Ireland has been transformed in the last quarter century from a poor, traditional society to one of the wealthiest and most globalized countries in the world. This broad-ranging text provides an accessible and up-to-date introduction to Irish society, politics and culture as well as developments in its economy and place in Europe and the world.

Stories told in the book, "Tony Dufflebag . . . and other Remembrances of the War in Korea," are a mixture of memories, history, journalism and autobiographical experiences that are blended into a fascinating collection. The title story is of the rescue by two soldiers of a six-year-old Korean orphan boy who was found freezing and starving on the streets in war-ravaged Seoul, South Korea, then secreted into protective "adoption" for a few weeks, and how he was cared for and won the hearts of all the soldiers in a frontline Infantry rifle company until he was placed in safer circumstances. The author shares feelings about the death of a fellow soldier, of thoughts about a young wife and son back home, of the dramatic mountain rescue of a critically-wounded friend, reflects on feelings of a Christian soldier in combat, tells about lifelong friendships that develop in wartime, reflects on personal values, beliefs, feelings, commitments, opinions and relates tales of humorous events that occur to and among soldiers, even in a far-off war zone.

What is distinctive about this book is its interdisciplinary approach towards deciphering the complex meanings of President Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe making it possible to evaluate Mugabe from a historical, political, philosophical, gender, literal and decolonial perspectives. It is concerned with capturing various meanings of Mugabeism.

German unification came as a surprise. Nobody in West Germany had expected the collapse of the German Democratic Republic so soon. What were the causes of the breakdown of the Communist system in East Germany? How did the Federal Republic and the Four Powers react when unification first became possible, then inevitable? Was there an alternative to the currency union? How does German unification affect the European Community and the international system? These are some of the fundamental questions examined in this volume by the distinguished German political scientists.

This book is a unique contribution to both media studies and contemporary politics. It analyzes the American media's structure and its role in shaping perceptions of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, and looks at the key issues involved, from self-determination to genocide. Sadkovich sees the failure of the U.S. media and the West as having prolonged and even aggravated the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. This work will prove useful to both the general reader and students of media and current affairs.

Glen O'Hara draws a compelling picture of Second World War Britain by investigating relations between people and government: the electorate's rising expectations and demands for universally-available social services, the increasing complexity of the new solutions to these needs, and mounting frustration with both among both governors and governed.

A decade after the war for Kuwait and two decades after the Iran-Iraq war, the wider Gulf region is mired in internal, regional and international conflicts. The contributors present analytical perspectives—including solution-oriented assessments—to identify major causes for actual and potential conflicts throughout the Gulf. Original essays cover Iranian, Iraqi, Saudi and Arab Gulf States’ political agendas on the domestic, regional and international fronts, assessments of pending border disputes, relations among the Gulf states themselves, and their ties with several Western powers. The study closes with four "trends" chapters looking at the 2000-2010 period.

The urban rebellions that rocked Miami in 1980, and other large cities in the United States during the 1960s, can be looked at as contributory components of the Black freedom movement. This new study argues that they are, on one level, a tactical response to contemporary forms of White domination and, on another level, an act in which key core values of the African American experience are sustained. The book provides an overview of racial violence in America, from the slaveocracy of the 18th and 19th centuries, to the urban rebellions of the late 20th century. It shows that in Black-White intergroup relations, Whites have used violence and the threat of violence to repress and intimidate Blacks. Blacks have used violence as a way of resisting White domination. The form that violence has taken has been shaped by prevailing societal conditions.

Importantly, the book concentrates on the essence of Black-White intergroup relations. In doing so, the thematic and cultural propensities that pattern the reality of those relations are clearer. Foremost is the practice of White domination and the Black response of resistance, which seeks to end that domination and encourage freedom and justice. The book ends by going beyond current thinking and looks to African American core values as key referents to examine Black violence.

