    It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris; June 6 - Aug. 5, 1944


John Keegan - 1982
    With dramatic, driving power, John Keegan describes the massed armies—American, Canadian, English, French, German, and Polish—at successive stages of the invasion. As he details the strategies of the military engagements, Keegan brilliantly shows how each of the armies reflected its own nation's values and traditions. In a new introduction written especially to commemorate the 50th anniversary of D-Day, he contemplates the ways the events at the battle of Normandy still reverberate today.“The best military historian of our generation.” –Tom Clancy “John Keegan writes about war better than almost anyone in our century.” –The Washington Post Book World “Very dramatic… Very well done… a book which conjures romance from some very hard fighting.” –A. J. P. Taylor, The New York Review of Books “The story of this vast, complex, and risky amphibious assault, and the campaign which followed, has been told many times, but never better than by John Keegan.” –The Wall Street Journal

The Peenemunde Raid: The Night of 17-18 August 1943 (Cassell Military Classics)


Martin Middlebrook - 1982
    Although the bombing "crept back" from its target, and the cloudless sky made the British aircraft perfect targets, they succeeded in disrupting Hitler's weapons program. Containing the remembrances of over 400 people from both sides--flight crews, researchers at the site, and foreign laborers forced to work there--this classic history is thoroughly irresistible.

The Galleys at Lepanto


Jack Beeching - 1982
    This battle, in which more than 30,000 men lost their lives, decided the most momentous question of the sixteenth century: whether the Mediterranean would be an Islamic sea and most of Europe an Islamic province. The victory of the Holy League reverberated joyfully throughout Europe. Remarkable men fought on both sides-the young and princely John of Austria leading the Christian forces; the many-sided genius who was the sultan’s grand vizier leading the Turks. The twenty-four-year-old Cervantes and the infamous Englishman Thomas Stukeley were also among the soldiers. Most of the ships present on both sides were galleys, their motive power the arms and backs of thousands of men: prisoners of war, slaves, convicts, and volunteers, living in abominable conditions. The Galleys at Lepanto is not merely a detailed account of the battle, but the story of the men who brought it about, those who commanded the galleys and who rowed them. Jack Beeching paints a compelling portrait of an era of Western history that was rife with religious and ideological conflict. Epic in scope and textured with finely wrought details, here is history at its most vivid and absorbing.

Luther: Man Between God and the Devil


Heiko A. Oberman - 1982
    Every person interested in Christianity should put this on his or her reading list.”—Lawrence Cunningham, Commonweal“This is the biography of Luther for our time by the world’s foremost authority.”—Steven Ozment, Harvard University“If the world is to gain from Luther it must turn to the real Luther—furious, violent, foul-mouthed, passionately concerned. Him it will find in Oberman’s book, a labour of love.”—G. R. Elton, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

The Anglo-Saxons


James Campbell - 1982
    Throughout the book the authors make use of original sources such as chronicles, charters, manuscripts and coins, works of art, archaelogical remains and surviving buildings.The nature of power and kingship, role of wealth, rewards, conquest and blood-feud in the perennial struggle for power, structure of society, the development of Christianity and the relations between church and secular authority are discussed at length, while particular topics are explored in 19 "picture essays".

The Penguin Atlas of Recent History: Europe Since 1815


Colin McEvedy - 1982
    With over fifty colour maps, complemented by an accessible text, and entirely new sections taking the reader from 1980 to the dawn of the millennium, it covers a wide range of issues from population growth to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

A Childhood in Scotland


Christian Miller - 1982
    A Childhood in Scotland describes a youth in a world where shooting came second only to religion, where questions were frowned upon, and reading seen as a waste of time.

The Grand Scuttle: The Sinking of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919


Dan van der Vat - 1982
    The German High Seas Fleet had sailed into British waters under the terms of the treaty ending World War I. Possibly misled by British newspaper reports, the German admiral in command decided to scuttle the fleet rather than let it fall into British hands--the operation resulting in the last casualties and the last prisoners of World War I.

Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages


Caroline Walker Bynum - 1982
    In one sense, their interrelationship is obvious. The first two address a question that was more in the forefront of scholarship a dozen years ago than it is today: the question of differences among religious orders.  These two essays set out a method of reading texts for imagery and borrowings as well as for spiritual teaching in order to determine whether individuals who live in different institutional settings hold differing assumptions about the significance of their lives.  The essays apply the method to the broader question of differences between regular canons and monks and the narrower question of differences between one kind of monk--the Cistercians--and other religious groups, monastic and nonmonastic, of the twelfth century.  The third essay draws on some of the themes of the first two, particularly the discussion of canonical and Cistercian conceptions of the individual brother as example, to suggest  an interpretation of twelfth-century religious life as concerned with the nature of groups as well as with affective expression.  The fourth essay, again on Cistercian monks, elaborates themes of the first three. Its subsidiary goals are to provide further evidence on distinctively Cistercian attitudes and to elaborate the Cistercian ambivalence about vocation that I delineate in the essay on conceptions of community. It also raises questions that have now become popular in nonacademic as well as academic circles: what significance should we give to the increase of feminine imagery in twelfth-century religious writing by males? Can we learn anything about distinctively male or female spiritualities from this feminization of language? The fifth essay differs from the others in turning to the thirteenth century rather than the twelfth, to women rather than men, to detailed analysis of many themes in a few thinkers rather than one theme in many writers; it is nonetheless based on the conclusions of the earlier studies. The sense of monastic vocation and of the priesthood, of the authority of God and self, and of the significance of gender that I find in the three great mystics of late thirteenth-century Helfta can be understood only against the background of the growing twelfth- and thirteenth-century concern for evangelism and for an approachable God, which are the basic themes of the first four essays. Such connections between the essays will be clear to anyone who reads them. There are, however, deeper methodological and interpretive continuities among them that I wish to underline here. For these studies constitute a plea for an approach to medieval spirituality that is not now--and perhaps has never been--dominant in medieval scholarship. They also provide an interpretation of the religious life of the high Middle Ages that runs against the grain of recent emphases on the emergence of "lay spirituality." I therefore propose to give, as introduction, both a discussion of recent approaches to medieval piety and a short sketch of the religious history of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, emphasizing those themes that are the context for my specific investigations. I do not want to be misunderstood. In providing here a discussion of approaches to and trends in medieval religion I am not claiming that the studies that follow constitute a general history nor that my method should replace that of social, institutional, and intellectual historians.  A handful of Cistercians does not typify the twelfth century, nor three nuns the thirteenth. Religious imagery, on which I concentrate, does not tell us how people lived. But because these essays approach texts in a way others have not done, focus on imagery others have not found important, and insist, as others have not insisted, on comparing groups to other groups (e.g., comparing what is peculiarly male to what is female as well as vice versa), I want to call attention to my approach to and my interpretation of the high Middle Ages in the hope of encouraging others to ask similar questions.

The German Sniper: 1914-1945


Peter R. Senich - 1982
    Presents more than 600 photos of Mauser 98s, Selbstladegewehr 41s and 43s, optical sights by Goerz, Zeiss, etc., plus German snipers in action. An exceptional hardcover collector's edition for serious military historians everywhere.

Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France


Marianne Elliott - 1982
    

London Calling North Pole


Hermann J. Giskes - 1982
    J

Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity


Peter R.L. Brown - 1982
    Author Biography: Peter Brown is Professor of History at Princeton University and author of, among other works, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography and The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity; he is General Editor of theseries, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, published by the University of California Press.

Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation: An Intellectual Biography


Barry Katz - 1982
    

Castles Of Britain


Patrick Cormack - 1982
    Covers the castles of Great Britain with information on their history and points of interest.

A History of Modern Germany: 1840-1945 (A History of Modern Germany, #3)


Hajo Holborn - 1982
    Craig calls a "masterly account of the dramatic, tragic and often shameful history of Germany in the most recent age" (New York Times Book Review). It deals with the period of nationalism and imperialism, from the abortive attempt of popular forces to found a liberal national state and Bismarck's German unification through the Prussian military monarchy to the expansionist programs of the age of William II and Hitler's world conquest.

The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World, 1606-1661


Jonathan I. Israel - 1982
    This is the first study of the conflict and its immediate aftermath. Israel reveals the deep and complex divisions between the political elites on both sides and demonstrates the decisive impact of political and military activity on the economic fate of Europe and the wider world.