"Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War" discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. It focuses in particular on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade. Its formation and short-lived history on the battlefield were closely connected to the activities and propaganda of Yiddish-speaking Jewish migrant communists in Paris who described Jewish volunteers as 'Chosen Fighters of the Jewish People' in their daily newspaper "Naye Prese."Gerben Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement in the left and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the communist movement and beyond. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist). In addition it analyses the various ways in which Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company have been commemorated after WWII, tracing how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as 'the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms'.

Developing a knowledge of the Spanish-Italian connection between right-wing extremist groups is crucial to any detailed understanding of the history of fascism. Transnational Fascism in the Twentieth Century allows us to consider the global fascist network that built up over the course of the 20th century by exploring one of the significant links that existed within that network. It distinguishes and analyses the relationship between the fascists of Spain and Italy at three interrelated levels - that of the individual, political organisations and the state - whilst examining the world relations and contacts of both fascist factions, from Buenos Aires to Washington and Berlin to Montevideo, in what is a genuinely transnational history of the fascist movement. Incorporating research carried out in archives around the world, this book delivers key insights to further the historical study of right-wing political violence in modern Europe.

Thousands of young Jews were orphaned by the Nazi genocide in the German-occupied Soviet Union and struggled for survival on their own. This book weaves together oral histories, video testimonies, and memoirs produced in the former Soviet Union to show how the first generation of Soviet Jews, born after the foundation of the USSR, experienced the Nazi genocide and how they remember it in a context of social change following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The 1930s, a period when the notion interethnic solidarity and social equality were promoted and a partly lived reality, were formative for a cohort of young Jews. Soviet policies of the time established a powerful framework for the ways in which survivors of the genocide understood, survived, and represent their experience of violence and displacement. The book demonstrates that the young Soviet Jews' struggle for survival, and its memory, was shaped by interethnic relationships within the occupied society, German annihilation policy, and Soviet efforts to construct a patriotic unity of the Soviet population. Age and gender were crucial factors for experiencing, surviving, and remembering the Nazi genocide in Soviet territories, an element that Anika Walke emphasizes by investigating the individual and collective efforts to save peoples' lives, in hiding places and partisan formations, and how these efforts were subsequently erased in the construction of the Soviet war portrayal. Pioneers and Partisans demonstrates how the Holocaust unfolded in the German-occupied Soviet territories and how Soviet citizens responded to it. The book does this work through oral histories of atrocities and survival during the German occupation in Minsk and a number of small towns in Eastern Belorussia such as Shchedrin, Slavnoe, Zhlobin, and Shklov. Following particular individuals' stories, framed within the broader historical and cultural context, this book tells of repeated transformations of identity, from Soviet citizen in the prewar years, to a target of genocidal violence during the war, to barely accepted national minority in the postwar Soviet Union.

The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, dazzled with its new rainbow-colored electric lights. It showcased an array of wonders, like daredevils attempting to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or the "Animal King" putting the smallest woman in the world and also terrifying animals on display. But the thrill-seeking spectators little suspected that an assassin walked the fairgrounds, waiting for President William McKinley to arrive. In Margaret Creighton's hands, the result is "a persuasive case that the fair was a microcosm of some momentous facets of the United States, good and bad, at the onset of the American Century" (Howard Schneider, Wall Street Journal).

Students will be able to debate the key political, social, and economic issues and initiatives of each President covered here by using this rich source of pro and con primary documents contemporary to the time. Carefully selected presidential statements and opposition statements on each major issue of the presidents' administrations, along with accompanying explanatory material, will help students to debate the issues and apply critical thinking skills to their understanding of U.S. history. This volume covers the Presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, and Calvin Coolidge. The section on each president includes entries on 5-9 key issues of his administration, from enforcing anti-trust legislation at the beginning of Roosevelt's administration to arguments over the value of the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact to outlaw war that closed the Coolidge era. Primary documents include presidential speeches, letters, memoirs and autobiographies, congressional speeches, Supreme Court decisions, statements by opposition groups, newspaper editorials, and comments from prominent private citizens.

Students will be able to trace ongoing arguments over significant political, social and economic issues during the course of these five administrations that comprise the Progressive Era, the war years, and the postwar return to normalcy, years that witnessed perhaps the greatest period of transformation in U.S. history. These presidents took varying positions on the increasingly activist role of government, the growing power of business, the issue of tariffs, the rights of workers, women, and children, the problems of minority groups, the question of immigration, the issue of isolationism or intervention abroad, and the growing concern over the environment. The section on each president features an introductory overview of the key issues of his administration, followed by an entry on each issue. Each entry contains an overview of the issue and discussion of the opposing viewpoints, followed by a statement from the president and the text of a document taking an opposing point of view. The section on each president concludes with suggested reading for further study. A timeline of the period puts all the issues in chronological context.

