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A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989
By Professor Padraic Kenney. 2003
This is the first history of the revolutions that toppled communism in Europe to look behind the scenes at the…
grassroots movements that made those revolutions happen. It looks for answers not in the salons of power brokers and famed intellectuals, not in decrepit economies--but in the whirlwind of activity that stirred so crucially, unstoppably, on the street. Melding his experience in Solidarity-era Poland with the sensibility of a historian, Padraic Kenney takes us into the hearts and minds of those revolutionaries across much of Central Europe who have since faded namelessly back into everyday life. This is a riveting story of musicians, artists, and guerrilla theater collectives subverting traditions and state power; a story of youthful social movements emerging in the 1980s in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and parts of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.Kenney argues that these movements were active well before glasnost. Some protested military or environmental policy. Others sought to revive national traditions or to help those at the margins of society. Many crossed forbidden borders to meet their counterparts in neighboring countries. They all conquered fear and apathy to bring people out into the streets. The result was a revolution unlike any other before: nonviolent, exuberant, even light-hearted, but also with a relentless political focus--a revolution that leapt from country to country in the exciting events of 1988 and 1989.A Carnival of Revolution resounds with the atmosphere of those turbulent years: the daring of new movements, the unpredictability of street demonstrations, and the hopes and regrets of the young participants. A vivid photo-essay complements engaging prose to fully capture the drama. Based on over two hundred interviews in twelve countries, and drawing on samizdat and other writings in six languages, this is among the most insightful and compelling accounts ever published of the historical milestone that ushered in our age.The Great British Reboot: How the UK Can Thrive in a Turbulent World
By Alex Brummer. 2020
An optimistic exploration of how, through radical economic reform, the United Kingdom can prosper and flourish in the new global…
economy Taking a refreshingly realistic approach, Alex Brummer outlines how our current moment can be reshaped into an unprecedented opportunity for economic prosperity. With a new long-term approach, Britain can capitalize on the ever-changing global market, its brilliant research universities, and new technological developments. Drawing on firsthand interviews with the leading minds in business and his own expertise as a seasoned economic journalist, Brummer creates an inspiring investigation into how careful planning and innovative reform can lead to a flourishing economy after Brexit.The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World
By Virginia Postrel. 2020
From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this…
enthralling and educational guide.The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture.In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code.Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.The Public Life of Cinema: Conflict and Collectivity in Austerity Greece
By Toby Lee. 2020
Is culture a luxury? In this era of austerity, the value of the arts has been a topic of heated…
debate in Greece, where the country’s economic troubles have led to drastic cuts in public funding and much contention over the significance of cultural institutions and government-funded arts initiatives. At issue in these debates are larger questions regarding the very notions of publicness, hierarchies of value, and functions of the state that structure collective life. Beginning with the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, How to Be Public tracks this turbulence as it unfolded in the Greek film world in the early years of the crisis. Investigating the different forms of citizenship and collectivity being negotiated in cinema’s social spaces, this book considers how the arts and cultural production may illuminate the changing conditions of, and possibilities for, public and collective life in the neoliberal era.Love between Enemies: Western Prisoners of War and German Women in World War II
By Raffael Scheck. 2021
Love between Enemies explores the forbidden relationships which formed between foreign prisoners of war and German women during the Second…
World War. From the desire to have fun to deep love commitments, this study examines the range of motivations which lay behind these relationships, tapping into new documents and drawing on thousands of court cases to offer a transnational analysis of personal relations between enemies. Highlighting gender roles, the contradictory reactions of the communities surrounding the couples, and the diplomatic tensions resulting from the severe punishments, this is a history of everyday life which throws light on this subversive aspect of intimacy in wartime Nazi Germany. Comparing the 'transgressing' couples to other groups persecuted for their cultural or private choices, Scheck demonstrates how the relationships were silenced or justified in the post-war memory of prisoners, while the German women, who had been publicly shamed, continued to live with the stigma, and even illegitimate children, for the years that followed.What did it mean to be an alien, and in particular an enemy alien, in the interstate conflicts that occurred…
