Best of
European-History

2000

The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures


John K. Roth - 2000
    During World War II, six million Jews—as well as other targeted groups including Poles, the handicapped, and homosexuals—were systematically murdered by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Although the weight and heft of The Holocaust Chronicle cannot capture the immensity of its subject, the book’s 768 pages suggest that the Holocaust is a topic that must be openly confronted. Written and fact-checked by top scholars, the chronicle offers:A 3,000-item timeline pinpointing specific events that contributed to the Holocaust, such as Nazi Germany occupation during World War II, the sealing of urban ghettos in Europe, and the deportation of millions of Jews to death camps.Nearly 2,000 photographs chronicling the Holocaust in starkly visual terms, including images of the massacre of more than 33,000 Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar and pictures from the liberation of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.Fourteen chapter-opening essays that put the most important years of the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath into perspective, beginning with Hitler’s rise to power and ending with the convictions of such Nazi officials as Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg Trial.More than 250 sidebars detailing the significant places, issues, events, and people of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank and Heinrich Himmler.An extensive prologue and epilogue that discuss the buildup to and aftermath of the Holocaust.* This is an alternate cover of Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures (ISBN-13: 9781680228328), content is the same. *

Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754 - 1766


Fred Anderson - 2000
    Relating the history of the war as it developed, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces brought into conflict helped both to create Britain’s empire and to sow the seeds of its eventual dissolution.Beginning with a skirmish in the Pennsylvania backcountry involving an inexperienced George Washington, the Iroquois chief Tanaghrisson, and the ill-fated French emissary Jumonville, Anderson reveals a chain of events that would lead to world conflagration. Weaving together the military, economic, and political motives of the participants with unforgettable portraits of Washington, William Pitt, Montcalm, and many others, Anderson brings a fresh perspective to one of America’s most important wars, demonstrating how the forces unleashed there would irrevocably change the politics of empire in North America.

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present


Jacques Barzun - 2000
    He introduces characters and incidents with his unusual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that have "Puritans as Democrats," "The Monarch's Revolution," "The Artist Prophet and Jester" -- show the recurrent role of great themes throughout the eras.The triumphs and defeats of five hundred years form an inspiring saga that modifies the current impression of one long tale of oppression by white European males. Women and their deeds are prominent, and freedom (even in sexual matters) is not an invention of the last decades. And when Barzun rates the present not as a culmination but a decline, he is in no way a prophet of doom. Instead, he shows decadence as the creative novelty that will burst forth -- tomorrow or the next day.Only after a lifetime of separate studies covering a broad territory could a writer create with such ease the synthesis displayed in this magnificent volume.

The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany


Martin Goldsmith - 2000
    Later that year, the Jdische Kulturbund, or Jewish Cultural Association, was created to allow Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences. Here is the riveting and emotional story of Gunther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them.

Fur Coat, No Knickers


Anna King - 2000
    A family torn apart by tragedy At the top of Lester Road in London’s East End stands ‘Paddy’s Castle’, the three-storey, red-bricked Georgian house that is home to Grace Donnelly and her family.Life may be hard in the late 1930s, but it is nothing compared with what is about to follow. Grace’s beloved fiancé Stanley decides to enlist in the fight against Nazi Germany. And as the sirens signal blitz after blitz of bombers, the family can only hide in the cellar and hope they will survive.But Grace has more than just the Germans to worry about. The good-looking Nobby Clark is keen to do more than just look out for his best friend’s fiancée. And scheming barmaid Beryl Lovesett is determined to worm her way into the family home, seducing Grace’s uncle with her fur coat, no knickers… A classic World War Two saga, Fur Coat, No Knickers is a perfect read for fans of Carol Rivers, Sally Warboyes, and Annie Murray. Praise for Fur Coat, No Knickers 'A gripping wartime novel, with strong female characters... full of courage, hope, and heartbreak.' Alina's Reading Corner'Any book written by Anna King is always a great read!' Reader review'I couldn't put it down... a must read.' Reader review'The late Anna King can hold a candle to [Catherine] Cookson. Her characters are flawlessly portrayed.' Reader review

Scotland: The Story of a Nation


Magnus Magnusson - 2000
    He charts the long struggle toward nationhood, explores the roots of the original Scots, and examines the extent to which Scotland was shaped by the Romans, the Picts, the Vikings, and the English. Encompassing everything from the first Mesolithic settlers in 7000 B.C. to the present movements for independence, Scotland: The Story of a Nation is history on an epic level, essential reading for anyone interested in the rich past of this captivating land.

The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s


Piers Brendon - 2000
    In this sweeping history, Piers Brendon brings the tragic, dismal days of the 1930s to life. From Stalinist pogroms to New Deal programs, Brendon re-creates the full scope of a slow international descent towards war. Offering perfect sketches of the players, riveting descriptions of major events and crises, and telling details from everyday life, he offers both a grand, rousing narrative and an intimate portrait of an era that make sense out of the fascinating, complicated, and profoundly influential years of the 1930s.

The Third Reich: A New History


Michael Burleigh - 2000
    The Third Reich restores a broad perspective and intellectual unity to issues that have become academic subspecialties and offers a brilliant new interpretation of Hitler's evil rule.Filled with human and moral considerations that are missing from theoretical accounts, Michael Burleigh's book gives full weight to the experience of ordinary people who were swept up in, or repelled by, Hitler's movement and emphasizes international themes-for Nazi Germany appealed to many European nations, and its wartime conduct included efforts to dominate the Continental economy and involved gigantic population transfers and exterminations, recruitment of foreign labor, and multinational armies.