Given the political, financial, social, and economic conditions inherited from Communist rule, Romania's new government concluded that a shock therapy approach to reform would create unmanageable chaos and enduring instability. Though committed to economic liberalization, decisionmakers espoused a gradualist approach to economic reform. The government pursued its objectives by implementing policies it considered functionally operational. Although Romania experienced the macro dislocations and downturns that are common in transitional economies in the region, the country sustained shallower recessions, lower inflationary spirals, and shorter production losses than many reforming economies. This study analyzes how, against calculated probabilities and within a relatively short time period, Romania has stabilized and assembled all the basic ingredients for a successful transformation from a centralized system to a market-driven economy.

The lessons derivable from Romania's relatively successful experiment with systemic transformation could be beneficial to reform architects in all newly liberalized economies in Eastern Europe. The conclusions of this study reinforce the view that it is imperative to examine and foster the existing preconditions, including political, institutional, and financial components, before subjecting an economy to extensive and intensive shocks that could be judiciously mitigated or circumvented. Unlike other newly liberalized economies in Eastern Europe, where the once disgraced Communists have returned to power, sympathy for a centralized system has been steadily and swiftly declining in Romania. The primary factor in Romania's success, the author claims, is its circumspect approach to reform.

Organized around the office of the president, this study focuses on American behavior at home and abroad from the Great Depression to the onset of the end of the Cold War, two key points during which America sought a re-definition of its proper relationship to the world. Domestically, American society continued the process of industrialization and urbanization that had begun in the 19th century. Urban growth accompanied industrialism, and more and more Americans lived in cities. Because of industrial growth and the consequent interest in foreign markets, the United States became a major world power. American actions as a nation, whether as positive attempts to mold events abroad or as negative efforts to enjoy material abundance in relative political isolation, could not help but affect the course of world history.

Under President Hoover, the federal government was still a comparatively small enterprise; challenges of the next six decades would transform it almost beyond belief, touching in one way or another almost every facet of American life. Before the New Deal, few Americans expected the government to do anything for them. By the end of the Second World War and in the aftermath of the Great Depression, however, Americans had turned to Washington for help. Even the popular Reagan presidency of the 1980s, the most conservative since Hoover, would fail to undo the basic New Deal commitment to assist struggling Americans. There would be no turning back the clock, at home or abroad.

This study follows the social, intellectual and political development of the Phoenician myth of origin in Lebanon from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 20th. Asher Kaufman demonstrates the role played by the lay, liberal Syrian-Lebanese who resided in Beirut, Alexandria and America towards the end of the 19th century in the birth and dissemination of this myth. Kaufman investigates the crucial place Phoenicianism occupied in the formation of Greater Lebanon in 1920. He also explores the way the Jesuit Order and the French authorities propagated this myth during the mandate years. The book also analyses literary writings of different Lebanese who advocated this myth, and of others who opposed it. Finally, the text provides an overview of Phoenicianism from Independece in 1943 to the present, demonstrating that despite the general objection to this myth, some aspects of it entered mainstream Lebanese national narratives. Kaufman's works should be of use to anyone interested in the birth of modern Lebanon as we know it today.

Landscape, politics and history: the Italian mountains as a crucible of national and natural identity. This book is part of a wider current in environmental history, that explores the links between nature and nation. It uncovers how Italian identity and mountains have constituted one another. It argues that state regimes since unification in 1861 have made mountains into national symbols and resources, thereby affecting mountain communities and ecosystems. The nationalisation of Italian mountains has been a story of military conquest and resistance, ecological and social transformation, expropriating resources and imposing meanings. The wind of 'big' history was rolling through the Alps and the Apennines: State building and national identities, totalitarianism and democracy, economic development and environmental protection, scientific knowledge and vernacular practices are the substance of this book. The book starts with the revaluation of mountains as the repository of the last Italian wilderness and chronicles the discovery/ invention of mountains as wild, primitive, and rebellious places needing to be tamed. War World I permanently transformed mountain landscapes and people, nationalising both. When the Fascists came to power, the process of politicisation of mountains reached its acme; the regime constructed and exploited mountains both rhetorically and materially, on one hand celebrating ruralism and rural people and, on the other, giving mountain natural resources to large hydro-electric corporations. Having been the sanctuary of Resistance against the Nazi-Fascist occupation, the Italian mountains were emptied by the economic boom of the 1960s; only recently have the green of natural parks and the white of the ski resorts become the distinctive colors of the new, tourist-oriented Italian mountains.

