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Books > History > World history > From 1900
"I lived the same life as everyone else, the life of ordinary people, the masses." Sitting in a prison cell in the autumn of 1944, Hans Fallada sums up his life under the National Socialist dictatorship, the time of "inward emigration." Under conditions of close confinement, in constant fear of discovery, he writes himself free from the nightmare of the Nazi years. His frank and sometimes provocative memoirs were thought for many years to have been lost. They are published here for the first time. The confessional mode did not come naturally to Fallada the writer of fiction, but in the mental and emotional distress of 1944, self-reflection became a survival strategy. In the "house of the dead" he exacts his political revenge on paper. "I know that I am crazy. I'm risking not only my own life, I'm also risking the lives of many of the people I am writing about," he notes, driven by the compulsion to write. And write he does: about spying and denunciation, about the threat to his livelihood and his literary work, about the fate of many friends and contemporaries such as Ernst Rowohlt and Emil Jannings. To conceal his intentions and to save paper, he uses abbreviations. His notes, constantly exposed to the gaze of the prison warders, become a kind of secret code. He finally succeeds in smuggling the manuscript out of the prison, although it remained unpublished for half a century. These revealing memoirs by one of the best-known German writers of the 20th century will be of great interest to all readers of modern literature.
From the late imperial period until 1922, the British and French made private and government loans to Russia, making it the foremost international debtor country in pre-World War I Europe. To finance the modernization of industry, the construction of public works projects, railroad construction, and the development and adventures of the military-industrial complex, Russia's ministers of finance, municipal leaders, and nascent manufacturing class turned, time and time again, to foreign capital. From the forging of the Franco-Russian alliance onwards, Russia's needs were met, first and foremost, its allies and diplomatic partners in the developing Triple Entente. In the case of Russia's relationships with both France and Great Britain, an open pocketbook primed the pump, facilitating the good spirits that fostered agreement. Russia's continued access to those ready lenders ensured that the empire of the Tsars would not be tempted away from its alliance and entente partners. This web of financial and political interdependence affected both foreign policy and domestic society in all three countries. The Russian state was so heavily indebted to its western creditors, rendering those western economies almost prisoners to this debt, that the debtor nation in many ways had the upper hand; the Russian government at times was actually able to dictate policy to its French and British counterparts. Those nations' investing classes-which, in France in particular, spanned not only the upper classes but the middle, rentier class, as well-had such a vast proportion of their savings wrapped up in Russian bonds that any default would have been catastrophic for their own economies. That default came not long after the Bolshevik Revolution brought to power a government who felt no responsibility whatsoever for the debts accrued by the tsars for the purpose of oppressing Russia's workers and peasants. The ensuing effect on allied morale, the French and British economies and, ultimately, on the Anglo-French relationship, was grim and far-reaching. This book will contribute to understandings of the ways that non-governmental and sometimes transnational actors were able to influence both British and French foreign policy and Russian foreign and domestic policy. It will address the role of individual financiers and policy makers-men like Lord Revelstoke, chairman of Baring Brothers, the British and French Rothschild cousins, Edouard Noetzlin of the Banque de Paris et de Pays Bas, and Sergei Witte, Russia's authoritative finance minister during much of this age of expansion; the importance of foreign capital in late imperial Russian policy; and the particular role of British capital and financial investment in the construction and strengthening of the Anglo-Russo-French entente. It will illustrate the interrelationship of political and economic decision-making with the ideas and beliefs that inform security policy. Drawing upon both the traditional archival sources for diplomatic history-the government holdings of Great Britain, France, and Russia-and the non-governmental archival holdings of international finance-this project looks beyond the realm of high politics and state-centered decision making in the formation of foreign policy, offering insights into the forms and functions of diplomatic alliances while elucidating the connections between finance and foreign policy. It is a classic tale of money and power in the modern era-an age of economic interconnectivity and great power interdependency.
Drawing on recently declassified material from Stalin's personal archive in Moscow, this is the first attempt by scholars to systematically analyze the way Stalin interpreted and envisioned his world-both the Soviet system he was trying to build and its wider international context. Since Stalin rarely left his offices and perceived the world largely through the prism of verbal and written reports, meetings, articles, letters, and books, a comprehensive analysis of these materials provides a unique and valuable opportunity to study his way of thinking and his interaction with the outside world. Comparing the materials that Stalin read from week to week with the decisions that he subsequently shaped, Sarah Davies and James Harris show not only how Stalin perceived the world but also how he misperceived it. After considering the often far-reaching consequences of those misperceptions, they investigate Stalin's contribution to the production and regulation of official verbal discourse in a system in which huge political importance was attached to the correct use of words and phrases..
The shots that killed President John F. Kennedy in November 1963
were fired from the sixth floor of a nondescript warehouse at the
edge of Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. That floor in the Texas
School Book Depository became a museum exhibit in 1989 and was
designated part of a National Historic Landmark District in 1993.
