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Books > History > European history
In May 1933, a young man named Rudolf Schwab fled Nazi-occupied
Germany. His departure allegedly came at the insistence of a close
friend who later joined the Party. Schwab eventually arrived in
South Africa, one of the few countries left where Jews could seek
refuge, and years later, resumed a relationship in letters with the
Nazi who in many ways saved his life. From Things Lost: Forgotten
Letters and the Legacy of the Holocaust is a story of displacement,
survival, and an unlikely friendship in the wake of the Holocaust
via an extraordinary collection of letters discovered in a
forgotten trunk. Only a handful of extended Schwab family members
were alive in the war's aftermath. Dispersed across five
continents, their lives mirrored those of countless refugees who
landed in the most unlikely places. Over years in exile, a web of
communication became an alternative world for these refugees, a
place where they could remember what they had lost and rebuild
their identities anew. Among the cast of characters that historian
Shirli Gilbert came to know through the letters, one name that
appeared again and again was Karl Kipfer. He was someone with whom
Rudolf clearly got on exceedingly well-there was lots of joking,
familiarity, and sentimental reminiscing. ""That was Grandpa's best
friend growing up,"" Rudolf's grandson explained to Gilbert; ""He
was a Nazi and was the one who encouraged Rudolf to leave Germany.
. . . He also later helped him to recover the family's property.""
Gilbert takes readers on a journey through a family's personal
history wherein we learn about a cynical Karl who attempts to make
amends for his ""undemocratic past,"" and a version of Rudolf who
spends hours aloof at his Johannesburg writing desk, dressed in his
Sunday finest, holding together the fragile threads of his
existence. The Schwab family's story brings us closer to grasping
the complex choices and motivations that-even in extreme
situations, or perhaps because of them-make us human. In a world of
devastation, the letters in From Things Lost act as a surrogate for
the gravestones that did not exist and funerals that were never
held. Readers of personal accounts of the Holocaust will be swept
away by this intimate story.
The Far Reaches of Empire chronicles the half century of
Anglo-American efforts to establish dominion in Nova Scotia, an
important French foothold in the New World. John Grenier examines
the conflict of cultures and peoples in the colonial Northeast
through the lens of military history as he tells how Britons and
Yankees waged a tremendously efficient counterinsurgency that
ultimately crushed every remnant of Acadian, Indian, and French
resistance in Nova Scotia.The author demonstrates the importance of
warfare in the Anglo-French competition for North America, showing
especially how Anglo-Americans used brutal but effective measures
to wrest control of Nova Scotia from French and Indian enemies who
were no less ruthless. He explores the influence of Abenakis,
Maliseets, and Mi'kmaq in shaping the region's history, revealing
them to be more than the supposed pawns of outsiders; and he
describes the machinations of French officials, military officers,
and Catholic priests in stirring up resistance. Arguing that the
Acadians were not merely helpless victims of ethnic cleansing,
Grenier shows that individual actions and larger forces of history
influenced the decision to remove them. The Far Reaches of Empire
illuminates the primacy of war in establishing British supremacy in
northeastern North America.
Napoleon arrived on St Helena in October 1815 aboard the British
74-gun warship HMS Northumberland. For the first six weeks he
stayed at the Briars, a property in the Upper Jamestown Valley
where he enjoyed the hospitality of the Balcombe family. By the end
of December, the re-building work on his destined home, Longwood,
was completed, and Napoleon accompanied by his entourage moved
there, much to Napoleon's annoyance. He found the site bleak,
inhospitable, and considered it conducive to rheumatism. The
British Government was paranoid about Napoleon being rescued and
maintained a large military presence on the island, and numerous
warships anchored offshore. This paranoia extended to the new
Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe. He ran a typrannical and petty campaign
against the residents at Longwood and had violent arguments with
Napoleon, who refused to cooperate with him. This book is one of
the best accounts of Napoleon's five-and-a-half years'
imprisonment, which ended with his death from a stomach ulcer. It
details all of the personalities, Napoleon's household, the
domestic arrangements, the island residents, the military residents
and the long-standing feud between Plantation House and Longwood.
It also covers Betsy Balcombe, the Deadwood Races, Napoleon's
habits and his garden and much, much more. The book has eighty
colour and black & white illustrations.
This book argues that while the historiography of the development
of scientific ideas has for some time acknowledged the important
influences of socio-cultural and material contexts, the significant
impact of traumatic events, life threatening illnesses and other
psychotropic stimuli on the development of scientific thought may
not have been fully recognised. Howard Carlton examines the
available primary sources which provide insight into the lives of a
number of nineteenth-century astronomers, theologians and
physicists to study the complex interactions within their
'biocultural' brain-body systems which drove parallel changes of
perspective in theology, metaphysics, and cosmology. In doing so,
he also explores three topics of great scientific interest during
this period: the question of the possible existence of life on
other planets; the deployment of the nebular hypothesis as a theory
of cosmogony; and the religiously charged debates about the ages of
the earth and sun. From this body of evidence we gain a greater
understanding of the underlying phenomena which actuated
intellectual developments in the past and which are still relevant
to today's knowledge-making processes.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the mortality crisis which affected
Eastern Europe and the republics of the former USSR at the time of
the transition to a market economy was arguably the major peacetime
health crisis of recent decades. Chernobyl and the Mortality Crisis
in Eastern Europe and the Old USSR discusses the importance of that
crisis, surprisingly underplayed in the scientific literature, and
presents evidence suggesting a potential role of the Chernobyl
disaster among the causes contributing to it.
While in the last twenty years perceptions of Europe have been
subjected to detailed historical scrutiny, American images of the
Old World have been almost wantonly neglected. As a response to
this scholarly desideratum, this pioneering study analyzes
neoconservative images of Europe since the 1970s on the basis of an
extensive collection of sources. With fresh insight into the
evolution of American images of Europe as well as into the history
of U.S. neoconservatism, the book appeals to readers familiar and
new to the subject matters alike. The study explores how, beginning
in the early 1970s, ideas of the United States as an anti-Europe
have permeated neoconservative writing and shaped their self-images
and political agitation. The choice of periodization and
investigated personnel enables the author to refute popular claims
that widespread Euro-critical sentiment in the United Studies
during the early 21st century - considerably ignited by
neoconservatives - was a distinct post-Cold War phenomenon.
Instead, the analysis reveals that the fiery rhetoric in the
context of the Iraq War debates was merely the climax of a
decade-old development.
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