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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.On the morning of April 16, 1945, the crewmen of the USS Laffey saw what seemed to be the entire…
Japanese air force assembled directly above. They were about to become the targets of the largest single-ship kamikaze attack of World War II. By the time the unprecedented assault was finished, thirty-two sailors were dead and more than seventy wounded. Although she lay shrouded in smoke and fire for hours, the Laffey somehow survived. The gutted American warship limped from Okinawa’s shore for home, where the ship and crew would be feted as heroes. Using personal interviews with survivors, the memoirs of crew members, and their wartime correspondence, John Wukovits breathes life into the story of this forgotten historic event.Shortly before Christmas in 1943, five Army aviators left Alaska’s Ladd Field on a test flight. Only one ever returned:…
Leon Crane, a city kid from Philadelphia with little more than a parachute on his back when he bailed from his B-24 Liberator before it crashed into the Arctic. Alone in subzero temperatures, Crane managed to stay alive in the dead of the Yukon winter for nearly twelve weeks and, amazingly, walked out of the ordeal intact. 81 Days Below Zero recounts, for the first time, the full story of Crane’s remarkable saga. In a drama of staggering resolve with moments of phenomenal luck, Crane learned to survive in the Yukon’s unforgiving landscape. His is a tale of the human capacity to endure extreme conditions and intense lonelinessand emerge stronger than before.الفهرس الموضوعي لمجلة مجمع اللغة العربية
By A. 2012
The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance
By Simon R. Doubleday. 2015
"If I had been present at the Creation,” the thirteenth-century Spanish philosopher-king Alfonso X is said to have stated, "Many…
faults in the universe would have been avoided. ” Known as El Sabio, "the Wise,” Alfonso was renowned by friends and enemies alike for his sparkling intellect and extraordinary cultural achievements. In The Wise King, celebrated historian Simon R. Doubleday traces the story of the king’s life and times, leading us deep into his emotional world and showing how his intense admiration for Spain’s rich Islamic culture paved the way for the European Renaissance. In 1252, when Alfonso replaced his more militaristic father on the throne of Castile and León, the battle to reconquer Muslim territory on the Iberian Peninsula was raging fiercely. But even as he led his Christian soldiers onto the battlefield, Alfonso was seduced by the glories of Muslim Spain. His engagement with the Arabic-speaking culture of the South shaped his pursuit of astronomy, for which he was famed for centuries, and his profoundly humane vision of the world, which Dante, Petrarch, and later Italian humanists would inherit. A composer of lyric verses, and patron of works on board games, hunting, and the properties of stones, Alfonso is best known today for his Cantigas de Santa María (Songs of Holy Mary), which offer a remarkable window onto his world. His ongoing struggles as a king and as a man were distilled--in art, music, literature, and architecture--into something sublime that speaks to us powerfully across the centuries. An intimate biography of the Spanish ruler in whom two cultures converged, The Wise King introduces readers to a Renaissance man before his time, whose creative energy in the face of personal turmoil and existential threats to his kingdom would transform the course of Western history.The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall
By Mary Elise Sarotte. 2014
The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 to end all traffic between the city’s two halves: the democratic west and…
the communist east. The iconic symbol of a divided Europe, the Wall became a focus of western political pressure on East Germany; as Ronald Reagan’s famously said in a 1987 speech in Berlin, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” But as award-winning historian Mary Sarotte shows in [Title TK] , the opening of the Wall on November 9, 1989 was not, as is commonly believed, the East German government’s deliberate concession to outside influence. It was an accident. A carelessly worded memo written by mid-level bureaucrats, a bumbling press conference given by an inept member of the East German Politburo, the negligence of government leaders, the bravery of ordinary people in East and West Berlin--these combined to bring about the end of nearly forty years of oppression, fear, and enmity in divided Berlin. When the news broke, Washington and Moscow could only stand by and watch as Tom Brokaw and other journalists narrated the televised broadcast of this critical moment in the thawing of the cold war. Sarotte opens her story in the months leading up to that fateful day. Following East German dissidents, she shows how their efforts coalesced around opposition to the regime’s restrictions on foreign travel. The city of Leipzig, close to the border with Czechoslovakia, became a hothouse of activism, and protests there quickly grew into massive