Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.From BooklistIf there is an explanation for the political killing perpetrated in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, historian Snyder roots it in agriculture. Stalin wanted to collectivize farmers; Hitler wanted to eliminate them so Germans could colonize the land. The dictators wielded frightening power to advance such fantasies toward reality, and the despots toted up about 14 million corpses between them, so stupefying a figure that Snyder sets himself three goals here: to break down the number into the various actions of murder that comprise it, from liquidation of the kulaks to the final solution; to restore humanity to the victims via surviving testimony to their fates; and to deny Hitler and Stalin any historical justification for their policies, which at the time had legions of supporters and have some even today. Such scope may render Snyder’s project too imposing to casual readers, but it would engage those exposed to the period’s chronology and major interpretive issues, such as the extent to which the Nazi and Soviet systems may be compared. Solid and judicious scholarship for large WWII collections.

    Thomas Asbridge—a renowned historian who writes with “maximum vividness” (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker)—covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this  big, ambitious, readable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history. From Richard the Lionheart to the mighty Saladin, from the emperors of Byzantium to the Knights Templar, Asbridge’s book is a magnificent epic of Holy War between the Christian and Islamic worlds, full of adventure, intrigue, and sweeping grandeur.

    Dominated by war, conquest, and the struggle to balance the stability brought by royal power with the rights of the governed, it was a period that put into place the foundation of much of the world we know today.Taught by Professor Jennifer Paxton, an honored scholar and award-winning teacher at Georgetown University and The Catholic University of America, The Story of Medieval England's 36 lectures feature a level of detail and attention to key figures that set this course apart from those with a more narrow focus.

    Endowed with English royal blood on her mother's side, she was betrothed in infancy to Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII of England, an alliance that greatly benefited both sides. Yet Arthur died weeks after their marriage in 1501, and Catherine found herself remarried to his younger brother, soon to become Henry VIII. The history of England-and indeed of Europe-was forever altered by their union.Drawing on his deep knowledge of both Spain and England, Giles Tremlett has produced the first full biography in more than four decades of the tenacious woman whose marriage to Henry VIII lasted twice as long (twenty-four years) as his five other marriages combined. Her refusal to divorce him put her at the center of one of history's greatest power struggles, one that has resonated down through the centuries- Henry's break away from the Catholic Church as, bereft of a son, he attempted to annul his marriage to Catherine and wed Anne Boleyn. Catherine's daughter, Mary, would controversially inherit Henry's throne; briefly and bloodily, she returned England to the Catholicism of her mother's native Spain, foreshadowing the Spanish Armada some three decades later.From Catherine's peripatetic childhood at the glittering court of Ferdinand and Isabella to the battlefield at Flodden, where she, in Henry's absence abroad, led the English forces to victory against Scotland to her determination to remain queen and her last years in almost monastic isolation, Giles Tremlett vividly re-creates the life of a giant figure in the sixteenth century. Catherine of Aragon will take its place among the best of Tudor biography.

    From Bach, Goethe, and Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein, from the arts and humanities to science and philosophy, The German Genius is a lively and accessible review of over 250 years of German intellectual history. In the process, it explains the devastating effects of World War II, which transformed a vibrant and brilliantly artistic culture into a vehicle of warfare and destruction, and it shows how the German culture advanced in the war’s aftermath.

    It was the launching pad for Hitler's empire, the embodiment of his vision of a world metropolis. Berlin was also the place where Hitler's Reich would ultimately fall. Berlin suffered more air raids than any other German city and endured the full force of a Soviet siege. In Berlin at War, historian Roger Moorhouse uses diaries, memoirs, and interviews to provide a searing first-hand account of life and death in the Nazi capital -- the privations, the hopes and fears, and the nonconformist tradition that saw some Berliners provide underground succor to the city's remaining Jews. Combining comprehensive research with gripping narrative, Berlin at War is the incredible story of the city -- and people -- that saw the whole of World War II.

    As colonial forces moved in, their ruthless punitive raids became an open war of extermination. Thousands of the indigenous people were killed or driven out into the desert to die. By 1905, the survivors were interned in concentration camps, and systematically starved and worked to death.Years later, the people and ideas that drove the ethnic cleansing of German South West Africa would influence the formation of the Nazi party. The Kaiser's Holocaust uncovers extraordinary links between the two regimes: their ideologies, personnel, even symbols and uniform. The Herero and Nama genocide was deliberately concealed for almost a century. Today, as the graves of the victims are uncovered, its re-emergence challenges the belief that Nazism was an aberration in European history. The Kaiser's Holocaust passionately narrates this harrowing story and explores one of the defining episodes of the twentieth century from a new angle. Moving, powerful and unforgettable, it is a story that needs to be told.

    They lived a paradox--unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. "When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone" is the astonishing and inspiring story of their rescue.Journalist Gal Beckerman draws on newly released Soviet government documents as well as hundreds of oral interviews with refuseniks, activists, Zionist "hooligans," and Congressional staffers. He shows not only how the movement led to a mass exodus in 1989, but also how it shaped the American Jewish community, giving it a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and teaching it to flex its political muscle. He also makes a convincing case that the movement put human rights at the center of American foreign policy for the very first time, helping to end the Cold War.In cinematic detail, the book introduces us to all the major players, from the flamboyant Meir Kahane, head of the paramilitary Jewish Defense League, to Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who labored in a Siberian prison camp for over a decade, to Lynn Singer, the small, fiery Long Island housewife who went from organizing local rallies to strong-arming Soviet diplomats. This multi-generational saga, filled with suspense and packed with revelations, provides an essential missing piece of Cold War and Jewish history.

    More than ten years in the making, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy tells the dramatic story of the Pope’s battle with communism in light of new and recently disclosed information and brings to a close Weigel’s landmark portrait of a man who not only left an indelible mark on the Catholic Church, but also changed the course of world history. When he was elected pope in the fall of 1978, few people had ever heard of the charismatic Karol Wojty³a. But in a very short time he would ignite a revolution of conscience in his native Poland that would ultimately lead to the collapse of European communism and death of the Soviet Union. What even fewer people knew was that the KGB, the Polish Secret Police, and the East German Stasi had been waging a dangerous, decades-long war against Wojty³a and the Vatican itself. Weigel, with unprecedented access to many Soviet-era documents, chronicles John Paul’s struggle against the dark forces of communism.  Moreover, Weigel recounts the tumultuous last years of John Paul’s life as he dealt with a crippling illness as well as the “new world disorder” and revelations about corruption within the Catholic Church. Weigel’s thought-provoking biography of John Paul II concludes with a probing and passionate assessment of a man who lived his life as a witness to hope in service to the Christian ideals he embraced.

    Enjoy the imperial sights of Vienna and walking tours of exotic Dubrovnik. Then delve into the region's natural wonders: hike through the waterfall wonderland at Plitvice Lakes National Park, drive the winding road to the Julian Alps, and watch the sun dip slowly into the Adriatic from the Dalmatian Coast.Rick's candid, humorous advice will guide you to good-value hotels and restaurants. He'll help you plan where to go and what to see, depending on the length of your trip. You'll learn which sights are worth your time and money, and how to get around by train, bus, car, and boat. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves guidebook is a tour guide in your pocket.

    Holbach’s house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.In A Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes of this exceptional group of friends. All brilliant minds, full of wit, courage, and insight, their thinking created a different and radical French Enlightenment based on atheism, passion, reason, and truly humanist thinking. A startlingly relevant work of narrative history, A Wicked Company forces us to confront with new eyes the foundational debates about modern society and its future.

    Professor Ralph Raico shows them to be wolves in sheep's clothing and their wars as attacks on human liberty and human rights.In the backdrop of this blistering and deeply insightful and scholarly history is the whitewashing of "great leaders" like Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, FDR, Truman, Stalin, Trotsky, and other collectivists. They are highly regarded because they were on the "right side" of the rise of the state. But do they deserve adulation? Raico says no: these great leaders were main agents in the decline of civilization in the 20th century, all of them anti-liberals who used their power to celebrate and enhance state power.Robert Higgs writes the introduction and cheers this powerful expose as a necessary corrective."For Ralph Raico," writes Robert Higgs in the foreword, "it would be not only unseemly but foolish to quiver obsequiously in the historical presence of a Churchill, a Roosevelt, or a Truman. He knows when he has encountered a politician who lusted after power and public adulation, and he describes the man accordingly. He does not sweep under the rug the crimes committed by the most publicly revered Western political leaders. If they ordered or acceded to the commission of mass murder, he tells us, without mincing words, that they did so. The idea that the United States has invariably played the role of savior or 'good guy' in its international relations Raico recognizes as state propaganda, rather than honest history."Thus, in these pages, you will find descriptions and accounts of World War I, of the lead-up to formal U.S. belligerence in World War II, and of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Truman, among others, that bear little resemblance to what you were taught in school. Here you will encounter, perhaps for the first time, compelling evidence of how the British maneuvered U.S. leaders and tricked the American people prior to the U.S. declarations of war in 1917 and 1941. You will read about how the British undertook to starve the Germans – men, women, and children alike – not only during World War I, but for the greater part of a year after the armistice. You will be presented with descriptions of how the communists were deified and the German people demonized by historians and others who ought to have known better. You will see painted in truer shades a portrait of the epic confrontation between the great majority of Americans who wished to keep their country at peace in 1939, 1940, and 1941 and the well-placed, unscrupulous minority who sought to plunge the United States into the European maelstrom."Raico’s historical essays are not for the faint of heart or for those whose loyalty to the U.S. or British state outweighs their devotion to truth and humanity. Yet Ralph did not invent the ugly facts he recounts here, as his ample documentation attests. Indeed, many historians have known these facts, but few have been willing to step forward and defy politically popular and professionally fashionable views in the forthright, pull-no-punches way that Raico does. The historians’ principal defect for the most part has not been a failure or refusal to dig out the relevant facts, but rather a tendency to go along to get along in academia and 'respectable' society, a sphere in which individual honesty and courage generally count against a writer or teacher, whereas capitulation to trendy nonsense often brings great rewards and professional acclaim."

