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Books > History > World history > From 1900
The definitive biography of Frank O'Hara, one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century, the magnetic literary figure at the center of New York's cultural life during the 1950s and 1960s. City Poet captures the excitement and promise of mid-twentieth-century New York in the years when it became the epicenter of the art world, and illuminates the poet and artist at its heart. Brad Gooch traces Frank O'Hara's life from his parochial Catholic childhood to World War II, through his years at Harvard and New York. He brilliantly portrays O'Hara in in his element, surrounded by a circle of writers and artists who would transform America's cultural landscape: Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, and John Ashbery. Gooch brings into focus the artistry and influence of a life "of guts and wit and style and passion" (Luc Sante) that was tragically abbreviated in 1966 when O'Hara, just forty and at the height of his creativity, was hit and killed by a jeep on the beach at Fire Island--a death that marked the end of an exceptional career and a remarkable era. City Poet is illustrated with 55 black and white photographs.
At the start of the First World War, Arthur Beecroft was a recently qualified barrister in his twenties. Determined to enlist despite a medical condition, he volunteered for military service, first as a regular soldier, then as a despatch rider. Offered a commission in the Royal Engineers, in 1915 he saw action at Gallipoli. Now a byword for catastrophic military disaster, the Gallipoli Campaign was the ill-conceived Allied invasion of the Dardanelles. The campaign stalled almost immediately, resulting in over half a million casualties on both sides. Lucky to survive, several years later Beecroft wrote a detailed memoir of his experiences. Discovered by his granddaughter and now reproduced here almost exactly as it was written nearly a century ago, Beecroft's vivid narrative takes us through those heady days of the declaration of war, enlistment, initial training, the bungled landing at Suvla Bay, and the exceptionally difficult conditions of the Gallipoli terrain. This is no mere jingoistic account. With a keen eye, Beecroft brings to life the men dogged by disease and exhaustion - ordinary soldiers who, even as they suffered the betrayal of incompetent leadership, displayed extraordinary reserves of heroism and bravery. Throughout this rare insight into what it was like for an ordinary 'civilian soldier' swept up in the fog of war, Beecroft's authentic voice still speaks honestly to us today - of comradeship and devotion to duty, of fear and facing death. Now published for the first time in the centenary year of the Gallipoli Campaign, this is a soldier's story in his own words.
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2016 Focussing on German responses to the Holocaust since 1945, Postwar Germany and the Holocaust traces the process of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung ('overcoming the past'), the persistence of silences, evasions and popular mythologies with regards to the Nazi era, and cultural representations of the Holocaust up to the present day. It explores the complexities of German memory cultures, the construction of war and Holocaust memorials and the various political debates and scandals surrounding the darkest chapter in German history. The book comparatively maps out the legacy of the Holocaust in both East and West Germany, as well as the unified Germany that followed, to engender a consideration of the effects of division, Cold War politics and reunification on German understanding of the Holocaust. Synthesizing key historiographical debates and drawing upon a variety of primary source material, this volume is an important exploration of Germany's postwar relationship with the Holocaust. Complete with chapters on education, war crime trials, memorialization and Germany and the Holocaust today, as well as a number of illustrations, maps and a detailed bibliography, Postwar Germany and the Holocaust is a pivotal text for anyone interested in understanding the full impact of the Holocaust in Germany.
Exiled Emissary is a biography of the colorful life of George H. Earle, III - a Main Line Philadelphia millionaire, war hero awarded the Navy Cross, Pennsylvania Governor, Ambassador to Austria and Bulgaria, friend and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, humanitarian, playboy, and spy. Rich in Casablanca-style espionage and intrigue, Farrell's deeply personal study presents FDR and his White House in a new light, especially when they learned in 1943 that high-ranking German officials approached Earle in Istanbul to convey their plot to kidnap Hitler and seek an armistice. When FDR rejected their offer, thereby prolonging World War II, his close relationship with Earle became most inconvenient, resulting in Earle's exile to American Samoa. Earle eventually returned to the United States, renewing his warnings about communism to President Truman, who underestimated the threat as a "bugaboo." Now, over four decades following Earle's death, Farrell has uncovered newly declassified records that give voice to his warnings about a threat we now know should have never been dismissed.
