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Books > History > World history > From 1900
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.
Switzerland suffered four major terrorist attacks in 1969 and 1970,
which forced the Swiss government to address the issue of
international terrorism for the first time. Subsequently, "neutral"
Switzerland worked closely with Western Cold War powers to develop
international counterterrorism measures and forged a
European-Israeli counterterrorist alignment to counter Palestinian
terrorism in Europe. Using recently declassified archival records,
this book is the first study to examine how the Swiss government
positioned the country within the international struggle against
terrorism. The book brings to light the creation of the Club de
Berne, a secret European network of intelligence agencies connected
to Israel and the United States. It offers new insights about the
history of Swiss, Western European, and Israeli security
cooperation.
When a devastated Belgium emerged from World War I, some of its
leaders had high hopes that the upcoming negotiations would enable
achievement of a long-cherished goal; annexing parts of the
Netherlands lost in the final 1839 settlement which had established
the country. Belgium's strong historical and military arguments
were bolstered by its courageous Great War image. Yet the Dutch
proved ready and able to launch an energetic counterattack which
ultimately stymied the Belgian campaign. This book explains why and
how this happened, and demonstrates that small states are active
participants in their own destinies, not just spectators or
victims.
The quantity of journalism produced during World War I was unlike
anything the then-budding mass media had ever seen. Correspondents
at the front were dispatching voluminous reports on a daily basis,
and though much of it was subject to censorship, it all eventually
became available. It remains the most extraordinary firsthand look
at the war that we have. Published immediately after the cessation
of hostilities and compiled from those original journalistic
sources-American, British, French, German, and others-this is an
astonishing contemporary perspective on the Great War. This replica
of the first 1919 edition includes all the original maps, photos,
and illustrations, lending an even greater immediacy to readers a
century later. Volume VIII covers the war against German ally
Turkey and the war in the Balkans and Greece, from August 1914 to
October 1918. American journalist and historian FRANCIS WHITING
HALSEY (1851-1919) was literary editor of The New York Times from
1892 through 1896. He wrote and lectured extensively on history;
his works include, as editor, the two-volume Great Epochs in
American History Described by Famous Writers, From Columbus to
Roosevelt (1912), and, as writer, the 10-volume Seeing Europe with
Famous Authors (1914).
Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee: An Oral History of
the Struggle for Civil Rights offers an unrivalled account of how a
rural Black community drew together to combat the immense forces
aligned against them. Author Robert Hamburger first visited Fayette
County as part of a student civil rights project in 1965 and, in
1971, set out to document the history of the grassroots movement
there. Beginning in 1959, Black residents in Fayette County
attempting to register to vote were met with brutal resistance from
the white community. Sharecropping families whose names appeared on
voter registration rolls were evicted from their homes and their
possessions tossed by the roadside. These dispossessed families
lived for months in tents on muddy fields, as Fayette County became
a "tent city" that attracted national attention. The white
community created a blacklist culled from voter registration rolls,
and those whose names appeared on the list were denied food, gas,
and every imaginable service at shops, businesses, and gas stations
throughout the county. Hamburger conducted months of interviews
with residents of the county, inviting speakers to recall childhood
experiences in the "Old South" and to explain what inspired them to
take a stand against the oppressive system that dominated life in
Fayette County. Their stories, told in their own words, make up the
narrative of Our Portion of Hell. This reprint edition includes
twenty-nine documentary photographs and an insightful new afterword
by the author. There, he discusses the making of the book and
reflects upon the difficult truth that although the civil rights
struggle, once so immediate, has become history, many of the core
issues that inspired the struggle remain as urgent as ever.
For a decade straddling the turn of the twentieth century, Mark
Hanna was one of the most famous men in America. Portrayed as the
puppet master controlling the weak-willed William McKinley, Hanna
was loved by most Republicans and reviled by Democrats, in large
part because of the way he was portrayed by the media of the day.
Newspapers and other media outlets that supported McKinley reported
positively about Hanna, but those sympathetic to William Jennings
Bryan, the Democrats\u2019 presidential nominee in 1896 and 1900,
attacked Hanna far more aggressively than they attacked McKinley
himself. Their portrayal of Hanna was wrong, but powerful, and this
negative image of him survives to this day. In this study of Mark
Hanna\u2019s career in presidential politics, William T. Horner
demonstrates the flaws inherent in the way the news media cover
politics. He deconstructs the myths that surround Hanna and
demonstrates the dangerous and long-lasting effect that inaccurate
reporting can have on our understanding of politics. When Karl Rove
emerged as the political adviser to George W. Bush\u2019s
presidential campaigns, reporters quickly began to compare Rove to
Hanna even a century after Hanna\u2019s death. The two men played
vastly different roles for the presidents they served, but modern
reporters consistently described Rove as the second coming of Mark
Hanna, another political Svengali. Ohio\u2019s Kingmaker is a
compelling story about a fascinating character in American politics
and serves to remind us of the power of (mis)perceptions.