    David Starkey looks at the monarchy as a whole, charting its history from Roman times, to the Wars of the Roses, the chaos of the Civil War, the fall of Charles I and Cromwell's emergence as Lord Protector - all the way up until the Victorian era when Britain's monarchs came face-to-face with modernity.

    Less well-known is that this savage war (1853-1856) killed almost a million soldiers and countless civilians; that it enmeshed four great empires—the British, French, Turkish, and Russian—in a battle over religion as well as territory; that it fixed the fault lines between Russia and the West; that it set in motion the conflicts that would dominate the century to come.In this masterly history, Orlando Figes reconstructs the first full conflagration of modernity, a global industrialized struggle fought with unusual ferocity and incompetence. Drawing on untapped Russian and Ottoman as well as European sources, Figes vividly depicts the world at war, from the palaces of St. Petersburg to the holy sites of Jerusalem; from the young Tolstoy reporting in Sevastopol to Tsar Nicolas, haunted by dreams of religious salvation; from the ordinary soldiers and nurses on the battlefields to the women and children in towns under siege..Original, magisterial, alive with voices of the time, The Crimean War is a historical tour de force whose depiction of ethnic cleansing and the West's relations with the Muslim world resonates with contemporary overtones. At once a rigorous, original study and a sweeping, panoramic narrative, The Crimean War is the definitive account of the war that mapped the terrain for today's world..

    What made Arthur Duke of Wellington the military genius who was never defeated in battle? Peter Snow recalls how Wellington evolved from a backward, sensitive schoolboy into the aloof but brilliant commander.

    He displayed his strategic brilliance in such campaigns as the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg of France, the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, and the battles of Kharkov and Kursk. Manstein also stands as one of the war’s most enigmatic and controversial figures. To some, he was a leading proponent of the Nazi regime and a symbol of the moral corruption of the Wehrmacht. Yet he also disobeyed Hitler, who dismissed his leading Field Marshal over this incident, and has been suspected by some of conspiring against the Führer. Sentenced to eighteen years by a British war tribunal at Hamburg in 1949, Manstein was released in 1953 and went on to advise the West German government in founding its new army within NATO. Military historian and strategist Mungo Melvin combines his research in German military archives and battlefield records with unprecedented access to family archives to get to the truth of Manstein’s life and deliver this definitive biography of the man and his career. 510 pages of narrative, 647 pages in total

    And if Constantine the emperor were not problem enough, we all know that Constantinianism has been very bad for the church. Or do we know these things? Peter Leithart weighs these claims and finds them wanting. And what's more, in focusing on these historical mirages we have failed to notice the true significance of Constantine and Rome baptized. For beneath the surface of this contested story there emerges a deeper narrative of the end of Roman sacrifice--a tectonic shift in the political theology of an empire--and with far-reaching implications. In this probing and informative book Peter Leithart examines the real Constantine, weighs the charges against Constantinianism, and sets the terms for a new conversation about this pivotal emperor and the Christendom that emerged.

    In 1972 the Hamburg State Court acquitted Walter Becker, the German chief of police in the Polish city of Starachowice, of war crimes committed against Jews. Thirty years before, Becker had been responsible for liquidating the nearby Jewish ghetto, sending nearly 4,000 Jews to their deaths at Treblinka and 1,600 to slave-labor factories. The shocking acquittal, delivered despite the incriminating eyewitness testimony of survivors, drives this author’s inquiry. Drawing on the rich testimony of survivors of the Starachowice slave-labor camps, Christopher R. Browning examines the experiences and survival strategies of the Jewish prisoners and the policies and personnel of the Nazi guard. From the killings in the market square in 1942 through the succession of brutal camp regimes, there are stories of heroism, of corruption and retribution, of desperate choices forced on husbands and wives, parents and children. In the end, the ties of family and neighbor are the sinews of survival. 10 photos.

    Philip prepared the ground, assembled the resources, conceived the strategic vision, and launched the first modern, tactically sophisticated and strategically capable army in Western military history, making the later victories of his son Alexander possible.Philip’s death marked the passing of the classical age of Greek history and warfare and the beginning of its imperial age. To Philip belongs the title of the first great general of a new age of warfare in the West, an age that he initiated with his introduction of a new instrument of war, the Macedonian phalanx, and the tactical doctrines to ensure its success. As a practitioner of the political art, Philip also had no equal. In all these things, Philip exceeded Alexander’s triumphs.This book establishes Philip’s legitimate and deserved place in military history, which, until now, has been largely minimized in favor of his son by the classicist writers who have dominated the field of ancient biography. Richard Gabriel, renowned military historian, has given us the first military biography of Philip II of Macedonia.

    Life at work is difficult but fulfilling; life at home a constant round of arguments—often prompted by her fly-by-night sister, Ellen, the apple of her short-tempered father's eye. Then Frank turns up at the house one night—a guard at the camp, he's been watching Mary for weeks—and won't leave until she agrees to walk out with him. Frank Shuttleworth is a difficult man to love and it's not long before Mary gives him his marching orders. But Shuttleworth won't take no for an answer and the gossips are eager for their next victim, and for the slightest hint of fraternization with the enemy. Suddently, not only Mary's happiness but her very life is threatened by the most dangerous of wartime secrets.

    An English schoolboy, 1903-1922 -- Servant of the Empire, 1922-1927 -- Among the poor, 1927-1933 -- A widow on Wigan, 1935-1936 -- The war in Spain, 1937 -- Bearing witness, 1937-1938 -- Coming up for air, 1938-1939 -- Surviving the Blitz, 1940-1941 -- A voice on the BBC, 1941-1943 -- Animal Farm, 1944-1945 -- Last man in Europe, 1945-1946 -- Orwell's list, 1946-1947 -- Big Brother and the world, 1948-1950.Listening Length: 7 hours and 36 minutes

    Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for the vector mosquitoes of yellow fever and malaria, and these diseases wrought systematic havoc among armies and would-be settlers. Because yellow fever confers immunity on survivors of the disease, and because malaria confers resistance, these diseases played partisan roles in the struggles for empire and revolution, attacking some populations more severely than others. In particular, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, which helped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish in the face of predatory rivals in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions to succeed by decimating forces sent out from Europe to prevent them.

    The Holocaust Sites of Europe offers the first comprehensive guide to these sites, including much practical information as well as the historical context. It serves as an indispensable guide for anyone seeking to add another layer to their understanding of the Holocaust by visiting these important sites for themselves.  Including not only the notorious concentration and death camps, such as Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, but also lesser known examples, such as Sered’ in Slovakia, The Holocaust Sites of Europe incorporates detailed descriptions of massacre sites, ghettos, “Euthanasia” centers and Roma and Sinti sites that witnessed similar crimes. Extensive reference to the many museums and memorials that commemorate the Holocaust complete this guide.

    Covering a wide geographical canvas, from America to the Far East, Steiner provides an indispensable reassessment of the most disputed events of these tumultuous years.Steiner underlines the far-reaching consequences of the Great Depression, which shifted the initiative in international affairs from those who upheld the status quo to those who were intent on destroying it. In Europe, the l930s were Hitler's years. He moved the major chess pieces on the board, forcing the others to respond. From the start, Steiner argues, he intended war, and he repeatedly gambled on Germany's future to acquire the necessary resources to fulfil his continental ambitions. Only war could have stopped him-an unwelcome message for most of Europe. Misperception, miscomprehension, and misjudgment on the part of the other Great Powers leaders opened the way for Hitler's repeated diplomatic successes.It is ideology that distinguished the Hitler era from previous struggles for the mastery of Europe. Ideological presumptions created false images and raised barriers to understanding that even good intelligence could not penetrate. Only when the leaders of Britain and France realized the scale of Hitler's ambition, and the challenge Germany posed to their Great Power status, did they finally declare war.

    There many died of starvation, disease, and exhaustion, and some were killed by criminals and camp guards. In 1939, as the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland, many Polish citizens found themselves swept up by the Soviet occupation and sent into the Gulag. One such victim was Julius Margolin, a Pinsk-born Jewish philosopher and writer living in Palestine who was in Poland on family matters.Margolin's Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back offers a powerful, first-person account of one of the most shocking chapters of the violent twentieth century. Opening with the outbreak of World War II in Poland, Margolin relates its devastating impact on the Jews and his arrest and imprisonment in the Gulag system. During his incarceration from 1940 to 1945, he nearly died from starvation and overwork but was able to return to Western Europe and rejoin his family in Palestine. With a philosopher's astute analysis of man and society, as well as with humor, his memoir of flight, entrapment, and survival details the choices and dilemmas faced by an individual under extreme duress. Margolin's moving account illuminates universal issues of human rights under a totalitarian regime and ultimately the triumph of human dignity and decency.This translation by Stefani Hoffman is the first English-language edition of this classic work, originally written in Russian in 1947 and published in an abridged French version in 1949. Circulated in a Russian samizdat version in the USSR, it exerted considerable influence on the formation of the genre of Gulag memoirs and was eagerly read by Soviet dissidents. Timothy Snyder's foreword and Katherine Jolluck's introduction contextualize the creation of this remarkable account of a Jewish world ravaged in the Stalinist empire--and the life of the man who was determined to reveal the horrors of the gulag camps and the plight of the zeks to the world.