Those Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972


Peter Pringle - 2000
    Five were shot in the back. A major turning point in the recent history of Northern Ireland, the massacre galvanized Catholics in their struggle against the British presence in Ulster. In Those Are Real Bullets, Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson provide the definitive, full-length narrative account of Bloody Sunday. Using extensive interviews and recently declassified documents unavailable for previous books about the shootings, they vividly re-create the chaos and terror of the day and capture the full human impact of the tragedy. Those Are Real Bullets provides an intimate portrait of a city in revolt and the climax of a failed military response that plunged Northern Ireland into three decades of armed conflict. "A shocking, stomach-turning, enraging narrative history that should be required reading." -- Irish Independent "Written by two veteran, first-rate reporters, this book will remain the standard account of that miserable day." -- Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Daily Mail

A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3500 BC-AD 1603


Simon Schama - 2000
    Schama, the author of the highly acclaimed Citizens and The Embarrassment of Riches, is one of the most popular and celebrated historians of our day, and in this magnificent work he brings history to dramatic life with a wealth of stories and vivid, colorful detail, reanimating familiar figures and events and drawing them skillfully into a powerful and compelling narrative. Schama's perspective moves from the birth of civilization to the Norman Conquest; through the religious wars and turbulance of the Middle Ages to the sovereignties of Henry II, Richard I and King John; through the outbreak of the Black Death, which destroyed nearly half of Europe's population, through the reign of Edward I and the growth of national identity in Wales and Scotland, to the intricate conflicts of the Tudors and the clash between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. Driven by the drama of the stories themselves but exploring at the same time a network of interconnected themes--the formation of a nation state, the cyclical nature of power, the struggles between the oppressors and the oppressed--this is a superbly readable and illuminating account of a great nation, and its extraordinary history.

So Few Got Through: Gordon Highlanders with the 51st Division from Normandy to the Baltic


Martin Lindsay - 2000
    The original 51st had gotten separated from the main British army before Dunkirk in 1940 and had been captured at St. Vale'ry, the surrender being taken by Irwin Rome in person. The reconstituted 51st had fought Rome in the desert and knew that 10,000 Scotsmen were now entering their fourth year in German prison camps.The original edition of So Few Got Through appeared just after the war and chronicles the campaigns of the 1st Gordon Highlanders from Normandy to V-E Day. Martin Lindsay was the Gordons' commander and his book has long been considered the best account of a British battalion in the war.

Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner


Simon Sebag Montefiore - 2000
    Over the next thirty years he would become her lover, co-ruler, and husband in a secret marriage that left room for both to satisfy their sexual appetites. Potemkin proved to be one of the most brilliant statesmen of the eighteenth century, helping Catherine expand the Russian empire and deftly manipulating allies and adversaries from Constantinople to London.This acclaimed biography vividly re-creates Potemkin’s outsized character and accomplishments and restores him to his rightful place as a colossus of the eighteenth century. It chronicles the tempestuous relationship between Potemkin and Catherine, a remarkable love affair between two strong personalities that helped shape the course of history. As he brings these characters to life, Montefiore also tells the story of the creation of the Russian empire. This is biography as it is meant to be: both intimate and panoramic, and bursting with life.

Never Again: A History of the Holocaust


Martin Gilbert - 2000
    Representing 40 years of research that Gilbert began in Poland in 1959, this comprehensive, illustrated volume traces the history of the Jewish people in Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust. Gilbert brilliantly blends this great swath of history with fresh, detailed accounts of individual drama: the rise of Nazism in Germany, the Jewish children who found refuge in Britain, the rejected refugees of the U.S.S. St Louis, the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, the stories of Anne Frank, Oscar Schindler, and the children of Izieu, as well as the reflections of survivors today. Never Again paints a deeply personal and cultural portrait of the Holocaust. Gilbert's sharp historical knowledge makes this work on the Holocaust enormously informative and tangibly real.

Berlin


David Clay Large - 2000
    At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation. If Paris was the "Capital of the Nineteenth Century," Berlin was to become the signature city for the next hundred years. Once a symbol of modernity, in the Thirties it became associated with injustice and the abuse of power. After 1945, it became the iconic City of the Cold War. Since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has again come to represent humanity's aspirations for a new beginning, tempered by caution deriving from the traumas of the recent past. David Clay Large's definitive history of Berlin is framed by the two German unifications of 1871 and 1990. Between these two events several themes run like a thread through the city's history: a persistent inferiority complex; a distrust among many ordinary Germans, and the national leadership of the "unloved city's" electric atmosphere, fast tempo, and tradition of unruliness; its status as a magnet for immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and the young; the opening up of social, economic, and ethnic divisions as sharp as the one created by the Wall.

Salisbury: Victorian Titan


Andrew Roberts - 2000
    And before his death at age 73 in 1903, he would spend nearly two decades as Britain’s Prime Minister, single-mindedly driving the British Empire to extend its iron grip to five continents. This multiple award-winning biography sheds uncompromising light on Lord Salisbury’s troubled family life, his transformational experiences in Australia, India, and Africa, and his dogged pursuit of political power in the court of Queen Victoria.

The Past is Myself & The Road Ahead Omnibus: When I Was a German, 1934-1945


Christabel Bielenberg - 2000
    She lived through the war in Germany, as a German citizen under the horrors of Nazi rule and Allied bombings. The Past is Myself is her story of that experience - and an unforgettable portrait of an evil time.The Road AheadFollowing the extraordinary success of her wartime memoir, The Past is Myself, Christabel Bielenberg received thousands of letters from readers begging her to describe what happened next. In The Road Ahead she continues her story with the outbreak of peace - a time of struggle for reconciliation with, and the rebuilding of, a defeated nation. She also tells of life in her newly adopted country, Ireland, her involvement with the Peace Women of Northern Ireland, and with characteristic modesty and gratitude, looks back on a rich, full life.

To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland


Sean O'Callaghan - 2000
    A vivid account of the Irish slave trade: the previously untold story of over 50,000 Irish men, women and children who were transported to Barbados and Virginia.

