But her spirit quails when she and her family are swept up with fifteen thousand other Hungarian Jews and forcibly transported to one of the world's most infamous concentration camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau. There Klara comes face to face with one of history’s most infamous Nazi doctors, nicknamed The Great Selector and the Murderer in White, Josef Mengele. Klara watches in horror as Mengele sends her parents, her younger brother, and her older sister to the gas chamber, leaving Klara and her two remaining sisters to be housed like animals in the women's barracks. They live in constant fear of Mengele choosing them for one of his cruel scientific experiments.As the Russian allies close in, Mengele steps up his selection process and sentences Klara to the gas chamber. But in a miraculous turn of events, Klara escapes both the chamber and Auschwitz itself and makes her way across war-torn Europe back home to Sighet.The only survivor of record to escape Mengele's notorious death selection process, Klara's is an extraordinary and inspirational story of survival and resilience in the face of deep loss and extreme cruelty.

    How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years?In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials—personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence—to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people—from infantrymen and tank commanders on the Eastern front to civilians on the home front—to vivid life. While most historians identify the German defeat at Stalingrad as the moment when the average German citizen turned against the war effort, Stargardt demonstrates that the Wehrmacht in fact retained the staunch support of the patriotic German populace until the bitter end.Astonishing in its breadth and humanity, The German War is a groundbreaking new interpretation of what drove the Germans to fight—and keep fighting—for a lost cause.

    But in 1914, Europe walked into a catastrophic conflict that killed millions, bled its economies dry, shook empires and societies to pieces, and fatally undermined Europe’s dominance of the world. It was a war that could have been avoided up to the last moment—so why did it happen?Beginning in the early nineteenth century and ending with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, award-winning historian Margaret Macmillan uncovers the huge political and technological changes, national decisions, and just as important, the small moments of human muddle and weakness that led Europe from peace to disaster. This masterful exploration of how Europe chose its path towards war will change and enrich how we see this defining moment in history.

    In Hebrides, readers will accompany him on an odyssey in prose and images, through a history of the Vikings’ ‘Long Island’ and his own deep personal connection with the islands that influenced his bestselling work. Travelling as if alongside his protagonist Fin Macleod, he describes the island life – as bewitching as it is treacherous – his encounter with the bird-hunters of Sula Sgeir, the savage seas of Ness and the churches of Eriskay. With extracts from the trilogy and specially commissioned photographs, this book places his writing and characters within the land that gave them form.

    But, as Leanda de Lisle’s gripping new history reveals, they are a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew.The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family’s obscure Welsh origins, the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a Queen’s lap—and later her bed. It passes by the courage of Margaret Beaufort, the pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who would help found the Tudor dynasty, and the childhood and painful exile of her son, the future Henry VII. It ignores the fact that the Tudors were shaped by their past—those parts they wished to remember and those they wished to forget.By creating a full family portrait set against the background of this past, de Lisle enables us to see the Tudor dynasty in its own terms, and presents new perspectives and revelations on key figures and events. De Lisle discovers a family dominated by remarkable women doing everything possible to secure its future; shows why the princes in the Tower had to vanish; and reexamines the bloodiness of Mary’s reign, Elizabeth’s fraught relationships with her cousins, and the true significance of previously overlooked figures. Throughout the Tudor story, Leanda de Lisle emphasizes the supreme importance of achieving peace and stability in a violent and uncertain world, and of protecting and securing the bloodline.Tudor is bristling with religious and political intrigue but at heart is a thrilling story of one family’s determined and flamboyant ambition.

    This era shook the foundations of the old world and marked a permanent shift for politics, religion, and society - not just for France, but for all of Europe. An account of the events alone reads like something out of a thrilling novel: France’s oppressed and hungry masses rise up against their government. In Paris, crowds storm the Bastille looking for bread and weaponry. Rumors, panic, and fear grip the nation as it faces an uncertain future. The National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the first bold step toward the invention of democratic politics and a republican state. A young Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte stuns Europe with his military strategy and political boldness.Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon is your opportunity to learn the full story of this captivating period. Taught by Dr. Suzanne M. Desan, these 48 exciting lectures give you a broad and comprehensive survey of one of the most important eras in modern history.Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.©2013 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2013 The Great Courses

    A year later, they threatened to complete the city’s destruction by deporting its remaining residents. A sophisticated and cosmopolitan community a thousand years old was facing its final days—and then opportunity struck. As Soviet soldiers turned back the Nazi invasion of Russia and began pressing west, the underground Polish Home Army decided to act. Taking advantage of German disarray and seeking to forestall the absorption of their country into the Soviet empire, they chose to liberate the city of Warsaw for themselves.      Warsaw 1944 tells the story of this brave, and errant, calculation. For more than sixty days, the Polish fighters took over large parts of the city and held off the SS’s most brutal forces. But in the end, their efforts were doomed. Scorned by Stalin and unable to win significant support from the Western Allies, the Polish Home Army was left to face the full fury of Hitler, Himmler, and the SS. The crackdown that followed was among the most brutal episodes of history’s most brutal war, and the celebrated historian Alexandra Richie depicts this tragedy in riveting detail. Using a rich trove of primary sources, Richie relates the terrible experiences of individuals who fought in the uprising and perished in it. Her clear-eyed narrative reveals the fraught choices and complex legacy of some of World War II’s most unsung heroes.

    Much more than a parade of admirals and their battles, this is the story of how an insignificant island nation conquered the world's oceans to become its greatest trading empire. Few other nations have fallen so deeply in love with a branch of the armed forces as the British did with its Navy. Yet, as Ben Wilson shows, there was nothing inevitable about this rise to maritime domination, nor was it ever an easy path. For much of our history Britain was a third-rate maritime power on the periphery of Europe. EMPIRE OF THE DEEP also reveals how our naval history has shaped us in more subtle and surprising ways - our language, culture, politics and national character all owe a great debt to this conquest of the seas. This is a gripping, fresh take on our national story.

    But the deeper history of Amsterdam, what makes it one of the most fascinating places on earth, is bound up in its unique geography-the constant battle of its citizens to keep the sea at bay and the democratic philosophy that this enduring struggle fostered. Amsterdam is the font of liberalism, in both its senses. Tolerance for free thinking and free love make it a place where, in the words of one of its mayors, "craziness is a value." But the city also fostered the deeper meaning of liberalism, one that profoundly influenced America: political and economic freedom. Amsterdam was home not only to religious dissidents and radical thinkers but to the world's first great global corporation. In this effortlessly erudite account, Russell Shorto traces the idiosyncratic evolution of Amsterdam, showing how such disparate elements as herring anatomy, naked Anabaptists parading through the streets, and an intimate gathering in a sixteenth-century wine-tasting room had a profound effect on Dutch-and world-history. Weaving in his own experiences of his adopted home, Shorto provides an ever-surprising, intellectually engaging story of Amsterdam from the building of its first canals in the 1300s, through its brutal struggle for independence, its golden age as a vast empire, to its complex present in which its cherished ideals of liberalism are under siege.

    Her name was Anne Boleyn and her story has made an indelible mark on history. This book will take you through stately homes, castles, chapels and artefacts with a connection to Anne. Explore Hever Castle, Anne's childhood home where two breathtaking Book of Hours both signed and inscribed by Anne Boleyn herself are housed; Thornbury Castle where Henry VIII and Anne stayed during their 1535 royal progress and see the octagonal bedchamber where they slept; stand in the very room in Windsor Castle where Anne was made Marquis of Pembroke. Each location is covered by an accessible and informative narrative, which unearths the untold stories and documents the artifacts. Accompanied by an extensive range of images, including photographs, portraits, letters, sketches and artifacts, this book brings the sixteenth century vividly to life - and takes you on your own personal and compelling journey in the footsteps of Anne Boleyn.

    So you have no other choice. . . . You must fight, Samson. You must. The year is 1941, and Samson Abrams makes a life-or-death decision that lands him, and his entire family, in the notorious concentration camp Auschwitz. When Samson is recognized by Dr. Josef Mengele and Commandant Rudolf Hoss as a former boxing champion, he is ordered box for their entertainment. A win means extra rations, but the penalty for losing is death in the gas chambers.One question haunts Samson as he and his family face one atrocity after another: Where is God in the face of such evil? An unexpected friendship between the Jewish Samson and the Polish Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe challenges Samson to examine what little is left of his faith, but will it give him strength when he needs it most?Based on true stories, "Samson: A Savior Will Rise" blends Shawn Hoffman s thorough research with a compelling narrative that provokes questions about faith, hope, and love."

    He clandestinely recorded the terrible events he witnessed, but his manuscript disappeared during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war, reunited with his wife and young daughter, he rewrote his story.Peopled with historical figures like the controversial Chaim Rumkowski, who fancied himself a king of the Jews, to infamous Nazi commanders and dozens of Jews and non-Jews who played cat and mouse with death throughout the war, Reicher’s memoir is about a community faced with extinction and the chance decisions and strokes of luck that kept a few stunned souls alive.Edward Reicher (1900–1975) was born in Lodz, Poland. He graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Warsaw, later studied dermatology in Paris and Vienna, and practiced in Lodz as a dermatologist and venereal disease specialist both before and after World War II. A Jewish survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, Reicher appeared at a tribunal in Salzburg to identify Hermann Höfle and give an eyewitness account of Höfle’s role in Operation Reinhard, which sent hundreds of thousands to their deaths in the Nazi concentration camps of Poland.Country of Ash, first published posthumously in France, was translated from the French by Magda Bogin and includes a foreword by Edward Reicher’s daughter Elisabeth Bizouard-Reicher.

