Brimming with lucid analysis, elegant character sketches, and geopolitical pathos, it is essential reading.'Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam.For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews.The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War.A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created--Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel--whose troubles haunt us still.Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize

    No objective historian, declared the judge, would manipulate the documentary record in the way that Irving did. Richard J. Evans, a Cambridge historian and the chief advisor for the defense, uses this pivotal trial as a lens for exploring a range of difficult questions about the nature of the historian's enterprise. For instance, don't all historians in the end bring a subjective agenda to bear on their reading of the evidence? Is it possible that Irving lost his case not because of his biased history but because his agenda was unacceptable? The central issue in the trial -- as for Evans in this book -- was not the past itself, but the way in which historians study the past. In a series of short, sharp chapters, Richard Evans sets David Irving's methods alongside the historical record in order to illuminate the difference between responsible and irresponsible history. The result is a cogent and deeply informed study in the nature of historical interpretation.

    Never before has a detailed, personal biography of this charismatic monarch been set against the cultural, social, and political background of his glittering court. Now Alison Weir, author of the finest royal chronicles of our time, brings to vibrant life the turbulent, complex figure of the King. Packed with colorful description, meticulous in historical detail, rich in pageantry, intrigue, passion, and luxury, Weir brilliantly renders King Henry VIII, his court, and the fascinating men and women who vied for its pleasures and rewards. The result is an absolutely spellbinding read.

    24 Lectures / 30 minutes per lecture.1. Why the Middle Ages?2. Demography and the Commercial Revolution3. Those Who Fought—The Nobles4. The Chivalric Code5. Feudalism6. Those Who Worked—The Peasants7. Those Who Worked—The Townspeople8. Women in Medieval Society9. Those Who Prayed—The Monks10. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Movement11. Heretics and Heresy12. The Medieval Inquisitions13. Jews and Christians14. The Origins of Scholasticism15. Aquinas and the Problem of Aristotle16. The First Universities17. The People's Crusade18. The Conquest of Jerusalem19. The Norman Conquest20. Philip II of France21. Magna Carta22. Empire versus Papacy23. Emperor Frederick II24. Looking Back, Looking Forward

    The text, based upon extensive research, describes both the battle and the campaign that preceded it in detail, drawing upon the first-hand accounts of participants on all sides in order to give the reader a vivid feeling for the experiences of those who fought upon this most celebrated of all battlefields. The many full-color maps, all specially commissioned for the book, and the numerous diagrams and photographs, the majority in color, as well as sixteen pages of original paintings, make the book a feast for the eyes and a collector's dream.

    It is the story of a girl who, at the age of six, witnesses a murder being committed by German Storm Troopers. From that moment, the happy life she has known disintegrates. Her family escapes to Prague, where they create a new life. Six years later, the Germans march into Prague. Now she has to escape to England alone and on foot. She walks across the snow-covered Tatra Mountains. By train, fishing boat, and ship, she finally manages to get to England. She comes of age there during the bombing of London. When the war ends, she immediately returns to the Continent to discover the fate of her family. Farewell to Prague is a gripping true story that will fascinate and inspire readers of all ages.

    Filled with the thrilling never-before-told personal stories of the prisoners of war held within the walls of this medieval fortress turned German high-security prison camp, Colditz offers endlessly intriguing stories of consummate survivors who proved the human spirit to be indomitable.In more than fifty original interviews, the English, French, Dutch, and Polish officers and their guards describe their experiences in the notorious castle. They reveal their boredom and frustrations, as well as the challenges inherent in making maps out of jelly or constructing tunnels with mere cutlery knives. The stories are by turns comic and tragic, as much of their labor and invention ended in failure. But what emerges is a story of breathtaking ingenuity and an intriguing portrait of the fascinating game of wits between captives and captors, who were bound together by mutual respect and extraordinary tolerance.

    The Radical Enlightenment played a part in this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of the eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have received limited scholarly attention. The greatest obstacle to the movement finding its proper place in modern historical writing is its international scope: the Radical Enlightenment was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time.In this wide-ranging volume, Jonathan Israel offers a novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents. Particular emphasis is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism.

    A photograph album of Queen Victoria's family exploring the lives, personalities, tastes and contributions of the Queen, her children and her children's children through four generations.

    But until now, Catholics interested in their faith have been hard-pressed to find an accessible, affirmative, and exciting history of the Church.Triumph is that history. Inside, you'll discover the spectacular story of the Church from Biblical times and the early days of St. Peter—the first pope—to the twilight years of John Paul II. It is a sweeping drama of Roman legions, great crusades, epic battles, toppled empires, heroic saints, and enduring faith. And, there are stormy controversies: Dark Age skullduggery, the Inquistition, the Renaissance popes, the Reformation, the Church's refusal to accept sexual liberation and contemporary allegations like those made in Hitler's Pope and Papal Sin.A brawling, colorful history full of inspiring pageantry and spirited polemic, Triumph will exhilarate, amuse, and infuriate as it extols the glories of Catholic history and the gripping stories of its greatest men and women.From the Hardcover edition.