The Power of Ideas


Isaiah Berlin - 2000
    He was constitutionally incapable of writing with the opacity of the specialist, but these shorter, more introductory pieces provide the perfect starting-point for the reader new to his work. Those who are already familiar with his writing will also be grateful for this further addition to his collected essays.The connecting theme of these essays, as in the case of earlier volumes, is the crucial social and political role--past, present and future--of ideas, and of their progenitors. A rich variety of subject-matters is represented--from philosophy to education, from Russia to Israel, from Marxism to romanticism--so that the truth of Heine's warning is exemplified on a broad front. It is a warning that Berlin often referred to, and provides an answer to those who ask, as from time to time they do, why intellectual history matters.Among the contributions are My Intellectual Path, Berlin's last essay, a retrospective autobiographical survey of his main preoccupations; and Jewish Slavery and Emancipation, the classic statement of his Zionist views, long unavailable in print. His other subjects include the Enlightenment, Giambattista Vico, Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen, G.V. Plekhanov, the Russian intelligentsia, the idea of liberty, political realism, nationalism, and historicism. The book exhibits the full range of his enormously wide expertise and demonstrates the striking and enormously engaging individuality, as well as the power, of his own ideas.Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilization.--Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 1958

Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War


Edward J. Erickson - 2000
    Outnumbered and outgunned, the Ottoman Army performed astonishingly well in the field and managed to keep fighting until the end of the war, long after many other armies had quit the field. It fought a multi-front war against sophisticated and capable enemies, including Great Britain, France, and Russia. Erickson challenges conventional thinking about Ottoman war aims, Ottoman military effectiveness, and the influence of German assistance.Written at the strategic and operational levels, this study frames the Turkish military contributions in a unitary manner by establishing linkages between campaigns and theaters. It also contains the first detailed discussion of Ottoman operations in Galicia, Romania, and Macedonia. Erickson provides a wealth of information on Ottoman Army organization, deployments, strategy, and staff procedures. He examines with particular attention the army's role in the Armenian deportations and the intelligence available to the Turks in 1914 and 1915. Appendixes include biographies of important commanders, the efforts of the Ottoman Air Force, Ottoman casualties, as well as a wartime chronology.

The Essential Homer


Homer - 2000
    Selections from both Iliad and Odyssey, made with an eye for those episodes that figure most prominently in the study of mythology.

The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath


Gerda Weissmann Klein - 2000
    Over fifty years ago, Gerda Weissmann was barely alive at the end of a 350-mile death march that took her from a slave labor camp in Germany to the Czech border. On May 7, 1945, the American military stormed the area, and the first soldier to approach Gerda was Kurt Klein. She guided him to her fellow prisoners who lay sick and dying on the ground, and quoted Goethe: "Noble be man, merciful and good." Perhaps it was her irony, her composure, her evident compassion in the face of tragedy, that struck Kurt Klein. A great love had begun. Forced to separate just weeks after liberation and hours after their engagement, Gerda and Kurt began a correspondence that lasted until their reunion and wedding in Paris a year later. Their poignant letters reflect upon the horrors of war and genocide, but above all, upon the rapture and salvation of true love.

The Exploits of Baron de Marbot


Jean-Baptiste de Marbot - 2000
    A vital and vibrant tale packed with bravado, duels, deceptions, and no lack of derring-do, it recounts in authentic detail and with compelling immediacy the careers that Napoleonic soldiers made of military perils, personal risks, and tactical maneuvers in the service of an imperial France. Originally published in France as a two-volume set under the title The Adventures of Baron de Marbot, the exploits of the man who was promoted to the rank of general on the eve of Waterloo appear here for the first time in a one-volume English edition. Not only has this classic soldier's memoir been discreetly edited to heighten the narrative of de Marbot's colorfully picaresque and anecdotal tale, but also expert commentary and essential background materials have been added to make the book's lively history more accessible, and the fascinating biography more illuminative for contemporary readers. "The first of all soldier books in the world - which gives us the best picture by far of the Napoleonic soldiers." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Into the Darkness: An Uncensored Report from Inside the Third Reich at War


T. Lothrop Stoddard - 2000
    During World War II he wrote Into the Darkness, about the effect of war on Nazi Germany. Stoddard was relatively nonpartisan in his coverage of the Nazi regime, but he did express concern for the welfare of the European Jewish community, foreseeing intense violence against the Jews.

The Creation of the Principality of Antioch, 1098-1130


Thomas Asbridge - 2000
    This book is the first major study of the early history of one of these Latin settlements, the principality of Antioch; it reasserts the significance of Antioch, and challenges the dominant position of the kingdom of Jerusalem in modern crusading historiography. Thomas Asbridge examines the formation of Antioch's political, military and ecclesiastical frameworks and explains how the principality survived in the hostile political environment of the Near East. He also demonstrates that Latin Antioch was shaped by the complex world of the Levant, facing a diverse range of influences and potential threats from the neighbouring forces of Byzantium and Islam. Historians of the Frankish East and of medieval Europe in the eleventh century will find this an important contribution to crusading history; it is also a significant contribution to the study of frontier societies and medieval communities. THOMAS S. ASBRIDGE is lecturer in early medieval history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.

Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer


Richard Holmes - 2000
    A daring mixture of travel, biographical sleuthing, and personal memoir, it broke all the conventions of the genre and remains one of the most intoxicating and magical works of modern literary investigation ever written. Now Holmes has put together a further and wonderfully revealing exploration of his biographical methods. "Sidetracks" is his personal casebook, assembled from decades of "wanderings from the straight and narrow" of his major biographies. It is a renewed examination of the strange and sometimes shadowy pathways of biography that have always fascinated him. "This is the fragmented tale of a single biographical quest," says Holmes, "a thirty-year journey in search of the perfect Romantic subject and the form to fit it." Sidetracks pursues this quest through an extraordinary and eclectic assortment of Romantic and Gothic writers and personalities--French, English, Dutch, and American, some major, some minor, but all made hypnotically alive and memorable through Holmes's transforming touch. We meet Chatterton and de Nerval, Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin, James Boswell and Robert Louis Stevenson, Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. With each of these twenty pieces Holmes shows how fluid, playful, and unconstrained the many voices of biography can be. The collection is held together by a subtle autobiographical thread: "To be sidetracked is, after all, to be led astray by a path or an idea, a scent or a tune, and maybe lost forever."