How does one of the world's greatest powers preserve its status and influence when international conditions are unfavourable and its resources do not match its commitments? This was Britain's burden in the 1970s and 1980s when the international order was transformed. Much became unsettled and Britain had to adapt policy to suit new needs and opportunities. Michael J. Turner elucidates the efforts that were made to maximise Britain's role on those matters and in those parts of the world that were of special importance to British strategy, prosperity and security. He examines key decisions and their consequences and places British policy-making in an international context, suggesting that British leaders were more successful in preserving power and prestige on the world stage than has sometimes been appreciated.

From interpretations of the Holocaust to fascist thought and anti-fascists' responses, and the problems of memorializing this difficult past, this essay collection tackles topics which are rarely studied in conjunction. As well as historical analyses of fascist and anti-fascist thinking, Stone analyses the challenges involved in writing history in general and Holocaust historiography in particular. Following an introductory essay on 'history and its discontents', the wide-ranging chapters deal with individual thinkers of very different sorts, such as Hannah Arendt, Rolf Gardiner, Jules Monnerot and Saul Friedlander, movements such as interwar rural revivalism, the contested translation of Mein Kampf, emigre anti-fascists' writings, and the relationship between memory and history, especially with respect to atrocities like genocide. This unique collection of essays on a wide variety of topics contributes to understanding the roots and consequences of mid-twentieth-century Europe's great catastrophe.

An accessible collection of essays about one of the most dramatic moment in France's modern history: the "event" of 1968. Often seen purely as a student revolution, the events of 1968 in fact impacted on almost every aspect of French society - theatre, film, gender relations, sexuality, race and immigration, farmers, workers. This volume of essays, written by young researchers and established scholars from France, Britain and the United States is the only book in English to explore the full diversity of this extraordinary upheaval. It takes us out of Paris to the regions of France, out of the student Latin Quarter into the factories, and shows how the events of 1968 continued to reverberate throughout the next decade, and how their legacy is still highly contested in France today.

Providing an indispensable resource for students, educators, businessmen, and officials investigating the transformative experience of modern China, this book provides a comprehensive summary of the culture, institutions, traditions, and international relations that have shaped today's China. In Modern China, author Xiaobing Li offers a resource far beyond a conventional encyclopedia, providing not only comprehensive coverage of Chinese civilization and traditions, but also addressing the values, issues, and critical views of China. As a result, readers will better understand the transformative experience of the most populous country in the world, and will grasp the complexity of the progress and problems behind the rise of China to a world superpower in less than 30 years. Written by an author who lived in China for three decades, this encyclopedia addresses 16 key topics regarding China, such as its geography, government, social classes and ethnicities, gender-based identities, arts, media, and food, each followed by roughly 250 short entries related to each topic. All the entries are placed within a broad sociopolitical and socioeconomic contextual framework. The format and writing consistency through the book reflects a Chinese perspective, and allows students to compare Chinese with Western and American views. Covers contemporary Chinese politics, economy, geography, law, education, culture, and history, providing readers with a breadth of insights into modern China and its people Addresses a variety of current issues such as pollution, corruption, human trafficking, human rights, civil liberties, and the one-child policy Contains accessible information ideal for high school and college-level students, grade school teachers, and any readers interested in the general topics of Asia and China

"Ambiguous Memory" examines the role of memory in the building of a new national identity in reunified Germany. The author maintains that the contentious debates surrounding contemporary monumnets to the Nazi past testify to the ambiguity of German memory and the continued link of Nazism with contemporary German national identity. The book discusses how certain monuments, and the ways Germans have viewed them, contribute to the different ways Germans have dealt with the past, and how they continue to deal with it as one country. Kattago concludes that West Germans have internalized their Nazi past as a normative orientation for the democratic culture of West Germany, while East Germans have universalized Nazism and the Holocaust, transforming it into an abstraction in which the Jewish question is down played. In order to form a new collective memory, the author argues that unified Germany must contend with these conflicting views of the past, incorporating certain aspects of both views.

