Two years later, Srebrenica fell after UN commanders turned down repeated requests for NATO air strikes to halt attacking Bosnian Serbs. As many as 7,000 Muslim men perished in mass executions or ambushes along a harrowing forty-mile flight one survivor called “The Marathon of Death.”In Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II, Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Rohde follows the experiences of seven central characters—three Muslims in Srebrenica, two Dutch peacekeepers charged with defending the surrounded town, and two Serb Army soldiers attacking it—through the ten-day period that changed the course of the war in Bosnia and was arguably the darkest hour in United Nations history.Rohde exposes how the United States, France, Great Britain, the United Nations and the Bosnian government—out of incompetence or cynicism—allowed 40,000 Muslims to fall into the hands of their potential executioners. Part of an apparent Serb endgame to win the war, Srebrenica's fall ended up playing a crucial role in the Clinton administration's “endgame strategy” that halted the conflict. A new afterword by the author updates recent efforts to find the missing victims of Srebrenica and to apprehend and prosecute the executioners.The most comprehensive book to date on the subject, Endgame is a tale of cynical power politics in the post–Cold War era, a case study in genocide, and a disturbing testament to the power of propaganda and self-delusion.

    We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence.

    . . . All of this he recounts in a style that consistently entertains." --The New York Times Book Review In this magisterial adaptation of his epic three-volume history of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich chronicles the world's longest-lived Christian empire. Beginning with Constantine the Great, who in a.d. 330 made Christianity the religion of his realm and then transferred its capital to the city that would bear his name, Norwich follows the course of eleven centuries of Byzantine statecraft and warfare, politics and theology, manners and art.In the pages of A Short History of Byzantium we encounter mystics and philosophers, eunuchs and barbarians, and rulers of fantastic erudition, piety, and degeneracy. We enter the life of an empire that could create some of the world's most transcendent religious art and then destroy it in the convulsions of fanaticism. Stylishly written and overflowing with drama, pathos, and wit, here is a matchless account of a lost civilization and its magnificent cultural legacy."Strange and fascinating . . . filled with drollery and horror."                          --Boston Globe

    Sobered by that sight, Gantter and his fellow infantrymen moved across northern France and Belgium, taking part in the historic and bloody Battle of the Bulge, before slowly penetrating into and across Germany, fighting all the way to the Czechoslovakian border.With depth, clarity, and remarkable compassion, Gantter--an enlisted man and college graduate who spoke German--portrays the extraordinary life of the American soldier as he and his comrades lived it while helping to destroy Hitler's Third Reich. From dueling with unseen snipers in ruined villages to fierce battles in which the lightly armed American infantry skirmished against Hitler's panzers, Gantter skillfully captures one infantryman's progress across a continent where guns, fear, and death lay in wait around every bend in the road.

    Book by Muhammad, Elijah, Elijah Muhammad

    It begins in a.d. 285, when the emperor Diocletian separated what became Byzantium from the western Roman Empire, and ends in 1461, when the last Byzantine outposts fell to the Ottoman Turks.Spanning twelve centuries and three continents, the Byzantine Empire linked the ancient and modern worlds, shaping and transmitting Greek, Roman, and Christian traditionsthat remain vigorous today, not only in Eastern Europe and the Middle East but throughout Western civilization. Though in its politics Byzantium often resembled a third-world dictatorship, it has never yet been matched in maintaining a single state for so long, over a wide area inhabited by heterogeneous peoples.Drawing on a wealth of original sources and modern works, the author treats political and social developments as a single vivid story, told partly in detailed narrative and partly in essays that clarify long-term changes. He avoids stereotypes and rejects such old and new historical orthodoxies as the persistent weakness of the Byzantine economy and the pervasive importance of holy men in Late Antiquity.Without neglecting underlying social, cultural, and economic trends, the author shows the often crucial impact of nearly a hundred Byzantine emperors and empresses. What the emperor or empress did, or did not do, could rapidly confront ordinary Byzantines with economic ruin, new religious doctrines, or conquest by a foreign power. Much attention is paid to the complex life of the court and bureaucracy that has given us the adjective "byzantine." The major personalities include such famous names as Constantine, Justinian, Theodora, and Heraclius, along with lesser-known figures like Constans II, Irene, Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer, and Michael VIII Palaeologus.Byzantine civilization emerges as durable, creative, and realistic, overcoming repeated setbacks to remain prosperous almost to the end. With 221 illustrations and 18 maps that complement the text, A History of the Byzantine State and Society should long remain the standard history of Byzantium not just for students and scholars but for all readers.

