Europe in the Modern World, Second Edition, is an engaging narrative history of Europe since 1500. Written by an award-winning teacher and scholar, it highlights the major episodes of the European past and vividly connects those episodes to major international events. Each chapter opens with a compelling biographical sketch that gives the book's ideas a vibrant, human face. Europe in the Modern World pays considerably more attention to economic history than other textbooks do, demonstrating the role that economic developments--and the political, social, and cultural responses to them--play in shaping the political and social life of a given age. By taking politics and economics seriously while doing justice to social and cultural life, this unique book explains the key phenomena of the Western past with clarity and verve. It reads not like a typical academic text, but more like the best narrative history.

Railroads, telegraphs, lithographs, photographs, and mass periodicals-the major technological advances of the 19th century seemed to diminish the space separating people from one another, creating new and apparently closer, albeit highly mediated, social relationships. Nowhere was this phenomenon more evident than in the relationship between celebrity and fan, leader and follower, the famous and the unknown. By mid-century, heroes and celebrities constituted a new and powerful social force, as innovations in print and visual media made it possible for ordinary people to identify with the famous; to feel they knew the hero, leader, or "star"; to imagine that public figures belonged to their private lives. This volume examines the origins and nature of modern mass media and the culture of celebrity and fame they helped to create. Crossing disciplines and national boundaries, the book focuses on arts celebrities (Sarah Bernhardt, Byron and Liszt); charismatic political figures (Napoleon and Wilhelm II); famous explorers (Stanley and Brazza); and celebrated fictional characters (Cyrano de Bergerac).

"This is a persuasive and timely collection. Celebrity and charisma are very much on the current research agenda. This volume deals with these issues in a serious, insightful manner, making an original contribution to what is now a rising field of study." . Philip Nord, Princeton University

Railroads, telegraphs, lithographs, photographs, and mass periodicals-the major technological advances of the 19th century seemed to diminish the space separating people from one another, creating new and apparently closer, albeit highly mediated, social relationships. Nowhere was this phenomenon more evident than in the relationship between celebrity and fan, leader and follower, the famous and the unknown. By mid-century, heroes and celebrities constituted a new and powerful social force, as innovations in print and visual media made it possible for ordinary people to identify with the famous; to feel they knew the hero, leader, or "star"; to imagine that public figures belonged to their private lives. This volume examines the origins and nature of modern mass media and the culture of celebrity and fame they helped to create. Crossing disciplines and national boundaries, the book focuses on arts celebrities (Sarah Bernhardt, Byron and Liszt); charismatic political figures (Napoleon and Wilhelm II); famous explorers (Stanley and Brazza); and celebrated fictional characters (Cyrano de Bergerac).

Edward Berenson is Professor of History and French Studies and Director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University. His numerous publications include The Trial of Madame Caillaux (University of California Press 1992) and Heroes of Empire: Five Charismatic Men and Europe's Quest for Africa, (University of California Press 2010).

Eva Giloi is Assistant Professor in the History Department at Rutgers University, Newark. Her book Monarchy, Myth, and Material Culture in Germany 1750-1950 is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2010.

On 22 September 1928, four-year-old Barbara Griffith strayed into the woods surrounding Massena in New York. Hundreds of people looked for the child but could not find her; then someone suggested that Barbara had been kidnapped and killed by Jews. The mayor and local police believed the rumour and the allegation of ritual murder, known to Jews as "blood libel", took hold. Rational people in government and Jewish leaders had to intervene to restore calm once Barbara was safely found. At first glance it seems bizarre that so many embraced the accusation but many of Massena's inhabitants had emigrated recently from Central and Eastern Europe where "blood libel" was common. The Accusation is a shocking and perceptive cross-cultural exploration of American and European responses to anti-Semitism.

