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Books > History > World history > From 1900
In the history of education, the question of how computers were
introduced into European classrooms has so far been largely
neglected. This edited volume strives to address this gap. The
contributions shed light on the computerization of education from a
historical perspective, by attending closely to the different
actors involved - such as politicians, computer manufacturers,
teachers, and students -, political rationales and ideologies, as
well as financial, political, or organizational structures and
relations. The case studies highlight differences in political and
economic power, as well as in ideological reasoning and the
priorities set by different stakeholders in the process of
introducing computers into education. However, the contributions
also demonstrate that simple cold war narratives fail to capture
the complex dynamics and entanglements in the history of computers
as an educational technology and a subject taught in schools. The
edited volume thus provides a comprehensive historical
understanding of the role of education in an emerging digital
society.
During World War II 51,000 Italian prisoners of war were detained
in the United States. When Italy signed an armistice with the
Allies in September 1943, most of these soldiers agreed to swear
allegiance to the United States and to collaborate in the fight
against Germany. At the Letterkenny Army Depot, located near
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, more than 1,200 Italian soldiers were
detained as co-operators. They arrived in May 1944 to form the
321st Italian Quartermaster Battalion and remained until October
1945. As detainees, the soldiers helped to order, stock, repair,
and ship military goods, munitions and equipment to the Pacific and
European Theaters of war. Through such labor, they lent their
collective energy to the massive home front endeavor to defeat the
Axis Powers. The prisoners also helped to construct the depot
itself, building roads, sidewalks, and fences, along with
individual buildings such as an assembly hall, amphitheater,
swimming pool, and a chapel and bell tower. The latter of these two
constructions still exist, and together with the assembly hall,
bear eloquent testimony to the Italian POW experience. For their
work the Italian co-operators received a very modest, regular
salary, and they experienced more freedom than regular POWs. In
their spare time, they often had liberty to leave the post in
groups that American soldiers chaperoned. Additionally, they
frequently received or visited large entourages of Italian
Americans from the Mid-Atlantic region who were eager to comfort
their erstwhile countrymen. The story of these Italian soldiers
detained at Letterkenny has never before been told. Now, however,
oral histories from surviving POWs, memoirs generously donated by
family members of ex-prisoners, and the rich information newly
available from archival material in Italy, aided by material found
in the U.S., have made it possible to reconstruct this experience
in full. All of this historical documentation has also allowed the
authors to tell fascinating individual stories from the moment when
many POWs were captured to their return to Italy and beyond. More
than seventy years since the end of World War II, family members of
ex-POWs in both the United States and Italy still enjoy the
positive legacy of this encounter.
To understand the current situation in Egypt it is necessary to see
it in a broader historical perspective and examine the evolution of
Egypt since Nasser's 1952 revolution. No one is better placed to
offer this perspective than Aly El-Samman, previously a close
advisor to Anwar Sadat and now a promoter of intergenerational
dialogue to the young pioneers of today's revolution. In Egypt from
One Revolution to Another, El-Samman offers a rigorous and vivid
analysis of these last sixty years of Egyptian history. His memoir,
rich in revelations and anecdotes, gives us a rare insight into the
thinking of some of the most famous figures of the 20th century,
including the leaders of the existentialist movement in France.
But, more importantly, it sets out a real strategy of peace for the
shores of Mediterranean Sea and far beyond.
The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution at a level sufficiently
general to guide lawmaking while avoiding great detail. This
four-page document has guided the United States of America for more
than two centuries. The Supreme Court has parsed the document into
clauses, which plaintiffs and defendants invoke in cases or
controversies before the Court. Some, like the Interstate Commerce
Clause, are central to the survival of a government of multiple
sovereignties. The practice of observing case precedents allows
orderly development of the law and consistent direction to the
lower courts. The Court itself claimed the final power of judicial
review, despite efforts to the contrary by the executive and
legislative branches of the national government and the state
supreme courts. The Court then limited its own awesome power
through a series of self-imposed rules of justiciability. These
rules set the conditions under which the Court may exercise the
extraordinary final power of judicial review. Some of these
self-imposed limits are prudential, some logical, and some inviting
periodic revision. This book examines the detailed unfolding of
several Constitutional clauses and the rules of justiciability. For
each clause and each rule of justiciability, the book begins with
the brilliant foundations laid by Chief Justice John Marshall, then
to the anti-Federalist era, the Civil War, the dominance of laissez
faire and social Darwinism, the Great Depression redirection, the
civil rights era, and finally the often-hapless efforts of Chief
Justice Rehnquist.
