Title search results
Showing 41 - 60 of 15456 items
Europe's Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union
By Guy Verhofstadt. 2016
In the heart of Europe's current crisis, one of the continent's foremost statesmen issues a clarion call to radically remake…
the European Union in the mold of the United States' own federal governmentEurope is caught in its greatest crisis since the Second World War. The catalog of ills seems endless: an economic crisis spread through most of Europe's Mediterranean tier that has crippled Greece and driven a wedge between northern and southern Europe; terrorist attacks in Paris, Cologne, Brussels, and Nice; growing aggression from Russia in Ukraine and the Baltic states; and refugees escaping war-torn neighbors. The European Union's inability to handle any of these disasters was a driving factor in Great Britain voting to leave, and others may soon follow. The result won't just be a continent in turmoil, but also a serious threat to American and British security-the Atlantic, let alone the Channel, simply isn't big enough to keep European troubles in Europe. For everyone's sake, Europe must survive.The question is how. In Europe's Last Chance, Guy Verhofstadt-former prime minister of Belgium and current leader of the liberal faction in the European Parliament-provides the essential framework for understanding Europe today, laying bare the absurdity of a system in which each member state can veto legislation, opt in or out of the Euro, or close borders on a whim. But Verhofstadt does not just indict the European Union, he also offers a powerful vision for how the continent can change for the better. The key, argues Verhofstadt, is to reform the European Union along the lines of America's federal government: a United States of Europe strong enough to stand with the United States of America in making a better, safer world.A visionary book from one of today's luminaries of European leadership, Europe's Last Chance is a clarion call to save the European Union, one of the world's greatest chances for peace and prosperity.Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi
By Thomas Weber. 2017
An award-winning historian charts Hitler's radical transformation after World War I from a directionless loner into a powerful National Socialist…
leaderIn Becoming Hitler, award-winning historian Thomas Weber examines Adolf Hitler's time in Munich between 1918 and 1926, the years when Hitler shed his awkward, feckless persona and transformed himself into a savvy opportunistic political operator who saw himself as Germany's messiah. The story of Hitler's transformation is one of a fateful match between man and city. After opportunistically fluctuating between the ideas of the left and the right, Hitler emerged as an astonishingly flexible leader of Munich's right-wing movement. The tragedy for Germany and the world was that Hitler found himself in Munich; had he not been in Bavaria in the wake of the war and the revolution, his transformation into a National Socialist may never have occurred. In Becoming Hitler, Weber brilliantly charts this tragic metamorphosis, dramatically expanding our knowledge of how Hitler became a lethal demagogue.The Unruly City: Paris, London and New York in the Age of Revolution
By Mike Rapport. 2017
In The Unruly City, historian Mike Rapport offers a vivid history of three intertwined cities toward the end of the…
eighteenth century-Paris, London, and New York-all in the midst of political chaos and revolution. From the British occupation of New York during the Revolutionary War, to agitation for democracy in London and popular uprisings, and ultimately regicide in Paris, Rapport explores the relationship between city and revolution, asking why some cities engender upheaval and some suppress it.Why did Paris experience a devastating revolution while London avoided one? And how did American independence ignite activism in cities across the Atlantic? Rapport takes readers from the politically charged taverns and coffeehouses on Fleet Street, through a sea battle between the British and French in the New York Harbor, to the scaffold during the Terror in Paris.The Unruly City shows how the cities themselves became protagonists in the great drama of revolution.The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love
By Marilyn Yalom. 2018
An eminent scholar unearths the captivating history of the two-lobed heart symbol from scripture and tapestry to T-shirts and text…
messages, shedding light on how we have expressed love since antiquityThe symmetrical, exuberant heart is everywhere: it gives shape to candy, pendants, the frothy milk on top of a cappuccino, and much else. How can we explain the ubiquity of what might be the most recognizable symbol in the world?In The Amorous Heart, Marilyn Yalom tracks the heart metaphor and heart iconography across two thousand years, through Christian theology, pagan love poetry, medieval painting, Shakespearean drama, Enlightenment science, and into the present. She argues that the symbol reveals a tension between love as romantic and sexual on the one hand, and as religious and spiritual on the other. Ultimately, the heart symbol is a guide to the astonishing variety of human affections, from the erotic to the chaste and from the unrequited to the conjugal.A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire
By Geoffrey Wawro. 2014
Europe Isn't Working
By Larry Elliott, Dan Atkinson. 2016
A timely and provocative account of why the euro has failed and why, as a result, the Union will unravel…
