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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900
This book provides a genealogy of radical Basque nationalism and the means by which this complex, often violent, political movement has reinforced Basque identity. Radical nationalists are mobilized by a shared frame of reference where ethnicity and violence are intertwined in a nostalgic recreation of a golden age and a quasi-religions imperative to restore that distant past. Diego Muro examines the origins of the ethno-nationalist conflict and provides a comprehensive examination of Euskadi Ta Askatusana's (ETA) violent campaign. The book analyzes the interplay of ethnicity and violence and stresses the role of inherited myths, memories and cultural symbols to explain the ability of radical Basque nationalism to endure.
Heda Margolius Kovaly (1919-2010) was a renowned Czech writer and translator born to Jewish parents. Her bestselling memoir, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her crime novel Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street based on her own experiences living under Stalinist oppression was named an NPR Best Book in 2015. In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is based on interviews between Kovaly and award-winning filmmaker Helena Trestikova. In it, Kovaly recounts her family history in Czechoslovakia, starving in the deprivations of Lodz Ghetto, how she miraculously left Auschwitz, fled from a death march, failed to find sanctuary amongst former friends in Prague as a concentration camp escapee, and participated in the liberation of Prague. Later under Communist rule, she suffered extreme social isolation as a pariah after her first husband Rudolf Margolius was unjustly accused in the infamous Slansky Trial and executed for treason. Remarkably, Kovaly, exiled in the United States after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, only had love for her country and continued to believe in its people. She returned to Prague in 1996. Heda had an enormous talent for expressing herself. She spoke with precision and was descriptive and witty in places. I admired her attitude and composure, even after she had such extremely difficult experiences. Nazism and Communism afflicted Heda's life directly with maximum intensity. Nevertheless, she remained an optimist. Helena Trestikova has made over fifty documentary films. Hitler, Stalin and I has garnered several awards in the Czech Republic and Japan. PRAISE FOR KOVALY'S INNOCENCE A luminous testament from a dark time, Innocence is at once a clever homage to Raymond Chandler, and a portrait of a city - Prague - caught and held fast in a state of Kafkaesque paranoia. Only a great survivor could have written such a book. - John Banville Innocence is an extraordinary novel ... in 1985, Kovaly produced a remarkable work of art with the intrigue of a spy puzzle, the irony of a political fable, the shrewdness of a novel of manners, and the toughness of a hard-boiled murder mystery ... Just as few will anticipate the many surprises and artful turns of Innocence, a book sure to dazzle and please a great many readers. - Tom Nolan, The Best New Mysteries, The Wall Street Journal Kovaly's skills as a mystery writer shines, as she uses suspense, hints, and suggestions to literally play with the reader's mind ... Innocence is an excellent novel for readers who are up for a challenging, intelligent, and complex story - one that paints a masterful picture of a bleak, Kafkaesque, and highly intriguing time, place, and cast of characters. - The New York Journal of Books Although not out of love for Hegel, Heda Margolius Kovaly makes a very Hegelian point: actions, as Hegel tells us in the section on Antigone in Phenomenology of Spirit - even seemingly small, meaningless actions - always reach beyond their intent; and the impossibility of foreseeing how the consequences will ripple outwards does not absolve us of guilt. As for innocence, the woman who went to hell twice wants her readers to know that there is no such thing. - The Times Literary Supplement
Between 1966 and 1975 North American youth activists established over 35 school- and community-based gay liberation youth groups whose members sought control over their own bodies, education, and sexual and social relations. This book focuses on three groundbreaking New York City groups -- Gay Youth (GY), Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), and the Gay International Youth Society of George Washington High School (GWHS) -- from the advent of gay liberation in NYC in 1969 to just after its dissolution and the rise of identity politics by 1975. Cohen examines how gay liberation -- with its rejection of stultifying sex roles, attack on institutional oppression, connection between personal and political liberation, celebration of innate androgyny, and resolute anti-war and anti-capitalist stance -- shaped understandings of sexual identity, membership criteria, organization, decision-making, the roles of youth and adults, and efforts to effect social change.
