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Books > History > World history > From 1900 > General
The history of Eastern Europe during the Cold War is one punctuated
by protest and rebellion. Revolution and Resistance in Eastern
Europe covers these flashpoints from the Stalin-Tito split of 1948
to the dramatic collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.Covering East
Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland and Romania,
the authors provide comprehensive critical analysis of the varying
forms of dissent in the East European socialist states. They take a
comparative approach and show how the different movements affected
one another. Incorporating archival material only accessible since
1989, they discuss issues such as the diverse manifestations of
non-conformity among different strata of the population, the
complex relationship between Moscow and the national Communist
Parties, the loosening of Soviet control after 1985, and everyday
resistance to state authority.This book offers a firm grounding in
the tumultuous decades of communist rule, which is essential to
understanding the contemporary politics of Eastern Europe.
Between 1941 and 1945 as many as 70,000 inmates died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northwestern Germany. The exact number will never be known. A large number of these deaths were caused by malnutrition and disease, mainly typhus, shortly before and after liberation. It was at this time, in April of 1945, that Michael Hargrave answered a notice at the Westminster Hospital Medical School for 'volunteers'. On the day of his departure the 21-year-old learned that he was being sent to Bergen-Belsen, liberated only two weeks before. This firsthand account, a diary written for his mother, details Michael's month-long experience at the camp. He compassionately relates the horrendous living conditions suffered by the prisoners, describing the sickness and disease he encountered and his desperate, often fruitless, struggle to save as many lives as possible. Amidst immeasurable horrors, his descriptions of the banalities of everyday life and diagrams of the camp's layout take on a new poignancy, while anatomic line drawings detail the medical conditions and his efforts to treat them.Original newspaper cuttings and photographs of the camp, many previously unpublished, add a further layer of texture to the endeavors of an inexperienced medical student faced with extreme human suffering.
The impact of the Irish Famine of 1845-1852 was unparalleled in both political and psychological terms. In this scholarly new study, Melissa Fegan explores the Famine's legacy to literature, tracing it down to 1919. Dr Fegan examines both fiction and non-fiction, and provides a strong historical framework for the understanding of the contemporary Irish mentality.
Fascism, Nazism, and Communism dominated the history of much of the
twentieth century, yet comparatively little attention has focused
on popular reactions to the regimes that sprang from these
ideologies. Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes is the first
volume to investigate popular reactions to totalitarian rule in the
Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the communist
regimes in Poland and East Germany after 1945.
A scholarly and engaging study, this history of Swaziland, by an author who spent many years in the kingdom, presents a vivid account of the interplay of politics and personalities along the passage to post-colonial independence. From the early stages of Swazi occupation of the present-day kingdom to the accession of Sobhuza II as king in 1921, this book traces problems in consolidating leadership under the Dlamini chieftaincy and examines the infuence of Boer and British settlers, and of mining and commercial interests, on Swazi culture and governance. It recounts the story of a thriving small nation that sought to maintain traditional customs and institutions in the face of a powerful European presence. Each of the sixteen chapters concentrates on an aspect of political history that has influenced the character of the present-day kingdom, and much of the material, especially after 1900, has not been utilized in previous studies. The introduction looks at Swazi experience in a contemporary context, evaluating historic forces that have made for stability in a rapidly changing world. Other sections detail the Swazi reaction to European-controlled neighboring states (the Transvaal, Natal, and Mozambique), the tensions introduced by successive Boer and British policies, the Swazi detachment during two external wars (1899-1902 and 1914-1918), and widespread concerns about colonialism and self-governance following World War I.
Mohandas Gandhi, icon of Indian liberation, remains an inspiration for anti-capitalists and peace activists globally. His campaigns for national liberation based on non-violence and mass civil disobedience were critical to defeating the power of the British Empire. This biography examines his campaigns from South Africa to India to evaluate the successes and failures of non-violent resistance. Seventy years after his death, his legacy remains contested: was he a saint, revolutionary, class conciliator, or self-obsessed spiritual zealot? The contradictions of Gandhi's politics are unpicked through an analysis of the social forces at play in the mass movement around him. Entrusted to liberate the oppressed of India, his key support base were industrialists, landlords and the rich peasantry. Gandhi's moral imperatives often clashed with these vested material interests, as well as with more radical currents to his left. Today, our world is scarred by permanent wars, racism and violence, environmental destruction and economic crisis. Can non-violent resistance win against state and corporate power? This book explores Gandhi's experiments in civil disobedience to assess their relevance for struggles today.
