In this analysis of the life of Arnost Frischer, an influential Jewish nationalist activist, Jan Lanicek reflects upon how the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia dealt with the challenges that arose from their volatile relationship with the state authorities in the first half of the 20th century. The Jews in the Bohemian Lands experienced several political regimes in the period from 1918 to the late 1940s: the Habsburg Empire, the first democratic Czechoslovak republic, the post-Munich authoritarian Czecho-Slovak republic, the Nazi regime, renewed Czechoslovak democracy and the Communist regime. Frischer's involvement in local and central politics affords us invaluable insights into the relations and negotiations between the Jewish activists and these diverse political authorities in the Bohemian Lands. Vital coverage is also given to the relatively under-researched subject of the Jewish responses to the Nazi persecution and the attempts of the exiled Jewish leadership to alleviate the plight of the Jews in occupied Europe. The case study of Frischer and Czechoslovakia provides an important paradigm for understanding modern Jewish politics in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, making this a book of great significance to all students and scholars interested in Jewish history and Modern European history.

The Problem of Disenchantment offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the intellectual history of science, religion, and "the occult" in the early 20th century. By developing a new approach to Max Weber's famous idea of a "disenchantment of the world", and drawing on an impressively diverse set of sources, Egil Asprem opens up a broad field of inquiry that connects the histories of science, religion, philosophy, and Western esotericism. Parapsychology, occultism, and the modern natural sciences are usually viewed as distinct cultural phenomena with highly variable intellectual credentials. In spite of this view, Asprem demonstrates that all three have met with similar intellectual problems related to the intelligibility of nature, the relation of facts to values, and the dynamic of immanence and transcendence, and solved them in comparable terms.

Born into poverty in Russian Poland in 1911, Zosa Szajkowski (Shy-KOV-ski) was a self-made man who managed to make a life for himself as an intellectual, first as a journalist in 1930s Paris, and then, after a harrowing escape to New York in 1941, as a scholar. Although he never taught at a university or even earned a PhD, Szajkowski became one of the world's foremost experts on the history of the Jews in modern France, publishing in Yiddish, English, and Hebrew. His work opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, economic and social modernization, and the rise of modern anti-Semitism. But beneath Szajkowski's scholarly success lay a shameful secret. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the scholar stole tens of thousands of archival documents related to French Jewish history from public archives and private synagogue collections in France and moved them, illicitly, to New York. There, he used them as the basis for his pathbreaking articles. Eventually, he sold them, piecemeal, to American and Israeli research libraries, where they still remain today. Why did this respectable historian become an archive thief? And why did librarians in the United States and Israel buy these materials from him, turning a blind eye to the signs of ownership they bore? These are the questions that motivate this gripping tale. Throughout, it is clear that all involved-perpetrator, victims, and buyers-saw what Szajkowski was doing through the prism of the Holocaust. The buyers shared a desire to save these precious remnants of the European Jewish past, left behind on a continent where six million Jews had just been killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. The scholars who read Szajkowski's studies, based largely on the documents he had stolen, saw the treasures as offering an unparalleled window into the history that led to that catastrophe. And the Jewish caretakers of many of the institutions Szajkowski robbed in France saw the losses as a sign of their difficulties reconstructing their community after the Holocaust, when the balance of power in the Jewish world was shifting away from Europe to new centers in America and Israel. Based on painstaking research, Lisa Leff reconstructs Szajkowski's story in all its ambiguity by taking us backstage at the archives, revealing the powerful ideological, economic and scientific forces that made Holocaust-era Jewish scholars care more deeply than ever before about preserving the remnants of their past.

This timely volume brings together an international team of leading scholars to explore the ways that women responded to situations of immense deprivation, need, and victimization under Hitler's dictatorship. Paying acute attention to the differences that gender made, Women Defying Hitler examines the forms of women's defiance, the impact these women had, and the moral and ethical dilemmas they faced. Several essays also address the special problems of the memory and historiography of women's history during World War II, and the book features standpoints of historians as well as the voices of survivors and their descendants. Notably, this book also serves as a guide for human behaviour under extremely difficult conditions. The book is relevant today for challenging discrimination against women and for its nuanced exploration of the conditions minorities face as outspoken protagonists of human rights issues and as resisters of discrimination. From this perspective the voices being empowered in this book are clear examples of the importance of protest by women in forcing a totalitarian regime to pause and reconsider its options for the moment. In revealing so, Women Defying Hitler ultimately foregrounds that women rescuers and resisters were and are of great continuing consequence.

