Iron Kingdom traces Prussia's involvement in the continent's foundational religious and political conflagrations: from the devastations of the Thirty Years War through centuries of political machinations to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, from the enlightenment of Frederick the Great to the destructive conquests of Napoleon, and from the "iron and blood" policies of Bismarck to the creation of the German Empire in 1871, with all that implied for the tumultuous twentieth century.

    In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl, struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour (twelve-foot-wide hoopskirts, whalebone corsets that crushed her organs). As queen, Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power and wage war against her enemies. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt "unqueenly" outfits (the provocative chemise) that, surprisingly, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her. Weber's queen is sublime, human, and surprising: a sometimes courageous monarch unwilling to allow others to determine her destiny. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion--the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs--was also the means of her undoing. Weber's book is not only a stylish and original addition to Marie Antoinette scholarship, but also a moving, revelatory reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.

    But what about Britain's role in the world? A People's History of the British Empire challenges the claim that the British Empire was a kinder, gentler empire and suggests that the description of 'Rogue State' is more fitting. How many people today know about Britain's deep involvement in the opium drug trade in China, or that Tony Blair's hero Gladstone devoted his maiden parliamentary speech to defending his family's slave plantation in Jamaica?John Newsinger has written a wonderful popular history of key episodes in British imperial history. He pays particular attention to the battles of the colonised to free themselves of its baleful rule, including Rebellion in Jamaica; The Irish Famine; The Opium Wars; The Great Indian Rebellion; The Conquest of Egypt; Palestine in Revolt; 'Quit India' and the struggle for Independence; Suez; Malaya; Kenya and Rhodesia; and, Britain and American Imperialism.

     Davies asks readers to reconsider what they know about World War II, and how the received wisdom might be biased or incorrect. He poses simple questions that have complicated and unexpected answers. For instance, Can you name the five biggest battles of the war in Europe? Or, What were the main political ideologies that were contending for supremacy? The answers to these and other questions?and the implications of those answers?will surprise even those who feel that they are experts on the subject. Norman Davies has established himself as one of the preeminent scholars of World War II history, in the tradition of John Keegan and Antony Beevor. "No Simple Victory" is an invaluable contribution to twentieth century history and an illuminating portrait of a conflict which continues to raise questions and provoke debate today.

    Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the two-hundred-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in history not only affected people long gone, but continues to shape our world and define who we are today.   The book focuses on the vast changes that took place in Western civilization between 1450 and 1650, from Gutenberg’s printing press and the subsequent revolution in the spread of ideas to the close of the Thirty Years’ War. Eire devotes equal attention to the various Protestant traditions and churches as well as to Catholicism, skepticism, and secularism, and he takes into account the expansion of European culture and religion into other lands, particularly the Americas and Asia. He also underscores how changes in religion transformed the Western secular world. A book created with students and nonspecialists in mind, Reformations is an inspiring, provocative volume for any reader who is curious about the role of ideas and beliefs in history.

    In the morning, a modern British army was swept aside by the onset of a seemingly unstoppable Zulu host at Isandlwana. Nearby, at a remote border outpost on the Buffalo River, a single company of the 24th Regiment and a few dozen recuperating hospital patients were passing another hot, monotonous day. News of the disaster across the river came like a bolt from the blue. Retreat was not an option. It seemed certain that the Rorke's Drift detachment would share the terrible fate of their comrades. Following on from How Can Man Die Better, Colonel Snook brings the insights of a military professional to bear in this strikingly original account. It is an extraordinary tale a victory largely achieved by the sheer bloody-mindedness in adversity of the British infantryman, fighting at the remarkable odds of over thirty to one. The heroics of all eleven VC winners are recounted in detail, and we are offered new insights into how the Zulu attack unfolded and how 150 men achieved their improbable victory. The author describes the remainder of the war, from the recovery of the lost Queen's Colour of the 24th to the climactic charge of the 17th Lancers at Ulundi. We return to Isandlwana to consider culpability, and learn of the often tragic fates of many of the war's participants. Like Wolves is a remarkable work, and the author's unbridled respect for the fighting qualities of British soldier and his abiding affection for the Zulu people shines through.

    In it, he grapples with perhaps the most challenging questions of modern history: Why was the twentieth century history's bloodiest by far? Why did unprecedented material progress go hand in hand with total war and genocide? His quest for new answers takes him from the walls of Nanjing to the bloody beaches of Normandy, from the economics of ethnic cleansing to the politics of imperial decline and fall. The result, as brilliantly written as it is vital, is a great historian's masterwork.

    Sebestyen’s narrative moves from the tumultuous streets of Budapest to the inner sanctums of the Kremlin and the White House, where we hear the conversations of the men and women who planned and took part in the uprising and of those who helped crush it–some actively, others through craven inaction.Sebestyen shows how Western anti-Communist rhetoric encouraged the rebels and convinced them they would receive help. We witness the thrilling first days when, armed with a few rifles, petrol bombs, and desperate courage, the people of Budapest rose up against their Soviet masters and nearly succeeded in routing the Russian forces. For a few exciting days, as the Western world watched in amazement, it looked as though the Hungarians would win and humble the Soviet Union. Russian troops withdrew. But not for long.The Soviets showed they would resort to brutal lengths to cling to their Communist empire–and the West was prepared to let them. The free world looked on in sympathy and horror, did nothing, and, finally, the Hungarians suffered a devastating defeat, and remained under Soviet occupation for three more decades. Fast-paced, vivid, and authoritative, Twelve Days adds immeasurably to our understanding of one of the most important battles of the Cold War and reminds us–through the extraordinary courage and sacrifice of the Hungarian people in their doomed fight–of the unquenchable human desire for freedom.