The building of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway extension over water to Key West from 1905 to 1916 was s triumph of engineering and logistics. The Keys were remote and with little means of communication. The massive amounts of materials had to be moved with steam power. This book tells the story of the planners and their plan and its execution. It has 250 old photos, most have never been published before.
This is yet another fine historical dictionary from Greenwood. . . . This carefully edited work should prove an asset for all reference collections and as a useful handbook for students of twentieth-century American history. "Reference Books Bulletin" "The Dictionary" presents more than 700 short essays on people--George Herman Babe Ruth, Warren Gamaliel Harding, and Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle; legislation--Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926, and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act of 1932; popular culture--baseball, motion pictures, radio, jazz; foreign policy--the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922, the Nine Power Treaty, the League of Nations; politics; social history--women's rights, the Harlem Renaissance, immigration; and culture--the Lost Generation, expatriatism. A detailed chronology and selected bibliography with twenty-three subcategores complete this history of the 1920s.
In one of the twentieth century's landmark Supreme Court cases, "Brown v. Board of Education," social scientists such as Kenneth Clark helped to convince the Supreme Court Justices of the debilitating psychological effects of racism and segregation. John P. Jackson, Jr., examines the well-known studies used in support of "Brown," such as Clark's famous "doll tests," as well as decades of research on race which lead up to the case. Jackson reveals the struggles of social scientists in their effort to impact American law and policy on race and poverty and demonstrates that without these scientists, who brought their talents to bear on the most pressing issues of the day, we wouldn't enjoy the legal protections against discrimination we may now take for granted. For anyone interested in the history and legacy of "Brown v. Board of Education," this is an essential book.
During World War I, the Catholic church blocked the distribution of government-sponsored V.D. prevention films, initiating an era of attempts by the church to censor the movie industry. This book is an entertaining and engrossing account of those efforts-how they evolved, what effect they had on the movie industry, and why they were eventually abandoned. Frank Walsh tells how the church's influence in Hollywood grew through the 1920s and reached its peak in the 1930s, when the film industry allowed Catholics to dictate the Production Code, which became the industry's self-censorship system, and the Legion of Decency was established by the church to blacklist any films it considered offensive. With the industry's Joe Breen, a Catholic layman, cutting movie scenes during production and the Legion of Decency threatening to ban movies after release, the Catholic church played a major role in determining what Americans saw and didn't see on the screen during Hollywood's Golden Age. Walsh provides fascinating details about the church's efforts to guard against anything it felt might corrupt moviegoers' morals: forcing Gypsy Rose Lee to change her screen name; investigating Frank Sinatra's fitness to play a priest in Miracle of the Bells; altering a dance sequence in Oklahoma; eliminating marital infidelity from Two-Faced Woman; compelling Howard Hughes to make 147 cuts in The Outlaw; blocking the distribution of Birth of a Baby; and attacking Asphalt Jungle for serving the "crooked purposes of the Soviet Union." However, notes Walsh, there were serious divisions within the church over film policy. Bishops feuded with one another over how best to deal with movie moguls, priests differed over whether attending a condemned film constituted a serious sin, and Legion of Decency reviewers disagreed over film evaluations. Walsh shows how the decline of the studio system, the rise of a new generation of better-educated Catholics, and changing social values gradually eroded the Legion's power, forcing the church eventually to terminate its efforts to control the type of film that Hollywood turned out. In an epilogue he relates this history of censorship to current efforts by Christian fundamentalists to end "sex, violence, filth, and profanity" in the media.
The aftershocks of the volatile 20th century will be felt for generations to come. In order to understand the current and future direction of the world, it is imperative to reflect on this century's seminal events and their lasting impact. Designed for students, this unique resource offers detailed descriptions and expert analysis of the 20th century's most important events: World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Rise of Fascism, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Chinese Revolution, the end of Colonialism and the Rise of the Third World, European unification, and the collapse of the Soviet union. Each of the events is dealt with in a separate chapter. An introductory essay presenting the facts about each event precedes an interpretive essay by a recognized authority on the event. Exploring beyond the traditional textbook treatment of history, these interpretive essays consider the immediate and far-reaching ramifications of each event. Through this innovative approach, students will be inspired to further analyze these events not only from a historical perspective, but also in the context of the world in which they live today. In order to make complex history easily understandable, the ]ntroductory essay for each event provides factual background in a clear, concise, chronological manner. Written for a general readership, the interpretive essays assess each event in terms of its political, economic, sociocultural, and international/diplomatic impact. Some essays validate the norm, while others challenge conventional wisdom; all reflect the most recent scholarship concerning each event. Each interpretive essay is followed by an annotated bibliography that identifies the most important and most recent scholarship about the respective events. A photo of each event offers a visual component to the narrative. The volume contains four useful appendices: a glossary of names, events, organizations, treaties, and terms; a timeline of important events in 20th-century world history; the population of selected countries; and a list of states achieving independence since 1945. This work is perfect for the high school, community college, and undergraduate library reference shelf, as well as supplementary reading in social studies and world history courses.
