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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
The 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically elected left wing government of Salvador Allende gave previously peripheral elements of the right the opportunity to exercise almost unlimited political and economic power. However, with the return to democracy in 1990, the right had to adapt to electoral politics. This book examines whether it is conforming to the rules of the electoral game or still harking back to the golden age of military politics, a question of paramount importance to the future of Chile's still nascent democracy.
"Spain Transformed" addresses the sweeping social and cultural changes that characterized the late Franco regime. Essential to explaining the dictatorship's extraordinary longevity, the strikingly successful transition to democracy following Franco's death in 1975. and the peace and prosperity enjoyed by Spain since then, this watershed period has received scant attention from scholars until now. This wide-ranging collection reassesses the dictatorship's latter years by drawing on a wealth of new material and ideas, using an interdisciplinary approach.
This book examines the political career of Hua Guofeng, Mao's successor as paramount leader in 1976. Hua emerged seemingly out of nowhere following an unexceptional career as a young revolutionary in Shanxi and a provincial official in Hunan. It was in Hunan that Hua became well-known to Mao and Hua's loyalty to Mao while he was there, just when Mao needed it most, helped to facilitate Hua's later ascent to power. On emerging as paramount leader, Hua moved quickly to arrest his opponents, the Gang of Four. As head of party, state and military, Hua looked well set to remain in power indefinitely. Just over two years later Hua had been eclipsed by Deng Xiaoping, a more politically shrewd, progressive and charismatic figure, with a political legacy that far outweighed Hua's modest beginnings. If Hua's rise to power was remarkable, then this fall was even more so.
Asia's 'Memory Problem' is unique. Chinese, Japanese and Koreans assign great significance to their national pasts; disagreements about one another's history and commemorative practices are heated and affect diplomatic and economic relationships. Honour and shame societies teach their members to think about the past differently than do societies of dignity and guilt. In Northeast Asia, the events judged most negative reveal weakness or incompetence, and they induce shame. For this reason, the Western 'politics of regret', which include practices based on violations of dignity and a sense of collective guilt, cannot be directly generalized to Northeast Asian cultures. These cultures are, thus, privileged sites for the study of memory. In no other regional setting is the interdependence of history, commemoration and belief so significant and problematic. In no other setting is the Memory Problem so acute.
Even 35 years after Harold Macmillan's resignation in 1963, opinions are sharply divided over his achievements as a politician and prime minister. This volume contributes to the debate about Macmillan's political role, his successes and his failures, by examining key aspects of his political life. Biographers, historians, and contemporaries present facets of Macmillan's life, his political visions, his skills, successes and failures in his personal life as well as in his domestic and foreign policies. With most official papers covering his active political life until his resignation now in the public domain, a more considered judgement about his party political and his governmental activities is possible. Taking account of this newly available documentary evidence, there is much yet to be written on Harold Macmillan's career, but this collection bears witness to the fact that his was a magnificent life.
Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people's lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.
In the period after World War II, the United States under the Truman administration provided Turkey with military assistance under the Truman Doctrine and gained admission for Turkey into the NATO alliance in 1952, which blocked Soviet entry to the Middle East.;In this text the author describes, for the viewpoint of a particpant, how this process took place. In this memoir, McGhee concentrates on Turkey during the period 1947-53, from the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine through the initiation of the massive US aid that enabled Turkey to build militarily and economically to meet its NATO responsibilities. Much of the source material used includes memorandums of conversations with the President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Turkey during successive diplomatic roles as well as documents released by the Department of State archives. George McGhee has also written "At the Creation of a New Germany" and "Envoy to the Middle World" and edited "Diplomacy for the Future".
In 1940, the USSR occupied and annexed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, leading to calls by many that the Soviets had violated international law. This book examines British, US, and Soviet policies toward the Baltic states, placing the true significance of the Baltic question in its proper geopolitical context.
Based on original research, this book disputes the notion that information management is a recent phenomenon. It traces its origins to the period 1945-1951, when the post-war Labour government, and its media architect, Herbert Morrison, moved from an idealistic commitment to open communication towards the pragmatic relationship with the media with which we are now familiar. In the process this government laid the foundations for the politics of spin. This book is indispensible to an understanding of the way contemporary governments communicate.
This book describes the vibrant activity of survivors who founded
Jewish historical commissions and documentation centers in Europe
immediately after the Second World War. In the first postwar
decade, these initiatives collected thousands of Nazi documents
along with testimonies, memoirs, diaries, songs, poems, and
artifacts of Jewish victims. They pioneered in developing a
Holocaust historiography that placed the experiences of Jews at the
center and used both victim and perpetrator sources to describe the
social, economic, and cultural aspects of the everyday life and
death of European Jews under the Nazi regime.