This book recounts the slow and painful process by which a city and
a nation came to terms with its collective memory of the
assassination and its aftermath.
Gandhi's ideas are as meaningful today as they were during his long and inspiring life. His enlightening thoughts and beliefs, especially on violence and the atomic bomb, reveal his eloquent foresight about our contemporary world. The words of one of the greatest men of the twentieth century, chosen by the award-winning director Richard Attenborough from Gandhi's letters, speeches, and published writings, explore the prophet's timeless thoughts on daily life, cooperation, nonviolence, faith, and peace. This bestselling volume includes an introduction by Attenborough and an afterword by Time magazine Senior Foreign Correspondent Johanna McGeary that places Gandhi's life and work in the historical context of the twentieth century. This book and the film Gandhi were the result of producer/director Richard Attenborough's long commitment to keeping alive the flame of Gandhi's spiritual achievement and the wisdom of his actions and his words. They are the wisdom and words of peace. Also included are twenty striking historical photographs, specially selected from the archives at the National Gandhi Museum in New Delhi, that capture the important personal, political, and spiritual aspects of Gandhi's career.
This book tells the story of 1960-a tumultuous, transitional year that unleashed the forces that eventually reshaped the American nation and the entire planet, to the joy of millions and the sorrow of millions more. In 1960, attitudes were changing; barriers were falling. It was a transitional year, during which the world as we know it today was beginning to take shape. While other books have focused on the presidential contest between Kennedy and Nixon, A New World to Be Won: John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and the Tumultuous Year of 1960 illuminates the emerging forces that would transform the nation and the world during the 1960s, putting the election in the broader context of American history-and world history as well. While the author does devote a large portion of this book to the 1960 presidential campaign, he also highlights four pivotal trends that changed life for decades to come: unprecedented scientific breakthroughs, ranging from the Xerox copier to new spacecraft for manned flight; fragmentation of the international power structure, notably the schism between the Soviet Union and China; the pursuit of freedom, both through the civil rights movement at home and the drive for independence in Africa; and the elevation of pleasure and self-expression in American culture, largely as a result of federal approval of the birth-control pill and the increasing popularity of illegal drugs. Photographs of key newsmakers and important events throughout the year A bibliography with a detailed listing of more than 400 sources, including oral histories, government publications, memoirs, and journals A comprehensive index by name and subject Footnotes for the full manuscript
The extraordinary story of Captain Llewellyn Wynne Jones' 1918 service in East Africa told through his personal military campaign diary and photograph albums. Llewellyn's granddaughter, born some 36 years after his death, researches his military life and family history to uncover the fascinating, courageous and ultimately tragic story of his life. The book is beautifully illustrated with original photographs from Llewellyn's campaign albums and from a rich family photographic archive. It includes family artefacts, letters, newspaper reports and interviews which combine to bring this exceptional young man's few years to life once more 100 years on.
What are you willing to do to survive? What are you willing to endure if it means you might live? 'Achingly moving, gives much-needed hope . . . Deserves the status both as a valuable historical source and as a stand-out memoir' Daily Express 'A story that needs to be heard' 5***** Reader Review Entering Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp, Franci was expected to die. She refused. In the summer of 1942, twenty-two-year-old Franci Rabinek - designated a Jew by the Nazi racial laws - arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and ghetto forty miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her three-year journey from Terezin to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the slave labour camps in Hamburg, and finally to Bergen Belsen. Franci, a spirited and glamorous young woman, was known among her fellow inmates as the Prague dress designer. Having endured the transportation of her parents, she never forgot her mother's parting words: 'Your only duty to us is to stay alive'. During an Auschwitz selection, Franci would spontaneously lie to Nazi officer Dr Josef Mengele, and claim to be an electrician. A split-second decision that would go on to endanger - and save - her life. Unpublished for 50 years, Franci's War is an astonishing account of one woman's attempt to survive. Heartbreaking and candid, Franci finds the light in her darkest years and the horrors she faces instill in her, strength and resilience to survive and to live again. She gives a voice to the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends. Her testimony sheds new light on the alliances, love affairs, and sexual barter that took place during the Holocaust, offering a compelling insight into the resilience and courage of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Above all, Franci's War asks us to explore what it takes to survive, and what it means to truly live. 'A candid account of shocking events. Franci is someone many women today will be able to identify with' 5***** Reader Review 'First-hand accounts of life in Nazi death camps never lose their terrible power but few are as extraordinary as Franci's War' Mail on Sunday 'Fascinating and traumatic. Well worth a read' 5***** Reader Review
Controlling Sex in Captivity is the first book to examine the nature, extent and impact of the sexual activities of Axis prisoners of war in the United States during the Second World War. Historians have so far interpreted the interactions between captors and captives in America as the beginning of the post-war friendship between the United States, Germany and Italy. Matthias Reiss argues that this paradigm is too simplistic. Widespread fraternisation also led to sexual relationships which created significant negative publicity, and some Axis POWs got caught up in the U.S. Army's new campaign against homosexuals. By focusing on the fight against fraternisation and same-sex activities, this study treads new ground. It stresses that contact between captors and captives was often loaded with conflict and influenced by perceptions of gender and race. It highlights the transnational impact of fraternisation and argues that the prisoners' sojourn in the United States also influenced American society by fuelling a growing concern about social disintegration and sexual deviancy, which eventually triggered a conservative backlash after the war.
