In 1932 Bolivia and Paraguay went to war over the Chaco region in South America. The war lasted three years and approximately 52,000 Bolivians and Paraguayans died. Moving beyond the battlefields of the Chaco War, this volume highlights the forgotten narratives of the war. Studying the environmental, ethnic, and social realities of the war in both Bolivia and Paraguay, the contributors examine the conflict that took place between 1932 and 1936 and explore its relationship with and impact on nationalism, activism and modernity. Beginning with an overview of the war, the book goes on to explore many new approaches to the conflict, and the contributors address topics such as the environmental challenges faced by the forces involved, the role of indigenous peoples, the impact of oil nationalism and the conflict's aftermath. This is a volume that will be of interest to anyone working on modern Latin America and the relationship between war and society.

Presidential Image has become an integral part of the campaign, presidency and legacy of Modern American presidents. Across the 20th century to the age of Trump, presidential image has dominated media coverage and public consciousness, winning elections, gaining support for their leadership in office and shaping their reputation in history. Is the creation of the presidential image part of a carefully conceived public relations strategy or result of the president's critics and opponents? Can the way the media interpret a presidents' actions and words alter their image? And how much influence do cultural outputs contribute to the construction of a presidential image? Using ten presidential case studies. this edited collection features contributions from scholars and political journalists from the UK and America, to analyse aspects of Presidential Image that shaped their perceived effectiveness as America's leader, and to explore this complex, controversial, and continuous element of modern presidential politics.

From the Vanguard to the Margins is dedicated to the work of the late British historian, Dr Mark Pittaway (1971-2010), a prominent scholar of post-war and contemporary Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Breaking with orthodox readings on Eastern bloc regimes, which remain wedded to the 'totalitarianism' paradigm of the Cold War era, the essays in this volume shed light on the contradictory historical and social trajectory of 'real socialism' in the region. Mainstream historiography has presented Stalinist parties as 'omnipotent', effectively stripping workers and society in general of its 'relative autonomy'. Building on an impressive amount of archive material, Pittaway convincingly shows how dynamics of class, gender, skill level, and rural versus urban location, shaped politics in the period. The volume also offers novel insights on historical and sociological roots of fascism in Hungary and the politics of legitimacy in the Austro-Hungarian borderlands.

The authors in this anthology explore how we are to rethink political and social narratives of the Spanish Civil War at the turn of the twenty-first century. The questions addressed here are based on a solid intellectual conviction of all the contributors to resist facile arguments both on the Right and the Left, concerning the historical and collective memory of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship in the milieu of post-transition to democracy. Central to a true democratic historical narrative is the commitment to listening to the other experiences and the willingness to rethink our present(s) in light of our past(s). The volume is divided in six parts: I. Institutional Realms of Memory; II. Past Imperfect: Gender Archetypes in Retrospect; III. The Many Languages of Domesticity; IV. Realms of Oblivion: Hunger, Repression, and Violence; V. Strangers to Ourselves: Autobiographical Testimonies; and VI. The Orient Within: Myths of Hispano-Arabic Identity. Contributors are Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez, Alex Bueno, Fernando Martinez Lopez, Miguel Gomez Oliver, Mary Ann Dellinger, Geoffrey Jensen, Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernandez, Maria del Mar Logrono Narbona, M. Cinta Ramblado Minero, Deirdre Finnerty, Victoria L. Enders, Pilar Dominguez Prats, Sofia Rodriguez Lopez, Oscar Rodriguez Barreira, Nerea Aresti, and Miren Llona. Listed by Choice magazine as one of the Outstanding Academic Titles of 2014

For the students of Colerain High School and their friends, life in Cincinnati in the 1950s was an adventure. Now, one of their own shares a look into their lives.

This is a story exposing the life of your grandparents. Yes, the lives of your grandmother, the silver-haired beauty that bakes your favorite cakes and cookies, who can soothe any hurt, and who allows you to do anything you wish, and your grandfather, the gentleman, of seemingly never-ending wisdom, experience, and knowledge, who can guide you to the correct decision, and will never say no. In a time long ago, the genteel women and the kindly men of today led a completely different, seemingly out-ofcharacter life. This is a chronicle of their escapades.