War in Afghanistan was inevitable since the rigid Islamic government of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar insured safe harbor to Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaida terrorists who killed 2,978 innocent people September 11, 2001, in Manhattan, the Pentagon and a Shanksville, Pennsylvania, pasture. Bin Laden said the U.S. was targeted in retaliation for: 1] its support of Israel, 2] building a military base in Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's holy sites Mecca and Medina and 3] its "decadent" popular culture. There was an additional human factor that encompassed U.S. troops in a strange land. Thus, the story wound itself around feuding warlords, poppy fields, political clout of the Northern Alliance Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara clans who supported the U.S.-led war and the larger Pashtun clan that allowed the terror. The Taliban government was overthrown in a month, al-Qaida's power was greatly diminished. Afghanistan held a Loya Jirga, adopted a constitution and the" people" elected a president for the first time in the nation's 5,000-year history. The collective "we" (U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Italy et al.) did that with the will of the Afghan people
Charismatic and committed, John F. Kennedy remains one of the most revered, and most disliked, of US Presidents. Dedicated to changing 'the look' of the American Presidency, Kennedy was also pledged to changing the nature of US foreign policy-making. Victory in the Cold War was possible, he said, and the greatest challenge to that victory was in the Asian/Pacific region. Success there would signal the end of the communist versus capitalist confrontation. America 'can do it', he vowed. This book describes the Kennedy administration's desperate efforts to achieve the impossible dream: an American Cold War victory throughout Asia and the Pacific.
The day is 8 August 1963. It is the early hours of the morning, and a group of men are waiting at a railway bridge in Buckinghamshire. They are about to rob a mail train, on its way to London from Glasgow, and they have no idea that on board they will find approximately £2.5 million (over £50 million in today's money) in cash - the largest of its time. Among their number is Ronnie Biggs. He will be remembered long after most of the other names are forgotten, and the money spent or lost. What is it about Ronnie Biggs that fascinates people sixty years on from the crime that made his name? Is it the man or the myth that makes Ron a latter-day Robin Hood - the odd man in the confederation of criminals who held up a train on that fateful day? This is Ronnie Biggs' official autobiography. It tells of one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century. From Ron's daring escape from HMP Wandsworth, to how he managed to outwit and outrun a posse of law enforcement officers as one of the world's most wanted men; from plastic surgery in Paris, and his years on the run in Brazil - complete with two kidnappings and an attempted suicide - to his return to the UK after 13,087 extraordinary days on the run. Published for the sixtieth anniversary of Britain's most famous crime, this is a daring, exciting and often misunderstood life of a man who has seen and done it all, told in his own words.
A general history of the critical first year of the Korean War, this study deals primarily with relations between General Douglas MacArthur and President Harry S. Truman from June 1950 to April 1951, a period that defined the war's direction until General Mark Clark, the final U.N. Commander, signed the Armistice two years later. Although the ever-changing military situation is outlined, the main focus is on policymaking and the developing friction between Truman and MacArthur. Wainstock contradicts the common view that MacArthur and Truman were constantly at odds on the basic aims of the war. In the matter of carrying the fight to Communist China, MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs differed only on timing, not on the need for such action. The end of the Cold War has provided historians with a better opportunity to study the forces that shaped the thinking of America's leaders at the time of the Korean War. The sheer quantity of material now available, while daunting, is filled with colorful and outstanding personalities, dramatic action, and momentous actions that have had an impact on world events even to the present day. Wainstock ultimately concludes that Washington placed too much emphasis on anti-Communist ideology, rather than long-term national interest, in the decision first to intervene in the war and later to cross the crucial 38th Parallel. He also emphasizes the important contributions of General Matthew B. Ridgway in stopping the Chinese offensive and in influencing Washington's decision not to carry the war to Communist China.
Few historical changes occur literally overnight, but on August 13
1961 eighteen million East Germans awoke to find themselves walled
in by an edifice which was to become synonymous with the Cold War:
the Berlin Wall.
From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a powerful portrait of how our wealthy, successful society has passed into an age of gridlock, stalemate, public failure and private despair. The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn't be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era's deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. Casting a cold eye on these trends, The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing-how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis. Ranging from the futility of our ideological debates to the repetitions of our pop culture, from the decline of sex and childbearing to the escapism of drug use, Ross Douthat argues that our age is defined by disappointment-by the feeling that all the frontiers are closed, that the paths forward lead only to the grave. Correcting both optimism and despair, Douthat provides an enlightening explanation of how we got here, how long our frustrations might last, and how, in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.
One of our most celebrated historians shows how we can use the lessons of the past to build a new post-covid society in Britain The 'duty of care' which the state owes to its citizens is a phrase much used, but what has it actually meant in Britain historically? And what should it mean in the future, once the immediate Covid crisis has passed? In A Duty of Care, Peter Hennessy divides post-war British history into BC (before covid) and AC (after covid). He looks back to Sir William Beveridge's classic identification of the 'five giants' against which society had to battle - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness - and laid the foundations for the modern welfare state in his wartime report. He examines the steady assault on the giants by successive post-war governments and asks what the comparable giants are now. He lays out the 'road to 2045' with 'a new Beveridge' to build a consensus for post-covid Britain with the ambition and on the scale that was achieved by the first.