Europe's Utopias of Peace explores attempts to create a lasting European peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and the two world wars. The book charts the 250 year cycle of violent European conflicts followed by new utopian formulations for peace. The utopian illusion was that future was predictable and rules could prescribe behaviour in conflicts to come. Bo Strath examines the reiterative bicentenary cycle since 1815, where each new postwar period built on a design for a project for European unification. He sets out the key historical events and the continuous struggle with nationalism, linking them to legal, political and economic thought. Biographical sketches of the most prominent thinkers and actors provide the human element to this narrative. Europe's Utopias of Peace presents a new perspective on the ideological, legal, economic and intellectual conditions that shaped Europe since the 19th century and presents this in a global context. It challenges the conventional narrative on Europe's past as a progressive enlightenment heritage, highlighting the ambiguities of the legacies that pervade the institutional structures of contemporary Europe. Its long-term historical perspective will be invaluable for students of contemporary Europe or modern European history.
This is the first biography of the extraordinary, but ordinary life of, Patrick Nelson. His experiences touched on some of the most important and intriguing historical themes of the twentieth century. He was a black migrant to interwar Britain; an aristocrat's valet in rural Wales; a Black queer man in 1930s London; an artist's model; a law student, a recruit to the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps and Prisoner of War during the Second World War. Through his return to Jamaica after the war and his re-migrations to London in the late 1940s and the early 1960s, he was also witness to post-war Jamaican struggles and the independence movement as well as the development of London's post-war multi-ethnic migrations. Drawing on a range of archival materials including letters sent to individuals such as Bloomsbury group artist Duncan Grant (his former boyfriend and life-long friend), as well as paintings and newspaper articles, Gemma Romain explores the intersections of these diverse aspects of Nelson's life and demonstrates how such marginalized histories shed light on our understanding of broader historical themes such as Black LGBTQ history, Black British history in relation to the London artworld, the history of the Second World War, and histories of racism, colonialism and empire.
The Yugoslav state of the interwar period was a child of the Great European War. Its borders were superimposed onto a topography of conflict and killing, for it housed many war veterans who had served or fought in opposing armies (those of the Central Powers and the Entente) during the war. These veterans had been adversaries but after 1918 became fellow subjects of a single state, yet in many cases they carried into peace the divisions of the war years. John Paul Newman tells their story, showing how the South Slav state was unable to escape out of the shadow cast by the First World War. Newman reveals how the deep fracture left by war cut across the fragile states of 'New Europe' in the interwar period, worsening their many political and social problems, and bringing the region into a new conflict at the end of the interwar period.
In the Khrushchev era, Soviet citizens were newly encouraged to
imagine themselves exploring the medieval towers of Tallinn's Old
Town, relaxing on the Romanian Black Sea coast, even climbing the
Eiffel Tower. By the mid 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Soviet
citizens each year crossed previously closed Soviet borders to
travel abroad. All this is your World explores the revolutionary
integration of the Soviet Union into global processes of cultural
exchange in which a de-Stalinizing Soviet Union increasingly, if
anxiously, participated in the transnational circulation of people,
ideas, and items. Anne E. Gorsuch examines what it meant to be
"Soviet" in a country no longer defined as Stalinist.
Was the outcome of the First World War on a knife edge? In this major new account of German wartime politics and strategy Holger Afflerbach argues that the outcome of the war was actually in the balance until relatively late in the war. Using new evidence from diaries, letters and memoirs, he fundamentally revises our understanding of German strategy from the decision to go to war and the failure of the western offensive to the radicalisation of Germany's war effort under Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the ultimate collapse of the Central Powers. He uncovers the struggles in wartime Germany between supporters of peace and hardliners who wanted to fight to the finish. He suggests that Germany was not nearly as committed to all-out conquest as previous accounts argue. Numerous German peace advances could have offered the opportunity to end the war before it dragged Europe into the abyss.
