|
|
Books > History > World history > From 1900
The #1 testimony book that every Christian needs to read. As the
Nazi madness swept across Europe, a quiet watchmaker's family in
Holland risked everything for the sake of others, and for the love
of Christ. Despite the danger and threat of discovery, the ten Boom
family courageously offered shelter to persecuted Jews during the
Nazi occupation of Holland. Then a trap brought about the family's
arrest. Could God's love shine through, even in Ravensbruck?
Coral Comes High is Captain George P. Hunt's account of what
happened to himself and his company during the initial stages of
the Peleliu invasion by the US Marines during World War 2. The
company sustains terrible casualties and is isolated in a seemingly
hopeless position for a nightmare forty-eight hours. Outnumbered
and outgunned by the enemy, they beat off all attacks and seize the
Point with a courage which is at the same time matter-of-fact and
almost superhuman.
After 1898 the United States not only solidified its position as an
economic colossus, but by annexing Puerto Rico and the Philippines
it had also added for the first time semi-permanent, heavily
populated colonies unlikely ever to attain statehood. In short
order followed a formal protectorate over Cuba, the "taking" of
Panama to build a canal, and the announcement of a new Corollary to
the Monroe Doctrine, proclaiming an American duty to "police" the
hemisphere. Empire had been an American practice since the nation's
founding, but the new policies were understood as departures from
traditional methods of territorial expansion. How to match these
actions with traditional non-entanglement constituted the central
preoccupation of U.S. foreign relations in the early twentieth
century. International lawyers proposed instead that the United
States become an impartial judge. By becoming a force for law in
the world, America could reconcile its republican ideological
tradition with a desire to rank with the Great Powers. Lawyers'
message scaled new heights of popularity in the first decade and a
half of the twentieth century as a true profession of international
law emerged. The American Society of International Law (ASIL) and
other groups, backed by the wealth of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, held annual meetings and published journals.
They called for the creation of an international court, the holding
of regular conferences to codify the rules of law, and the
education of public opinion as to the proper rights and duties of
states. To an extent unmatched before or since, the U.S.
government-the executive branch if not always the U.S.
Senate-embraced this project. Washington called for peace
conferences and pushed for the creation of a "true " international
court. It proposed legal institutions to preserve order in its
hemisphere. Meanwhile lawyers advised presidents and made policy.
The ASIL counted among its first members every living secretary of
state (but one) who held office between 1892 and 1920. Growing
numbers of international lawyers populated the State Department and
represented U.S. corporations with business overseas. International
lawyers were not isolated idealists operating from the sidelines.
Well-connected, well-respected, and well-compensated, they formed
an integral part of the foreign policy establishment that built and
policed an expanding empire.
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.
They called themselves Legionnaires of the Waffen SS, the new
European Army. They came from all nations of Europe, and they were
wearing the same uniform to fight for the same cause: fighting the
strong Russian Armed Forces. Almost one million of these young men
fought next to the Wehrmacht during WWII. It was during this era
that the ideal of a united Europe was born. There is no other
period in history that has been documented like the 6 years that
ranged from the invasion of Poland in 1939 to the capitulation in
Berlin in 1945. They left their homes, families, and friends with
their heart full of joy and pride. They had to endure extreme
weather from +40 to -50 while fighting on several fronts. They were
battle hardened because of this. They became good soldiers because
they knew how to survive in any situation. These young men were
prepared to give their lives for Germany and, in their eyes, for a
better Europe.
"Ye cannot serve God and mammon," the Bible says. But conservative
American Protestants have, for at least a century, been trying to
prove that adage wrong. While preachers, activists, and politicians
have all helped spread the gospel, Darren Grem argues that
evangelicalism owes its strength to the blessings of business. Grem
offers a new history of American evangelicalism, showing how its
adherents strategically used corporate America-its leaders,
businesses, money, ideas, and values-to advance their religious,
cultural, and political aspirations. Conservative evangelicals were
thus able to retain and expand their public influence in a
secularizing, diversifying, and liberalizing age. In the process
they became beholden to pro-business stances on matters of
theology, race, gender, taxation, free trade, and the state, making
them well-suited to a broader conservative movement that was also
of, by, and for corporate America. The Blessings of Business tells
the story of unlikely partnerships between champions of the
evangelical movement, such as Billy Graham, and largely forgotten
businessmen, like R.G. LeTourneau; he describes the backdrop
against which the religious right's pro-business politics can be
understood. The evangelical embrace of corporate capitalism made
possible a fusion with other conservatives, he finds, creating a
foundation for the business-friendly turn in the nation's economy
and political culture. But it also transformed conservative
evangelicalism itself, making it as much an economic movement as a
religious one. Fascinating and provocative, The Blessings of
Business uncovers the strong ties Americans have forged between the
Almighty and the almighty dollar.