    Jafa Wallet's "Bitter Freedom," which I first read as an untitled manuscript in the late 1970's, is one of the most compelling first-person accounts by a Holocaust survivor that I have ever encountered. She evokes scenes which have resonated inside my head for nearly thirty years, and its publication is an important event not only for those interested in the Holocaust, but for everyone seeking illumination into the complexities and mysteries of what it means to be human. "Nelson E Breen, Emmy Award-winning writer and director "

    Duration: 18 hours 40 minsCourse Lecture TitlesArchaeologys Big BangOde on a Grecian UrnA Quest for the Trojan WarHow to DigFirst Find Your SiteTaking the Search Underwater Cracking the CodesTechniques for Successful DatingReconstructing Vanished EnvironmentsNot Artifacts but PeopleArchaeology by ExperimentReturn to VesuviusGourniaHarriet Boyd and the Mother GoddessTheraA Bronze Age Atlantis?OlympiaGames and GodsAthenss AgoraWhere Socrates WalkedDelphiQuestioning the OracleKyreniaLost Ship of the Hellenistic AgeRiaceWarriors from the SeaRomeFoundation Myths and ArchaeologyCaesarea MaritimaA Roman City in JudeaTeutoburgBattlefield ArchaeologyBathHealing Waters at Aquae SulisTorre de PalmaA Farm in the Far WestRoots of Classical CultureThe Texture of Everyday LifeTheir Daily BreadVoyaging on a Dark Sea of WineShows and CircusesRomes Virtual RealityEngineering and TechnologySlavesA Silent Majority?Women of Greece and RomeHadrianMark of the IndividualCrucible of New FaithsThe End of the WorldA Coroners ReportA Bridge across the Torrent

    Weeds Like Us is a gripping true adventure story about the author's own East Prussian family. The author's earliest years were spent in relative comfort on his grandfather's farm in East Prussia during World War II. For him, life in Hitler's Germany was the natural order of things. Then, in January 1945, just after the author's seventh birthday, the Russians rolled into East Prussia. Full of unexpected twists and turns, Weeds Like Us tells the story of what happened over the next six years, as the author's family tried to make its way safely to the West.

    All of them led with courage — but also with great optimism. The pope helped ordinary Poles and East Europeans banish their fear of Soviet Communism, convincing them that liberation was possible. The prime minister restored her country's failing economy by reviving the "vigorous virtues" of the British people. The president rebuilt America's military power, its national morale, and its pre – eminence as leader of the free world. Together they brought down an evil empire and changed the world for the better. No one can tell their intertwined story better than John O'Sullivan, former editor of National Review and the Times of London, who knew all three and conducted exclusive interviews that shed extraordinary new light on these giants of the twentieth century.

    In Bergen-Belsen concentration camp he survived the inhuman brutality of the SS guards, the ravages of near starvation, disease, and squalor. All but one of his family died there, his mother losing her life on the very day the British finally marched into the camp. Discovered by a Red Cross nurse who described him as ‘an enchanting scrap of humanity’, Zoltan was brought to Ireland and adopted by one of the liberators, Dr Bob Collis, who raised him as his own son on Ireland’s east coast. Now aged 65, Zoltan is ready to speak. His story is one of deepest pain and greatest joy. Zoltan tells how he lost one family and found another; of how, escaping from the ruins of a broken Europe, he was able to build himself a life – a life he may never have had.

    Within days the barbed-wire entanglement would undergo an extraordinary metamorphosis: it became an imposing 103-mile-long wall guarded by three hundred watchtowers. A physical manifestation of the struggle between Soviet Communism and American capitalism—totalitarianism and freedom—that would stand for nearly thirty years, the Berlin Wall was the high-risk fault line between East and West on which rested the fate of all humanity. Many brave people risked their lives to overcome this lethal barrier, and some paid the ultimate price.In this captivating work, sure to be the definitive history on the subject, Frederick Taylor weaves together official history, archival materials, and personal accounts to tell the complete story of the Wall's rise and fall, from the postwar political tensions that created a divided Berlin to the internal and external pressures that led to the Wall's demise. In addition, he explores the geopolitical ramifications as well as the impact the wall had on ordinary lives that is still felt today. For the first time the entire world faced the threat of imminent nuclear apocalypse, a fear that would be eased only when the very people the Wall had been built to imprison breached it on the historic night of November 9, 1989.Gripping and authoritative, The Berlin Wall is the first comprehensive account of a divided city and its people in a time when the world seemed to stand permanently on the edge of destruction.

    In 1945 Ditha was living with her parents in the small town of Lossen, in Upper Silesia. Close Jewish friends had vanished, swastikas hung from every building, and neighbours were disappearing in the middle of the night. At the same time more than one thousand, five hundred British and Commonwealth airmen were being marched out of Stalag Luft VII, a POW camp in Upper Silesia. Twenty three of these prisoners managed to escape from the marching column and by chance hobbled into Lossen. One amongst them, Warrant Officer Gordon Slowey, was the man Ditha was destined to meet and fall in love with. This book tells the extraordinary story of Ditha and the escaped POWs she helped to save. Together they embarked on a dangerous and daring flight out of Germany. As they faced exhaustion, hunger, extreme cold and the constant risk of discovery, Ditha and Gordon’s love for one another intensified, and so did their determination to survive and escape together. Michael Hingston is a trained journalist. He spent twelve years working as a general news reporter, crime writer and industrial correspondent before turning to public relations. This book is based on his aunt Ditha’s vivid recollections recorded in over a hundred hours of conversation between the two of them, as well as exhaustive research in archives to verify the facts.

    Its more than six hundred thousand inhabitants--almost all of them ethnic Germans--were expelled and replaced by Polish settlers from all parts of prewar Poland. Uprooted examines the long-term psychological and cultural consequences of forced migration in twentieth-century Europe through the experiences of Wroclaw's Polish inhabitants.In this pioneering work, Gregor Thum tells the story of how the city's new Polish settlers found themselves in a place that was not only unfamiliar to them but outright repellent given Wroclaw's Prussian-German appearance and the enormous scope of wartime destruction. The immediate consequences were an unstable society, an extremely high crime rate, rapid dilapidation of the building stock, and economic stagnation. This changed only after the city's authorities and a new intellectual elite provided Wroclaw with a Polish founding myth and reshaped the city's appearance to fit the postwar legend that it was an age-old Polish city. Thum also shows how the end of the Cold War and Poland's democratization triggered a public debate about Wroclaw's amputated memory. Rediscovering the German past, Wroclaw's Poles reinvented their city for the second time since World War II.Uprooted traces the complex historical process by which Wroclaw's new inhabitants revitalized their city and made it their own.

    Geoffrey Wellum's First Light was one example. The memoir of Timothy Vigors is another.Born in Hatfield but raised in Ireland and educated at Eton and Cranwell, Vigors found himself in France in 1940 flying Fairey Battle bombers. After the Fall he joined the fighters of 222 Squadron, with whom he saw frantic and distinguished service over Dunkirk and persevered through the dangerous days of the Battle of Britain, when he became an ace.Vigors transferred to the Far East in January 1941 as a flight commander with 243, then to 453 Squadron RAAF, and on December 10 of that year he led a flight of Buffaloes to cover the sinking Prince of Wales and Repulse. Dramatically shot down, burnt and attacked on his parachute, he was evacuated to Java, and from there, to India. As he describes these experiences in his handwritten account, the author provides a fascinating and valuable record, a newly discovered personal narrative of air combat destined to be seen as a classic.