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."
Few stories in the annals of American counterculture are as intriguing or dramatic as that of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Dubbed the "Hippie Mafia," the Brotherhood began in the mid-1960s as a small band of peace-loving, adventure-seeking surfers in Southern California. After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary's mantra of "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process. Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied "Maui Wowie"), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border. They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood's most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group's nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell's Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano. Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group's surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, "Orange Sunshine" explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia.
This thought-provoking collection analyses the European Community's external relations between 1957 and 1992, with a particular focus upon their broader impact and global significance. Reconceptualizing the long arc of the EC's international role, from its inception in the 1950s to the end of the Cold War, the chapters identify and assess the factors that either supported or impeded Europe's international projection within this period. Organized into three parts, the authors investigate the EC's relations with key countries and world regions, discuss its activities within key policy areas, and offer reflections and conclusions on the various arguments that are put forward. Each chapter considers the entire period from 1957-1992 to identify and explain overarching trends, key decisions and historical conjunctions through scholarly literature, key debates and original discussion of each topic or policy issue. A final chapter situates the main findings within wider contexts, situating the EC in Cold War history. Bringing together international history and international relations, this project allows for cross-disciplinary dialogue and the careful discussion of key concepts, analytical approaches, and empirical findings. Filling a gap in our understanding of the early development of the EC's role as an autonomous global actor, this book holds important messages for the modern day, as the EU's position in global politics continues to shape the world.
"The History of East-Central European Eugenics, 1900-1945" redefines a new European history of eugenics by exploring the ideological transmission of eugenics internationally and its application locally in Central Europe. Using over 120 primary sources translated from various European languages into English for the first time, in addition to the key contributions of leading scholars in the field from around Europe, this book examines the main organisations, individuals and policies that shaped eugenics in Austria, Poland, former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), former Yugoslavia (now Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia), Hungary and Romania. It pioneers the study of ethnic minorities and eugenics, exploring the ways in which ethnic minorities interacted with international eugenics discourses to advance their own aims and ambitions, whilst providing a comparative analysis of the emergence and development of eugenics in Central Europe more generally.Complete with 20 illustrations, a glossary of terms and a comprehensive bibliography, "The History of East-Central European Eugenics, 1900-1945" is a pivotal reference work for students, researchers and academics interested in Central Europe and the history of science in the twentieth century.
A masterly synthesis of the history of the contemporary world, The World Since 1945 offers the ideal introduction to the events of the period between the end of the Second World War and the present day. P. M. H. Bell and Mark Gilbert balance a clear narrative with in-depth analysis to guide the reader through the aftermath of the Second World War, the Cold War, decolonization, Detente and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, up to the on-going ethnic strife and political instability of the 21st century. The new edition has been thoroughly revised to fully reflect developments in the history and historiography of the post-war world, and features five new chapters on the post-Cold War world, covering topics including: - The rise and fall of American hegemony - The decline of Europe - The rise of Asia - Political Islam as a global force - The role of human rights The World Since 1945 challenges us to better understand what happened and why in the post-war period and shows the ways in which the past continues to exercise a profound influence on the present. It is essential reading for any student of contemporary history.
South Asian History has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the
past thirty years. Its historians are not only producing new ways
of thinking about the imperial impact and legacy on South Asia, but
also helping to reshape the study of imperial history in general.
The Japanese military was responsible for the sexual enslavement of thousands of women and girls in Asia and the Pacific during the China and Pacific wars under the guise of providing 'comfort' for battle-weary troops. Campaigns for justice and reparations for 'comfort women' since the early 1990s have highlighted the magnitude of the human rights crimes committed against Korean, Chinese and other Asian women by Japanese soldiers after they invaded the Chinese mainland in 1937. These campaigns, however, say little about the origins of the system or its initial victims. The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery during the China and Pacific Wars explores the origins of the Japanese military's system of sexual slavery and illustrates how Japanese women were its initial victims. |
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