The bankruptcy of the French state and a bitter civil war within the royal family were followed by the defeat and capture of the King of France by the Black Prince at Poitiers. A peasant revolt and a violent revolution in Paris completed the tragedy. In a humiliating treaty of partition France ceded more than a third of its territory to Edward III of England. Not for sixty years would the English again come so close to total victory. France's great cities, provincial towns and rural communities resisted where its leaders failed. They withstood the sustained savagery of the soldiers and the free companies of brigands to undo most of Edward III's work in the following generation. England's triumphs proved to be brittle and short-lived.

    For American commanders it was the culmination of years of planning and hope, the day when their self-defending formations of the famous Flying Fortress could at last perform their true role and reach out by daylight to strike at targets in the deepest corners of industrial Germany. The day ended in disaster for the Americans. Thanks to the courage of the aircrews the bombers won through to the targets and caused heavy damage, but sixty were shot down and the hopes of the American commanders were shattered. Historically, it was probably the most important day for the American air forces during the Second World War.While researching this catastrophic raid the Author interviewed hundreds of the airmen involved, German defenders, ‘slave workers’ and eye witnesses. This took him twice to both the USA and Germany.The result is a mass of fresh, previously unused material with which the author finally provides the full story of this famous day’s operations. Not only is the American side described in far greater depth than before but the previously vague German side of the story – both the Luftwaffe action and the civilian experiences in Schweinfurt and Regensburg, are now presented clearly and in detail for the first time. The important question of why the RAF did not support the American effort and follow up the raid on Schweinfurt as planned is also fully covered.

    Memory was the psychological faculty valued above all others in the period stretching from late antiquity through the Renaissance. The prominence given to memory has profound implications for the contemporary understanding of all creative activity, and the social role of literature and art. Drawing on a range of fascinating examples from Dante, Chaucer, and Aquinas to the symbolism of illuminated manuscripts, this unusually wide-ranging book offers new insights into the medieval world.

    Her tales of childhood in rural Ireland hark back to a timeless past, to a world now lost, but ever and fondly remembered. The colorful characters and joyous moments she offers have made her stories an Irish phenomenon, and have made Alice herself the most beloved author in all of the Emerald Isle.

    The Atlas of the Crusades chronicles Christendom's Holy Wars, charting the entire 700-year history of the Crusades with a brilliant integration of text, illustrations, and more than 150 maps.

    Representing twenty years of research and reflection, Leni Yahil's book won the Shazar Prize, one of Israel's highest awards for historical work. Now available in English, The Holocaust offers a sweeping look at the Final Solution, covering not only Nazi policies, but also how Jews and foreign governments perceived and responded to the unfolding nightmare. The Holocaust is astonishingly comprehensive. Yahil weaves a gripping chronological narrative that stretches from the Norwegian fjords to the Greek islands, from Amsterdam to Tehran--and even Shanghai. Her writing is balanced, objective, and compelling, as she systematically explores the evolution of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe, probing its politics, planning, goals, and key figures. Yahil uses her command of the many relevant languages to marshal an impressive array of documentary and statistical evidence, driving her narrative forward with telling details and personal accounts--such as a survivor's description of her perseverance during a death march, or the story of the Struma, a boat that sank with over 700 Jewish refugees when the British refused to receive it in Palestine. Along the way, she destroys persistent myths about the Holocaust: that Hitler had no plan for exterminating the Jews, that the Jews themselves went peacefully to the slaughter. Though Yahil finds that Nazi policies were often inconsistent, particularly during the years before the war, she conclusively demonstrates that Hitler was always working toward a final reckoning with world Jewry, envisioning his war as a war against the Jews. The book also recounts numerous uprisings and acts of resistance in ghettos and concentration camps, as well as the activities of Jewish partisan units. Yahil describes the work of Jews in America, Palestine, and world organizations on behalf of Hitler's victims--often in the face of resistance by the Allied governments and neutral states--and explores the factors that affected the success of rescue efforts. The Holocaust is a monumental work of history, unsurpassed in scope and insightful detail. Objective yet compassionate, Leni Yahil brings together the countless diverse strands of this epic event in a single gripping account.