So you wanted to know just how your grandparents lived their lives during the indestructible, wonderful, fantastic, and unmindful time of their teenage life, then this is the story for you, a real story, a story your grandparents will never tell, yet a story they will never forget.

This unique sourcebook explores the Stab-in-the-Back myth that developed in Germany in the wake of World War One, analyzing its role in the end of the Weimar Republic and its impact on the Nazi regime that followed. A critical development in modern German and even European history that has received relatively little coverage until now, the Stab-in-the-Back Myth was an attempt by the German military, nationalists and anti-Semites to explain how the German war effort collapsed in November 1918 along with the German Empire. It purported that the German army did not lose the First World War but were betrayed by the civilians on the home front and the democratic politicians who had surrendered. The myth was one of the foundation myths of National Socialism, at times influencing Nazi behaviour in the 1930s and later their conduct in the Second World War. The Stab-in-the-Back Myth and the Fall of the Weimar Republic draws on German government records, foreign and domestic newspaper accounts, diplomatic reports, diary entries and letters to provide different national and political perspectives on the issue. The sourcebook also includes chapter summaries, study questions, and further reading lists, in addition to numerous visual sources and a range of maps, charts, tables and graphs. This is a vital text for all students looking at the history of the Weimar Republic, the legacy of the First World War and Germany in the 20th century.

From the late eighteenth century, Germans increasingly identified the fate of their nation with that of their woodlands. A variety of groups soon mobilized the 'German forest' as a national symbol, though often in ways that suited their own social, economic, and political interests. The German Forest is the first book-length history of the development and contestation of the concept of 'German' woodlands.

Jeffrey K. Wilson challenges the dominant interpretation that German connections to nature were based in agrarian romanticism rather than efforts at modernization. He explores a variety of conflicts over the symbol -- from demands on landowners for public access to woodlands, to state attempts to integrate ethnic Slavs into German culture through forestry, and radical nationalist visions of woodlands as a model for the German 'race'. Through impressive primary and archival research, Wilson demonstrates that in addition to uniting Germans, the forest as a national symbol could also serve as a vehicle for protest and strife.

The Welfare Revolution of the early 20th century did not start with Clement Attlee's Labour governments of 1945 to 1951 but had its origins in the Liberal government of forty years earlier. The British Welfare Revolution, 1906-14 offers a fresh perspective on the social reforms introduced by these Liberal governments in the years 1906 to 1914. Reforms conceived during this time created the foundations of the Welfare State and transformed modern Britain; they touched every major area of social policy, from school meals to pensions, the minimum wage to the health service. Cooper uses an innovative approach, the concept of the Counter-Elite, to explain the emergence of the New Liberalism and examines the research that was carried out to devise ways to meet each specific social problem facing Britain in the early 20th century. For example, a group of businessmen, including Booth and Rowntree, invented the poverty survey to pinpoint those living below the poverty line and encouraged a new generation of sociologists. This comprehensive single volume survey presents a new critical angle on the origins of the British welfare state and is an original analysis of the reforms and the leading personalities of the Liberal governments from the late Edwardian period to the advent of the First World War.

In the wake of the First World War, in which France suffered severe food shortages, colonial produce became an increasingly important element of the French diet. The colonial lobby seized upon these foodstuffs as powerful symbols of the importance of the colonial project to the life of the French nation. But how was colonial food really received by the French public? And what does this tell us about the place of empire in French society? In Colonial Food in Interwar Paris, Lauren Janes disputes the claim that empire was central to French history and identity, arguing that the distrust of colonial food reflected a wider disinterest in the empire. From Indochinese rice to North African grains and tropical fruit to curry powder, this book offers an intriguing and original challenge to current orthodoxy about the centrality of empire to modern France by examining the place of colonial foods in the nation's capital.