In a remarkable decade of public investment in higher education,
some 200 new university campuses were established worldwide between
1961 and 1970. This volume offers a comparative and connective
global history of these institutions, illustrating how their
establishment, intellectual output and pedagogical experimentation
sheds light on the social and cultural topography of the long
1960s. With an impressive geographic coverage - using case studies
from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia - the book explores how
these universities have influenced academic disciplines and
pioneered new types of teaching, architectural design and student
experience. From educational reform in West Germany to the
establishment of new institutions with progressive,
interdisciplinary curricula in the Commonwealth, the illuminating
case studies of this volume demonstrate how these universities
shared in a common cause: the embodiment of 'utopian' ideals of
living, learning and governance. At a time when the role of higher
education is fiercely debated, Utopian Universities is a timely and
considered intervention that offers a wide-ranging, historical
dimension to contemporary predicaments.
Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in April 1889, and shot himself in
a bunker in Berlin in April 1945 with Russian soldiers beating at
the door, surrounded by the ruins of the country he had vowed to
restore to greatness. Adolf Hitler: The Curious and Macabre
Anecdotes - part biography, part miscellany, part historical
overview - presents the life and times of der Fuhrer in a unique
and compelling manner. The early life of the loner son of an
Austrian customs official gave little clue as to his later years.
As a decorated, twice-wounded soldier of the First World War,
through shrewd manipulation of Germany's offended national pride
after the war, Hitler ascended rapidly through the political
system, rousing the masses behind him with a thundering rhetoric
that amplified the nation's growing resentment and brought him the
adulation of millions. By the age of 44, he had become both a
millionaire with secret bank accounts in Switzerland and Holland,
and the unrivalled leader of Germany, whose military might he had
resurrected; six years later, he provoked the world to war. Patrick
Delaforce's book is a masterly assessment of Hitler's life, career
and beliefs, drawn not only from its subject's own writings,
speeches, conversation, poetry and art, but also from the accounts
of those who knew him, loved him, or loathed him. The journey of an
ordinary young man to callous dictator and architect of the 'Final
Solution' makes for provocative and important - thought not always
comfortable - reading.
At this juncture in American history, some of our most hard-fought
state-level political struggles involve control of state supreme
courts. New Hampshire witnessed one of the most dramatic of these,
culminating in the impeachment of Chief Justice David Brock in
2000, but the issues raised by the case are hardly confined to New
Hampshire. They involved the proper nature and operation of
judicial independence within a "populist" civic culture that had
long assumed the primacy of the legislative branch, extolled its
"citizen legislators" over insulated and professionalized elites,
and entrusted those legislators to properly supervise the
judiciary. In the last few decades of the 20th Century, New
Hampshire's judiciary had been substantially reconfigured:
constitutional amendments and other measures endorsed by the
national judicial-modernization movement had secured for it a much
higher level of independence and internal unification than it had
historically enjoyed. However, a bipartisan body of legislators
remained committed to the principle of legislative supremacy
inscribed in the state constitution of 1784. The 1980s and 1990s
witnessed a series of clashes over court administration,
allegations of judicial corruption, and finally a bitter and
protracted battle over Court decisions on educational funding.
