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Author: Richard Bassett Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0241014875 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
Selected as a Book of the Year in the TLS and Spectator The final decade of the Cold War, through the eyes of a laconic and elegant observer In 1979 Richard Bassett set out on a series of adventures and encounters in central Europe which allowed him to savour the last embers of the cosmopolitan old Hapsburg lands and gave him a ringside seat at the fall of another ancien regime, that of communist rule. From Trieste to Prague and Vienna to Warsaw, fading aristocrats, charming gangsters, fractious diplomats and glamorous informants provided him with an unexpected counterpoint to the austerities of life along the Iron Curtain, first as a professional musician and then as a foreign correspondent. The book shows us familiar events and places from unusual vantage points: dilapidated mansions and boarding-houses, train carriages and cafes, where the game of espionage between east and west is often set. There are unexpected encounters with Shirley Temple, Fitzroy Maclean, Lech Walesa and the last Empress of Austria. Bassett finds himself at the funeral of King Nicola of Montenegro in Cetinje, plays bridge with the last man alive to have been decorated by the Austrian Emperor Franz-Josef and watches the KGB representative in Prague bestowing the last rites on the Soviet empire in Europe. Music and painting, architecture and landscape, food and wine, friendship and history run through the book. The author is lucky, observant and leans romantically towards the values of an older age. He brilliantly conjures the time, the people he meets, and Mitteleuropa in one of the pivotal decades of its history.
Author: Richard Bassett Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0241014875 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
Selected as a Book of the Year in the TLS and Spectator The final decade of the Cold War, through the eyes of a laconic and elegant observer In 1979 Richard Bassett set out on a series of adventures and encounters in central Europe which allowed him to savour the last embers of the cosmopolitan old Hapsburg lands and gave him a ringside seat at the fall of another ancien regime, that of communist rule. From Trieste to Prague and Vienna to Warsaw, fading aristocrats, charming gangsters, fractious diplomats and glamorous informants provided him with an unexpected counterpoint to the austerities of life along the Iron Curtain, first as a professional musician and then as a foreign correspondent. The book shows us familiar events and places from unusual vantage points: dilapidated mansions and boarding-houses, train carriages and cafes, where the game of espionage between east and west is often set. There are unexpected encounters with Shirley Temple, Fitzroy Maclean, Lech Walesa and the last Empress of Austria. Bassett finds himself at the funeral of King Nicola of Montenegro in Cetinje, plays bridge with the last man alive to have been decorated by the Austrian Emperor Franz-Josef and watches the KGB representative in Prague bestowing the last rites on the Soviet empire in Europe. Music and painting, architecture and landscape, food and wine, friendship and history run through the book. The author is lucky, observant and leans romantically towards the values of an older age. He brilliantly conjures the time, the people he meets, and Mitteleuropa in one of the pivotal decades of its history.
Author: David Fromkin Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307425789 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it surprised a European population enjoying the most beautiful summer in memory. For nearly a century since, historians have debated the causes of the war. Some have cited the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; others have concluded it was unavoidable. In Europe’s Last Summer, David Fromkin provides a different answer: hostilities were commenced deliberately. In a riveting re-creation of the run-up to war, Fromkin shows how German generals, seeing war as inevitable, manipulated events to precipitate a conflict waged on their own terms. Moving deftly between diplomats, generals, and rulers across Europe, he makes the complex diplomatic negotiations accessible and immediate. Examining the actions of individuals amid larger historical forces, this is a gripping historical narrative and a dramatic reassessment of a key moment in the twentieth-century.
Author: Dennis Glover Publisher: Abrams ISBN: 1468315927 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 189
Book Description
This “riveting novel about Orwell’s last days” takes readers inside the renowned author’s mind as he creates his final dystopian masterpiece (New Statesman). April, 1947. In a run-down farmhouse on a remote Scottish island, George Orwell begins his last and greatest work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Forty-three years old and suffering from the tuberculosis that within three winters will take his life, Orwell comes to see the book as his legacy—the culmination of a career spent fighting to preserve the freedoms which the wars and upheavals of the twentieth century have threatened. Completing the book is an urgent challenge, a race against death. In this masterful novel, Dennis Glover explores the creation of Orwell’s classic work which defined the twentieth century for millions of readers worldwide—and has continued to prove its unnerving relevance in the twenty-first. Simultaneously a captivating drama, a unique literary excavation, and an unflinching portrait of a writer, The Last Man in Europe will change the way we understand both our enduringly Orwellian times and Orwell’s timeless masterpiece.
Author: David P. Calleo Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 069111367X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 411
Book Description
Rethinking Europe's Future is a major reevaluation of Europe's prospects as it enters the twenty-first century. David Calleo has written a book worthy of the complexity and grandeur of the challenges Europe now faces. Summoning the insights of history, political economy, and philosophy, he explains why Europe was for a long time the world's greatest problem and how the Cold War's bipolar partition brought stability of a sort. Without the Cold War, Europe risks revisiting its more traditional history. With so many contingent factors--in particular Russia and Europe's Muslim neighbors--no one, Calleo believes, can pretend to predict the future with assurance. Calleo's book ponders how to think about this future. The book begins by considering the rival ''lessons'' and trends that emerge from Europe's deeper past. It goes on to discuss the theories for managing the traditional state system, the transition from autocratic states to communitarian nation states, the enduring strength of nation states, and their uneasy relationship with capitalism. Calleo next focuses on the Cold War's dynamic legacies for Europe--an Atlantic Alliance, a European Union, and a global economy. These three systems now compete to define the future. The book's third and major section examines how Europe has tried to meet the present challenges of Russian weakness and German reunification. Succeeding chapters focus on Maastricht and the Euro, on the impact of globalization on Europeanization, and on the EU's unfinished business--expanding into ''Pan Europe,'' adapting a hybrid constitution, and creating a new security system. Calleo presents three models of a new Europe--each proposing a different relationship with the U.S. and Russia. A final chapter probes how a strong European Union might affect the world and the prospects for American hegemony. This is a beautifully written book that offers rich insight into a critical moment in our history, whose outcome will shape the world long after our time.