Based on hitherto untapped source materials, this book charts the history of Muslim missionary activity in London from 1912, when the first Indian Muslim missionaries arrived in London, until 1944. During this period a unique community was forged out of British converts and native Muslims from various parts of the world, which focused itself around a purpose built mosque in Woking and later the first mosque to open in London in 1924. Arguing that an understanding of Muslim mission in this period needs to place such activity in the context of colonial encounter, Islam and Britain provides a background narrative into why Muslim missionary activity in London was part of a variety of strategies to engage with European expansion and overzealous Christian missionary activity in India. Ron Geaves draws on research undertaken in India and Pakistan, where the Ahmadiya missionaries have kept extensive archives of this period which until now have been unavailable to scholars. Unique in providing an account of Islamic missionary work in Britain from the Islamic perspective, Islam and Britain adds to our knowledge and understanding of British Muslim history and makes an important contribution to the literature concerned with Islamic missiology.

The history of noncombatant immunity is well established. What is less understood is how militaries have rationalized violating this immunity. This book traces the development of how militaries have rationalized the killing of the innocent from the thirteenth century onward. In the process, this historiography shows how we have arrived at the ascendant convention that assumes militaries should not intentionally kill the innocent. Furthermore, it shows how moral arguments about the permissibility of killing the innocent are largely adaptations to material changes in how wars are fought, whether through technological innovations or changes in institutional structures.

While traditional industries like textile or lumber mills have received a majority of the scholarly attention devoted to southern economic development, "Faith in Bikinis "presents an untold story of the New South, one that explores how tourism played a central role in revitalizing the southern economy and transforming southern culture after the Civil War. Along the coast of the American South, a culture emerged that negotiated the more rigid religious, social, and racial practices of the inland cotton country and the more indulgent consumerism of vacationers, many from the North, who sought greater freedom to enjoy sex, gambling, alcohol, and other pleasures. On the shoreline, the Sunbelt South--the modern South--first emerged.
This book examines those tensions and how coastal southerners managed to placate both. White supremacy was supported, but the resorts' dependence on positive publicity gave African Americans leverage to pursue racial equality, including access to beaches often restored through the expenditure of federal tax dollars. Displays of women clad in scanty swimwear served to market resorts via pamphlets, newspaper promotions, and film. Yet such marketing of sexuality was couched in the form of carefully managed beauty contests and the language of Christian wholesomeness widely celebrated by resort boosters. Prohibition laws were openly flaunted in Galveston, Biloxi, Myrtle Beach, Virginia Beach, and elsewhere. Yet revenue from sales taxes made states reluctant to rein in resort activities. This revenue bridged the divide between the coastal resorts and agricultural interests, creating a space for the New South to come into being.

The history of oil is a chapter in the story of Europe's geopolitical decline in the twentieth century. During the era of the two world wars, a lack of oil constrained Britain and Germany from exerting their considerable economic and military power independently. Both nations' efforts to restore the independence they had enjoyed during the Age of Coal backfired by inducing strategic over-extension, which served only to hasten their demise as great powers. Having fought World War I with oil imported from the United States, Britain was determined to avoid relying upon another great power for its energy needs ever again. Even before the Great War had ended, Whitehall implemented a strategy of developing alternative sources of oil under British control. Britain's key supplier would be the Middle East - already a region of vital importance to the British Empire - whose oil potential was still unproven. As it turned out, there was plenty of oil in the Middle East, but Italian hostility after 1935 threatened transit through the Mediterranean. A shortage of tankers ruled out re-routing shipments around Africa, forcing Britain to import oil from US-controlled sources in the Western Hemisphere and depleting its foreign exchange reserves. Even as war loomed in 1939, therefore, Britain's quest for independence from the United States had failed. Germany was in an even worse position than Britain. It could not import oil from overseas in wartime due to the threat of blockade, while accumulating large stockpiles was impossible because of the economic and financial costs. The Third Reich went to war dependent on petroleum synthesized from coal, domestic crude oil, and overland imports, primarily from Romania. German leaders were confident, however, that they had enough oil to fight a series of short campaigns that would deliver to them the mastery of Europe. This plan derailed following the victory over France, when Britain continued to fight. This left Germany responsible for Europe's oil requirements while cut off from world markets. A looming energy crisis in Axis Europe, the absence of strategic alternatives, and ideological imperatives all compelled Germany in June 1941 to invade the Soviet Union and fulfill the Third Reich's ultimate ambition of becoming a world power - a decision that ultimately sealed its fate.