    He begins by describing his unusual childhood and the devastating Yokohama earthquake in 1923. In 1930 the family settled in Warsaw, Poland. However they became split up when Poland became overrun by the Nazis and the Russians in 1939. Whilst his father and older brother were in England, Tom found himself trapped in the Russian-occupied part of the country and, after several agonizing months, eventually made his way to Warsaw where his mother had managed to survive the bombing of the city. He vividly describes life under both regimes, as well as the cat-and-mouse game his mother was forced to play with the Gestapo in order to avoid arrest. Later, both became deeply involved with the sheltering of escaped British prisoners of war and it was this activity which led to his capture and imprisonment in a jail in Krakow. Miraculously released after eighteen months captivity, largely due to his command of the Polish language, he vowed to escape to Britain at all cost.Later in the war and after many harrowing experiences he succeeded in getting through to the Red Army, but was again faced with hostility, suspicion and imprisonment. Held for several months in primitive conditions, he, along with two British companions was finally taken to Moscow and handed over to the British Military Mission there. Arriving in Scotland with a convoy of supply ships late in December 1944, he had the galling experience of spending a night in Brixton Prison. With nowhere to go he then began a frantic search for his father and brother, who were convinced that he was dead. His dream came true, but even after the ending of hostilities and later in time, tragedy struck with the news of his mother’s arrest by the Polish Communist authorities. Sentenced to death for alleged espionage, she spent several years in prison, being freed in a Government amnesty and arriving in England in 1956.

    Travelling the length and breadth of the country, his intention was to seek out the remarkable achievements of the craftsmen, engineers, inventors and industrial workers whose endeavour made engines like Fred's possible. It was a journey that took him to Britain's most iconic engineering marvels as well as less familiar sites: from the Forth Bridge and the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge to Europe's last deep-working iron ore mine in Cumbria and a local castings workshop in Bo'ness. Along the way he called in on numerous old friends and even managed to squeeze in a trip to Buckingham Palace to collect his MBE.This behind-the-scenes account of that ambitious journey is made all the more remarkable by Fred's heroic efforts to complete it while suffering from terminal cancer. It is not only a glorious testament to our nation's industrial achievements but also a story of the friendships, unfailing courage and determination of the nation's favourite steeplejack.

    Instead, in a gallant stand that captured the world’s imagination, the tiny Finnish army was able to hold off Stalin’s mechanized echelons for 105 days. Gordon F. Sander peels away the layers of myth surrounding this Nordic Thermopylae to reveal the conflict in its full military, political, and cultural contexts. A bestseller in Finland, the English-language version of Sander’s book draws on interviews with both Finnish and Russian veterans of the war, in addition to a bountiful archive of articles from both the Western and Finnish press, to create the most comprehensive and up-to-date single-volume history of the war.Written in “real time” to give the reader a you-are-there feeling, the book describes the Finns’ stunning defeat of the Soviets’ initial massive offensive, including the destruction of several Red divisions by Finnish ski troops; the deceptively calm January interregnum, when the two sides engaged in a complicated diplomatic minuet; and the final, titanic Red assault itself, which finally drove the Finns to the peace table—though not before they had forged one of the great legends of modern military history.Using his intimate knowledge of Finland and Finnish history, the author explains how the Finns’ winter skills, their innate sisu, or toughness, and their devotion to both their young republic and their brilliant and inspiring commander-in-chief, Gustav Mannerheim, together enabled them to make their historic stand.Sander explores such oft-ignored aspects of the conflict as Finnish press censorship; the abortive Allied “rescue mission” across Scandinavia that was a factor in Stalin’s surprising decision to bring the war to a halt; the Kremlin’s novel use of paratroopers in the war; and the pivotal role played by the Lotta Svard, the Finnish all-purpose women’s auxiliary. Illustrating Sander’s fast-paced text are nearly 50 photographs, including numerous never-seen-before images of both the battlefront and the home front.Hailed by Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s leading daily, as “a bittersweet morality play” that “opens up this quintessentially Finnish tale to a much wider and admiring readership” and by STT, Finland’s leading news agency, as “an outstanding book that combines brilliant writing with a rock-solid factual foundation,” Sander’s compelling book fills a key gap in the record of the Second World War.

    They were arguably the most important thinkers in Europe, and their exchange touched upon the most urgent questions in the history of philosophy: What is human finitude? What is objectivity? What is culture? What is truth?Over the last eighty years the Davos encounter has acquired an allegorical significance, as if it marked an ultimate and irreparable rupture in twentieth-century Continental thought. Here, in a reconstruction at once historical and philosophical, Peter Gordon reexamines the conversation, its origins and its aftermath, resuscitating an event that has become entombed in its own mythology. Through a close and painstaking analysis, Gordon dissects the exchange itself to reveal that it was at core a philosophical disagreement over what it means to be human.But Gordon also shows how the life and work of these two philosophers remained closely intertwined. Their disagreement can be understood only if we appreciate their common point of departure as thinkers of the German interwar crisis, an era of rebellion that touched all of the major philosophical movements of the day life-philosophy, philosophical anthropology, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, and existentialism. As Gordon explains, the Davos debate would continue to both inspire and provoke well after the two men had gone their separate ways. It remains, even today, a touchstone of philosophical memory.This clear, riveting book will be of great interest not only to philosophers and to historians of philosophy but also to anyone interested in the great intellectual ferment of Europe s interwar years."

    Eugenics informed social and scientific policy across the political spectrum, from liberal welfare measures in emerging social-democratic states to feminist ambitions for birth control, from public health campaigns to totalitarian dreams of the perfectibility of man. This book dispels for uninitiated readers the automatic and apparently exclusive link between eugenics and the Holocaust. It is the first world history of eugenics and an indispensable core text for both teaching and research. Eugenics has accumulated generations of interest as experts attempted to connect biology, human capacity, and policy. In the past and the present, eugenics speaks to questions of race, class, gender and sex, evolution, governance, nationalism, disability, and the social implications of science. In the current climate, in which the human genome project, stem cell research, and new reproductive technologies have proven so controversial, the history of eugenics has much to teach us about the relationship between scientific research, technology, and human ethical decision-making.

    Not only have we already become nostalgic for them, but in many ways the decade does seem like a thoroughly foreign country. This book offers and in-depth history of the decade.

    This is the first book in English for over fifty years to survey this most elusive and fascinating period in medieval history. It is also the first book in any language to combine the expertise of two authors who are specialists in the written, archaeological and visual evidence from this period, a combination of particular importance to the iconoclasm debate. The authors have worked together to provide a comprehensive overview of the visual, written and other materials that together help clarify the complex issues of iconoclasm in Byzantium. In doing so they challenge many traditional assumptions about iconoclasm and set the period firmly in its broader political, cultural and social-economic context.

    The discovery of more than 1,500 prized paintings and drawings in a private Munich residence, as well as a recent movie about Allied attempts to recover European works of art, have brought Nazi plundering back into the headlines, but the thievery was far from being limited to works of art. From 1942 onwards, ordinary Parisian Jews—mostly poor families and recent immigrants from Eastern Europe—were robbed, not of sculptures or paintings, but of toys, saucepans, furniture, and sheets. Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews tells how this vast enterprise of plunder was implemented in the streets of Paris by analyzing images from an album of photographs found in the Federal Archives of Koblenz. Brought from Paris in 1945, the photographs were cataloged by the staff of the Munich Central Collecting Point. Beyond bearing witness to the petty acts of larceny, these images provide crucial information on how the Germans saw their work. They enable us to grasp the “Nazi gaze” and to confront the issue of the relation between greed and mass destruction.

    But in this pathbreaking work, Eric Nelson argues that this familiar story is wrong. Instead, he contends, political thought in early-modern Europe became less, not more, secular with time, and it was the Christian encounter with Hebrew sources that provoked this radical transformation.During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars began to regard the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel. Newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative guides to the institutions and practices of the perfect republic. This thinking resulted in a sweeping reorientation of political commitments. In the book s central chapters, Nelson identifies three transformative claims introduced into European political theory by the Hebrew revival: the argument that republics are the only legitimate regimes; the idea that the state should coercively maintain an egalitarian distribution of property; and the belief that a godly republic would tolerate religious diversity. One major consequence of Nelson s work is that the revolutionary politics of John Milton, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes appear in a brand-new light.Nelson demonstrates that central features of modern political thought emerged from an attempt to emulate a constitution designed by God. This paradox, a reminder that while we may live in a secular age, we owe our politics to an age of religious fervor, in turn illuminates fault lines in contemporary political discourse."

    Acclaimed historian G. J. Meyer reveals the flesh-and-bone reality in all its wild excess.In 1485, young Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne was so weak as to be almost laughable, crossed the English Channel from France at the head of a ragtag little army and took the crown from the family that had ruled England for almost four hundred years. Half a century later his son, Henry VIII, desperate to rid himself of his first wife in order to marry a second, launched a reign of terror aimed at taking powers no previous monarch had even dreamed of possessing. In the process he plunged his kingdom into generations of division and disorder, creating a legacy of blood and betrayal that would blight the lives of his children and the destiny of his country.The boy king Edward VI, a fervent believer in reforming the English church, died before bringing to fruition his dream of a second English Reformation. Mary I, the disgraced daughter of Catherine of Aragon, tried and failed to reestablish the Catholic Church and produce an heir. And finally came Elizabeth I, who devoted her life to creating an image of herself as Gloriana the Virgin Queen but, behind that mask, sacrificed all chance of personal happiness in order to survive.  The Tudors weaves together all the sinners and saints, the tragedies and triumphs, the high dreams and dark crimes, that reveal the Tudor era to be, in its enthralling, notorious truth, as momentous and as fascinating as the fictions audiences have come to love.