The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates


Mark Munn - 2000
    This remarkable age produced such luminaries as Socrates, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and the sophists, and set the stage for the education and early careers of Plato and Xenophon, among others. The School of History provides the fullest and most detailed intellectual and political history available of Athens during the late fifth century b.c.e., as it examines the background, the context, and the decisive events shaping this society in the throes of war. This expansive, readable narrative ultimately leads to a new understanding of Athenian democratic culture, showing why and how it yielded such extraordinary intellectual productivity. As both a source and a subject, Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War is the central text around which the narrative and thematic issues of the book revolve. Munn re-evaluates the formation of the Greek historiographical tradition itself as he identifies the conditions that prompted Thucydides to write--specifically the historian's desire to guide the Athenian democracy as it struggled to comprehend its future. The School of History fully encompasses recent scholarship in history, literature, and archaeology. Munn's impressive mastery of the huge number of sources and publications informs his substantial contributions to our understanding of this democracy transformed by war. Immersing us fully in the intellectual foment of Athenian society, The School of History traces the history of Athens at the peak of its influence, both as a political and military power in its own time and as a source of intellectual inspiration for the centuries to come. A Main Selection of the History Book Club

Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France


Ernest R. May - 2000
    Why did Hitler turn against France in the Spring of 1940 and not before? And why were his poor judgement and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive earlier, when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? Skillfully weaving together decisions of the high commands with the confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field, the distinguished diplomatic historian Ernest R. May offers many new insights into the tragic paradoxes of the battle for France.

Hitler, the War, and the Pope


Ronald J. Rychlak - 2000
    Perhaps no modern-day leader of the Church has sparked as much controversy as Pope Pius XII, the Bishop of Rome during World War II.Some claim that he was indifferent to Nazi atrocities and even accuse him of being an anti-Semite Nazi sympathizer.Others call him a lonely voice of sanity in an insane world and consider him one of the true saints of the modern world.Discover the truth in Hitler, the War, and the Pope.In this convincing refutation of the black legend depicting Pius XII as passive and silent in the face of the Holocaust, learn how the Pope's unremitting hostility to Nazism, repeated condemnations of anti-Semitism led to his feverish efforts to save Jewish lives.A definitive answer to the allegation that Pius XII was 'Hitler's Pope.'

The History Of Christianity In The Reformation Era


Brad S. Gregory - 2000
    Gregory in these 36 lectures on one of the most tumultuous and consequential periods in all of European history. Regardless of whether we ourselves are religious, says Professor Gregory, our modern preference for belief bolstered by doctrine is "a long-term legacy of the efforts to educate, to catechize, to indoctrinate, that began in a widespread way during the 16th century."This course consists of 36 lectures, and is designed to take you inside the minds of those who supported the Reformation and those who resisted it. It treats the three broad religious traditions that endured or arose during these years: •Roman Catholicism, both as it existed on the cusp of the Reformation and as it changed to meet the Protestant challenge.•Protestantism, meaning the forms approved by political authorities, such as Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism. •"Radical" Protestantism, meaning the forms often at odds with political authorities, such as Anabaptism.The goal is to understand historically the theological and devotional aspects of each of these three broad traditions on its own terms and to grasp the overall ramifications of religious conflict for the subsequent course of modern Western history.

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland


Jan Tomasz Gross - 2000
    In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered-not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.

Ireland and the Classical World


Philip Freeman - 2000
    Classical authors frequently portrayed its people as savages - even as cannibals and devotees of incest - and evinced occasional uncertainty as to the island's shape, size, and actual location. Unlike neighbouring Britain, Ireland never knew Roman occupation, yet literary and archaeological evidence prove that Iuverna was more than simply terra incognita in classical antiquity.

The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History


Peregrine Horden - 2000
    It offers a novel analysis of this relationship in terms of microecologies and the often extensive networks to which they belong.

Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945


Paul Weindling - 2000
    Paul Weindling examines how German bacteriology became increasingly racialized, and how it sought to eradicate the disease by the eradication of the perceived carriers. Delousing became a key feature of Nazi preventive medicine during the Holocaust, and gassing a favored means of eliminating typhus.

False Papers: Deception and Survival in the Holocaust


Robert Melson - 2000
    Armed with false papers identifying them as aristocratic Gentiles, this Jewish family took shelter in the very shadow of the Nazi machine.

Isonzo: The Forgotten Sacrifice of the Great War


John R. Schindler - 2000
    Not well known in the West, the battles of Isonzo were nevertheless ferocious, and compiled a record of bloodletting that totaled over 1.75 million for both sides. In sharp contrast to claims that neither the Italian nor the Austrian armies were viable fighting forces, Schindler aims to bring the terrible sacrifices endured by both armies back to their rightful place in the history of 20th century Europe. The Habsburg Empire, he contends, lost the war for military and economic reasons rather than for political or ethnic ones.Schindler's account includes references to remarkable personalities such as Mussolini; Tito; Hemingway; Rommel, and the great maestro Toscanini. This Alpine war had profound historical consequences that included the creation of the Yugoslav state, the problem of a rump Austrian state looking to Germany for leadership, and the traumatic effects on a generation of young Italian men who swelled the ranks of the fascists. After nearly a century, Isonzo can assume its proper place in the ranks of the tragic Great War clashes, alongside Verdun, the Somme, and Passchendaele.

Ancient Greece: The Famous Monuments Past and Present


G. Behor - 2000
    Overlays depict the sculptures and other adornments thought to have embellished the buildings in their day.

The Cyprus Conspiracy: America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion


Brendan O'Malley - 2000
    The island remains split in two, policed by the United Nations. Henry Kissinger claimed he could do nothing to stop this because of the Watergate crisis. The Cyprus Conspiracy provides crucial evidence that this was no failure of American foreign policy, revealing for the first time the explosive strategic reasons why Washington had to divide the island.

Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood


Gary Taylor - 2000
    Castration is a lively history of the meaning, function, and act of castration from its place in the early church to its secular reinvention in the Renaissance as a spiritualized form of masculinity in its 20th century position at the core of psychoanalysis.

Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany


Margaret Lavinia Anderson - 2000
    Originally designed to make voters susceptible to manipulation by the authorities, the suffrage's unintended consequence was to enmesh its participants in ever more democratic procedures and practices. The result was the growth of an increasingly democratic culture in the decades before 1914.Explicit comparisons with Britain, France, and America give us a vivid picture of the coercive pressures--from employers, clergy, and communities--that German voters faced, but also of the legalistic culture that shielded them from the fraud, bribery, and violence so characteristic of other early franchise regimes. We emerge with a new sense that Germans were in no way less modern in the practice of democratic politics. Anderson, in fact, argues convincingly against the widely accepted notion that it was pre-war Germany's lack of democratic values and experience that ultimately led to Weimar's failure and the Third Reich. Practicing Democracy is a surprising reinterpretation of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany and will engage historians concerned with the question of Germany's special path to modernity; sociologists interested in obedience, popular mobilization, and civil society; political scientists debating the relative role of institutions versus culture in the transition to democracy. By showing how political activity shaped and was shaped by the experiences of ordinary men and women, it conveys the excitement of democratic politics.