Chief Justice Brock publicly embodied the judicial branch's new
status and assertiveness. When information came to light regarding
some of his administrative actions on the high court, deepening
antipathy toward him exploded into an impeachment crisis. The
struggle over Brock's conduct raised significant questions about
the meaning and proper practice of impeachment itself as a feature
of democratic governance. When articles of impeachment were voted
by the House of Representatives, the state Senate faced the
difficult task of establishing trial protocols that would balance
the political and juridical responsibilities devolved on them,
simultaneously, by the state constitution. Having struck that
balance, the trial they conducted would finally acquit Brock of all
charges. Nevertheless, David Brock's impeachment was a highly
consequential ordeal that provided a needed catalyst for reforms
intended to produce a productive recalibration of
legislative-judicial relations.
'No Feelings', 'No Fun', 'No Future'. The years 1976-84 saw punk
emerge and evolve as a fashion, a musical form, an attitude and an
aesthetic. Against a backdrop of social fragmentation, violence,
high unemployment and socio-economic change, punk rejuvenated and
re-energised British youth culture, inserting marginal voices and
political ideas into pop. Fanzines and independent labels
flourished; an emphasis on doing it yourself enabled provincial
scenes to form beyond London's media glare. This was the period of
Rock Against Racism and benefit gigs for the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament and the striking miners. Matthew Worley charts the full
spectrum of punk's cultural development from the Sex Pistols,
Buzzcocks and Slits through the post-punk of Joy Division, the
industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle and onto the 1980s diaspora
of anarcho-punk, Oi! and goth. He recaptures punk's anarchic force
as a medium through which the frustrated and the disaffected could
reject, revolt and re-invent.
In this book, Judy Kutulas complicates the common view that the
1970s were a time of counterrevolution against the radical
activities and attitudes of the previous decade. Instead, Kutulas
argues that the experiences and attitudes that were radical in the
1960s were becoming part of mainstream culture in the 1970s, as
sexual freedom, gender equality, and more complex notions of
identity, work, and family were normalized through popular
culture--television, movies, music, political causes, and the
emergence of new communities. Seemingly mundane things like
watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, listening to Carole King songs,
donning Birkenstock sandals, or reading Roots were actually
critical in shaping Americans' perceptions of themselves, their
families, and their relation to authority. Even as these cultural
shifts eventually gave way to a backlash of political and economic
conservatism, Kutulas shows that what critics perceive as the
narcissism of the 1970s was actually the next logical step in a
longer process of assimilating 1960s values like individuality and
diversity into everyday life. Exploring such issues as feminism,
sexuality, and race, Kutulas demonstrates how popular culture
helped many Americans make sense of key transformations in U.S.
economics, society, politics, and culture in the late twentieth
century.
For the Honor of Our Fatherland: German Jews on the Eastern Front
during the Great War focuses on the German Jews' role in
reconstructing Poland's war-ravaged countryside. The Germany Army
assigned rabbis to serve as chaplains in the German Army and to
support and minister to their own Jewish soldiers, which numbered
100,000 during the First World War. However, upon the Army's
arrival into the decimated region east of Warsaw, it became
abundantly clear that the rabbis might also help with the
poverty-stricken Ostjuden by creating relief agencies and
rebuilding schools. For the Honor of Our Fatherland demonstrates
that the well-being of the Polish Jewish community was a priority
to the German High Command and vital to the future of German
politics in the region. More importantly, by stressing the
importance of the Jews in the East to Germany's success, For the
Honor of Our Fatherland will show that Germany did not always want
to remove the Jews-quite the contrary. The role and influence of
the German Army rabbis and Jewish administrators and soldiers
demonstrates that Germany intentionally supported the Polish Jewish
communities in order to promote its agenda in the East, even as the
modes for future influence changed. By implementing a philanthropic
agenda in the East, the Germans recognized that its success might
lie in part in enfranchising the Jewish population. Moreover, the
directives of these relief agencies were not only beneficial to the
impoverished Jewish communities, but the German Army had much to
gain from this transnational relationship. The tragic irony was
that Germany returned to the East in the Second World War and
killed millions of Jews.
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