Best of
European-History

1991

Dreadnought


Robert K. Massie - 1991
    Massie has written a richly textured and gripping chronicle of the personal and national rivalries that led to the twentieth century's first great arms race. Massie brings to vivid life, such historical figures as the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz, the young, ambitious, Winston Churchill, the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow, and many others. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tratedy in his powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, DREADNOUGHT is history at its most riveting.

Maybe You Will Survive: A Holocaust Memoir


Aron Goldfarb - 1991
    Maybe you will survive…”Aron Goldfarb was fifteen years old when he was ripped from his bed in Poland and forced to enter a Jewish work camp. Watching helplessly as Nazis murdered his friends and family, he and his brother, Abe, made their courageous escape after hearing rumours of fellow prisoners being executed in gas chambers.With astonishing bravery and an unshakeable will to survive, the brothers hid together in underground holes on an estate controlled by the Gestapo. In this moving testament to the strength of human endurance and the power of relationships, co-written with acclaimed author Graham Diamond, Goldfarb tells his unbelievable true tale at long last.Vivid, compelling and frequently harrowing, Maybe You Will Survive is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the human condition.Marking seventy-five years since the end of the Holocaust and Aron’s liberation, this edition includes a foreword his from sons, Morris & Ira.

Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives


Alan Bullock - 1991
    Forty years after his Hitler: A Study in Tyranny set a standard for scholarship of the Nazi era, Lord Alan Bullock gives readers a breathtakingly accomplished dual biography that places Adolf Hitler's origins, personality, career, and legacy alongside those of Joseph Stalin--his implacable antagonist and moral mirror image.

The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912


Thomas Pakenham - 1991
    White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912

The Boer War


Thomas Pakenham - 1991
    History Bk Club.

A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940


William R. Trotter - 1991
    Guerrillas on skis, heroic single-handed attacks on tanks, unfathomable endurance, and the charismatic leadership of one of this century's true military geniuses - these are the elements of both the Finnish victory and a gripping tale of war.

The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830


Paul Johnson - 1991
    From Wellington at Waterloo and Jackson at New Orleans to the surge of democratic power and the new forces of reform that emerged by 1830, this is a portrait of a period of great and rapid changes that saw the United States transform itself from an ex—colony into a formidable nation; Britain become the first industrial world power; Russia develop the fatal flaws that would engulf her in the 20th century and China and Japan set the stage for future development and catastrophe. Latin America became independent, and the dawn of modernity appeared in Turkey and Egypt, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans.It was an age of new ideas, inventions and great technological advances of every kind. Throughout the world the last wildernesses from Canada to the Himalayas to the Andes were being penetrated and settled. The new and expanding cities were being beautified—Boston was lit by gas in 1822; New York and London were being paved. There were steamboats on the Mississippi as early as 1811; the first railroad was built in 1825 in England, and in 1826 the Erie Canal was completed. Charles Babbage invented the first computer, and Turner, Constable, Delacroix and Géricault were fashioning the visual grammar of modern art. Jane Austen finished Emma during Napoleon’s Hundred Days; Goethe presided over the German literary establishment, - and Hegel was creating the theory of the modern state. Beethoven was writing his Ninth Symphony and Mendelssohn his Midsummer Night’s Dream. Byron, Shelley, Keats and Victor Hugo were leading figures in the Romantic Movement. Despite the immense social strains of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of society, constitutional government was able to survive, initiating and sustaining reforms affecting almost every part of society. And, after Waterloo, an international order was established that, for the most part, endured for a century.ln Paul Johnson's words, “The age abounded in great personalities; warriors, statesmen and tyrants; outstanding inventors and technologists; and writers, artists and musicians of the highest genius, women as well as men. I have brought them to the fore but I have also sought to paint in background, showing how ordinary men and women-—and children—lived, suffered and died, ate and drank, worked, played and traveled." This was the era of Wellington, Castlereagh, Metternich, Talleyrand and Bolivar; of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Washington and Chateaubriand; of Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday and Robert Fulton; of Madame de Staél, Mary Shelley, Lady Holland and Maria Edgeworth; of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson; of Goya, Richard Bonington and Thomas Cole.Provocative, challenging and readable, Paul Johnson’s book covers the whole spectrum of history and human affairs, bringing together the various strands into a coherent narrative and telling it through the lives and actions of its outstanding, curious and ordinary people.

Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth


Allen Paul - 1991
    Today, these brutal events are symbolized by one word, Katyn—a crime that still bitterly divides Poles and Russians. Paul’s richly updated account covers Russian attempts to recant their admission of guilt for the murders in Katyn Forest and includes recently translated documents from Russian military archives, eyewitness accounts of two perpetrators, and secret official minutes published here for the first time that confirm that U.S. government cover-up of the crime continued long after the war ended.Paul’s masterful narrative recreates what daily life was like for three Polish families amid momentous events of World War II—from the treacherous Nazi-Soviet invasion in 1939 to a rigged election in 1947 that sealed Poland’s doom. The patriarch of each family was among the Polish officers personally ordered by Stalin to be shot. One of the families suffered daily repression under the German General Government. Like thousands of other Poles, two of the families were deported to Siberia, where they nearly died from forced labor, starvation, and neglect. Through painstaking research, the author reconstructs the lives of these families including such stories as a miraculous escape on the last transport of Poles leaving Russia and a mother’s daring ski trek over the Carpathian Mountains to rescue a daughter she had not seen in six years. At the heart of the drama is the Poles’ uncommon belief in “victory in defeat”—that their struggles made them strong and that freedom and independence, inevitably, would be regained.

Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism


Alexander Stille - 1991
    An extraordinary montage that resurrects a forgotten and tragic era.

George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography


Roderick Beaton - 1991
    Acclaimed for his thought-provoking lyric poetry, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. At the same time, he rose in the diplomatic corps to the position of Ambassador to Britain. This biography of Seferis provides insights into his work, life, and country. culture, draws on previously unknown sources to tell Seferis's story. He describes how Seferis occupied key diplomatic positions during periods of historic crisis before, during, and after World War II. He explores Seferis's service as Ambassador to London at a time when Greece and Great Britain were disputing the future of Cyprus, noting that some of Seferis's finest poetry was written about that troubled island. He analyses Seferis's literary production and his impact on Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, and other British and American writers. Exploring the interplay between poet and diplomat, public and private, and poetry and politics in Seferis's life and career, this book should interest anyone interested in 20th-century Greek literature, culture, or history.

The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe


Marija Gimbutas - 1991
    600 illustrations.

Churchill: A Life


Martin Gilbert - 1991
    This lengthy biography is a single-volume abridgment of a massive, eight-volume work that took a quarter-century to write. It covers Churchill's entire life, highlighting not only his exploits during the Second World War, but also his early belief in technology and how it would revolutionize warfare in the 20th century. Churchill learned how to fly a plane before the First World War, and was also involved in the development of both the tank and anti-aircraft defense, but he truly showed his unmatched mettle during his country's darkest moments: "His finest hour was the leadership of Britain when it was most isolated, most threatened, and most weak; when his own courage, determination, and belief in democracy became at one with the nation," writes Gilbert.

A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance


Claudio Pavone - 1991
    Since its publication in Italy, Claudio Pavone’s masterwork has become indispensable to anyone seeking to understand this period and its continuing importance for the nation’s identity. Pavone casts a sober eye on his protagonists’ ethical and ideological motivations. He uncovers a multilayered conflict, in which class antagonisms, patriotism and political ideals all played a part. A clear understanding of this complexity allows him to explain many details of the post-war transition, as well as the legacy of the Resistance for modern Italy. In addition to being a monumental work of scholarship, A Civil War is a folk history, capturing events, personalities and attitudes that were on the verge of slipping entirely out of recollection to the detriment of Italy’s understanding of itself and its past.