Ashes And Blood: The British Army In South Africa, 1795 1914


Alan J. Guy - 2000
    

Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana


Lawrence N. Powell - 2000
    The first book to connect the prewar and wartime experiences of Jewish survivors to the lives they subsequently made for themselves in the United States, Troubled Memory is also a dramatic testament to how the experiences of survivors as new Americans spurred their willingness to bear witness. Perhaps the only family to survive the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto as a group, the Skoreckis evaded deportation to Treblinka by posing as Aryans. The family eventually made their way to New Orleans, where they became part of a vibrant Jewish community. Lawrence Powell traces their dramatic odyssey and explores the events that eventually triggered Anne Skorecki Levy's brave decision to honor the suffering of the past by confronting the recurring specter of racist hatred.

Rethinking the Holocaust


Yehuda Bauer - 2000
    Drawing on research he and other historians have done in recent years, he offers fresh opinions on such basic issues as how to define and explain the Holocaust; whether it can be compared with other genocides; how Jews reacted to the murder campaign against them; and what the relationship is between the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.The Holocaust says something terribly important about humanity, says Bauer. He analyzes explanations of the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman, Jeffrey Herf, Goetz Aly, Daniel Goldhagen, John Weiss, and Saul Friedländer and then offers his own interpretation of how the Holocaust could occur. Providing fascinating narratives as examples, he deals with reactions of Jewish men and women during the Holocaust and tells of several attempts at rescue operations. He also explores Jewish theology of the Holocaust, arguing that our view of the Holocaust should not be clouded by mysticism: it was an action by humans against other humans and is therefore an explicable event that we can prevent from recurring.

Who's Who of the Conquistadors (Military Trade Book)


Hugh Thomas - 2000
    Now over 2,000 biographies shed dramatic new light on the conquistadors who made 1519-1521 the bloodiest two-year period in the Western Hemisphere. The world's leading authority on the subject tells who they were, what roles they played, their histories, backgrounds, and relationships, based on previously unpublished material in both Mexico and Spain.

Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750


Stephan R. Epstein - 2000
    This book examines whether different kinds of 'freedoms' (absolutist, parliamentary and republican) caused different economic outcomes, and shows the effect of different political regimes on long term development. It thus offers new answers to debates on the transition from feudalism to capitalism and on the causes of pre-industrial growth and divergence.

Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo


Ger Duijzings - 2000
    Duijzings challenges the notion that Balkan conflicts have evolved around clear-cut and fixed ethno-religious groups, demonstrating that Balkan identities are full of ambiguities caused by processes that are important survival strategies in conditions of violence and insecurity.

The Scottish 100: Portraits of History's Most Influential Scots


Duncan A. Bruce - 2000
    Grant, Edvard Grieg, Martha Graham, Jackson Pollock, and Thomas Edison, whose achievements have won national freedom, built empires, reformed religion, defined justice, become presidents, composed music, revolutionized dance, redefined art, made pictures move, and built engines run by steam -- along with ninety more Scots worldwide who have altered the way all of us live our lives.

Visual Culture and the Holocaust


Barbie Zelizer - 2000
    From Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, Claude Lanzmann's epic documentary project Shoah, to Art Spiegelman's Maus, the visual domain has emerged as a fruitful venue for representing those horrible times.Visual Culture and the Holocaust takes that domain as its focus. It considers the increasing number of works that claim to give us access to the Holocaust, asking for whom these images are intended and how effective they are at promoting remembrance and understanding. Barbie Zelizer has gathered essays from a group of internationally renowned scholars representing a broad range of disciplines to consider both the traditional and the unconventional ways in which the Holocaust has been visually represented. In addressing film, painting, photography, museum exhibits, television, the Internet, and the body itself as venues for these representations, the essays explore the abilities of these different genres to testify to the tragedy, particularly in relation to the horrific historical fact they seek to translate.Visual Culture and the Holocaust substantially enhances what we know of the visual representation of the Holocaust. An introduction by the editor provides an important historical and theoretical overview of these efforts as well as a context in which these accomplishments may be understood.

Ruskin's Venice: The Stones Revisited


Sarah Quill - 2000
    However, the problems posed by its length (almost half a million words in three volumes) make it a challenge to read in its entirety. individual buildings and linking them to her own photographs of the same buildings, so creating a guide that fuses Ruskin's vision of the city with images of the present day. Covering a wide range of subjects - from palaces, churches and town houses, to bridges, courtyards and capitals - Quill's photographs illuminate Ruskin's words and record the fine architectural details described by him: intricate brickwork, coloured marble, carvings and sculpture. In addition, many of Ruskin's own drawings and watercolours are reproduced, along with 19th-century engravings, providing a visual comparison between the Venice he encountered in the 1850s and the city we see today. Also included are extracts from Ruskin's letters and introductory chapters that provide background on Ruskin in Venice and Venetian architecture. The result is a book that communicates the writer's passion for Venice and his concern for her architectural heritage. Revisited is a companion guide for both the seasoned and first-time traveller to Venice.

The Time Of Light


Gunnar Kopperud - 2000
    Framed by the 9-day Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of 1994, this novel contains a story weaved from historical narration and tales - tales of war and tales of women - as two men talk.

The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle


Carol Off - 2000
    Events turned on the actions of two Canadian generals: the fox of the title, Lewis MacKenzie, who commanded the UN forces in Bosnia for the first crucial months of the conflict; and the lion, Romeo Dallaire, who developed an interventionary plan that he believed would have prevented the Rwandan genocide but was forced by the UN to stand by while 800,000 people were slaughtered. The eagle is Louise Arbour, a Canadian judge who became Chief Prosecutor for War Crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.This is a Greek drama in three acts: all three people made decisions that affected the lives of millions. All three were required, in the absence of proper guidelines, to rely on their own moral compasses. Not only is The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle a hard-hitting behind-the-scenes account of personal testing and horrifying events, it is also a call to arms to reinvent the peacekeepers' mission, to find the will and the means to prevent future genocides.

Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision--An Analytical Biography


Louis Breger - 2000
    Everyone with an interest in psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic movement will enjoy exploring, grappling with, arguing about, and learning from this absolutely fascinating book."-JUDITH VIORST, AUTHOR, Necessary Losses and Imperfect Control "Written with brilliance and insight, Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision takes us on a daring, at times chilling, journey to the early years of psychoanalysis, revealing both the human weaknesses and the professional triumphs of its founder. . . . Cutting away the accretions of fabrication and romance cloaking Sigmund Freud, Breger has reinstated historical honesty to its rightful, high place, but the figure who emerges at the end of this breathlessly honest biography is quite as extraordinary as the legend concocted by Freud and perpetuated by his followers. Fresh, vigorous, and lucid."-PHILIP M. BROMBERG, Ph.D., CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY"Louis Breger's fine new biography of Freud is a welcome contribution to the existing literature and a corrective to much of it. It is also one of the best intellectual histories of the origin and development of psychoanalysis I have read in recent years. Breger is to be commended for his original research, the objectivity of his views, and the elegance and grace of his writing."-DEIRDRE BAIR, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR Samuel Beckett AND AUTHOR OF A FORTHCOMING BIOGRAPHY OF CARL JUNG"Finally, the Freud biography we have long been waiting for. With the history of Europe in the background, we follow with fascination Freud's journey from an impoverished childhood filled with losses to worldly fame, ending in exile in England. We come to understand the impact of Freud's difficult personality on the development of his brilliant as well as questionable theoretical ideas. Breger writes with compassion and fairness toward Freud as well as toward the many interesting personalities who cross his life, with their complicated relationships to the great man."-SOPHIE FREUD, FREUD'S GRANDDAUGHTER AND PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF SOCIAL WORK, SIMMONS COLLEGE"Louis Breger's magnificent book is the definitive work on the personal psychology of Sigmund Freud. it brilliantly illuminates how the darkness in Freud's vision has affected psychoanalytic history. This book will be central for psychoanalytic scholarship for decades to come."-GEORGE E. ATWOOD, Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

The Age Of Charles Martel


Paul Fouracre - 2000
    Describes Charles Martel's rise to power in medieval France and his involvement in the development of the feudal system.

Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century


Ida Blom - 2000
    The focus on the twentieth century and in particular the post-colonial and post-socialist era, however, has neglected the crucial developmental phase of modern nationalism, when basic patterns were created that were to exert long-term influence on the political culture of nations in and outside Europe. This book examines how gender and nation legitimize and limit the access of individuals and groups to national movements and the resources of nation-state. From problems of inclusion, exclusion and difference, national wars and military systems to national symbols, rituals and myths, contributors present a diverse array of critical perspectives, methodological approaches, and case-studies that are intellectually provocative and will help to guide future research as well as orient it toward international comparison.This book raises new questions about nation and gender and provides an assessment of the state of research in different countries for all those interested in cultural and social history, politics, anthropology and gender studies.

Dr. Strangelove & the Hideous Epoch: Deterrence in the Nuclear Age


John Renaker - 2000
    It is a dramatically new view of where we have been and where we are as a result of the development of nuclear weapons. There is an indepth study of Stanley Kubrck's movie sub titled; "How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb". The book is erudite in that it examines all the relevent literature. And it has wonderful drawings by David Levine of all the major players. But, above all, this is a hopeful book for as the author puts it; "...if nothing can be done it may seem that nothing NEED be done. Naturally enough, those who take comfort in that view tend to leave the arena of debate to those who want to do something. Thus the more believers in the power of deterrence, the fewer advocates for action. Dr.Strangelove and the Hideous Epoch reviews the debate's history from the viewpoint of that less representative side and argues the the end of the hideous epoch...is now within view."

Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany, 1945-1990


Raymond G. Stokes - 2000
    The car's 1950s design, obvious environmental incorrectness and all-plastic body became a symbol of the technological limitations of East German communism. But as Raymond G. Stokes points out in this text, eastern Germany in 1945 was one of the most highly developed, technologically sophisticated industrial areas in the world. Despite the evident failings of its technology by the late 1980s, the German Democratic Republic maintained advanced technological capability in selected areas. If the system itself was fundamentally flawed, what explains successes under the very same system? Why could the successes not be repeated in other areas? And if examples of success are so isolated, how did East Germany last as long as it did?

Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe: From the Congress of Vienna to the Fall of Communism


Richard Frucht - 2000
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Sediments of Time: On Possible Histories


Reinhart Koselleck - 2000
    The volume sheds new light on Koselleck's crucial concerns, including his theory of sediments of time; his theory of historical repetition, duration, and acceleration; his encounters with philosophical hermeneutics and political and legal thought; his concern with the limits of historical meaning; and his views on historical commemoration, including that of the Second World War and the Holocaust. A critical introduction addresses some of the challenges and potentials of Koselleck's reception in the Anglophone world.

When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland


Brian Porter - 2000
    He begins by examining the common assumption that nationalist movements by nature draw lines of inclusion and exclusion around socialgroups, establishing authority and hierarchy among one's own and antagonism towards others. Porter argues instead that the penetration of communal hatred and social discipline into the rhetoric of nationalism must be explained, not merely assumed.Porter focuses on nineteenth-century Poland, tracing the transformation of revolutionary patriotism into a violent anti-Semitic ideology. Instead of deterministically attributing this change to the forces of modernization, Porter demonstrates that the language of hatred and discipline was centralto the way modernity itself was perceived by fin-de-si�cle intellectuals.The book is based on a wide variety of sources, including political speeches and posters, newspaper articles and editorials, underground brochures, published and unpublished memoirs, personal letters, and nineteenth-century books on history, sociology, and politics. It embeds nationalism within amuch broader framework, showing how the concept of the nation played a role in liberal, conservative, socialist, and populist thought.When Nationalism Began to Hate is not only a detailed history of Polish nationalism but also an ambitious study of how the term nation functioned within the political imagination of modernity. It will prove an important text for a wide range of students and researchers of European history andpolitics.