    It is a story told through the testimony of those who cared for him - stretcher bearers and medical officers, surgeons and chaplains, orderlies and nurses - from the aid post in the trenches to the casualty clearing station and the ambulance train back to Blighty.We feel the calloused hands of the stretcher-bearers; we see the bloody dressings and bandages; we smell the nauseating gangrene and, at London's stations, the gas clinging to the uniforms of the men arriving home. There are the unspeakable injuries: the officer with a hole in his torso so big the doctor can see the sky beyond him; a man with no legs holding a hymnbook for a man with no arms. Together, the experiences in Wounded encapsulate what it was to fight, live and die for four long years at the Western Front.The first comprehensive account of medical care at the Western Front, Wounded is a homage to the courageous and determined men and women who saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

    With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West. Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world. The thrust of this tradition construes Judaism as an opposition, a danger often from within, to be criticized, attacked, and eliminated. The intersections of these ideas with the world of power the Roman destruction of the Second Temple, the Spanish Inquisition, the German Holocaust are well known. The ways of thought underlying these tragedies can be found at the very foundation of Western history.

    Goethe (1749–1832), a remarkably prolific poet, playwright, novelist, and, as Safranksi emphasizes, a statesman and naturalist, first awakened not only a burgeoning German nation but also the European continent with his electrifying novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Safranski has scoured Goethe’s entire oeuvre, relying on primary sources as well as Goethe's correspondence with contemporaries and their comments to one another, to produce an illuminating portrait of the avatar of the Romantic era. Set against the cultural and political turmoil of Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Goethe, who intersected with almost every great figure of his age, is thrillingly re-created in this monumental biography. As Safranski ultimately shows, Goethe’s greatest creation, even in comparison to his masterpiece Faust, was his own life.

    Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap.The question is, Why? Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaimed author Rodney Starkprovides the answers in this sweeping new look at Western civilization. How the West Won demonstrates the primacy of uniquely Western ideas—among them the belief in free will, the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, the notion that the universe functions according to rational rules that can be dis­covered, and the emphasis on human freedom and secure property rights.Taking readers on a thrilling journey from ancient Greece to the present, Stark challenges much of the received wisdom about Western his­tory. How the West Won shows, for example:• Why the fall of Rome was the single most beneficial event in the rise of Western civilization • Why the “Dark Ages” never happened • Why the Crusades had nothing to do with grabbing loot or attacking the Muslim world unprovoked • Why there was no “Scientific Revolution” in the seventeenth century • Why scholars’ recent efforts to dismiss the importance of battles are ridiculous: had the Greeks lost at the Battle of Marathon, we probably would never have heard of Plato or Aristotle Stark also debunks absurd fabrications that have flourished in the past few decades: that the Greeks stole their culture from Africa; that the West’s “discoveries” were copied from the Chinese and Muslims; that Europe became rich by plundering the non-Western world. At the same time, he reveals the woeful inadequacy of recent attempts to attribute the rise of the West to purely material causes—favorable climates, abundant natural resources, guns and steel. How the West Won displays Rodney Stark’s gifts for lively narrative history and making the latest scholarship accessible to all readers. This bold, insightful book will force you to rethink your understanding of the West and the birth of modernity—and to recognize that Western civilization really has set itself apart from other cultures.

    The place is Nazi Germany. Lilly is not Jewish. She is a typical eight-year-old German girl who is too busy playing in the cemetery her pappa runs to worry about what is going on around her. That is until Hitler and his Nazis interrupt her life. Shadow of the Swastika is based on her life until the end of World War II. Even at a young age, Lilly is a hardheaded girl. She wants her freedom, but the tyranny and oppression of the Third Reich thwarts her desire to do and say as she pleases. Though Lilly grows up in a world of war, hunger, fear and death, she is a survivor and faces each day’s challenges with obstinance, humor, spunk and courage.

    Their experiences encompass the span of the Cold War, from voyages in WW2-era submarines under Arctic ice to nuclear-powered espionage missions in Soviet-dominated seas. There are dangerous encounters with Russian spy ships in UK waters and, finally as the communist facade begins to crack, they hold the line against the Kremlin's oceanic might, playing a leading role in bringing down the Berlin Wall. It is the first time they have spoken out about their covert lives in the submarine service.This is the dramatic untold story of Britain's most secret service.

    Nevertheless, her initial reaction to the birth of Princess Victoria of Wales belied the genuine concern that Queen Victoria felt for each of her twenty-two granddaughters. ‘As a rule,’ she wrote, ‘I like girls best,’ and she devoted a great deal of time to their wellbeing and happiness, showering them with an affection she had seldom shown her own children.By 1914, through a series of dynastic marriages, the Queen’s granddaughters included the Empress of Russia, the Queens of Spain, Greece and Norway, and the Crown Princesses of Roumania and Sweden. As their brothers and cousins occupied the thrones of Germany, Britain and Denmark, Prince Albert’s dream of a peaceful Europe created through bonds of kinship seemed a real possibility. Yet in little more than a decade after Queen Victoria’s death, the Prince Consort’s dream would lie shattered in the carnage of the First World War. Royal cousins and even siblings would find themselves on opposing sides; two of them would die horrifically at the hands of revolutionaries and several others would be ousted from their thrones. They had lived through the halcyon days of the European monarchies but their lives, like the lives of millions of their peoples, would be changed forever by the catastrophe played out on the battlefields of France.Through all the upheavals, tragedies and conflicts one person had bound them together and, even when wars had divided their nations, to the end of their lives, they would look back and remember ‘dearest grandmama’ with love.

    464- The String Quintets- DissonanceMusical and Financial- Basset Horns and Harmonicas

    World-class interpretations exist of its Classical and subsequent history, but there has been remarkably little holistic exploration of how its societies, culture and economies first came into being, despitethe fact that almost all the fundamental developments originated well before 500 BC. This book is the first full, interpretive synthesis for a generation on the rise of the Mediterranean world from its beginning, before the emergence of our own species, up to the threshold of Classical times, bywhich time the Middle Sea was already in effect made.Thanks to unrivalled depth and breadth of exploration, Mediterranean archaeology is one of the world's richest sources for the reconstruction of ancient societies. This book is the first to draw in equal measure on ideas and information from the European, western Asian and African flanks, as well asthe islands at the Mediterranean's heart, to achieve a truly innovative focus on the varied trajectories and interactions that created this maritime world.The Mediterranean combines unusual conditions in a strictly unique fashion that goes a long way towards explaining its precocious development: it is the world's largest inland sea, easily the largest of the five challenging, opportunity-rich mediterraneoid environments on the planet, and adjacentto the riverine cores of two of the earliest civilizations, in Mesopotamia and Egypt. No wonder its societies proved exceptional.Extensively illustrated and ranging across disciplines, subject matter and chronology from early humans and the origins of farming and metallurgy to the rise of civilizations--Egyptian, Levantine, Hispanic, Minoan, Mycenaean, Phoenician, Etruscan, early Greek--the book is a masterpiece ofarchaeological and historical writing.

    By the time he completed his mandate, he had led the country for 14 years, longer than any other French head of state in modern times. Mitterrand mirrored France in all its imperfections and tragedies, its cowardice and glory, its weakness and its strength.In the wake of the Observatory affair (in which he orchestrated his own assassination attempt), his secretiveness and mistrust grew more pronounced, especially when details of a second family came to light; he was a mixture of "Machiavelli, Don Corleone, Casanova and the Little Prince," said his doctor.During the German occupation, Mitterrand hedged his bets by joining Petain's Vichy government. Later in 1943, under the nom de guerre of Morland (and 30 other aliases), Mitterrand quit Vichy for the Resistance and a paramilitary organization.He changed the ground rules of French social and political debate in ways more far-reaching and fundamental than any other modern leader before him, helping set the agenda for France and Europe for generations to come. Philip Short's A Taste for Intrigue will fill the gap and become the standard against which all other Mitterrand biographies are set.

    As an impressionable teenager, fired with national pride, he was eager to join the army and fight for his country. He enlisted in the South Notts Hussars at the beginning of the Second World War and started a journey that would take him through fierce fighting in the Western Desert, the deprivation suffered in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp and a daring escape to join the partisan forces in the Appenines. His story is an honest and moving memoir of the horror of warfare, but it also reveals the surprising triumphs of the human spirit in times of great hardship. Ellis s self-deprecating humor skillfully counters the harsh realities related in a personal recollection of a war that claimed so many young lives.

    This book, hailed as a masterwork on its publication in France, takes up the epic narrative at the heart of this turbulent period: the life of Napoleon himself, the man who—in Madame de Staël’s words—made the rest of “the human race anonymous.” Gueniffey follows Bonaparte from his obscure boyhood in Corsica, to his meteoric rise during the Italian and Egyptian campaigns of the Revolutionary wars, to his proclamation as Consul for Life in 1802. Bonaparte is the story of how Napoleon became Napoleon. A future volume will trace his career as emperor.Most books approach Napoleon from an angle—the Machiavellian politician, the military genius, the life without the times, the times without the life. Gueniffey paints a full, nuanced portrait. We meet both the romantic cadet and the young general burning with ambition—one minute helplessly intoxicated with Josephine, the next minute dominating men twice his age, and always at war with his own family. Gueniffey recreates the violent upheavals and global rivalries that set the stage for Napoleon’s battles and for his crucial role as state builder. His successes ushered in a new age whose legacy is felt around the world today.Averse as we are now to martial glory, Napoleon might seem to be a hero from a bygone time. But as Gueniffey says, his life still speaks to us, the ultimate incarnation of the distinctively modern dream to will our own destiny.