    This is the story of 732 of those Jews--all under the age of sixteen in 1945. It is the story of what they lost, of what they, as children, suffered, and, most of all, of what they overcame. Robbed of their childhoods, orphaned by violence and bestiality, they ought to have become sociopaths. Instead, they rebuilt their lives and dedicated them to the memory of those who were not as lucky. Told in their voices, The Boys bears witness to the power of the human spirit.

    First settled in the Lake District, they formed a tightly knit group of friends whose terrible shared experience is almost beyond imagining. This is their story, which begins in the lost communities of pre-World War II central Europe, moves through ghetto, concentration camp and death march, to liberation, survival, and finally, fifty years later, a deeply moving reunion. Martin Gilbert has brought together the recollections of this remarkable group of survivors. With magisterial narration, he tells their astonishing stories. The Boys bears witness to the human spirit, enduring the depths, and bearing hopefully the burden and challenge of survival.'Martin Gilbert is to be congratulated on producing a masterly and deeply moving tribute to those who had the courage and luck to survive' Literary Review

    Publisher: Constable. Published: 1997. 1st Edition. Comments: Edited by Elaine Potter with introduction by Martin Gilbert. Blue cloth, slightly marked. Dust jacket in library protective cover, very good with label to spine. Library labels to ffep and stamp to title verso. Pages very good, slightly sunned. Binding sound.

    [A] soul-searching trip” (Kirkus Reviews).   In 1996, prominent Holocaust historian Sir Martin Gilbert embarked on a fourteen-day journey into the past with a group of his graduate students from University College, London. Their destination? Places where the terrible events of the Holocaust had left their mark in Europe.   From the railway lines near Auschwitz to the site of Oskar Schindler’s heroic efforts in Krakow, Poland, Holocaust Journey features intimate personal meditations from one of our greatest modern historians, and is supported by wartime documents, letters, and diaries—as well as over fifty photographs and maps by the author—all of which help interweave Gilbert’s trip with his students with the surrounding history of the towns, camps, and other locations visited. The result is a narrative of the Holocaust that ties the past to the present with poignancy and power.   “Gilbert . . . is a dedicated guide to this difficult material. We can be grateful for his thoroughness, courage and guidance.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

    The two-week journey that resulted, with England's leading Holocaust and World War II scholar as its guide, culminated in this powerful travel narrative.

    This book traces the relationship between the reality and the invention. Based on a rich selection of travelogues, diplomatic accounts, academic surveys, journalism, and belles-lettres in many languages, Imagining the Balkans explores the ontology of the Balkans from the eighteenth century to the present day, uncovering the ways in which an insidious intellectual tradition was constructed, became mythologized, and is still being transmitted as discourse.The author, who was raised in the Balkans, is in a unique position to bring both scholarship and sympathy to her subject. A region geographically inextricable from Europe, yet culturally constructed as the other, the Balkans have often served as a repository of negative characteristics upon which a positive and self-congratulatory image of the European has been built. With this work, Todorova offers a timely, accessible study of how an innocent geographic appellation was transformed into one of the most powerful and widespread pejorative designations in modern history.

