Author: Howard M. Sachar Publisher: University of Toronto Press ISBN: 1442609184 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 476
Book Description
A look at how the political assassinations that occurred in Europe between 1918 and 1939 shaped the history and politics of the continent.
Author: Howard Morley Sachar Publisher: ISBN: 9781442609204 Category : Europe Languages : en Pages : 461
Book Description
In this captivating new book, pre-eminent scholar Howard M. Sachar tells the story of the modern Western world through the lens of one particular act of revenge: political assassination. By detailing the deaths of key political figures during a very fraught time period--the immediate aftermath of World War I--Sachar explores a much larger history: the gradual demise of Europe and its descent into World War II. In beautiful prose, Sachar illustrates the consequences of the assassinations of Rosa Luxemburg and Kurt Eisner in Germany, and how the death of Giacomo Matteotti, a leader of the left in Italy, contributed to the rise of Mussolini. Through the executions of Matthias Erzberger, Walter Rathenau, and Ernst R?hm, Sachar shows the disintegration of Germany and the rise of Hitler. Further chapters explore the effects of political assassinations in Russia, Yugoslavia, and France, and the final chapter, which chronicles the deaths of Stefan and Lotte Zweig, serves as a thought-provoking metaphor for the assassination of the Old World itself. Taking an approach that is both dark and illuminating, Howard M. Sachar provides an entirely new perspective on this extremely pivotal moment in twentieth-century history.
Author: Robert Leeson Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319745093 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 414
Book Description
F.A. von Hayek (1899-1992) was a Nobel Prize winning economist, famous for promoting an Austrian version of classical liberalism. The multi-volume Hayek: A Collaborative Biography examines the evolution of his life and influence. Two concepts of civilization revolve around power – should it be separated or concentrated? Liberalism in the non-Austrian classical tradition remains fearful of power concentrated in the hands of government, labour unions or corporations; Red Terrorists sought to monopolize power to liquidate enemies and competitors as a prelude to utopia (the ‘withering away of the State’); and behind the ‘slogan of liberty,’ White Terror promoters (Mises and Hayek) sought to concentrate power in the hands of a ‘dictatorial democracy’ where henchmen would liquidate enemies, and – ‘guided’ by ‘utopia’ (the ‘spontaneous’ order) – follow orders from their social superiors. This volume, Part XII, examines the ‘free’ market Use of Knowledge in Society; examines the foundations of ‘free’ market educational credentials; and asks whether those funded by the tobacco industry and the carbon lobby should be accorded ‘independent policy expert’ status.
Author: Philippe Sands Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0525433724 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 466
Book Description
A profound, important book, a moving personal detective story and an uncovering of secret pasts, set in Europe’s center, the city of bright colors—Lviv, Ukraine, dividing east from west, north from south, in what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A book that explores the development of the world-changing legal concepts of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich. It is also a spellbinding family memoir, as the author traces the mysterious story of his grandfather as he maneuvered through Europe in the face of Nazi atrocities. This is “a monumental achievement ... told with love, anger and precision” (John le Carré, acclaimed internationally bestselling author). East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in “the Paris of Ukraine,” a major cultural center of Europe, a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. Phillipe Sands changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder
Author: Peter Dale Scott Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP ISBN: 0228021006 Category : Poetry Languages : en Pages : 110
Book Description
so the long stretch of life / reveals its curvature / by those widely separated // moments when we are / brushed / by this awareness // of an other / that we do not know In his latest collection of poems, poet, deep state researcher, and radical medievalist Peter Dale Scott interrogates topics that have occupied his later thought and writing, such as moreness (our need, as humans, to be more than we are), minding, and enmindment (the generative synergy, engaging both hemispheres of our bicameral mind, of intellectual and spiritual enlightenment, now out of kilter). In pursuit of these themes, Scott’s voice ranges far, from engaging with poets of the past and, hopefully, the future to critiques of coercive political power, from elegies for important figures in his life – Leonard Cohen, Daniel Ellsberg, Czeslaw Milosz, and Robert Silvers – to fan letters for “minders” Chelsea Manning and Dr Christine Blasey Ford. Dreamcraft is a book that crosses distances and straddles boundaries, moving from whistleblower law to the mimetic properties of DNA, from “the entropic spread / of the drifting cosmos / after the big bang” to “the push of lawn grass / under foot.”
