8468 results for "History"

The happy traitor: spies, lies and exile in Russia: the extraordinary story of George Blake

Kuper, Simon
"Those people who were betrayed were not innocent people. They were no better nor worse than I am. It's all part of the intelligence world. If the man who turned me in came to my house today, I'd invite him to sit down and have a cup of tea. George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a Senior Officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least known double agents, and remained unrepentant. In 1961, Blake was sentenced to forty-two years imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court. On the surface, Blake was a charming, intelligent and engaging man, and most importantly, a seemingly committed patriot. Underneath, a ruthlessly efficient mole and key player in the infamous 'Berlin Tunnel' operation. This illuminating biography tracks Blake from humble beginnings as a teenage courier for the Dutch underground during the Second World War, to the sensational prison-break from Wormwood Scrubs that inspired Hitchcock to write screenplay. Through a combination of personal interviews, research and unique access to Stasi records, journalist Simon Kuper unravels who Blake truly was, what he was capable of, and why he did it"--Publisher's description
Profile Books 2021 270 pages

One hundred years of kibbutz life: a century of crises and reinvention

Michal Palgi,Shulamit Reinharz
The years 1909-2009 marked a century of kibbutz life-one hundred years of achievements, challenges; and creative changes. The impact of kibbutzim on Israeli society has been substantial but is now waning. Contributors discuss the hopes, goals, frustrations, and disappointments of the kibbutz movement They also examine reform efforts intended to revitalize the institution and reinforce fading kibbutz ideals. The various studies presented in this book clarify the dynamism of the kibbutz institution and raises questions about the ways in which residential arrangements throughout the world manage change.
Transaction Publishers 2014 347 pages

Safe Among the Germans Liberated Jews After World War II

Ruth Gay
This book tells the little-known story of why a quarter-million Jews, survivors of death camps and forced labor, sought refuge in Germany after World War II. Those who had ventured to return to Poland after liberation soon found that their homeland had become a new killing ground, where some 1,500 Jews were murdered in pogroms between 1945 and 1947. Facing death at home, and with Palestine and the rest of the world largely closed to them, they looked for a place to be safe and found it in the shelter of the Allied Occupation Forces in Germany. By 1950 a little community of 20,000 Jews remained in Germany: 8,000 native German Jews and 12,000 from Eastern Europe. Ruth Gay examines their contrasting lives in the two postwar Germanies. After the fall of Communism, the Jewish community was suddenly overwhelmed by tens of thousands of former Soviet Jews. Now there are some 100,000 Jews in Germany. The old, somewhat nostalgic life of the first postwar decades is being swept aside by radical forces from the Lubavitcher at one end to Reform and feminism at the other. What started in 1945 as a "remnant" community has become a dynamic new center of Jewish life.
Yale University Press 2011-06-23 368 pages

Politics in Black and White Race and Power in Los Angeles

Raphael Sonenshein
This book reaches deep into the past of the city of Los Angeles and carries through to the dramatic events that have recently received global attention--the Rodney King beating and the uprising in South Central L.A. Tracing the evolution of an extraordinary biracial coalition in Los Angeles behind Mayor Tom Bradley, Raphael Sonenshein shows how "crossover" politics and racial violence coexist in urban America. While challenging the prevailing pessimism about biracial coalitions in general, he also compares their relative successes in Los Angeles to their disheartening failures in New York City. What emerges is a probing look at a crucial issue of politics in the United States: can whites and minorities find common ground?
Princeton University Press 1993 301 pages

The paradoxical ascent to God: the kabbalistic theosophy of Habad Hasidism

Elior, Rachel
This book is a study of the Habad Hasidism movement, an influential part of the Hasidic Movement, which originated in the eigteenth century. Habad was founded by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1813) who established a Hasidic community in Belorussia and who set forth the new Habad doctrine in a book entitled Tanya (Likutey Amarim). This doctrine expounded the mystical ideas underlying the quest for God. Its essential innovation lay in the formulation of a religious outlook which concentrated upon perceiving the divinity: its essence, its nature, the stages of its manifestation, its characteristics, its perfection, its differing wills, its processes, the significance of its revelation and the possibilities of its perception. This conception generated a profound transformation of religious worship and was the cause of great controversy throughout the Jewish world.
State University of New York Press 1993-01-01 279 pages

Hungary Between Democracy and Authoritarianism

Paul Lendvai
How has Hungary, a country once in the vanguard of political and economic reform under Communism, become a chilling example of the new threats confronting democracy in Central Europe? The return of Hungary's demons of the past--nationalism, ethnic hatred, deeply-rooted corruption and authoritarian tendencies--has engendered international concern. Since winning a two-thirds majority in parliament in the spring of 2010, the dynamic right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has embarked on a sweeping and ruthless concentration of power and has sought to reshape the state in his own image. A new constitution and a sweeping series of laws and decrees--radical changes in the judicial and electoral system and the dismantling of constitutional safeguards ensuring the autonomy of the executive branch and the freedom of the media--seem destined to ensure a long-term hegemony of the far right. Meanwhile a campaign of vituperative nationalist rhetoric and the granting of voting rights to 2.5 million ethnic Hungarians living in neighbouring countries are bound to increase tensions in this volatile corner of Europe. Lendvai offers readers an unsparing and dispassionate account, based on his intimate personal knowledge of Hungary's major political figures and its political culture, of the turbulent events since the collapse of the Communist regime which affect not only Hungary, but also the political and economic stability of the Danube basin.
Oxford University Press 2012-05 288 pages