    Ladd surveys the urban landscape, excavating its ruins, contemplating its buildings and memorials, and carefully deconstructing the public debates and political controversies emerging from its past."Written in a clear and elegant style, The Ghosts of Berlin is not just another colorless architectural history of the German capital. . . . Mr. Ladd's book is a superb guide to this process of urban self-definition, both past and present."—Katharina Thote, Wall Street Journal"If a book can have the power to change a public debate, then The Ghosts of Berlin is such a book. Among the many new books about Berlin that I have read, Brian Ladd's is certainly the most impressive. . . . Ladd's approach also owes its success to the fact that he is a good storyteller. His history of Berlin's architectural successes and failures reads entertainingly like a detective novel."—Peter Schneider, New Republic"[Ladd's] well-written and well-illustrated book amounts to a brief history of the city as well as a guide to its landscape."—Anthony Grafton, New York Review of Books

    Based on private diaries, letters, and documents long hidden in the Soviet archives, it sheds light on an extraordinary tale of enduring love and ultimate tragedy that, until now, has never been told. He was the Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich, the tall, dashing brother of Tsar Nicholas II. She was Nathalie Wulfert, a beautiful, elegant, intelligent, divorced commoner, and the wife of a Guards officer under Michael's command. Everything was wrong...yet for Grand Duke Michael, it was love at first sight-an obsession that would lead to disgrace, humiliation, and exile.Much of Michael and Natasha's story is told in their own words, through hundreds of hitherto unpublished letters. Here they reveal their passion, their joy, and their despair as they are banished from their own country, bathed in scandal in the courts of Europe, and forced to suffer cruel separation. But more than a love story, Michael and Natasha is a historical drama played out against the elegant background of a bygone age and a world at war. It is a spell-binding account of Michael's return to Russia, his reputation as a war hero, the downfall of Nicholas II, the strange and short reign of Grand Duke Michael, and the cruel and tragic end of one of the most colorful eras in world history.

    Based on the television documentary series of the same name, the author charts the history of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein.

    400 and 1400. The book is arranged in two parts: the first surveys the comparative modes of thought and varying success of Byzantine, Latin-Christian, and Muslim cultures, and the second takes the reader from the eleventh-century revival of learning to the high Middle Ages and beyond, the period in which the vibrancy of Western intellectual culture enabled it to stamp its imprint well beyond the frontiers of Christendom.Marcia Colish argues that the foundations of the Western intellectual tradition were laid in the Middle Ages and not, as is commonly held, in the Judeo-Christian or classical periods. She contends that Western medieval thinkers produced a set of tolerances, tastes, concerns, and sensibilities that made the Middle Ages unlike other chapters of the Western intellectual experience. She provides astute descriptions of the vernacular and oral culture of each country of Europe; explores the nature of medieval culture and its transmission; profiles seminal thinkers (Augustine, Anselm, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Ockham); studies heresy from Manichaeism to Huss and Wycliffe; and investigates the influence of Arab and Jewish writing on scholasticism and the resurrection of Greek studies. Colish concludes with an assessment of the modes of medieval thought that ended with the period and those that remained as bases for later ages of European intellectual history.

    This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.

    Covers Low Mass, Sacramentaries, other Western Rites, etc. Highlights the reforms of Popes St. Gregory the Great (590-604) and St. Pius V (1566-1572). Says neither \"reform\" produced a \"new\" liturgy.

    He contends that a despotism rooted in force and fear enjoyed widespread support among the ruling classes of the provinces on the basis of an aristocratic culture of honor shared by rulers andruled.

    Bridging the fields of military history and the history of technology—and challenging past assumptions about Europe's "gunpowder revolution"—Hall discovers a complex and fascinating story. Military inventors faced a host of challenges, he finds, from Europe's lack of naturally occurring saltpeter—one of gunpowder's major components—to the limitations of smooth-bore firearms. Manufacturing cheap, reliable gunpowder proved a difficult feat, as did making firearms that had reasonably predictable performance characteristics. Hall details the efforts of armorers across Europe as they experimented with a variety of gunpowder recipes and gunsmithing techniques, and he examines the integration of new weapons into the existing structure of European warfare.

    For 40 years the men from all three armed services, the SAS and the Foreign Office conducted an intelligence war against the massive Soviet military strength.