Author: Jan Morris Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1439136939 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 213
Book Description
One hundred years ago, Trieste was the chief seaport of the entire Austro-Hungarian empire, but today many people have no idea where it is. This fascinating Italian city on the Adriatic, bordering the former Yugoslavia, has always tantalized Jan Morris with its moodiness and melancholy. She has chosen it as the subject of this, her final work, because it was the first city she knew as an adult -- initially as a young soldier at the end of World War II, and later as an elderly woman. This is not only her last book, but in many ways her most complex as well, for Trieste has come to represent her own life with all its hopes, disillusionments, loves and memories. Jan Morris evokes Trieste's modern history -- from the long period of wealth and stability under the Habsburgs, through the ambiguities of Fas-cism and the hardships of the Cold War. She has been going to Trieste for more than half a century and has come to see herself reflected in it: not just her interests and preoccupations -- cities, empires, ships and animals -- but her intimate convictions about such matters as patriotism, sex, civility and kindness. Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is the culmination of a singular career.
Author: James Reston, Jr. Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0385483368 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
Accomplished historical author James Reston, Jr., presents the enthralling saga of how the Christian kingdoms converted, conquered, and slaughtered their way to dominance in Europe as the year 1000 approached. Through Reston's brilliant narrative and engaging portraits of the unforgettable historical characters who embodied the struggle for the soul of Europe, students are introduced to a pivotal period in history during which an old order was crumbling, and terrifying, confusing new ideas were gaining hold in the populace. From the righteous fury of the Viking queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded, who burned unwanted suitors alive; to the brilliant but too-cunning Moor, al-Mansur the Illustrious Victor; to the aptly named English king Ethelred the Unready; to the abiding genius of the age, Pope Sylvester II—warrior kings and concubine empresses, maniacal warriors and religious zealots bring this stirring period to life.
Author: Frederick Kagan Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated ISBN: 9780306811371 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 816
Book Description
Looks at the Corsican general's rise to power in France, the impact of his quest for conquest on the changing face of Europe, the seminal events of the period, and the lives of key personalities and their roles during this time.
Author: David Marquand Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400838053 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 226
Book Description
Has Europe's extraordinary postwar recovery limped to an end? It would seem so. The United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Italy, and former Soviet Bloc countries have experienced ethnic or religious disturbances, sometimes violent. Greece, Ireland, and Spain are menaced by financial crises. And the euro is in trouble. In The End of the West, David Marquand, a former member of the British Parliament, argues that Europe's problems stem from outdated perceptions of global power, and calls for a drastic change in European governance to halt the continent's slide into irrelevance. Taking a searching look at the continent's governing institutions, history, and current challenges, Marquand offers a disturbing diagnosis of Europe's ills to point the way toward a better future. Exploring the baffling contrast between postwar success and current failures, Marquand examines the rebirth of ethnic communities from Catalonia to Flanders, the rise of xenophobic populism, the democratic deficit that stymies EU governance, and the thorny questions of where Europe's borders end and what it means to be European. Marquand contends that as China, India, and other nations rise, Europe must abandon ancient notions of an enlightened West and a backward East. He calls for Europe's leaders and citizens to confront the painful issues of ethnicity, integration, and economic cohesion, and to build a democratic and federal structure. A wake-up call to those who cling to ideas of a triumphalist Europe, The End of the West shows that the continent must draw on all its reserves of intellectual and political creativity to thrive in an increasingly turbulent world, where the very language of "East" and "West" has been emptied of meaning.
Author: Etienne Penissat Publisher: Verso Books ISBN: 1788736303 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
Mapping the class divisions that run throughout Europe Over the last ten years - especially with the 'no' votes in the French and Dutch referendums in 2010, and the victory for Brexit in 2016 - the issue of Europe has been placed at the centre of major political conflicts. Each of these crises has revealed profound splits in society, which are represented in terms of an opposition between those countries on the losing and those on the winning sides of globalisation. Inequalities beyond those between nations are critically absent from the debate. Based on major European statistical surveys, the new research in this work presents a map of social classes inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. It reveals the common features of the working class, the intermediate class and the privileged class in Europe. National features combine with social inequalities, through an account of the social distance between specific groups in nations in the North and in the countries of the South and East of Europe. The book ends with a reflection on the conditions that would be required for the emergence of a Europe-wide social movement.
Author: Richard Bassett
Author: Richard Bassett
Author: Walter Laqueur
Author: David Fromkin
Author: Dennis Glover
Author: David P. Calleo
Author: Jan Morris
Author: James Reston, Jr.
Author: Frederick Kagan
Author: David Marquand
Author: Etienne Penissat