Dreyfus: A Family Affair, 1789-1945


Michael Burns - 1991
    France. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer, is convicted of a treasonous act of espionage he did not commit. The next twelve years fiercely divided French public opinion. Anti-Semitism was thrown into the foreground. Famous French figures both condemned and defended Dreyfus, whilst anti-Semitic riots erupted in cities across the country.The Dreyfus Affair signalled an assault on the civil state, on the ideals of justice and community for which the Revolution stood one hundred years earlier. Through all its trials, the family never wavered in its allegiance to a nation that often wavered in the fulfilment of its promises.Through the experiences of six generations of the family Burns shows how the Dreyfus Affair went beyond the events that shook turn-of-the-century society, recounting a larger socio-political saga as gripping as it is disconcerting.It is a story that culminates in the darkest moment of European anti-semitism.The Holocaust.Praise for ‘Dreyfus: A Family Affair 1789-1945’“A remarkable piece of work, both for its detailed scholarship and for its particular overview of French society: a monumental achievement” Claire Tomalin, Independent on Sunday“Mr Burns does not have a thesis to advance, and does not try to draw our conclusions for us. He is content simply to tell a story (and what a story!), which he does with skill, humanity and warmth” John Gross, Sunday Telegraph“A harrowing saga of unrequited patriotism” Observer“Burns handles the central drama with the artistry of a novelist” EuropeanMichael Burns is an American professor emeritus of history of Mount Holyoke College, Ma. and former actor of television and film. During his twenty years teaching European history he authored a number of books focusing on France and the Dreyfus affair.Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Portraits of France


Robert Daley - 1991
    Whether he is expressing consternation at Avignon's immense Palace of the Popes, monument to medieval extravagance, or tracking the legend of bike racer Jacques Anquetil, Daley has a knack for the telling detail, the unusual observation. A few of these 19 vignettes delve into little-known events, like the building of French concentration camps in the Pyrenees during WW II. Among the indelible portraits we find those of French soldier- politican-aristocrat Lafayette, Grace Kelly, Scottish novelist Tobias Smollett (inventor of the ``fabulous Riviera'' mystique) and De Gaulle, an obscure brigadier general in 1940 worried mainly about his wife and retarded daughter. Other pieces deal with Lourdes, Bordeaux, a perfume factory in Grasse, Jules Massenet writing operas in Paris and the Sansons family, which operated the guillotine through six generations.

Long Days Journey Into War: December 7, 1941


Stanley Weintraub - 1991
    One of the best-written WWII histories.

The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700


J.H. Burns - 1991
    Recent decades have seen intensive historical investigation and reappraisal in this field. Many established perspectives have changed; and while it would still be generally accepted that something distinctly modern took shape in the political thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there have been important changes in our understanding of what is medieval and what is modern and of the relationship between these concepts. A highly distinguished team of contributors present a unique, authoritative guide to these developments. Full bibliographical and biographical information is provided for those wishing to pursue specific topics in greater detail.

Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology Practice


Bruce Lincoln - 1991
    Written over fifteen years, the essays—six of them previously unpublished—fall into three parts. Part I deals with matters "Indo-European" in a relatively unproblematized way, exploring a set of haunting images that recur in descriptions of the Otherworld from many cultures. While Lincoln later rejects this methodology, these chapters remain the best available source of data for the topics they address. In Part II, Lincoln takes the data for each essay from a single culture area and shifts from the topic of dying to that of killing. Of particular interest are the chapters connecting sacrifice to physiology, a master discourse of antiquity that brought the cosmos, the human body, and human society into an ideologically charged correlation. Part III presents Lincoln's most controversial case against a hypothetical Indo-European protoculture. Reconsidering the work of the prominent Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumézil, Lincoln argues that Dumézil's writings were informed and inflected by covert political concerns characteristic of French fascism. This collection is an invaluable resource for students of myth, ritual, ancient societies, anthropology, and the history of religions. Bruce Lincoln is professor of humanities and religious studies at the University of Minnesota.

Isabel of Spain: The Catholic Queen


Warren H. Carroll - 1991
    The first full scholarly biography of Queen Isabel in English for nearly seventy-five years, Isabel is extensively annotated and eminently readable.

A Heart for Europe: the lives of Emperor Charles and Empress Zita of Austria-Hungary


Joanna Bogle - 1991
    The Pope was himself formerly bishop in the once Habsburg-ruled city of Cracow and his baptismal name Karol (meaning Charles) was given in memory of the late Emperor under whom his father had served as an officer in the Imperial army. Married to Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma, Charles inherited the throne of Austria-Hungary in 1916 at the height of World War One upon the death of his uncle, the Emperor Franz Josef. His dedicated efforts to end the war earned him the popular name the Peace-Emperor but led him to an idealistic struggle in the face of impossible odds and an early death in exile on the island of Madeira, after two attempts to regain the Hungarian throne. This book tells of these events set in the context of the wider drama of the twentieth century showing how a great and historically peaceful empire was destroyed by nationalist intrigue leaving the way free for the totalitarian powers that came after until their fall in 1945 and 1989.

Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars


Albert Marrin - 1991
    Follows Napoleon Bonaparte from his origins as a lowly soldier to his rise to military power and his conquest of Europe.

Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450-1800


Anthony Grafton - 1991
    In a full-scale presentation of the world of scholarship, from the Renaissance to the modern period, Grafton sets before us in three-dimensional detail such seminal figures as Poliziano, Scaliger, Kepler, and Wolf. He calls attention to continuities, moments of crisis, and changes in direction.The central issue in Defenders of the Text is the relation between humanism and science from the mid-fifteenth century to the beginning of the modern period. Treatments of Renaissance humanism in English have emphasized the humanists' commitment to rhetoric, ethics, and politics and have accused the humanists of concentrating on literary matters in preference to investigating the real world via new developments in science, philosophy, and other technical disciplines. This revisionist book demonstrates that humanism was neither a simple nor an impractical enterprise, but worked hand-in-hand with science in developing modern learning.Grafton makes clear that humanism remained an integral and vital part of European culture until the eighteenth century, maintaining a technical component of its own--classical philology--which developed in as rich, varied, and unexpected a way as any other field of European thought. Attention to the text led the humanists to develop a whole range of cools and methods that lent power to science and learning for centuries to come. Grafton shows the continued capacity of classical texts to provoke innovative work in both philology and philosophy, and traces a number of close and important connections between humanism and natural science. His book will be important to intellectual historians, students of the classics and the classical tradition, and historians of early modern science.

The Last Prussian: A Biography of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt 1875-1953


Charles Messenger - 1991
    A Prussian aristocrat and member of the General Staff in World War I, he helped to modernize the German armed forces before policy disagreements led to his premature retirement in 1938. Frequently sacked and reinstated, von Rundstedt was a controversial figure. He was recalled to take part in the Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939-41 and was responsible for the land element of Sealion, the planned invasion of the British mainland. After service on the Eastern Front, he became Commander-in-Chief West until being sacked for the last time in March 1945. Only ill-health prevented him from being tried as a war criminal after arraignment by the British in 1948. In this book, the author examines this enigmatic officer - his attitude to Hitler as leader and tactician, his standing as a field commander, his possible war trial and his position as one of the last members of the Prussian military elite.

Jesuits: A Multibiography


Jean Lacouture - 1991
    Jesuits: A Multibiography is history with a human face, the fascinating tales of men of the spirit who participated in the actions and passions of the modern world, a "world bursting its seams." "Be all things to all men," said the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, to his followers. "Go and set the world ablaze!" The often picaresque story takes us to the Paris of Rabelais, where Ignatius, with a handful of his fellow students, formed what would become the Society of Jesus. We follow Francis Xavier to Japan and Matteo Ricci to China. We watch as the Society grows into Christendom's most powerful order, and as the "Black Legend" of a calculating, Machiavellian Jesuitry leads to its abolition in 1773 (it was restored forty years later). We see the great characters of history and culture-Pascal, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great-play their parts. One of Jean Lacouture's most poignant portraits is of the twentieth century's most famous and beloved Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a scientist-priest whose humanistic conclusions put him at odds with the Church. Lacouture's wide-ranging narrative illuminates Pope John XXIII's reforms and the Jesuit-inspired liberation theology movements in Central and South America. With the papacy of John Paul II, a riveting drama unfolds as the Jesuits are brought under new constraints.

Jewels And Ashes


Arnold Zable - 1991
    Zable travels from Australia to the Eastern European countryside of his parents' remembrance to understand the present-the inner lives of those who, like his parents, survived the hatred but lost every trace of family. Winner of top Australian literary awards.