    After the death of her mother, Frances, in 1989, Helen Epstein set out to research and reconstruct the life of her mother and that of her grandmother and great-grandmother. Like so many children of Holocaust survivors and other people displaced by the catastrophes of the 20th century, she had few family documents, only stories. She traveled to Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Israel, searching out people who had known her family and locating material in libraries and archives on three continents. Using three decades of journalistic training, and working like an archaeologist with shards of data, she pieced together an account of the lives of the women in her family and the social history of Central European Jews.

    He builds a convincing case to justify why blacks in America should give up depending on America to supply their needs of food, clothing and shelter now that they are over 100 years up from from chattel and servitude slavey. It's time they seek the respect as other nations.

    A personal appreciation, fuelled by five decades of journeying, this is Jan Morris at her best - at once magisterial and particular, whimsical and profound. It is a matchless portrait of a continent.

    Including 100 examples of hand-coloured medieval and Renaissance illumination from around Europe, this work presents translations of key texts and explanations of the cultural significance of Books of Hours.

    Given analyzes the inquisition in one French region in order to develop a sociology of medieval politics. Established in the early thirteenth century to combat widespread popular heresy, inquisitorial tribunals identified, prosecuted, and punished heretics and their supporters. The inquisition in Languedoc was the best documented of these tribunals because the inquisitors aggressively used the developing techniques of writing and record keeping to build cases and extract confessions.Using a Marxist and Foucauldian approach, Given focuses on three inquiries: what techniques of investigation, interrogation, and punishment the inquisitors worked out in the course of their struggle against heresy; how the people of Languedoc responded to the activities of the inquisitors; and what aspects of social organization in Languedoc either facilitated or constrained the work of the inquisitors. Punishments not only inflicted suffering and humiliation on those condemned, he argues, but also served as theatrical instruction for the rest of society about the terrible price of transgression. Through a careful pursuit of these inquires, Given elucidates medieval society's contribution to the modern apparatus of power.

    It was a turbulent time, marked by revolutionary developments in culture and religion, social conflict, political upheaval, and civil war. It was also an age of passionate debate and radical innovation in political theory and practice. Many contemporary political ideologies and concepts--ideas of the state, civil society, property, and individual rights, to name a few--can trace their ancestry to this era.Illuminating the roots of contemporary Western political thought, A Trumpet of Sedition surveys canonical texts by prominent thinkers such as Thomas More, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, radicals like the Levellers and Gerrard Winstanley and other less well known but important figures. In clear and lively prose, while situating them in their social and political context in new and original ways and contrasting the English case to others in Europe. By examining political ideas not merely as free-floating abstractions but as living encounters with the historical experience--the formation of the English state and the rise of agrarian capitalism--A Trumpet of Sedition illuminates the roots of contemporary Western political thought.

    His first book, Half The Way Home: A Memoir Of Father And Son, was published in 1986. It was followed by The Mirror At Midnight: A South African Journey, and The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. The Unquiet Ghost won the Madeline Dane Ross Award of the Overseas Press Club of America, given to "the best foreign correspondent in any medium showing concern for the human condition. Hochschild's work has also won prizes from the World Affairs Council, the Eugene V. Debs Foundation and the Society of American Travel Writers. An anthology of his shorter pieces, Finding The Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels, won the 1998 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay. Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost: A Story Of Greed, Terror And Heroism. In Colonial Africa was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It, Half The Way Home, and The Unquiet Ghost were all named Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. His books have been translated into six languages. Besides his books, Hochschild has also written for The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, The Nation, and many other newspapers and magazines. He is a former commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Hochschild teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and has been a guest teacher at other campuses in the U.S. and abroad. In 1997-98, he was a Fulbright Lecturer in India. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Arlie, the sociologist and author. They have two sons.