Author: Ian D. Armour Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1472508653 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 481
Book Description
Why is Eastern Europe still different from Western Europe, more than a quarter-century after the collapse of Communism? A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present shows how the roots of this difference are based in Eastern Europe's tortured 20th century. Eastern Europe emerged in 1918 as the 'lands between', new states whose weakness vis-à-vis Germany and Soviet Russia soon became obvious. The region was the main killing-field of the Second World War, which visited unimaginable horrors on its inhabitants before their 'liberation' by the Soviets in 1945. The imposition of Communist dictatorships on the region, ironically, only deepened Eastern Europe's backwardness. Even in the post-Communist period, its problems continue to make it a fertile breeding-ground for nationalism and political extremism. A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present explores the comparative backwardness of Eastern Europe and how this has driven strategies of modernisation; it looks at the ways in which the region has served as a giant test-tube for political experimentation and, in particular, at the enduring strength of nationalism, which since 1989 has re-emerged more virulent than ever. This book in the essential textbook for any student of 20th-century Eastern Europe.
Author: Emilio Lussu Publisher: Rizzoli Publications ISBN: 0847842797 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 277
Book Description
A rediscovered World War I masterpiece—one of the few memoirs about the Italian front—for fans of military history and All Quiet on the Western Front An infantryman’s “harrowing, moving, [and] occasionally comic” account of trench warfare on the alpine front seen in A Farewell to Arms (Times Literary Supplement). Taking its place alongside works by Ernst JŸnger, Robert Graves, and Erich Maria Remarque, Emilio Lussu’s memoir as an infantryman is one of the most affecting accounts to come out of the First World War. A classic in Italy but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, it reveals in spare and detached prose the almost farcical side of the war as seen by a Sardinian officer fighting the Austrian army on the Asiago plateau in northeastern Italy—the alpine front so poignantly evoked by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. For Lussu, June 1916 to July 1917 was a year of continuous assaults on impregnable trenches, absurd missions concocted by commanders full of patriotic rhetoric and vanity but lacking in tactical skill, and episodes often tragic and sometimes grotesque, where the incompetence of his own side was as dangerous as the attacks waged by the enemy. A rare firsthand account of the Italian front, Lussu’s memoir succeeds in staging a fierce indictment of the futility of war in a dry, often ironic style that sets his tale wholly apart from the Western Front of Remarque and adds an astonishingly modern voice to the literature of the Great War.
Author: István Deák Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400832055 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 350
Book Description
The presentation of Europe's immediate historical past has quite dramatically changed. Conventional depictions of occupation and collaboration in World War II, of wartime resistance and post-war renewal, provided the familiar backdrop against which the chronicle of post-war Europe has mostly been told. Within these often ritualistic presentations, it was possible to conceal the fact that not only were the majority of people in Hitler's Europe not resistance fighters but millions actively co-operated with and many millions more rather easily accommodated to Nazi rule. Moreover, after the war, those who judged former collaborators were sometimes themselves former collaborators. Many people became innocent victims of retribution, while others--among them notorious war criminals--escaped punishment. Nonetheless, the process of retribution was not useless but rather a historically unique effort to purify the continent of the many sins Europeans had committed. This book sheds light on the collective amnesia that overtook European governments and peoples regarding their own responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity--an amnesia that has only recently begun to dissipate as a result of often painful searching across the continent. In inspiring essays, a group of internationally renowned scholars unravels the moral and political choices facing European governments in the war's aftermath: how to punish the guilty, how to decide who was guilty of what, how to convert often unspeakable and conflicted war experiences and memories into serviceable, even uplifting accounts of national history. In short, these scholars explore how the drama of the immediate past was (and was not) successfully "overcome." Through their comparative and transnational emphasis, they also illuminate the division between eastern and western Europe, locating its origins both in the war and in post-war domestic and international affairs. Here, as in their discussion of collaborators' trials, the authors lay bare the roots of the many unresolved and painful memories clouding present-day Europe. Contributors are Brad Abrams, Martin Conway, Sarah Farmer, Luc Huyse, László Karsai, Mark Mazower, and Peter Romijn, as well as the editors. Taken separately, their essays are significant contributions to the contemporary history of several European countries. Taken together, they represent an original and pathbreaking account of a formative moment in the shaping of Europe at the dawn of a new millennium.