Providing a topography of East, West, and unified German memory during the 1980s and the 1990s, this work contributes to a better understanding of contemporary national identity and society. The author shows how public debate over such issues at Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg, the renarration of Buchenwald as Nazi and Soviet internment camp, the Goldhagen controversy, and the Holocaust Memorial debate in Berlin contribute to the complexities surrounding the way Germans see themselves, their relationship to the past, and their future identity as a nation. In a careful analysis, the author shows how the past was used and abused by both the East and the West in the 1980s, and how these approaches merged in the 1990s. This interesting new work takes a sociological approach to the role of memory in forging a new, integrative national identity.

Eurasia remains a zone of confrontation between the United States and Russia. Over the last decade, this confrontation has reached the Middle East, and, extending through Central Asia to China and points further afield, it has acquires global dimensions. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eurasia and the territories on Russia's periphery acquired increased geopolitical importance. After a decade of euphoria at what seemed to be new freedoms and another decade adjusting to new realities, the last ten years have witnessed a struggle between Putin's Russia and America of Cold War proportions. Gradually, Moscow redefined its geopolitical priorities and reclaimed a sphere of influence over the newly independent countries of Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and has projected power into Ukraine and the three Caucasian republics. This is now a battleground between Russia and the United States. Since the end of the Cold War, relations between Washington and Moscow fluctuated from open and amicable to cool and suspicious. Presently, they seem to be contradictory and difficult to grasp, though it is certain that Russia is doing everything to keep the "Near Abroad" under its control while harassing American interests globally wherever it can. As of 2019, Russia has just won a new battle in Syria that may reconfigure the geopolitical balance of the entire Middle East. What we need the most in this situation is honest and competent leaders capable of wrestling with politics as well as with ethical and moral issues that both influence and reflect international politics.

In what ways have social movements attracted the attention of the mass media since the sixties? How have activists influenced public attention via visual symbols, images, and protest performances in that period? And how do mass media cover and frame specific protest issues? Drawing on contributions from media scholars, historians, and sociologists, this volume explores the dynamic interplay between social movements, activists, and mass media from the 1960s to the present. It introduces the most relevant theoretical approaches to such issues and offers a variety of case studies ranging from print media, film, and television to Internet and social media.

An in-depth and comprehensive account of the complex history of Japanese modernism from the mid-19th century "opening to the West" until the 21st century globalized world of "postmodernism." Its concept of modernism encompasses not just the aesthetic avant-garde but a wide spectrum of social, political and cultural phenomena.

Burning the veil draws upon sources from newly-opened archives, exploring the 'emancipation' of Muslim women from the veil, seclusion and perceived male oppression during the Algerian War of decolonisation. The claimed French liberation was contradicted by the violence inflicted on women through rape, torture and destruction of villages. This book examines the roots of this contradiction in the theory of 'revolutionary warfare', and the attempt to defeat the National Liberation Front by penetrating the Muslim family, seen as a bastion of resistance. Striking parallels with contemporary Afghanistan and Iraq, French 'emancipation' produced a backlash that led to deterioration in the social and political position of Muslim women. This analysis of how and why attempts to Westernise Muslim women ended in catastrophe has contemporary relevance and will be important to students and academics engaged in the study of French and colonial history, feminism and contemporary Islam. -- .

In this unique and informative new volume, Beate Hamizrachi offers a fascinating examination of the emergence of the Israeli-controlled Security Belt and the rise of Lebanese Major Saad Haddad in South Lebanon. The detailed descriptions of events and people, often based on the author's personal experience, in the Lebanese kaleidoscope will give scholars, students, decision-makers, and journalists a better understanding of the ongoing internal struggle and the external pressures in Lebanon.

Communism Unwrapped is a collection of essays that unwraps the complex world of consumption under communism in postwar Eastern Europe, featuring new work by both American and European scholars writing from variety of disciplinary perspectives. The result is a fresh look at everyday life under communism that explores the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, exchanged and assessed goods. These phenomena, the editors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived and experienced in its widely varied contexts in the region. Consumption pervaded everyday life far more than most other political and social phenomena. From design, to production, to retail sales and black market exchange, Communism Unwrapped follows communist goods from producer to consumer, tracing their circuitous routes. In the communist world this journey was rife with its own meanings, shaped by the special political and social circumstances of these societies. In examining consumption behind the Iron Curtain, this volume builds on a new field of study. It brings dimension and nuance to our understanding of the communist period and a new perspective to our current analyses of consumerism.