Designed to secure a lasting peace between the Allies and Germany, the Versailles Settlement soon came apart at the seams. In After The Versailles Treaty an international team of historians examines the almost insuperable challenges facing victors and vanquished alike after the ravages of WW1. This is not another diplomatic history, instead focusing on the practicalities of treaty enforcement and compliance as western Germany came under Allied occupation and as the reparations bill was presented to the defeated and bankrupt Germans. It covers issues such as: How did the Allied occupiers conduct themselves and how did the Germans respond? Were reparations really affordable and how did the reparations regime affect ordinary Germans? What lessons did post-WW2 policymakers learn from this earlier reparations settlement The fraught debates over disarmament as German big business struggled to adjust to the sudden disappearance of arms contracts and efforts were made on the international stage to achieve a measure of global disarmament. The price exacted by the redrawing of frontiers on Germany's eastern and western margins, as well as the (gentler) impact of the peace settlement on identity in French Flanders. This book was previously published as a special issue of Diplomacy and Statecraft
Containing essays by leading Cold War scholars, such as Wilfried Loth, Geir Lundestad and Seppo Hentila, this volume offers a broad-ranging examination of the history of detente in the Cold War. The ten years from 1965 to 1975 marked a deep transformation of the bipolar international system of the Cold War. The Vietnam War and the Prague Spring showed the limits of the two superpowers, who were constrained to embark on a wide-ranging detente policy, which culminated with the SALT agreements of 1972. At the same time this very detente opened new venues for the European countries: French policy towards the USSR and the German Ostpolitik being the most evident cases in point. For the first time since the 1950s, Western Europe began to participate in the shaping of the Cold War. The same could not be said of Eastern Europe, but ferments began to establish themselves there which would ultimately lead to the astounding changes of 1989-90: the Prague Spring, the uprisings in Gdansk in 1970 and generally the rise of the dissident movement. That last process being directly linked to the far-reaching event which marked the end of that momentous decade: the Helsinki conference. The Making of Detente will appeal to students of the Cold War, international history and European contemporary history.
An Army officer must lead men into frightening and dangerous situations and sometimes make them do things that they never thought they could do. This book recounts how British officers have led their men, and commanded their respect, from the days of Marlborough to the Second Iraq war of 2003. Anthony Clayton explores who the officers, men and now women, have been and are, where they came from, what ideals or traditions have motivated them, and their own perceptions of themselves. His account tells the fascinating story of how the role of the military officer evolved, illustrated by a selection of captivating images, and the personal memoirs, biographies and autobiographies of officers.
Europe's rapacious hunger for other people's lands is one of the key shaping forces of our contemporary world. Everything is touched by our colonial past, from the way we see the world to the food we eat. Our contemporary preoccupations and ills - from globalization to humanitarian intervention to international terrorism - have colonialism somewhere in their genetic make-up. The character and policies of contemporary international organizations - from the United Nations to the European Union - have also been deeply affected by the colonial inheritance of their members, whether as perpetrators or "victims". Weaving together the complex strands of history and politics into one compact narrative, this book addresses the key theories of colonialism, examining them against contemporary realities. It goes on to looks at how the different policies of colonisers have had profoundly contradictory effects on the way different empires ended in the 20th century. These endings in turn affected the entire nature of modern day international relations. It also exposes the moral ambiguities of colonialism and the hypocrisies, which underlay colonial policies in the 19th and 20th centuries.
James Tobin, award-winning author of "Ernie Pyle's War" and "The
Man He Became," has penned the definitive account of the inspiring
and impassioned race between the Wright brothers and their primary
rival Samuel Langley across ten years and two continents to conquer
the air.