Tosca's Rome: The Play and the Opera in Historical Perspective


Susan Vandiver Nicassio - 2000
    In Tosca's Rome, Susan Vandiver Nicassio explores the surprising historical realities that lie behind Giacomo Puccini's opera and the play by Victorien Sardou on which it is based.By far the most "historical" opera in the active repertoire, Tosca is set in a very specific time and place: Rome, from June 17 to 18, 1800. But as Nicassio demonstrates, history in Tosca is distorted by nationalism and by the vehement anticlerical perceptions of papal Rome shared by Sardou, Puccini, and the librettists. To provide the historical background necessary for understanding Tosca, Nicassio takes a detailed look at Rome in 1800 as each of Tosca's main characters would have seen it—the painter Cavaradossi, the singer Tosca, and the policeman Scarpia. Finally, she provides a scene-by-scene musical and dramatic analysis of the opera."[Nicassio] must be the only living historian who can boast that she once sang the role of Tosca. Her deep knowledge of Puccini's score is only to be expected, but her understanding of daily and political life in Rome at the close of the 18th century is an unanticipated pleasure. She has steeped herself in the period and its prevailing culture-literary, artistic, and musical-and has come up with an unusual, and unusually entertaining, history."—Paul Bailey, Daily Telegraph"In Tosca's Rome, Susan Vandiver Nicassio . . . orchestrates a wealth of detail without losing view of the opera and its pleasures. . . . Nicassio aims for opera fans and for historians: she may well enthrall both."—Publishers Weekly"This is the book that ranks highest in my estimation as the most in-depth, and yet highly entertaining, journey into the story of the making of Tosca."—Catherine Malfitano"Nicassio's prose . . . is lively and approachable. There is plenty here to intrigue everyone-seasoned opera lovers, musical novices, history buffs, and Italophiles."—Library Journal

The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism


Karl P. Ameriks - 2000
    The essays in the volume trace and explore the unifying themes of German Idealism, and discuss their relationship to Romanticism, the Enlightenment, and the culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. The result is an illuminating overview of a rich and complex philosophical movement that will appeal to a wide range of readers in philosophy, German studies, theology, literature, and the history of ideas.

From a World Apart: A Little Girl in the Concentration Camps


Francine Christophe - 2000
    Last year, I was seven years old. This year, I’m eight and so many years separate these two ages. I have learned that I am Jewish, that I am a monster, and that I must hide myself. I’m frightened all the time.”—Francine Christophe. Francine Christophe’s account begins in 1939, when her father was called up to fight with the French army. A year later he was taken prisoner by the Germans. Hearing of the Jewish arrests in France from his prison camp, he begged his wife and daughter to flee Paris for the unoccupied southern zone. They were arrested during the attempted escape and subsequently interned in the French camps of Poitiers, Drancy, and Beaune-la-Rolande. In 1944 they were deported to Bergen-Belsen in Germany.In short, seemingly neutral paragraphs, Christophe relates the trials that she and her mother underwent. Writing in the present tense, she tells her story without passion, without judgment, without complaint. Yet from these unpretentious, staccato sentences surges a well of tenderness and human warmth. We live through the child’s experiences, as if we had gone hand-in-hand with her through the death camps.

Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice


Jutta Gisela Sperling - 2000
    In trying to explain why unprecedented numbers of patrician women did not marry, historians have claimed that dowries became too expensive. However, Jutta Gisela Sperling debunks this myth and argues that the rise of forced vocations happened within the context of aristocratic culture and society.Sperling explains how women were not allowed to marry beneath their social status while men could, especially if their brides were wealthy. Faced with a shortage of suitable partners, patrician women were forced to offer themselves as "a gift not only to God, but to their fatherland," as Patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo told the Senate of Venice in 1619. Noting the declining birth rate among patrician women, Sperling explores the paradox of a marriage system that preserved the nobility at the price of its physical extinction. And on a more individual level, she tells the fascinating stories of these women. Some became scholars or advocates of women's rights, some took lovers, and others escaped only to survive as servants, prostitutes, or thieves.

The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific Revolution


Zakiya Hanafi - 2000
    Zakiya Hanafi recreates scenes of Italian life and culture from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries to show how monsters were conceptualized at this particular locale and historical juncture—a period when the sacred was being supplanted by a secular, decidedly nonmagical way of looking at the world. Noting that the word “monster” is derived from the Latin for “omen” or “warning,” Hanafi explores the monster’s early identity as a portent or messenger from God. Although monsters have always been considered “whatever we are not,” they gradually were tranformed into mechanical devices when new discoveries in science and medicine revealed the mechanical nature of the human body. In analyzing the historical literature of monstrosity, magic, and museum collections, Hanafi uses contemporary theory and the philosophy of technology to illuminate the timeless significance of the monster theme. She elaborates the association between women and the monstrous in medical literature and sheds new light on the work of Vico—particularly his notion of the conatus—by relating it to Vico’s own health. By explicating obscure and fascinating texts from such disciplines as medicine and poetics, she invites the reader to the piazzas and pulpits of seventeenth-century Naples, where poets, courtiers, and Jesuit preachers used grotesque figures of speech to captivate audiences with their monstrous wit. Drawing from a variety of texts from medicine, moral philosophy, and poetics, Hanafi’s guided tour through this baroque museum of ideas will interest readers in comparative literature, Italian literature, history of ideas, history of science, art history, poetics, women’s studies, and philosophy.

Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification, and National Identity


Jan-Werner Müller - 2000
    He analyzes the responses of Günter Grass, Jürgen Habermas, and others of the so-called skeptical generation, who broke with the tradition of the illiberal interwar intellectuals and reinvented themselves as a "democratic elite" who sought to transform political culture after the war#151;and tried to do so again after 1989. He discusses the German idea of "constitutional patriotism" as well as the antinationalism of the "generation of 1968," and provides the first full-scale analysis of Germany's "New Right." Written clearly and elegantly, the book assesses the acrimonious debates about the future of the nation-state and public memory in Germany and offers more general reflections on the role intellectuals can play in post-totalitarian societies.brpbAbout the Author:/bBRJan-Werner Müller is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and has recently held a senior visiting fellowship at the Remarque Institute at New York University.