    Under furious attack both from the ground and the air, the average survival time of a First World War reconnaissance pilot is eighteen hours. George Duckwell, reluctant novice-hero of the Royal Flying Corps, is living on borrowed time. Having joined up to escape disgrace at home, George can only watch in horror as a succession of comrades - inexperienced, under-trained and hopelessly idealistic - are shot down, burned, maimed and killed, while somehow he survives. Struggling to make sense of the conflict, George forms an awkward friendship with William 'Mac' MacBride, an enigmatic Canadian ace, waging his own private war against the legendary Red Baron. But when Mac falls for George's sweetheart - front-line nurse Emily - heartbroken George learns that Mac's mysterious past is darker than he imagined, and the fragile bond that keeps the two men alive comes under threat on the eve of the most lethal conflict the modern world has known.

    Conventionally viewed as worthless, incapable of sustained policy, and significant only for his sporadic displays of ill-directed energy or a stubborn adherence to greedy and ambitious favorites, he has been presented as fit only to be deposed and replaced by someone more worthy of the throne.This definitive biography, the fruit of a lifetime’s study, does not present Edward II as a heroic or successful king: his deposition after a turbulent reign of nearly twenty years is proof enough that it went terribly wrong. But Seymour Phillips’ scrutiny of the multitude of available sources shows that a richer picture emerges, in line with the complexity of events and of the man himself. If Edward II was not a successful king, he was not fundamentally different in many ways from most English monarchs. The biography strikes a deft balance, taking full account of the problems the king faced in England, Scotland, and Ireland and in his relations with France. It also tackles the contentious issue of whether Edward II did not die in 1327, murdered under barbaric circumstances, but lived on as a captive in England and then a wanderer on the Continent. Eight hundred years on, a king’s life is properly examined.

    But the reality is far richer, and Martin Windrow describes it in gripping detail, including the colonial missions in North Africa and Vietnam, the imperative to build empire, and the impact of Islamic fundamentalism.

    Having grown up in Paris, Prague, and England, he was also one of the last great Jewish thinkers from Central Europe to experience directly the impact of the Holocaust. His intellectual trajectory differed from that of similar thinkers, both in producing a highly integrated philosophy of modernity and in combining a respect for nationalism with an appreciation of the power of modern science. Gellner was a fierce opponent, in private as well as in public, of such contemporaries as Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Noam Chomsky and Edward Said. As this definitive biography shows, he was passionate in the defense of reason against every form of relativism—a battle that his intellectual inheritors continue to this day.

    an illustrated history, from 160 onwards, over 550 archived photographs

    This is a taster of the extraordinary accounts provided by soldiers of the Durham Light Infantry, painting a vivid picture of the real horror, boredom, hardship, sacrifice, heroism, and comradeship of World War 2.

    Spanos was not much more than a boy when he went off to fight in World War II. In the chaos of his first battle, what would later become legendary as the Battle of the Bulge, he was separated from his antitank gun crew and taken prisoner in the Ardennes forest. Along with a procession of other prisoners of war, he was marched and conveyed by freight train to Dresden. Surviving the brutal conditions of the labor camps and the Allies’ devastating firebombing of the city, he escaped as the losing German army retreated. For Spanos, this was never a “war story.” It was the singular, irreducible, unnameable, dreadful experience of war. In the face of the American myth of the greatest generation, this renowned literary scholar looks back at that time and crafts a dissident, dissonant remembrance of the “just war.” Retrieving the singularity of the experience of war from the grip of official American cultural memory, Spanos recaptures something of the boy’s life that he lost. His book is an attempt to rescue some semblance of his awakened being—and that of the multitude of young men who fought—from the oblivion to which they have been relegated under the banalizing memorialization of the “sacrifices of our greatest generation.”

    The first book on the subject in English, it details the danger and complexity behind Zegota rescue attempts, clarifying the relationship of the Germans, who had total control; the Poles, who were relegated to sub-human status and treated as slave labor; and the Jews, designated nonhuman and collectively condemned to death.Illuminating the moral dilemmas that arose as one life was pitted against another under the lawless apartheid conditions created by the Nazis, Code Name: Zegota explores the critical situation in occupied Poland and the personalities that responded to desperate conditions with a mix of courage and creativity. It profiles the key players and the network behind them and describes the sophisticated organization and its mode of operation. The cast of characters ranges from members of prewar Poland's cultural and political elite to Girl Guides and Boy Scouts, who worked as couriers. As this inspiring book shows, all of these brave souls risked torture, concentration camps, and death--and many paid the price.

    Under Lord Derbys scheme, and in response to Kitcheners famous call for a million volunteers, local communities raised (and initially often paid for) entire battalions for service on the Western Front. Their experience was all too frequently tragic, as men who had known each other all their lives, had worked, volunteered, and trained together, and had shipped to France together, encountered the first full fury of modern battle on the Somme in July 1916. Many of the Pals battalions would not long survive that first brutal baptism, but their spirit and fighting qualities have gone down into history - these were, truly, the cream of Britains young men, and every single one of them was a volunteer.This is a comprehensive history of the Tyneside Irish Brigade raised in the North East. It covers their raising, training and active service as well as the aftermath of the war and how it effected the local community. Included is an invaluable nominal roll which will appeal to local, family and military enthusiasts alike.

    The significance of the emergence of such scientific values lies above all in their ability to provide the criteria by which we come to appraise cognitive enquiry, and which shape our understanding of what it can achieve.The period between the 1680s and the middle of the eighteenth century is a very distinctive one in this development. It is then that we witness the emergence of the idea that scientific values form a model for all cognitive claims. It is also at this time that science explicitly goes beyond technical expertise and begins to articulate a world-view designed to displace others, whether humanist or Christian. But what occurred took place in a peculiar and overdetermined fashion, and the outcome in the mid-eighteenth century was not the triumph of 'reason', as has commonly been supposed, but rather a simultaneous elevation of the standing of science and the beginnings of a serious questioning of whether science offers a comprehensive form of understanding.The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility is the sequel to Stephen Gaukroger's acclaimed 2006 book The Emergence of a Scientific Culture. It offers a rich and fascinating picture of the development of intellectual culture in a period where understandings of the natural realm began to fragment.

    In 1216, taking advantage of the turmoil created in England by King John’s inept rule, Prince Louis of France invaded England and allied with English rebels. The prize was the crown of England. Within months Louis had seized control of one-third of the country, including London. This is the first book to cover the bloody events of the invasion, one of the most dramatic but most overlooked episodes of English history. The text vividly describes the campaigns, sieges, battles and atrocities of the invasion and its colourful leaders – Louis the Lion, King John, William Marshal, and the mercenaries Fawkes de Béauté and Eustace the Monk – to offer the first detailed military analysis of this epic struggle for England.

    79, Pliny the Younger looked up and saw a spectacle the world would never forget. As he later wrote down, "A cloud was ascending, the appearance of which I cannot give you a more exact description of than by likening it to that of a great pine tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a very tall trunk, which spread itself out at the top into a sort of branches. It appeared sometimes bright and sometimes dark and spotted, according as it was either more or less impregnated with earth and cinders."

    By late November Napoleon had reached the banks of the River Berezina - the last natural obstacle between his army and the safety of the Polish frontier. But instead of finding the river frozen solid enough to march his men across, an unseasonable thaw had turned the Berezina into an icy torrent. Having already ordered the burning of his bridging equipment, Napoleon's predicament was serious enough: but with the army of Admiral Chichagov holding the opposite bank, and those of Kutusov and Wittgenstein closing fast, it was critical. Only a miracle could save him ... In a gripping narrative Alexander Mikaberidze describes how Napoleon rose from the pit of despair to the peak of his powers in order to achieve that miracle. Drawing on contemporary sources - letters, diaries, memoirs - he recreates one of the greatest escapes in military history - a story often half-told in general histories of the Russian campaign but never before fully explored.242 pages of narrative, 284 pages in total

    While there are indeed many infamous female poisoners, such as Mary Ann Cotton, who is believed to have claimed at least 20 victims between 1852 and 1872, and Mary Wilson, who killed her husbands and lovers in the 1950s for the proceeds of their insurance policies, there are also many men who chose poison as their preferred means to a deadly end. Between 1897 and 1902, George Chapman poisoned three of his lovers with antimony, while Staffordshire doctor William Palmer murdered at least 10 victims between 1842 and 1856. Readily obtainable, poison was considered the ideal method of murder and its exponents rarely stopped at just one victim. Along with the most notorious cases of murder by poison in Britain, this book also features many of the cases that did not make headlines, examining not only the methods and motives but also the real stories of the perpetrators and their victims.

    Yet, in slightly over a century, the idea of Galicia came to have meaning for both the peoples who lived there and the Habsburg government that ruled it. Indeed, its memory continues to exercise a powerful fascination for those who live in its former territories and for the descendants of those who emigrated out of Galicia.The idea of Galicia was largely produced by the cultures of two cities, Lviv and Cracow. Making use of travelers' accounts, newspaper reports, and literary works, Wolff engages such figures as Emperor Joseph II, Metternich, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Ivan Franko, Stanislaw Wyspiański, Tadeusz Boy Żeleński, Isaac Babel, Martin Buber, and Bruno Schulz. He shows the exceptional importance of provincial space as a site for the evolution of cultural meanings and identities, and analyzes the province as the framework for non-national and multi-national understandings of empire in European history.

