Book picks similar to
The Neighbours of Poland in the 10th Century by Przemysław Urbańczyk


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Copernicus' Secret: How the Scientific Revolution Began


Jack Repcheck - 2007
    Repchecks riveting story tells of the enigmatic genius responsible for one of the most important scientific theories ever--and why it took several decades and a strangers intervention before his groundbreaking On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was published.

Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II


Robert Leckie - 1987
    "A first-class popular history of the war, lively, entertaining, and continuously informative."-- "Publishers Weekly" "His ability to recreate the emotions of war makes this monumental work a living history."-- "Booklist" "His ability to recreate the emotions of war makes this monumental work a living history." "--Booklist" "This one-volume library manages to include everything a reader could possibly want to know about the events of World War II and the people who shaped them."--Bill MauldinA

The Dam Busters


Paul Brickhill - 1951
    The Dam Busters tells the story of the raid and the squadron of fearless airmen who carried it through. Again and again, the crews of 617 Squadron Bomber Command used their flying skills, their tremendous courage and Barnes Wallis’ highly accurate bouncing bombs to deal devastating blows to Nazi Germany.One of the most daring true stories to emerge from the Second World War, Paul Brickhill’s The Dam Busters inspired the famous 1955 film starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd.

The Liberators: My Life in the Soviet Army


Viktor Suvorov - 1981
    Suvorov takes the reader through the mind-freezing savagery of a penal glass-house and the extravagant idiocy of army maneuvers on the grandest scale. He shows how an officer is trained, and how the hierarchy of the Soviet army is achieved and maintained. He gives brutally frank portraits of the senior commanders and politicians, and of the petty bureaucrats and Party informers. There is much satiric humor in his Suvorov's vivid narrative, which includes his experiences not only in training and garrison but in action, such as the infamous crushing of the Czech uprising.

The Northern Crusades


Eric Christiansen - 1980
    Newly revised in the light of the recent developments in Baltic and Northern medieval research, this authoritative overview provides a balanced and compelling account of a tumultuous era.

Für Volk and Führer: The Memoir of a Veteran of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler


Erwin Bartmann - 2013
    Convinced he was growing up in the best country in the world, he dreamt of joining the Leibstandarte, Hitler's elite Waffen SS unit. Tall, blond, blue-eyed, and just seventeen-years-old, Erwin fulfilled his dream on Mayday 1941, when he gave up his apprenticeship at the Glaser bakery in Memeler Strasse and walked into the Lichterfelde barracks in Berlin as a raw, volunteer recruit. On arrival at the Eastern Front in late summer 1941, Erwin was assigned to a frontline communications squad attached to 4.Kompanie and soon discovered that survival was a matter of luck - or the protection of a guardian angel. Good fortune finally deserted Erwin on 11 July 1943 when shrapnel sizzled through his lung during the epic Battle of Kursk-Prokhorovka. Following a period of recovery, and promotion to Unterscharfuhrer, Erwin took up a post as machine-gun instructor with the Ausbildung und Ersatz Bataillon, a training unit based close to the eastern section of the Berliner Ring Autobahn. When the Red Army launched its massive assault on the Seelow Heights, Erwin's unit, now incorporated into Regiment Falke, was deployed to the southern flank of the Berlin-Frankfurt Autobahn, close to the River Oder. The German defenses soon crumbled and with the end of the Reich inevitable, Erwin was forced to choose between a struggle for personal survival and the fulfillment of his SS oath of 'loyalty unto death'. From the war on the southern sector of the Eastern Front to a bomb-shattered Berlin populated largely by old men and demoralized lonely women, this candid eyewitness account offers a unique and sometimes surprising perspective on the life of a young Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler volunteer.

The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War


Yasmin Cordery Khan - 2015
    India produced the largest volunteer army in world history:over 2 million men. But, until now, there has never been a comprehensive account of India's turbulent home front and the nexus between warfare and India’s society.At the heart of The Raj at War are the many lives and voices of ordinary Indian people. From the first Indian to win the Victoria Cross in the war to the three soldiers imprisoned as ‘traitors to the Raj’ who returned to a hero’s welcome, from the nurses in Indian General Hospitals to the labourers, prostitutes and families—their testimonies reveal the great upheaval experienced throughout the land.Yasmin Khan presents the hidden and sometimes overlooked history of India at war, and shows how mobilisation for the war introduced seismic processes of economic, cultural and social change—decisively shaping the international war effort, the unravelling of the empire and India’s own political and economic trajectory.

Book of Spies PB


Alan FurstJohn le Carré - 2003
    The Book of Spies brings us the aristocratic intrigues of The Scarlet Pimpernel, in which French émigrés duel with Robespierre’s secret service; the savage political realities of the 1930s in Eric Ambler’s classic A Coffin for Dimitrios; the ordinary (well, almost) citizens of John le Carré’s The Russia House, who are drawn into Cold War spy games; and the 1950s Vietnam of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, with its portrait of American idealism and duplicity. Drawing on acknowledged classics and rediscovered treasures, A Book of Spies delivers literate entertainment and excitement on every page.

