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Books > History > European history > General
"A masterly work of military and judicial history." -New York
Times. Telford Taylor's book is a defining piece of World War II
literature, an engrossing and reflective eyewitness account of one
of the most significant events of our century. In 1945, the Allied
nations agreed on a judicial process, rather than summary
execution, to determine the fate of the Nazis following the end of
World War II. Held in Nuremberg, the ceremonial birthplace of the
Nazi Party, the British, American, French, and Soviet leaders
contributed both judges and prosecutors to the series of trials
that would prosecute some of the most prominent politicians,
military leaders and businessmen in Nazi Germany. This is the
definitive history of the Nuremberg crimes trials by one of the key
participants, Telford Taylor, the distinguished lawyer who was a
member of the American prosecution staff and eventually became
chief counsel. In vivid detail, Taylor portrays the unfolding
events as he "saw, heard, and otherwise sensed them at the time,
and not as a detached historian working from the documents might
picture them." Table of Contents: 1 Nuremberg and the Laws of War 2
The Nuremberg Ideas 3 Justice Jackson Takes Over 4 Establishing the
Court: The London Charter 5 The Defendants and the Charges: Krupp
and the German General Staff 6 Berlin to Nuremberg 7 Nuremberg:
Pretrial Pains and Problems 8 On Trial 9 The Nuremberg War Crimes
Community 10 The SS and the General Staff-High Command 11
Individual Defendants, Future Trials, and Criminal Organizations 12
The French and Soviet Prosecutions 13 The Defendants: Goering and
Hess 14 The Defendants: "Murderers' Row" 15 The Defendants: Bankers
and Admirals 16 The Defendants: The Last Nine 17 The Closing
Arguments 18 The Indicted Organizations 19 The Defendants' Last
Words 20 The Judgments of Solomons 21 Judgment: Law, Crime, and
Punishment Taylor describes personal vendettas among the Allied
representatives and the negotiations that preceded the handing down
of sentences. The revelations have not lost their power over the
decades: The chamber is reduced to silence when an SS officer
recounts impassively that his troops rounded up and killed 90,000
Jews, and panic overcomes the head of the German State Bank as it
becomes clear that he knew his institution was receiving jewels and
other valuables taken from the bodies of concentration camp
inmates.
In the wake of the 1688 revolution, England's transition to
financial capitalism accelerated dramatically. Londoners witnessed
the rise of credit-based currencies, securities markets,
speculative bubbles, insurance schemes, and lotteries. Many
understood these phenomena in terms shaped by their experience with
another risky venture at the heart of London life: the public
theater. Speculative Enterprise traces the links these observers
drew between the operations of Drury Lane and Exchange Alley,
including their hypercommercialism, dependence on collective
opinion, and accessibility to people of different classes and
genders.Mattie Burkert identifies a discursive ""theater-finance
nexus"" at work in plays by Colley Cibber, Richard Steele, and
Susanna Centlivre as well as in the vibrant eighteenth-century
media landscape. As Burkert demonstrates, the stock market and the
entertainment industry were recognized as deeply interconnected
institutions that, when considered together, illuminated the nature
of the public more broadly and gave rise to new modes of publicity
and resistance. In telling this story, Speculative Enterprise
combines methods from literary studies, theater and performance
history, media theory, and work on print and material culture to
provide a fresh understanding of the centrality of theater to
public life in eighteenth-century London.
Few philosophers are more often referred to and more often
misunderstood than Machiavelli. He was truly a product of the
Renaissance, and he was as much a revolutionary in the field of
political philosophy as Leonardo or Michelangelo were in painting
and sculpture. He watched his native Florence lose its independence
to the French, thanks to poor leadership from the Medici successors
to the great Lorenzo (Il Magnifico). Machiavelli was a keen
observer of people, and he spent years studying events and people
before writing his famous books. Descended from minor nobility,
Machiavelli grew up in a household that was run by a vacillating
and incompetent father. He was well educated and smart, and he
entered government service as a clerk. He eventually became an
important figure in the Florentine state but was defeated by the
deposed Medici and Pope Julius II. He was tortured but eventually
freed by the restored Medici. No longer employed, he retired to his
home to write the books for which he is remembered. Machiavelli had
seen the best and the worst of human nature, and he understood how
the world operated. He drew his observations from life, and he was
appropriately cynical in his writing, given what he had personally
experienced. He was an outstanding writer, and his work remains
fascinating nearly 500 years later.
In incorporating Black African soldiers on the European
battleground in their war against the Germans in WWI, France needed
to change the image of the African from that of savage to a loyal
and courageous soldier, a non-threat to French citizenry. What
emerged was the Grand Enfant, a child-like figure with a winning
grin who nonetheless could be ruthless in pursuit of the Hun.
Meanwhile, German propaganda persisted in portraying the African as
a cannibal, being unjustly deployed by France against the civilized
European. Postcards of the era were an important means of
disseminating these images and demonstrate how the African
soldier's image was manipulated to serve the changing needs of the
European belligerents. The book contains over 150 stunning images
from this propaganda war and places them in historical context. It
is a pioneering study in English of a long-neglected aspect of the
First World War.
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