This book is rooted in the author's experience as an interviewer and researcher in the Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project - the biggest European oral history project devoted to a single Nazi concentration camp system, realized in the years 2002/2003 at the University of Vienna. Over 850 Mauthausen survivors have been recorded worldwide, more than 160 of them in Poland, and over 30 by the author. The work offers an in-depth analysis of Polish survivors' accounts, sensitive to both, form and content of these stories, as well as their social and cultural framing. The analysis is accompanied by an interpretation of (Polish) camp experiences in a broader biographical and historical perspective. The book is an interpretive journey from camp experiences, through the survivors' memories, to narratives recalling them and backwards.

Russian-speaking Jews from the former Soviet Union are a peculiarity in the Jewish world. After decades living in a repressive, nominally atheistic state, these Jews did manage to retain a strong sense of Jewish identity-but one that was almost completely divorced from Judaism. Today, more than ten percent of Jews speak or understand Russian, signaling the importance of an ever-vexing question: why are Russian Jews the way they are? In pursuit of an answer, Anna Shternshis's groundbreaking When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin draws on nearly 500 oral history interviews on the Soviet Jewish experience with Soviet citizens who were adults by the 1940s. Soviet Jews lived through tumultuous times: the Great Terror, World War II, the anti-Semitic policies of the postwar period, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But, like millions of other Soviet citizens, they married, raised children, and built careers, pursuing life as best they could in a profoundly hostile environment. One of the first scholars to record and analyze oral testimonies of Soviet Jews, Shternshis unearths heartbreaking, deeply poignant, and often funny stories of the everyday choices Jews were forced to navigate as a repressed minority living in a totalitarian regime. Shternshis reveals how ethnicity rapidly transformed into a disability, as well as a negative characteristic, for Soviet Jews in the postwar period, and shows how it was something they needed desperately to overcome in order to succeed. That sense of self has persisted well into the twenty-first century, and has impacted the Jewish identities of the children and grandchildren of Shternshis's subjects, the foundational generation of contemporary Russian Jewish culture. An illuminating work of social and cultural history, When Sonia Met Boris traces the fascinating contours of contemporary Russian Jewish identity back to their very roots.

A sweeping new account of ancient Greek culture and its remarkable diversity.

Covering the whole of the ancient Greek experience from its beginnings late in the third millennium BCE to the Roman conquest in 30 BCE, Out of One, Many is an accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking. In this fresh and witty exploration of the thought, culture, society, and history of the Greeks, Jennifer Roberts traces not only the common values that united them across the seas and the centuries, but also the enormous diversity in their ideas and beliefs.

Examining the huge importance to the Greeks of religion, mythology, the Homeric epics, tragic and comic drama, philosophy, and the city-state, the book offers shifting perspectives on an extraordinary and astonishingly creative people. Century after century, in one medium after another, the Greeks addressed big questions, many of which are still very much with us, from whether gods exist and what happens after we die to what political system is best and how we can know what is real. Yet for all their virtues, Greek men set themselves apart from women and foreigners and profited from the unpaid labor of enslaved workers, and the book also looks at the mixed legacy of the ancient Greeks today.

The result is a rich, wide-ranging, and compelling history of a fascinating and profoundly influential culture in all its complexity—and the myriad ways, good and bad, it continues to shape us today.

For Kennedy devotees, as well as readers unfamiliar with the "lion of the Senate", this book presents the compelling story of Edward Kennedy's unexpected rise to become one of the most consequential legislators in American history and a passionate defender of progressive values, achieving legislative compromises across the partisan divide. What distinguishes Edward Kennedy: An Oral History is the nuanced detail that emerges from the senator's never-before published, complete descriptions of his life and work, placed alongside the observations of his friends, family, and associates. The senator's twenty released interviews reveal, in his own voice, the stories of Kennedy triumph and tragedy-from the Oval Office to the waters of Chappaquiddick. Spanning the presidencies of JFK to Barack Obama, Edward Kennedy was an iconic player in American political life, the youngest sibling of America's most powerful dynasty; he candidly addresses this role: his legislative accomplishments and failures, his unsuccessful run for the White House, his impact on the Supreme Court, his observations on Washington gridlock, and his personal faults. The interviews and introductions to them create an unsurpassed and illuminating volume. Gathered as part of the massive Edward Kennedy Oral History Project, conducted by the University of Virginia's Miller Center, the senator's interviews allow readers to see how oral history can evolve over a three-year period, drawing out additional details as the interviewee becomes increasingly comfortable with the process and the interviewer. Yet, given the Kennedys' well-known penchant for image creation, what the senator doesn't say or how he says what he chooses to include, is often more revealing than a simple declarative statement.