The end of a dynasty
It is likely that few of those who contributed to the outbreak of
the First World War would have imagined its consequences or
predicted which nations would prevail, which would fall in defeat
and which would all but cease to exist. Very few would have
foreseen the fall of so many of the royal houses of Europe and yet
this came to pass; most prominent among them were the Romanovs of
Russia. It was almost inconceivable that the Tsar, who ruled over a
vast territory and many millions of subjects, would be murdered (or
executed, according to one's sensibility) with all of his immediate
family such a short time from when the power and influence of the
Romanovs had seemed immutable. But this was an age of global
warfare on an industrial scale, and of revolution and political
change that would affect the nature of war and peace for a century
to come. This highly regarded book considers in detail the downfall
of the Russian Imperial family, and the authors have drawn upon
eyewitness testimony of those who were close to these historic
events. The narrative follows the Romanovs to their deaths, ordered
by Lenin, in a Yekaterinburg cellar, so preventing the Tsar
becoming a figure for the White Russians to rally around. An
essential and recommended work for any student of the fall of
monarchy, Russian involvement in the Great War and the rise of
Bolshevism.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each
title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our
hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their
spines and fabric head and tail bands.
Sent to the Middle East by Woodrow Wilson to ascertain the
viability of self-determination in the disintegrating Ottoman
Empire, the King-Crane Commission of 1919 was America's first foray
into the region. The commission's controversial recommendations
included the rejection of the idea of a Jewish state in Syria, US
intervention in the Middle East and the end of French colonial
aspirations. The Commission's recommendations proved inflammatory,
even though its counsel on the question of the Palestinian mandate
was eventually disregarded by Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau
in favour of their own national interests. In the ensuing years,
the Commission's dismissal of claims by Zionist representatives
like David Ben-Gurion on their 'right to Palestine' proved
particularly divisive, with some historians labeling it prophetic
and accurate, and others arguing that Commission members were
biased and ill-informed. Here, in the first book-length analysis of
the King-Crane report in nearly 50 years, Andrew Patrick chronicles
the history of early US involvement in the region, and challenges
extant interpretations of the turbulent relationship between the
United States and the Middle East.
Without what the Allies learned in the Mediterranean air war in
1942-1944, the Normandy landing-and so, perhaps, World War II-would
have ended differently. This is one of many lessons of The
Mediterranean Air War, the first one-volume history of the vital
role of airpower during the three-year struggle for control of the
Mediterranean Basin in World War II-and of its significance for
Allied successes in the war's last two years. Airpower historian
Robert S. Ehlers opens his account with an assessment of the
pre-war Mediterranean theater, highlighting the ways in which the
players' strategic choices, strengths, and shortcomings set the
stage for and ultimately shaped the air campaigns over the Middle
Sea. Beginning with the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, Ehlers
reprises the developing international crisis-initially between
Britain and Italy, and finally encompassing France, Germany, the
US, other members of the British Commonwealth, and the Balkan
countries. He then explores the Mediterranean air war in detail,
with close attention to turning points, joint and combined
operations, and the campaign's contribution to the larger Allied
effort. In particular, his analysis shows how and why the success
of Allied airpower in the Mediterranean laid the groundwork for
combined-arms victories in the Middle East, the Indian Ocean area,
North Africa, and northwest Europe, and how victory in the Middle
Sea benefitted Allied efforts in the Battle of the Atlantic and the
China-Burma-India campaigns. Of grand-strategic importance from the
days of Ancient Rome to the Great-Power rivalries of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, the Middle Sea was no less crucial to the
Allied forces and their foes. Here, in the successful offensives in
North Africa in 1942 and 1943, the US and the British learned to
conduct a coalition air and combined-arms war. Here, in Sicily and
Italy in 1943 and 1944, the Allies mastered the logistics of
providing air support for huge naval landings and opened a vital
second aerial front against the Third Reich, bombing critical oil
and transportation targets with great effectiveness. The first full
examination of the Mediterranean theater in these critical roles-as
a strategic and tactical testing ground for the Allies and as a
vital theater of operations in its own right-The Mediterranean Air
War fills in a long-missing but vital dimension of the history of
World War II.
The quantity of journalism produced during World War I was unlike
anything the then-budding mass media had ever seen. Correspondents
at the front were dispatching voluminous reports on a daily basis,
and though much of it was subject to censorship, it all eventually
became available. It remains the most extraordinary firsthand look
at the war that we have. Published immediately after the cessation
of hostilities and compiled from those original journalistic
sources-American, British, French, German, and others-this is an
astonishing contemporary perspective on the Great War. This replica
of the first 1919 edition includes all the original maps, photos,
and illustrations, lending an even greater immediacy to readers a
century later. Volume IX covers the war in Italy and the war at
sea, including submarine warfare, from August 1914 through November
1918. American journalist and historian FRANCIS WHITING HALSEY
(1851-1919) was literary editor of The New York Times from 1892
through 1896. He wrote and lectured extensively on history; his
works include, as editor, the two-volume Great Epochs in American
History Described by Famous Writers, From Columbus to Roosevelt
(1912), and, as writer, the 10-volume Seeing Europe with Famous
Authors (1914).