    Continuing the story he began in the best-selling Radical Enlightenment, and now focusing his attention on the first half of the eighteenth century, he returns to the original sources to offera groundbreaking new perspective on the nature and development of the most important currents in modern thought.Israel traces many of the core principles of Western modernity to their roots in the social, political, and philosophical ferment of this period: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression. He emphasizes the dualcharacter of the Enlightenment, and the bitter struggle between on the one hand a generally dominant, anti-democratic mainstream, supporting the monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authority, and on the other a largely repressed democratic, republican, and materialist radical fringe. He alsocontends that the supposedly separate French, British, German, Dutch, and Italian enlightenments interacted to such a degree that their study in isolation gives a hopelessly distorted picture.A work of dazzling and highly accessible scholarship, Enlightenment Contested will be the definitive reference point for historians, philosophers, and anyone engaged with this fascinating period of human development.

    Written specially for children, Eva describes her happy early childhood in Vienna with her kind and loving parents and her older brother Heinz, whom she adored. But when the Nazis marched into Austria everything changed. Eva's family fled to Belgium, then to Amsterdam where, with the help of the Dutch Resistance, they spent the next two years in hiding - Eva and her mother in one house, and her father and brother in another. Finally, though, they were all betrayed and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Despite the horrors of the camp, Eva's positive attitude and stubborn personality (which had often got her into trouble) saw her through one of the most tragic events in history and she and her mother eventually returned to Amsterdam. Sadly her father and brother perished just weeks before the liberation.Eva and her mother went back to the house where Heinz and his father had hidden, for Eva had remembered that Heinz had told her he had hidden his paintings beneath the floorboards there. Sure enough, there were over thirty beautiful paintings. Heinz hadn't wasted any of his talents during his captivity. For Eva, here was a tangible, everlasting memory of her brother and a reminder of her father's promise that all the good things you accomplish will make a difference to someone, and your achievements will be carried on. Heinz's paintings have been on display in exhibitions in the USA and are now a part of a permanent exhibition in Amsterdam's war museum. Told simply and clearly for younger readers, "The Promise" is an unforgettable story, written by Eva Schloss, the step-daughter of Otto Frank and Barbara Powers, Eva's very close friend.

    Yet in the fifteenth century it was a European pilgrimage site surpassed in importance only by Rome and Santiago de Compostela. The goal of pilgrimage was three miraculous hosts, supposedly discovered in the charred remains of the village church several days after it had been torched by a marauding knight in August 1383. Although the church had been burned and the spot soaked with rain, the hosts were found intact and dry, with a drop of Christ's blood at the center of each.In Wonderful Blood, Caroline Walker Bynum studies the saving power attributed to Christ's blood at north German cult sites such as Wilsnack, the theological controversy such sites generated, and the hundreds of devotional paintings, poems, and prayers dedicated to Christ's wounds, scourging, and bloody crucifixion. She argues that Christ's blood as both object and symbol was central to late medieval art, literature, pious practice, and theology. As object of veneration, blood provided a focus of intense debate about the nature of matter, body, and God and an occasion for Jewish persecution; as motif, blood became a prominent subject of northern art and a central symbol in the visions of mystics and the prayers of ordinary people.

    Berman looks at the history of social democracy from its origins in the late nineteenth century to today and shows how it beat out competitors such as classical liberalism, orthodox Marxism, and its cousins, Fascism and National Socialism by solving the central challenge of modern politics - reconciling the competing needs of capitalism and democracy. Bursting on to the scene in the interwar years, the social democratic model spread across Europe after the Second World War and formed the basis of the postwar settlement. This is a study of European social democracy that rewrites the intellectual and political history of the modern era while putting contemporary debates about globalization in their proper intellectual and historical context.

    It explores the forging of the revolutionary self, a study without precedent that speaks to the evolution of the individual in mass movements of our own time.

    Forced to flee the Nazi Army, Jewish families found a safe haven in a small town in Le Chambon, France, where a community of Protestants, having once been persecuted for their religion, sympathized with their struggle and did all they could to hide them from the invaders that sought to do them harm.

    The authors take us from Waterloo to Chirac’s slandering of British cooking, charting the cross-channel entanglement and its unparalleled breadth of cultural, economic and political influence. They illuminate the complexity of the relationship—rivalry, enmity, misapprehension and loathing mixed with envy, admiration and genuine affection—and the ways in which it has shaped the modern world, from North America to the Middle East to Southeast Asia, and is still shaping Europe today. They make clear that warfare between the two countries often went hand in hand with hardy, if hidden, strains of anglophilia and francophilia; conversely, though France and Britain were allies for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it has been an alliance almost as uneasy, as competitive and as ambivalent as the previous generations of warfare.Wonderfully written—acute, witty, consistently surprising—That Sweet Enemy is a triumph: an eye-opener for the experts, and a feast for the general reader.

    Her reign, the longest in Russian Imperial history, lasted from 1762 until her death in 1796; during those years she built on the work begun by her most famous predecessor, Peter the Great, to establish Russia as a major European power and to transform its new capital, St Petersburg, into a city to rival Paris and London in the beauty of its architecture, the glittering splendor of its Court and the magnificence of its art collections. Yet the great Catherine was not even Russian by birth and had no legitimate claim to the Russian throne; she seized it and held on to it, through wars, rebellions and plagues, by the force of her personality, by her charm and determination, and by an unshakable belief in her own destiny. This is the story of Catherine the woman, whom power alone could never satisfy, for she also wanted love, affection, friendship and humor. She found these in letter-writing, in grandchildren, in gardens, architecture and greyhounds--as well as in a succession of lovers which gave rise to salacious rumors throughout Europe. The real Catherine, however, was more interesting than any rumor. Using many of Catherine's own words from her voluminous correspondence and other documents, as well as contemporary accounts by courtiers, ambassadors and foreign visitors, Virginia Rounding penetrates the character of this most powerful, fascinating and surprisingly sympathetic of eighteenth-century women.