Through sources ranging from ancient forsundun (praise songs) and the hero kings to newspaper accounts, public decrees, and even graffiti, this book offers vivid portraits of major events and everyday life in Ireland through the centuries--beginning with Golamh, the legendary leader of the band of Iberian Celts who settled the island more than three thousand years ago, and concluding with gripping accounts by those on both sides of the bloody civil conflict in Northern Ireland.

Lady Bird Johnson, an early champion of the environment and Project Head Start, has been widely acknowledged as one of America's greatest First Ladies. In a 1982 poll, historians ranked her the third most influential, behind Abigail Adams and Eleanor Roosevelt. This oral history encompass three important stories. The first is that of a young woman's transformation from a shy, rural East Texan into one of America's most admired First Ladies. The second reveals the remarkable emergence of Lyndon Johnson, one of the twentieth century's most powerful political and legislative leaders, as told by his most trusted confidante. Finally, this volume presents a keen observer's day-by-day view of a turbulent world, as "the greatest generation" confronted momentous challenges at home and abroad. Lady Bird Johnson's oral history provides an intimate, first-person narrative of her own development and activities as well as the life she shared with LBJ. It includes her vivid descriptions of the moments and events that shaped their destiny and influenced their attitudes on such issues as civil rights, education, health care, and national defense. Her rich verbal portraits brings to life scores of prominent political personalities, including Sam Rayburn, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy. The core narrative consists of thirty-seven oral history interviews that Michael L. Gillette conducted with her during the late 1970s and 1980s; the transcripts were opened only in May 2011 and have never previously been available for research. The lengthy seal under which they have been held is a measure of Lady Bird's expansiveness and candor. In recording the interviews, Mrs. Johnson marshaled the same elegant prose and attention to detail that characterized her memoir, A White House Diary. Selected excerpts from interviews with some of those who knew Lady Bird Johnson best, as well as transcripts of White House tapes, appear in sidebars to amplify and supplement her own narrative. Oxford will publish the book to coincide with the centennial of Lady Bird Johnson's birth in December 2012.

Contesting home defence is a new history of the Home Guard, a novel national defence force of the Second World War composed of civilians who served as part-time soldiers: it questions accounts of the force and the war, which have seen them as symbols of national unity. It scrutinises the Home Guard's reputation and explores whether this 'people's army' was a site of social cohesion or of dissension by assessing the competing claims made for it at the time. It then examines the way it was represented during the war and has been since, notably in Dad's Army, and discusses the memories of men and women who served in it. The book makes a significant and original contribution to debates concerning the British home front and introduces fresh ways of understanding the Second World War. -- .

Based upon interviews with a wide-range of former German Army and SS soldiers, these unique personal episodes vividly depict the extraordinary circumstances of the Third Reich's final days as armies closed in from all sides. Le Tissier's interviews link the brutality of combat with the humanity of the desperate battles.

By his own admission, SS Kommandant Rudolf Hoss was history's greatest mass murderer, personally supervising the extermination of approximately two million people, mostly Jews, at the death camp in Auschwitz, Poland. Death Dealer is the first complete translation of Hoss's memoirs into English. The Memoirs of Kommandant Rudolf Hoss were written between October 1946 and April 1947. At the suggestion of psychologist Professor Stanislaw Batawia and Professor Jan Sehn, the prosecuting attorney for the Polish War Crimes Commission in Warsaw, Hoss wrote explanations of how the camp developed, his impressions of the various personalities with whom he dealt, and even about the destruction of the millions in the gas chambers. This written testimony is perhaps the most important document attesting to the Holocaust, because it is the only candid, detailed, and (for the most part) honest description of the Final Solution from a high-ranking SS officer intimately involved in carrying out the plans of Hitler and Himmler. With the cold objectivity of a common hit-man, Kommandant Hoss bloodlessly chronicles the discovery of the most effective poison gas and the technical obstacles that often thwarted his aim to kill as efficiently as possible. Staring at the horror without reacting, Hoss allows conditions in his camp to reduce human beings to walking skeletons, then he labels them as subhumans fit only to die. Readers will witness Hoss's shallow rationalizations as he tries to balance his deeds with his increasingly disturbed, yet always ineffectual, conscience. Published here for the first time are several photographs, including those of Hoss, the Nazi occupation of Poland, and of the camp itself; original diagrams of the camps; the original minutes of the Wannsee conference; and Hoss's final letters.