War in the East African bush
Explores the ways television documents, satirizes, and critiques the political era of the Trump presidency. In American Television during a Television Presidency, Karen McNally and contributors critically examine the various ways in which television became transfixed by the Trump presidency and the broader political, social, and cultural climate. This book is the first to fully address the relationship between TV and a presidency consistently conducted with television in mind. The sixteen chapters cover everything from the political theater of televised impeachment hearings to the potent narratives of fictional drama and the stinging critiques of comedy, as they consider the wide-ranging ways in which television engages with the shifting political culture that emerged during this period. Approaching television both historically and in the contemporary moment, the contributors-an international group of scholars from a variety of academic disciplines-illuminate the indelible links that exist between television, American politics, and the nation's broader culture. As it interrogates a presidency played out through the lens of the TV camera and reviews a medium immersing itself in a compelling and inescapable subject, American Television during a Television Presidency sets out to explore what defines the television of the Trump era as a distinctive time in TV history. From inequalities to resistance, and from fandom to historical memory, this book opens up new territory in which to critically analyze television's complex relationship with Donald Trump, his presidency, and the political culture of this unsettled and simultaneously groundbreaking era. Undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of film and television studies, comedy studies, and cultural studies will value this strong collection.
The rise of China is no doubt one of the most important events in world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. Mainstream economics, especially the institutional theory of economic development based on a dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions, is highly inadequate in explaining China's rise. This book argues that only a radical reinterpretation of the history of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West (as incorrectly portrayed by the institutional theory) can fully explain China's growth miracle and why the determined rise of China is unstoppable despite its current 'backward' financial system and political institutions. Conversely, China's spectacular and rapid transformation from an impoverished agrarian society to a formidable industrial superpower sheds considerable light on the fundamental shortcomings of the institutional theory and mainstream 'blackboard' economic models, and provides more-accurate reevaluations of historical episodes such as Africa's enduring poverty trap despite radical political and economic reforms, Latin America's lost decades and frequent debt crises, 19th century Europe's great escape from the Malthusian trap, and the Industrial Revolution itself.
Migrations and border issues are now matters of great interest and importance. This book examines the ways in which Hungary has adapted to regional and global requirements while seeking to meet its own needs. It adds to the literature a case study, the only one of its kind, showing the evolution of a single set of borders over a century in response to a wide range of internal and external forces in a regional and global context. The narrative illuminates the complexities, opportunities, and problems that face a small state that finds itself often on the edge. Twentieth century Europe's borders have repeatedly been dismantled, moved, and refashioned. Hungary, even more than Germany, exemplifies border decomposition, re-creation, destruction, "Sovietization," and resurrection in a new Central Europe. Facing one way, then the other, its past includes a conflicting self image as a bastion of the west and as a bridge between east and west, as well as a long and unwilling period as a defender of the east.
In the mid-1960s, Michael Tritico is growing tired of ultra-conservative Louisiana; he hears whispers of a new way of life out West. He ventures out of his comfort zone and heads to the mountains, trying to escape a swamp of depression. He soon finds himself rejuvenated in many ways, fighting life's boredom and the things that keep him down along his journey. Making it to California, he's joined by thousands of others who are seeking a different way of life and participating in what they call "The Revolution." During a span lasting just a handful of precious years, this is a time of love. For those that allow it to happen, almost anything negative can be overcome. But it's not completely peaceful: Hippies, Hell's Angels, Vietnam veterans, law enforcement personnel, politicians, and numerous silent minorities interact in complex ways. Join Michael as he remembers a youth full of miracles and shares the harmony and struggles of the 1960s in "Stars above My Hearse."
The Cold War began in Europe in the mid-1940s and ended there in 1989. Notions of a "global Cold War" are useful in describing the wide impact and scope of the East-West divide after World War II, but first and foremost the Cold War was about the standoff in Europe. The Soviet Union established a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in the mid-1940s that later became institutionalized in the Warsaw Pact, an organization that was offset by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the United States. The fundamental division of Europe persisted for forty years, coming to an end only when Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe dissolved. Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945-1989, edited by Mark Kramer and Vit Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain. The contributors take account of structural conditions that helped generate the Cold War schism in Europe, but they also ascribe agency to local actors as well as to the superpowers. The chapters dealing with the end of the Cold War in Europe explain not only why it ended but also why the events leading to that outcome occurred almost entirely peacefully. |
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