over the nineteenth century and that climaxed in the First World War? In this ambitious and broad-ranging study, Daniela L. Caglioti highlights the many ways in which belligerent countries throughout the world mobilized populations along the member/non-member divide, redefined inclusion and exclusion, and refashioned notions and practices of citizenship. She examines what it meant to be an alien in wartime, how the treatment of aliens in wartime interfered with sovereignty and the rule of law, and how that treatment affected population policies, individual and human rights, and conceptions of belonging. Concentrating on the gulf between citizens and foreigners and on the dilemma of balancing rights and security in wartime, Caglioti highlights how each country, regardless of its political system, chose national security even if this meant reducing freedom, discriminating among citizens and non-citizens, and violating international law.Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis
By Jeffrey H. Jackson. 2020
&“A Nazi resistance story like none you&’ve ever heard or read.&” —Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers and On Desperate…
Ground"Every page is gripping, and the amount of new research is nothing short of mind-boggling. A brilliant book for the ages!&” —Douglas Brinkley, author of American Moonshot Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionPaper Bullets is the first book to tell the history of an audacious anti-Nazi campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair: two French women, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute &“paper bullets&”—wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive fictional dialogues designed to demoralize Nazi troops occupying their adopted home on the British Channel Island of Jersey. Devising their own PSYOPS campaign, they slipped their notes into soldier&’s pockets or tucked them inside newsstand magazines. Hunted by the secret field police, Lucy and Suzanne were finally betrayed in 1944, when the Germans imprisoned them, and tried them in a court martial, sentencing them to death for their actions. Ultimately they survived, but even in jail, they continued to fight the Nazis by reaching out to other prisoners and spreading a message of hope. Better remembered today by their artist names, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, the couple&’s actions were even more courageous because of who they were: lesbian partners known for cross-dressing and creating the kind of gender-bending work that the Nazis would come to call &“degenerate art.&” In addition, Lucy was half Jewish, and they had communist affiliations in Paris, where they attended political rallies with Surrealists and socialized with artists like Gertrude Stein.Paper Bullets is a compelling World War II story that has not been told before, about the galvanizing power of art, and of resistance.This political history of Germany assesses Bismarck's role in the events which paved the way for the catastrophes of the…
twentieth century, showing how Bismarck first established the association between German nationalism, Prussian militarism, and Hohenzollern authoritarianism. The author is completing a second volume, "The Period of Consolidation, 1871-1890." Volume I has been awarded the McKnight Foundation Humanities Award.Nineteenth-Century Britain (Palgrave Foundations)
By Jeremy Black, Donald M. MacRaid. 2003
The nineetenth century was a period of striking developments, and subject to a great pressure of change. This process of…
change is the primary focus of the book. Organised into a series of thematic chapters, Black and MacRaild's wide-ranging text offers the reader an analysis of numerous spheres of human history: politics, empire and warfare; economy, society and population; religion and culture. The book also offers considered treatment of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, with a truly British (as opposed to English) perspective maintained throughout. With numerous illustrations, helpful explanatory tables, boxes and textual inserts, as well as a list of further reading with each chapter, Ninteetenth Century Britain is an excellent introductory text book for students of this most vital period in British history.The Last Vermeer: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren
By Jonathan Lopez. 2008
It's a story that made Dutch painter Han van Meegeren famous worldwide when it broke at the end of World War…
II: A lifetime of disappointment drove him to forge Vermeers, one of which he sold to Hermann Goering in mockery of the Nazis. And it's a story that's been believed ever since. Too bad it isn't true. Jonathan Lopez has drawn on never-before-seen documents from dozens of archives to write a revelatory new biography of the world&’s most famous forger. Neither unappreciated artist nor antifascist hero, Van Meegeren emerges as an ingenious, dyed-in-the-wool crook—a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush. Lopez explores a network of illicit commerce that operated across Europe: Not only was Van Meegeren a key player in that high-stakes game in the 1920s and '30s, landing fakes with famous collectors such as Andrew Mellon, but he and his associates later cashed in on the Nazi occupation.The Man Who Made Vermeers is a long-overdue unvarnishing of Van Meegeren&’s legend and a deliciously detailed story of deceit in the art world.Parliament's Generals: Supreme Command and Politics during the British Wars, 1642–51