    Skillfully blending intellectual, political, and cultural history, Jan-Werner Müller elucidates the ideas that shaped the period of ideological extremes before 1945 and the liberalization of West European politics after the Second World War. He also offers vivid portraits of famous as well as unjustly forgotten political thinkers and the movements and institutions they inspired.Müller pays particular attention to ideas advanced to justify fascism and how they relate to the special kind of liberal democracy that was created in postwar Western Europe. He also explains the impact of the 1960s and neoliberalism, ending with a critical assessment of today's self-consciously post-ideological age.

    Combining compelling narrative storytelling with analysis, Joseph Bendersky presents an authoritative survey of the major political, economic, and social factors that powered the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Now in its third edition, the book incorporates the significant research of recent years. Delving into the complexity of social life within the Nazi state, it also reemphasizes the crucial role played by racial ideology in determining the policies and practices of the Third Reich. Bendersky paints a fascinating picture of how average citizens negotiated their way through both the threatening power behind certain Nazi policies and the strong enticements to acquiesce or collaborate. His classic treatment provides an invaluable overview of a subject that retains its historical significance and contemporary importance.

    As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa. After grueling marches admidst countless Russian bodies, burnt-out vehicles, and a great number of cheering Baltic civilians, Lubbeck's unit entered the outskirts of Leningrad, making the deepest penetration of any German formation.The Germans suffered brutal hardships the following winter as they fought both Russian counterattacks and the brutal cold. The 58th Division was thrown back and forth across the front of Army Group North, from Novgorod to Demyansk, at one point fighting back Russian attacks on the ice of Lake Ilmen. Returning to the outskirts of Leningrad, the 58th was placed in support of the Spanish "Blue" Division. Relations between the allied formations soured at one point when the Spaniards used a Russian bath house for target practice, not realizing that Germans were relaxing inside.A soldier who preferred to be close to the action, Lubbeck served as forward observer for his company, dueling with Russian snipers, partisans and full-scale assaults alike. His worries were not confined to his own safety, however, as news arrived of disasters in Germany, including the destruction of Hamburg where his girlfriend served as an Army nurse.In September 1943, Lubbeck earned the Iron Cross First Class and was assigned to officers' training school in Dresden. By the time he returned to Russia, Army Group North was in full-scale retreat. Now commanding his former heavy weapons company, Lubbeck alternated sharp counterattacks with inexorable withdrawal, from Riga to Memel on the Baltic. In April 1945 Lubbeck's company became stalled in a traffic jam and was nearly obliterated by a Russian barrage followed by air attacks.In the last chaotic scramble from East Prussia, Lubbeck was able to evacuate on a newly minted German destroyer. He recounts how the ship arrived in the British zone off Denmark with all guns blazing against pursuing Russians. The following morning, May 8, 1945, he learned that the war was over.After his release from British captivity, Lubbeck married his sweetheart, Anneliese, and in 1949 immigrated to the United States where he raised a successful family. With the assistance of David B. Hurt, he has drawn on his wartime notes and letters, Soldatbuch, regimental history and personal memories to recount his four years of frontline experience. Containing rare firsthand accounts of both triumph and disaster, At Leningrad's Gates provides a fascinating glimpse into the reality of combat on the Eastern Front.

    This innovative and expansive survey draws on historical and archaeological sources in the narration of 750 years of the region's history. Among a number of key themes it addresses the rise of medieval states, the conversion to Christianity, the monastic movement inspired by developments in Western Europe and in Byzantium and the role of material culture in the representation of power.

    This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1907 edition by Gay and Bird, London.

    With the Japanese deeply entrenched and determined to die rather than surrender, Robert Dick and his fellow soldiers quickly realized that theirs would be a war fought inch by bloody inch–and that their Sherman tanks would serve front and center. As driver, Dick had to maneuver his five-man crew in and out of dangerous and often deadly situations.Whether crawling up beaches, bogged down in the mud-soaked Leyte jungle, or exposed in the treacherous valleys of Okinawa, the Sherman was a favorite target. A land mine could blow off the tracks, leaving its crew marooned and helpless, and the nightmare of swarms of Japanese armed with satchel charges was all too real. But there was a war to be won, and Americans like Robert Dick did their jobs without fanfare, and without glory. This gripping account of tanker combat is a ringing testament to the awe-inspiring bravery of ordinary Americans.From the Paperback edition.

    He wrote several well regarded histories of the campaigns and battles of the Civil War and other works of military history. Perhaps his most outstanding achievement was a series of books, published under the umbrella title 'the Art of War, ' focusing on different historical periods as typified by their most notable military commanders-including the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar in the ancient world and the wars of the 17th and 18th century as fought by great captains including Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick and Marlborough. This volume is part of his in depth study of the Napoleonic period, which in its entirety was comprised of four huge volumes that benefited from the inclusion of almost 800 small scale uniform drawings, portraits of notable personalities and numerous theatre, campaign and battlefield maps. This retitled Leonaur edition has been revised to form volumes of approximately equal size reformatted to enable us to enlarge all the illustrations and maps for the benefit of the reader. This series is an excellent history of the campaigns and battles of the Napoleonic Age but it goes far beyond the historical record. Dodge critically examines the strategies and tactics of all the military commanders in such a clear and authoritative manner that the student of military history can clearly understand the errors of those about to suffer defeat and the expertise-or in the case of Napoleon Bonaparte, the military genius-of the victors. This is an invaluable guide to warfare in the age of Napoleon and is highly recommended.This volume opens with a fascinating study of the French adventure in Egypt and Syria and is followed by the epic victory at Marengo against the Austrians and Moreau's campaign in Germany at the conclusion of the Revolutionary Wars; but the new Emperor of the First Empire was soon engaged upon the field of battle again, at Ulm where he delivered one of his most significant military victories.Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

    Rosenwein here discusses some instances from the Early Middle Ages. Drawing on extensive microhistorical research, as well as cognitive and social constructionist theories of the emotions, Rosenwein shows that different emotional communities coexisted, that some were dominant at times, and that religious beliefs affected emotional styles even as those styles helped shape religious expression.This highly original book is both a study of emotional discourse in the Early Middle Ages and a contribution to the debates among historians and social scientists about the nature of human emotions. Rosenwein explores the character of emotional communities as discovered in several case studies: the funerary inscriptions of three different Gallic cities; the writings of Pope Gregory the Great; the affective world of two friends, Gregory of Tours and Venantius Fortunatus; the Neustrian court of Clothar II and his heirs; and finally the tumultuous period of the late seventh century. In this essay, the author presents a new way to consider the history of emotions, inviting others to continue and advance the inquiry.For medievalists, early modernists, and historians of the modern world, the book will be of interest for its persuasive critique of Norbert Elias's highly influential notion of the civilizing process. Rosenwein's notion of emotional communities is one with which all historians and social scientists working on the emotions will need to contend.