    The most daring of the corsairs who raided the West Indies and Spanish Main, he led the English into the Pacific, and cirumnavigated the world to bring home the Golden Hind laden with Spanish treasure. His attacks on Spanish cities and ships transformed his private war into a struggle for surivival between Protestant England and Catholic Spain, in which he became Elizabeth I's most prominent admiral and marked the emergence of England as major maritime nation.‘Excellent...It deserves to become the standard Drake life. His scholarship is impeccable’ Frank McLynn, Sunday Telegraph

    O'G. Anderson explores the cultural and political contradictions that have arisen from two critical facts in Indonesian history: that while the Indonesian nation is young, the Indonesian nation is ancient originating in the early seventeenth-century Dutch conquests; and that contemporary politics are conducted in a new language. Bahasa Indonesia, by peoples (especially the Javanese) whose cultures are rooted in medieval times. Analyzing a spectrum of examples from classical poetry to public monuments and cartoons, Anderson deepens our understanding of the interaction between modern and traditional notions of power, the mediation of power by language, and the development of national consciousness. Language and Power, now republished as part of Equinox Publishing's Classic Indonesia series, brings together eight of Anderson's most influential essays over the past two decades and is essential reading for anyone studying the Indonesian country, people or language. Benedict Anderson is one of the world's leading authorities on Southeast Asian nationalism and particularly on Indonesia. He is Professor of International Studies and Director of the Modern Indonesia Project at Cornell University, New York. His other works include Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism and The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World.

    These forces were often dropped behind enemy lines, and despite casualties they triumphed in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war, including the Battle of the Bulge. One such paratrooper was Kurt Gabel, and this is his story.

    A Jew passing as a Christian in occupied Poland, Rufeisen worked as translator for the German police--the very people who rounded up and murdered the Jews--and repeatedly risked his life to save hundreds from the Nazis. In this gripping biography, Nechama Tec, a widely acclaimed writer on the Holocaust, recounts Rufeisen's remarkable story. A youth of seventeen when World War II began, Rufeisen joined the exodus of Poles who fled the approaching German army. Tec vividly describes how Rufeisen used his ability to speak fluent German to pass as half German and half Polish in Mir, where he came to serve as translator and personal secretary to the German in charge of the gendarmerie. As he carried out his duties--reading death sentences to prisoners, swearing in new police officers before a portrait of Hitler--he earned the trust and affection of the German commander, yet lived in constant fear of discovery. He used his position to pass secret information to Jews and Christians about impending aktions and to sabatoge Nazi plans. Most notably, he thwarted the annihilation of the Mir ghetto by arming hundreds of doomed Jews and organizing their escape, and saved an entire Belorussian village from destruction. Denounced, Rufeisen escaped and found shelter in a convent, where he converted to Catholicism. Though a pacifist, he spent the rest of the war fighting in a Russian partisan unit. After the war, Father Daniel (as he is now known) became a priest and a Carmelite monk. Identifying himself as a Christian Jew and an ardent Zionist, he moved to Israel, where he challenged the Law of Return in a case that reached the High Court and attracted international attention. Today he continues to devote himself to bridging the gap between Christians and Jews. In the Lion's Den offers a stirring portrait of a Jewish rescuer during the Holocaust and its aftermath, illuminating the intricate connections between good and evil, cruelty and compassion, and Judaism and Christianity.

    Jews who fell into the hands of the German army ended up in concentration camps; none of those taken by the Italians suffered the same fate. Yet the protectors of the Jews were no philo-Semites, nor were they (often) great respecters of human life. Some of those same officers had sanctioned savage atrocities against Ethiopians and Arabs in the years before the war. Jonathan Steinberg uses this remarkable and poignant story to unravel the motives and forces underpinning both Fascism and Nazism. As a renowned historian of both Germany and Italy, he is uniquely placed to answer the underlying question; why?

    England after the war was a different place; the arts were different; history was different; sex, society, class were all different.Samuel Hynes examines the process of that transformation. He explores a vast cultural mosaic comprising novels and poetry, music and theatre, journalism, paintings, films, parliamentary debates, public monuments, sartorial fashions, personal diaries and letters.Told in rich detail, this penetrating account shatters much of the received wisdom about the First World War. It shows how English culture adapted itself to the needs of killing, how our stereotypes of the war gradually took shape and how the nations thought and imagination were profoundly and irretrievably changed.

    Skillfully analyzing a mass of previously inaccessible and often quite astonishing data, he demonstrates conclusively that Allied victory—against both the Axis and Japan—finally owed for more to the endless stream of tanks, artillery and military aircraft rolling off Allied production lines than it did to the ability of their commanders. Drawing from his masterly analysis of production statistics, Ellis reviews the entire course of the war and demonstrates how American, British and Russian commanders continually mismanaged the resources at their deposal and how serious mistakes were made in almost every theater of war—land, sea and air. Time and again, Allied generals proved incapable of deploying their numerical advantage in the most effective way, instead falling back on crude, attritional tactics that prolonged the war unnecessarily: appalling armored tactics in Africa, Italy and Northwest Europe; Bomber Command’s wrongheaded targeting policies; Russian acceptance of enormous casualty bills; the American navy’s failure to recognize that Japan’s economy and lines of imperial communication should have been the prime target—all of these issues and many more are thoroughly aired in this authoritative and stimulating work.