For many people, urbanization and the growth of big cities promised new lives, employment opportunities and increased prosperity. And in the long run this fundamental process of social change witnessed the spread of a new urban way of life. In the short run, however, the rapid urbanization of German society brought a range of pressing social, political and environmental concerns. Rapidly expanding cities meant overcrowding, sickness, pollution and growing inequality between the rich and poor. While some of these problems were largely overcome in the course of the twentieth century, German cities faced new challenges due to the Nazi dictatorship, the bombing of World War II, and the interventions of city planners in both the GDR and the Federal Republic.
This book explores the nature and impact of Germany's urbanization during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and emphasizes the range of solutions and reforms, both private and governmental, introduced to address these issues. What did these new cities look like? How did they develop? Who ran them? How were cities perceived by their inhabitants? Exploring these and other key questions, this book makes a vital new contribution to studies of urbanization, one of the most fundamental factors in the creation of the modern era.

Australia's Prime Minister and premier diplomat in the 1930/1940s, this new biography presents him as a consistent internationalist and places him in a global context. Stanley Melbourne Bruce was at the centre of Imperial politics for more than two decades from the early 1920s until the end of the Second World War. This new biography presents Bruce as a consistent internationalist. Educated in Melbourne and Cambridge, Bruce, as a businessman, was alive to the importance of international commerce, and particularly Anglo-Australian trade. This lay at the core of his internationalism, which took the form in the 1920s of encouraging the political and economic integration of the British Empire. Bruce's punitive treatment of militant Australian trade unionists and his upholding of constitutionalism and law and order in the 1920s was part of an effort to defend one form of internationalism, commitment to the British Empire, against the competing international ideology of communism. While continuing to support a unified British Empire acting as a progressive force in world affairs, Bruce championed stronger international collaboration through the League of Nations and the United Nations and through cooperation between the Empire and the United States.

Grand Tours is a chronicle of the American visits of five charismatic pianists--Leopold de Meyer, Henri Herz, Sigismund Thalberg, Anton Rubenstein, and Hans von Bulow--during the late nineteenth century. Performing Beethoven and Chopin in gold-rush era California, these pianists introduced many Americans to the delights of the concert hall. With humor and insight, Lott describes the clash between the flamboyant, elegant, European pianists and American audiences more accustomed to circuses and rodeos than these "serious" entertainments. Lott also explores the creative and sometimes outlandish publicity techniques of managers seeking to capitalize on rich but uncharted American markets. The tours, which included almost a thousand concerts in more than one hundred cities in America and Canada, illustrate the rigors of the performing life, the wide range of nineteenth-century audiences and their gradual transformation from boisterous participators to respectful listeners, and the establishment of the piano recital as it exists today. With the colorful personalities of the pianists, the juxtaposition of high art and unsophisticated audiences, and the predilection of Americans to treat even the most serious subjects with humor, the book is illuminating and entertaining. The text is illustrated with ads, newspaper clippings, and correspondence that bring to life this collision of cultures.

From the 1920s and 1930s, when American cinema depicted the South as a demi-paradise populated by wealthy landowners, glamorous belles, and happy slaves, through later, more realistic depictions of the region in films based on works by Erskine Caldwell, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Robert Penn Warren, Hollywood's view of the South has been as ever-changing as the place itself. This comprehensive reference guide to Southern films offers credits, plot descriptions, and analyses of how the stereotypes and characterizations in each film contribute to our understanding of a most contentious American time and place.

Organized by subjects including Economic Conditions, Plantation Life, The Ku Klux Klan, and The New Politics, "Hollywood's Image of the South" seeks to coin a new genre by describing its conventions and attitudes. Even so, the Southern film crosses all known generic boundaries, including the comedy, the women's film, the "noir," and many others. This invaluable guide to an under-recognized category of American cinema illustrates how much there is to learn about a time and place from watching the movies that aim to capture it.

Geoff Eley's magnum opus, this book analyses the role the Left has played in establishing democracy in modern Europe. Eley looks at socialist, labour, feminist, Communist, and other organisations in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe. He considers how the Left has been a part of key moments of change in European history, including the rise of industrialisation, the World Wars, the Cold War, student uprisings in 1968, and the overturn of Communist governments in Eastern Europe.

The Development of Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo, 1878-1918 charts the urban history of Sarajevo in this period within the context of other modernising central-European cities. It gives detailed consideration to elements of change and continuity in the development of the urban fabric, as well as the economic, social and cultural life of the city. The book also explores how far changes were the work of the occupying Austro-Hungarian administration and the influx of immigrants from elsewhere, and suggests that the local elites from all confessions took an active role in the redevelopment of their city, building an integrated 'Sarajevan' version of urban modernity at a middle-class level. Case studies of particular buildings and their owners, and maps illustrating the chronological development of the city during the period, are used throughout the book to highlight aspects of the aforementioned themes. The built environment forms a major source of evidence, together with material from a range of other sources, including census records, directories, newspapers, government documents, planning records and postcards. These sources are also used to augment observations and arguments put forward in this important study for all students and scholars of modern Central and Eastern Europe.