By Malcolm Wanklyn. 2019
Waller, Essex, Fairfax, Manchester and Cromwell are among the most famous military men who fought for Parliament during the English…
Civil War. While their performance as generals has been explored in numerous books on the campaigns, comparatively little has been written by military historians about the political aspects of high command, namely the ever-changing and often fractious relationship with the English Parliament and its executive committees. That is why Malcolm Wanklyn&’s study of these men is of such value, for he sheds new light on the qualities they employed in their attempts to achieve their military and political aspirations. In a series of insightful chapters he follows their careers through the course of the conflict, focusing on their successes and failures in battle and the consequences for their reputations and influence. Dissatisfaction with the leadership of Essex, Manchester and Waller in the inconclusive early campaigns is examined, as are the contrasting strengths of Fairfax and Cromwell. This reassessment sheds new light on how these commanders managed promotions, outmaneuvered their fellow generals and controlled their subordinates.Famous for Calvados apple brandy and Camembert cheese, Normandy is a green and pleasant land now dotted with thousands of…
British-owned second homes. Its coastline is also dotted with thousands of indestructible reinforced-concrete bunkers and gun emplacements that formed part of the Atlantic Wall of Hitler&’s Fortress Europe. Tourists passing through the ferry ports like Boulogne, Cherbourg and Dunkirk may wonder why there are so few old buildings. Few know that the demolition which preceded the extensive urban renewal of the ancient town centers was effected by British bombs during four years of hell for the people living there. Before its belated liberation three ghastly months after D-Day, the sirens in Le Havre wailed 1,060 times to warn of approaching British and American bombers. After one single Allied raid, over 3,000 dead civilians were recovered from the city&’s ruins, without counting the thousands of injured, maimed and traumatized survivors. So, whom did the Normans regard as the enemy: the German occupiers who shot a few hundred civilians or the Allied airmen who killed as many neutral citizens of northern France as died in Britain from German bombs during the whole war? Told largely in the words of French, German and Allied eyewitnesses – including the moving last letters of executed hostages – this is the story of Normandy&’s nightmare war.Captain Cook claimed the honor of being the first man to sail into the Antarctic Ocean in 1773, which he…
then circumnavigated the following year. Cook, though, did not see any land, and he declared that there was no such thing as the Southern Continent. Fifty years later, an Irishman who had been impressed into the Royal Navy at the age of eighteen and risen through the ranks to reach the position of master, proved Cook wrong and discovered and charted parts of the shoreline of Antarctica. He also discovered what is now Elephant Island and Clarence Island, claiming them for the British Crown.Edward Bransfield&’s varied naval career included taking part in the Bombardment of Algiers in 1816 onboard the 50-gun warship HMS Severn. Then, in 1817, he was posted to the Royal Navy&’s Pacific Squadron off Valparaíso in Chile, and it was while serving there that the owner and skipper of an English whaling ship, the Williams, was driven south by adverse winds and discovered what came to be known as the South Shetland Islands where Cook had said there was no land.Bransfield&’s superior officer, Captain Sherriff, decided to investigate this discovery further. He chartered Williams and sent Bransfield with two midshipmen and a ship&’s surgeon into the Antarctic – and the Irishman sailed into history.Despite his achievements, and many parts of Antarctica and an Antarctic survey vessel being named after him, as well as a Royal Mail commemorative stamp being issued in his name in 2000, the full story of this remarkable man and his historic journey, have never been told – until now.Following decades of research, Sheila Bransfield MA, a member of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, has produced the definitive biography of one of Britain&’s greatest maritime explorers. The book has been endorsed by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, whose patron the Princess Royal, has written the Foreword.11 de marzo de 2004: El día del mayor atentado de la historia de España
By Mercedes Cabrera. 2020
Una colección única que cuenta nuestro largo siglo xx en 7 libros para 7 fechas clave. No todos los días…
