The Swedish scholar and prelate Olaus Magnus issued his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus from Rome in 1555. It is an ethnographic essay on an encyclopedic scale, touching on a vast variety of topics -snowflakes and sea-serpents, sables and saltpetre, watermills and werewolves. Much of it was culled from ancient authorities, much from Magnus's own travels (his account of the Lapps has attracted particular attention). It is still a prime sourcefor information on the material culture, social history and folklore of pre-Reformation Sweden and Scandinavia as a whole. This is the first English translation of the whole work.

The harrowing, moving and poignant account of one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz: a girl who was only five years old when she was sent to an extermination camp, and was one of the few people who entered a gas chamber and lived to tell her story. 'I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf.' With a special foreword by Sir Ben Kingsley. 'Every so often a book arrives that demands to be read' John Humphrys 'An unforgettable and deeply moving story' Jeremy Bowen AN INCREDIBLE STORY OF COURAGE, RESILIENCE AND SURVIVAL Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was five when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale. As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova's father tracked them down and the family was reunited. In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it is in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honour the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant's thorough research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova's extraordinary story about one of the worst ever crimes against humanity. 'I read this book with gratitude and urgency' Fergal Keane '[A] vividly written and compelling story' Lindsey Hilsum 'A truly remarkable book' Christine Lampard, Lorraine

Sailors in Forest Green is a detailed examination of the uniforms and equipment used by Navy personnel attached to the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. Navy hospital corpsmen, Seabees, combat photographers, demolitions experts, and many other Navy specialists served with USMC units from 1941-1945. This subject is often overlooked today. Sailors in Forest Green is the first book of its kind to address this previously unexplored and fascinating topic. It is lavishly illustrated with over 800 previously unpublished archival and contemporary photographs, documents, and dramatic reconstructions. Both U.S. Navy and Marine Corps uniforms are highlighted, including officer and enlisted dress uniforms and insignia, combat and fatigue uniforms, camouflage, field gear and experimental equipment. Additionally, gas masks, medical supplies, and explosives are featured as well. Anyone with an interest in World War II militaria will marvel at this new and exciting breakthrough!

Drawing from a wide range of historical sources, from hagiography to numismatics, this book will appeal to students and academics researching Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern History, Theology / This is a study that invites meditation on the highly symbolic and powerful role of money through coins which were the price, value, and measure of Christ / This book will also appeal to those interested in the use of relics throughtout Medieval Europe.

This book explores the political construction of imperial frontiers during the reigns of Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles V in the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean. Contrary to many studies on this topic, this book neither focuses on a specific frontier nor attempts to provide an overview of all the imperial frontiers. Instead, it focuses on a specific individual: Juan Rena (1480-1539). This Venetian clergyman spent 40 years serving the king in several capacities while travelling from the Maghreb to northern Spain, from the Pyrenees to the western fringes of the Ottoman Empire. By focusing on his activities, the book offers an account of the Spanish Empire's frontiers as a vibrant political space where a multiplicity of figures interacted to shape power relations from below. Furthermore, it describes how merchants, military officers, nobles, local elites and royal agents forged a specific political culture in the empire's liminal spaces. Through their negotiations and cooperation, but also through their competition and clashes, they created practices and norms in areas like cross-cultural diplomacy, the making of the social fabric, the definition of new jurisdictions, and the mobilization of resources for war.

Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquity shows how today's environmental and ecological concerns can help illuminate our study of the ancient world. The contributors consider how the Greeks and Romans perceived their natural world, and how their perceptions affected society. The effects of human settlement and cultivation on the landscape are considered, as well as the representation of landscape in Attic drama. Various aspects of farming, such as the use of terraces and the significance of olive growing are examined. The uncultivated landscape was also important: hunting was a key social ritual for Greek and hellenistic elites, and 'wild' places were not wastelands but played an essential economic role. The Romans' attempts to control their environment are analyzed.
This volume shows how Greeks and Romans worked hand in hand with their natural environment and not against it. It represents an outstanding collaboration between the disciplines of history and archaeology.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203426908

This book is an important work in Holocaust literature and was originally published in Poland in 1967. Covering the years 1939-1945, it is the author's account of her experience growing up in the Warsaw ghetto and her eventual deportation to, imprisonment in, and survival of the Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Neustadt-Glewe camps. Since the old, the weak, and children were summarily executed by the Nazis in these camps, Mrs Birenbaum's survival and coming of age is all the more remarkable. Her story is told with simplicity and clarity and the new edition contains revisions made by the author to the original English translation, and is expanded with a new epilogue and postscripts that bring the story up to date and complete the circle of Mrs Birenbaum's experiences.