Europe's center-left is rapidly falling out of love with the European single currency. Fifteen years after its creation, British journalists Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson assess its performance to show why. Looking at a range of key indicators the authors show how the euro has failed to deliver on its promise of more jobs, more growth and greater equality. Instead it has undermined the European Union. Elliott and Atkinson compare the European Central Bank to the Federal Reserve, arguing that the architects of the euro subjugated economic measures to political considerations. Consequently, countries that didn't meet the economic convergence criteria were still allowed entry. The end result is a dysfunctional currency union that is unable to cope with difficult economic circumstances. Assessing the situations in Greece, Germany, Italy, France, Ireland, and Iceland, as well as Britain, they show that the current policy of kicking the can down the road and hoping that something will turn up is proving increasingly unpopular with the currency's one-time fans in progressive politics. This engaging and accessibly written volume will be widely read by economists, pundits, and policymakers as Britian considers its future relationship with Europe.Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune
By John Merriman. 2014
The Paris Commune lasted for only 64 days in 1871, but during that short time it gave rise to some…
of the grandest political dreams of the nineteenth century—before culminating in horrific violence. Following the disastrous French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, hungry and politically disenchanted Parisians took up arms against their government in the name of a more just society. They expelled loyalists and soldiers and erected barricades in the streets. In Massacre, John Merriman introduces a cast of inimitable Communards—from les pétroleuses (female incendiaries) to the painter Gustave Courbet—whose idealism fueled a revolution. And he vividly recreates the Commune’s chaotic and bloody end when 30,000 troops stormed the city, burning half of Paris and executing captured Communards en masse. A stirring evocation of the spring when Paris was ablaze with cannon fire and its citizens were their own masters, Massacre reveals how the indomitable spirit of the Commune shook the very foundations of Europe.Rick Steves Snapshot Normandy
By Rick Steves, Steve Smith. 2015
You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when traveling in Normandy. Rick…
Steves and Steve Smith cover the essentials of Normandy, including Rouen, Honfleur, Bayeux, Mont St. Michel, and Dinan. Visit the Big Clock in Rouen that dates back to the Renaissance, or cross the causeway towards Mont St. Michel. You’ll get Rick’s firsthand advice on the best sights, eating, sleeping, and nightlife, and the maps and self-guided tours will ensure you make the most of your experience. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves Snapshot guide is a tour guide in your pocket. Rick Steves Snapshot guides consist of excerpted chapters from Rick Steves European country guidebooks. Snapshot guides are a great choice for travelers visiting a specific city or region, rather than multiple European destinations. These slim guides offer all of Rick’s up-to-date advice on what sights are worth your time and money. They include good-value hotel and restaurant recommendations, with no introductory information (such as overall trip planning, when to go, and travel practicalities).Imperial Unknowns
By Cornel Zwierlein. 2016
In this major new study, the history of the French and British trading empires in the early modern Mediterranean is…
used as a setting to test a new approach to the history of ignorance: how can we understand the very act of ignoring - in political, economic, religious, cultural and scientific communication - as a fundamental trigger that sets knowledge in motion? Zwierlein explores whether the Scientific Revolution between 1650 and 1750 can be understood as just one of what were in fact many simultaneous epistemic movements and considers the role of the European empires in this phenomenon. Deconstructing central categories like the mercantilist 'national', the exchange of 'confessions' between Western and Eastern Christians and the bridging of cultural gaps between European and Ottoman subjects, Zwierlein argues that understanding what was not known by historical agents can be just as important as the history of knowledge itself.How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust
By Dan Mcmillan. 2014
The Holocaust is the defining event of the twentieth century - and perhaps all of modern history. Yet for too…
long, we have ignored the vital question of how and why such a monstrous event could have happened at all. Now, in How Could This Happen, historian Dan McMillan distills the existing Holocaust research into a cogent explanation of the genocide’s causes, revealing how a once progressive society like Germany could commit murder on such a massive scale. Countless barriers stand between stable societies and genocide, McMillan explains, but in Germany these buffers began to topple well before World War II. From Hitler’s meteoric rise to deep-rooted European anti-Semitism to the dehumanizing effects of World War I, McMillan uncovers the many factors that made the Holocaust possible. Persuasive and compelling, How Could This Happen illustrates how a perfect storm of bleak circumstances, malevolent ideas, and societal upheaval unleashed history’s most terrifying atrocity.Wartime Schooling and Education Policy in the Second World War
By Sarah Van Ruyskensvelde. 2016
This book deals with the development of private secondary schooling during the Second World War in Belgium. It focuses on…