    The Mongol, Ottoman, Habsburg, Nazi and Soviet empires have all since vanished; but Hungary, a victim of all five and despite suffering the consequences of being on the losing side in every war she has fought, still occupies the territory the Magyar tribes claimed for themselves in the ninth century. The eleven hundred years covered by this stirring account embrace medieval greatness, Turkish occupation, Habsburg domination, unsuccessful struggles for independence, massive deprivation of territory and population after the First World War, a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany motivated by the hope of redress, and forty years of Soviet-imposed Communism interrupted by a gallant but brutally suppressed revolution in 1956.

    In Khrushchev's Cold War, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, authors of the Cuban missile crisis classic "One Hell of a Gamble," bring to life head-to-head confrontations between Khrushchev and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Drawing from their unrivaled access to Politburo and Soviet intelligence materials, they reveal for the first time three moments when Khrushchev's inner circle restrained him from plunging the superpowers into war. Combining new insights into the Cuban crisis, startling narratives on the hot spots of Suez, Iraq, Berlin, and Southeast Asia, and vivid portraits of leaders in the developing world who challenged Moscow and Washington, Castro, Lumumba, Nasser, and Mao Khrushchev's Cold War provides one of the most gripping and authoritative studies of the crisis years of the Cold War.

    Written by a leading William Blake scholar, this is an intriguing and controversial history of the poet and artist, which reveals a world of waking visions, magical practices, sexual-spiritual experimentation, tantric sex and free love.

    It was the cause of low productivity, poverty, and economic backwardness, while it also stunted literacy, limited political participation, and undermined the army. In this book Frank Snowden recounts how Italy became the world center for the development of malariology as a medical discipline and launched the first national campaign to eradicate the disease.Snowden traces the early advances, the setbacks of world wars and Fascist dictatorship, and the final victory against malaria after World War II. He shows how the medical and teaching professions helped educate people in their own self-defense and in the process expanded trade unionism, women’s consciousness, and civil liberties. He also discusses the antimalarial effort under Mussolini’s regime and reveals the shocking details of the German army’s intentional release of malaria among Italian civilians—the first and only known example of bioterror in twentieth-century Europe. Comprehensive and enlightening, this history offers important lessons for today’s global malaria emergency.

    Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources, Matuschek recounts the eventful life of a writer spoilt by success, which changed direction under the influence of contemporary events, and ended tragically in a suicide pact with his second wife Lotte.

    Despite his small physical stature, the shadow of Napoleon is cast like a colossus, compelling all who would look at that epoch to chart their course by reference to him. For this reason, most historical accounts of the Napoleonic era-and there are many-tell the same Napoleon-dominated story over and over again, or focus narrowly on special aspects of it. Frederick Kagan, distinguished historian and military policy expert, has tapped hitherto unused archival materials from Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia, to present the history of these years from the balanced perspective of all of the major players of Europe. In The End of the Old Order readers encounter the rulers, ministers, citizens, and subjects of Europe in all of their political and military activity-from the desk of the prime minister to the pen of the ambassador, from the map of the general to the rifle of the soldier. With clear and lively prose, Kagan guides the reader deftly through the intriguing and complex web of international politics and war. The End of the Old Order is the first volume in a new and comprehensive four-volume study of Napoleon and Europe. Each volume in the series will surprise readers with a dramatically different tapestry of early nineteenth-century personalities and events and will revise fundamentally our ages-old understanding of the wars that created modern Europe.

    In itself a cultural tour de force, the book covers high and low culture, readers and writers, audiences and prima donnas, Rossini and hip hop, Verdi and the Beatles, Zola and Tintin, Walter Scott and Jules Verne, the serialized novel of the 19th century as well as Dallas and Coronation Street. Included in its vast scope are fairy tales, best-sellers, crime and sci-fi, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers, comic strips, plays, opera, musicals, pop music, sound recording, films, documentaries, radio, and television. A continent-wide survey, this majestic work includes discussions of rock music under communism, Polish and Danish bestsellers, French melodramas and German cabarets, fascist and Soviet cinema. It examines the ways culture travels—how it is produced, transformed, adapted, absorbed, sold, and consumed; how it is shaped by audiences and politics, and controlled by laws and conventional morality; and why some countries excel in particular genres. It examines the anxiety and attraction felt by Europeans towards American culture, and asks to what extent European culture has become Americanized. Stylishly written, devoid of jargon, this is global non-fiction narrative at its best.

    While ruling queens occupied the office of king, they still had to conform to contemporary expectations of womanhood that served as social and political roadblocks to the full exercise of regal power. Charles Beem has identified a specific yet panoramic set of problems facing female rulers throughout British history, from the twelfth century empress Matilda's imaginative efforts to become England's first regnant queen, to Queen Victoria's remarkable exercise of political power during the Bedchamber Crisis of 1839.

    Although dissonance and strife were certainly part of this relationship, he argues, coexistence and cooperation were more common. Moving beyond the clash of civilizations model that surveys the relationship between Islam and Christianity from a geopolitical perch, Dursteler analyzes the lived reality by focusing on a localized microcosm: the Venetian merchant and diplomatic community in Muslim Constantinople. While factors such as religion, culture, and political status could be integral elements in constructions of self and community, Dursteler finds early modern identity to be more than the sum total of its constituent parts and reveals how the fluidity and malleability of identity in this time and place made coexistence among disparate cultures possible.

    Yet in 1759, Wolfe's victory, bought at the cost of his life, ensured that English, not French, would become the dominant language in North America. But was there more to James Wolfe than a celebrated death? This book seeks to answer that question.