    Adolf Hitler approves a secret plan, code-named Kondor, for a U-boat to deliver biological weapons developed in Nazi labs to Japan for use against American forces. In exchange, the Japanese promise to send Hitler gold bullion, which the Reich needs in order to mount a final stand against the Allies. Kapitänleutnant Horst Bekker, the German Navy’s top U-boat skipper, receives orders to undertake the mission to Japan. Bekker, a battered and cynical survivor of the U-boat wars, mourns his wife and daughter killed in a Berlin air raid and is haunted by guilt over their deaths and his survival. He agonizes over issues of loyalty and duty to a Führer and a regime he despises. He questions the morality of a scheme to help the Japanese win the war by killing millions with virulent strains of anthrax and plague. Yet even though he knows the chances of surviving the voyage to Japan are slim, he and his loyal crew depart on the mission.When the Americans and British discover the Nazis’ plan they send an Allied task force into the North Atlantic to find and destroy Bekker’s U-boat and its deadly cargo. Their task becomes ever more urgent when agents learn that a Soviet mole has penetrated the highest levels of Britain’s MI-6. Suddenly the Allies are in a race to keep the U-boat’s cargo from possibly falling into Soviet hands. Employing stealth and deception, Bekker and his crew escape a series of undersea engagements with Allied and Soviet forces. Fighting for survival, Bekker must decide whether to carry out Hitler’s orders and prolong the war or consign the Reich’s weapons of mass death to the North Atlantic deep. His decision could alter the course of history.The Last U-boat published in Germany as Red Alert, 2010.

    Between 1939 and 1945, Greiser was the territorial leader of the Warthegau, an area of western Poland annexed to Nazi Germany. In an effort to make the Warthegau German, Greiser introduced numerous cruel policies. He spearheaded an influx of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans. He segregated Germans from Poles, and introduced wide-ranging discriminatory measures against the Polish population. He refashioned the urban and natural landscape to make it German. And even more chillingly, the first and longest standing ghetto, the largest forced labour program, and the first mass gassings of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were all initiated under Greiser's jurisdiction.Who was the man behind these dreadful policies? Catherine Epstein gives us a compelling biographical portrait of Greiser the man: his birth in the German-Polish borderlands, his rise to Nazi prominence in Danzig, his actions as party leader in the Warthegau, and his trial and execution in postwar Poland. Drawing on a remarkable array of German and Polish sources, she shows how nationalist obsessions, political jealousies, and personal insecurities shaped the policies of a man who held remarkable power in his Nazi fiefdom. Throughout, Epstein confronts a burning question of our age: why do individuals imagine genocide and ethnic cleansing to be solutions to political problems?

    The cargo ship on which she was evacuated from Singapore in 1942 was shelled, leaving her on a makeshift raft with 16 other survivors. One by one they perished, leaving her alone, burnt black by the sun, and suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Discovered by a Japanese destroyer and imprisoned on Banka Island, Turner was beaten and tortured, before being taken to the notorious Palembang jail. Here, crammed with murderers and rapists in a filthy cell, she spent six months, living in daily fear of joining the many who were noisily tortured and executed. In this, the first biography for 40 years, Penny Starns describes the often horrific, but occasionally heart-warming, experiences of this unbreakable woman who, not content with surviving the war, went on to become a brigadier and Chief Military Nurse. Using recently released material from The National Archives and Turner's own words, she re-analyses the Pacific conflict against a backdrop of one woman's incredible fortitude and strength, and brings the story of a remarkable woman to life.

    The unravelling of these empires was both cause and consequence of World War I and resulted in the deaths of millions. It irrevocably changed the landscape of the Middle East and Eurasia and reverberates to this day in conflicts throughout the Caucasus and Middle East. Shattering Empires draws on extensive research in the Ottoman and Russian archives to tell the story of the rivalry and collapse of two great empires. Overturning accounts that portray their clash as one of conflicting nationalisms, this pioneering study argues that geopolitical competition and the emergence of a new global interstate order provide the key to understanding the course of history in the Ottoman-Russian borderlands in the twentieth century. It will appeal to those interested in Middle Eastern, Russian, and Eurasian history, international relations, ethnic conflict, and World War I.

    Providing both historical background and an insightful analysis of the period after 1991, de Waal sheds light on how the region has been scarred by the tumultuous scramble for independence and the three major conflicts that broke out with the end of the Soviet Union--Nagorny Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. The book examines the region as a major energy producer and exporter; offers a compelling account of the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the rise of Mikheil Saakashvili, and the August 2008 war; and considers the failure of the South Caucasus, thus far, to become a single viable region. In addition, the book features a dozen or so "boxes" which provide brief snapshots of such fascinating side topics as the Kurds, Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, the promotion of the region as the "Soviet Florida," and the most famous of all Georgians, Stalin.The Caucasus delivers a vibrantly written and timely account of this turbulent region, one that will prove indispensable for all concerned with world politics. It is, as well, a stimulating read for armchair travelers and for anyone curious about far-flung corners of the world.

    

    From the theological discussion of bodily resurrection to the folkloric use of body parts as remedies, and from the judicial punishment of the corpse to the ceremonial interment of the social elite, this book discusses how seemingly incompatible beliefs about the dead body existed in parallel through this tumultuous period. This study, which is the first to incorporate archaeological evidence of early modern death and burial from across Britain and Ireland, addresses new questions about the materiality of death: what the dead body means, and how its physical substance could be attributed with sentience and even agency. It provides a sophisticated original interpretive framework for the growing quantities of archaeological and historical evidence about mortuary beliefs and practices in early modernity.

    Technically non-combatant spouses of active-duty soldiers, they fought and died in every conflict from the wars of the Revolution through colonial campaigns in Algeria, Mexico, West Africa, and Indochina. At a time when women were strictly controlled by the Napoleonic Code, cantinieres owned property, traveled widely, and exercised a fierce independence from their husbands. However, despite their actions, they passed largely under the radar of the growing feminist and anti-feminist movements that flourished in France from 1792 onward. Based on extensive archival research as well as published sources, Intrepid Women is the first serious book-length study of a previously ignored aspect of women's and military history.

    He was a consistently loyal supporter of the Yorkist dynasty from the late 1450s until his death at Bosworth in 1485. He was an indefatigable royal servant, active in the military field, as an agent of the Crown at home in East Anglia, as a councillor at Westminster and as an ambassador who became England's leading envoy to France. And yet there were other men of the period, equally significant in their careers, for whom no biographies have been forthcoming.To the question - why write a biography of John Howard? one answer must be - because we can. With the exceptions of the kings he served, no other man of the fifteenth-century peerage has left us so much in the way of evidence of his day-to-day life, not only of his royal service but his domestic concerns. Information about other men of his time depends largely on well-documented political or administrative action; very little information is available on their private lives. The same is not true of Howard. The unparalleled records that he left behind are four volumes of household memoranda covering the periods 1462 -1471 and 1481-1483.The memoranda were a daily record of the money received and dispersed by Howard himself, his family and senior household members. The lack of distinction between business and domestic concerns and the great range of subjects, from payments for ships to laces for his wife's gowns, are what make them so illuminating. Taken together, these surviving records illustrate almost every aspect of his life and bring him alive: talented, efficient, ambitious and not above some dishonourable dealings, short-tempered, paternalistic and loyal.

    Essays by leading scholars analyse how the medieval arts invited and delighted in collaborative performances designed to persuade. The essays cast fresh light on subjects ranging from pilgrim processions within Chartres Cathedral, to polyphonic song, and the 'rhetoric of silence' perfected by the Cistercians. Rhetoric is defined broadly in this book to encompass its relationship to its sister arts of music, architecture, and painting, all of which use materials and media in addition to words, sometimes altogether without words. Contributors have concentrated on those aspects of formal rhetoric that are performative in nature, the sound, gesture, and facial expressions of persuasive speech in action. Delivery (performance) is shown to be at the heart of rhetoric, that aspect of it which is indeed beyond words.

    Based on new archival data, Alexander Statiev presents the first comprehensive study of Soviet counterinsurgency that ties together the security tools and populist policies intended to attract the local populations. The book traces the origins of the Soviet pacification doctrine and then presents a comparative analysis of the rural societies in Eastern Poland and the Baltic States on the eve of the Soviet invasion. This analysis is followed by a description of the anti-communist resistance movements. Subsequently, the author shows how ideology affected the Soviet pacification doctrine and examines the major means to enforce the doctrine: agrarian reforms, deportations, amnesties, informant networks, covert operations, and local militias. The book also demonstrates how the Soviet atheist regime used the church in struggle against guerrillas and explains why this regime could not curb the random violence of its police. The final chapter discusses the Soviet experience in the global context.