The night watch

Modiano, Patrick
When Patrick Modiano was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for LIterature he was praised for using the 'art of memory' to bring to life the Occupation of Paris during the Second World War. The Night Watch is his second novel and tells the story of a young man of limited means, caught between his work for the French Gestapo informing on the Resistance, and his work for a Resistance cell informing on the police and the black market dealers whose seedy milieu of nightclubs, prostitutes and spivs he shares. Under pressure from both sides to inform and bring things to a crisis, he finds himself driven towards an act of self-sacrifice as the only way to escape an impossible situation and the question that haunts him - how to be a traitor without being a traitor. In this astonishing, cruel and tender book, Modiano attempts to exorcise the past by leading his characters out on a fantasmagoric patrol during one fatal night of the Occupation.
Bloomsbury 2015 130 pages

Disease in Milk; the Remedy, Pasteurization; the Life Work of Nathan Straus

Nathan Straus
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
HardPress 2012 398 pages

Romanticism against the tide of modernity

Löwy, Michael
Romanticism is a worldview that finds expression over a whole range of cultural fields—not only in literature and art but in philosophy, theology, political theory, and social movements. In Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre formulate a theory that defines romanticism as a cultural protest against modern bourgeois industrial civilization and work to reveal the unity that underlies the extraordinary diversity of romanticism from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. After critiquing previous conceptions of romanticism and discussing its first European manifestations, Löwy and Sayre propose a typology of the sociopolitical positions held by romantic writers-from “restitutionist” to various revolutionary/utopian forms. In subsequent chapters, they give extended treatment to writers as diverse as Coleridge and Ruskin, Charles Peguy, Ernst Bloch and Christa Wolf. Among other topics, they discuss the complex relationship between Marxism and romanticism before closing with a reflection on more contemporary manifestations of romanticism (for example, surrealism, the events of May 1968, and the ecological movement) as well as its future. Students and scholars of literature, humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies will be interested in this elegant and thoroughly original book.
Duke University Press 2001 317 pages

The She Wolf Of France

Maurice Druon
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2022-10-27 340 pages

The Einstein Theory of Relativity

Lillian R. Lieber
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2015-08-08 338 pages

Fortunate sons: the 120 Chinese boys who came to America, went to school, and revolutionized an ancient civilization

Leibovitz, Liel
In 1872, the Qing Empire sent 120 boys to America in the hope that they would unlock the mysteries of Western innovation. They studied at New England's finest schools, befriended luminaries such as Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant, and exchanged ideas with their American peers that would change the course of both nations. But when anti-Chinese fervor forced them back home, the young men faced a new set of obstacles, having to overcome a suspicious imperial court and a culture deeply resistant to change. Filled with colorful characters and vivid historical detail, this book unearths the dramatic stories of these young men who led China at the pivotal moment when it teetered between modernity and tradition.--From publisher description.
W.W. Norton 2011 319 pages

Red diaper baby: a boyhood in the age of McCarthyism

Laxer, James
"Red Diaper Baby is James Laxer's compelling and extraordinary memoir of growing up in a communist family during the height of the Cold War. When Jim was born in a Montreal hospital, his father was living in hiding under an assumed name. And when it came time to begin school in Ottawa, Jim was enrolled under a false birth date. Throughout his childhood he was repeatedly instructed not to tell anyone what his father did for work. Laxer's parents were dedicated members of the Communist Party, true believers in an ideology that was generally reviled and had been outlawed during much of World War II. From an early age, Laxer was collecting signatures on ban-the-bomb petitions, delivering Party flyers door to door, attending eccentric left-wing Camp Naivelt, and campaigning for the charismatic J. B. Salsberg, a Communist MPP in the Ontario legislature. Dramatic, humorous, and full of period detail, Red Diaper Baby offers a rare look at the McCarthy years through the eyes of a child. It also explains a great deal about Laxer's eventual and crucial role in the founding of the Waffle faction of the NDP, his continued engagement with the left, and his evolution into one of Canada's preeminent intellectuals."--
House of Anansi Press Inc 2019 189 pages

Radical Politics in Modern Turkey

Landau, Jacob M.
The fact that the active and organized involvement of radical movements in Turkish politics is a recent development renders its investigation difficult. To be meaningful, the terms 'Left', 'Right' and 'Islamist' have to relate to specific situations, and against a background of freedom of action. In Turkey, therefore, the main field of study should be the years following the 1960 Revolution - the period which is the main concern of this book, first published in 1974.
Routledge 2017-08-29 326 pages