demonstrations. The East German Politburo hoped to limit its citizens’ knowledge of these marches, but two daring dissidents, East Berliners Aram Radomski and Siegbert Schefke, managed to evade the Stasi and film the largest of them from a church tower. They then smuggled their tape to West Germany; broadcast in both nations, the footage galvanized activists across East Germany, and precipitated the stunning developments on November 9. Facing mounting pressure from its own citizens, the East German Politburo planned to put off enacting any meaningful change to its travel policy by issuing a deceptive ruling that would appear to offer more freedom, but which in fact would allow the state to maintain strict control over its citizen’s movements. But the bureaucrats tasked with preparing the "new” regulations misunderstood their task, and instead drafted a declaration that said East Germans could freely leave the country. This declaration ended up in the hands of regime spokesman Günter Schabowski, who announced the rules at a press conference without understanding their import. Stunned reporters were soon broadcasting the news around the world. Crowds of East Germans began streaming to the Wall, prompting a showdown with border guards, who received no support or direction from East German leadership as the throngs multiplied. By 11:30, Harald Jäger, a second-tier passport control officer, had had enough and finally opened the wall to the mob gathering outside his gate. Even though East German forces successfully regained control by the morning, it was too late--for the wall, for the regime, and for Communism in Eastern Europe. Drawing on evidence from archives in multiple countries and languages, along with dozens of interviews with key actors, including Harald Jäger, [Title TK] is the definitive account of the event that brought down the East German Politburo and came to represent the final collapse of the Cold War order.The Gates of Europe
By Plokhy. 2015
Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense battle with Russia to preserve its economic and political independence. But today’s conflict…
is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign nation. As award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe, we must examine Ukraine’s past in order to understand its fraught present and likely future. Situated between Europe, Russia, and the Asian East, Ukraine was shaped by the empires that have used it as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, all have engaged in global fights for supremacy on Ukrainian soil. Each invading army left a lasting mark on the landscape and on the population, making modern Ukraine an amalgam of competing cultures. Authoritative and vividly written, The Gates of Europe will be the definitive history of Ukraine for years to come.Princes at War: The Bitter Battle Inside Britain's Royal Family in the Darkest Days of WWII
By Deborah Cadbury. 2015
This book tells the story of four sons of King George V during the period that the monarchy faced the…
greatest threats to its survival in the modern era the crisis of the abdication, and the nationwide threat to Britain of the Nazis, inside and out. The threat of world war echoed the war within the royal family. Played out against the cataclysm of the Second World War the princes’ actions for good or ill became all the more significant and magnified on a world stage. The war served to unleash passions at a time when the very function of royalty as head of the empire was under threat. It served as a crucible that made or destroyed each of the princes. One would die in mysterious circumstances forever mired in conspiracy and scandal; another was destroyed in all but name, a third slipped into comfortable obscurity, and the fourth rose to new heights of achievement redefining the monarchy for the modern age. The catalyst for the story is one dangerous American woman: Wallis Simpson. The consequences of her actions drive one prince to an early grave and the other to become a living wreck of a man nursing long held grievances. Recently discovered letters show that Wallis herself was caught in a trap of her own making: a life entombed in a gilded cage with a man she could not respect and whom she tried to leave. Everything she wished for, she destroyed. Famously she is said to have been sent 17 carnations by the Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop, representing their 17 sexual trysts. George VI’s story is also an allegory for a much wider theme. Starting where the film The Kings Speech ends, a revealing transformation in his character takes place. As he steps up with some dread to the role of king that his older brother spurns, his horizons are widened and he falls into the sphere of influence of brilliant leaders such as Winston Churchill. As Hitler stole country after country for the Third Reich, George VI rose to the challenge, to find the very best in himself, and was transformed by the effort. By the end he can stand alone at the helm, without the support of those who helped him on his way Like fables of old, taking on the challenge transforms the quality of the man but it is also killing him.