    79, Pliny the Younger looked up and saw a spectacle the world would never forget. As he later wrote down, "A cloud was ascending, the appearance of which I cannot give you a more exact description of than by likening it to that of a great pine tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a very tall trunk, which spread itself out at the top into a sort of branches. It appeared sometimes bright and sometimes dark and spotted, according as it was either more or less impregnated with earth and cinders."Thus opened the sole eyewitness account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius-one of the most iconic natural disasters in the history of the ancient world.Most people are familiar with this story. Over three harrowing days, the inhabitants of Pompeii experienced the full force of Mother Nature's fury in the form of blasts of superheated gases, rains of pumice stone and ash, and rivers of scorching mud.Yet while the account of the eruption is compelling, Pompeii holds a much more intriguing story for historians: a tale of everyday 1st-century life, flash-frozen in time under mountains of sediment. The tragedy left a rich record of daily life as it was experienced by all strata of Roman society; housewives, slaves, merchants, and politicians were stopped in their tracks on that fateful day. Through careful excavations of Pompeii, scholars have revealed the hidden complexities of ancient life, unveiling the everyday activities of commerce, agriculture, politics, and private life otherwise lost to modern eyes.In Pompeii: Daily Life in an Ancient Roman City, gain a tantalizing glimpse into this world, as eminent classicist and Professor Steven L. Tuck resurrects the long-lost lives of aristocrats, merchants, slaves, and other Roman people in this imperial city. The result is an unprecedented view of life as it was lived in this ancient culture-and your chance to discover intriguing details that lay buried for centuries. In 24 enthralling lectures, Professor Tuck unearths these everyday truths to create a full portrait of daily life in the ancient world.In-Depth Information and Unexpected InsightsIn the opening lectures of Pompeii: Daily Life in an Ancient Roman City, you'll consider the geology and geography of this region and learn about the area's pre-Roman settlers. Next, you'll hear how the city was rediscovered in the 1700s, and examine the cutting-edge excavation techniques used to uncover the city's buried treasures.Then, Professor Tuck takes you on an in-depth tour of Pompeii with a side trip to neighboring Herculaneum. Finally, you'll get an account of the eruption itself, re-created from ancient writings, archaeological evidence, and the latest scientific insights.Along the way, Professor Tuck offers surprising facts and dispels long-held misconceptions, including these interesting insights: Only an estimated 5% of the residents of Pompeii perished in the eruption. Survivors can be traced as far away as Spain. Despite the searing heat of Vesuvius, 1,800 carbonized scrolls were discovered in an ancient library in the nearby city of Herculaneum, and more than 50,000 bits of writing have been preserved as graffiti scattered throughout the remains. The features that made Pompeii such an attractive site for human habitation-the richness of its soil, its mineral-rich hot springs-were the result of geologic forces that ultimately led to the city's destruction. The preserved ruins at Pompeii display evidence of a disaster that was a precursor to the eruption in 79-a massive earthquake that rocked the town in the year 62."At Pompeii, the Dead Do Speak"As Professor Tuck delves into Pompeii's archaeological riches, long-silenced voices will sound loud and clear. You'll hear them as you meet a variety of Pompeii's original inhabitants. In a series of lectures, Professor Tuck selects actual Pompeian residents and reconstructs a typical day in their lives. Here are a few of the journeys you'll take: Follow Chryseis, a slave girl, as she accompanies her mistress to the public baths. Trace the steps of two city officials as they survey major civic structures and carry out their duties in local government. Attend the elaborate funeral procession of the exalted priestess Eumachia. Visit a fullonica-the ancient equivalent of a dry-cleaner-and meet the owner, a freed slave named Stephanus. Witness the rituals experienced by a young bride on the night before her wedding. Taking the perspective of these diverse viewpoints, you'll gain remarkable insights into agriculture, commerce, civic planning, entertainment, local government, private life, and other aspects of the Pompeian experience.Walk the Streets of an Ancient CityProfessor Tuck also provides a virtual tour of the city that reflects the diverse lives of Pompeii's residents. As you visit cliff-top villas, local businesses, civic buildings, and private homes, you'll examine the intriguing clues these structures hold about the lives of everyday individuals.Imagine, for example, the splendor of Pompeii's amphitheater, the site of gladiatorial games, and its Roman-style forum, seat of the city's government. You'll also explore commercial spaces, such as the only preserved brothel of Pompeii and the Praedia of Julia Felix, a massive rental structure housing baths, shops, and garden dining rooms.To bring these structures to life, Professor Tuck shares exclusive photos he's taken of the surviving ruins and art, later artists' renditions of Pompeian life, videos, and remarkable computer reconstructions of these ancient structures, including the House of the Faun, home of the Roman Patron of the colony.Your walk through Pompeii also reveals the marvels of Roman architecture and technology, as you explore the public baths, water systems, and other details of civic planning. Finally, you'll relive the cataclysmic eruption of 79 through computer reconstructions, images, and maps that trace the impact of Vesuvius on the surrounding communities.Travel Back in Time to Ancient PompeiiAs Professor Tuck says, "The real treasure of Pompeii is how it can operate for us as a sort of time machine." You'll have no better guide than Professor Tuck. A noted scholar and expert on the classical world, Professor Tuck offers intriguing insights, allowing you to inhabit the lives of the people of the ancient Roman Empire.Whether you're planning to visit Pompeii or you're simply curious about what ancient life was like, don't miss this rare opportunity to walk in the footsteps of these Romans whose city perished nearly 2,000 years ago.

    Faced with the terror of the unexploded bomb, the Maltese people looked for help to the Royal Engineers Bomb Disposal Section, who dealt with all unexploded bombs, outside of airfields and the RN dockyard, across an area the size of Greater London. Based on official wartime records and personal memoirs, the extraordinary tale unfolds of the challenges they faced—as the enemy employed every possible weapon in a relentless bombing campaign: 3,000 raids in two years. Through violent winter storms and blazing summer heat, despite interrupted sleep and meagre rations, they battled to reach, excavate, and render safe thousands of unexploded bombs. Day after day, and in 1942 hour after hour—through constant air raids—they approached live bomb after live bomb, mindful that it could explode at any moment. In the words of one of their number they were "just doing a job." The author has interviewed survivors, made use of contemporary diaries, and researched hundreds of previously unpublished wartime documents.

    The Amber Coast tells the story of one family's flight from war-torn Latvia, struggle to survive, to gain strength and begin all over again in a new country. Though many immigrants never see their old country again, Ilse enjoyed a fortuitous return to Latvia in the summer of 1990, just as the small Baltic country teetered on the brink of freedom from the Soviet Union. Optimism abounds. Change is in the air. Long-separated relatives meet, many for the first time, and the past becomes vividly present. Steeped in nostalgia for the homeland and the longing to return, it is a story that any immigrant can relate to. This historical non-fiction is steeped in memories from Latvia, Germany, Sweden and Canada. In Canada, Ilse grew up in a Latvian family, belonging to the Montreal Latvian community, while being drawn to the Canadian world of school and neighborhood around her. Ilse Zandstra is a published author of two children's books about Ukuku, a Peruvian spectacled bear, as well as several scientific works. She was born in Latvia but is a well-travelled Canadian, having lived in Europe, Canada, USA, Colombia, the Philippines, and Peru. She now lives with her husband in Ottawa.

    Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 24. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: "On Denoting," written by Bertrand Russell, is one of the most significant and influential philosophical essays of the 20th century. It was published in the philosophy journal Mind in 1905; then reprinted, in both a special 2005 anniversary issue of the same journal and in Russell's Logic and Knowledge, 1956. In it, Russell introduces definite and indefinite descriptions, formulates descriptivism with regard to proper names, and characterizes proper names as "disguised" or "abbreviated" definite descriptions. In the 1930s, Frank P. Ramsey referred to the essay as "that paradigm of philosophy." More recently, a contributor to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy singled it out as "the paradigm of philosophy," and called it a work of "tremendous insight" that has provoked discussion and debate among philosophers of language and linguists for over a century. For Russell, a denoting phrase is a singular noun phrase, preceded by a quantifier, whose predicate term is satisfied by some particular. Such phrases do not contribute objects as the constituents of the singular propositions in which they occur. Denotation, in other words, is a semantically inert property, in this view. Whereas Frege held that there were two distinct parts (or aspects) of the meaning of every term, phrase or sentence (its Sinn and Bedeutung), Russell explicitly rejects the notion of sense (Sinn) and replaces it with the idea of a propositional function (i.e., a function from objects to abstract propositions that are the contents of sentences). This is so because, for Russell, propositions must have concrete, really existing entiti...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=472209

    Based on extensive archival research, You Are All Free provides the first complete account of the dramatic events that led to these epochal decrees, and also to the destruction of Cap Francais, the richest city in the French Caribbean, and to the first refugee crisis in the United States. Taking issue with earlier accounts that claim that Saint-Domingue's slaves freed themselves, or that French revolutionaries abolished slavery as part of a general campaign for universal human rights, the book shows that abolition was the result of complex and often paradoxical political struggles on both sides of the Atlantic that have frequently been misunderstood by earlier scholars.

    Yet death, too, has a history. Death in Berlin is the first study to trace the rituals, practices, perceptions, and sensibilities surrounding death in the context of Berlin's multiple transformations over the decades between Germany's defeat in World War I and the construction of the Berlin Wall. Evocatively illustrated and drawing on a rich collection of sources, Monica Black reveals the centrality of death to the evolving moral and social life of one metropolitan community. In doing so, she connects the intimacies of everyday life and death to events on the grand historical stage that changed the lives of millions - all in a city that stood at the center of some of the twentieth century's most transformative events.

    Her first conscious recollection of life goes back to 1942, when as a young child she escaped to Sweden, a neutral country during World War II, to avoid annihilation. Germany had invaded Norway and the persecution of two thousand Norwegian Jews had begun. Seven members of her father's family were among the seven hundred and seventy-one unfortunate persons who were deported and sent to Auschwitz. In 2005, Irene was forced to examine the label of being a Holocaust survivor. Her strong dual identity as a Norwegian and a Jew led her to explore previously unopened doors in her mind. This is not a narrative of the Holocaust alone, but the remembrance of growing up Jewish in Norway during and after WWII. In addition to the richness of both her Norwegian and Jewish cultures, she ultimately acquired yet another identity as an American.

    A Metropolitan police officer's thrilling and terrifying account of fighting terrorism.

    Yet in the nineteenth century thousands of Europeans and others, some of bourgeois status but many impoverished, moved south to North Africa, Egypt, and the Levant. This extraordinary study of a dynamic borderland, the Tunis region, forged by diverse kinds of migrants and mobilities offers the fullest picture to date of the Mediterranean before, and during, French colonialism. In a vibrant examination of people in motion, Clancy-Smith tells the story of countless migrants, travelers, and adventurers who traversed the Mediterranean, changing it forever. Who were they? Why did they leave home? What awaited them in North Africa? And most importantly, how did an Arab-Muslim state and society make room for the newcomers? Combining fleeting facts, tales of success and failure, and vivid cameos, Clancy-Smith explores questions raised by migrations: women and gender, legal pluralism, finding work, informal sector economies, missionaries, and Islamic reform. With vivid details and broad geographical and historical sweep, the book gives a groundbreaking view of one of the principal ways that the Mediterranean became modern.