    Both the recipes and the factbook part are based on finds, literary sources, other contemporary sources and experimental archaeology.In the first part of the book the authors presents the food of the Viking Age. They describe what one may have eaten during the Viking Age, how the food was prepared and the practices that surrounded eating the food. This chapter is based on the yet to be finished doctoral thesis by Daniel Serra, archaeological finds from the period across Scandinavia and a range of various other sources.The second part is a cookbook presented as a journey through Viking Age Scandinavia with 42 different recipes divided into seven geographical areas. The recipes are based upon archaeological finds and experimental archaeology bound together by the combined archaeological and culinary expertise of Daniel Serra and Hanna Tunberg. Almost all dishes can be cooked just as easily in the kitchen as out in a re-enactors camp.In addition to the background material and the actual cookbook, there are some very interesting appendixes. Not only do we include an Encyclopedic part, which act as a quick reference guide to both food and cooking equipment, there will also be a list of plant finds and a reference for translation of plants, fish birds and other ingredients between English, Latin, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and German.

    The countless books on the Third Reich and the Holocaust fail even to mention the laws restricting firearms ownership, which rendered political opponents and Jews defenseless. A skeptic could surmise that a better-armed populace might have made no difference, but the National Socialist regime certainly did not think so—it ruthlessly suppressed firearm ownership by disfavored groups.Gun Control in the Third Reich spans the two decades from the birth of the Weimar Republic in 1918 through Kristallnacht in 1938. The book then presents a panorama of pertinent events during World War II regarding the effects of the disarming policies. And even though in the occupied countries the Nazis decreed the death penalty for possession of a firearm, there developed instances of heroic armed resistance by Jews, particularly the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

    They fully understood that a small conflict in the Balkans – the tinderbox at the heart of the continent – could spark a European war. They well knew what their weapons could do.Yet they carried on. They accepted – and, in some cases, even seemed to relish – what they saw as an inevitable clash of arms. They planned and mapped every station on the path to oblivion. These pied pipers of the apocalypse chose war in the full knowledge that millions would follow, and die, on their orders.1914: The Year the World Ended seeks to answer the most vexing question of the 20th century: Why did European governments decide to condemn the best part of a generation of young men to the trenches and four years of slaughter, during which 8.5 million would die?

    Onyeka's book acknowledges this predilection but challenges our perceptions. Onyeka's book is about the presence, status and origins of Africans in Tudor England. In it Onyeka argues that these people were present in cities and towns throughout England, but that they did not automatically occupy the lowest positions in Tudor society. This is important because the few modern historians who have written about Africans in Tudor England suggest that they were all slaves, or transient immigrants who were considered as dangerous strangers and the epitome of otherness. However, this book will show that some Africans in England had important occupations in Tudor society, and were employed by powerful people because of the skills they possessed. These people seem to have inherited some of their skills from the multicultural societies that they came from, but that does not mean all of those present in England were born in other countries: some were born in England. The arguments in this book are supported by evidence from a variety of sources both manuscript and printed, most of which has not been widely discussed - whilst some of it Onyeka has discovered, and this may be the first time that it has been revealed. Other evidence is taken from texts that are the subject of popular discussion by historians, linguists and so on, but Onyeka encourages the reader to re-examine these works in a different way because they reveal information about the presence, status and origins of Africans in Tudor England.

    This is the story of the Romanovs, from the Tsar who brought Russia from darkness into light, to one of the greatest female rulers in history, and ultimately to the death-marked royals who watched their empire crumble. PETER THE GREAT: Crowned at the age of 10, Peter embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Russia while being at the very forefront of her development. CATHERINE THE GREAT: In 1762, Catherine rode out of St Petersburg at the head of an army to arrest her husband. Three months later, at the age of just 33, she became sole empress of the largest empire on earth. NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA: The story of Nicholas's political naivete, Alexandra's obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis's brave struggle with haemophilia.

    Having Polish friends meant it was becoming increasingly unsafe for her to stay there and she finds a new life in the Harz Mountains. This taking her still further away from her home and her beloved younger sister, Erika.In Goslar, Hilde meets her husband, Karl, a young officer in the German Army.When he joins the 7th Panzer Brigade led by General Erwin Rommel at the beginning of WW II, Hilde is left to bring up their children in war-torn Germany.After Rommel's promotion to Field Marshal, Karl follows him to Africa, later Italy and ultimately Karl is posted to the Russian front. Hilde's story is based on facts and is told by her youngest daughter, Elisabeth

    Now, in this first full one-volume history in modern times, John W. O'Malley brings to life the volatile issues that pushed several Holy Roman emperors, kings and queens of France, and five popes--and all of Europe with them--repeatedly to the brink of disaster.During the council's eighteen years, war and threat of war among the key players, as well as the Ottoman Turks' onslaught against Christendom, turned the council into a perilous enterprise. Its leaders declined to make a pronouncement on war against infidels, but Trent's most glaring and ironic silence was on the authority of the papacy itself. The popes, who reigned as Italian monarchs while serving as pastors, did everything in their power to keep papal reform out of the council's hands--and their power was considerable. O'Malley shows how the council pursued its contentious parallel agenda of reforming the Church while simultaneously asserting Catholic doctrine.Like What Happened at Vatican II, O'Malley's Trent: What Happened at the Council strips mythology from historical truth while providing a clear, concise, and fascinating account of a pivotal episode in Church history. In celebration of the 450th anniversary of the council's closing, it sets the record straight about the much misunderstood failures and achievements of this critical moment in European history.

    North and South America, too, suffered turbulence. The distinguished historian Geoffrey Parker examines first-hand accounts of men and women throughout the world describing what they saw and suffered during a sequence of political, economic and social crises that stretched from 1618 to the 1680s. Parker also deploys scientific evidence concerning climate conditions of the period, and his use of ‘natural’ as well as ‘human’ archives transforms our understanding of the World Crisis. Changes in the prevailing weather patterns during the 1640s and 1650s – longer and harsher winters, and cooler and wetter summers – disrupted growing seasons, causing dearth, malnutrition, and disease, along with more deaths and fewer births. Some contemporaries estimated that one-third of the world died, and much of the surviving historical evidence supports their pessimism.Parker’s demonstration of the link between climate change and worldwide catastrophe 350 years ago stands as an extraordinary historical achievement.  And the contemporary implications of his study are equally important: are we at all prepared today for the catastrophes that climate change could bring tomorrow?

    This ambitious history tells the fascinating story of the cult of the saints from its origins in the second-century days of the Christian martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. Robert Bartlett examines all of the most important aspects of the saints--including miracles, relics, pilgrimages, shrines, and the saints' role in the calendar, literature, and art.The book explores the central role played by the bodies and body parts of saints, and the special treatment these relics received. From the routes, dangers, and rewards of pilgrimage, to the saints' impact on everyday life, Bartlett's account is an unmatched examination of an important and intriguing part of the religious life of the past--as well as the present.

    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. As you journey through this largely chronological narrative - occasionally interrupted for lecture-long explorations of specific topics - you'll see key themes emerge, including the assimilation of successive waves of invaders, the tense relationship between kings and the nobility, and the constant battles over money and taxation. And because so much of history is driven by specific individuals and not just historical circumstance, each lecture is rich in intimate portraits that reveal those individuals at the key moments of their historical destiny, including Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and John Wycliffe.The result is a lecture series that winds up being not only informative but deeply entertaining, with each lecture drawing you in with its own particular fascinations, including a probing look at the scope of the Black Death, a realistic examination of the legends of both King Arthur and Robin Hood, a riveting description of the Battle of Bosworth Field, and a discussion of the surprisingly nuanced penalties of the early Germanic law codes.These lectures consistently deliver a fresh level of understanding about medieval England, its rulers and subjects, and their significance for the world we live in today. The chain of theme and event that links our world to theirs will never be clearer, rewarding every moment you spend with this series.

    A brilliant self-publicist in the first age of mass media, he used his fame to sell his work, seduce women, and promote his extreme nationalism. In 1915 d’Annunzio’s incendiary oratory helped drive Italy to enter the First World War, in which he achieved heroic status as an aviator.In 1919 he led a troop of mutineers into the Croatian port of Fiume and there a delinquent city-state. Futurists, anarchists, communists, and proto-fascists descended on the city. So did literati and thrill seekers, drug dealers, and prostitutes. After fifteen months an Italian gunship brought the regime to an end, but the adventure had its sequel: three years later, the fascists marched on Rome, belting out anthems they’d learned in Fiume, as Mussolini consciously modeled himself after the great poet.At once an aesthete and a militarist, d’Annunzio wrote with equal enthusiasm about Fortuny gowns and torpedoes, and enjoyed making love on beds strewn with rose petals as much as risking death as an aviator. Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s stunning biography vividly re-creates his flamboyant life and dramatic times, tracing the early twentieth century’s trajectory from Romantic idealism to world war and fascist aggression.

    The bitter four-month struggle that ensued-known as the Hundred Days Campaign-saw some of the bloodiest and most ferocious combat of the Great War, as the Allies grimly worked to break the stalemate in the west and end the conflict that had decimated Europe. In Hundred Days, acclaimed military historian Nick Lloyd leads readers into the endgame of World War I, showing how the timely arrival of American men and materiel-as well as the bravery of French, British, and Commonwealth soldiers-helped to turn the tide on the Western Front. Many of these battle-hardened troops had endured years of terror in the trenches, clinging to their resolve through poison-gas attacks and fruitless assaults across no man's land. Finally, in July 1918, they and their American allies did the impossible: they returned movement to the western theater. Using surprise attacks, innovative artillery tactics, and swarms of tanks and aircraft, they pushed the Germans out of their trenches and forced them back to their final bastion: the Hindenburg Line, a formidable network of dugouts, barbed wire, and pillboxes. After a massive assault, the Allies broke through, racing toward the Rhine and forcing Kaiser Wilhelm II to sue for peace. An epic tale ranging from the ravaged fields of Flanders to the revolutionary streets of Berlin, Hundred Days recalls the bravery and sacrifice that finally silenced the guns of Europe.

