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Books > Humanities > History > European history > General
A Mail on Sunday book of the year.
In 1940, Europe was on the brink of collapse. Country after country had fallen to the Nazis, and Britain was known as ‘Last Hope Island’, where Europeans from the captive nations gathered to continue the war effort.
In this epic, character-driven narrative, acclaimed historian and New York Times–bestselling author Lynne Olson takes us back to those perilous days when the British and their European guests joined forces to combat the mightiest military force in history.
From the Polish and French code breakers who helped crack Enigma, to the Czech pilots who protected London during German bombings, Olson tells the stories of the courageous men and women who came together to defeat Hitler and save Europe.
For a long time agriculture and rural life were dismissed by many
contemporaries as irrelevant or old-fashioned. Contrasted with
cities as centers of intellectual debate and political
decision-making, the countryside seemed to be becoming increasingly
irrelevant. Today, politicians in many European countries are
starting to understand that the neglect of the countryside has
created grave problems. Similarly, historians are remembering that
European history in the twentieth century was strongly influenced
by problems connected to the production of food, access to natural
resources, land rights, and the political representation and
activism of rural populations. Hence, the handbook offers an
overview of historical knowledge on a variety of topics related to
the land. It does so through a distinctly activity-centric and
genuinely European perspective. Rather than comparing different
national approaches to living with the land, the different chapters
focus on particular activities - from measuring to settling the
land, from producing and selling food to improving agronomic
knowledge, from organizing rural life to challenging political
structures in the countryside. Furthermore, the handbook overcomes
the traditional division between East and West, North and South, by
embracing a transregional approach that allows readers to gain an
understanding of similarities and differences across national and
ideological borders in twentieth-century Europe.
Despite the large number of books and studies written about
Metternich, there is still a period of his political career that
scholars neglect to this day, the 1840s. This book offers an
analysis of Metternich's German policy in the years 1840-1848 and
thus fills a gap in Metternich studies. Analysing this period is
important due to the fact that over the course of those less than
nine years, Metternich lost his influence within the German
Confederation. He represented a certain way of behaving - moderate,
calm and reconciliatory - but it was an attitude which was rejected
during the period of rising mass nationalism. Nevertheless, he
continued to endeavour to steer this escalating nationalism, and by
applying calming policies prevent it from causing armed conflicts
in Europe. Since Metternich conceived the German Confederation at
the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as one of the pillars of the
European peace settlement, the issue is viewed from the perspective
of European crises of the time, from the Rhine Crisis to the Swiss
civil war. Similarly, it presents his policy in a broader context
of economic and social history. The book follows revisionist
research on Metternich and refutes some of the cliches still
associated with his policy.
During the final years of the Second World War, a decisive change
took place in the Italian left, as the Italian Communist Party
(PCI) rose from clandestinity and recast itself as a mass,
patriotic force committed to building a new democracy. This book
explains how this new party came into being. Using Rome as its
focus, it explains that the rebirth of the PCI required that it
subdue other, dissident strands of communist thinking. During the
nine-month German occupation of Rome in 1943-44, dissident
communists would create the capital's largest single resistance
formation, the Communist Movement of Italy (MCd'I), which
galvanised a social revolt in the capital's borgate slums.
Exploring this wartime battle to define the rebirth of Italian
communism, the author examines the ways in which a militant
minority of communists rooted their activity in the everyday lives
of the population under occupation. In particular, this study
focuses on the role of draft resistance and the revolt against
labour conscription in driving recruitment to partisan bands, and
how communist militants sought to mould these recruits through an
active effort of political education. Studying the political
writing of these dissidents, their autodidact Marxism and the
social conditions in which it emerged, this book also sheds light
on an often-ignored underground culture in the years that preceded
the armed resistance that began in September 1943. Revealing an
almost unknown history of dissident communism in Italy, outside of
more recognisable traditions like Trotskyism or Bordigism, this
book provides an innovative perspective on Italian history. It will
be of interest to those researching the broad topics of political
and social history, but more specifically, resistance in the Second
World War and the post-war European left.
This book explores how First World War commemoration events are
presented, reported and mediated on the websites of mainstream
daily newspapers from seven European countries. The book is the
result of a research group - DIREPA-EUROPE (Discours,
representations, passe de l'Europe), part of Lemel research network
- characterized by a shared interest in media discourse and online
newspapers. It presents a fluid analysis chain on the commemoration
discourse generated by the WWI Armistice Centenary in 2018, and
will be of interest not only to scholars of discourse and media
studies, but also of European history, cultural memory, journalism
and conflict studies.
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