    It included Hebrew, a touch of the Romance and Slavic languages, and a large helping of German. In a world of earthly wandering, this pungent, witty, and infinitely nuanced speech, full of jokes, puns, and ironies, became the linguistic home of the Jews, the bond that held a people together.Here is the remarkable story of how this humble language took vigorous root in Eastern European shtetls and in the Jewish quarters of cities across Europe; how it achieved a rich literary flowering between the wars in Europe and America; how it was rejected by emancipated Jews; and how it fell victim to the Holocaust. And how, in yet another twist of destiny, Yiddish today is becoming the darling of academia. Yiddish is a history as story, a tale of flesh-and-blood people with manic humor, visionary courage, brilliant causes, and glorious flaws. It will delight everyone who cares about language, literature, and culture.

    In 1944, 13-year-old Fritz was almost old enough to join the Hitler Youth in his German village of Kleinheubach. That same year in Tab, Hungary, 12-year-old Bernie was loaded onto a train with the rest of the village's Jewish inhabitants and taken to Auschwitz, where his whole family was murdered. How to bridge the deadly gulf that separated them in their youth, how not to allow the power of the past to separate them even now, as it separates many others, become the focus of their friendship, and together they begin the project of remembering.The separate stories of their youth are told in one voice, at Bernat Rosner's request. He is able to retrace his journey into hell, slowly, over many sessions, describing for his friend the "other life" he has resolutely put away until now. Frederic Tubach, who must confront his own years in Nazi Germany as the story unfolds, becomes the narrator of their double memoir. Their decision to open their friendship to the past brings a poignancy to stories that are horrifyingly familiar. Adding a further and fascinating dimension is the counterpoint of their similar village childhoods before the Holocaust and their very different paths to personal rebirth and creative adulthood in America after the war.Seldom has a memoir been so much about the present, as we see the authors proving what goodwill and intelligence can accomplish in the cause of reconciliation. This intimate story of two boys trapped in evil and destructive times, who become men with the freedom to construct their own future, has much to tell us about building bridges in our public as well as our personal lives.

    That's what the wisdom of history teaches us. And Adolf Hitler was surely the greatest enemy ever faced by modern civilization. Over half a century later, the horror and fascination still linger.Professor Childers has designed this course to answer two burning questions that have nagged generations for decades, ever since Hitler and Nazism were destroyed.1) How could a man like Adolf Hitler and a movement like Nazism come to power in 20th-century Germany? An industrially developed country with a highly educated population, it lies within the very heart of Western Europe. 2) How were the Nazis able to establish the foundations of a totalitarian regime in such a short time and hurl all of Europe—and the world—into a devastating war that would consume so many millions of lives?Length: 6hrs 22mins

    This long-awaited biography, written by one of the most distinguished medievalists of his generation, offers a major reassessment of Henry’s character and reign. Challenging the dark and dated portrait of the king as brutal, greedy, and repressive, it argues instead that Henry’s rule was based on reason and order. C. Warren Hollister points out that Henry laid the foundations for judicial and financial institutions usually attributed to his grandson, Henry II. Royal government was centralized and systematized, leading to firm, stable, and peaceful rule for his subjects in both England and Normandy. By mid-reign Henry I was the most powerful king in Western Europe, and with astute diplomacy, an intelligence network, and strategic marriages of his children (legitimate and illegitimate), he was able to undermine the various coalitions mounted against him. Henry strove throughout his reign to solidify the Anglo-Norman dynasty, and his marriage linked the Normans to the Old English line.Hollister vividly describes Henry’s life and reign, places them against the political background of the time, and provides analytical studies of the king and his magnates, the royal administration, and relations between king and church. The resulting volume is one that will be welcomed by students and general readers alike.

    His defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 crowned a reputation first won in India at Assaye and then confirmed during the Peninsular War, where he followed up his defense of Portugal by driving the French from Spain. Gordon Corrigan, himself an ex-soldier, examines Wellington’s claims to greatness. Wellington was in many ways the first modern general, combining a mastery of logistics with an ability to communicate with and inspire men of all ranks. He had to contend not only with enemy armies but also with his political masters and an often skeptical public at home. 'Wellington: A Military Life' is a brilliant examination of one of Britain's most important historical figures. ‘Political, fluent, well-researched and extremely argumentative’ – Andrew Roberts. Major Gordon Corrigan is a retired Gurkha officer, a member of the British Commission for Military History and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Fluent in the Nepali language, he is now a freelance military historian and battlefield lecturer. He is a well known figure on the History channel. He is also the author of ‘Sepoys in the Trenches’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    This study offers definitive insight into the mind of one of the greatest protagonists of Nicene theology, and through his extraordinary personality, opens a window onto the world of Late Antiquity and the place of the Christian Church in it.