    He traces the path to war, making clear why Germany and Austria-Hungary were primarily to blame, and describes the gripping first clashes in the West, where the French army marched into action in uniforms of red and blue with flags flying and bands playing. In August, four days after the French suffered 27,000 men dead in a single day, the British fought an extraordinary holding action against oncoming Germans, one of the last of its kind in history. In October, at terrible cost the British held the allied line against massive German assaults in the first battle of Ypres. Hastings also re-creates the lesser-known battles on the Eastern Front, brutal struggles in Serbia, East Prussia and Galicia, where the Germans, Austrians, Russians and Serbs inflicted three million casualties upon one another by Christmas. As he has done in his celebrated, award-winning works on World War II, Hastings gives us frank assessments of generals and political leaders and masterly analyses of the political currents that led the continent to war. He argues passionately against the contention that the war was not worth the cost, maintaining that Germany's defeat was vital to the freedom of Europe. Throughout we encounter statesmen, generals, peasants, housewives and private soldiers of seven nations in Hastings's accustomed blend of top-down and bottom-up accounts: generals dismounting to lead troops in bayonet charges over 1,500 feet of open ground; farmers who at first decried the requisition of their horses; infantry men engaged in a haggard retreat, sleeping four hours a night in their haste. This is a vivid new portrait of how a continent became embroiled in war and what befell millions of men and women in a conflict that would change everything.

    If they failed, thousands of British troops landing on the beaches were expected to die. But their mission was flawed and started to go wrong from the moment they jumped from their aircraft above Normandy.Only twenty per cent of the unit made it to the objective and half of them were killed or wounded during the attack. Undermanned and lacking equipment and ammunition, the survivors then held a critical part of the invasion beachhead. For six bloody days, they defended the Breville Ridge against vastly superior German forces and bore the brunt of Rommel's attempt to turn the left flank of the Allied invasion.The Manner of Men is an epic account of courage beyond the limits of human endurance, where paratroopers prevailed despite intelligence failures and higher command blunders, in what has been described as one of the most remarkable feat of arms of the British Army and the Parachute Regiment during World War II.

    Yet many childcare experts reckon these crimes are just the tip of an iceberg of wide scale exploitation occurring across the country. The Deputy Children's Commissioner Sue Berelowitz said in June 2012 that there 'isn't a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited'. As this book goes to press, a gang of men similar to those convicted in Rochdale stands trial for similar crimes in Oxford. What is happening in Britain that means young vulnerable girls can be exploited in this way? Award-winning journalist Kris Hollington tells the inside story of some of the most shocking and heartbreaking crimes of recent years, focusing on the Rochdale case but also analysing recent cases in the London area that have echoes of the brutality of organised slavery. His findings expose how the British justice system is failing to protect children in the 21st century. It is a scandal that cannot be ignored.

    This fascinating guide will teach you all you need to know about the vocabulary of the Rogues of Georgian London and how to function in society at the lowest level. Along the way you will acquire some much-needed information and advice on how to make false dice; how to pick pockets; how best to rob a man on a horse; and where to find a good cup of coffee at 3:00am in the morning.

    They are equipped with a bewildering range of ships, craft and other vessels and types of equipment whose purpose is often unclear. Writings on naval warfare are usually replete with references to obscure concepts explained in arcane language that can serve as an effective barrier to understanding. It is the objective of this book to cut through the obscure and the arcane to offer a clear, coherent and accessible guide to the key features of naval warfare that will equip the reader with the knowledge and understanding necessary for a sophisticated engagement with the subject. Understanding Naval Warfare is divided into two key parts. The first focuses on concepts of naval warfare and introduces readers to the key concepts and ideas associated with the theory and practice of naval operations. The second part focuses on the conduct of war at sea, and also on peacetime roles for contemporary navies. This section concludes with a chapter that looks ahead to the likely future of naval warfare, assessing whether navies are likely to be more or less useful than in the past.This textbook will be essential reading for students of naval warfare, seapower and maritime security, and highly recommended for students of military history, strategic studies and security studies in general.

    But I had reckoned without the liberation of Paris - I had reckoned without remembering that I might be a part of that richly historic day. We were in Paris on the first day - one of the great days of all time.' (Ernie Pyle, US war correspondent)The liberation of Paris was a momentous point in twentieth-century history, yet it is now largely forgotten outside France. Eleven Days in August is a pulsating hour-by-hour reconstruction of these tumultuous events that shaped the final phase of the war and the future of France, told with the pace of a thriller. While examining the conflicting national and international interests that played out in the bloody street fighting, it tells of how, in eleven dramatic days, people lived, fought and died in the most beautiful city in the world.Based largely on unpublished archive material, including secret conversations, coded messages, diaries and eyewitness accounts, Eleven Days in August shows how these August days were experienced in very different ways by ordinary Parisians, Resistance fighters, French collaborators, rank-and-file German soldiers, Allied and French spies, the Allied and German High Commands.Above all, it shows that while the liberation of Paris may be attributed to the audacity of the Resistance, the weakness of the Germans and the strength of the Allies, the key to it all was the Parisians who by turn built street barricades and sunbathed on the banks of the Seine, who fought the Germans and simply tried to survive until the Germans finally surrendered, in a billiard room at the Prefecture of Police. One of the most iconic moments in the history of the twentieth century had come to a close, and the face of Paris would never be the same again.

    I asked myself, do humans set up the system of normal? If they do, are genocide and cruelty normal? Maybe the nature of man was evil. Maybe Hitler was right. Could I be the one who was wrong?" Orphaned at eight years old, brilliant and obsessive Julia Josephine Patterson finds herself living with her godfather in Vienna at the brink of World War II. Obsessed with honoring her namesake, John Joseph Pershing who tragically lost his own daughters, Julia uses old family letters and her American ideals to guide her quest to make her father and General Pershing proud. While trying to find herself in a world turning to evil, Julia decides to save one unsuspecting victim of Nazi terror at a time. Coming to grips with right and wrong, Julia is forced to question everyone in her life, leading her to discover the secrets her parents left behind. In the process of trying to save the world, she must fight her own demons and find herself, while being forced to hide her true intentions from the world. General Pershing’s Other Daughter is a 76,000-word work of historical fiction set on the cobblestone streets of World War II Austria. The story follows Julia, an obsessive-compulsive, idealistic, sarcastic, yet genius American orphan sent to live in Austria during Adolph Hitler’s rise to power. Focusing on Austria, an often forgotten player in the Second World War in contemporary fiction, General Pershing’s Other Daughter seizes a topic of high interest (the Nazi takeover of Europe) from a new perspective. Character driven, General Pershing’s Other Daughter explores the challenges of a girl learning to embrace, yet struggling to overcome, being raised solely by broken men and concerned with books and justice more than beauty and compliance.

    But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizen—a special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely?In The Subject of Murder, Lisa Downing explores the ways in which the figure of the murderer has been made to signify a specific kind of social subject in Western modernity. Drawing on the work of Foucault in her studies of the lives and crimes of killers in Europe and the United States, Downing interrogates the meanings of media and texts produced about and by murderers. Upending the usual treatment of murderers as isolated figures or exceptional individuals, Downing argues that they are ordinary people, reflections of our society at the intersections of gender, agency, desire, and violence.

    But what makes Schmidt even more compelling to us is his day job. For forty-five years, Schmidt was an efficient and prolific public executioner, employed by the state to extract confessions and put convicted criminals to death. In his years of service, he executed 361 people and tortured, flogged, or disfigured hundreds more. Is it possible that a man who practiced such cruelty could also be insightful, compassionate, humane—even progressive? In his groundbreaking book, the historian Joel F. Harrington looks for the answer in Schmidt’s journal, whose immense significance has been ignored until now. Harrington uncovers details of Schmidt’s medical practice, his marriage to a woman ten years older than him, his efforts at penal reform, his almost touching obsession with social status, and most of all his conflicted relationship with his own craft and the growing sense that it could not be squared with his faith. A biography of an ordinary man struggling for his soul, The Faithful Executioner is also an unparalleled portrait of Europe on the cusp of modernity, yet riven by conflict and encumbered by paranoia, superstition, and abuses of power. In his intimate portrait of a Nuremberg executioner, Harrington also sheds light on our own fraught historical moment.

    Following Britain’s military commanders and troops across the battlefields of Europe, from D-Day to VE-Day, from the Normandy beaches to Arnhem and the Rhine, and, ultimately, to the Baltic, Buckley’s provocative history demonstrates that the British Army was more than a match for the vaunted Nazi war machine. This fascinating revisionist study of the campaign to liberate Northern Europe in the war’s final years features a large cast of colorful unknowns and grand historical personages alike, including Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery and the prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill. By integrating detailed military history with personal accounts, it evokes the vivid reality of men at war while putting long-held misconceptions finally to rest.

    The curtain fell on the Roman Empire in Western Europe, its territories divided between successor kingdoms constructed around barbarian military manpower. But if the Roman Empire was dead, the dream of restoring it refused to die. In many parts of the old Empire, real Romans still lived, holding on to their lands, the values of their civilisation, its institutions; the barbarians were ready to reignite the imperial flame and to enjoy the benefits of Roman civilization, the three greatest contenders being Theoderic, Justinian and Charlemagne. But, ultimately, they would fail and it was not until the reinvention of the papacy in the eleventh century that Europe’s barbarians found the means to generate a new Roman Empire, an empire which has lasted a thousand years.