Volume XXV of the distinguished annual Studies in Contemporary
Jewry explores new understandings and approaches to Jewish
"ethnicity." In current parlance regarding multicultural diversity,
Jews are often considered to belong socially to the "majority,"
whereas "otherness" is reserved for "minorities." But these group
labels and their meanings have changed over time. This volume
analyzes how "ethnic," "ethnicity," and "identity" have been
applied to Jews, past and present, individually and collectively.
Published in 1944, What the Negro Wants was a direct and emphatic call for the end of segregation and racial discrimination that set the agenda for the civil rights movement to come. With essays by fourteen prominent African American intellectuals, including Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Mary McLeod Bethune, A. Philip Randolph, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Roy Wilkins, What the Negro Wants explores the policies and practices that could be employed to achieve equal rights and opportunities for Black Americans, rejecting calls to reform the old system of segregation and instead arguing for the construction of a new system of equality. Stirring intense controversy at the time of publication, the book serves as a unique window into the history of the civil rights movement and offers startling comparisons to today's continuing fight against racism and inequality. Originally gathered together by distinguished Howard University historian Rayford W. Logan in 1944, our 2001 edition of the book includes Rayford Logan's introduction to the 1969 reprint, a new introduction by Kenneth Janken, and an updated bibliography.
This one-volume sourcebook draws together the scholarly literature assessing news coverage in the U.S. mainstream media of Americans of African, Native, Asian, Hispanic, or Pacific Islander origin. The work covers over 60 years, beginning in 1934, and examines the 50 states and the territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean that are currently under U.S. governance. The categories of racial and cultural groups follow the scheme of the 1990 U.S. Census, which provided the most detailed breakdown of race and ethnicity of the American population in the 200-year history of the census. This sourcebook gives parallel treatment to each of these five census groups. Every chapter begins with a history of that group as it came under U.S. jurisdiction. Then, each chapter is divided into six periods suggested by pivotal news events and discusses studies of news coverage of that group during that period. Each chapter also contains extensive endnotes and a selected bibliography on a racial or cultural group. Also included are chapters on investigative reporting and federal regulation of broadcasting as they relate to minorities.
The original 1944 G.I. Bill holds a special place in the American imagination. In popular mythology, it stands as the capstone of the Greatest Generation narrative of World War II, a fitting reward for the nation's heroes. Given the almost universal acclaim afforded the bill, future generations of warriors might well have expected to receive similar remuneration for their sacrifice. But when soldiers of the Vietnam conflict shed their fatigues and returned home to civilian life, they found that their G.I. Bills fell well short of what many of them believed they had earned.In this first legislative history of the G.I. Bill during the Vietnam Era, Mark Boulton takes the story of veterans' politics beyond the 1944 G.I. Bill as he seeks to uncover the reasons why Vietnam veterans were less well compensated than their predecessors. In crafting their legislation, both conservative and liberal politicians of the Vietnam era wrestled with fundamental questions about the obligations of American citizenship. What does it mean to serve one's country? What does society owe those civilians it puts in uniform? Repeatedly, in answering those questions, lawmakers from both ends of the political spectrum found reasons to curb the generosity of the benefits offered.The G.I. Bills should play a central role in our understanding of the Vietnam veteran's post-service lives, just as they do for World War II veterans. Taking the story of the G.I. Bills beyond the World War II generation allows for a more complete understanding of the veteran experience in America.
From its inception, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) provoked controversy. Today it is widely regarded as having contributed to the end of the Cold War. Bringing together new and innovative research on the CSCE, this volume explores questions key to understanding the Cold War: What role did diplomats play in shaping the 1975 Helsinki Final Act? How did that agreement and the CSCE more broadly shape societies in Europe and North America? And how did the CSCE and activists inspired by the Helsinki Final Act influence the end of the Cold War?