    Through their youth, education, and military training, both men experienced similar triumphs and failures that shaped their lives, though they met only for the first time upon the eve of war in 1941.Eisenhower and Churchill tells the magnificent story of these two great leaders and their exemplary partnership in war and peace. Through enlivened pages and fascinating anecdotes, author James C. Humes illuminates the human side of each man, who had more in common with each other than a world war. You'll discover the extraordinary stories of how both were born to domineering mothers and failed fathers, both did not qualify for the military academy on the first try, both were traumatized by experiences in World War I, both were talented writers, and both lost a child in the very same year (1921). Remarkably, each man did not warm to the other at first; but as they worked together, their respect for one another grew to become a powerful friendship that lived long after the echoes of war had receded into the past.As allies, they shared a hatred for tyranny and led the world through the greatest war of the twentieth century. As friends, they shared a sense of trust and cooperation that should be raised as a standard. Containing new research and memorable insights, Eisenhower and Churchill brings to life the two lions of the twentieth centruy."Who would not welcome an intimate book about Churchill and Eisenhower, and who is better situated to write it than Professor Humes, who knew them both, and studiously—and ardently—records their careers and their friendship?"—William F. Buckley Jr."James C. Humes's Eisenhower and Churchill is a wonderful dual biography laced with lively anecdotes, engaging prose, and shrewd analysis. A truly welcome addition to our growing literature on the Second World War."—Douglas Brinkley, professor of history and director of the Eisenhower Center, University of New Orleans

    Yet it was, according to Professor Harl, "without a doubt the greatest state in Christendom through much of the Middle Ages," and well worth our attention as a way to widen our perspective on everything from the decline of imperial Rome to the rise of the Renaissance.In a series of 24 tellingly detailed lectures, you'll learn how the Greek-speaking empire of Byzantium, or East Rome, occupied a crucial place in both time and space that began with Constantine the Great and endured for more than a millennium - a crucible where peoples, cultures, and ideas met and melded to create a world at once Eastern and Western, Greek and Latin, classical and Christian. And you'll be dazzled by the achievements of Byzantium's emperors, patriarchs, priests, monks, artists, architects, scholars, soldiers, and officialsPreserving and extending the literary, intellectual, and aesthetic legacy of Classical and Hellenistic GreeceCarrying forward path-breaking Roman accomplishments in law, politics, engineering, architecture, urban design, and military affairsDeepening Christian thought while spreading the faith to Russia and the rest of what would become the Orthodox worldDeveloping Christian monastic institutionsShielding a comparatively weak and politically fragmented western Europe from the full force of eastern nomadic and Islamic invasionsFusing classical, Christian, and eastern influencesHelping to shape the course of the Humanist revival and the Renaissance

    Bert Lewyn was a teenager, only 18 years old. Like thousands of other Jewish families, Bert, his mother and father were all arrested and taken away. His parents were deported to a concentration camp and Bert was conscripted as a slave laborer, forced to work in a weapons factory building machine guns for the German Wehrmacht. This is a story of Bert's escape and subsequent struggle to survive on his own, living underground in Nazi Berlin.

    These maritime communities have long looked north and south along the coast, not inland, to claim a common bond. Even today, the Bretons see themselves as distinct from the French, but refer to the Irish, Welsh, and Galicians as their brothers and cousins.In Facing the Ocean, Barry Cunliffe, one of the world's most highly regarded authorities on prehistoric Europe, offers an utterly original way of looking at that continent. He argues that the peoples of the Atlantic rim--of Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar--all share a cultural identity shaped by the Atlantic Ocean, an identity which stretches back almost ten thousand years. These peoples lived at the edge of the world, in places called Land's End, Finistere, and Finisterra, and looked out on a bountiful but terrifying expanse of ocean, a roiling, merciless infinity beyond which there was nothing. Their profound relationship with the ocean set these communities apart from their inland countryman, creating a distinct Atlantic culture. Cunliffe culls the archaeological evidence to illuminate the bonds that developed and intensified between these isolated communities and helped to maintain a shared and distinctive Atlantic identity.Attractively designed and vibrantly written, Facing the Ocean offers a striking reassessment of a people who have usually been regarded as peripheral to European history. It will send shock waves through the history world and will radically change our view of the European past.

    Almost overnight she was transformed into a woman of spirit and defiance, a fighter who, when the Gestapo came for her family, seized the moment and went underground. On the run for two years, Marianne traveled across Nazi Germany without papers, aided by a remarkable resistance organization, previously unknown and unsung. Drawing on an astonishing cache of documents as well as interviews on three continents, historian Mark Roseman reconstructs Marianne's odyssey and reveals aspects of life in the Third Reich long hidden from view. As Roseman excavates the past, he also puts forward a new and sympathetic interpretation of the troubling discrepancies between fact and recollection that so often cloud survivors' accounts.A detective story, a love story, a story of great courage and survival under the harshest conditions, A Past in Hiding is also a poignant investigation into the nature of memory, authenticity, and truth.