    In 1682, ten-year-old Peter and his mentally retarded brother Ivan were declared joint tsars with 25 year old Sophia as their regent. The regency lasted for seven years until Sophia was ousted by Peter and dispatched to a convent for the last 15 years of her life.

    Enriched by the novelist's private papers, it is a sharp, clear, sensitive portrait of a woman whose work won critical acclaim and international attention. 8-page photo insert.

    For 872 days between 1941 and 1944, residents of Leningrad starved and scavenged, and the result was a humanitarian catastrophe with few historical parallels. Elena Kochina was thirty–four when the blockade began, and reasonably prosperous―she had a job, a loving family, and an active cultural life. All of this was promptly effaced, and Blockade Diary is the record what happened next. Her book goes inside the horror to reveal the blockade in its totality. But this is far more than a catalogue of suffering and starvation: Blockade Diary is a testament to selfishness and moral collapse, but also a tribute to generosity and courage. This remarkable book reveals humanity at its best and worst.

    Challenging beliefs about intellectual culture, Makdisi reaffirms the links between Western and Arabic thought and shows that although scholasticism and humanism have long been considered to be exclusive to the Western world, they have their roots in the medieval Islamic world.

    

    This chaotic time witnessed a new type of right-wing thinking: traditionalist, yet oriented towards a new beginning . . . consciously nationalist (völkisch), yet civilizational in scope . . . born in the despair of defeat and humiliation, yet envisioning a triumphant new age. The Conservative Revolutionaries sought an "overthrow of an overthrow."Armin Mohler, who knew many of these figures personally, traces the development of this German ideal from Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Oswald Spengler, Thomas Mann, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, and beyond. The Conservative Revolutionaries persistently thought against the grain. They stood in opposition both to Bolshevism and Anglo-American capitalism, as well as Hitler and the incipient National Socialist regime. They continue to offer a vital alternative to both Left and Right in the twenty-first century.Available in English for the first time, this edition includes new essays by Paul E. Gottfried and Alain de Benoist, who discuss the book's influence and contemporary relevance.

    Over 1200 entries arranged in alphabetical order tell the story of the Plantagenet era and the people, places, and events that shaped 400 years of history.

    - These thought-provoking books offer a balanced exploration of the beliefs, history and customs of the peoples and religions of the world

    The tradition produced an international political literature that is immensely important for understanding the Counter-Reformation, Baroque culture, and early modern politics and diplomacy.Originally published in 1990.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

    In The History of Syphilis, Claude Qutel chronicles five centuries of medical detective work and official management of a virulent disease that quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Qutel's study is a reminder that modern medical science grew not only from inspired genius but also from desperate speculation. Drawing parallels with the current medical and social campaigns against AIDS, Qutel notes that the history of syphilis has a surprisingly contemporary resonance."Qutel argues that the war against syphilis was never mainly between science and disease. From the very beginning, it was waged between those who sought to preserve syphilis as a scourge on sinners and those who sought its cure."--Wilson Quarterly"In its relation to sex and sin, Qutel demonstrates, syphilis was perhaps the archetypical social disease. The strength of this history is that the author portrays physicians and public officials in a broad social context as they tried to counter popular views of syphilis as being shameful and frightening... Demonstrates that our present concern with AIDS has not shifted this debate significantly."--Journal of the History of Sexuality"This book is two books in one. It traces the history of the medical conceptualizations of syphilis and the attendant therapies for the disease from its first appearance in Europe during the 1490s until the present. But it also charts the cultural representations of syphilis over a period of five hundred years.Contemporary French scholars excel in the study of this aspect of medical history, and Claude Qutel is clearly among the finest."--Historian

    H. Elliott published Spain and Its World, 1500�1700 some twenty years ago, one of many enthusiasts declared, �For anyone interested in the history of empire, of Europe and of Spain, here is a book to keep within reach, to read, to study and to enjoy" (Times Literary Supplement). Since then Elliott has continued to explore the history of Spain and the Hispanic world with originality and insight, producing some of the most influential work in the field. In this new volume he gathers writings that reflect his recent research and thinking on politics, art, culture, and ideas in Europe and the colonial worlds between 1500 and 1800. The volume includes fourteen essays, lectures, and articles of remarkable breadth and freshness, written with Elliott’s characteristic brio. It includes an unpublished lecture in honor of the late Hugh Trevor-Roper. Organized around three themes—early modern Europe, European overseas expansion, and the works and historical context of El Greco, Velázquez, Rubens, and Van Dyck—the book offers a rich survey of the themes at the heart of Elliott’s interests throughout a career distinguished by excellence and innovation.