From Loki to Thor, Ragnarok to Beowulf A gripping and truly mesmerising delve into the Norse legends From bestselling books to blockbusting Hollywood movies, the myths of the Scandinavian gods and heroes are part of the modern day landscape. For over a millennium before the arrival of Christianity, the legends permeated everyday life in Iceland and the northern reaches of Europe. Since that time, they have been perpetuated in literature and the arts in forms as diverse as Tolkien and Wagner, graphic novels to the world of Marvel. This book covers the entire cast of supernatural beings, from gods to trolls, heroes to monsters, and deals with the social and historical background to the myths, topics such as burial rites, sacrificial practices and runes.

Oral history gives history back to the people in their own words. And in giving a past, it also helps them towards a future of their own making. Oral history and life stories help to create a truer picture of the past and the changing present, documenting the lives and feelings of all kinds of people, many otherwise hidden from history. It explores personal and family relationships and uncovers the secret cultures of work. It connects public and private experience, and it highlights the experiences of migrating between cultures. At the same time it can bring courage to the old, meaning to communities, and contact between generations. Sometimes it can offer a path for healing divided communities and those with traumatic memories. Without it the history and sociology of our time would be poor and narrow. In this fourth edition of his pioneering work, fully revised with Joanna Bornat, Paul Thompson challenges the accepted myths of historical scholarship. He discusses the reliability of oral evidence in comparison with other sources and considers the social context of its development. He looks at the relationship between memory, the self and identity. He traces oral history through its own past and weighs up the recent achievements of a movement which has become international, with notably strong developments in North America, Europe, Australia, Latin America, South Africa and the Far East, despite resistance from more conservative academics. This new edition combines the classic text of The Voice of the Past with many new sections, including especially the worldwide development of different forms of oral history and the parallel memory boom, as well as discussions of theory in oral history and of memory, trauma and reconciliation. It offers a deep social and historical interpretation along with succinct practical advice on designing and carrying out a project, The Voice of the Past remains an invaluable tool for anyone setting out to use oral history and life stories to construct a more authentic and balanced record of the past and the present.

In the past sixty years, oral history has moved from the periphery to the mainstream of academic studies and is now employed as a research tool by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, medical therapists, documentary film makers, and educators at all levels. The Oxford Handbook of Oral History brings together forty authors on five continents to address the evolution of oral history, the impact of digital technology, the most recent methodological and archival issues, and the application of oral history to both scholarly research and public presentations. The volume is addressed to seasoned practitioners as well as to newcomers, offering diverse perspectives on the current state of the field and its likely future developments. Some of its chapters survey large areas of oral history research and examine how they developed; others offer case studies that deal with specific projects, issues, and applications of oral history. From the Holocaust, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, the Falklands War in Argentina, the Velvet Revolution in Eastern Europe, to memories of September 11, 2001 and of Hurricane Katrina, the creative and essential efforts of oral historians worldwide are examined and explained in this multipurpose handbook.

Am 25. Juli 1936 beschloss Hitler an der Seite General Francos im Spanischen Burgerkrieg zu intervenieren. Die geschichtstrachtige "Bayreuther Entscheidung" legte die Weichen fur eine faschistische Diktatur in Spanien, die das Land uber vierzig Jahre vom Rest Europas isolieren sollte. Der deutsche Geschaftsmann Johannes Bernhardt wurde als Protagonist des geheimen Treffens in Bayreuth von Hitler mit dem Aufbau eines oekonomischen Schattenimperiums in Spanien beauftragt. Eine Analyse historischer Schlusseltexte und anderer medialer Inszenierungen von Bernhardt und der deutschen Intervention in Spanien zeigt, welcher sprachlichen Strategien sich Historiker, Journalisten und Autoren bedienen, um die Erinnerungsgeschichte der deutsch-spanischen Beziehungen seit acht Jahrzehnten zu konstruieren, manipulieren und revidieren.

