This book analyses the relationship between the Irish home rule crisis, the Easter Rising of 1916 and the conscription crisis of 1918, providing a broad and comparative study of war and revolution in Ireland at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Destenay skilfully looks at international and diplomatic perspectives, as well as social and cultural history, to demonstrate how American and British, foreign and domestic policies either thwarted or fed, directly or indirectly, the Irish Revolution. He readdresses-and at times redresses-the well established, but somewhat inaccurate, conclusion that Easter Week 1916 was the major factor in radicalizing nationalist Ireland. This book provides a more nuanced and gradualist account of a transfer of allegiance: how fears of conscription aroused the bitterness and mistrust of civilian populations from August 1914 onwards. By re-situating the Irish Revolution in a global history of empire and anti-colonialism, this book contributes new evidence and new concepts. Destenay convincingly argues that the fears of conscription have been neglected by Irish historiography and this book offers a fresh appraisal of this important period of history.

The notorious Parr family manipulated local politics in South Texas for decades. Archie Parr, his son George, and his grandson Archer relied on violence and corruption to deliver the votes that propelled their chosen candidates to office. The influence of the Parr political machine peaked during the 1948 senatorial primary, when election officials found the infamous Ballot Box 13 six days after the polls closed. That box provided a slim eighty-seven-vote lead to Lyndon B. Johnson, initiating the national political career of the future U.S. president. Dukes of Duval County begins with Archie Parr's organization of the Mexican American electorate into a potent voting bloc, which marked the beginning of his three-decade campaign for control of every political office in Duval County and the surrounding area. Archie's son George, who expanded the Parrs' dominion to include jobs, welfare payments, and public works, became a county judge thanks to his father's influence - but when George was arrested and imprisoned for accepting payoffs, only a presidential pardon advocated by then-congressman Lyndon Johnson allowed George to take office once more. Further legal misadventures haunted George and his successor, Archer, but in the end it took the combined force of local, state, and federal governments and the courageous efforts of private citizens to overthrow the Parr family. In this first comprehensive study of the Parr family's political activities, Anthony R. Carrozza reveals the innermost workings of the Parr dynasty, a political machine that drove South Texas politics for more than seventy years and critically influenced the course of the nation.

Now It Can Be Told comprises of Philip Gibbs recollections regarding the First World War, in which he served as an officially commissioned war reporter. Titled in reference to the relieving of censorship laws following the conclusion of World War One in 1918, this book is noticeably different from the censored or dumbed-down accounts published under Gibbs' byline in popular newspapers as the conflict wore on. In this book, the full scale of the horror wrought in Europe is told unflinchingly with the aim of showing the depravity of conflict and the destruction that results. Early in the war, Gibbs' frank and accurate accounts of the carnage of modern warfare unnerved the British government, who were concerned his accounts would demoralize citizens and turn them against the war effort. Gibbs was ordered home; on refusing to cease reporting, he was arrested and forcibly brought back to Britain.

Directly, with the candour of a well informed old friend, Dr Wafik Moustafa shares an insight into the remarkable situation Egypt finds itself in today. This authoritative commentary on Egyptian affairs casts an eye back over Egypt's modern history, taking the reader through the landmark events that have formed the modern nation, and brings the reader to a close and impartial understanding of the current political climate in Egypt.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was one of the defining moments in the history of the modern Middle East. Yet its co-creator, Sir Mark Sykes, had far more involvement in British Middle East strategy during World War I than the Agreement for which he is now most remembered. Between 1915 and 1916, Sykes was Lord Kitchener's agent at home and abroad, operating out of the War Office until the war secretary's death at sea in 1916. Following that, from 1916 to 1919 he worked at the Imperial War Cabinet, the War Cabinet Secretariat and, finally, as an advisor to the Foreign Office. The full extent of Sykes's work and influence has previously not been told. Moreover, the general impression given of him is at variance with the facts. Sykes led the negotiations with the Zionist leadership in the formulation of the Balfour Declaration, which he helped to write, and promoted their cause to achieve what he sought for a pro-British post-war Middle East peace settlement, although he was not himself a Zionist. Likewise, despite claims he championed the Arab cause, there is little proof of this other than general rhetoric mainly for public consumption. On the contrary, there is much evidence he routinely exhibited a complete lack of empathy with the Arabs. In this book, Michael Berdine examines the life of this impulsive and headstrong young British aristocrat who helped formulate many of Britain's policies in the Middle East that are responsible for much of the instability that has affected the region ever since.

'A REMARKABLE BOOK... AN AMAZINGLY AUDACIOUS AND COMPLETELY INNOVATIVE WAY OF WRITING HISTORY... IMMEDIATE AND GRIPPING' - WILLIAM BOYD In Petrograd a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to the Urals. A rancorous Russian exile crosses war-torn Europe to make his triumphal entry into the capital. 'Peace now!' the crowds cry... German soldiers return from the war to quash a Communist rising in Berlin. A former field-runner trained by the army to give rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against the Jews... A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk from Switzerland into a celebrity, shaking the foundations of human understanding with his revolutionary theories of time and space... In Paris an American reporter in search of himself writes ever shorter sentences and discovers a new literary style... Lenin and Hitler, Einstein and Hemingway, Sigmund Freud and Andre Breton, Emmaline Pankhurst and Mustafa Kemal - these are some of the protagonists in this dramatic panorama of a world in turmoil. Emperors, kings and generals depart furtively on midnight trains and submarines. Women are given the vote. Artistic experiments flourish. The real becomes surreal. Marching tunes are syncopated into jazz. Civilisation is loosed from its pre-war moorings. People search for meaning in the wreckage. Even as the ink is drying on the armistice that ends the war in the west in 1918, fresh conflicts and upheavals erupt elsewhere. It takes six years for Europe to find uneasy peace. Crucible is the collective diary of an era: filled with all-too-human tales of exuberant dreams, dark fears, grubby ambitions and the absurdities of chance. Encompassing both tragedy and humour, it brings immediacy and intimacy to a moment of deep historical transformation - with consequences which echo down to today.