"Warfare Since the Second World War "presents a wealth of analysis and data about one of the most pressing questions of our time: why does war continue to plague us fifty years after World War II? This book argues that the nature of war has shifted from inter-state conflicts toward internal conflicts, above all civil war. Low-intensity conflict helps explain the constant increase in wars over the last fifty years and makes it probable this trend will continue. Gantzel and Schwinghammer argue that modern warfare reflects a continuation of the nation-state-building process begun in nineteenth-century Europe. In their analysis, economic modernization and social integration destroy traditional relations and create instability in the developing world. While these forces were successfully harnessed by the modern state in Europe and North America, economic and political globalization make a similar resolution considerably more complex. In addition to their insightful analysis, the authors provide a detailed list of all wars fought from 1945 to 1995. The authors' lucid explanatory commentaries are accompanied by lists, tables, and charts. In addition to a detailed war register, upon which all statistical data and analyses for the volume are based, there are appendices with directories useful for locating specific wars, as well as several supplementary lists. An afterword brings the reader closer to the world situation as we conclude the twentieth century; including the impact of political developments in Eastern Europe. Beyond its historical dimension, this book offers a policy-relevant empirical demonstration of the ongoing increase in internal (civil) wars and addresses the inability of modern society to prevent this scourge. "Warfare Since the Second World War" is an indispensable resource for anyone concerned with issues of war and peace, development, and the future of international relations.

This recently discovered study by Allen W. Dulles, brother of John Foster and Eleanor Dulles, OSS director in Switzerland during the Second World War and later director of the CIA, was written in the winter of 1947/48 when the acceptance of the Marshall Plan was still in doubt. At this point Dulles, who had been prominently involved in the planning of this recovery programme, produced this well-argued manuscript forcefully putting the case for acceptance. This book offers not only fascinating insights into the dramatic atmosphere of the early postwar period, but may also serve as an inspiration to policy-makers at a time when, 45 years later, there is much discussion of recovery programmes for Eastern Europe and the Marshall Plan is often evoked as a possible model.

This book intervenes in debates over the significance of Diana, Princess of Wales, by offering a critical account of her status as a media icon from 1981 to the present. It outlines the historical development of representations of Diana, analyzing the ways in which she has been understood via discourses of gender, sexuality, race, economic class, the royal, national identity, and the human. The book goes on to assess the issues at stake in debates over the "meaning" of Diana, such as the gender politics of cultural icon-making and deconstruction, and conflicting notions of cultural value.

In this book, the author describes that the relationship based shareholding was the hidden key factor to explain Japan's miraculous economic success after WWII. The stock market which valued the low profitability Japanese companies highly enabled them to provide 'better and cheaper' manufactured goods in the export markets, leading resource poor Japan to a leading exporter and economic and financial superpower. The book also casts critical eyes to the weakness of the traditional Japanese financial system as a catch-up model, in comparison with the open US system.

During the 1970s, left-wing youth militancy in Greece intensified, especially after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974. This is the first study of the impact of that political activism on the leisure pursuits and sexual behavior of Greek youth, analyzing the cultural politics of left-wing organizations alongside the actual practices of their members. Through an examination of Maoists, Socialists, Euro-Communists, and pro-Soviet groups, it demonstrates that left-wing youth in Greece collaborated closely with comrades from both Western and Eastern European countries in developing their political stances. Moreover, young left-wingers in Greece appropriated American cultural products while simultaneously modeling some of their leisure and sexual practices on Soviet society. Still, despite being heavily influenced by cultures outside Greece, left-wing youth played a major role in the reinvention of a Greek "popular tradition." This book critically interrogates the notion of "sexual revolution" by shedding light on the contradictory sexual transformations in Greece to which young left-wingers contributed.