Told for the first time, the riveting story of how common people-miners, cooks, former soldiers-shook off the intimidation of Serbian strongman Slobadan Milosevic and overthrew, peacefully, his tyrannical regime. Based on numerous interviews with participants, from the man in the street to top officials in the Serbian regime, The Fall of Milosevicrecounts the exhilaration, fear and chaos of a population rising in opposition to a tyrant, the “Butcher of the Balkans.” As the people gather in protest, behind the scenes the pillars of Milosevic’s regime crumble as politicians, military officers, and the police desert a leader no longer legitimate in the eyes of the people. This is the story of individuals facing down fear and rising up for democracy.
Paris was home to one of the key European initiatives to document and commemorate the Holocaust, the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine . By analysing the earliest Holocaust narratives and their reception in France, this study provides a new understanding of the institutional development of Holocaust remembrance in France after the War.
The post war history of public health and the role of smoking
within that history epitomises the tensions which surround taking
health to the public. Public health history has largely
concentrated on the nineteenth century sanitary period or on the
years before the Second World War, often focussing on the
environmental advances, or on the professional and occupational
history of public health as an activity. This book has a different
focus: it deals with the change in the outlook of public health
post war. From a focus on services, vaccination, and dealing with
health issues at the local level, public health had developed new
discourse. Centring on chronic disease, it became concerned with
the concept of "risk" and targeted individual behaviour. The mass
media and centralised campaigning directed at the whole population
replaced local campaigns, and politicians changed their mind about
speaking directly to the public on health matters. Their early
worries about the 'nanny state' gave place to a desire to inculcate
new norms of behaviour, and it was debated how change was to be
achieved.
This is the second of two volumes to bear witness to the Cuban experience. Together with its predecessor, "Cuba: Twenty-Five Years of Revolution," it offers a positive account. Yet, it is sensitive to the dilemmas and flawed strategies in Cuba's thirty-year process of transformation. It warns that no preconceived notion of state or of development will help grasp the multifaceted nature of this nation, which reflects aspects of both developed and underdeveloped nations. Seventeen chapters, five of which are from Cuban contributors, thoroughly investigate recent political, economic, and social changes as well as the successes and failures of long-term development policies. Heavy attention is paid to the rectification process launched by Castro in 1986. This volume portrays a Cuba facing the 1990s with a burst of increased vigor in its efforts to secure continued far-reaching transformation. Seventeen chapters describe major changes in the economic realm caught up in the rectification campaign; a slow process of liberalization in the political sphere; and a Cuba that, in social terms, is far better off than any other Latin American country.
Beyond Catastrophe examines the post-World War II leadership efforts of four major German intellectuals: Karl Jaspers, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Meinecke, and Bertolt Brecht. Clark focuses on the symbolic, practical, and theoretical contributions of these men to post-war cultural reconstruction, and pays special attention to their key works of the period - The German Catastrophe, Doctor Faustus, The Question of German Guilt, and Turandot - in which they addressed the key issues of the period including responsibility and guilt for the National Socialist regime, German distinctiveness, the possibility of a renewed humanism, and the relationship of intellectuals to the broader society. Addressing an important lacuna in twentieth-century intellectual history, Beyond Catastrophe will appeal to scholars of history and German studies.
A cooperative effort by a number of historians and political scientists, this essay collection focuses on the important connection between domestic affairs and foreign relations during the Cold War. The case studies treat phases of both the Soviet and American experiences and involve contributions by two Russian scholars, three Americans, a German, a Swede, and an Israeli. This collection is particularly timely and signficant because of the surprising way the Cold War ended, making clear that domestic developments can overthrow even the most potent foreign policies and undermine longstanding assumptions about the primacy of international factors. A provocative essay collection, this will be of interest to diplomatic historians and Soviet Affairs specialists, scholars, and students.
*As featured in the landmark BBC2 documentary Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story* Published to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Falklands war 'There was a time when we did extraordinary things.' On 28 May 1982, 450 men of the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment - 2 Para - went into action to retake the settlement of Goose Green on East Falkland, where more than 1,000 Argentine soldiers were holding 119 Falkland Islanders - men, women, children and one baby - in squalid conditions. Forty years on, Goose Green is still the biggest and bloodiest battle the British Army has fought in modern times. This book is the living narrative of the battle told by the very men who fought it; not just the soldiers of 2 Para, but also the SAS, the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy, and others, in more than a hundred exclusive and untold personal accounts. Some are extremely funny, some touching, and some heart-breaking. All were recorded face to face, the speakers' own words adding a gritty authenticity to each account and conveying the confusion and terror of battle, as well as the courage and selflessness of men in action. Goose Green is a book that goes beyond the official histories and the many memoirs to bring to life the first and, as it turned out, the decisive battle of this country's outstanding campaign to retake the Falkland Islands from a foreign invader. This is a true story of a great victory against all the odds, told by the men who fought it. |
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