    "No man ever saw her without love or will read her history without pity." Whether it is this French Marie Stuart recorded by Brantome, the German Maria Stuart of Schiller's tragedy, the Italian Maria Stuarda of Donizetti's opera, or the more recent queen of film played by Katharine Hepburn or Vanessa Redgrave, her story resonates over four centuries. The tale of the free-spirited and beautiful Queen of Scots, who refused to accept the constraints of her birth and position, still appeals to us today. Mary's inheritance gave her both the Scottish throne in 1542, when she was only six days old, and a claim to the English throne that would lead to her death. It gave her an upbringing in France, cultural and intellectual center of Europe, where she witnessed the power play of her Guise relations, married the heir to the French throne, and became queen of France, only to be widowed at eighteen. There was a turbulent interlude as ruler of Scotland, made the more tumultuous by two disastrous marriages and rumors of adultery and murder. Finally, there was an eighteen-year exile as Elizabeth I's prisoner, passing the long days of captivity at her embroidery or her prayers, the center of a network of intrigue, double agents, coded dispatches, and mysterious couriers, which was to lead ineluctably to her trial and execution. Susan Watkins re-creates the world in which Mary livedthe landscapes, the palaces and the courtly culture, and the fine details of the domestic scene. The text gives life to the wealth of historical illustrations and specially taken photographs by Mark Fiennes, who accompanied Susan Watkins on her journey in search of Mary Queen of Scots. 194 color illustrations and photographs.

    Howard K. Smith worked as a young reporter in Berlin during Hitler's rise to power, and for the first two years of the Second World War. Finally granted a visa to leave the country--coincidentally on December 7th, 1941--he wrote everything censors had forbidden about the physical, emotional, and psychological manipulation of the German people by Hitler, Goebbels, and their lackeys. His personal experiences under difficult circumstances are extraordinary enough, but his descriptions of people forced to join the war, compulsory Nazi Youth groups, and of the German high command read like a chilling thriller.

    In a sophisticated and much-needed account, the author argues that many aspects of contemporary Burmese society are the creations of the nineteenth century when Burma fought the British and tried to modernize the country. The book will be an important resource for students and policymakers as a basis for understanding contemporary politics and the challenges of the modern state, as well as for historians interested in British colonial expansion during the period.

    The Weimar Republic and the Third Reich were in the forefront of statistical innovation in the interwar decades. New ways of measuring the economy were inspired both by contemporary developments in macroeconomic theory and the needs of government. Under the Nazi regime, these statistical tools provided the basis for a radical experiment in economic planning. Based on the German example, Tooze argues for a more wide-ranging reconsideration of the history of modern economic knowledge.

    In this chilling memoir, Wiernicki, a Gentile, details "life" in the infamous death camp, and his battle to survive, physically and morally, in the face of utter evil. The author begins by remembering his aristocratic youth, an idyllic time shattered by German invasion. The ensuing dark days of occupation would fire the adolescent Wiernicki with a burning desire to serve Poland, a cause that led him to valiant action and eventual arrest.As a young non-Jew, Wiernicki was acutely sensitive to the depravity and injustice that engulfed him at Auschwitz. He bears witness to the harrowing selection and extermination of Jews doomed by birth to the gas chambers, to savage camp policies, brutal SS doctors, and rampant corruption with the system. He notes the difference in treatment between Jews and non-Jews. And he relives fearful unexpected encounters with two notorious "Angels of Death" Josef Mengele and Heinz Thilo.War in the Shadow of Auschwitz is an important historical and personal document. Its vivid portrait of prewar and wartime Poland, and of German concentration camps, provides a significant addition to the growing body of testimony by gentile survivors and a heartfelt contribution to fostering comprehension and understanding.

    John Horne and Alan Kramer mine military reports, official and private records, witness evidence, and war diaries to document the crimes that have long been denied: a campaign of brutality that led to the death of some 6500 Belgian and French civilians. Contemporary German accounts insisted that the civilians were guerrillas, executed for illegal resistance. In reality this claim originated in a vast collective delusion on the part of German soldiers. The authors establish how this myth originated and operated, and how opposed Allied and German views of events were used in the propaganda war. They trace the memory and forgetting of the atrocities on both sides up to and beyond World War II. Meticulously researched and convincingly argued, this book re-opens a painful chapter in European history while contributing to broader debates about myth, propaganda, memory, war crimes, and the nature of the First World War. Winner of the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History in 2000.

    The cloister, a space secluded -- as its Latin derivation suggests -- within four galleries is at once a place of peace and a ceaseless crossroads. As the hub of all activity, through which monks progressed from task to task and prayer to prayer throughout the day from matins to vespers, its classic layout inspired some of the most extraordinary and varied architectural treasures of the world. Cloisters of Europe covers the cloister throughout western Europe -- Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, and Britain -- between the ninth and fifteenth centuries and is a celebration of art and architecture from stark pre-Romanesque to flamboyant late Gothic. With an enlightening introduction to the history of religious orders and their devotional life, it is a magnificently illustrated monument to art, antiquity, and spiritual profundity.