    John Hay, vicar of South Brent, dragged from his church and slaughtered in 1436, Devon has had its fair share of 'murder most foul'. This book recounts several notable cases, from the killing of Sarah and Edward Glass at Wadland Down in 1827, and the poisonings of Samuel Wescombe in Exeter in 1829 and William Ashford at Honiton Clyst in 1866, both by wives whose affections had gones elsewhere; to the horrific murder of Emma Doidge and her boyfriend William Rowe by the former's jilted suitor at Peter Tavey in 1892, the strangling of schoolgirl Alice Gregory in 1916, and the triple murder of Emily Maye and her daughters at West Charleton, Kingsbridge, in 1936, which remains unsolved to this day. Above all, there is an account of Devon's most famous case, the murder of Emma Keyse at Babbacombe and the convicted servant John Lee - the man they couldn't hang. John Van der Kiste's carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of Devon's history.

    After my father's death, my mother spent many winters with my husband and I here in Florida. During these visits, she and I transcribed my father's World War II diaries into German from the old "Gabelsberger" shorthand, which only Mama was able to read. Subsequently, I translated them into English. These diaries fortunately were discovered by my sister Sigrid in the attic upon the sale of the old family home after my father's passing in 1989. She felt Mama and I should translate these books for the family. At a later point many friends and acquaintances encouraged me, to publish this diary, to document his thoughts, experiences, and innermost feelings from the beginning of his conscripted military service in 1939 through 1946, when he returned home after being released from a French POW labor camp. During the latter part of 1946 and into 1947, an epilog describes his daily struggles to return to normalcy, the resumption of his teaching career, and the search for food to feed his family. He describes his touching love for his family, as well as his anger and hatred for the insane war and its inept leaders. A war, he was forced to participate in as an ordinary German soldier. Many times he naively commented very unfavorably, sometimes using "choice words" about Hitler, the Nazi Party, and his superiors, a risk, if found out, could have cost him his life. I myself have many memories of the war and its horrors as a little girl without a father, spending night after night in a bunker, the "liberation" of our small town by the Americans. This has left deep and lasting impressions on me. Later on, I met a wonderful American with whom I fell in love and married, with my father proudly walking me down the aisle. This, in spite of the resentment he held against Americans, for shamefully turning him over to the French as a forced labor POW. I remember his sadness, when his little "Murschel," as he used to call me, left for America wit

    Their scientific and philosophical innovations stemmed in part from their understanding of mathematics and science as cognitive and spiritual exercises that could create a truer mental and spiritual nobility.  In portraying the rich contexts surrounding Descartes’ geometry, Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, and Leibniz’s calculus, Matthew L. Jones argues that this drive for moral therapeutics guided important developments of early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution.

    Maggi leads us straight to the heart of what Italian Renaissance culture thought familiar spirits were. Through close readings of Giovan Francesco Pico della Mirandola, Strozzi Cigogna, Pompeo della Barba, Ludovico Sinistrari, and others, we find that these spirits or demons speak through their sudden and striking appearances—their very bodies seen as metaphors to be interpreted. The form of the body, Maggi explains, relies on the spirits’ knowledge of their human interlocutors’ pasts. But their core trait is compassion, and sometimes their odd, eerie arrivals are seen as harbingers or warnings to protect us. It comes as no surprise then that when spiritual beings distort the natural world to communicate, it is vital that we begin to listen.

    In this first book-length assessment of the treaty in over seventy years, Jason Knirck recounts the compelling story of the nationalist politics that produced the Irish Revolution, the tortuous treaty negotiations, and the deep divisions within Sinn Fein that led to the slow unraveling of fragile party cohesion. Focusing on broad ideological and political disputes, as well as on the powerful personalities involved, the author considers the major issues that divided the pro- and anti-treaty forces, why these issues mattered, and the later judgments of historians. He concludes that the treaty debates were in part the result of the immaturity of Irish nationalist politics, as well as the overriding emphasis given to revolutionary unity. A fascinating story in their own right, the treaty debates also open a wider window onto questions of European nationalism, colonialism, state-building, and competing visions of Irish national independence. Treaty Documents

    This crucial material permits a broader and richer picture of Evelyn, his life, and his friendships than permitted by his own celebrated diaries.Gillian Darley provides a rounded portrait of Evelyn’s eighty-five years--his family life, his exile in Paris, his interests, and his preoccupations. Evelyn lived through some of England’s most tumultuous history, through five reigns, the Civil War, the Restoration, and the Revolution of 1688. He was author or translator of countless publications, tackling an enormous variety of contemporary issues. Both a religious man and a key figure in the Royal Society, he viewed Christianity and the new science as wholly compatible. Evelyn remained endlessly curious and engaged into very old age, and this absorbing biography demonstrates the liveliness of his hugely busy mind.

    But while commanders close to the troops on Germany's various fronts were beginning to read it, those at the top were resolutely looking the other way.This seventh volume in the magisterial 10-volume series from the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt [Research Institute for Military History] shows both Germany and her Japanese ally on the defensive, from 1943 into early 1945. It looks in depth at the strategic air war over the Reich and the mounting toll taken in the Battles of the Ruhr, Hamburg, and Berlin, and at the Battle of the Radar Sets so central to them all. The collapse of the Luftwaffe in its retaliatory role led to hopes being pinned on the revolutionary V-weapons, whose dramatic but ultimately fruitless achievements are chronicled.The Luftwaffe's weakness in defence is seen during the Normandy invasion, Operation overlord, an account of the planning, preparation and execution of which form the central part of this volume together with the landings in the south of France, the setback suffered at Arnhem, and the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes.The final part follows the fortunes of Germany's ally fighting in the Pacific, Burma, Thailand, and China, with American forces capturing islands ever closer to Japan's homeland, and culminates in her capitulation and the creation of a new postwar order in the Far East. The struggle between internal factions in the Japanese high command and imperial court is studied in detail, and highlights an interesting contrast with the intolerance of all dissent that typified the Nazi power structure.Based on meticulous research by MGFA's team of historians at Potsdam, this analysis of events is illustrated by a wealth of tables and maps covering aspects ranging from Germany's radar defence system and the targets of RAF Bomber Command and the US 8th Air Force, through the break-out from the Normandy beachhead, to the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

    

    'Christianity and the Transformation of the Book' combines broad-gauged synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books and the ways of organising scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea, on the coast of the Roman Palestine.