    Sip fine wine in a Parisian cafe, explore the ruins of Rome or party through the night in the bars of Berlin; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Western Europe and begin your journey now! Inside Lonely Planet's Western Europe Travel Guide: Colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries show you the simplest way to tailor your trip to your own personal needs and interests Insider tips save you time and money, and help you get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - including hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, and prices Honest reviews for all budgets - including eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, and hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer and more rewarding travel experience - including history, art, literature, cinema, music, architecture, landscapes, wildlife, cuisine, wine, and customs and etiquette Over 124 maps Useful features - including Month by Month (annual festival calendar), Itineraries, and Countries at a Glance Coverage of Austria, Belgium & Luxembourg, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland & Liechtenstein, and more eBook Features: (Best viewed on tablet devices) Zoom-in maps and images bring it all up close and in greater detail Downloadable PDF and offline maps let you stay offline to avoid roaming and data charges Seamlessly flip between pages Easily navigate and jump effortlessly between maps and reviews Speedy search capabilities get you to what you need and want to see Use bookmarks to help you shoot back to key pages in a flash Visit the websites of our recommendations by touching embedded links Adding notes with the tap of a finger offers a way to personalise your guidebook experience Inbuilt dictionary to translate unfamiliar languages and decode site-specific local terms The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet Western Europe , our most comprehensive guide to Western Europe, is perfect for those planning to both explore the top sights and take the road less travelled. Looking for just the highlights of Europe? Check out Lonely Planet's Discover Europe, a photo-rich guide to the region's most popular attractions. Looking for more extensive coverage? Check out Lonely Planet's Europe on a Shoestring guide. Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Ryan Ver Berkmoes, Alexis Averbuck, Oliver Berry, Kerry Christiani, Mark Elliott, Dunc

    In one compendious volume, The Mammoth Book of Kings and Queens offers the first royal biographical A-Z, its pages lavish in details on all the rulers of kingdoms within the British Isles, together with their wives or consorts, pretenders, usurpers, and regents.Turn to your favorite monarch -- be it Charles II, Queen Victoria, or even Henry VIII -- and you will find an amazing amount of fascinating information. Perhaps you want to know who among Britain's rulers holds royal records for the shortest or the longest reigns, the richest or poorest monarchies.You have more than a thousand sovereigns to browse through, from Queen Boadicea of the early Britons to Elizabeth II. You can learn of various trial and Saxon rulers prior to 1066, the rulers of Scotland and Wales, and the many kings of Ireland, whose lineage goes back even further than their mainland counterparts. Your discoveries may surprise you and will always keep you entertainingly informed.Author Mike Ashley presents in chronological order all the kings and queens of Britain as well as other powerful nobles and dignitaries; he includes, too, genealogies showing the family descent of all the leading royal families as a further bonus. The result is a superb and authoritative one-volume reference.

    Over 2 million of these alone, including countless children, died on the road or in concentration camps in Poland and elsewhere. That these deaths occurred at all is still being denied by Western governments.At the same time, Herbert Hoover and Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King created the largest charity in history, a food-aid program that saved an estimated 800 million lives during three years of global struggle against post–World War II famine—a program they had to struggle for years to make accessible to the German people, who had been excluded from it as a matter of official Allied policy.Never before had such revenge been known. Never before had such compassion been shown. The first English-speaking writer to gain access to the newly opened KGB archives in Moscow and to recently declassified information from the renowned Hoover Institution in California, James Bacque tells the extraordinary story of what happened to these people and why.Revised and updated for this new edition, bestseller Crimes and Mercies was first published by Little, Brown in the U.K. in 1997.

    her connections in Parisian high society made the Revolution dangerous for her, and after the fall of the Bastille she fled France both to save her own skin and to go on painting beautiful women and powerful men. Her wandering, cosmopolitan life took her to Bourbon Naples, Hapsburg Vienna, imperial St. Petersburg and Georgian London, ans wherever she went she attracted attention for her alluring portraits.Vigée Le Brun, in both her personal and her public life, was a woman of contradictions. A revolutionary female artist, she was apolitical reactionary who yearned for what he saw as the lost paradise of France before the Revolution. A proud and independent woman, she raised her daughter single-handedly, only tragically to lose her affection.Angelica Goodden's illuminating account of this extraordinary woman - the first biography of the artist in English for seventy-five-years - is also a vivid portrait of an age of society scandal and political turmoil. Drawing on contemporary records and Vigée Le Brun's own fascinating memoirs, Godden brings to life the remarkable range of friends and acquaintances the artist made through her work, from Catherine the Great to Madame de Staël to Emma Hamilton, whose suggestive portrait won Vigée Le Brun some notoriety. As her art regains favour, this definitive biography is a long-overdue reassessment of this sometimes scandalous, often devious but prodigiously gifted woman.