    By burning and looting libraries and censoring "un-German" publications, the Nazis aimed to eradicate all traces of Jewish culture along with the Jewish people themselves. The Holocaust and the Book examines this bleak chapter in the history of printing, reading, censorship, and libraries. Topics include the development of Nazi censorship policies, the celebrated library of the Vilna ghetto, the confiscation of books from the Sephardic communities in Rome and Salonika, the experience of reading in the ghettos and concentration camps, the rescue of Polish incunabula, the uses of fine printing by the Dutch underground, and the suppression of Jewish books and authors in the Soviet Union. Several authors discuss the continuing relevance of Nazi book burnings to the present day, with essays on German responses to Friedrich Nietzsche and the destruction of Bosnian libraries in the 1990s. The collection also includes eyewitness accounts by Holocaust survivors and a translation of Herman Kruk's report on the Vilna ghetto library. An annotated bibliography offers readers a concise guide to research in this growing field.

    In this fascinating study, Serhii Plokhy examines the confessionalization of religious life in the early modern period, showing how Cossack involvement in the religious struggle between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism helped shape not only Ukrainian but also Russian and Polish cultural identities.

    Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there, Andrew Zimmerman argues, that the battle lines of today's "culture wars" were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge.Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak shows," Zimmerman demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies.Scholars of anthropology, European and intellectual history, museum studies, the history of science, popular culture, and colonial studies will welcome this book.

    Why was the great philosopher Spinoza expelled from his Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam? Nadler's investigation of this simple question gives fascinating new perspectives on Spinoza's thought and the Jewish religious and philosophical tradition from which it arose.

    Early Carolingian Warfare is the first book-length study of how the Frankish dynasty, beginning with Pippin II, established its power and cultivated its military expertise in order to reestablish the regnum Francorum, a geographical area of the late Roman period that includes much of present-day France and western Germany. Bernard Bachrach has thoroughly examined contemporary sources, including court chronicles, military handbooks, and late Roman histories and manuals, to establish how the early Carolingians used their legacy of political and military techniques and strategies forged in imperial Rome to regain control in the West.Pippin II and his successors were not diverted by opportunities for financial enrichment in the short term through raids and campaigns outside of the regnum Francorum; they focused on conquest with sagacious sensibilities, preferring bloodless diplomatic solutions to unnecessarily destructive warfare, and disdained military glory for its own sake. But when they had to deploy their military forces, their operations were brutal and efficient. Their training was exceptionally well developed, and their techniques included hand-to-hand combat, regimented troop movements, fighting on horseback with specialized mounted soldiers, and the execution of lengthy sieges employing artillery. In order to sustain their long-term strategy, the early Carolingians relied on a late Roman model whereby soldiers were recruited from among the militarized population who were required by law to serve outside their immediate communities. The ability to mass and train large armies from among farmers and urban-dwellers gave the Carolingians the necessary power to lay siege to the old Roman fortress cities that dominated the military topography of the West.Bachrach includes fresh accounts of Charles Martel's defeat of the Muslims at Poitiers in 732, and Pippin's successful siege of Bourges in 762, demonstrating that in the matter of warfare there never was a western European Dark Age that ultimately was enlightened by some later Renaissance. The early Carolingians built upon surviving military institutions, adopted late antique technology, and effectively utilized their classical intellectual inheritance to prepare the way militarily for Charlemagne's empire.

    Yet the intervening years have traditionally been seen as a period of crisis. The 260s saw the nadir of Imperial fortunes, with every frontier threatened or overrun, the senior emperor imprisoned by the Persians, and Gaul and Palmyra breaking away from central control. It might have been thought that the empire should have collapsed - yet it did not.Pat Southern shows how this was possible by providing a chronological history of the Empire from the end of the second century to the beginning of the fourth; the emergence and devastating activities of the Germanic tribes and the Persian Empire are analysed, and a conclusion details the economic, military and social aspects of the third century 'crisis'.

    Pál Engel traces the establishment of the medieval kingdom of Hungary from its conquest by the Magyar tribes in 895 until defeat by the Ottomans at the battle of Mohacs in 1526. He shows the development of the dominant Magyars who, upon inheriting an almost empty land, absorbed the remaining Slavic peoples into their culture after the original communities had largely disappeared. Engel's book is an accessible and highly readable history.

    Crucial to Hitlers strategy was the use of Spanish soil to take Gibraltar, at the mouth of the Mediterranean. He counted on Francos friendship. For three years General Franco, leader of the weakest nation in Europe defied the wishes, and thwarted the hope of Nazi Germany, the greatest military power in history

    Focussing on the period from c.1090-1212, the volume explores the lives, scholarly resources, and contributions of a wide sample of people who either took part in the creation of the scholastic system of thought or gave practical effect to it in public life. The second volume of a compelling, original work which will redefine our perceptions of medieval civilization, the renaissance and the evolution of modern Europe.Written by a man who was widely regarded as the greatest medieval historian.