How should failed states in Africa be understood? Catherine Scott
here critically engages with the concept of state failure and
provides an historical reinterpretation. She shows that, although
the concept emerged in the context of the post-Cold War new world
order, the phenomenon has been attendant throughout (and even
before) the development of the Westphalian state system.
Contemporary failed states, however, differ from their historical
counterparts in one fundamental respect: they fail within their
existing borders and continue to be recognised as something that
they are not. This peculiarity derives from international norms
instituted in the era of decolonisation, which resulted in the
inviolability of state borders and the supposed universality of
statehood. Scott argues that contemporary failed states are, in
fact, failed post-colonies. Thus understood, state failure is less
the failure of existing states and more the failed rooting and
institutionalisation of imported and reified models of Western
statehood. Drawing on insights from the histories of Uganda and
Burundi, from pre-colonial polity formation to the present day, she
explores why and how there have been failures to create effective
and legitimate national states within the bounds of inherited
colonial jurisdictions on much of the African continent.
The collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 left all Austrians in a
state of political, social, and economic turmoil, but Jews in
particular found their lives shaken to the core. Although Jews'
former comfort zone suddenly disappeared, the dissolution of the
Dual Monarchy also created plenty of room for innovation and change
in the realm of culture. Jews eagerly took up the challenge to fill
this void, becoming heavily invested in culture as a way to shape
their new, but also vexed, self-understandings. By isolating the
years between the World Wars and examining formative events in both
Vienna and the provinces, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture
between the World Wars demonstrates that an intensified marking of
people, places, and events as "Jewish" accompanied the crises
occurring in the wake of Austria-Hungary's collapse, leaving
profound effects on Austria's cultural legacy. In some cases, the
consequences of this marking resulted in grave injustices. Philipp
Halsmann, for example, was wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of
his father years before he became a world-famous photographer. And
the men who shot and killed writer Hugo Bettauer and physicist and
philosopher Moritz Schlick received inadequate punishment for their
murderous deeds. But engagements with the terms of Jewish
difference also characterized the creation of culture, as shown in
Hugo Bettauer's satirical novel The City without Jews and its film
adaptation, other novels by Veza Canetti, David Vogel, A.M. Fuchs,
Vicki Baum, and Mela Hartwig, and performances at the Salzburg
Festival and the Yiddish theater in Vienna. By examining the role
Jewish difference played in the lives, works, and deeds of a broad
range of Austrians, this study reveals how the social codings of
politics, gender, and nation received a powerful boost with the
application of the "Jewish" label.
The 'Cockney Jocks' at war in Flanders and France
The wide distribution of Scots throughout Britain and the Empire
led to the formation new 'Scottish' regiments and the London
Scottish, formed in 1859 as a volunteer rifle corps and originally
commanded by Lord Elcho, was a primary example. Elcho, anxious to
embrace all the fighting men of Scotland into one brotherhood
irrespective of their clan origins, uniquely clad the regiment in
kilts of 'Hodden Grey, ' a traditional hard wearing Scottish
homespun cloth devoid of the tartan check and, as he perceived,
being a drab colour suited for life on military campaign in the
most practical way. Pinkerton, the author of this book was a
soldier among the ranks of the regiment who answered the nation's
call to arms during the First World War. The regiment was mobilised
at the outbreak of hostilities and the 1st battalion had the
distinction of being the first Territorials to go into action
during operations at Messines in October 1914. Pinkerton takes his
readers to war with the London Scottish on the western front where
it took part in all the major offensives of the conflict.
Predictably this vital account is filled with immediate first hand
account action and anecdotes and is essential reading for anyone
interested in the war in the trenches the kilted infantry
knew.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each
title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our
hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their
spines and fabric head and tail bands.
Modern China and the New World focuses upon a few of the main
topics associated with China's recent rise to global prominence.
Dr. Randall Doyle discusses the impact that China will have on the
geopolitical balance throughout the Asia-Pacific region, as well as
the effect of China's new power on U.S.-China relations in the 21st
century. Dr. Zhang Boshu addresses China's continuing struggles
with Tibet and the Dalai Lama. He also discusses the existing
political system within China today and the future possibility of
democratic reforms occurring and transforming Chinese society
itself. Modern China and the New World presents these important
topics by incorporating not just traditional reading and research,
but also integrating the personal experiences of the authors.
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