In the past decade, Jeffrey Olick has established himself as one of the world's pre-eminent sociologists of memory (and, related to this, both cultural sociology and social theory). His recent book on memory in postwar Germany, In the House of the Hangman (University of Chicago Press, 2005) has garnered a great deal of acclaim. This book collects his best essays on a range of memory related issues and adds a couple of new ones. It is more conceptually expansive than his other work and will serve as a great introduction to this important theorist. In the past quarter century, the issue of memory has not only become an increasingly important analytical category for historians, sociologists and cultural theorists, it has become pervasive in popular culture as well. Part of this is a function of the enhanced role of both narrative and representation - the building blocks of memory, so to speak - across the social sciences and humanities. Just as importantly, though, there has also been an increasing acceptance of the notion that the past is no longer the province of professional historians alone. Additionally, acknowledging the importance of social memory has not only provided agency to ordinary people when it comes to understanding the past, it has made conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the past more fraught, particularly in light of the terrible events of the twentieth century. Olick looks at how catastrophic, terrible pasts - Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa - are remembered, but he is particularly concerned with the role that memory plays in social structures. Memory can foster any number of things - social solidarity, nostalgia, civil war - but it always dependson both the nature of the past and the cultures doing the remembering. Prior to his studies of individual episodes, he fully develops his theory of memory and society, working through Bergson, Halbwachs, Elias, Bakhtin, and Bourdieu.
The extraordinary autobiography of novelist Marina Jarre, tracing her identity and relationships through a turbulent era of European history. 'Beautifully ingenious' Vivian Gornick 'Her masterwork' New York Times 'Rich and lyrical... Jarre's life is fascinating' New Statesman 'Ann Goldstein's shimmering translation of Jarre's prose delivers into English a European masterpiece' Benjamin Taylor 'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Il Libraio In distinctive, lyrical prose Jarre depicts an exceptionally multinational and complicated family: her elusive, handsome father, a Jewish man who perished in the Holocaust; her severe, cultured mother, an Italian Lutheran who translated Russian literature; her sister and Latvian grandparents. Shifting between past and present, Jarre narrates her coming-of-age; first as a linguistic minority in a Baltic nation and then in traumatic exile to Italy after her parents' divorce. There, she lived with her maternal grandparents among a community of French-speaking Waldensian Protestants and experienced the hostility of fascist Italy in the 1930s. Published in Italy in 1987 and now translated into English for the first time, Distant Fathers probes questions of memory, language, womanhood, belonging and estrangement, while asking what a homeland can be for those who have none, or many more than one.
This book examines the impact of American perceptions of the military balance between the United States and the Soviet Union during the key period of 1976-1985. That decade witnessed the decline of the US-Soviet detente and the resurgence of superpower confrontation, often called the 'Second Cold War'. Among the factors contributing to this shift was the American view of the military balance - whether the United States had been or was being overtaken by the Soviet Union in terms of military capability. Since then, the military balance has been viewed within the overall context of issues impacting superpower relations during this era. David Walsh examines the full range of issues - strategic and European-based forces, power-projection capabilities, and military spending - and their role in shaping perceptions, not just of the military balance but also in such key areas of international relations as arms control, trans-Atlantic diplomacy and Third World conflict. In doing so, he shows how the perceptions of the 1970s contributed to key policy decisions in the 1980s, which themselves played a significant role in bringing the Cold War to an end. The Military Balance in the Cold War will be of interest to advanced students of Cold War history, strategic studies, US foreign policy and international relations in general.
The 'Rhodesian crisis' of the 1960s and 1970s, and the early 1980s crisis of independent Zimbabwe, can be understood against the background of Cold War historical transformations brought on by, among other things, African decolonization in the 1960s; the failure of American power in Vietnam and the rise of Third World political power at the UN and elsewhere. In this African history of the diplomacy of decolonization in Zimbabwe, Timothy Lewis Scarnecchia examines the relationship and rivalry between Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe over many years of diplomacy, and how both leaders took advantage of Cold War racialized thinking about what Zimbabwe should be, including Anglo-American preoccupations with keeping whites from leaving after Independence. Based on a wealth of archival source materials, including materials that have recently become available through thirty-year rules in the UK and South Africa, it uncovers how foreign relations bureaucracies the US, UK, and SA created a Cold War 'race state' notion of Zimbabwe that permitted them to rationalize Mugabe's state crimes in return for Cold War loyalty to Western powers.
The #1 testimony book that every Christian needs to read. As the Nazi madness swept across Europe, a quiet watchmaker's family in Holland risked everything for the sake of others, and for the love of Christ. Despite the danger and threat of discovery, the ten Boom family courageously offered shelter to persecuted Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Then a trap brought about the family's arrest. Could God's love shine through, even in Ravensbruck?