    This position is defended with detailed analyses of the major economic sectors and investigations into social structure and macro-economic performance. Dutch economic history is placed in its European and world context. Inter-continental and colonial trade are discussed fully. Special emphasis is placed on the environmental context and demographic developments.

    Cereta's works circulated widely in Italy during the early modern era, but her complete letters have never before been published in English. In her public lectures and essays, Cereta explores the history of women's contributions to the intellectual and political life of Europe. She argues against the slavery of women in marriage and for the rights of women to higher education, the same issues that have occupied feminist thinkers of later centuries. Yet these letters also furnish a detailed portrait of an early modern woman’s private experience, for Cereta addressed many letters to a close circle of family and friends, discussing highly personal concerns such as her difficult relationships with her mother and her husband. Taken together, these letters are a testament both to an individual woman and to enduring feminist concerns.

    In tackling this important subject this book provides profound insights into German society under Hitler and represents a significant contribution to the existing literature on the Third Reich.The book first explores the nature of Nazi family ideology and gives an overview of various aspects of Nazi family policy, including the impact of eugenics upon population policy and issues such as marriage, divorce, contraception, abortion and welfare measures. This is followed by a consideration of the dissemination of Nazi family ideals by means of education and socialization. The book examines families at different ends of the spectrum in Nazi Germany - model families which served to define the Nazi ideal of the kinderreich family, as well as undesirable families that did not fit into the national community. In particular, asocial and Jewish families are vigorously examined -- the former representing the socially unfit and the latter, the racially inferior or alien.The book also presents an overview of the regime's ultimate legacy for the family in post-1945 Germany, not least the effects of World War II, and gives an overall assessment of the regime's family policy and a discussion of how the Nazi period fits into the framework of the history of the German family.

    Their day-to-day lives are defined by their past history as colonized peoples, often in ways that are subtle or hard to define. In Dangerous Liaisons, eminent contributors address the issues raised by the postcolonial condition, considering nationhood, history, gender, and identity from an inter-disciplinary perspective.Among the questions they address are: What are the boundaries of race and ethnicity in a diasporic world? How have women been so effectively excluded from national power? What have been the historical aftermaths of different forms of colonialism? What are the cultural and political consequences of colonial partitions of the nation-state? Representing an essential intervention, Dangerous Liaisons is a crucial guidebook for those concerned with understanding postcoloniality at the moment when it is becoming more and more widely discussed.

    The author traces events from the cicil rights movement in 1968 to the height of the Troubles in 1972 and examines the conditions created for a protracted confrontation.

    The encyclopedia portrays important military, political, and diplomatic figures from John Quincy Adams to Castlereagh. Key battles, including the Battle of Tippecanoe and the sea battle of the U.S.S. Constitution v. H.M.S. Guerri�re, are relived.A short bibliography for each article provides guidance for more in depth exploration, making the Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 a useful tool for general readers and scholars alike. The editors cover approximately 500 topics and the entries are extensively cross referenced. The encyclopedia is also illustrated with photos from the Library of Congress. An impressive collection of contributors and prestigious scholars from the United States, Europe, and Canada offer fresh insights and perspectives to many aspects of a war that has enjoyed a rebirth of interest.