    This definitive history of the barricade charts the origins, development, and diffusion of a uniquely European revolutionary tradition. Mark Traugott traces the barricade from its beginnings in the sixteenth century, to its refinement in the insurrectionary struggles of the long nineteenth century, on through its emergence as an icon of an international culture of revolution. Exploring the most compelling moments of its history, Traugott finds that the barricade is more than a physical structure; it is part of a continuous insurrectionary lineage that features spontaneous collaboration even as it relies on recurrent patterns of self-conscious collective action. A case study in how techniques of protest originate and evolve, The Insurgent Barricade tells how the French perfected a repertoire of revolution over three centuries, and how students, exiles, and itinerant workers helped it spread across Europe.

    The Czechs have preserved their language, traditions, and customs, despite their incorporation into the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Third Reich, and the Eastern Bloc. Organized chronologically, the selections in The Czech Reader include the letter to the Czech people written by the religious reformer and national hero Jan Hus in 1415, and Charter 77, the fundamental document of an influential anticommunist initiative launched in 1977 in reaction to the arrest of the Plastic People of the Universe, an underground rock band. There is a speech given in 1941 by Reinhard Heydrich, a senior Nazi official and Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, as well as one written by Václav Havel in 1984 for an occasion abroad, but read by the Czech-born British dramatist Tom Stoppard, since Havel, the dissident playwright and future national leader, was not allowed to leave Czechoslovakia. Among the songs, poems, folklore, fiction, plays, paintings, and photographs of monuments and architectural landmarks are “Let Us Rejoice,” the most famous chorus from Bedřich Smetana’s comic opera The Bartered Bride; a letter the composer Antonín Dvořák sent from New York, where he directed the National Conservatory of Music in the 1890s; a story by Franz Kafka; and an excerpt from Milan Kundera’s The Joke. Intended for travelers, students, and scholars alike, The Czech Reader is a rich introduction to the turbulent history and resilient culture of the Czech people.

    Forced to grow up much too early, the daring young boy risks his life over and over again to slip in and out of the ghetto in his hometown of Otwock to find food. When he finally escapes the ghetto, alone and living by his wits, Marian's perfect Polish and fair complexion help him narrowly escape death as he travels through the Polish countryside "passing" as a Polish-Catholic farmhand. A heart-rending tale of lost youth, Fleeing from the Hunter poignantly describes the quick thinking and extraordinary will to live that are Marian Domanski's greatest strengths as he manages to survive against all odds.

    It has remained one of the best-known studies of the great medieval universities for over a century. Volume 2 Part 1 covers the Italian universities from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries; the universities of Spain and Portugal from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries; the universities of France with detail on the universities of Montpellier, Orleans, Angers, Toulouse and Avignon; the universities of Germany, Bohemia and the Low Countries; the universities of Hungary; and the universities of Scotland. The origins and constitutions, institutional development, and curriculum of each university is analysed. Rashdall's study was one of the first comparative works on the subject. Its scope and breadth has ensured its place as a key work of intellectual history, and an indispensable tool for the study of the educational organisation of the Middle Ages.

    The period also witnessed a violent conflict in Asia Minor between warring peoples in the region, a conflict commonly believed to be the historical basis for Homer's Trojan War. The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean provides a detailed survey of these fascinating aspects of the period, and many others, in sixty-six newly commissioned articles.Divided into four sections, the handbook begins with Background and Definitions, which contains articles establishing the discipline in its historical, geographical, and chronological settings and in its relation to other disciplines. The second section, Chronology and Geography, contains articles examining the Bronze Age Aegean by chronological period (Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age). Each of the periods are further subdivided geographically, so that individual articles are concerned with Mainland Greece during the Early Bronze Age, Crete during the Early Bronze Age, the Cycladic Islands during the Early Bronze Age, and the same for the Middle Bronze Age, followed by the Late Bronze Age. The third section, Thematic and Specific Topics, includes articles examining thematic topics that cannot be done justice in a strictly chronological/geographical treatment, including religion, state and society, trade, warfare, pottery, writing, and burial customs, as well as specific events, such as the eruption of Santorini and the Trojan War. The fourth section, Specific Sites and Areas, contains articles examining the most important regions and sites in the Bronze Age Aegean, including Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Knossos, Kommos, Rhodes, the northern Aegean, and the Uluburun shipwreck, as well as adjacent areas such as the Levant, Egypt, and the western Mediterranean.Containing new work by an international team of experts, The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean represents the most comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date single-volume survey of the field. It will be indispensable for scholars and advanced students alike.

    She is also remembered as the author of The Mummy! an early work of science fiction and as editor of The Ladies' Companion. Her knowledge of plants and gardening was gained from her husband, the landscape designer John Claudius Loudon, whom she married in 1830, and from attending the lectures of the botanist John Lindley. Her notes from these were published as articles in John Loudon's Gardener's Magazine. This book, first published in 1840, was an immediate success, selling 1,350 copies on the day of publication and more than 200,000 in total. Written in the approachable style typical of her works, it covers all the elements of horticulture, and helped to encourage many Victorian women to take up gardening as a hobby.Having married a gardening expert, it seemed to Jane C. Loudon, that everyone around her knew far more about plants and gardening than she did, but she quickly learned the art of horticulture from her husband and decided to pass his teachings on to other ladies to help them enjoy the delights of the garden. Gardening for Ladies was, and still is, an entirely practical book that describes how a lady can make the most of her garden in a clear and precise way. Digging over a flowerbed might have been work for a rough-handed, rope-muscled garden worker, but Jane explained how a lady could tackle the job without undue strain, and explained why it was necessary. The advice and instruction in this classic gardening book is as relevant today as it was when it was written 180 years ago.

    On one level it is the tale of a bizarre social project carried out by some 400 muscular historians, re-enactors, international volunteers, cavers and mountain climbers. On another it provides a detailed account of the development of a valuable experimental history project with wide educational and research applications, on a minimal budget. It catalogues a unique restoration of a derelict historic farming landscape, from buildings and field boundaries to woodlands and weed patterns, and describes its current management, on a social farming basis, with livestock co-operatives and adopted orchards.

    This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

    Indeed, Rachel Koopmans contends, the miracle collection quickly became a defining genre of high medieval English monastic culture.Koopmans surveys more than seventy-five collections and offers a new model for understanding how miracle stories were generated, circulated, and replicated. She argues that orally exchanged narratives carried far more propagandistic power than those preserved in manuscripts; stresses the literary and memorial roles of miracle collecting; and traces changes in form and content as the focus of the collectors shifted from the stories told by religious colleagues to those told by lay visitors to their churches.Wonderful to Relate highlights the importance of the two massive collections written by Benedict of Peterborough and William of Canterbury in the wake of the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170. Koopmans provides the first in-depth examination of the creation and influence of the Becket compilations, often deemed the greatest of all medieval miracle collections. In a final section, she ponders the decline of miracle collecting in the thirteenth century, which occurred with the advent of formalized canonization procedures and theological means of engaging with the miraculous.

    In this study, Miller argues that one incarnation of monstrosity in the Middle Ages-the female body-exists in special relation to medieval teratology insofar as it resists the customary marginalization that defined most other monstrous groups in the Middle Ages. Though medieval maps located the monstrous races on the distant margins of the civilized world, the monstrous female body took the form of mother, sister, wife, and daughter. It was, therefore, pervasive, proximate, and necessary on social, sexual, and reproductive grounds. Miller considers several significant texts representing authoritative discourses on female monstrosity in the Middle Ages: the Pseudo-Ovidian poem, De vetula (The Old Woman); a treatise on human generation erroneously attributed to Albert the Great, De secretis mulierum (On the Secrets of Women), and Julian of Norwich's Showings. Through comparative analysis, Miller grapples with the monster's semantic flexibility while simultaneously working towards a composite image of late-medieval female monstrosity whose features are stable enough to define. Whether this body is discursively constructed as an Ovidian body, a medicalized body, or a mystical body, its corporeal boundaries fail to form properly: it is a body out of bounds.

    The world in which this new category emerged was marked by three major historical and intellectual phenomena: the rise of European empires, that gave birth to ethnological curiosity; the Reformation, which permanently altered Christianity; and the invention of philology, a discipline that transformed Western intellectual thought. Against this complex historical backdrop, Stroumsa guides us through the lives and writings of the men who came to define the word "religion." As Stroumsa boldly argues, the modern study of religion, a new science, was made possible through a dialectical process between Catholic and Protestant scholars. Ancient Israelite religion, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Manichaeanism, Zoroastrianism, the sacred beliefs of the New World, and those of Greece, Rome, India, and China, composed the complex ground upon which "religion," a most modern category, was discovered.

    We have remained as true as possible to Marguerite's account which reveals to readers the cruelty of war and the innocence of past generations. As a child, her family lived a luxurious life. Her mother was a French aristocrat, and her father a wealthy Austrian diplomat, and so her story begins. Always defiant, Margie was forced into a labor camp for dissident teenagers. She attended the University of Berlin during the Berlin bombings, became a young teacher in the Polish war zone, was captured as a prisoner of war and escaped, and after the war, worked for the Allied Forces, helping repatriate those who had been displaced. Her story demonstrates cunning and great courage. She went from affluence to poverty and survived the war on her wits alone, dependent on only herself and the skills she'd acquired from traveling with her family. Only after the war does she reflect on what her single-minded struggle for survival cost her, and a new journey, of a very different kind, begins.

    This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.

    However, the military history of this period is usually written from either medieval or early-modern, and either Western or Eastern European, perspectives. These chronological and geographical limits have produced substantial confusion about how the conduct of war changed. The essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of land and sea warfare across Europe throughout this period of momentous political, religious, technological, intellectual and military change. Written by leading experts in their fields, they not only summarise existing scholarship, but also present new findings and new ideas, casting new light on the art of war, the rise of the state, and European expansion.