This edited volume uses newly released archival material to show linkages between the development of the European Union and the Cold War. Containing essays by well-known Cold War scholars such as Jussi Hanhimaki, Wilfried Loth and Piers Ludlow, the book looks at:
Nixon and Kissinger's policies are set out as the background of US policy against which each of the European players was compelled to operate, explaining how Washington saw European integration as part of the over-arching Cold War. European Integration and the Cold War will appeal to students of Cold War history, European politics, and international history.
Africa in the 21st Century: Toward a New Future brings together some of the finest Pan African and Afrocentric intellectuals to discuss the possibilities of a new future where the continent claims its own agency in response to the economic, social, political, and cultural problems which are found in every nation. The volume is structured around four sections: I. African Unity and Consciousness: Assets and Challenges; II. Language, Information, and Education; III. African Women, Children and Families; and IV. Political and Economic Future of the African World. In original essays, the authors raise the level of discourse around the questions of integration, pluralism, families, a federative state, and good governance. Each writer sees in the continent the potential for greatness and therefore articulates a theoretical and philosophical approach to Africa that constructs a victorious consciousness from hard concrete facts. This book will interest students and scholars of the history and politics of Africa as well as professional Africanists, Africologists, and international studies scholars who are inclined toward Africa.
"Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . .
Freewheeling and fabulous." "--The Times "(London) Strange as it
may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It
was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned
economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things
that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a
little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic
seemed to be working. "Red Plenty "is about that moment in history,
and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when,
under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked
forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists,
when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be
better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did
their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give
the tyranny its happy ending.
For readers of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit and Unbroken, the dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics Daniel James Brown's robust book tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936. The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious
This well-researched book details the ambiguity in British policy towards Europe in the Cold War as it sought to pursue detente with the Soviet Union whilst upholding its commitments to its NATO allies. From the early 1950s, Britain pursued a dual policy of strengthening the West whilst seeking detente with the Soviet Union. British statesmen realized that only through compromise with Moscow over the German question could the elusive East-West be achieved. Against this, the West German hard line towards the East (endorsed by the United States) was seen by the British as perpetuating tension between the two blocs. This cast British policy onto an insoluble dilemma, as it was caught between its alliance obligations to the West German state and its search for compromise with the Soviet bloc. Charting Britain's attempts to reconcile this contradiction, this book argues that Britain successfully adapted to the new realities and made hitherto unknown contributions towards detente in the early 1960s, whilst drawing towards Western Europe and applying for membership of the EEC in 1961. Drawing on unpublished US and UK archives, Britain, Germany and the Cold War casts new light on the Cold War, the history of detente and the evolution of European integration. This book will appeal to students of Cold War history, British foreign policy, German politics, and international history.
The Field Marshal was a born commander and, besides being a gifted linguist, was mobilised as a Subaltern for the Boer War to act as a secret agent and to streamline the peace process. With an appetite for battle, in WW1 he became the Allied C-in-C of the Expeditionary Force in North Russia and, being ranked as a knighted Major General at the age of 39, he then modernised the Staff training to deal with armoured and aerial warfare. His Generalship was tested out in the Raj and, in 1939, on the day war was declared, the British Army leadership as CIGS was placed in his hands, so that he was able to defend Calais and free-up the BEF escape route to Dunkirk. Back in business as C-in-C Home Forces he was given his baton. Ironside surely had one of the most varied and long military careers of any military leader in the 20th century.
Who is this Vladimir Putin? Who is this man who suddenly--overnight
and without warning--was handed the reigns of power to one of the
most complex, formidable, and volatile countries in the world? How
can we trust him if we don't know him?