    During the next two decades, more than 1,600 spacecraft of all varieties were launched, mostly into the earth's orbit In addition, twelve men walked on the moon and returned home. By the end of the 1980s, there were more than 300 operational spacecraft and thousands of orbiting objects, mostly the spent, upper stages of launch vehicles and inert spacecraft. The Encyclopedia of Space Vehicles uses a combination of high-quality photos, illustrations, fact tables, and authoritative text to describe all the vehicles and equipment used in space, past and present. It covers all types of rockets, satellites, and probes, as well as their equipment and cargo, such as radio transmitters, measuring instruments, and cameras.

    Yet this study challenges the traditional interpretations of the role of the army as an instrument of the emerging absolutist state, and shows how the expansion of the French war effort contributed to weakening Richelieu's hold on France and heightened levels of political and social tension. This is the first detailed account of the French army during this formative period of European history. It also contributes more generally to the "military revolution" debate among early modern historians.

    Situated in West Germany after World War II, it was the one former concentration camp most subject to the push and pull of the many groups wishing to eradicate, ignore, preserve and present it. Thus its postwar history is an illuminating case study of the contested process by which past events are propagated into the present, both as part of the historical record, and within the collectively shared memories of different social groups. How has Dachau been used--and abused--to serve the present? What effects have those uses had on the contemporary world? Drawing on a wide array of sources, from government documents and published histories to newspaper reports and interviews with visitors, Legacies of Dachau offers answers to these questions. It is one of the first books to develop an overarching interpretation of West German history since 1945. Harold Marcuse examines the myth of victimization, ignorance, and resistance and offers a model with which the cultural trajectories of other post-genocidal societies can be compared. With its exacting research, attention to nuance, and cogent argumentation, Legacies of Dachau raises the bar for future studies of the complex relationship between history and memory. Harold Marcuse is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches modern German history. The grandson of German emigr� philosopher Herbert Marcuse, Harold Marcuse returned to Germany in 1977 to rediscover family roots. After several years, he became interested in West Germany's relationship to its Nazi past. In 1985, shortly before Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl visited Bitburg, he organized and coproduced an exhibition Stones of Contention about monuments and memorials commemorating the Nazi era. That exhibition, which marks the beginning of Marcuse's involvement in German memory debates, toured nearly thirty German cities, including Dachau. This is his first book.

    The Tigers were originally intended to counter the heavy tanks of the Russian Front, and were assigned to specially created tank battalions. In 1944 Tiger units were rushed to Normandy and fought in all the major battles of the Western Front. Although they were superior to all the tanks of the Western allies, Tigers in the West faced the added danger of attack from the greatly superior British and American air forces. Each Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS unit equipped with the Tiger I is covered in detail. Each unit's insignia and a representative vehicle with camouflage and markings is shown in color. The operational history of each unit, and in some cases individual vehicles, is described with the aid of 250 black and white photos, most of them never before published.

     Provides a close analysis of each of Milton's prose and poetry works. Reveals how Milton was the first writer to self consciously construct himself as an 'author'. Focuses on the development of Milton's ideas and his art.

    In this innovative new study, Frank McDonough provides a clear account of opposition and resistance towards the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 and presents the historical debate surrounding this important aspect of the history of Nazi Germany. The book concentrates on the individuals and groups that resisted and opposed Nazi rule, including the Christian churches, industrial workers, youth groups and sections of the army, whose resistance culminated in the assassination attempt against Hitler in July 1944.

    Embracing all the major aspects of European political, social, economic and cultural history during the period, it reflects the enormous changes that transformed Europe over three centuries. Key themes include the Reformation, Imperial Spain, the Revolt of the Netherlands, the Thirty Years War and the Enlightenment, with a detailed examination of European expansion overseas. It offers chronologies that outline 300 years of European history and chart the course of major conflicts of the period, mini-biographies of leading personalities and bibliographical essay that guides the reader through the literature. "The Longman Handbook of Early Modern Europe" is the essential companion to Europe during the early modern period - a user-friendly compendium of key facts and figures. Chris Cook is formerly of the London School of Economics.Dr. Philip Broadhead Philip is at the University of London.

    The book seeks to understand the significance of Rome's Trojan origins for the Greeks by considering the place of Troy and Trojans in Greek culture. It moves beyond the more familiar spheres of art and literature to explore the countless, overlapping, local traditions, the stories that cities told about themselves, a world often neglected by scholars.