    Fangs of the Lone Wolf: Chechen Tactics in the Russian-Chechen Wars 1994-2009 is an exception. These are the stories of low-level guerrilla combat as told by the survivors. They cover fighting from the cities of Grozny and Argun to the villages of Bamut and Serzhen-yurt, and finally the hills, river valleys and mountains that make up so much of Chechnya. The author embedded with Chechen guerrilla forces and knows the conflict, country and culture. Yet, as a Western outsider, he is able to maintain perspective and objectivity. He traveled extensively to interview Chechen former combatants now displaced, some now in hiding or on the run from Russian retribution and justice. The military professional will appreciate the book's crisp narration, organization by type of combat, accurate color maps and insightful analysis and commentary. The civilian reader will discover the complexity of "simple guerrilla tactics" and the demands on individual perseverance and endurance that guerrilla warfare exacts.The book is organized into vignettes that provide insight on the nature of both Chechen and Russian tactics utilized during the two wars. They show the chronic problem of guerrilla logistics, the necessity of digging in fighting positions, the value of the correct use of terrain and the price paid in individual discipline and unit cohesion when guerrillas are not bound by a military code and law. Guerrilla warfare is probably as old as man, but has been overshadowed by maneuver war by modern armies and recent developments in the technology of war. As Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines and Chechnya demonstrate, guerrilla war is not only still viable, but is increasingly common. Fangs of the Lone Wolf provides a unique insight into what is becoming modern and future war.

    Spanning almost 200 years, the entire industry is represented; from clothing and footwear designers, to photographers, stylists, icons and retailers, including the new category of educational institutions that have been fundamental in the careers of many of the creative individuals.

    When Napoleon eventually died in exile, the Lords of the Admiralty ordered that the original dispatches from seven major fleet battles - The Glorious First of June (1794), St Vincent (1797), Camperdown (1797), The Nile (1798), Copenhagen (1801), Trafalgar (1805) and San Domingo (1806) - should be gathered together and presented to the Nation. These letters, written by Britain's admirals, captains, surgeons and boatswains and sent back home in the midst of conflict, were bound in an immense volume, to be admired as a jewel of British history. Sam Willis, one of Britain's finest naval historians, stumbled upon this collection by chance in the British Library in 2010 and soon found out that only a handful of people knew of its existence. The rediscovery of these first-hand reports, and the vivid commentary they provide, has enabled Willis to reassesses the key engagements in extraordinary and revelatory detail, and to paint an enthralling series of portraits of the Royal Navy's commanders at the time. In a compelling and dramatic narrative, In the Hour of Victory tells the story of these naval triumphs as never before, and allows us to hear once more the officer's voices as they describe the battles that made Britain great.

    Only at sea was British power dominant, though even with this crucial advantage the British population lived under fear of a French invasion for much of those two decades. How was it that despite multiple changes of government and the assassination of a Prime Minister, Britain survived and eventually won a generation-long war against a regime which at its peak in 1807 commanded many times the resources and manpower?This book looks beyond the familiar exploits of the army and navy to the politicians and civil servants, and examines how they made it possible to continue the war at all. It shows the degree to which the capacities of the whole British population were involved: industrialists, farmers, shipbuilders, cannon founders, gunsmiths and gunpowder manufacturers all had continually to increase quality and output as the demands of the war remorselessly grew. The intelligence war was also central. Yet no participants were more important, he argues, than the bankers and international traders of the City of London, who played a critical role in financing the wars and without whom the armies of Britain's allies could not have taken the field.The Duke of Wellington famously said that the battle which finally defeated Napoleon was 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life': this book shows how true that was for the Napoleonic War as a whole.474 pages narrative, 678 pages in total

    During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. These beliefs provided the basis for defining witchcraft as a secular and ecclesiastical crime and prosecuting tens of thousands of women and men for this offence. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions.These essays study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. They also relate these prosecutions to the Catholic and Protestant reformations, the introduction of new forms of criminal procedure, medical and scientific thought, the process of state-building, profound social and economic change, early modern patterns of gender relations, and the wave of demonic possessions that occurred in Europe at the same time. The essays survey the current state of knowledge in the field, explore the academic controversies that have arisen regarding witch beliefs and witch trials, propose new ways of studying the subject, and identify areas for future research.

    In this stunningly illustrated volume, Michael Witt explores Godard's landmark work as both a specimen of an artist's vision and a philosophical statement on the history of film. Witt contextualizes Godard's theories and approaches to historiography and provides a guide to the wide-ranging cinematic, aesthetic, and cultural forces that shaped Godard's groundbreaking ideas on the history of cinema.

    During this period, the RAF was in a state of regrouping and attempting to renew its ties to the radical left in response to the emergence of a new radical youth movement in the Federal Republic, the Autonomen. This reorganization was evidenced by the shifting of focus from freeing prisoners to fighting NATO. By examining communiqués and texts from 1978 up until the 1982 May Paper, the broader movement is examined and the possibilities and perils of an armed underground organization are contrasted to the more fluid and flexible practice of the revolutionary cells at that time. The history of the 2nd of June Movement (2JM), an eclectic guerilla group with its roots in West Berlin, is also evaluated, especially in light of the split that led to some 2JM members officially disbanding the organization and rallying to the RAF. Finally, the RAF’s relationship to the East German Stasi is examined, as is the abortive attempt by West Germany’s liberal intelligentsia to defuse the armed struggle during Gerhard Baum’s tenure as Minister of the Interior. Dancing with Imperialism will be required reading for students of the first world guerilla, those with interest in the history of European protest movements, and all who wish to understand the challenges of revolutionary struggle.

    Part of me remains young, always reaching for the child that is still inside me; that child and I still speak every day, but never really touch. Too many years have passed, too many horrors. I want to forget, but I shall not. I remember everything that happened over my lifetime-my teachers, my friends and family. I especially remember those who did not survive the war. Even now, nightmares still awaken me, ghastly faces of the dead choking me from my sleep. Lamb of Legacy is the beautifully honest and haunting true story of Edeltraud Fellendorf's childhood in Silesia and adolescent years in Berlin, Germany, where she was raised in the shadow of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, the madness of World War II, and the years that followed. She survives today through the grace of God, and is determined to finally share her story before everything is forgotten-before the past is buried and no one remembers the ugliness of a world at war and what it means to be a German girl, a sacrificial Lamb that innocently carried on Hitler's Legacy.

    First there was the burning of the neighborhood shops. Then her father, a bookseller, must leave the family and go into hiding. No longer allowed to go to school or even sit in a café, Marianne's only comfort is her beloved mother.      Remember Me - Young Marianne is one of the lucky ones. She has escaped on the first Kindertransport organized to take Jewish children out of Germany to safety in Britain. At first Marianne is desperate. Marianne speaks little English and is made to feel unwelcomed in her sponsor's home and, most of all, she misses her mother terribly. As the months pass, she realizes that she cannot control the circumstances around her. She must rely on herself if she is to survive.      Finding Sophie - Sophie Mandel was only seven years old when she arrived in London on the first Kindertransport from Germany. She has grown up with a friend of her parents, a woman she calls Aunt Em, and despite the war and its deprivations, she has made a good life for herself in England with her foster mother. She has even stopped thinking about the parents she left behind. Now the war is over, and fourteen-year-old Sophie is faced with a terrible dilemma. Where does she belong?

    Its corollary was more elusive. Was it possible to remember—at least to recall—a world that existed before the calamity?”  In the winter of 2000, Louise Steinman set out to attend an international Bearing Witness Retreat at Auschwitz-Birkenau at the invitation of her Zen rabbi, who felt the Poles had gotten a “bum rap.” A bum rap? Her own mother could not bear to utter the word “Poland,” a country, Steinman was taught, that allowed and perhaps abetted the genocide that decimated Europe’s Jewish population, including members of her own extended family.   As Steinman learns more about her lost ancestors, though, she finds that the history of Polish-Jewish relations is far more complex. Although German-occupied Poland was the site of horrific Jewish persecution, Poland was for centuries the epicenter of European Jewish life. After the war, Polish-Jewish relations soured. For Poles under Communism, it was taboo to examine or discuss the country’s Jewish past. Among Jews in the Diaspora, there was little acknowledgment of the Poles’ immense suffering during its dual occupation.   Steinman’s research leads her to her grandparents’ town of Radomsko, whose eighteen thousand Jews were deported or shot during the Nazi occupation. As she delves deeper into the town’s and her family’s history, Steinman discovers a prewar past where a lively community of Jews and Catholics lived shoulder to shoulder, where a Polish Catholic painted the blue ceiling of the Radomsko synagogue, and a Jewish tinsmith roofed the spires of the Catholic church. She also uncovers untold stories of Poles who rescued their Jewish neighbors in Radomsko and helps bring these heroes to the light of day.   Returning time and again to Poland over the course of a decade, Steinman finds Poles who are seeking the truth about the past, however painful, and creating their own rituals to teach their towns about the history of their lost Jewish neighbors. This lyrical memoir chronicles her immersion in the exhilarating, discomforting, sometimes surreal, and ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation.

    But his long list of accomplishments doesn’t begin or end there. He was also the first and only five-star general of the US Air Force; one of the first US military aviators; the first American to carry air mail; and the architect of the war-winning air strategy of World War II.In this new biography of one of the American military’s most towering figures, author Bill Yenne weaves the story of Hap Arnold’s life, from his youthful days as a cunning prankster to his sunset career as an elder statesman. All along, Yenne unfolds General Arnold’s life like the adventure story it is. A bold advocate for technological advancement, Hap Arnold was a powerful character in the golden age of aviation, an innovative warrior in the conflict that defined the modern era, and the creator of an entirely new branch of the US military.Hap Arnold: The General Who Invented the US Air Force is a page-turning adventure biography for history buffs, aviation enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the events that shaped America and the world in the first half of the twentieth century.