Through interviews with developers, gamers, and journalists examining the phenomena of bedroom coding, arcade gaming, and format wars, mapped onto enquiry into the seminal genres of the time including driving, shooting, and maze chase, Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames examines how 1980s Britain has become the culture of work in the 21st century and considers its meaning to contemporary society. This crucial and timely work fills a lacuna for students and researchers of sociology, media, and games studies and will be of interest to employees of the videogames and media industries. Research into videogames have never been greater, but exploration of their historic drivers is as elided as the technology is influential, giving rise to a range of questions. What were the social and economic conditions that gave rise to a billion dollar industry? What were the motivations of the early 'bedroom coders'? What are the legacies of the seminal videogames of the 1980s and how do they inform the current social, political and cultural landscape? With a focus on the characteristics of the UK videogame industry in the 1980s, Wade explores these questions from perspectives of consumption, production and leisure, outlining the construction of a habitus unique to this time.

This volume offers insights into the major Jewish migration movements and rebuilding of European Jewish communities in the mid-twentieth century. Its chapters illustrate many facets of the Jews' often traumatic post-war experiences. People had to find their way when returning to their countries of origin or starting from scratch in a new land. Their experiences and hardships from country to country and from one community of migrants to another are analyzed here. The mass exodus of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries is also addressed to provide a necessary and broader insight into how those challenges were met, as both migrations were a result of persecution, as well as discrimination.

George Pitt-Rivers began his career as one of Britain's most promising young anthropologists, conducting research in the South Pacific and publishing articles in the country's leading academic journals. With a museum in Oxford bearing his family name, Pitt-Rivers appeared to be on track for a sterling academic career that might even have matched that of his grandfather, one of the most prominent archaeologists of his day. By the early 1930s, however, Pitt-Rivers had turned from his academic work to politics. Writing a series of books attacking international communism and praising the ideas of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Pitt-Rivers fell into the circles of the anti-Semitic far right. In 1937 he attended the Nuremberg Rally and personally met Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis. With the outbreak of war in 1940 Pitt-Rivers was arrested and interned by the British government on the suspicion that he might harm the war effort by publicly sharing his views, effectively ending his academic career. This book traces the remarkable career of a man who might have been remembered as one of Britain's leading 20th century anthropologists but instead became involved in a far-right milieu that would result in his professional ruin and the relegation of most of his research to margins of scientific history. At the same time, his wider legacy would persist far beyond the academic sphere and can be found to the present day.

The peasantry accounted for the large majority of the Russian population during the Imperialist and Stalinist periods - it is, for the most part, how people lived. Peasants in Russia from Serfdom to Stalin provides a comprehensive, realistic examination of peasant life in Russia during both these eras and the legacy this left in the post-Soviet era. The book paints a full picture of peasant involvement in commerce and local political life and, through Boris Gorshkov's original ecology paradigm for understanding peasant life, offers new perspectives on the Russian peasantry under serfdom and the emancipation. Incorporating recent scholarship, including Russian and non-Russian texts, along with classic studies, Gorshkov explores the complex interrelationships between the physical environment, peasant economic and social practices, culture, state policies and lord-peasant relations. He goes on to analyze peasant economic activities, including agriculture and livestock, social activities and the functioning of peasant social and political institutions within the context of these interrelationships. Further reading lists, study questions, tables, maps, primary source extracts and images are also included to support and enhance the text wherever possible. Peasants in Russia from Serfdom to Stalin is the crucial survey of a key topic in modern Russian history for students and scholars alike.

Lisa Pine assembles an impressive array of influential scholars in Life and Times in Nazi Germany to explore the variety and complexity of life in Germany under Hitler's totalitarian regime. The book is a thematic collection of essays that examine the extent to which social and cultural life in Germany was permeated by Nazi aims and ambitions. Each essay deals with a different theme of daily German life in the Nazi era, with topics including food, fashion, health, sport, art, tourism and religion all covered in chapters based on original and expert scholarship. Life and Times in Nazi Germany, which also includes 24 images and helpful end-of-chapter select bibliographies, provides a new lens through which to observe life in Nazi Germany - one that highlights the everyday experience of Germans under Hitler's rule. It illuminates aspects of life under Nazi control that are less well-known and examines the contradictions and paradoxes that characterised daily life in Nazi Germany in order to enhance and sophisticate our understanding of this period in the nation's history. This is a crucial volume for all students of Nazi Germany and the history of Germany in the 20th century.