    They had come to the throne in 1461, when Edward IV, who traced his claim to Edward III, replaced the ineffectual Henry VI as king. Forced into exile in 1470, Edward returned to power after the bloody battle of Towton in 1470 finally ended Lancastrian opposition. His reign was ended by his premature death in 1483, leaving behind his son Edward, a minor, as his heir. This led to Richard III's ursurpation, ended two years later by his defeat and death at Bosworth Field at the hands of Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII and the founder of a new dynasty, marrying Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV. The Yorkists were one of the two main contending parties in England's first great civil war, the Wars of the Roses. They have been immortalised by Shakespeare not only in his Richard III but also in his three parts of Henry VI. Anne Crawford examines the truth behind both the characters of these kings and behind the stories in the plays, including the death of the duke of Clarence by drowning in a butt of malmsey and the celebrated murder of his nephews, Edward V and Richard, duke of York, by their uncle, Richard III.

    Experience the passion of young Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf and his friends as they took a vow to serve Christ their King faithfully in whatever situation of life they found themselves. Signed by the five school friends and illustrated in a medallion made by Zinzendorf’s grandmother, the vow of the “Confessors of Christ” is as relevant today as when it first was conceived in 1716. Join Phil Anderson on an aerial road trip via his three-seater plane as he undertakes a 21st century pilgrimage from England to Germany. Anderson retraces the steps of Zinzendorf, reconnects with his legacy and seeks to apply it to life and faith in a new millennium. Learning from the past, readers will discover crucial signposts for grappling with the Church of today’s identity and calling as an authentic, relational, missional community.

    Catherine Julien's new translation of Titu Cusi Yupanqui's Relasçion de como los Españoles Entraron en el Peru - an account of the Spanish conquest of Peru by the last indigenous ruler of the Inca empire - features student-oriented annotation, facing-page Spanish, and an Introduction that sets this remarkably rich source in its cultural, historical, and literary contexts.

    The journeys they must make to reach Post-War Europe are astounding in their bravery; the atrocities, horrifying; the humor, gentle and the convictions, fierce. The Lukians: Severyn, a famous painter, and his wife, Olena, a writer and composer, flee Ukraine and away from the mistrustful and chaotic environment caused by the political factions of the Underground resistance. Along with their two young sons and Olena's sister - a beautiful, clever and shrewd spy - they attempt to reach Switzerland. However, they are surrounded by the Germans in Slovakia and deported forever away from their goal. The Hanchars: Siblings Maksym, Marianna and Danylo escape into the Underground to fight alongside the Germans, and against the Russians. When Maksym and the other senior officers of the cell convince the Germans to recognize the "forest fighters" as an official legion, things take an interesting twist as everyone anticipates the fierceness of the returning Red Tide. Roksana Mystets'ka: Alone, she has fled into the Underground after her priest-brother is sent to the gulag. Roksana - strong, sassy and a fanatical patriot - must face some of the hardest choices in her life as her homeland is being burnt to the ground. These are the stories of love and betrayal, deaths and rebirth, separations and reunions, during one of the most controversial chapters in Ukrainian history and World War II history. Deep Wells, Burning Forests examines the meaning of patriotism in a misunderstood country that constantly struggled for independence, freedomand the right of man, and made a Faustian deal with the enemy in order to get them.

    By carefully examining the political and economic environment of the times, Levy argues that Neville Chamberlain crafted an active, logical and morally defensible foreign policy designed to avoid and deter a potentially devastating war. Levy shows that through Chamberlain's experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he knew that Britain had not yet fully recovered from the first World War and the longer an international confrontation could be avoided, the better Britain's chances of weathering the storm. In the end, Hitler could be neither appeased nor deterred, and recognizing this, Britain and France went into war better armed and better prepared to fight.

    The book weaves together personal stories from interviews, statistical material, and evidence from archival research in Berlin, Potsdam, Leipzig, Merseburg, and Chemnitz to reconstruct the complex interplay between state policy toward women and the family on the one hand, and women's reactions to policy on the other. Donna Harsch demonstrates that women resisted state decisions as citizens, wageworkers, mothers, wives, and consumers, and that in every guise they maneuvered to overcome official neglect of the family. As state dependence on female employment increased, the book shows, the Communists began to respond to the insistence of women that the state pay attention to the family. In fits and starts, the party state begrudgingly retooled policy in a more consumerist and family-oriented direction. This "domestication" was partial, ambivalent, and barely acknowledged from above. It also had ambiguous, arguably regressive, effects on the private gender arrangements and attitudes of East Germans. Nonetheless, the economic and social consequences of this domestication were cumulatively powerful and, the book argues, gradually undermined the foundations of the GDR.

    The 40 concise articles in this collection comprise the first English translation of Ficino’s works and provide an insightful glimpse into the philosophy that contributed to the Renaissance.

    The authors have selected 7,500 of the most interesting places and place-names, from Ashby-de-la-Zouch (scene of Ivanhoe’s unforgettable joust), to Wetwang, where builders recently discovered the 2,300-year-old grave of an Iron Age woman who was buried with a chariot. Tourists, scholars, and armchair travelers will revel in fascinating facts on everything from what’s odd about the name “Avon River” to why Brits say “God bless the Duke of Argyle!” when someone scratches an itch.

    When the Soviets came to occupy Lwów, Lanckoronska became active in the Polish resistance and moved to Krakow. She was arrested by the Germans in Kolomyya in 1942, imprisoned and later sentenced to death; incarcerated first in Stanislau, then in Lwow and Berlin before being placed in the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp for women.As a countess, Lanckoronska was subjected to varying treatment, suffering near starvation at times only to receive extra food and medical care at others according to the fluctuating and often conflicting orders from the authorities in Berlin. With the intervention of some influential friends and the honourable actions of one Nazi, she was saved from death on several occasions. Thanks to efforts by the Swiss diplomat, scholar and International Red Cross President Carl J. Burckhardt (whose correspondence with Heinrich Himmler was found among Lanckoronska's personal belongings) she was finally released in April, 1945.Throughout her imprisonment, Lanckoronska remained defiantly resilient, loyal to Poland and committed to her fellow prisoners, including women used by Nazi doctors as guinea pigs for horrific medical experiments. Her magnetic personality and superb story-telling makes this a powerful narrative and sustains our interest through harrowing reading. Her ability to view her own horrific situation with objectivity gives us insight into the motives and behaviour of the Soviets and the Germans not simply as oppressors, but as human beings. Hers is an extraordinary story of courage and will.