how the German occupier used education to gain acceptance of the regime, and discusses the attitudes of Belgian education authorities, schools, teachers and pupils towards the German occupation. Suggesting that the occupation forced Belgian education authorities, such as the Roman Catholic Church, to take certain positions, the book explores the wartime experiences and memories of pupils and teachers. It explains that the German Culture Department was relatively weak in establishing total control over education and that Catholic schools were able to maintain their education project during the war. However, the book also reveals that, in some cases, the German occupation did not need total control over education in order to find support for some authoritarian ideas. As such, Van Ruyskenvelde's analysis presents a nuanced view of the image of the Catholic Church, schools, teachers and pupils as mere victims of war.Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse
By Jay Rubenstein. 2011
At Moson, the river Danube ran red with blood. At Antioch, the Crusaders- their saddles freshly decorated with sawed-off heads-indiscriminately…
clogged the streets with the bodies of eastern Christians and Turks. At Ma'arra, they cooked children on spits and ate them. By the time the Crusaders reached Jerusalem, their quest-and their violence- had become distinctly otherworldly: blood literally ran shin-deep through the streets as the Crusaders overran the sacred city. Beginning in 1095 and culminating four bloody years later, the First Crusade represented a new kind of warfare: holy, unrestrained, and apocalyptic. In Armies of Heaven, medieval historian Jay Rubenstein tells the story of this cataclysmic event through the eyes of those who witnessed it, emphasizing the fundamental role that apocalyptic thought played in motivating the Crusaders. A thrilling work of military and religious history, Armies of Heaven will revolutionize our understanding of the Crusades.Deutschsprachige Psychologinnen und Psychologen 1933-1945
By Uwe Wolfradt, Elfriede Billmann-Mahecha, Armin Stock. 2015
Mehr als 300 Kurzbiographien mit Werkbezug geben über 80 Jahre nach der Machtübernahme durch die Nationalsozialisten Aufschluss über Psychologinnen und…
Psychologen, die von dem damaligen politischen und gesellschaftlichen Wandel betroffen waren. Einige wurden aufgrund ihrer Herkunft oder politischen Überzeugung in die Emigration gezwungen und mussten unter schwierigsten Bedingungen in der Fremde ein neues Leben aufbauen. Akademische Lebenswege wurden abgeschnitten oder konnten nur unter erschwerten Umständen weitergeführt werden. Andere Psychologinnen und Psychologen blieben in Deutschland und versuchten, sich auf unterschiedliche Weise mit den neuen politischen Verhältnissen zu arrangieren. Darunter waren auch Einzelne, die durch den Eintritt in eine NS-Organisation oder in die NSDAP ihre persönliche Karriere zu fördern suchten.The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke
By Timothy Snyder. 2008
Wilhelm Von Habsburg wore the uniform of the Austrian officer, the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, the simple suit…
of a Parisian exile, the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and, every so often, a dress. He could handle a saber, a pistol, a rudder, or a golf club; he handled women by necessity and men for pleasure. He spoke the Italian of his archduchess mother, the German of his archduke father, the English of his British royal friends, the Polish of the country his father wished to rule, and the Ukrainian of the land Wilhelm wished to rule himself. In this exhilarating narrative history, prize-winning historian Timothy D. Snyder offers an indelible portrait of an aristocrat whose life personifies the wrenching upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century, as the rule of empire gave way to the new politics of nationalism. Coming of age during the First World War, Wilhelm repudiated his family to fight alongside Ukrainian peasants in hopes that he would become their king. When this dream collapsed he became, by turns, an ally of German imperialists, a notorious French lover, an angry Austrian monarchist, a calm opponent of Hitler, and a British spy against Stalin. Played out in Europe’s glittering capitals and bloody battlefields, in extravagant ski resorts and dank prison cells, The Red Prince captures an extraordinary moment in the history of Europe, in which the old order of the past was giving way to an undefined future-and in which everything, including identity itself, seemed up for grabs.The Glorious First of June
By Sam Willis. 2011
France, early summer 1794. The French Revolution has been hijacked by the extreme Jacobins and is in the grip of…
The Terror. While the guillotine relentlessly takes the heads of innocents, two vast French and British fleets meet in mid-Atlantic after a week of skirmishing.b bThe French, in ships painted blood-red and bearing banners proclaiming 'la République ou la mort!' are escorting an American grain convoy to Brest to feed a starving population. Their ships are manned by a mutinous revolutionary mob that will fiercely defend their nascent Republic. The British, under the command of Lord Howe, a radical innovator and tactical genius, are bent on destroying it.b bBoth sides would claim victory in the ensuing battle; and both had reason to do so. For the French, it represented a strategic success since the convoy and its precious cargo made it safely through. But this outcome came at a heavy material cost. In purely numerical terms 'the Glorious First of June' was the greatest British naval victory over her oldest enemy for more than a century: six French ships were captured and another sunk; 4,200 French sailors were killed and 3,300 wounded - ten per cent of their entire maritime workforce. These were physical blows from which the French navy would never truly recover, the battle an important precursor of the decisive British victories that would soon follow.In The Glorious First of June Sam Willis not only tells, with thrilling immediacy and masterly clarity, the gripping story of an epic and complex battle, he places it within the context of The Terror, the survival of the French Revolution and the growth of British sea-power.The Glorious First of June is the last in 'The Hearts of Oak trilogy' and, like The Fighting Temeraire and The Admiral Benbow, is another thrilling account of the Age of Sail by one of our most exciting young historians.The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A History of the Cold War