    This forms an important part of Indian military history, a territory not very well explored.In a guerrilla war that lasted from 1682 to 1707, the Maratha Kingdom founded by Shivaji the Great, destroyed the Mughal power. It was not very long before Marathas became the per-eminent power on the Indian subcontinent. In 1761 however the Marathas suffered a major reverse in their effort to have an all India Empire when they lost heavily to Afghans in the battle of Panipat. The British seized this opportunity and beginning as Mughal vassal in Bengal, slowly extended their sway over the entire country. Marathas opposed the British and fought three wars. The story of these conflicts is an essential link in the chain of Indian history.The various record of this period from Portuguese and French sources have only become available on 1970s. An authentic and objective reconstruction of the history of that period can now be done. In order to keep continuity and also relevance, events other than the Anglo-Maratha struggle have also been covered in brief. Overall the book deals with the military history of Indian of 18th and early 19th century.The research was done in Poona Archives, India Office library in London, Deccan College and Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal in Pune. Over 4000 original documents were seen and used.* * * * * * * * * * * Colonel Anil Anant Athale (b. 28 August 1947) A PhD in Defence and Strategic studies, Poona University Graduate of NDA and Indian Military Academy & Staff College, served in the Gorkha Rifles from 1968-1990. Sought premature and voluntary retirement as Joint Director in War History division. As first General Palit fellow of IDSA worked on the project of Anglo-Maratha Wars. Other studies in peace keeping include, Mizoram Insurgency and Peace 1966-1988, Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Kashmir and Northern Ireland. He has traveled widely and undertaken many study visits to Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. Currently he is chief co-ordinator and founder member of Pune based Inpad (Initiative of Peace and Disarmament). He has authored several books on military subjects that include “ARAB ISRAELI WARS 1967 AND 1973”, “MOSHE DAYAN: A BIOGRAPHY” “SINO INDIAN BORDER CONFLICT 1962”, “INSURGENCY IN MIZORAM 1966-1988” (Official history, not yet cleared for publication.) LET THE JHELUM SMILE AGAIN, published by Aditya Prakashan, Mumbai and released by Gen. K V K Rao in April' 97. NUCLEAR MENACE : THE SATYAGRAHA APPROACH, INPAD publication. He has contributed a chapter on Kashmir in IPPNW publication and Indian Philosophical society's forthcoming work on military history. He is a regular contributor to print media and has given talks at US universities and think tanks as well as at Indian military establishments.

    The book examines the history of Western Civilization to 1715 within a framework of political history, while fully integrating social, economic, religious and cultural history. Accessible and well-written, the book explores everyday events and ordinary people as well as momentous affairs and powerful elites. For anyone interested in the history of Western Civilization to 1715.

    The period 1890 to 1945 witnessed such momentous events in European history as the Russian Revolution and the First and Second World Wars. It also saw the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Fascist Italy. In this accessible and stimulating text, Frank McDonough concentrates on a number of key themes: the conflict which produced the two world wars, the road to the Russian Revolution and the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy. The text also examines the main historical debates surrounding these topics. Conflict, communism and fascism includes a document study section on Nazi Germany 1933-1945.

    One of the world's most famous heritage sites, it has long been a national monument of Greece and a potent symbol of western civilization. But the Acropolis is typically viewed in the context of 5th-century-BC Athenian society, while the multiple local and international meanings and identities that the site shapes today are overlooked.This book looks at the meaning of the Acropolis in contemporary Greece. How are global ideas adopted and adapted by local cultures? How do Greeks deal with the national and international features of their ancient classical heritage? How do the global cultural constructions surrounding the Acropolis become part of local practices which project Greek cultural difference?The author examines this historic site as a powerful agent for negotiations of power on an international level. Drawing from a wide range of sources as well as original fieldwork, this handsomely illustrated book will make compelling reading for anyone interested in heritage issues, archaeology, anthropology material culture studies, and tourism.

    She explores the proto-nationalist novels of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya as well as scandal literature, rumors, women's memoirs, and the popular press of colonial times for the "subaltern" ideas that have shaped contemporary India. Sarkar also examines the way earlier Indian religious traditions of saintliness, sacrifice, heroism, and warfare are being subverted or transformed by militant and fundamentalist forms of Hinduism.

    The author examines the nature and extent of collaboration and resistance, different experiences of Occupation, the persecution of the Jews, intellectual and cultural life under Occupation, and thepurge trials that followed. He concludes by tracing the legacy and memory of the Occupation since 1945. Taking in ordinary peoples' experiences, this volume uncovers the conflicting memories of occupation which ensure that even today France continues to debate the legacy of the Vichy years.

    

    Focusing his attention for the first time on visual imagery, Porter examines the ways in which the sick and their healers were represented to the culture at large from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The author combines erudition, a sharp sense of humor, and abundant art to show how contrasting conceptions of the healthy and diseased body were mapped onto antithetical notions of the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. He juxtaposes images of disease to illustrations of medical practice, exploring self-presentations by physicians, surgeons, and quacks and showing how practitioners' public identities changed over time. Bodies Politic argues that the human body is the chief signifier and communicator of all manner of meanings religious, moral, political, and medical alike and that pre-scientific medicine was an art that depended heavily on performance, ritual, rhetoric, and theater. Throughout, Porter makes clear the wide metaphorical and symbolic implications of disease and doctoring."