Germany and the Second World War: Volume I: The Build-Up of German Aggression


Wolfram Wette - 1991
    The volumes so far published have achieved international acclaim as a major contribution to historical study. Under the auspices of the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Research Institute for Military History), a team of renowned historians has combined a full synthesis of existing material with the latest research to produce what will be the definitive history of the Second World War.This volume, The Build-up of German Aggression, surveys the forces both within and outside Weimar Germany which paved the way for Hitler. The authors examine the systematic preparation for war, from the outset of Nazi rule, through rearmament, economic autarky, diplomacy, and the penetration of German society at all levels. They consider the extent to which the movement can be regarded as a continuation of historic German nationalism; the limits of Hitler's involvement with the army and big business; and the lack of coordination between the administration and the armed services. The book demonstrates that, despite Nazi propaganda and in stark contrast to 1914, most Germans in 1939 opposed a war which they nevertheless endured with such tragic consequences.Intensively researched and documented, Germany and the Second World War is an undertaking of unparalleled scope and authority. It will prove indispensable to all historians of the twentieth century.

The European Reformations


Carter Lindberg - 1991
    The storyline sets the initia Reformationis in the context of late medieval social, economic, and religious crises, and traces its differentiation through a series of internal and external crises into various Reformation movements which acquired specificity through confessionalization.

Germany and the Second World War: Volume II: Germany's Initial Conquests in Europe


Klaus A. Maier - 1991
    The volumes so far published have achieved international acclaim as a major contribution to historical study. Under the auspices of the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Research Institute for Military History), a team of renowned historians has combined a full synthesis of existing material with the latest research to produce what will be the definitive history of the Second World War.Germany's Initial Conquests in Europe surveys the first year of the war deliberately begun by Nazi Germany. The authors examine the train of interconnected political and military events, and set military operations against the background of Hitler's war policy and general aims, both immediate and long term. Their comprehensive analysis, based on detailed scholarly research, is underpinned by a full apparatus of maps, diagrams, and tables. The conflict took a course quite different from that which Hitler had intended, but nevertheless resulted in a series of conquests for the Third Reich. At the same time, the establishment of hegemony on the European continent confronted the aggressor with new problems.Intensively researched and documented, Germany and the Second World War is an undertaking of unparalleled scope and authority. It will prove indispensable to all historians of the twentieth century.

The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood In The Middle Ages


Clarissa W. Atkinson - 1991
    Pope Joan was not betrayed by a lover or discovered by an enemy; her downfall came when she went into labor during a papal procession through the streets of Rome. From the myth of Joan to the experiences of saints, nuns, and ordinary women, The Oldest Vocation brings to life both the richness and the troubling contradictions of Christian motherhood in medieval Europe.After tracing the roots of medieval ideologies of motherhood in early Christianity, Clarissa W. Atkinson reconstructs the physiological assumptions underlying medieval notions about women's bodies and reproduction; inherited from Greek science and popularized through the practice of midwifery, these assumptions helped shape common beliefs about what mothers were. She then describes the development of "spiritual motherhood" both as a concept emerging out of monastic ideologies in the early Middle Ages and as a reality in the lives of certain remarkable women. Atkinson explores the theological dimensions of medieval motherhood by discussing the cult of the Virgin Mary in twelfth-century art, story, and religious expression. She also offers a fascinating new perspective on the women saints of the later Middle Ages, many of whom were mothers; their lives and cults forged new relationships between maternity and holiness. The Oldest Vocation concludes where most histories of motherhood begin-in early modern Europe, when the family was institutionalized as a center of religious and social organization.

The Road to Rocroi: Class, Culture and Command in the Spanish Army of Flanders, 1567-1659


Fernando González de León - 1991
    This work, the first study of an early modern officer corps, examines the culture, class structure, and combat effectiveness of the largest army of its day. Combining approaches and insights from social, cultural and military history, it traces the evolution of the leading cadres of the legendary tercios in relation to major trends such as aristocratization and military modernization while revising recent perspectives on Spain's war against the Dutch and the French in the Low Countries.

The Rebirth of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy


Misha Glenny - 1991
    For 40 years Eastern Europe has been erroneously considered a political monolith but beneath apparently identical structures of power, old political tensions continued to ferment. Glenny shows how these traditions have broken out into newly legitimized political parties, offering the reader a comprehensive map of this turbulent area's traditions and prospects. He provides some understanding of the crucial inter-war years that still shape so much of the region's politics. There are biographical portraits of the major political personalities.