The true story of a woman's incredible journey into the heart of the Third Reich to find the man she loves. When the Gestapo seize 20-year-old Olga Czepf's fiance she is determined to find him and sets off on an extraordinary 2,000-mile search across Nazi-occupied Europe risking betrayal, arrest and death. As the Second World War heads towards its bloody climax, she refuses to give up - even when her mission leads her to the gates of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps...Now 88 and living in London, Olga tells with remarkable clarity of the courage and determination that drove her across war-torn Europe, to find the man she loved. The greatest untold true love story of World War Two.

With the spread of manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese cartoons) around the world, many have adopted the Japanese term 'otaku' to identify fans of such media. The connection to manga and anime may seem straightforward, but, when taken for granted, often serves to obscure the debates within and around media fandom in Japan since the term 'otaku' appeared in the niche publication Manga Burikko in 1983. Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan disrupts the naturalization and trivialization of 'otaku' by examining the historical contingency of the term as a way to identify and contain problematic youth, consumers and fan cultures in Japan. Its chapters, many translated from Japanese and available in English for the first time - and with a foreword by Otsuka Eiji, former editor of Manga Burikko - explore key moments in the evolving discourse of 'otaku' in Japan. Rather than presenting a smooth, triumphant narrative of the transition of a subculture to the mainstream, the edited volume repositions 'otaku' in specific historical, social and economic contexts, providing new insights into the significance of the 'otaku' phenomenon in Japan and the world. By going back to original Japanese documents, translating key contributions by Japanese scholars and offering sustained analysis of these documents and scholars, Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan provides alternative histories of and approaches to 'otaku'. For all students and scholars of contemporary Japan and the history of Japanese fan and consumer cultures, this volume will be a foundation for understanding how 'otaku', at different places and times and to different people, is meaningful.

At midnight on 30 June 1997, Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty after 150 years of British rule. The moment when the British flag came down was dramatic enough but the ten years leading up to it were full of surprising incident and change. These 'Letters from Hong Kong', written by an Englishwoman who was involved in those events from 1987, are both an unusual historical record and a heartwarming account of women's domestic, intellectual and political activity. This epilogue brings Hong Kong up to date ten years after the Handover.

Czestochowa was the home of the eighth largest Jewish community in Poland. After 1765, when there were 75 Jews in Czestochowa, the community grew steadily. With emancipation in 1862, many Jews migrated to Czestochowa and contributed to its industrial and commercial growth. In 1935, there were 27,162 Jews out of a total population of 127,504. When the Nazis deported Jews to Czestochowa to work in its munition factories, the Jewish population exceeded 50,000. Almost all perished in Treblinka. Anti-Jewish feeling was spurred on by the Church and Fascist groups that organized boycotts of Jewish stores and incited pogroms intended to drive the Jews out of the city. The Jewish labor movement fought unemployment and poor working conditions. Impoverished families were aided by community charitable funds. Jewish philanthropists established the non-sectarian "Jewish Hospital," progressive schools, two gymnasia and the "New Synagogue." During election seasons, the entire Jewish political spectrum, from the socialist parties to the ultra-Orthodox, competed in the self-governing body, and in the Municipal Council. By 1901, stylishly dressed men and women mixed in the streets with poor religious Jews in their traditional garb. A popular press, libraries, theaters, cinema, sporting events and youth movements gave Czestochowa Jews a variety of cultural choices to suit their politics, artistic taste, and modes of leisure. Public life transformed a dreary factory town into one of the most colorful and celebrated Jewish communities in Poland before and after the First World War.