The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West


Patricia Nelson Limerick - 1987
    But in fact, Patricia Nelson Limerick argues, the West has a history grounded in primary economic reality; in hardheaded questions of profit, loss, competition, and consolidation. In The Legacy of Conquest, she interprets the stories and the characters in a new way: the trappers, traders, Indians, farmers, oilmen, cowboys, and sheriffs of the Old West "meant business" in more ways than one, and their descendents mean business today."Written with extraordinary grace and understanding…[this book] returns the Western American past to the mainstream of national history. …Most important of all is her eloquent plea for Westerners, whether Anglo, Hispanic, Indian, Asian, or black, to see the West as a shared place, a splendid whole which each has helped create." -- Howard R. Lamar

You Don't Have to Fuck People Over to Survive


Seth Tobocman - 1990
    Cofounder of the magazine World War 3 Illustrated, Tobocman documents a decade of gentrification and fierce struggle in New York and the world at large.

Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor


Elizabeth C. Dunn - 2004
    Using a blend of ethnography and economic geography, Elizabeth C. Dunn shows how management technologies like niche marketing, accounting, audit, and standardization make up flexible capitalism's unique form of labor discipline. This new form of management constitutes some workers as self-auditing, self-regulating actors who are disembedded from a social context while defining others as too entwined in social relations and unable to self-manage.Privatizing Poland examines the effects privatization has on workers' self-concepts; how changes in personhood relate to economic and political transitions; and how globalization and foreign capital investment affect Eastern Europe's integration into the world economy. Dunn investigates these topics through a study of workers and changing management techniques at the Alima-Gerber factory in Rzesz�w, Poland, formerly a state-owned enterprise, which was privatized by the Gerber Products Company of Fremont, Michigan.Alima-Gerber instituted rigid quality control, job evaluation, and training methods, and developed sophisticated distribution techniques. The core principle underlying these goals and strategies, the author finds, is the belief that in order to produce goods for a capitalist market, workers for a capitalist enterprise must also be produced. Working side-by-side with Alima-Gerber employees, Dunn saw firsthand how the new techniques attempted to change not only the organization of production, but also the workers' identities. Her seamless, engaging narrative shows how the employees resisted, redefined, and negotiated work processes for themselves.

Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past


Sam Wineburg - 2001
    This book demolishes the conventional notion that there is one true history and one best way to teach it.

Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals


Frans de Waal - 1996
    Might there he a code of ethics in the animal kingdom? Must an animal be human to he humane? In this provocative book, a renowned scientist takes on those who have declared ethics uniquely human Making a compelling case for a morality grounded in biology, he shows how ethical behavior is as much a matter of evolution as any other trait, in humans and animals alike.World famous for his brilliant descriptions of Machiavellian power plays among chimpanzees-the nastier side of animal life--Frans de Waal here contends that animals have a nice side as well. Making his case through vivid anecdotes drawn from his work with apes and monkeys and holstered by the intriguing, voluminous data from his and others' ongoing research, de Waal shows us that many of the building blocks of morality are natural: they can he observed in other animals. Through his eyes, we see how not just primates but all kinds of animals, from marine mammals to dogs, respond to social rules, help each other, share food, resolve conflict to mutual satisfaction, even develop a crude sense of justice and fairness.Natural selection may be harsh, but it has produced highly successful species that survive through cooperation and mutual assistance. De Waal identifies this paradox as the key to an evolutionary account of morality, and demonstrates that human morality could never have developed without the foundation of fellow feeling our species shares with other animals. As his work makes clear, a morality grounded in biology leads to an entirely different conception of what it means to he human--and humane.

When Corporations Rule the World


David C. Korten - 1995
    Korten's warnings about the growing global power of multinational corporations seem prophetic today. This new edition has been revised throughout to make it more accessible to the general reader, and features a new introduction, a new epilogue, and three new chapters. While Korten points out that the multinationals are, if anything, more powerful now than they were when he first wrote the book, he also offers reason for hope: the growth of the international Living Democracy movement opposing corporate rule. The new material in the book: Documents the consolidation since 1995 of financial and corporate power at the expense of democracy, people, communities, and the planet Looks in depth at the nature and cultural underpinnings of the burgeoning Living Democracy movement to resist corporate power Offers a vision of a what a civil society grounded in life-centered values rather than immediate financial gain might look like.

Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada


Emma Battell Lowman - 2015
    But what does it mean to be Settler? And why does it matter?Through an engaging, and sometimes enraging, look at the relationships between Canada and Indigenous nations, Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada explains what it means to be Settler and argues that accepting this identity is an important first step towards changing those relationships. Being Settler means understanding that Canada is deeply entangled in the violence of colonialism, and that this colonialism and pervasive violence continue to define contemporary political, economic and cultural life in Canada. It also means accepting our responsibility to struggle for change. Settler offers important ways forward -- ways to decolonize relationships between Settler Canadians and Indigenous peoples -- so that we can find new ways of being on the land, together.This book presents a serious challenge. It offers no easy road, and lets no one off the hook. It will unsettle, but only to help Settler people find a pathway for transformative change, one that prepares us to imagine and move towards just and beneficial relationships with Indigenous nations. And this way forward may mean leaving much of what we know as Canada behind.