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Books > Humanities > History > European history
We are living a moment in which famous chefs, Michelin stars,
culinary techniques, and gastronomical accolades attract moneyed
tourists to Spain from all over the world. This has prompted the
Spanish government to declare its cuisine as part of Spanish
patrimony. Yet even with this widespread global attention, we know
little about how Spanish cooking became a litmus test for
demonstrating Spain's modernity and, in relation, the roles
ascribed to the modern Spanish women responsible for daily cooking.
Efforts to articulate a new, modern Spain infiltrated writing in
multiple genres and media. Women's Work places these efforts in
their historical context to yield a better understanding of the
roles of food within an inherently uneven modernization process.
Further, the book reveals the paradoxical messages women have
navigated, even in texts about a daily practice that shaped their
domestic and work lives. This argument is significant because of
the degree to which domestic activities, including cooking,
occupied women's daily lives, even while issues like their fitness
as citizens and participation in the public sphere were hotly
debated. At the same time, progressive intellectuals from diverse
backgrounds began to invoke Spanish cooking and eating as one
measure of Spanish modernity. Women's Work shows how culinary
writing engaged these debates and reached women at the site of much
of their daily labor-the kitchen-and, in this way, shaped their
thinking about their roles in modernizing Spain.
Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of
World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three
minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in
Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome colour film. More than seventy years
later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of
home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community,
an entire culture that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three
Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four year journey
to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His
search takes him across the United States to Canada, England,
Poland, and Israel. To archives, film preservation laboratories,
and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates
seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty six
year old man who appears in the film as a thirteen year old boy.
Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents,
and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny,
harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven
survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir,
David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a
vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film,
Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and
improbable survival, a monument to a lost world.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has
spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its
front lines. In this authoritative account, he traces the war’s
decisive moments―from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the
gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over
Bakhmut―to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against
Russia in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath.
Putin had intended to conquer Ukraine with a vicious blitzkrieg, in a
few short weeks. But in the face of this existential threat, the
Ukrainian people fought back, turning what looked like certain defeat
into a great moral victory, even as the territorial battle continues to
seesaw to this day. This is the story of their epic bravery in the face
of almost unthinkable aggression.
For Trofimov, this war is deeply personal. He grew up in Kyiv and his
family has lived there for generations. He tells the story of how
everyday Ukrainian citizens―doctors, computer programmers,
businesspeople, and schoolteachers―risked their lives and lost loved
ones.
At once heart-breaking and inspiring, and combining vivid reportage
with expert military analysis and rare insight into the thinking of
Ukrainian leadership, Our Enemies Will Vanish tells the riveting story
Ukraine’s fight for survival and refusal to surrender as it has never
been told before.
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