    Yet the archaeological and historical records are so scant that the true nature of Viking civilization remains shrouded in mystery.In this richly illustrated volume, twelve leading scholars draw on the latest research and archaeological evidence to provide the clearest picture yet of this fabled people. Painting a fascinating portrait of the influences that the "Northmen" had on foreign lands, the contributors trace Viking excursions to the British Islands, Russia, Greenland, and the northern tip of Newfoundland, which the Vikings called "Vinlund." We meet the great Viking kings: from King Godfred, King of the Danes, who led campaigns against Charlemagne in Saxony, to King Harald Bluetooth, the first of the Christian rulers, who helped unify Scandinavia and introduced a modern infrastructure of bridges and roads. The volume also looks at the day-to-day social life of the Vikings, describing their almost religious reverence for boats and boat-building, and their deep bond with the sea that is still visible in the etymology of such English words as "anchor," "boat," "rudder," and "fishing," all of which can be traced back to Old Norse roots. But perhaps most importantly, the book goes a long way towards answering the age-old question of who these intriguing people were.From sagas to shipbuilding, from funeral rites to the fur trade, this superb volume is an indispensable guide to the Viking world.

    It concentrates on monks and nuns, but also takes into consideration hermits, recluses, wandering preachers, crusaders, penitents, and other less organized forms of religious life. In particular it studies the variety of reform movements, the relation of the reformers to each other and the outside world, and their spirituality and motivation as reflected in their writings and activities.

     * The World at War * The Rise of Globalization * Control of the Seas * Control of Space * Superpowers * Population Growth * Urbanization * Traffic * Energy Use * Global Warming * Biodiversity * Stock Markets * Human Rights * Children's Rights * The Internet and Digital Media * Investment * Health and Disease Using a mainly visual analysis of data in full-color maps and graphics, Dan Smith gives shape and meaning to the statistics.

    The English women prophets and visionaries whose voices are recovered here all lived between the 12th and the 17th centuries and claimed, through the medium of trances and eucharistic piety, to speak for God. They include Margery Kempe and the medieval visionaries, Elizabeth Barton (the Holy Maid of Kent), the Reformation martyr Anne Askew and other godly women described in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and Lady Eleanor Davies as an example of a woman prophet of the Civil War. The uncertainties surrounding their words and their dissemination are analyzed, and the strategies women devised to be heard and read are exposed, showing that through prophecy they were often able to intervene in the religious and political discourse of their times; the role of God's secretary gave them the opportunity to act and speak autonomously and publicly.

    It was a time of effervescence, which witnessed the birth of new ideas and the struggle between revolution and reaction. The Romanian principalities, located on the crossroads between East and West, were at the center of the conflict between the various empires dominating Southeastern Europe, making them a permanent subject of international diplomacy.With the expansion of Russia in the Balkans, amidst the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the struggle against Russia in the Romanian principalities, supported by Anglo-Turkish diplomacy, took on international significance.Written by one of the leading specialists on Romanian history in the United States, The Struggle Against Russia in the Romanian Principalities is a significant contribution to nineteenth century European diplomatic history.

    It deals with the Rashidi dynasty which in the 19th century emerged among the Shammar camel herders, made the oasis of Hail a capital rivalling Mecca and Medina in fame and prosperity, and attempted to unify central Arabia into a single polity.The author considers why at this particular moment the Shammar became susceptible to political centralization, the internal and external factors that contributed to the emergence of their dynasty, the changes in the political system and the factors which contributed to the subsequent instability and decline of the Shammar polity in the 20th century.

    A useful prologue offers students guidance in analyzing both written and visual primary sources.

    His latest book breaks new scholarly boundaries in its exploration of cultural and scientific exchanges between Iran and China. Contrary to popular belief, Mongol rulers were intensely interested in the culture of their sedentary subjects. Under their auspices, various commodities, ideologies and technologies were disseminated across Eurasia. The result was a lively exchange of scientists, scholars and ritual specialists between East and West. The book is broad-ranging and erudite and promises to become a classic in the field.