Friendships between women and gay men captivated the American media in the opening decade of the 21st century. John Portmann places this curious phenomenon in its historical context, examining the changing social attitudes towards gay men in the postwar period and how their relationships with women have been portrayed in the media. As women and gay men both struggled toward social equality in the late 20th century, some women understood that defending gay men - who were often accused of effeminacy - was in their best interest. Joining forces carried both political and personal implications. Straight women used their influence with men to prevent bullying and combat homophobia. Beyond the bureaucratic fray, women found themselves in transformed roles with respect to gay men - as their mothers, sisters, daughters, caregivers, spouses, voters, employers and best friends. In the midst of social hostility to gay men during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, a significant number of gay women volunteered to comfort the afflicted and fight reigning sexual values. Famous women such as Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand threw their support behind a detested minority, while countless ordinary women did the same across America. Portmann celebrates not only women who made the headlines but also those who did not. Looking at the links between the women's liberation and gay rights movements, and filled with concrete examples of personal and political relationships between straight women and gay men, Women and Gay Men in the Postwar Period is an engaging and accessible study which will be of interest to students and scholars of 20th- and 21st century social and gender history.

Since the end of World War II, there have been 181 insurgencies around the world. Today, there are over three dozen violent insurgencies, including in such high-profile countries as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. These insurgencies have been led by a range of groups, from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, most warfare today occurs in the form of insurgencies. If we are to understand modern warfare, we need to understand insurgencies. While numerous books have been written on the subject of insurgencies, there is no book that brings together all of what we know into one accessible volume that policymakers can understand and use. Waging Insurgent Warfare is that book. Seth G. Jones, who has been deeply involved in the Afghanistan war over the last decade, aims to help policymakers, scholars, and general readers better understand how groups start, wage, and end insurgencies. He weaves together examples from today and from recent history into an analytic synthesis that focuses on several sets of questions. First, what factors contribute to the rise of an insurgency? Second, what are the key components involved in conducting an insurgency? As he explains, insurgent groups need to decide on a strategy, employ a range of tactics, select an organizational structure, secure outside aid from state and non-state actors, and conduct information campaigns. They then have to routinely re-assess these decisions over the course of an insurgency. Third, what factors contribute to the end of insurgencies? Finally, what do the answers to these questions mean for the conduct of counterinsurgency warfare? Waging Insurgent Warfare is not only a practical handbook for understanding insurgent warfare, but it also has implications for waging counterinsurgent warfare. Highly readable, empirically sophisticated, and historically informed, Waging Insurgent Warfare will become a standard work on the topic.

Learning How to Feel explores the ways in which children and adolescents learn not just how to express emotions that are thought to be pre-existing, but actually how to feel. The volume assumes that the embryonic ability to feel unfolds through a complex dialogue with the social and cultural environment and specifically through reading material. The fundamental formation takes place in childhood and youth. A multi-authored historical monograph, Learning How to Feel uses children's literature and advice manuals to access the training practices and learning processes for a wide range of emotions in the modern age, circa 1870-1970. The study takes an international approach, covering a broad array of social, cultural, and political milieus in Britain, Germany, India, Russia, France, Canada, and the United States. Learning How to Feel places multidirectional learning processes at the centre of the discussion, through the concept of practical knowledge. The book innovatively draws a framework for broad historical change during the course of the period. Emotional interaction between adult and child gave way to a focus on emotional interactions among children, while gender categories became less distinct. Children were increasingly taught to take responsibility for their own emotional development, to find 'authenticity' for themselves. In the context of changing social, political, cultural, and gender agendas, the building of nations, subjects and citizens, and the forging of moral and religious values, Learning How to Feel demonstrates how children were provided with emotional learning tools through their reading matter to navigate their emotional lives.

The Great and Holy War offers the first look at how religion created and prolonged the First World War. At the one-hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, historian Philip Jenkins reveals the powerful religious dimensions of this modern-day crusade, a period that marked a traumatic crisis for Western civilization, with effects that echoed throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. Thanks to the emergence of modern media, a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was given to an unprecedented audience, using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon. But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda. Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels and apparitions, visions and the supernatural was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the major religions--Christianity, Judaism and Islam--paving the way for modern views of religion and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism.

Connecting numerous remarkable incidents and characters--from Karl Barth to Carl Jung, the Christmas Truce to the Armenian Genocide--Jenkins creates a powerful and persuasive narrative that brings together global politics, history, and spiritual crisis as never before and shows how religion informed and motivated circumstances on all sides of the war.