son iguales. Solemos abordar la historia a partir de arcos de tiempo dilatados. Pero ¿qué sucede si, por una vez, centramos la atención en los instantes concretos que más han marcado nuestro pasado colectivo? Los protagonistas, sus acciones, sus emociones, sus deseos, sus dudas y sus errores pasan al centro del relato, irrumpen con la fuerza de la imprevisibilidad, y los revivimos como si fuera la primera vez. En esta novedosa colección, algunos de los mejores historiadores nos muestran que nada puede darse por sentado, y cómo ciertos acontecimientos pueden dejar un rastro profundo en un país. A las 7.36 del 11 de marzo de 2004, tres días antes de las elecciones generales, se produjeron diez explosiones casi simultáneas en cuatro trenes de cercanías de Madrid. El resultado fueron 192 muertos, 1.857 heridos y un terremoto político cuyas reverberaciones aún marcan la sociedad española. Mercedes Cabrera, prestigiosa historiadora y candidata al Parlamento en esas elecciones, narra desapasionadamente el atentado, la guerra informativa que siguió, la persecución y muerte de los terroristas y el largo epílogo político y judicial de un atentado brutal que sacudió España y fracturó muchos de los consensos previos. La crítica ha dicho sobre la colección:«Una serie para tener muy en cuenta.»Manuel Rodríguez Rivero, Babelia, El País «Una historia en la que los protagonistas son las personas, los individuos y no tanto la abrumadora y fría erudición de los hechos y los datos.»Fernando Prieto Arellano, La VanguardiaGary Sterne, a keen collector of militaria and co-founder of The Armourer and Skirmish magazines, has always been fascinated by…
the D-Day landings. In particular he was intrigued by the lack of precise information relating to the mystery of the &‘missing guns&’ of Pointe du Hoc.His research led to the finding of a map which indicated the position of an &‘unknown&’ German gun position buried in the village of Maisy. The rediscovery of the Maisy Batteries made headline news around the world and his best-selling book Cover Up at Omaha Beach subsequently changed the history of the Omaha sector and made many start to question the Rangers&’ Pointe du Hoc mission. The Maisy site is now one of the major Normandy D-Day attractions.For the first time ever this follow-up book now offers complete Rangers history for the seven months prior to D-Day and does so using period documents, many of which have only recently been released from TOP SECRET status in US Archives. The author fills in the gaps that many have only guessed at concerning the Rangers&’ real missions on D-Day, he explains why a battalion commander was removed hours before the landings, why the Rangers were not briefed on their actual D-Day missions and the extraordinary role that Lt. Col. Rudder played at Pointe du Hoc. This book is a historical game-changer that pulls no punches.Wolfe Frank was Chief Interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials where he was dubbed &‘The Voice of Doom.&’ A playboy turned…
resistance worker he had fled Germany for England in 1937 having been branded an &‘enemy of the state – to be shot on sight.&’ Initially interned as an &‘enemy alien,&’ he was later released and allowed to join the British Army – where he rose to the rank of Captain. Unable to speak English when he arrived by the time of the trials he was considered to be the finest interpreter in the world. In the months following his service at Nuremberg, Frank became increasingly alarmed at the misinformation coming out of Germany so in 1949, backed by the New York Herald Tribune, he risked his life again by returning to the country of his birth to make an &‘undercover&’ survey of the main facets of postwar German life and viewpoints. During his enterprise he worked as a German alongside Germans in factories, on the docks, in a refugee camp and elsewhere. Equipped with false papers he sought objective answers to many questions including: refugees, anti-Semitism, morality, de-Nazification, religion, and nationalism. The NYHT said at the time: &‘A fresh appraisal of the German question could only be obtained by a German and Mr Frank had all the exceptional qualifications necessary. We believe the result of his &“undercover" work told in human, factual terms, is an important contribution to one of the great key problems of the postwar world … and incidentally it contains some unexpected revelations and dramatic surprises.&’ The greatest of those surprises was Frank single-handedly tracking down and arresting the SS General ranked &‘fourth&’ on the allies &‘most wanted&’ list – and personally taking and transcribing the Nazi&’s confession. The Undercover Nazi Hunter not only reproduces Frank&’s series of articles (as he wrote them) and a translation of the confession, which, until now, has never been seen in the public domain, it also reveals the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of a great American newspaper agonizing over how best to deal with this unique opportunity and these important exposés.Beggars, outcasts, urchins, waifs, prostitutes, criminals, convicts, madmen, fallen women, lunatics, degenerates—part reality, part fantasy, these are the grotesque faces…