Imperial Simla: The Political Culture of the Raj


Pamela Kanwar - 1991
    Drawing on contemporary reports, official documents and personal interviews with old residents of Simla, the book covers roughly the hundred years leading up to India's independence.

The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870


Robert J. Steinfeld - 1991
    By the eighteenth century, traditional legal restrictions no longer applied to many kinds of colonial workers, but it was not until the nineteenth century that indentured servitude came to be regarded as similar to slavery.

Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus De Niccolis


Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan - 1991
    Press edition of the letters of Florentine humanist Poggius (1380-1459) to his friend de Niccolis regarding the rediscovery of lost classical texts. Translated (from the Latin) with notes by Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordon. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portla

W.B. Yeats: Images of Ireland


W.B. Yeats - 1991
    The photos accompany a succession of key extracts from the poet's verses, plays, essays, and memoirs--passages that evoke the landscape he loved. Includes a brief chronology of Yeats' life. 44 color photographs, 53 duotones.

Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe


Margaret C. Jacob - 1991
    Enamoured of British institutions, Continental Europeans turned to the imported masonic lodges and found in them a new forum thatwas constitutionally constructed and logically egalitarian. Originating in the Middle Ages, when stone-masons joined together to preserve their professional secrets and to protect their wages, the English and Scottish lodges had by the eighteenth century discarded their guild origins and become aninternational phenomenon that gave men and eventually some women a place to vote, speak, discuss and debate. Margaret Jacob argues that the hundreds of masonic lodges founded in eighteenth-century Europe were among the most important enclaves in which modern civil society was formed. In France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Britain men and women freemasons sought to create a moral and social order based upon reason and virtue, and dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality. A forum where philosophers met with men of commerce, government, and the professions, the masonic lodgecreated new forms of self-government in microcosm, complete with constitutions and laws, elections, and representatives. This is the first comprehensive history of Enlightenment freemasonry, from the roots of the society's political philosophy and evolution in seventeenth-century England andScotland to the French Revolution. Based on never-before-used archival sources, it will appeal to anyone interested in the birth of modernity in Europe or in the cultural milieu of the European Enlightenment.

The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism


Gwendolyn Wright - 1991
    Nowhere is this more revealingly illustrated than in urban design, a field that encompasses architecture and social life, traditions and modernization. Here aesthetic goals and political intentions meet, sometimes in collaboration, sometimes in conflict. Here the formal qualities of art confront the complexities of history. When urban design policies are implemented, they reveal underlying aesthetic, cultural, and political dilemmas with startling clarity. Gwendolyn Wright focuses on three French colonies—Indochina, Morocco, and Madagascar—that were the most discussed, most often photographed, and most admired showpieces of the French empire in the early twentieth century. She explores how urban policy and design fit into the French colonial policy of "association," a strategy that accepted, even encouraged, cultural differences while it promoted modern urban improvements that would foster economic development for Western investors. Wright shows how these colonial cities evolved, tracing the distinctive nature of each locale under French imperialism. She also relates these cities to the larger category of French architecture and urbanism, showing how consistently the French tried to resolve certain stylistic and policy problems they faced at home and abroad. With the advice of architects and sociologists, art historians and geographers, colonial administrators sought to exert greater control over such matters as family life and working conditions, industrial growth and cultural memory. The issues Wright confronts—the potent implications of traditional norms, cultural continuity, modernization, and radical urban experiments—still challenge us today.

Exploring Scottish Hill Tracks


Ralph Storer - 1991
    Some of these ancient routes are now cart-tracks and some are paths, while others have disappeared from the map altogether and can be traced only by detective work on the ground.

Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, C.1660-1725


Robert B. Shoemaker - 1991
    Historians, however, have argued over whether the discretion and flexibility embodied in the judicial system was used as a method of social control, and by focusing their attention on felonies and on the action of the protagonists in judicial decisions they have tended to ignore rich sources of information concerning attitudes towards and experiences of the law. Misdemeanour prosecutions affected many more people (and a broader social variety of participants) than felony prosecutions, and in their choice of methods of prosecution both victims and Justices of the Peace exercised considerably greater flexibility in responding to petty crimes than they did with felonies. This book examines the day-to-day operation of the criminal justice system in Middlesex from the point of view of plaintiffs and defendants, and offers an assessment of the social significance of the law in pre-industrial England.