    Despite a 1942 ordinance mandating death for the ridicule of Nazi soldiers, Norwegians attacked the occupying Nazis and their Norwegian collaborators by means of anecdotes, quips, insinuating personal ads, children’s stories, Christmas cards, mock postage stamps, and symbolic clothing.    In relating this dramatic story, Kathleen Stokker draws upon her many interviews with survivors of the Occupation and upon the archives of the Norwegian Resistance Museum and the University of Oslo. Central to the book are four “joke notebooks” kept by women ranging in age from eleven to thirty, who found sufficient meaning in this humor to risk recording and preserving it. Stokker also cites details from wartime diaries of three other women from East, West, and North Norway. Placing the joking in historical, cultural, and psychological context, Stokker demonstrates how this seemingly frivolous humor in fact contributed to the development of a resistance mentality among an initially confused, paralyzed, and dispirited population, stunned by the German invasion of their neutral country.    For this paperback edition, Stokker has added a new preface offering a comparative view of resistance through humor in neighboring Denmark.

    Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel challenge the familiar understanding of Munich as the product of a naive "appeasement" of Nazi appetites. They argue that it was the culmination of cynical collaboration between the Tory government and the Nazis in the 1930s. Based upon a careful reading of official and unofficial correspondence, conference notes, cabinet minutes, and diaries, In Our Time documents the steps taken under diplomatic cover by the West to strike a bargain with Hitler based upon shared anti-Soviet premises. Munich, write the authors, "formalized what had been an informal understanding between Britain and Germany to that point, with France, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and reluctance, concurring: Germany could do as it wished in central and eastern Europe and the democracies were not to intervene, particularly should Germany carry its warfare to the Soviet Union." Gripping, direct, and detailed, In Our Time overturns the conventional wisdom about World War II, its roots, and its lessons. With profound implications for understanding international relations in the Cold War and after, it sheds new light on a signal event of the twentieth century.

    Focuses on the often chaotic events and larger-than-life personalities of the fateful last republican century and discusses the power struggles which gave way to a dictatorship.

    Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi reads fascist myths, rituals, images, and speeches as texts that tell the story of fascism. Linking Mussolini's elaboration of a new ruling style to the shaping of the regime's identity, she finds that in searching for symbolic means and forms that would represent its political novelty, fascism in fact brought itself into being, creating its own power and history.Falasca-Zamponi argues that an aesthetically founded notion of politics guided fascist power's historical unfolding and determined the fascist regime's violent understanding of social relations, its desensitized and dehumanized claims to creation, its privileging of form over ethical norms, and ultimately its truly totalitarian nature.

    Taking its perspective from the cultural, social and political margins of the British Isles, it demonstrates how fragile the supposed political consensus of the eighteenth century was. To read it is to revaluate our understanding of the culture of England in relation to other societies of these islands.

    There are detailed chronologies devoted to domestic, foreign and colonial affairs; a dictionary of 200 specialist terms; over 100 concise biographies of leading personalities; discussion of over 1000 publications in a bibliographical essay; maps; and a genealogical table.

    It is a history for our times: well-known authors and movements are set in a wider literary, cultural and political context, standard judgments are reexamined where appropriate, and a new prominence is given to writing by women. The book is designed for the general reader as well as the advanced student; titles and quotations are translated, and there is an extensive bibliography.

    Growing out of the Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures that Anthony Grafton gave at the University of Michigan in 1992, this book describes the interaction between books and readers in the Renaissance, as seen in four major case studies.Humanists Alberti, Pico, Budé, and Kepler, all major figures of their time and now major figures in intellectual history, are examined in the light of their distinctive ways of reading. Investigating a period of two centuries, Grafton vividly portrays the ways in which book/scholar interactions--and the established traditions that were reflected in these interactions--were part of and helped shape the subjects' Humanistic philosophy. The book also indicates how these traditions have implications for the modern literary scene.Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers illustrates the immense variety of the humanist readers of the Renaissance. Grafton describes life in the Renaissance library, how the act of reading was shaped by the physical environment, and various styles of reading during the time. A strong sense of what skilled reading was like in the past is built up through anecdotes, philological analysis, and documents from a wide variety of sources, many of them unpublished.This volume will be of special interest to Renaissance and intellectual historians, students of Renaissance literature, and classicists who concern themselves with the afterlife of their texts.Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University.