In "A Traveller's History of Greece", the reader is provided with an authoritative general history of Greece from its earliest beginnings down to the present day. It covers in a clear and comprehensive manner the classical past, the conflict with Persia, the conquest by the Romans, the Byzantine era and the occupation by the Turks; and, the struggle for independence and the turbulence of recent years, right up to current events. This history will help the visitor make sense of modern Greece against the background of its diverse heritage. Illustrated with maps and line drawings, "A Traveller's History of Greece" is an invaluable companion for your vacation.

What role have parliaments played in the dramatic changes occurring in Eastern and Central Europe? Adopting a common research framework, the contributors analyze in detail the role and operations of parliaments in ten of the new democracies. They focus on what determines their capacity to have some impact on public policy. They identify the significance of parliaments operating in often hybrid systems of government, with the relationship between the executive and legislature not well defined, and with an absence of constraining influence that typify western political systems.

Soviet Jewish Aliyah 1989-92 provides new insights into a period of fundamental change in Israel and the Middle East. It explains how the Israeli government failed to effectively handle the integration of new emigres from the Soviet Union, and how it alienated traditional Likud supporters among Oriental Jews in Israel. Clive Jones's argument is that, by placing its ideological commitment to the retention of the West Bank above other priorities, the Likud leadership made itself beholden to the United States for financial assistance which was then denied. The resulting fundamental change in the composition and orientation of the Israeli political leadership has had a major influence on the course of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

As the first book to examine the origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Europe and Asia as a whole, this major contribution should be essential reading for archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists and geographers. Adopting a novel approach to the subject, the authors examine it first in terms of seven different disciplinary perspectives: social, ecological, genetic, linguistic, biomolecular, epidemiological and geogrpahical. Then, 20 case studies are presented, which are based primarily on archaeological and biological evidence and which relate to three major regions: Southwest Asia, Europe and Central Asia to the Pacific. The book concludes with an overview of Eurasia as a whole.; The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture had revolutionary consequences for human society. It led to the emergence of urban civilizations and ultimately to humanity's almost complete dependence on relatively few domesticated animals and plants. The subject has been much studied, but the results have tended to be interpreted largely in terms of local cultural sequences, with insufficient comparison made with evidence from other areas. In contrast, this book provides a continental- scale framework, with its scope extended to pastoralism because in Eurasia both the raising of livestock and the cultivation of crops were integral components of the agricultural "revolution" from its inception some 10,000 years ago.; Comprehensive and authoritative, "The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia" should appeal strongly to the wide readership of students and specialists concerned with the prehistoric antecedents of modern civilization.

This is the first comprehensive history of conscription and the military in Italy from the Restoration to the eve of WWI. The comparative and transnational approach enables this work to compare and contrast the Italian experience with that of many other countries in the world as well as understand transfers and the adaptive and imitative processes that emerge when conscription and the military are viewed from an Italian perspective. Peacetime and wartime recruitment, military life, culture, justice and civil-military relationships are analysed using a wide range of sources and an interdisciplinary approach that combines top-down and bottom-up perspectives. This enables the book not only to assess the contribution the military has made to the country in terms of state-building, nation building, modernization, pedagogical and disciplinary models, gender identity and roles, but also to reconsider the standard taxonomies as well as some established evolutionary models of the armies. Moreover, the Italian military is seen as an internally complex world that is incapable of defining its own one-dimensional identity or of imposing any such identity on its members. Consequently, it is an element in the history of a country that is substantially the same as any other such element and thus important in people’s collective and individual lives whether or not they are in uniform. Rather than being an object of study in and of itself, the military becomes a vantage point from which to observe the Italian history in the long 19th century. Therefore, this book can be profitably read by professional military historians and non-specialist readers interested in the military, as well as by all scholars working on Italian pre- and post-unification political, institutional, socio-economic, cultural and gender history.

The Politics of Memory in the Italian Populist Radical Right examines the role of colonial memory in the contemporary Italian populist radical right, which includes the Lega and Fratelli d'Italia (FdI). The book originally adopts postcolonialism as an analytical framework to critically examine which roles colonial memory plays in the Italian populist radical right. Considering the timeframe between 2013 and 2021, this book suggests that the contemporary Italian populist radical right selectively shaped its memory of the colonial past, expunging the most difficult aspects from it. The fact that the Italian populist radical right parties examined do not fully acknowledge the controversial aspects of Italy's colonial past, which are bracketed off discourse, may contribute to the deployment of colonial discourse by these same parties when discussing immigration. From this Italian case study, broader implications can be drawn regarding the role of colonial memory in political discourse, which is a topical matter across Europe. The book will be of interest to those studying populism, the radical right, Italian politics and history, colonialism, and the politics of memory.

