A massively destructive and transformative event, the First World War left in its wake many legacies. Beyond 1917 explores both the consequences of the war for the United States (and the world) and American influence on shaping the legacies of the conflict in the decades after US entry in 1917. From the fields, seas, and airspace of battle, we live today with the consequences of the Great War's poison gas, post-traumatic stress disorder, and technological inventions such as air bombardment of civilians, submarine and tank warfare, and modern surgical techniques. Conscription, pacifism, humanitarian campaigns, and socialist movements emerged from the war to shape politics within countries for decades to come. Governments learned the value of propaganda, both in print and in film. Society changed: women were emancipated in some countries and citizenship was altered in many places, while aristocracy and monarchies went into decline. European empires were transformed and in some cases destroyed; in the Middle East, the change was enormous, beginning with the final collapse of Ottoman hegemony in the region. Fascism and communism, mass migration, independence, militarism, an influenza epidemic, the rise of Wall Street and American economic power, a slowdown in the process of globalization, and the pursuit of world peace by an organization based on collective security numbered among the most significant and lasting legacies of this conflict. Beyond 1917 explores how and why the war has become an integral milepost for human history, reflects the importance of the conflict, the forces that led to it, and the forces it unleashed. On the occasion of the centennial commemorations, an international group of scholars considers the long-term policy, political, social, economic, and cultural consequences of the war for the United States itself and for the world. In addition to interpretive essays, the volume provides a comprehensive bibliography and timeline of events.

Studies that connect the Spanish 17th and 20th centuries usually do so through a conservative lens, assuming that the blunt imperialism of the early modern age, endlessly glorified by Franco's dictatorship, was a constant in the Spanish imaginary. This book, by contrast, recuperates the thriving, humanistic vision of the Golden Age celebrated by Spanish progressive thinkers, writers, and artists in the decades prior to 1939 and the Francoist Regime. The hybrid, modern stance of the country in the 1920s and early 1930s would uniquely incorporate the literary and political legacies of the Spanish Renaissance into the ambitious design of a forward, democratic future. In exploring the complex understanding of the multifaceted event that is modernity, the life story and literary opus of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) acquires a new significance, given the weight of the author in the poetic and political endeavors of those Spanish left-wing reformists who believed they could shape a new Spanish society. By recovering their progressive dream, buried for almost a century, of incipient and full Spanish modernities, Ana Maria G. Laguna establishes a more balanced understanding of both the modern and early modern periods and casts doubt on the idea of a persistent conservatism in Golden Age literature and studies. This book ultimately serves as a vigorous defense of the canonical as well as the neglected critical traditions that promoted Cervantes's humanism in the 20th century.

From Paris to Stalingrad, the Nazis systematically plundered all manner of art and antiquities. But the first and most valuable treasures they looted were the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. In "Hitler's Holy Relics, "bestselling author Sidney Kirkpatrick tells the riveting and never-before-told true story of how an American college professor turned Army sleuth recovered these cherished symbols of Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich before they could become a rallying point in the creation of a Fourth and equally unholy Reich.
Anticipating the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler had ordered a top-secret bunker carved deep into the bedrock beneath Nurnberg castle. Inside the well-guarded chamber was a specially constructed vault that held the plundered treasures Hitler valued the most: the Spear of Destiny (reputed to have been used to pierce Christ's side while he was on the cross) and the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, ancient artifacts steeped in medieval mysticism and coveted by world rulers from Charlemagne to Napoleon. But as Allied bombers rained devastation upon Nurnberg and the U.S. Seventh Army prepared to invade the city Hitler called "the soul of the Nazi Party," five of the most precious relics, all central to the coronation ceremony of a would-be Holy Roman Emperor, vanished from the vault. Who took them? And why? The mystery remained unsolved for months after the war's end, until the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, ordered Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-born art historian on leave from U.C. Berkeley, to hunt down the missing treasures.
To accomplish his mission, Horn must revisit the now-rubble-strewn landscape of his youth and delve into the ancient legends and arcane mysticism surrounding the antiquities that Hitler had looted in his quest for world domination. Horn searches for clues in the burnt remains of Himmler's private castle and follows the trail of neo-Nazi "Teutonic Knights" charged with protecting a vast hidden fortune in plundered gold and other treasure. Along the way, Horn has to confront his own demons: how members of his family and former academic colleagues subverted scholarly research to help legitimize Hitler's theories of Aryan supremacy and the Master Race. What Horn discovers on his investigative odyssey is so explosive that his final report will remain secret for decades.
Drawing on unpublished interrogation and intelligence reports, as well as on diaries, letters, journals, and interviews in the United States and Germany, Kirkpatrick tells this riveting and disturbing story with cinematic detail and reveals-- for the first time--how a failed Vienna art student, obsessed with the occult and dreams of his own grandeur, nearly succeeded in creating a Holy Reich rooted in a twisted reinvention of medieval and Church history.

Since 2004, the violent conflict between Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims has caused more than 7,500 deaths and 13,000 injuries in the southern border provinces of Thailand. This will be the first collection published in English to give voice to those who have rebounded from these profound personal tragedies to demand justice and peace.The ethnic and religious separatist insurgency in the southern provinces of Thailand is complex. Ninety to ninety-five percent of Thai citizens are Buddhists. In the southernmost provinces, however, Muslims are in the majority-yet they are governed by the Buddhist Thai capital in the north. In 2006 and 2014, the Thai government went through separate coups, resulting in differing policies to address this problem in the south, including a National Culture Act to promote "Thai-ness" throughout the country. In the south, this has resulted in a repressive and corrupt police force and military raids on Muslim villages, provoking the burning of schools and other symbols of Thai government, bombings, and even the killing of teachers and monks. The narratives collected here, primarily from women, testify that although the violence has been generated from both sides of the Buddhist/Muslim divide, the actions undertaken by armed forces of the Thai Buddhist state-including repressive violence and torture-have served as a catalyst for increased Muslim insurgency. These contributions reveal the fundamental problem of how a minority people can fully belong within a state that has insisted on religious, cultural, and linguistic homogenization.