Complete set Since 1961 the Adelphi Papers have provided some of the most informed accounts of international and strategic relations. Produced by the world renowned International Institute of Strategic Studies, each paper provides a short account of a subject of topical interest by a leading military figure, policy maker or academic. The project reprints the first forty years of papers, arranged into thematic sets. The collection as a whole provides a rich and insightful account of international affairs during a period which spans the second half of the Cold War, the fall of the communist bloc and the emergence of a new regime with the United States as the sole superpower. There is a wealth of global coverage: four volumes on east and southeast Asia as well as individual volumes on China, Japan and Korea particular attention is given to the Middle East, with volumes addressing internal sources of instability; geo-politics and the role of the superpowers; the Israel-Palestine conflict; and the Iran-Iraq War and the first Gulf War. There is also a volume on oil and insecurity there are also two volumes on Africa, the site of most of the world's wars during the period. The IISS has obviously made a particular contribution to the understanding of military strategy, and this is reflected with material on topics such as urban and guerrilla warfare, nuclear deterrence and the role of information in modern warfare. Volumes on military strategy are complemented by approaches from other disciplines, such as defence economics. Key selling points: early papers were only distributed by the IISS and will have achieved limited penetration of the academic market a host of major authors on a range of different subjects (eg Gerald Segal on China, Michael Leifer on Southeast Asia, Sir Lawrence Freidman on the revolution in military affairs, Raymond Vernon on multinationals and defence economics) individual volumes will have a strong appeal to different markets (eg the volume on defence economics for economists, various volumes for Asian Studies etc)
Complete set Since 1961 the Adelphi Papers have provided some of the most informed accounts of international and strategic relations. Produced by the world renowned International Institute of Strategic Studies, each paper provides a short account of a subject of topical interest by a leading military figure, policy maker or academic. The project reprints the first forty years of papers, arranged into thematic sets. The collection as a whole provides a rich and insightful account of international affairs during a period which spans the second half of the Cold War, the fall of the communist bloc and the emergence of a new regime with the United States as the sole superpower. There is a wealth of global coverage: Four volumes on east and southeast Asia as well as individual volumes on China, Japan and Korea Particular attention is given to the Middle East, with volumes addressing internal sources of instability; geo-politics and the role of the superpowers; the Israel-Palestine conflict; and the Iran-Iraq War and the first Gulf War. There is also a volume on oil and insecurity There are also two volumes on Africa, the site of most of the world's wars during the period. The IISS has obviously made a particular contribution to the understanding of military strategy, and this is reflected with material on topics such as urban and guerrilla warfare, nuclear deterrence and the role of information in modern warfare. Volumes on military strategy are complemented by approaches from other disciplines, such as defence economics. Key selling points: Early papers were only distributed by the IISS and will have achieved limited penetration of the academic market A host of major authors on a range of different subjects (eg Gerald Segal on China, Michael Leifer on Southeast Asia, Sir Lawrence Freidman on the revolution in military affairs, Raymond Vernon on multinationals and defence economics) Individual volumes will have a strong appeal to different markets (eg the volume on defence economics for economists, various volumes for Asian Studies etc)
This book examines how in defending Asian rights and their own version of Christian idealism against scientific racism, missionaries developed a complex theology of race that prefigured modern ideologies of multiculturalism and reached its final, belated culmination in the liberal Protestant support of the civil rights movements in the 1960s
A poignant description of one of Europe's most well known war cemeteries. Based on interviews and personal experiences, this work includes images, including photographs by Corporal Eric Gunton of Number 32 Graves Registration Unit, who photographed the cemetery as it took shape. Look out for more Pitkin Guides on the very best of British and French history, heritage and travel.
This work concentrates on tracing the evolution of the so-called "red menace" phenomenon as a means of demonstrating the correlation between growing American paranoia and the success of the anticommunist campaign (1935-1955). The House Committee on Un-American Activities 1947 investigation of Hollywood, the nation's most visible industry, served a critical role in conjuring up anti-red hysteria and fanning the flames of virulent anticommunism. Using conveniently unjust tactics, the Committee "painted" targeted Hollywood personalities red and established the infamous blacklist - certified proof in the minds of many that "subversives" were indeed conspiring from within. A failed attempt on behalf of the "Hollywood Ten" to demonstrate the Committee's undemocratic nature allowed HUAC to forge ahead with its investigation and establish the anticommunist foundation upon which Joseph McCarthy would construct his campaign. Hollywood and Anticommunism stands as an important contribution to McCarthy-era literature and should appeal to all interested in the early Cold War and the impact that unwarranted hysteria has had and continues to have on the growth and development of the nation. |
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