The year is 1932. In Rome, the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini
unveils a giant obelisk of white marble, bearing the Latin
inscription MVSSOLINI DVX. Invisible to the cheering crowds, a
metal box lies immured in the obelisk's base. It contains a few
gold coins and, written on a piece of parchment, a Latin text: the
Codex fori Mussolini. What does this text say? Why was it buried
there? And why was it written in Latin? The Codex, composed by the
classical scholar Aurelio Giuseppe Amatucci (1867-1960), presents a
carefully constructed account of the rise of Italian Fascism and
its leader, Benito Mussolini. Though written in the language of
Roman antiquity, the Codex was supposed to reach audiences in the
distant future. Placed under the obelisk with future excavation and
rediscovery in mind, the Latin text was an attempt at directing the
future reception of Italian Fascism. This book renders the Codex
accessible to scholars and students of different disciplines,
offering a thorough and wide-ranging introduction, a clear
translation, and a commentary elucidating the text's rhetorical
strategies, historical background, and specifics of phrasing and
reference. As the first detailed study of a Fascist Latin text, it
also throws new light on the important role of the Latin language
in Italian Fascist culture.
The Franklin Book Programs (FBP) was a private not-for-profit U.S.
organization founded in 1952 during the Cold War and was subsidized
by the United States' government agencies as well as private
corporations. The FBP was initially intended to promote U.S.
liberal values, combat Soviet influence and to create appropriate
markets for U.S. books in 'Third World' of which the Middle East
was an important part, but evolved into an international
educational program publishing university textbooks, schoolbooks,
and supplementary readings. In Iran, working closely with the
Pahlavi regime, its activities included the development of
printing, publishing, book distribution, and bookselling
institutions. This book uses archival sources from the FBP, US
intelligence agencies and in Iran, to piece together this
relationship. Put in the context of wider cultural diplomacy
projects operated by the US, it reveals the extent to which the
programme shaped Iran's educational system. Together the history of
the FBP, its complex network of state and private sector, the role
of U.S. librarians, publishers, and academics, and the joint
projects the FBP organized in several countries with the help of
national ministries of education, financed by U.S. Department of
State and U.S. foundations, sheds new light on the long history of
education in imperialist social orders, in the context here of the
ongoing struggle for influence in the Cold War.
Titoist Yugoslavia is a particularly interesting setting to examine
the integrity of the modern nation-state, especially the viability
of distinctly multi-ethnic nation-building projects. Scholarly
literature on the brutal civil wars that destroyed Yugoslavia
during the 1990s emphasizes divisive nationalism and dysfunctional
politics to explain why the state disintegrated. But the larger
question remains unanswered-just how did Tito's state function so
successfully for the preceding forty-six years. In an attempt to
understand better what united the stable, multi-ethnic, and
globally important Yugoslavia that existed before 1991 Robert
Niebuhr argues that we should pay special attention to the dynamic
and robust foreign policy that helped shape the Cold War.
The Rarefied Air of the Modern examines technology, modern
identity, and history-making in Peru by telling the story of the
surprising success of Peruvian pilots in European aviation
competitions in 1910, and how their achievements generated great
optimism that this new technology could lift the country out of its
self-perceived backwardness. Though poor infrastructure, economic
woes, a dearth of technical expertise, and a ghastly number of
pilot deaths slowed the project after the first flights over Lima
in 1911, the image of intrepid Peruvian pilots inspired a new sense
of national possibility. Airplanes seemed to embody not just
technological progress but enlightened rationality, capitalist
enterprise, and nation-state aggrandizement. By 1928, three
commercial lines were transporting passengers, mail, and
merchandise from Lima to other parts of the country and South
America. This exploration of the fitful development of Peruvian
aviation illuminates how a Eurocentric modernizing vision has
served as a powerful organizing force in regions with ambivalent
relationships to the West. More broadly, it underscores the
important role that technology plays in larger, complex historical
processes. Even as politicians, businessmen, military officials,
journalists, and ruling oligarchs felt a special kinship with
Peru's aviation project, diverse socioeconomic groups engaged
aviation to challenge power asymmetries and historical silences
rooted in Peru's postcolonial past. Most observers at the time
considered airplanes a "universal" technology that performed the
same function in Europe, the United States, and Peru. In reality,
how Peruvians mobilized and understood airplanes reflected
culturally specific values and historical concerns.
|
|