New, insightful essays from musicologists, historians, art historians, and literary scholars reconsider the relationship of Debussy, Gauguin, Zola, and other great French creative artists to cultural and political trends during the Third Republic. This collection of new essays examines the relationships between discourses of French national and regional identity, political alignment, and creative practice during one of France's most fascinating eras: the Third Republic. The authors, from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, explore the ways in which the architects of the Third Republic [re]constructed France culturally and artistically, in part through artful use of the press and [at the 1889Paris World's Fair] new technologies. The chapters also investigate changing attitudes toward Debussy's opera Pelleas et Melisande, attempts by composers and critics to define a musical canon, and the impact of religious education, spirituality, and exoticism for Gauguin and Jolivet. Tensions between the center and region are seen in celebrations for the national musical figurehead, Rameau, and in the cultural regionalism that flourished in the annexed territories of Alsace and Lorraine. Contributors: Edward Berenson, Katharine Ellis, Annegret Fauser, Didier Francfort, Brian Hart, Steven Huebner, Barbara L. Kelly, Detmar Klein, Deborah Mawer, James Ross, Marion Schmid, and Debora Silverman. Barbara L. Kelly is Professor of Musicology at Keele University.

Examining the democratic-socialist politics of the Second Republic, Edward Berenson delves into the largely unexplored content of the Montagnards' ideology and traces its diffusion and reception in the populist religious culture of rural France. This book shows how the urbanbased Montagnards were able to appeal to rural Frenchmen by advocating doctrines grounded in the ideals and morality of early Christianity. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Examining the democratic-socialist politics of the Second Republic, Edward Berenson delves into the largely unexplored content of the Montagnards' ideology and traces its diffusion and reception in the populist religious culture of rural France. This book shows how the urbanbased Montagnards were able to appeal to rural Frenchmen by advocating doctrines grounded in the ideals and morality of early Christianity.

Originally published in 1984.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

During the decades of empire (1870-1914), legendary heroes and their astonishing deeds of conquest gave imperialism a recognizable human face. Henry Morton Stanley, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, Charles Gordon, Jean-Baptiste Marchand, and Hubert Lyautey all braved almost unimaginable dangers among "savage" people for their nation's greater good. This vastly readable book, the first comparative history of colonial heroes in Britain and France, shows via unforgettable portraits the shift from public veneration of the peaceful conqueror to unbridled passion for the vanquishing hero. Edward Berenson argues that these five men transformed the imperial steeplechase of those years into a powerful 'heroic moment'. He breaks new ground by linking the era's 'new imperialism' to its 'new journalism' - the penny press - which furnished the public with larger-than-life figures who then embodied each nation's imperial hopes and anxieties.

Early in the evening of 16 March 1914 Henriette Caillaux, the wife of a powerful French cabinet minister, paid an unexpected call to her husband's most implacable enemy, Le Figaro editor Gaston Calmette. Madame Caillaux wore an expensive fur coat with a large fur muff to protect her hands from the wintry cold. Concealed inside the muff was a Browning automatic. After murmuring a few words, she drew her weapon and fired six shots at point-blank range. Calmette slumped to the floor, fatally wounded; office workers seized Madame Caillaux, smoking gun in hand. Four months later Henriette Caillaux stood accused of murder before the Paris Cour d'assises. The date was 20 July 1914, just two weeks before Europe exploded into war. So mesmerizing was the trial that for seven long days the French press virtually ignored the looming conflict. As late as 29 July, some seventy-two hours before France mobilized for war, several leading journals devoted more front-page space to the Caillaux Affair than to the hostilities abroad. In this elegant work of microhistory, Edward Berenson tells the story of what was for commentators of the Belle Epoque "the trial of the century". Never before had a criminal proceeding featured depositions from the president of the Republic; many of its participants ranked among the most powerful and noteworthy members of French society. They included two former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, members of parliament, directors of the leading newspapers, medical experts, literary celebrities, and intellectual luminaries. From his close analysis of this discrete but momentous event, Berenson draws a fascinating portrait of the wider field of politics and culture surroundingit. He considers the ways in which French men and women perceived some of the most fundamental concerns of their age: the meaning of crime and criminality, the power and venality of the press, the changing relations between women and men. The Caillaux Affair is a gripping narrative history that gives us new and unsuspected insight into France of the Belle Epoque.