    That decision cost her family dearly in wartorn Europe, 1945. Ilse grew up on a small farm, with a wonderful family, the woods as a playground and the beaches of the Baltic. Then turmoil followed the German defeat by the Russians and the subsequent occupation. In 31 months under the Russians, Ilse's family is driven from their home, she mourns her missing father, witnesses her mother's rape, sees her grandparents and baby brother succumb to the brutal conditions, and hears of her oldest sister's capture and death in a work prison. Fighting starvation, Ilse crafts ways to coexist with the Russians, scavenging, begging and stealing to help the family survive.

    Yet, surprisingly, few if any of their ferocious African wars are known to English-speaking readers. In this impeccably researched and spellbinding new book, John Leband seeks to redress this imbalance expertly recalling this remarkable saga in full.

    The essays collected in this volume speak to interpretative challenges common to all fields of women's and gender history - that is, how best to uncover the experiences of ordinary people from archives formed mainly by and about elite males, and how to combine social histories of lived experiences with cultural histories of gendered discourses and identities. The collection focuses on Western Europe in the Middle Ages but offers some consideration of medieval Islam and Byzantium.The Handbook is structured into seven sections: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thought; law in theory and practice; domestic life and material culture; labour, land, and economy; bodies and sexualities; gender and holiness; and the interplay of continuity and change throughout the medieval period. It contains material from some of the foremost scholars in this field, and it not only serves as the major reference text in medieval and gender studies, but also provides an agenda for future new research.

    While European courts targeted and executed overwhelmingly female suspects, often on charges of compacting with the devil, the tsars' courts vigorously pursued men and some women accused of practicing more down-to-earth magic, using poetic spells and home-grown potions. Instead of Satanism or heresy, the primary concern in witchcraft testimony in Russia involved efforts to use magic to subvert, mitigate, or avenge the harsh conditions of patriarchy, serfdom, and social hierarchy.Broadly comparative and richly illustrated with color plates, Desperate Magic places the trials of witches in the context of early modern Russian law, religion, and society. Piecing together evidence from trial records to illuminate some of the central puzzles of Muscovite history, Kivelson explores the interplay among the testimony of accusers, the leading questions of the interrogators, and the confessions of the accused. Assembled, they create a picture of a shared moral vision of the world that crossed social divides. Because of the routine use of torture in extracting and shaping confessions, Kivelson addresses methodological and ideological questions about the Muscovite courts equation of pain and truth, questions with continuing resonance in the world today. Within a moral economy that paired unquestioned hierarchical inequities with expectations of reciprocity, magic and suspicions of magic emerged where those expectations were most egregiously violated.Witchcraft in Russia surfaces as one of the ways that oppression was contested by ordinary people scrambling to survive in a fiercely inequitable world. Masters and slaves, husbands and wives, and officers and soldiers alike believed there should be limits to exploitation and saw magic deployed at the junctures where hierarchical order veered into violent excess.

    Beginning with Lederman as a young girl in Poland in 1941, Sheva’s Promise traces her experience in a Nazi ghetto with her mother and sister. Resolved that she must avoid the detention camp to help her family, Lederman obtains a false birth certificate and escapes the ghetto. Through the courage and humanity of a few individuals, she finds work in a hospital in Germany under an assumed identity. With fierce determination and resourcefulness, Lederman manages to elude Nazi capture and eventually immigrates to the United States with her husband.Sheva’s Promise is not only an invaluable piece of historical record but also the work of a gifted writer whose keen eye for detail and skillful attention to language gives readers an unforgettable story.

    Who would keep the flame burning through dark years of occupation? At what cost?Olivier Wieviorka presents a comprehensive history of the French Resistance, synthesizing its social, political, and military aspects to offer fresh insights into its operation. Detailing the Resistance from the inside out, he reveals not one organization but many interlocking groups often at odds over goals, methods, and leadership. He debunks lingering myths, including the idea that the Resistance sprang up in response to the exhortations of de Gaulle's Free French government-in-exile. The Resistance was homegrown, arising from the soil of French civil society. Resisters had to improvise in the fight against the Nazis and the collaborationist Vichy regime. They had no blueprint to follow, but resisters from all walks of life and across the political spectrum formed networks, organizing activities from printing newspapers to rescuing downed airmen to sabotage. Although the Resistance was never strong enough to fight the Germans openly, it provided the Allies invaluable intelligence, sowed havoc behind enemy lines on D-Day, and played a key role in Paris's liberation.Wieviorka shatters the conventional image of a united resistance with no interest in political power. But setting the record straight does not tarnish the legacy of its fighters, who braved Nazism without blinking.

    Drawing from an abundance of new, previously unpublished material from the Thatcher Archive at Churchill College, Cambridge, Jonathan Aitken's fresh and original biography is a lively and perceptive exploration of the personality that dominated conservative British politics for more than 10 years and her profound and worldwide impact on the historical tapestry of her time. At once positive and critical in its assessment of her governance, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality is crafted from the author's longtime personal relationship with his subject, his eyewitness account of public and private episodes in her life, and more than 100 interviews with the former Prime Minister's political colleagues and close personal friends. Penetrating and insightful, it chronicles one of the most remarkable political lives of our time.

    Taking German Indological scholarship on the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita as their example, Adluri and Bagchee develop a critique of the modern valorization of method over truth in thehumanities.The authors show how, from its origins in eighteenth-century Neo-Protestantism onwards, the critical method was used as a way of making theological claims against rival philosophical and/or religious traditions. Via discussions of German Romanticism, the pantheism controversy, scientific positivism, and empiricism, they show how theological concerns dominated German scholarship on the Indian texts. Indology functions as a test case for wider concerns: the rise of historicism, the displacement of philosophical concerns from thinking, and the belief in the ability of a technical method to producetruth.Based on the historical evidence of the first part of the book, Adluri and Bagchee make a case in the second part for going beyond both the critical pretensions of modern academic scholarship and the objections of its post-structuralist or post-Orientalist critics. By contrasting German Indologywith Plato's concern for virtue and Gandhi's focus on praxis, the authors argue for a conception of the humanities as a dialogue between the ancients and moderns and between eastern and western cultures.

    He explains why the Catholic has a moral obligation to support the war effort against the Axis Powers; not only because of the crimes perpetrated against the Polish and Jewish peoples, but because a loss for the Allies would mean the end of Western Civilization. Belloc also shares his shock at the attitudes of appeasement towards, and sympathy for, the enemy shared by some of his fellow countrymen.

    Combining the art of dramatic storytelling with biography, Church history, and Catholic teaching and belief, this collection shows how real people lived the Gospel, revealing the richness of the Christian life and offering inspirational models of the faith.

    Flanders, 1914. The German and British soldiers in the trenches make an unofficial Christmas truce, with carols and a football match. But the officers aren't happy...A veteran soldier and a young recruit are 'celebrating' Christmas in the trenches of Flanders in 1914. They hear the enemy sing carols and watch them place Christmas Trees in the trenches opposite. They begin to shout greetings across no-man's land and end up playing an international football match. The match is hard-fought but with moments of generosity and sportsmanship on both sides. They see the 'enemy' as vulnerable humans and the officers are furious. Further unofficial truces are banned and the war goes on with bullets instead of footballs. But it's a memory that stays with young Albert long after the war. A moving and fascinating look at a very human moment of the Great War, by the master historical storyteller. Perfect for 7+.

    As Bednarski points out, the story is important not so much for what it tells us about Margarida but for how it illuminates a past world. Through the depositions and accusations made in court, the reader learns much about medieval women, female agency, kin networks, solidarity, sex, sickness, medicine, and law. Unlike most histories, this book does not remove the author from the analysis. Rather, it lays bare the working methods of the historian. Throughout his tale, Bednarski skillfully weaves a second narrative about how historians "do" history, highlighting the rewards and pitfalls of working with primary sources.The book opens with a chapter on microhistory as a genre and explains its strengths, weaknesses, and inherent risks. Next is a narrative of Margarida's criminal trial, followed by chapters on the civil suits and appeal and Margarida's eventual fate. The book features a rough copy of a court notary, a notorial act, and a sample of a criminal inquest record in the original Latin. A timeline of Margarida's life, list of characters, and two family trees provide useful information on key people in the story. A map of late medieval Manosque is also provided.

    K. E. Schmoger, features the complete original text, along with a supplemental reading section entitled "A Brief Life of Christ". We’ve also included unique hand-selected classic artwork for the reader’s enjoyment, exclusive to this eBook edition of "Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich Volume 1".Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich Volume 1:Definitive life of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824); a German Augustinian nun- mystic; stigmatist; visionary; prophet; victim soul. Prophecies and amazing revelations on every aspect of the Faith. Extremely edifying; makes the Gospels come alive with details you never knew before! 2 Volume Set.A Brief Life of Christ:Absolutely excellent for students and for adult review. Capsulizes the main events and sayings of Our Lord. Map of the Holy Land. A chronological outline. Perfect for a refresher.

    Based on extensive new research, it addresses a perennial question about the British army on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918: why did they think they were winning? Jim Beach reveals how the British perceived the German army through a study of the development of the British intelligence system, its personnel and the ways in which intelligence was gathered. He also examines how intelligence shaped strategy and operations by exploring the influence of intelligence in creating perceptions of the enemy. He shows for the first time exactly what the British knew about their opponent, when and how and, in so doing, sheds significant new light on continuing controversies about the British army's conduct of operations in France and Belgium and the relationship between Haig and his chief intelligence officer, John Charteris.