that populate the underworld, the dark inverse of our everyday world. Lurking in the mirror that we hold up to our society, they are our counterparts and our doubles, repelling us and yet offering the tantalizing promise of escape. Although these images testify to undeniable social realities, the sordid lower depths make up a symbolic and social imaginary that reflects our fears and anxieties—as well as our desires.In Vice, Crime, and Poverty, Dominique Kalifa traces the untold history of the concept of the underworld and its representations in popular culture. He examines how the myth of the lower depths came into being in nineteenth-century Europe, as biblical figures and Christian traditions were adapted for a world turned upside-down by the era of industrialization, democratization, and mass culture. From the Parisian demimonde to Victorian squalor, from the slums of New York to the sewers of Buenos Aires, Kalifa deciphers the making of an image that has cast an enduring spell on its audience. While the social conditions that created that underworld have changed, Vice, Crime, and Poverty shows that, from social-scientific ideas of the underclass to contemporary cinema and steampunk culture, its shadows continue to haunt us.Eric Rentschler's new book, The Use and Abuse of Cinema, takes readers on a series of enthralling excursions through the…
fraught history of German cinema, from the Weimar and Nazi eras to the postwar and postwall epochs and into the new millennium. These journeys afford rich panoramas and nuanced close-ups from a nation's production of fantasies and spectacles, traversing the different ways in which the film medium has figured in Germany, both as a site of creative and critical enterprise and as a locus of destructive and regressive endeavor. Each of the chapters provides a stirring minidrama; the cast includes prominent critics such as Siegfried Kracauer and Rudolf Arnheim; postwar directors like Wolfgang Staudte, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Alexander Kluge; representatives of the so-called Berlin School; and exponents of mountain epics, early sound musicals, rubble films, and recent heritage features. A film history that is both original and unconventional, Rentschler's colorful tapestry weaves together figures, motifs, and stories in exciting, unexpected, and even novelistic ways.In 1941, the Jewish American writer and avant-garde icon Gertrude Stein embarked on one of the strangest intellectual projects of…
her life: translating for an American audience the speeches of Marshal Philippe Pétain, head of state for the collaborationist Vichy government. From 1941 to 1943, Stein translated thirty-two of Pétain's speeches, in which he outlined the Vichy policy barring Jews and other "foreign elements" from the public sphere while calling for France to reconcile with Nazi occupiers.Unlikely Collaboration pursues troubling questions: Why and under what circumstances would Stein undertake this project? The answers lie in Stein's link to the man at the core of this controversy: Bernard Faÿ, Stein's apparent Vichy protector. Faÿ was director of the Bibliothèque Nationale during the Vichy regime and overseer of the repression of French freemasons. He convinced Pétain to keep Stein undisturbed during the war and, in turn, encouraged her to translate Pétain for American audiences. Yet Faÿ's protection was not coercive. Stein described the thinker as her chief intellectual companion during her final years. Barbara Will outlines the formative powers of this relationship, noting possible affinities between Stein and Faÿ's political and aesthetic ideals, especially their reflection in Stein's writing from the late 1920s to the 1940s. Will treats their interaction as a case study of intellectual life during wartime France and an indication of America's place in the Vichy imagination. Her book forces a reconsideration of modernism and fascism, asking what led so many within the avant-garde toward fascist and collaborationist thought. Touching off a potential powder keg of critical dispute, Will replays a collaboration that proves essential to understanding fascism and the remaking of modern Europe.Los campos de concentración de Franco: Sometimiento, torturas y muerte tras las alambradas
By Carlos Hernández de Miguel. 2015
Esta obra es un libro imprescindible por arrojar luz sobre uno de los capítulos menos estudiados y conocidos de la…
represión franquista. Los campos de concentración fueron la primera pata de un sistema represivo, un holocausto ideológico, que convirtió a toda España en una inmensa cárcel repleta de fosas. En ellos, presos políticos y prisioneros de guerra fueron asesinados, murieron de hambre y enfermedades, padecieron todo tipo de torturas y humillaciones. Los datos son necesarios y las pruebas documentales resultan fundamentales, pero nada tiene verdadero sentido si no somos capaces de entender que detrás de cada cifra, de cada listado, de cada campo de concentración franquista hubo miles y miles de hombres, de mujeres, de familias... Citas:«Escalofriante relato. Una obra de obligada lectura que desnuda las mentiras del franquismo, documentada de forma esplendida y minuciosa.»Baltasar Garzón «Una investigación tan heroica como necesaria. El nuevo libro de Carlos Hernández de Miguel me ha conmovido hasta las raíces.»Ian Gibson «Los campos fueron parte de una compleja estrategia del terror dentro de un proyecto ideológico muy amplio para aniquilar la cultura política y moral de la España Republicana. Este tema tan crucial para la recuperación de la memoria histórica en España ha encontrado en Carlos Hernández de Miguel su cronista ideal. Nos ofrece una historia dolorosa pero necesaria, basada en una investigación exhaustiva y presentada en una prosa lúcida, del sufrimiento impuesto sobre miles de españoles y sus familias por Franco y sus seguidores.»Paul Preston