A history of Japan-United States relations from the point of view of a pro-American Japanese scholar, this work is designed to serve as an analysis of the current situation--the third opening of Japan to the West in the last century. The two earlier openings failed when Japan adopted the policy of sonno-joi (which means literally revere the emperor and expel the foreigners). This book is written to try to forestall the very real possibility of a recurrence of sonno-joi: as a reaction to the current opening by appealing to both the Japanese and the Americans to understand Japanese history and Japanese sensibilities. Japan and the United States share many interests and goals, but they suffer from a tremendous gap in mutual perceptions. Ibe makes an attempt here to explain the Japanese and their view of the world to a non-Japanese audience. He believes Japan is not an inexplicable riddle nor a monolith Japan, Inc. He argues that since time immemorial, forging unity among the many warring groups in Japan has been difficult, whether uniting the warlord clans of the ancient period, the feudalistic domains of premodern times, the political factions of the modernizing period, or the private corporations or government ministries of today. Ibe examines the difficulties the Japanese have encountered in their efforts to unify and to articulate their desires--which is not well understood by non-Japanese. This book is ideal for students, scholars, and the informed citizen interested in Japan and Japanese-American relations.
Drawing on oral narratives and archival sources gathered in Berlin, this study explores how some 35 Berliners have woven personal memories, their city's divided past, and their nation's complex historical legacy into cohesive life narratives and collective identities. Redding argues that daily experience during the final years of World War II inadvertently prepared German youth for defeat and occupation. While postwar officials lamented youth's apparent apathy, young Berliners were in fact applying lessons in pragmatism and self-reliance learned as National Socialist society crumbled in 1944 and 1945. Although competing political forces strove to rapidly remobilize German youth, young Berliners took advantage of destabilized sociopolitical structures in their war-torn city to assert autonomy and pursue personal initiatives. Their retrospective narratives reveal creative efforts to claim for themselves the normal pleasures of modern youth in the midst of rubble. These accounts also demonstrate how Cold War ideologies and loyalties have informed memories of daily life in Allied occupied Berlin. In a broader sense, the study sheds new light on the collective experiences, memories, and self-perceptions of a generation of Germans who grew up in a world defined by World War II and Allied occupation, rebuilt their devastated society under Cold War parameters, and eventually negotiated the unification of the two successor states.
Eastern Europe in Transformation examines the history of sociology in Eastern Europe during the period leading up to and including glasnost and perestroika. Taking advantage of the raising of the iron curtain, the volume editors have assembled 25 contributors from throughout the region to chronicle the impact these developments have had on sociology, as well as any contributions sociologists might have made to them. The result is a fascinating account of a discipline under siege, struggling to come to terms with its place in a changing social milieu. In addition, the work offers Western sociologists unprecedented access to the sociological research carried out in Eastern Europe during this period.
Using the Nation of Islam as a vehicle, but largely through his own dedication, energy, and intelligence, Malcolm X became an indefatigable Black leader during the 1960s. This encyclopedic volume examines one of the most controversial and heroic leaders of the 20th century. Over 500 essays discuss how Malcolm X affected the world in which he lived and how the influence of people, issues, and events shaped his development as an international figure. With more than 70 contributors from black studies, history, political science, sociology, philosophy, education, journalism, and psychology, the encyclopedia combines the knowledge of a precise group of writers. Addressing a major social, religious, and political figure through their own disciplines, these authors flesh out both the diversity and the complexity of the world that defined Malcolm X.
A woman of intelligence and energy, Lou Henry Hoover's talents benefited a large number of cultural and philanthropic organizations, but her distaste for publicity obscured her many achievements until now. By the time her husband reached the White House in 1929, she had already established herself as a woman with high goals. The first woman to earn a university degree in geology, she collaborated with her husband in the translation of a classic book on mining methods. During World War I, she organized assistance for American travelers stranded in Europe, campaigned on behalf of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, and set up a boarding house in Washington D.C. for young women working in war-related agencies. Lou Hoover served as president of the Girl Scouts during its formative years, organized the Women's Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation to encourage public participation in sports, and raised money for a number of cultural and philanthropic organizations. As First Lady, she redecorated the White House to make it a suitable residence for a head of state, cataloging its furnishings for posterity. She founded a school for underprivileged Appalachian children and ran a private, unpublicized relief network for Americans suffering under the Great Depression. After leaving the White House, she resumed the volunteer work that remained such a treasured part of her life. |
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