    Examining cultural conflict and communication between social groups and classes in industrial societies, he identifies the way individuals strive to create memories in order to make sense of their lives, and evaluates the impact of the fieldwork experience on the consciousness of the researcher. By recovering the value of the story-telling experience, Portelli's work makes delightful reading for the specialist and non-specialist alike.

    His unique “exploded views” reveal in lavish detail the intricate way the knight’s armor was built.Discover how a page learned how to become a knight, how a knight’s horse was armed, how a castle was attacked and defended, how heavy the knight’s armor really was and what happened to the role of the knight.

    Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages."Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History

    Robert Vavra has always searched for the exciting, the evocative, and the unexpected in what we see around us. Presenting images both familiar and new, this book captures the beauty of the earth around us.

    It presents the vivid reality of this masterpiece, including the restored apartments, recently acquired furniture and newly landscaped gardens, and is a perfect companion as one explores this evolving world of art and history.

    Presenting a new interpretation of the British government's policy toward Germany from the period of Churchill and Eden to that of Attlee and Bevin, this study exploits recently released documents to illuminate the strategic maneuverings of West and East over Germany and the emergence of the Cold War.

    Historians have debated its influence on Parliamentary politics, but none has yet attempted to explore its broader implications in English society. This study offers a wide-ranging analysis of every aspect of Jacobite activity, from pamphlets and newspapers to songs, cartoons, riots, seditious words, clubs, and armed insurrection. It argues that Jacobitism was not confined to a tiny group of fanatical reactionaries, and that it had a profound impact on various aspects of English life including political thought, literature, popular culture, religion, and elite sociability. It contributed a great deal both to the emergence of conservative attitudes in eighteenth-century England and to the development of a radical critique of Whig government. This paradoxical legacy makes Jacobitism a subject of considerable significance in English political, social, and cultural history.

    In the fifty years after its creation, the Alliance established a vast network of schools in the lands of Islam for the purpose of "civilizing" the local Jewish communities and remaking them in the idealized self-image of French Jewry.This study, drawing on the author's extensive research in the archives of the Alliance in Paris, focuses on the work of the Alliance among Turkish Jewry, one of the communities most strongly affected by the organizations' activities. Although the Alliance played a conclusive role in the Westernization of Turkish Jews, it was also the unwitting catalyst for the emrgence of new political movements such as Zionism, which turned away from the Alliance's ideology and ultimately threatened the survival of its schools. This book illuminates an important episode in the history of Sephardi and French Jewries as they interacted through the Alliance Israelite Universelle and draws important conclusions about the transformation of European as well as Middle Eastern Jewries in the modern era.

    Beginning with America’s response to the French Revolution and the wars of liberation in Latin America, David Brion Davis poses the intriguing question of why the United States, born in revolution, has fluctuated between fears of a revolutionary world and a joyous expectation that foreign liberations signal the Americanization of the globe.Before the Civil War, the question of slavery helped to define the way Americans looked at revolutions in terms of equality, for it was equality, and not liberty, that was the true antithesis of “the peculiar institution.” In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, foreign revolutions were closely tied to messianic aspirations and internal reform. Industrialization, political revolution, and dreams of equality and social justice went hand in hand. Writing in the grand style of Burke, Yale’s distinguished scholar of comparative history forces us to think once more about our revolutionary heritage and its tangled web of liberty, equality, and evil.

    He links the use of flowers to the rise of advanced systems of agriculture, the growth of social stratification, and the spread of luxury goods, looking at the history of aesthetic horticulture in Europe and Asia. Other themes which emerge are the role of written texts in building up a culture of flowers; the importance of trade and communications in disseminating and transforming attitudes to flowers; the rejection on puritanical grounds of flowers and their artistic representation, and the multiplicity of meanings which flowers possess. Written from a broad temporal and geographical perspective, this original and wide-ranging book will appeal not only to anthropologists and social historians but also to anyone interested in flowers and their symbolic function across the centuries.

    The monarchs of Habsburg Spain extended these seizures to municipal property and used the revenue to maintain their empire. They sold charters of autonomy to hundreds of villages, thus converting them into towns, and sold towns to private buyers, thus increasing the number of seigniorial lords. In Hapsburg Spain, therefore, absolutism did not mean centralization. Rather, the kings invoked their absolute power to decentralize authority and allow their subjects a surprising degree of autonomy.