German Soldier in World War II


Stephen A. Hart - 2000
    Using dozens of images and firsthand accounts, The German Soldier In World War II conveys what it was like for the ordinary "Fritz" to serve in the searing heat of the North African desert and the frozen wastes of the Russian Steppes: what food he ate, the equipment he used, the uniforms he wore, and the medical facilities available to him. A graphic portrait of the life of the private German soldier.

Gibraltar: A History


Maurice Harvey - 2000
    Gibraltar has, for its size, been inordinately important as a strategic point since prehistoric times and in this book the author traces the history of the Rock through to the present contentious issue that it represents for Spain and the UK.

The Abbé Grégoire and His World


Jeremy D. Popkin - 2000
    A distinguished group of international scholars from the disciplines of history, philosophy, literature and art history offer a reconsideration of the ideas and the impact of the abb Henri Gr goire, one of the most important figures of the French Revolution and a contributor to the campaigns for Jewish emancipation, rights for blacks, the reform of the Catholic Church and many other causes

The Sermon


Beverly Mayne Kienzle - 2000
    Extant in thousands of unedited manuscripts, sermons provide cruscial insights into the mentalities of medieval people: yet they also pose difficult methodological challenges. The Sermon, volume 81-83 in the series Typologie des sources du moyen age occidental, offers both a practical guide to methodology and extensive coverage of both Latin and vernacular texts. This significant work provides a bridge from sermonists to other scholars, inviting them into the study of this exciting and challenging genre. The Sermon provides guidelines for historical criticism that apply to the sermon genre. An extensive bibliography of works pertinent to the genre, opens the volume; it is divided into sections corresponding to the subsequent chapters. The book's Introduction focuses on the definition of the genre, attempting to establish a working typology of the sermon both as a literary genre and as a medieval text. The Jewish Sermon precedes the chapter on Christian sermons: for the latter the genre's development from Latin to the vernacular serves as the organizational guide. The Latin Sermon is represented in: Early Medieval Homilies and Homiliaries, The Twelfth-Century Monastic Sermon, the Sermons of the Twelfth-Century Schoolmasters and Canons, and the Latin Sermons after 1200. The chapter of medieval preaching in Italy encompasses both Latin and vernacular sermons, and the several chapters devoted to vernacular texts include: Old English; Middle English; Old Norse; French; Spanish; Portuguese and Catalan; and German.Several topics are discussed in each chapter: the definition of the genre, its development, its diffusion, its value for historians, the principal editions and/or manuscripts.

Stavisky: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue


Paul Jankowski - 2000
    Jankowski introduces his subject, Russian-born Sacha Stavisky, who in 1934 set off a scandal that rivaled the Dreyfus affair in its intensity. "So wide was his reach [and] so dogged his pursuit of influence that," Jankowski finds, "his brief passage . . . reveal[s] . . . the inner workings of the Republic's high society." In the author's engaging tale of a flawed public order, the elite circles and the demi-monde of depression-era Paris come vividly to life.A confidence man with a long police record who had escaped trial because of the influence of his powerful friends, Stavisky saw his final get-rich scheme collapse in 1933. His unexplained death in an Alpine hide-out gave new credence to rumors that he had been abetted and protected by leading politicians. The scandal grew even uglier when the mutilated corpse of a judge connected to the case was found on a railroad track.Jankowski skillfully recounts Stavisky's notorious schemes and untimely demise, the deadly riot that rocked Paris in its wake, the fall of successive governments including that of Edouard Daladier, and the spectacular trial of many of the swindler's accomplices. "Sacha Stavisky, much against his will," the author observes, "had ignited an explosion that briefly engulfed the entire system of government."Jankowski's thorough investigation of these dramatic events includes research in police and judicial archives that at his request were opened for the first time. From these rich sources he saw "slowly emerge, as though drawn in invisible ink, the people of scandal, the portraits of a moment." His account brings to life a motley cast of characters including the rogue himself, whose Jewish origins proved a boon to anti-Semites; his widow Arlette, the glamour girl of the capital; and a mixed-race citizen of Martinique who was editor of a scurrilous weekly paper.Stavisky was ultimately a man who instigated a crisis that laid bare the strains and tensions in France's democratic institutions. For Jankowski, this crisis was the last and the loudest of the scandals that rocked France from the 1880s to the 1930s, punctuating with spectacle and tumult the implantation of a liberal republic after a century of failed experiments.

Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary


Martyn Rady - 2000
    Rady indicates that although all noble land was held by the ruler, a complex web of relationships still permeated the Hungarian nobility. In his discussion of the institutions of lordship, clientage and office-holding, the author draws direct parallels between medieval Hungary and its better-known Western neighbors.

Germany and the Second World War: Volume 5: Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power. Part I: Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower ... 1939-1941


Bernhard R. Kroener - 2000
    It deals with developments in wartime administration, economy, and manpower resources in Germany and its occupied territories from 1939-1941. Series description This is the fifth in the magisterial ten-volume Germany and the Second World War. The six volumes so far published in German take the story to 1943, and have achieved international acclaim as a major contribution to historical study. Under the auspices of the Militärgeschichtliches 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 from the German point of view. The comprehensive analysis, based on detailed scholarly research, is underpinned by a full apparatus of maps, diagrams, and tables. 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 Life and Death of a Polish Shtetl


Feigl Bisberg-Youkelson - 2000
    Less well known are the post–World War II yizkors, collective memoirs written by survivors to memorialize a home village purged or destroyed by Nazis. The Hebrew word yizkor translates as “he shall remember” and also refers to a prayer for the dead. While hundreds of yizkors exist, very few have been translated into English.The Life and Death of a Polish Shtetl, the memorial for the town of Strzegowo, was collected and edited in 1951. Its stories are simple, yet they evoke considerable emotional turmoil. Some are shattering tales of torture, cultural destruction, and death. Others are moving remembrances of what the beloved little town was like before it was invaded by the Nazis. Because there is no longer a Jewish population living in Strzegowo, this book is an important record of what was lost.

The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569-1772


Karin Friedrich - 2000
    It studies the complex relationship between Germans and Slavs in the Polish-Prussian borderlands, and demonstrates the importance of national and historical myth-making for power politics. Analyzing the rivalry between the multinational, constitutionalist Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its centralized, dynastic neighbor Brandenburg-Prussia, this study contributes to our understanding of the process of early modern nation-building and the formation of national identity.