The essays in this book demonstrate the breadth and vitality of American intellectual history. Their core theme is the diversity of both American intellectual life and of the frameworks that we must use to make sense of that diversity. The Worlds of American Intellectual History has at its heart studies of American thinkers. Yet it follows these thinkers and their ideas as they have crossed national, institutional, and intellectual boundaries. The volume explores ways in which American ideas have circulated in different cultures. It also examines the multiple sites-from social movements, museums, and courtrooms to popular and scholarly books and periodicals-in which people have articulated and deployed ideas within and beyond the borders of the United States. At these cultural frontiers, the authors demonstrate, multiple interactions have occurred - some friendly and mutually enriching, others laden with tension, misunderstandings, and conflict. The same holds for other kinds of borders, such as those within and between scholarly disciplines, or between American history and the histories of other cultures. The richness of contemporary American intellectual history springs from the variety of worlds with which it must engage. Intellectual historians have always relished being able to move back and forth between close readings of particular texts and efforts to make sense of broader cultural dispositions. That range is on display in this volume, which includes essays by scholars as fully at home in the disciplines of philosophy, literature, economics, sociology, political science, education, science, religion, and law as they are in history. It includes essays by prominent historians of European thought, attuned to the transatlantic conversations in which Europeans and Americans have been engaged since the seventeenth century, and American historians whose work has carried them not only to different regions in North America but across the North Atlantic to Europe, across the South Atlantic to Africa, and across the Pacific to South Asia.

Solomon Northup's riveting memoir written in 1853 and now an award winning major motion picture. Mr. Northup recounts his powerful life story of being born a free man in New York, kidnapped and forced into slavery for twelve years and then freed and reunited with his wife and children. 12 YEARS A SLAVE: NARRATIVE OF SOLOMON NORTHUP, A CITIZEN OF NEW-YORK, KIDNAPPED IN WASHINGTON CITY IN 1841 AND RESCUED IN 1853, FROM A COTTON PLANTATION NEAR THE RED RIVER IN LOUISIANA. "A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's many thousands gone who retained his humanity in the depths of degradation. It is also a chilling insight into the peculiar institution." -Saturday Review

The southern Agrarians were a group of twelve young men who joined, from 1929 to 1937, in a fascinating intellectual and political movement. Prominent among them were Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, and Donald Davidson. In the midst of the depression, these gifted writers tried, as did so many other intellectuals, to plot the best cultural and economic choices open to southerners and Americans as a whole. That they failed to gain most of their goals does not diminish the significance of their crusade, or the enduring values that they espoused.

Interweaving group biography and intellectual history, Conkin traces how these young intellectuals came to write their classic manifesto, "I'll Take My Stand, " relates their political advocacy to the earlier Fugitive movement in poetry, and follows their careers after the Agrarian crusade fell apart. More than any other historian or critic, Conkin takes seriously the economic and political beliefs of these southern writers.

Greenbaum examines the use of use of myth as a means of social control and examines the corporate mythology of the Gilded Age. Progressive politicians led the opposition to these myths, arguing that government was not to be used to enrich corporations, but to reduce their economic and political power and to increase equity. The progressive challenge redirected government to serve the larger commonwealth and, thus, transformed ordinary lives. Gilded Age mythology, resurrected in the 1980s, restored corporate domination and economic inequity.

Through his extensive analysis of the lives of six prominent Progressives, Greenbaum seeks to contravene contemporary mythology. He begins with George Norris of Nebraska, a Republican Congressman and Senator from 1906 until 1942; William E. Borah, Republican of Idaho, who served in the Senate from 1906 until his death in 1940; and Hiram Johnson, who was Republican Governor of California, Progressive Vice Presidential candidate in 1912, and Senator from 1916 until his demise in 1945. These chapters are followed by an examination of William Gibbs McAdoo, a New York business promoter, who was Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, the leading candidate for the 1924 Democratic Presidential nomination, and Senator from California from 1932 until 1938; Bainbridge Colby, a New York legislator, who supported Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and was Wilson's last Secretary of State; and Edward P. Costigan, Colorado Republican, who became the Progressive appointee to the Tariff Commission and Democratic Senator from 1930 through 1936. The volume concludes with an analysis of the progressive impulse and contrasts progressive views with resurrected Gilded Age mythology, the new ideas of the 1980s. An important study for scholars, students, and other researchers interested in progressivism and the role of government in American socioeconomic life and intelligent readers interested in ideas.