By Norman Stone. 2010
After World War II, the former allies were saddled with a devastated world economy and traumatized populace. Soviet influence spread…
insidiously from nation to nation, and the Atlantic powers--the Americans, the British, and a small band of allies--were caught flat-footed by the coups, collapsing armies, and civil wars that sprung from all sides. The Cold War had begun in earnest. In The Atlantic and Its Enemies, prize-winning historian Norman Stone assesses the years between World War II and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. He vividly demonstrates that for every Atlantic success there seemed to be a dozen Communist or Third World triumphs. Then, suddenly and against all odds, the Atlantic won--economically, ideologically, and militarily--with astonishing speed and finality. An elegant and path-breaking history, The Atlantic and Its Enemies is a monument to the immense suffering and conflict of the twentieth century, and an illuminating exploration of how the Atlantic triumphed over its enemies at last.Franco-America in the Making: The Creole Nation Within (France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization)
By Jonathan K. Gosnell. 2018
Every June the city of Lowell Massachusetts celebrates Franco-American Day raising the Franco-American flag and hosting events…
designed to commemorate French culture in the Americas Though there are twenty million French speakers and people of French or francophone descent in North America making them the fifth-largest ethnic group in the United States their cultural legacy has remained nearly invisible Events like Franco-American Day however attest to French ethnic permanence on the American topography In Franco-America in the Making Jonathan K Gosnell examines the manifestation and persistence of hybrid Franco-American literary musical culinary and media cultures in North America especially New England and southern Louisiana To shed light on the French cultural legacy in North America long after the formal end of the French empire in the mid-eighteenth century Gosnell seeks out hidden French or Franco identities and sites of memory in the United States and Canada that quietly proclaim an intercontinental French presence examining institutions of higher learning literature folklore newspapers women s organizations and churches This study situates Franco-American cultures within the new and evolving field of postcolonial Francophone studies by exploring the story of the peoples and ideas contributing to the evolution and articulation of a Franco-American cultural identity in the New World Gosnell asks what it means to be French not simply in America but of AmericaMussolini's Children: Race and Elementary Education in Fascist Italy
By Eden K. McLean. 2018
Mussolini s Children uses the lens of state-mandated youth culture to analyze the evolution of official racism in…
Fascist Italy Between 1922 and 1940 educational institutions designed to mold the minds and bodies of Italy s children between the ages of five and eleven undertook a mission to rejuvenate the Italian race and create a second Roman Empire This project depended on the twin beliefs that the Italian population did indeed constitute a distinct race and that certain aspects of its moral and physical makeup could be influenced during childhood Eden K McLean assembles evidence from state policies elementary textbooks pedagogical journals and other educational materials to illustrate the contours of a Fascist racial ideology as it evolved over eighteen years Her work explains how the most infamous period of Fascist racism which began in the summer of 1938 with the publication of the Manifesto of Race played a critical part in a more general and long-term Fascist racial programLetters to Poseidon
By Cees Nooteboom. 2012
It is said that during his abortive campaign to invade Britannia, the infamous Roman emperor Caligula ordered his legions into…
the surf to attack Poseidon and claim seashells as trophies of war. Cees Nooteboom is considerably more thoughtful in his relationship with the god of the sea. As autumn falls each year, Nooteboom writes Poseidon a letter requesting permission to return to his home in Minorca the following spring.Of course, it would be the height of discourtesy if Nooteboom's letters were no more than a series of demands. So Cees takes the opportunity to seek the wisdom of the trident-wielding deity, and to offer the god updates about his own life and thoughts.At once playful and poignant, beautiful and at times slightly bizarre, this masterful exploration of humankind's relationship with the sea uses the minutiae of everyday life to illuminate the broadest questions of human existence, all couched in the lapidary prose of one of Europe's outstanding stylists.European Anthropologies
By Andrés Barrera-González, Monica Heintz, Anna Horolets. 2007
In what ways did Europeans interact with the diversity of people they encountered on other continents in the context of…
colonial expansion, and with the peasant or ethnic 'Other' at home? How did anthropologists and ethnologists make sense of the mosaic of people and societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when their disciplines were progressively being established in academia? By assessing the diversity of European intellectual histories within sociocultural anthropology, this volume aims to sketch its intellectual and institutional portrait. It will be a useful reading for the students of anthropology, ethnology, history and philosophy of science, research and science policy makers.