From Moses to Nelson Mandela, speeches have changed the way we see the world and the way the world is shaped. The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches gathers together the world's greatest speeches, bringing together the words of over one hundred men and women. These brilliant and passionate declarations by Socrates, Robespierre, Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth I, Churchill, Washington, Pankhurst, Gandhi and many others provide a vivid glimpse of history in the making while retaining their power to move and inspire today. 'Impeccable. MacArthur prefaces each address with a short but scholarly historical explanation that sets the scene perfectly. An attractive volume' Andrew Roberts, Sunday Times 'Works well not just as an anthology but as a history' Independent on Sunday

Prepared to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the establishment of Nova Scotia's Supreme Court, this important new volume provides a comprehensive history of the institution, Canada's oldest common law court. The thirteen essays include an account of the first meeting in 1754 of the court in Michaelmas Term, surveys of jurisprudence (the court's early federalism cases; its use of American law; attitudes to the administrative state), and chapters on the courts of Westminster Hall, on which the Supreme Court was modelled, and the various courthouses it has occupied. Anchoring the volume are two longer chapters, one on the pre-confederation period and one on the modern period.

Editors Philip Girard, Jim Phillips, and Barry Cahill have put together the first complete history of any Canadian provincial superior court. All of the essays are original, and many offer new interpretations of familiar themes in Canadian legal history. They take the reader through the establishment of the one-judge court to the present day ? a unique contribution to our understanding of superior courts.

.,."Two major sections deal with the Resistance and with concentration camp life; a shorter final section concerns re-entry into normal life by the survivors...." Library Journal

The country is bankrupt, the gap between rich and poor is widening, the church has retreated from the inner cities, and even in the more affluent suburbs, many young people see the church as irrelevant - out of touch. No, it's not 2012. It's 1938. And a man called George MacLeod, and a group of like-minded friends and colleagues, have a vision of how to put the church with its message of 'good news to the poor' right back at the centre of life. To make it speak again to ordinary people. If the rest of the church had followed their example, maybe 2012 would have looked very different. This is their story. Please God it's not too late to listen.

Whithorn: An Economy of People is an exploration of a unique face-to-face society in Galloway in the south west of Scotland. It paints a picture of a largely cashless economy based on trust, frugality and the skilled labour and strategies of its residents to remain independent of the rest of the world while keeping closely connected to each other. Between 2012 and 2013 Julia Muir Watt interviewed twenty-nine individuals from Whithorn and the Machars about their memories. From those interviewed we learn what it was like to grow up, to go to school, and to work and to play in Whithorn in the twentieth century, before and after the Second World War. A great strength of oral history is that it can provide a direct insight into a lived life. In this collection, we have many such insights into life in and around the burgh of Whithorn. In telling of their experiences, those interviewed also provide an understanding into what it felt like to live those lives. Co-published with the European Ethnological Research Centre based on the research undertaken by them in their programme Dumfries and Galloway:A Regional Ethnology - part of a wider research programme the Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project (RESP).

As a subculture, cloistered monastic nuns live hidden from public view by choice. Once a woman joins the cloister and makes final vows, she is almost never seen and her voice is not heard; her story is essentially nonexistent in the historical record and collective, public history. From interviews conducted over six years, Abbie Reese tells the stories of the Poor Clare Colettine Order, a cloistered contemplative order at the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford, Illinois. Seldom leaving their 25,000-square-foot gated enclosure, members of this community embrace an extreme version of poverty and anonymity-a separation that enables them to withdraw from the world to devote their lives to prayer. This removal, they contend, allows them to have a greater impact on humanity than if they maintained direct contact with loved ones and strangers. Dedicated to God explores individual and cultural identity through oral history interviews with several generations of nuns, focusing on the origins and life stories of the women who have chosen to become members of one of the strictest religious orders. But the narrative is also one of a collective memory and struggle against extinction and modernity, a determination to create community within the framework of ancient rules. The author's stunning photographs of their dual worlds, religious and quotidian, add texture to the narrative. This artistic and ethnographic work highlights the countercultural values and dedication of individuals who, at incredible personal cost, live for love of God and humanity, out of faith in what cannot be seen, and with the belief that they will be rewarded in the afterlife.

The Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has been in the news constantly since the U.S. began using it as a prison camp after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. With all the controversy surrounding the torture of suspects at the prison, its precedent-setting prior use as an immigrant detention center for Haitian and Cuban boat people has been largely overlooked. Overcoming Guantanamo is an oral history of the rafter crisis and the camps written by an anthropologist who worked in the camps. More than a straight oral history, the book is a study of group-level trauma and coping. Using a trauma studies perspective along with discourse-oriented models from anthropology, the book discusses examples of the extensive camp artwork as well as the oral history narratives as part of a meaning-making process that necessarily occurs as people recover from trauma. Campisi worked in the Cuban camps for a year as a temporary employee of the Justice Department's mediation service, and then returned to analyze the camps from an anthropological point of view. She conducted life history interviews of twelve of the rafters, which included the process of disenchantment with the Revolution, leaving Cuba, the rafting trip, life on the base, and their initial experiences in Cuban Miami, focusing on life on the base. Their stories are gripping. Some people provided disturbing accounts of military abuses, which is an ancillary reason that Overcoming Guantanamo is important right now: human rights violations that occurred at the prison for terror suspects also occurred in the Cuban and Haitian camps, but few people know about them. All such violations should be taken into account in current debates about the use of the base. While it is important as an oral history, the book's examination of the camp culture also makes it a new contribution to the field of anthropology. Campisi argues that because trauma has cognitive and emotional impacts that require an individual to create new meanings, when people work through individually-traumatic experiences as a group, the new meanings they generate together create new cultural forms. Hence, social trauma can be culturally generative. In these times, that is an important conclusion.

In this people's history of Ireland, John Creedon introduces a fascinating collection of stories from the Schools' Collection. This treasure trove of old stories, ways and wisdom, which could have been lost for ever, was collected by schoolchildren as part of a nationwide project set up in the 1930s to preserve Irish folklore. Published here for the first time, this 'best of' selection includes chapters on ghost stories, agriculture, forgotten trades, schooling and pastimes. The result is an incredible arc of folk history that tells us about ourselves and how we lived long ago.

A lost classic of Holocaust literature translated for the first time - from journalist, poet and survivor József Debreczeni.

When József Debreczeni arrived in Auschwitz in 1944, had he been selected to go 'left', his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the 'lucky' ones, he was sent to the 'right', which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labour in a series of camps, ending in the 'Cold Crematorium' - the so-called hospital of the forced labour camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work were left to die.

Debreczeni beat the odds and survived. Very soon he committed his experiences to paper in Cold Crematorium, one of the harshest and powerful indictments of Nazism ever written. This haunting memoir, rendered in the precise and unsentimental prose of an accomplished journalist, compels the reader to imagine human beings in circumstances impossible to comprehend intellectually.

First published in Hungarian in 1950, it was never translated due to the rise of McCarthyism, Cold War hostilities and antisemitism. This important eyewitness account that was nearly lost to time will be available in fifteen languages, finally taking its rightful place among the great works of Holocaust literature more than seventy years after it was first published.

History students read a lot. They read primary sources. They read specialized articles and monographs. They sometimes read popular histories. And they read textbooks. Yet students are beginners, and as beginners they need to learn the differences among various kinds of readings - their natures, their challenges, and the unique expectations one needs to bring to each of them. Reading History is a practical guide to help students read better. Uniquely designed with the author's engaging explanations in the margins, the book describes primary sources across various genres, including documents of practice, treatises, and literary works, as well as secondary sources such as textbooks, articles, and monographs. An appendix contains tips and questions for reading primary or secondary sources. Full of practical advice and hands-on training that allows students to be successful, Reading History will cultivate a wider appreciation for the discipline of history.

'An extraordinary book . . . vivid and heart-breaking' The Jewish Chronicle Through the discovery of a precious friendship album which belonged to 12-year-old Alie, a Jewish schoolgirl in Amsterdam, Claudia Carli has traced and preserved the lives of an entire class of girls, most of whom did not survive the War. Alie and her friends are brought touchingly and vividly to life, along with their writings, in this extraordinary book. Their everyday hopes, pleasures and longings are offset by the constant fear of a knock on the door, a missing friend from class, a family member taken away. Alie and her mother were to die in Sobibor in 1943. Alie's sister Gretha survived Auschwitz and kept her promise to her sister to preserve the friendship album so long as she hoped to live. This book will sit alongside Anne Frank's diary and The Cutout Girl as a unique window into occupied Amsterdam and the girls who will now never be forgotten.