    Alfred Wegener's discovery of continental drift went through each stage with unusual drama. In 1915, when he published histheory that the world's continents had once come together in a single landmass before splitting apart and drifting to their current positions, the world's geologists denied and scorned it. The scientific establishment's rejection of continental drift and plate tectonic theory is a story told oftenand well. Yet, there is an untold side to Wegener's life: he and his famous father-in-law, Wladimir K�ppen (a climatologist whose classification of climates is still in use), became fascinated with climates of the geologic past. In the early 20th century Wegener made four expeditions to thethen-uncharted Greenland icecap to gather data about climate variations (Greenland ice-core sampling continues to this day). Ending in Ice is about Wegener's explorations of Greenland, blending the science of ice ages and Wegener's continental drift measurements with the story of Wegener's fatalexpedition trying to bring desperately needed food and fuel to workers at the central Greenland ice station of Eismitte in 1930. Arctic exploration books with tragic endings have become all too common, but this book combines Wegener's fatal adventures in Greenland with the relevant science--now moreimportant than ever as global climate change becomes movie-worthy (The Day After Tomorrow).

    In fact, floods were simply a part of life in ancient Rome, where proximity to the Tiber left a substantial part of the city vulnerable to the river's occasional transgressions.Here, in the first book-length treatment of the impact of floods on an ancient city, Gregory S. Aldrete draws upon a diverse range of scientific and cultural data to develop a rich and detailed account of flooding in Rome throughout the classical period.Aldrete explores in detail the overflowing river’s destructive effects, drawing from ancient and modern written records and literary accounts, analyses of the topography and hydrology of the Tiber drainage basin, visible evidence on surviving structures, and the known engineering methods devised to limit the reach of rising water. He discusses the strategies the Romans employed to alleviate or prevent flooding, their social and religious attitudes toward floods, and how the threat of inundation influenced the development of the city's physical and economic landscapes.

    Conspicuous in a host of disciplines from history of science and technology to history of art, literature, and society, both have assumed a prominent place in studies of the Early Modern period. This volume brings together an international group of scholars to investigate the various manifestations of, and relationships between, 'curiosity' and 'wonder' from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Focused case studies on texts, objects and individuals explore the multifaceted natures of these themes, highlighting the intense fascination and continuing scrutiny to which each has been subjected over three centuries. From instances of curiosity in New World exploration to the natural wonders of 18th-century Italy, Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment locates its subjects in a broad geographical and disciplinary terrain. Taken together, the essays presented here construct a detailed picture of two complex themes, demonstrating the extent to which both have been transformed and reconstituted, often with dramatic results.

    Looking at a variety of well-known and neglected figures and texts, as well as canonical ones, it shows how attitudes to piracy and privateering were debated and contested between 1550 and 1650. This collection of broad-ranging essays by international figures offers a new perspective on an early modern cultural phenomenon, and satisfies the need for a scholarly, in-depth analysis of this important topic in Renaissance history.

    Picart and David A. Frank. In Frames of Evil: The Holocaust as Horror in American Film, Picart and Frank challenge this classic horror frame—the narrative and visual borders used to demarcate monsters and the monstrous. After examining the way in which directors and producers of the most influential American Holocaust movies default to this Gothic frame, they propose that multiple frames are needed to account for evil and genocide.Using Schindler’s List, The Silence of the Lambs, and Apt Pupil as case studies, the authors provide substantive and critical analyses of these films that transcend the classic horror interpretation. For example, Schindler’s List, say Picart and Frank, has the appearance of a historical docudrama but actually employs the visual rhetoric and narrative devices of the Hollywood horror film. The authors argue that evil has a face: Nazism, which is configured as quintessentially innate, and supernaturally crafty.Frames of Evil, which is augmented by thirty-six film and publicity stills, also explores the commercial exploitation of suffering in film and offers constructive ways of critically evaluating this exploitation. The authors suggest that audiences will recognize their participation in much larger narrative formulas that place a premium on monstrosity and elide the role of modernity in depriving millions of their lives and dignity, often framing the suffering of others in a manner that allows for merely “documentary” enjoyment.

    She is allowed to relive his epic journey and becomes drawn into an unnerving yet moving tapestry of extraordinary events that take place in prisoner of war camps deep within Russia.Taken by force at age sixteen from the protective circle of his family in Germany, Janos is tossed into the cataclysmic, last-gasp efforts of World War II. His several years-long journey takes him to a place of darkness, where he lives through a near-death experience and must survive physical and emotional starvation, hard labor and ostracism; yet it also carries him into unlikely places and relationships where friendships, compassion, healing, mentoring and love can amazingly still flourish.As the story unfolds, Janos' journey accelerates his passage from adolescence to manhood. Almost miraculously, he survives while vast numbers of his fellow prisoners of war perish.

    It examines this pivotal era through the reign of Charlemagne's grandson, Louis the German (826 876), one of the longest-ruling Carolingian kings. Eric J. Goldberg's book brings the enigmatic Louis to life and makes a vital contribution to recent reevaluations of the late Carolingian age.In the Treaty of Verdun of 843, Louis inherited the eastern territories of the Carolingian empire, thereby laying the foundations for an east Frankish kingdom. But, as Goldberg emphasizes, Louis was never satisfied with his realm beyond the Rhine. Louis was a skilled and cultured ruler who modeled himself on Charlemagne, and he aspired to rebuild his grandfather's empire. This ambition to reunite Europe brought Louis into repeated conflict with other rulers: Carolingian kings, Byzantine emperors, Bulgar khans, Roman popes, and Slavic warlords. While Louis ultimately failed to reunify the empire, his fifty-year reign produced a period of remarkable political consolidation and cultural creativity in central Europe.By highlighting the ways in which dynastic rivalries, aristocratic rebellions, diplomacy, and warfare shaped Louis's reign, Struggle for Empire uncovers the dynamism and innovation of ninth-century kingship. To trace Louis's evolving policies, Goldberg moves beyond the evidence traditionally used to study his reign the Annals of Fulda and exploits the visual arts, liturgy, archeology, and especially charters. The result is a remarkably comprehensive and colorful picture of Carolingian kingship in action."

    It is the story of a country that, while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the political trajectories of its neighbours.This first volume (of two) begins with the origins and consequences of the medieval myth of the 'Reich,' which was to experience a fateful renaissance in the twentieth century, and ends with the collapse of the first German democracy. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyses the decisions that shaped the country's triumphs and catastrophes, interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German people and their ownself-perception.With a forthcoming second volume to take the story up to reunification in 1990, Germany: The Long Road West will be welcomed by scholars, students, and anyone wishing to understand this most complex and contradictory of countries..