Providing an intellectual biography of Pope Pius II, this book offers an understanding of the formation of the concept of ‘European’ ensuring students studying the formation of modern Europe, intellectual history and the history of early modern political thought, and cultural studies have a better understanding of how this concept was formed and disseminated. This volume will be in demand for students of a wide range of topics because it will demonstrate to them how important it is to understand how and when this concept of ‘Europe’ and being ‘European was formed to better understand the later revolutions, slave trade, Empire building and wars. This book is authored by Nancy Bisaha who has expertise on Renaissance humanism and identity and has authored another book Pope Pius II. It contains close readings of his letters, orations, histories, autobiography, and other works.

Focusing on the so-called 'Phoney War' at the start of World War II, this well-researched account concentrates on incidents when Britain stood alone during those tense and dark early days of hostilities. The book contains graphic accounts of enemy action including two major attacks on elements of the Home Fleet, the downing of the first German aircraft on British soil, the sinking of the liner Athenia and the pursuit of the raider Graf Spee. The controversial attack on the aircraft carrier Ark Royal is vividly described when Goering's flyers harassed fishing boats along the coastal waters. The fates of captured Luftwaffe crews are also presented with the aid of authentic eye-witness descriptions. There are also accounts of the time spent by enemy crews in prisoner-of-war camps in Britain and Canada tracking the conduct of would-be escapees. Descriptions of the north Atlantic convoys are vividly related and in particular the dramatic and harrowing account of two Merchant Navy seamen who rowed their way to freedom after their ship had been ruthlessly attacked by a notorious Nazi captain. With painstaking research the author has provided fascinating stories complemented with previously unpublished photographs and documents - an unmissable read for the modern historian.

In a world historically dominated by male rulers, the women who have sat on thrones of their own shine out brightly. Some queens and empresses were born to greatness, while others fought their way to power. Queens ranges from the ancient world to the present day, telling the stories of these women who ruled, from murderous former courtesan Wu Zetian in 7th century China to Elizabeth I, the 'Virgin Queen' of England. In 6th century Constantinople, Empress Theodora, who had been a street performer before catching the eye of Emperor Justinian, extended rights for women, passing laws that allowed them to divorce and own property and made rape a crime punishable by death. In 12th century Europe, Eleanor of Aquitaine first married the king of France and then the king of England. At the Mughal court in Lahore in the early 17th century, Nur Jahan, wife of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, was the political powerhouse behind the throne. In more recent history, the book explores the reigns of Catherine the Great, revealing how a minor German aristocrat came to rule and expand the Russian Empire, Queen Victoria, whose family dominated the world in the early 20th centuty, and her more recent descendent, Elizabeth II, the longest-ruling queen in history. Female rulers are often described as ambitious rather than bold, as devious rather than diplomatically astute and as intriguers and meddlers, all characterizations that are destructive to the reality of women's lives in the world's monarchies. Even genealogies still often leave out the women of royal families, overlooking their genuine contributions. To some extent, we will never know these great women of history as well as we know their menfolk; the sources simply leave too many gaps. However, we can and will do better in giving the women rulers of history the recognition they deserve Carefully researched, superbly entertaining and illustrated throughout with more than 180 photographs and artworks, Queens highlights the true personalities and real lives of the women who became monarchs and empresses.

World War One was the landmark event of the first quarter of the 20th century. In "The Great War, 1914-1918, " Roy Douglas tells the history of the period through an international collection of over 100 cartoons, many of them previously unknown. This pioneering pan-European approach offers new perspectives of key themes, events and figures, forcing a new reinterpretation of the familiar. Both "establishment" and "subversive" cartoons demonstrate the real concerns of all participants from the governments of the combative powers, to the soldier to those at home.
This unique collection will inform in a fresh way the continued historical debates surrounding the Great War and the implications which reach to the present day.

Communism in Eastern Europe is a groundbreaking new survey of the history of Eastern Europe since 1945. It examines how Communist governments came to Eastern Europe, how they changed their societies and the legacies that persisted after their fall. Written from the perspective of the 21st century, this book shows how Eastern Europe's trajectory since 1989 fits into the longer history of its Communist past. Rather than focusing on high politics, Communism in Eastern Europe concentrates on the politics of daily life, melding political history with social, cultural and gender history. It tells the history of this complicated era through the voices and experiences of ordinary people. By focusing on the complex interactions of everyday life, Communism in Eastern Europe illuminates the world Communism made in Eastern Europe, its politics and culture, values and dreams, successes and failures. This book is an engaging introduction to the history of Communist Eastern Europe for any reader. It is ideal for adoption in a wide array of undergraduate and graduate courses in 20th-century European history.