    The great cathedral of Notre Dame was halfway through its construction and walls were being built to enclose the new, larger limits of the city. Pope Innocent III ordered all French churches closed to punish King Philip Augustus for his remarriage; the king himself negotiated an unprecedented truce with the English; and the students of Paris threatened a general strike, punctuated with incidents of violence, to protest infringements of their rights.John W. Baldwin brilliantly resurrects this key moment in Parisian history using documents only from 1190 to 1210—a narrow focus made possible by the availability of collections of the Capetian monarchy and the medieval scholastic thinkers. This unique approach results in a vivid snapshot of the city at the turn of the thirteenth century.Paris, 1200 introduces the reader to the city itself and its inhabitants. Three "faces" exemplify these inhabitants: that of the celebrated scholar Pierre the Chanter, of King Philip Augustus, and of the more deeply hidden visages of women. The book examines the city's primary institutions: the royal government, the Church, and its celebrated schools that evolved into the university at Paris. Finally, it offers an account of the delights and pleasures, as well as the fears and sorrows, of Parisian life in this period.

    Using the very latest genetic research and combining it with the historical record, this book proves conclusively that there is a clearly definable indigenous population in Britain and that they qualify fully for protected status under the United Nations Charter on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.In this booklet you will find out how:* People can be identified and linked to specific areas using modern genetics;* Genetic evidence shows that the vast majority — nearly 80% — of all British people have ancestors going back to the end of the last mini ice age;* Genetic evidence shows that the Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking/Danish and Norman conquests had relatively small impact upon the British people;* Genetic evidence shows that the Irish people have far more in common with the British than both sides of that traditional divide realise; and * The British people have been indigenous to the British Isles for longer than almost every other people already accorded indigenous status.

    This compact book is a major contribution to the study of Islamic pietism in general and Ottoman religious and cultural history in particular." —Professor Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Washington University in St. LouisOne of the earliest Arabic texts against smoking, Ahmad al-Aqhisari's Epistle on Tobacco is presented here for the first time in a scholarly edition, together with a fully annotated English translation. Yahya Michot expertly sets the epistle within its Ottoman social, intellectual, and historical context. Includes thirty illustrations.Yahya Michot is professor of Islamic studies and Christian–Muslim relations at Hartford Seminary, Connecticut.

    Interweaving the public triumph of Montefiore's foreign missions with the private tragedy of his childless marriage, this book brings the diversity of 19th-century Jewry to life, from London to Jerusalem, Rome to St Petersburg, Morocco to Istanbul.

    She had been the first woman to be awarded the GC, as well as the Legion d'Honneur, and in 1950 the release of a film about her life made her the darling of the British popular press. But others openly questioned Odette's personal and professional integrity, even claiming that she had a clandestine affair with her supervisor Captain Peter Churchill. In the first full biography of this incredible woman for nearly 60 years, it delves into recently opened SOE personnel files to reveal the true story of this wartime heroine and the officer who posed as her husband. From her life as a French housewife living in Britain and her undercover work with the French Resistance, to her arrest, torture, and unlikely survival in Ravensbruck concentration camp, it is revealed for the first time the truth of Odette's mission.

    The authors argue that this rejection of the European constitution was to a certain extent a challenge to the current historical grounding used for further integration and further demonstrates the lack of understanding by European bureaucrats of the historical complexity and divisiveness of Europe's past. A critical European history is therefore urgently needed to confront and re-imagine Europe, not as a harmonious continent but as the outcome of violent and bloody conflicts, both within Europe as well as with its Others. As the authors show, these dark shadows of Europe's past must be integrated, and the fact that memories of Europe are contested must be accepted if any new attempts at a United Europe are to be successful.

    

    This new culinary culture saw food and wine as important links between human beings and nature. Authentic foodstuffs and simple preparations became the hallmarks of the modern style. Pinkard traces the roots and development of this culinary revolution to many different historical trends, including changes in material culture, social transformations, medical theory and practice, and the Enlightenment. Pinkard illuminates the complex cultural meaning of food in her history of the new French cooking from its origins in the 1650s through the emergence of cuisine bourgeoise and the original nouvelle cuisine in the decades before 1789. This book also discusses the evolution of culinary techniques and includes historical recipes adapted for today's kitchens.

    His curiosity piqued, he tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a secret Vatican archive housing the records of the Roman Inquisition that had been sealed to outsiders from its sixteenth-century beginnings. In 1996 Decker was one of the first of a small group of scholars allowed access. Originally published as Die Papste und die Hexen, Witchcraft and the Papacy is based on these newly available materials and traces the role of the papacy in witchcraft prosecutions from medieval times to the eighteenth century. Decker found that although the medieval church did lay the foundation for witch hunts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the postmedieval papacy, and the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, played the same kind of skeptical, restraining role during the height of the witch-hunting frenzy in Germany and elsewhere in Europe as it had in the trial that was the initial focus of his research. Witchcraft and the Papacy overturns a large body of scholarship that confuses the medieval papacy with its markedly skeptical successors, and that mistakenly portrays the papacy as fanning rather than quelling the flames of the witchcraft mania sweeping northern Europe from the mid-sixteenth century onward.

    Existing histories tend to treat cinema as an economic rather than an aesthetic phenomenon; earlier surveys that do engage with individual films do not include films of recent decades. This book treats representative films from the beginnings of German film to the present. Providing historical context through an introduction and interchapters preceding the treatments of each era's films, the volume is suitable for semester- or year-long survey courses and for anyone with an interest in German cinema.BR> The films: The Student of Prague - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - The Last Laugh - Metropolis - The Blue Angel - M - Triumph of the Will - The Great Love - The Murderers Are among Us - Sun Seekers - Trace of Stones - The Legend of Paul and Paula - Solo Sunny - The Bridge - Young Torless - Aguirre, The Wrath of God - Germany in Autumn - The Marriage of Maria Braun - The Tin Drum - Marianne and Juliane - Wings of Desire - Maybe, Maybe Not - Rossini - Run Lola Run - Good Bye Lenin! - Head On - The Lives of Others Stephen Brockmann is Professor of German at Carnegie Mellon University and past President of the German Studies Assocation.

    This multi-contributory work is a landmark publication that sees experts renowned in their field addressing these questions in light of current research.A comprehensive introduction to the history of the Holocaust, this volume has 42 chapters which add important depth to the academic study of the Holocaust, both geographically and topically. The chapters address such diverse issues as:continuities in German and European history with respect to genocide prior to 1939the eugenic roots of Nazi anti-Semitismthe response of Europe's Jewish Communities to persecution and destructionthe Final Solution as the German occupation instituted it across Europerescue and rescuer motivations the problem of prosecuting war crimesgender and Holocaust experiencethe persecution of non-Jewish victimsthe Holocaust in postwar cultural venues. This important collection will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of the Holocaust.

    Its main arguments are that the metaphor of the German nation as a body that needed to be rescued from a deadly poison must be viewed as the conceptual basis rather than a mere propagandistic by-product of Nazi genocidal policies culminating in the Holocaust, and that this metaphor is closely related to the more general metaphor complex of the nation as a human body/person, which is deeply ingrained in Western political thought. The cognitive approach is crucial to understanding the nature and the origins of this metaphor complex because it goes beyond the rhetorical level by analyzing the ideological and practical implications of the conceptual mapping body-state in detail. It provides an innovative perspective on the problem of how the Nazis managed to 'revive' a clichd metaphor tradition to the point where it became a decisive factor in European and world history. Musolff reveals how such a perspective allows us to explain why the body-state metaphor continues to be attractive for use in contemporary political theories.

    The American attitude towards this forceful European leader was, however, an equally defining part of the dispute. In this riveting study of transatlantic international relations, Sebastian Reyn traces American responses to de Gaulle’s foreign policy from 1958 to 1969, concluding that how Americans judged de Gaulle depended largely on whether their politics leaned to the left or the right.

    With minimal command of English and little formal education, he enlisted in the Army and quickly found himself assigned to operations where his German language abilities were put to use. With the Soviet Union's emergence as a potential adversary, Thamm was recruited into the Army's clandestine services, where he operated as a secret agent in Germany, under multiple identities. This richly detailed personal narrative tells Thamm's incredible story (with more than two dozen photographs and sketches).

    Standing between the great victories of Marlborough in the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713) and the even greater victories of the Seven Years War (1756-1763), it has been dismissed as inconclusive and incompetently managed. For the first time this book brings together the political and operational conduct of the war to explore its contribution to a critical development in British history during the eighteenth century - the emergence of Britain as the paramount global naval power. The war posed a unique set of problems for British politicians, statesmen and servicemen. They had to overcome domestic and diplomatic crises, culminating in the rebellion of 1745 and the threat of French invasion. Yet, far from being incompetent, these people handled the crises and learned a great deal about the conduct of global warfare. The changes they made and decisions they took prepared Britain for the decisive Anglo-French clash of arms in the Seven Years War. In this misunderstood war lie some of the key factors that made Britain the greatest naval power for the next one hundred and fifty years. RICHARD HARDING is Professor of Organisational History and Head of the Department of Leadership and Development at the University of Westminster. He is the author of numerous articles and books on naval history and is currently Chairman of the Society for Nautical Research.

    Born in Brooklyn and having left school in the sixth grade to work, the author enlisted at the age of 17. The book explores his time in combat, when he laid down wire for radio communications, often along the front lines and during battles, always alert for German troops. Featured are his sketches of the scenes of his work with fellow soldiers. Particular attention is paid to the role of the wireman and the history of the Fifth Infantry Division.