Singing for Survival: Songs of the Lodz Ghetto, 1940-45


Gila Flam - 1991
    Drawing on interviews with survivors and on library and archival materials, the author illustrates the general themes of the Lodz repertoire and explores the nature of Holocaust song. Most of the songs are presented here for the first time.

Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe 1815-1914


Sandi E. Cooper - 1991
    Citizen challenges to the exercise of this power grew slowly. Drawn from the educated middle classes, peace activists maintained that Europe was a single culture despite national animosities; that Europe needed rational inter-state relationships to avoid catastrophe; and that internationalism was the logical outgrowth of the nation-state, not its subversion. In this book, Cooper explores the arguments of these patriotic pacifists with emphasis on the remarkable international peace movement that grew between 1889 and 1914. While the first World War revealed the limitations and dilemmas of patriotic pacifism, the shape, if not substance, of many twentieth-century international institutions was prefigured in nineteenth-century continental pacifism.

Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe


Jonathan Frankel - 1991
    Moreover the established historiography dealing with those years has tended to focus on the processes of accommodation and communal disintegration. However, the historical processes as analysed in this collection of essays emerge as multi- rather than uni-directional, far more variegated and complex than usually described hitherto. Contradictory trends were associated with different localities, levels of development and ideological allegiances. Traditional loyalties, new socio-ethnic structures, communal cohesion, romantic rediscoveries of the past and the political solidarity engendered by the struggle for emancipation across Europe, all served to counterbalance the homogenizing forces of modernity. Bringing together the work of fourteen leading historians, this book represents a major contribution to the revision, which has gained momentum in recent years, of the traditional historiography.

François Truffaut: The Lost Secret


Anne Gillain - 1991
    Available in English for the first time, Anne Gillain's Francois Truffaut: The Lost Secret is considered by many to be the best book on the interpretation of Truffaut's films. Taking a psycho-biographical approach, Gillain shows how Truffaut's creative impulse was anchored in his personal experience of a traumatic childhood that left him lonely and emotionally deprived. In a series of brilliant, nuanced readings of each of his films, she demonstrates how involuntary memories arising from Truffaut's childhood not only furnish a succession of motifs that are repeated from film to film, but also govern every aspect of his mise en scene and cinematic technique.

The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution, 1919-1953


Aleksa Djilas - 1991
    Published amid the unraveling of the second Yugoslavia, The Contested Country lays bare the roots of the idea of Yugoslav unity--its conflict with the Croatian and Serbian national ideologies and its peculiar alliance with liberal and progressive, especially Communist, ideologies.

Lines Of Succession: Heraldry of the Royal Families of Europe


Jiří Louda - 1991
    It presents, for the first time, a comprehensive account of both the heraldic and the genealogical history of European royalty. Starting with the beginning of heraldry in the eleventh century, the two experts who collaborated to make the book present the heraldic shields as well as the genealogy of all the royal families of Europe, past and present.The genealogical tables provide detailed family trees, country by country. Tot coats-of -arms representing the various matrimonial and alliances show how heraldic devices evolved and developed from simple symbols to complex quartering. Additional tables highlight the most important historical events involving dynastic succession. The text describes with many pithy asides the historical background to each royal family tree, and shows how such events are reflected in the make-up of the royal coats-of-arms. The result is a fascinating historical document, as well as an important contribution to the literature of heraldry.

Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century


Kenneth M. Setton - 1991
    Setton provides a brief survey of the Thirty Years' Was as part of the background to Venetian relations with the Ottoman Empire. Having lost the island of Crete to the Turks in the long war of 1645-1669, Venice renewed her warfare with the Porte in 1684, this time as the ally of Austria after the Turkish failure to take Vienna the preceding year. The Venetians now conquered the Peloponnesus (the "Morea"), and occupied Athens, with the disastrous result that the Parthenon was destroyed, a tragedy which receives much attention in this book. This volume is to some exrtent a continuation of the author's highly praised work on "The Papacy and the Levant" (also published by the American Philosophical Society), which covers in four volumes the period from the Fourth Crusade (1204) to the battle of Lepanto (1571), and goes somewhat beyond.