    Packed full of history it can be enjoyed after your visit as well.

    This monumental work launched a seminal attack on the idea of progress and supplanted the outmoded Eurocentric understanding of history. His provocative pessimism seems to be confirmed in retrospect by the twentieth-century horrors of economic depression, totalitarianism, genocide, the dawn of the nuclear age, and the emerging global environmental crisis.In Prophet of Decline, John Farrenkopf takes advantage of the historical perspective the end of the millennium provides to reassess this visionary thinker and his challenging ideas on world history and politics and modern civilization. Farrenkopf's assessment ranges widely, placing Spengler's philosophy in its intellectual historical context and covering Spengler's ideas on democracy, capitalism, science and technology, cities, Western art, social change, and human exploitation of the environment. He also illuminates the implications of Spengler's thought for contemplating from a fresh perspective the future of the United States, the leading power of the West.Prophet of Decline is highly relevant today as many take the opportunity at the turn of the century to ponder again the direction in which humankind and our global community are moving and approach with concern the uncertain future amid globalization, hypercomplexity, and accelerating change. An interdisciplinary book about an interdisciplinary thinker, it is a substantial contribution to the literature of historical philosophy, political science, international relations, and German studies.

    It first traces the entry of Western medical discourse on reproduction into Russia and its extension to the countryside during the Soviet period. Using the village mothers' own words, as captured in 100 oral interviews collected by the author and his collaborators in the early 1990s, David L. Ransel shows how the women mediated the inherited beliefs of their families and communities, the claims of the state to control reproduction, and their personal desires for a better life. The interviews tell of willing acceptance of some changes and selective acceptance of or outright resistance to others. The women interviewed were subject to powerful forces beyond their control, ranging from patriarchal tyranny to civil war, governmental coercion and violence, famine, and world war. Their testimonies, however, reveal the strategies by which they maintained a measure of personal control and choice that enabled them to build a sense of independence, endure hardship, and give meaning to their lives.

    Andrew Wernick provides the first in-depth critique of Comte's concept of religion and its place in his thinking on politics, sociology and philosophy of science. He places Comte's ideas within the context of post-1789 French political and intellectual history, and of modern philosophy, especially postmodernism. Wernick relates Comte to Marx and Nietzsche as seminal figures of modernity and examines key features of modern and postmodern French social theory, tracing the inherent flaws and disintegration of Comte's system.

    This volume examines the transformation of a European war into a global conflict during the period from 1941-1943. It focuses on the politics, strategy, and operations of the belligerent powers as Germany lost the initiative to the Allies, and it spans both the climax and turning points of the war. Its detailed analysis is supplemented by numerous maps, diagrams, and tables.

    Participants on both sides considered it the hardest-fought battle between them in the eighteenth century, and both sides felt they attained their objectives: the British captured or sank seven French battleships, and the French saved their big grain convoy from America.In this book, experts explore the naval campaign from both British and French perspectives, setting it in its wider context of the war strategy of the rival powers. The intensity of the encounter is demonstrated through the accounts of eyewitnesses, three of which are here published for the first time, and the impact of the battle on public imagination is traced through plays, prints and paintings, and through the artefacts and memorials by which it was commemorated.

    Werth considers these large questions in his survey of imperial Russian rule in the vast Volga-Kama region. First conquered in the sixteenth century, the Volga-Kama lands were by the nineteenth century both part of the Russian heartland and resolutely "other" the home of a mix of Slavic, Finnic, and Turkic peoples where the urge to assimilate was always counterbalanced by determined efforts to preserve cultural and religious differences. The Volga-Kama thus poses the dilemmas of empire in especially complex and telling ways. Drawing on a wide range of printed and archival sources, Werth untangles and reconstructs this complicated history, focusing on the ways in which the tsarist state and Orthodox missions used conversion in their ongoing (and regularly frustrated) efforts to transform the region's Muslim and animist populations into imperial, Orthodox citizens. He shows that the regime became less concerned with religion and more concerned with secular attributes as the marker of cultural differences, an emphasis that would change dramatically in the early years of Soviet rule."

    The conditions under which they were held varied enormously but baseball, in various forms, was a common activity among these prisoners of war. Not just Americans, but Canadians, British, Australians and New Zealanders took the field, as well as the Japanese and even a few Germans. In the best of the German Stalags (permanent German camps where these prisoners were held, shortened from Stamm Lagers) there were often several leagues active at a time, with dozens of teams playing games continuously during the warm weather months. In the harsher Stalags, and in some Japanese camps, there was only makeshift ball playing. In places like Camp O'Donnell, the worst of the camps, there was no energy left for anything but the struggle to survive. This work is the story of POW baseball, complete with guard versus prisoner ball games, radio parts hidden in baseballs, and future major leaguers. The book is divided into the various prison camps and describes the types of prisoners held there and the degree to which baseball was played.