The historical consciousness of medieval Jewry has engendered lively debate in the scholarly world. The focus in this book is on the historical consciousness of the Jews of Spain and southern France in the late Middle Ages, and specifically on their perceptions of Christianity and Christian history and culture. In his detailed analysis of Jews' understanding of the history of the communities they lived among, Ram Ben-Shalom shows that in these southern European lands Jews experienced a relatively open society that was sensitive to and knowledgeable about voices from other cultures, and that this had significant consequences for shaping Jewish historical consciousness. Among the topics that receive special attention are what Jews knew of the significance of Rome, of Jesus and the early days of Christianity, of Church history, and of the history of the Iberian monarchies. Ben-Shalom demonstrates that, despite the negative stereotypes of Jewry prevalent in Christian literature and increasing familiarity with that literature, they were more influenced by their interactions with Christian society at the local level. Consequently there was no single stereotype that dominated Jewish thought, and frequently little awareness of the two societies as representing distinct cultures. This book contributes to medieval Jewish intellectual history on many levels, demonstrating that, in Spain and southern France, Jews of the later Middle Ages evinced a genuine interest in history, including the history of non-Jews, and that in some cases they were deeply familiar with Christian and sometimes also classical historiography. In providing a comprehensive survey of the multiple contexts in which historiographical material was embedded and the many uses to which it was put, it enriches our understanding of medieval historiography, polemic, Jewish-Christian relations, and the breadth of interests characterizing Provencal and Spanish Jewish communities.

'A real treasure that we can't stop exploring' - La Republica Felicia Browne decided it was time to put down her paintbrushes and pick up a rifle. Jimmy Yates left Chicago with three books in his bindle, sacrificing them all on the gruelling trek across the Pyrenees. Salaria Kea worked at the front as a nurse, judged by her skill rather than her skin colour... In 1936 something extraordinary happened. As the threat of fascism swept across the Iberian peninsula, thousands of people from all over the world left their families and jobs to heed the call - No Pasaran! History has never seen a wave of solidarity like it. The Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 with the Republic crushed, but the revolutionary dream of the International Brigades has never burnt out. Through these 60 illustrated profiles, Brigadistes embroiders an epic story of political struggle with the everyday bravery, sorrow and love of those who lived it.

The extraordinary true story of the Stasi's poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society. 'Engrossing.' Observer 'Remarkable.' The Times 'Magnificent.' Phillipe Sands 'Gripping.' Literary Review 'A history so outlandish and unlikely that you feel it must be true . . . [A] grippingly well-written book.' Anthony Quinn, Observer Book of the Week In 1982, East Germany's fearsome secret police - convinced that writers were embedding subversive messages in their work - decided to train their own writers, weaponising poetry in the struggle against the class enemy. Once a month, a group of soldiers and border guards gathered in a heavily guarded military compound in East Berlin for meetings to learn how to write lyrical verse. Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Stasi files, digging out lost volumes of poetry and tracking down surviving members of this Red poet's society, to illustrate the little known story in which spies turned poets and poets spies.

Bringing together scholars from Russia, the United States and Europe, this collection of essays is the first to explore the slippery phenomenon of post-Soviet nostalgia by studying it as a discursive practice serving a wide variety of ideological agendas. The authors demonstrate how feelings of loss and displacement in post-Soviet Russia are turned into effective tools of state building and national mobilization, as well as into weapons for local resistance and the assertion of individual autonomy. Drawing on novels, memoirs, documentaries, photographs and Soviet commodities, Post-Soviet Nostalgia is an invaluable resource for historians, literary scholars and anthropologists interested in how Russia comes to terms with its Soviet past.

This is the first book on Italian colonialism that specifically deals with the question of citizenship/subjecthood. Such a topic is crucial for understanding both Italian imperial rule and the complex dynamics of the different colonial societies where several actors, like notables, political leaders, minorities, etc., were involved. The chapters gathered in the book constitute an unprecedented account of a heterogeneous geographical area. The cases of Eritrea, Libya, Dodecanese, Ethiopia, and Albania confirm that citizenship and subjecthood in the colonial context were ductile political tools, which were structured according to the orientations of the Metropole and the challenges that came from the colonial societies, often swinging between submission, cooptation to the colonial power, and resistance. On one hand, the book offers an account of the different policies of citizenship implemented in the Italian colonies, in particular the construction of gradated forms of citizenship, the repression and expulsion of dissidents, the systems of endearment of local people and cooptation of the elites, and the racialization of legal status. On the other, it deals with the various answers coming from the local populations in terms of resistance, negotiation, and construction of social identity.