Today, 1913 is inevitably viewed through the lens of 1914: as the last year before a war that would shatter the global economic order and tear Europe apart, undermining its global pre-eminence. Our perspectives narrowed by hindsight, the world of that year is reduced to its most frivolous features--last summers in grand aristocratic residences--or its most destructive ones: the unresolved rivalries of the great European powers, the fear of revolution, violence in the Balkans.
In this illuminating history, Charles Emmerson liberates the world of 1913 from this "prelude to war" narrative, and explores it as it was, in all its richness and complexity. Traveling from Europe's capitals, then at the height of their global reach, to the emerging metropolises of Canada and the United States, the imperial cities of Asia and Africa, and the boomtowns of Australia and South America, he provides a panoramic view of a world crackling with possibilities, its future still undecided, its outlook still open.
The world in 1913 was more modern than we remember, more similar to our own times than we expect, more globalized than ever before. The Gold Standard underpinned global flows of goods and money, while mass migration reshaped the world's human geography. Steamships and sub-sea cables encircled the earth, along with new technologies and new ideas. Ford's first assembly line cranked to life in 1913 in Detroit. The Woolworth Building went up in New York. While Mexico was in the midst of bloody revolution, Winnipeg and Buenos Aires boomed. An era of petro-geopolitics opened in Iran. China appeared to be awaking from its imperial slumber. Paris celebrated itself as the city of light--Berlin as the city of electricity.
Full of fascinating characters, stories, and insights, "1913: In Search of the World before the Great War" brings a lost world vividly back to life, with provocative implications for how we understand our past and how we think about our future.

Focusing on a decade in Irish history which has been largely overlooked, Youth and Popular Culture in 1950s Ireland provides the most complete account of the 1950s in Ireland, through the eyes of the young people who contributed, slowly but steadily, to the social and cultural transformation of Irish society. Eleanor O'Leary presents a picture of a generation with an international outlook, who played basketball, read comic books and romance magazines, listened to rock'n'roll music and skiffle, made their own clothes to mimic international styles and even danced in the street when the major stars and bands of the day rocked into town. She argues that this engagement with imported popular culture was a contributing factor to emigration and the growing dissatisfaction with standards of living and conservative social structures in Ireland. As well as outlining teenagers' resistance to outmoded forms of employment and unfair work practices, she maps their vulnerability as a group who existed in a limbo between childhood and adulthood. Issues of unemployment, emigration and education are examined alongside popular entertainments and social spaces in order to provide a full account of growing up in the decade which preceded the social upheaval of the 1960s. Examining the 1950s through the unique prism of youth culture and reconnecting the decade to the process of social and cultural transition in the second half of the 20th century, this book is a valuable contribution to the literature on 20th-century Irish history.

The concept of 'hybridity' is often still poorly theorized and problematically applied by peace and development scholars and researchers of resource governance. This book turns to a particular ethnographic reading of Michel Foucault's Governmentality and investigates its usefulness to study precisely those mechanisms, processes and practices that hybridity once promised to clarify. Claim-making to land and authority in a post-conflict environment is the empirical grist supporting this exploration of governmentality. Specifically in the periphery of Bukavu. This focus is relevant as urban land is increasingly becoming scarce in rapidly expanding cities of eastern Congo, primarily due to internal rural-to-urban migration as a result of regional insecurity. The governance of urban land is also important analytically as land governance and state authority in Africa are believed to be closely linked and co-evolve. An ethnographic reading of governmentality enables researchers to study hybridization without biasing analysis towards hierarchical dualities. Additionally, a better understanding of hybridization in the claim-making practices may contribute to improved government intervention and development assistance in Bukavu and elsewhere.

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.

The Bosnian war of 1992-1995 was one of the most brutal conflicts to have erupted since the end of the Second World War. But although the war occurred in 'Europe's backyard' and received significant media coverage in the West, relatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to cultural representations of the conflict. Stephen Harper analyses how the war has been depicted in global cinema and television over the past quarter of a century. Focusing on the representation of some of the war's major themes, including humanitarian intervention, the roles of NATO and the UN, genocide, rape and ethnic cleansing, Harper explores the role of popular media culture in reflecting, reinforcing -- and sometimes contesting -- nationalist ideologies.