    While he is still well-known among our French-speaking brothers, most English-speaking evangelicals have scarcely heard of him. In God's providence Constance Walker 'stumbled' upon a dusty, seemingly obscure volume from 1856 containing Monod's death-bed meditations. She found these meditations to be filled with life and peace and often joy, even as the speaker was suffering from intense, unremitting pain. Beyond that, the messages displayed a beautiful balance between logic and feeling, between appeals to the head and to the heart. Monod set out a lofty standard for the Christian life, while managing to make that standard winsomely appealing. Monod was called 'the voice of the Awakening'. His impact was enormous, as he labored to awaken the nominal Christians of his era to a living, vibrant, personal faith in Jesus Christ and as he challenged those who had such faith to live more wholeheartedly for their Savior. The richness of his classic, romantic prose is only matched by the richness of his thought and the depth of his love for his Savior.

    Written in an easy to understand and engaging manner, Lions of the Faith breaks ground through its chronicling the lives of great Catholics whose feats changed history but are seldom remembered today. Researched in a dozen languages and from sources across three continents and fourteen centuries, Lions of the Faith is a rare gem in weaving together the fascinating story of the Catholic Church's history with Islam.

    Amy Remensnyder explores Mary's prominence on and off the battlefield in the culturally and ethnically diverse world of medieval Iberia, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived side by side, and in colonial Mexico, where Spaniards and indigenous peoples mingled. As this array of peoples turned to her to articulate their identities, Mary was drawn into both hostile and peaceful cross-cultural encounters.

    At the sametime, our popular perception of that complex, fluid, andtransformative time is often rigid and simplistic. Perhaps itmight be easier to grasp if we try to experience it throughthe struggles, desires, perplexities, convictions, and questsof someone who lived though it — in this case, a vocal andinquisitive woman — Renée of France. Although Renéebelonged to the nobility of that time, the course of eventskept her focused on some basic questions of faith — thesame ones that many of us face. Is faith a private matter?Can we just believe secretly in our hearts? What harm isthere in a little pretence?

    

    This was the decade of the cataclysmic Great War, of an officers' mutiny in an elite cavalry regiment of the British Army and of Irish armed rebellion. It was a time, argues Ronan Fanning, when violence and the threat of violence trumped democratic politics. This is a contentious view. Historians have wished to see the events of that decade as an aberration, as an eruption of irrational bloodletting. And they have have been reluctant to write about the triumph of physical force. Fanning argues that in fact violence worked, however much this offends our contemporary moral instincts. Without resistance from the Ulster Unionists and its very real threat of violence the state of Northern Ireland would never have come into being. The Home Rule party of constitutionalist nationalists failed, and were pushed aside by the revolutionary nationalists, Sinn Fein. Bleakly realistic, ruthlessly analytical of the vacillation and indecision displayed by democratic politicians at Westminster faced with such revolutionary intransigence, Fatal Path is history as it was, not as we would wish it to be.

    By1914 Germany had ships and sailors scattered across the globe, protecting its overseas colonies and “showing the flag” of its new Imperial Navy. After war broke out on August 4 there was no hope that they could reach home. Instead, they were ordered to attack Britain’s vital trade routes for as long as possible. Under the leadership of a few brilliant, audacious men, they unleashed a series of raids that threatened Britain’s war effort and challenged the power and prestige of the Royal Navy. The next year saw a battle of wits which stretched across the globe, drawing in ships and men from six empires.By the end, the “Kaiser’s Pirates” were no more, and Britain once again ruled the waves. Including vivid descriptions of the battles of Coronel and the Falklands and the actions of the Emden, the Goeben and the Breslau, the Karsrühe and the Königsberg, The Kaiser’s Pirates tells a fascinating narrative that ranges across the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, and the Caribbean.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    These Field Hospitals were the lifeline to the rear for the unabated deluge of wounded which soon overwhelmed both units. All wards were full and operating theaters were working round the clock to deal with the endless queues for amputations and major surgery. In the words of Major-General von Bertele in his foreword: "that casualty care should be managed on such a scale and at such a pace leaves the reader open mouthed." Lifeline is a touching record of the care provided by an often exhausted but dedicated medical and nursing staff and the bravery and spirit of their patients as the hospitals, always under intense pressure, moved back and forth with the changing positions of the line during the last months of the war.

    Explores global traditions surrounding birthdays, including cake, parties, and decorations.

    It was a signal event of the early modern era, thoroughly of its time even as it prefigured the radical political developments of subsequent centuries. This sweeping, exhaustively researched history is the first comprehensive account of the treaty and its wider significance to appear in the English language. Bringing together the latest scholarship with an engaging narrative, it retraces the European situation leading up to the Congress of Westphalia, exploring its political and intellectual underpinnings and placing it in a broad global and chronological context. In doing so, it definitively fills a massive lacuna in the scholarly literature while offering fascinating insights into the long historical transition to modernity.

    While offering insight into the pope's response to Nazism, Robert A. Ventresca argues that it was the Cold War and Pius XII's manner of engaging with the modern world that defined his pontificate.Laying the groundwork for the pope's controversial, contradictory actions from 1939 to 1958, Ventresca begins with the story of Pacelli's Roman upbringing, his intellectual formation in Rome's seminaries, and his interwar experience as papal diplomat and Vatican secretary of state. Accused of moral equivocation during the Holocaust, Pius XII later fought the spread of Communism in Western Europe, spoke against the persecution of Catholics in Eastern Europe and Asia, and tackled a range of social and political issues. By appointing the first indigenous cardinals from China and India and expanding missions in Africa while expressing solidarity with independence movements, he internationalized the church's membership and moved Catholicism beyond the colonial mentality of previous eras.Drawing from a diversity of international sources, including unexplored documentation from the Vatican, Ventresca reveals a paradoxical figure: a prophetic reformer of limited vision whose leadership both stimulated the emergence of a global Catholicism and sowed doubt and dissension among some of the church's most faithful servants.

    Contained within the pages of this book are twenty-five historic cases of murder committed in the Channel Islands. They include a fatal assault on John Francis in 1894, which remains unsolved; the murder by Philippe Jolin of his father in 1829; and the murder and suicide committed by Eugenie Toupin in 1881, all of which occurred in Jersey. In Guernsey, elderly widow Elizabeth Saujon was murdered during the course of a robbery in 1853, Edward Hooper drunkenly beat his wife to death in 1890, and housekeeper Elizabeth de la Mare murdered her elderly employer in 1935, wanting to hasten his demise on the understanding that she was the sole beneficiary of his will.Nicola Sly’s carefully researched and enthralling text will appeal to everyone interested in true crime and the shady side of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney’s history.

    How could a sophisticated, civilized nation like Germany sink into an abyss of degradation that had no bottom? How could the SS rulers of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp torture, starve, and murder defenseless prisoners? And how could Nazi doctors use the camp as their personal, ghoulish laboratory? Buchenwald: Hell on a Hilltop, Book 3 in The Buchenwald Trilogy, explores these themes and is a comprehensive examination of the depths of officially sanctioned depravity into which the Third Reich sank.

    Meticulously documented and lavishly illustrated, the volume covers interiors, furniture, textiles and dress, glass, graphics, metalwork, ceramics, exhibitions, product design, landscape and garden design, and theater and film design. Divided into four chronological sections, each of which is subdivided geographically, the authors elucidate the evolution of style, form, materials, and techniques, and address vital issues such as gender, race, patronage, cultural appropriation, continuity versus innovation, and high versus low culture.   Leading authorities in design history and decorative arts studies present hundreds of objects in their contemporary contexts, demonstrating the overwhelming extent to which the applied arts have enriched customs, ceremony, and daily life worldwide over the past six hundred years. This ambitious, landmark publication is essential reading, contributing a definitive classic to the existing scholarship on design, decorative arts, and material culture, while also introducing these subjects to new readers in a comprehensive, erudite book with widespread appeal.

    Yet within weeks of the outbreak of war, they became pariahs, objects of suspicion and aversion. The "anti-alien" campaign following the sinking of the "Lusitania" forced the Speyers into exile in the United States. He was stripped of his membership of the Privy Council, but she went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

    It examines both recent movements of right-wing extremism and the way in which rearticulated neo-ethnic ideas have been adopted by main stream politicians and in main stream public discourse. Politicians from other than the right-wing populist parties have tended to resist specific ways of talking that are considered too extremist, rather than their underlying frame of interpretation.Governments across Europe have adopted anti-immigrant and anti-Roma policies. Xenophobia and hostility towards 'others' is on the rise, along with appeals to "Tradition and Security". 'Cultures of fear' are linked with fantasies of fusion or 'imagined sameness'. Alongside the image of the nation as a mother and/or father, Reich (1933) called attention to the fantasy of the nation as a body, echoed in Money-Kyrle's (1939) characterization of 'group hypochondria' in connection with the burning of witches and heretics; "The Church, and State united to it, could tolerate no foreign body within itself, and turned ferociously upon any that it found." To address the current political developments, the volume stresses the urgency of understanding the fantasies and affects which underpin them.'Nationalism and the Body Politic is a fine, timely collection that should be read by anyone concerned by the rise of nationalist and far-right politics in Europe and beyond. Offering numerous insights and frequent provocations to further thought, it brings together an impressive selection of topics and national contexts. Informed by a generous range of theoretical traditions, the book is also a model of open-minded critical dialogue. Above all, the collection is testament to the ongoing relevance of psychoanalytically informed political and social analysis – perhaps needed now more than ever.’— Peter Redman, Editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society‘Psychoanalysis has traditionally eschewed discussing politics and neutrality has been held as the touchstone of its scientific respectability. Nonetheless, this is tantamount to a major gelding of psychoanalytic thought and an undue restriction of its impact on human life, both individual and collective. This fascinating collection of articles on the subject of psychoanalysis and politics, meticulously edited by Lene Auestad, is a major effort to redress this long-standing omission. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested and engaged in psychoanalysis, group analysis, social science, philosophy, or politics. It is definitely worth your while.’— Juan Tubert-Oklander, training and supervising analyst at the Institute of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association‘This unique volume presents a selection of contemporary theoretical discussions of the recent revival of neo-nationalism, but reaching beyond the traditional political debates of the topic. The different contributions in the book offer new and fascinating perspectives by exploring the unconscious fantasies of neo-nationalist policies. As Adorno and Marcuse have already shown, xenophobia, racism, ethnocentrism, and prejudice are connected with deep-rooted emotions – with hatred, uncanny desires, anxieties, and overwhelming fears of annihilation. These emotions cannot be fought politically if it is not possible to understand them as expressions of unconscious and unresolved political conflicts within society. Therefore, this book is a most valuable and a much-needed contribution to a scientifically neglected issue that threatens Europe from within its own societies.’— Elisabeth Rohr, Professor of Intercultural Education, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany; group analyst; counsellor of group therapy training projects in Guatemala and Ramallah‘This book is an eye-opener for all of us. It addresses dramatic changes in the political and socio-economic climate of our time and calls for simultaneous testing of external and psychic reality. If we fail to grasp how external reality, history, and trauma shape our experience of the world, we miss a fundamental momentum in the process of understanding and elaboration.’— Judit Szekacs-Weisz, psychoanalyst and co-editor of Sandor Ferenczi – Ernest Jones: Letters 1911–1933

    In the main, the dramas in French Algeria and British Kenya in the 1950s have dominated the scene, overshadowing the equally violent events that unfolded in the Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese empires. Colonial counterinsurgency and mass violence is the first book in English to treat the intense conflict that occurred during the 'Indonesian revolution'--the decolonization struggle of the Dutch East Indies between 1945 and 1949. This case is particularly significant as the first episode of post-war colonial violence, indeed one with global reverberations. International opinion was ranged against the Dutch, and the nascent United Nations condemned its euphemistically termed 'police actions' to reclaim the archipelago from Indonesian nationalists after defeat by the Japanese in 1942. As this book makes clear, however, intra-Indonesian violence was no less prevalent, as rival independence visions vied for control and villagers were caught between the fronts. Taking a multi-perspectival approach, eighteen authors examine the origins of the conflict as well as its representational and memory dimensions. Colonial counterinsurgency and mass violence will appeal to scholars of imperial history, mass violence and memory studies alike.This book is based on a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.

    

    The first western god was both male and female. The worship of hermaphroditic gods like the Gynomorph surfaces in ancient pagan cults as well as early Christianity.In Gynomorphs readers meet female gods with penises and discover how they impacted the development of western culture. Veneration of the Gynomorph is the basis for modern western law courts. The founders of democracy worshiped similar female divinities who possessed penises. Ritual sodomy as a means of celebrating hermaphroditic gods directly promoted the birth of western democracy. In fact, ancient priestesses responsible for guiding the worship of hermaphroditic goddesses laid the very foundations for democracy, science and philosophy.Snake venoms used in cultic sex rituals were immensely popular in both Greece and Rome. In addition, abortion-inducing drugs promoted the first scientific investigations. Classical civilization relied heavily upon the use of cannabis, opiates, and hallucinogens, which were mixed with sexual stimulants. Gynomorphs reveals how the oldest western pharmaceuticals were sex drugs used in religious initiations in celebration of the Gynomorph.

    But, in this book, Catherine Foley illustrates that the practice and contexts of step dancing are much more complicated and fluid. Tracing the trajectory of step dancing in Ireland, she tells its story from roots in eighteenth-century Ireland to its diverse cultural manifestations today. She examines the interrelationships between step dancing and the changing historical and cultural contexts of colonialism, nationalism, postcolonialism and globalization, and shows that step dancing is a powerful tool of embodiment and meaning that can provoke important questions relating to culture and identity through the bodies of those who perform it. Focusing on the rural European region of North Kerry in the south-west of Ireland, Catherine Foley examines three step-dance practices: one, the rural Molyneaux step-dance practice, representing the end of a relatively long-lived system of teaching by itinerant dancing masters in the region; two, RinceoirA- na RA-ochta, a dance school representative of the urbanized staged, competition orientated practice, cultivated by the cultural nationalist movement, the Gaelic League, established at the end of the nineteenth century, and practised today both in Ireland and abroad; and three, the stylized, commoditized, folk-theatrical practice of Siamsa TA-re, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, established in North Kerry in the 1970s. Written from an ethnochoreological perspective, Catherine Foley provides a rich historical and ethnographic account of step dancing, step dancers and cultural institutions in Ireland.

    During these centuries radical changes occurred in the organisation of the rural world. Towns and complex communities of artisans and merchant-traders emerged and networks of contact between northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle and Far East were redefined, with long-lasting consequences into the present day. Loveluck provides the most comprehensive comparative analysis of the rural and urban archaeological remains in this area for twenty-five years. Supported by evidence from architecture, relics, manuscript illuminations and texts, this book explains how the power and intentions of elites were confronted by the aspirations and actions of the diverse rural peasantry, artisans and merchants, producing both intended and unforeseen social changes.

    Here is a different perspective from Nesta on the Origins of World War. Quite hard to find. Contains useful appendixes.

    During this period field fortifications became increasingly important, and their construction evolved from primarily above to below ground. The reasons for these changes are crucial to explaining the landscape of World War I, yet they have remained largely unstudied.The transformation in field fortifications reflected not only the ongoing technological advances but also the changing priorities in the reasons for constructing them, such as preventing desertion, protecting troops, multiplying forces, reinforcing tactical points, providing a secure base, and dominating an area. Field fortification theory, however, did not evolve solely in response to improving firepower or technology. Rather, a combination of those factors and societal ones for example, the rise of large conscript armies and the increasing participation of citizens rather than subjects led directly to technical alterations in the actual construction of the fieldworks. These technical developments arose from the second wave of the Industrial Revolution in the late nineteenth century that provided new technologies that increased the firepower of artillery, which in turn drove the transition from above- to belowground field fortification.Based largely on primary sources including French, British, Austrian, and American military attach reports Murray s enlightening study is unique in defining, fully examining, and contextualizing the theories and construction of field fortifications before World War I.

    The essays explicate how racial science, preexisting racist sentiments, and pseudoscientific theories of race that were preeminent in interwar Europe ultimately facilitated Nazi racial designs for a New Europe. The volume examines racial theories in a number of European nation-states in order to understand racial thinking at large, the origins of the Holocaust, and the history of ethnic discrimination in each of those countries. The essays, by uncovering neglected layers of complexity, diversity, and nuance, demonstrate how local discourse on race paralleled Nazi racial theory but had unique nationalist intellectual traditions of racial thought. Written by rising scholars who are new to English-language audiences, this work examines the scientific foundations that central, eastern, northern, and southern European countries laid for ethnic discrimination, the attempted annihilation of Jews, and the elimination of other so-called inferior peoples.

    Still, thousands of Jews in these small towns survived the war and returned afterward to rebuild their communities. The recollections of some 400 returnees in Ukraine provide the basis for Jeffrey Veidlinger’s reappraisal of the traditional narrative of 20th-century Jewish history. These elderly Yiddish speakers relate their memories of Jewish life in the prewar shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism. Despite Stalinist repressions, the Holocaust, and official antisemitism, their individual remembrances of family life, religious observance, education, and work testify to the survival of Jewish life in the shadow of the shtetl to this day.

    We were bombarding a tree with snowballs. It was fun. A Russian soldier appeared in the driveway and took pot shots at us. Little Richard fell down in the snow, dead. I walked back into the house and said, "They have shot little Richard."Luise Urban was born into a world about to be turned upside down. Her family lived east of the river Oder, and as the Third Reich crumbled and the Soviet Red Army advanced, she was one of 15 million Germans trapped in a war zone during the terrible winter of 1945. Weakened by starvation and forced to flee their home, it was only the bravery and ingenuity of Luise's mother that saved the family from total destruction. Luise relives that harrowing time in this account written in memory of her mother, to whom she owes her life. It is the story of a child, but it is not a story for children.

    A quarter-century after the publication of his classic account of man's attitudes to his past, David Lowenthal revisits how we celebrate, expunge, contest and domesticate the past to serve present needs. He shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt as well as heard and read about. Empathy, re-enactment, memory and commemoration overwhelm traditional history. A unified past once certified by experts and reliant on written texts has become a fragmented, contested history forged by us all. New insights into history and memory, bias and objectivity, artefacts and monuments, identity and authenticity, and remorse and contrition, make this book once again the essential guide to the past that we inherit, reshape and bequeath to the future.

    Once, we were told that Brian, the great Christian king, gave his life in a battle on Good Friday against pagan Viking enemies whose defeat banished them from Ireland forever. More recent interpretations of the Battle of Clontarf have played down the role of the Vikings and portrayed it as merely the final act in a rebellion against Brian, the king of Munster, by his enemies in Leinster and Dublin.This book proposes a far-reaching reassessment of Brian Boru and Clontarf. By examining Brian's family history and tracing his career from its earliest days, it uncovers the origins of Brian's greatness and explains precisely how he changed Irish political life forever.Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf offers a new interpretation of the role of the Vikings in Irish affairs and explains how Brian emerged from obscurity to attain the high-kingship of Ireland because of his exploitation of the Viking presence. And it concludes that Clontarf was deemed a triumph, despite Brian's death, because of what he averted--a major new Viking offensive in Ireland--on that fateful day.Reviews:'I cannot recommend enough Sean Duffy's book for its readability and the enormity of backbreaking historical scholarship lightly borne and compellingly presented.'Dr Pat Wallace, Director Emeritus of the National Museum of Ireland'This scholarly, sympathetic book expertly unpicks legend and propaganda to uncover the real figure, offering an important reassessment of his place in Irish history.' Donnchadh O Corrain, Irish Times Weekend Review