A funny and affecting portrait of Britain's love hate relationship with the railway with a new chapter for this paperback editionBritain gave railways to the world, yet its own network is the dearest (definitely) and the worst (probably) in Western Europe. Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore - yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humour, capacity for suffering and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has travelled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel ('half-John Betjeman, half-Victor Meldrew') finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railwayman, and - after a quest lasting decades - an Individual Pot of Strawberry Jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.

Two men were shot and killed in the office of the Montreal Cotton Company in Valleyfield, Quebec, on a night in 1895. A third victim, shot through the head, managed to survive. Charged with the murders was Valentine Shortis, a young Irish immigrant. His trial, the longest on record at the time in Canada, was played out against one of the most dramatic periods in Canadian political history. Before the case closed it had involved some of the most important names in the country. Did Valentine Shortis commit murder in the course of a bold robbery, as the Crown and the citizens of Valleyfield believed? Or was he insane, as the defence argued and the leading psychiatrists in Canada contended? The best-known lawyers in Quebec fought out the issues in the courts, while politicians used the case to further their careers. As the trial dragged on it became part of the intricate political tapestry of the day, along with the Manitoba schools question, the revolt of the 'nest of traitors' from the Mackenzie Bowell's cabinet, and the federal election of 1896, in which Laurier used the Shortis case to help him become prime minister. As well as Laurier, other prominent Canadians made appearances in the case. Lady Aberdeen, the wife of the govenor-general, mysteriously put a word in the ear of Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, the young minister of justice. We meet the larger-than-life psychiatrists, C.K. Clarke and R.M. Bucke, sex-educator Arthur Beall, and even Mackenzie King and his spirits. Martin Friedland has vividly reconstructed one of the most dramatic criminal cases in Canada's history. Along the way he reveals much about our political past, the criminal process, French-English relations, and the history of psychiatry and corrections. Above all he tells a fascinating and compelling tale of murder and politics.

A groundbreaking interpretation of the intellectual origins of the United Nations No Enchanted Palace traces the origins and early development of the United Nations, one of the most influential yet perhaps least understood organizations active in the world today. Acclaimed historian Mark Mazower forces us to set aside the popular myth that the UN miraculously rose from the ashes of World War II as the guardian of a new and peaceful global order, offering instead a strikingly original interpretation of the UN's ideological roots, early history, and changing role in world affairs. Mazower brings the founding of the UN brilliantly to life. He shows how the UN's creators envisioned a world organization that would protect the interests of empire, yet how this imperial vision was decisively reshaped by the postwar reaffirmation of national sovereignty and the unanticipated rise of India and other former colonial powers. This is a story told through the clash of personalities, such as South African statesman Jan Smuts, who saw in the UN a means to protect the old imperial and racial order; Raphael Lemkin and Joseph Schechtman, Jewish intellectuals at odds over how the UN should combat genocide and other atrocities; and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, who helped transform the UN from an instrument of empire into a forum for ending it. A much-needed historical reappraisal of the early development of this vital world institution, No Enchanted Palace reveals how the UN outgrew its origins and has exhibited an extraordinary flexibility that has enabled it to endure to the present day.

"A fantastic social history" from the author of Salt and Cod ( USA Today ) In the Dominican Republic town of San Pedro de Macorís, baseball is often seen as the only way to a better life. For those who make it, the million-dollar paychecks from Major League Baseball mean that not only they, but their entire families as well, have been saved from grinding poverty. The successful few set an example that dazzles the neighbors they left behind. But for the majority, this dream is illusory. In The Eastern Stars, New York Times bestselling author Mark Kurlansky reveals the connection between two countries' love affair with a sport, and the remarkable journey of impoverished San Pedro and its baseball players-including Rico Carty, Albert Pujols, Robinson Canó, Sammy Sosa, and Alfonso Soriano-who have sought freedom from poverty through playing ball.

This book is a more personal history than has ever before been written by or about Marianne Faithfull. Anecdotal, conversational, intimate and revealing, this is her no-holds-barred account of her life, her friends, her triumphs and mistakes. A decade after the publication of ‘Faithfull’, one of the most acclaimed rock autobiographies of all time, Marianne Faithfull is back, vowing periodically leave her wicked ways behind and grow up, but finding that somehow strange things keep happening. A wry observer of her slightly off-kilter world, Marianne muses nostalgically about afternoons languishing on Moroccan cushions at George and Pattie's, getting high and listening to new songs. She fondly recalls the outlandish antics of her Beat friends Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; is frequently baffled at her image in the press (opening the paper to read of her own demise: 'Sixties Star in Death Plunge'); terrified by the curse sent by Kenneth Anger; mortified by her history of reckless behaviour; not to mention her near-death experience in Singapore while looking for an opium den. Marianne peoples her anecdotal memoir with legendary characters one can imagine only Marianne assembling around her, both the eccentric and the beautiful, from Henrietta Moraes and Donatella Versace to Sofia Coppola, Juliette Greco, and Yves St. Laurent's dog. Here is Marianne on the dark side of the sixties and the bright side of the nineties, which saw her collaborating with the likes of Blur and Jarvis Cocker; compelling recollections of an unconventional childhood in her father's orgiastic literary commune to a hilariously decadent few days at Lady Caroline Blackwood's deathbed. Here she is her blossoming movie career, on her records as subliminal autobiography. This is as intimate a portrait as we've ever had of Marianne, as she meditates on sex and drugs, confronts her alter-ego, the Fabulous Beast, and faces her own mortality in her battle with breast cancer. Since her last book Marianne has, in her own words, 'made quite a few records, gone on many tours, tried to play it straight, and... Well, the rest is the subject of this book.'

Marcus Spiegel, a German Jewish immigrant, served with the 67th and 120th Ohio Volunteer regiments during the Civil War. He saw action in Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, where he was fatally wounded in May 1864. These letters to Caroline, his wife, reveal the traumatizing experience of a soldier and the constant concern of a husband and father. Jean Powers Soman is a great-great-granddaughter of Marcus Spiegel. Her coeditor, Frank L. Byrne, is a professor of history at Kent State University and the editor of several books, including Haskell of Gettysburg: His Life and Civil War Papers.

MacKinlay Kantor's book for young readers captures all the emotions and drama of those few days in April 1865: Lee's mingled sorrow and relief, Grant's generosity toward his late opponent and the nearly starving Confederate soldiers; and the two commanders' negotiation of surrender terms intended to help heal the wounds of more than four years of the most violent conflict in American history.

Perhaps no other crusade in the history of the U.S. provoked so much passion and fury as the struggle over slavery. Many of the problems that were a part of that great debate are still with us. Louis Filler has brought together much information both known and new on those who organized to defeat slavery. He has also re-examined the anti-slavery movement's ideals, heroes, and martyrs with historical perspective and precision. Contrary to popular belief, the anti-slavery movement was far from united. It included abolitionists as well as a variety of reformers whose activities place them among the anti-slavery forces. These included men as different in background and temperament as William Lloyd Garrison and John Quincy Adams. Portraits of the many protagonists, their hardships, and their quarrels with Southerners and Northerners alike, bring to life this exciting and tumultuous period. Filler also examines the many related reform movements that characterized the period: feminism, spiritualism, utopian societies, and educational reform. The volume traces the relationship of the antislavery movement to abolition and probes their connection with the several reforms that dominated the period. He brilliantly recaptures a sense of the contemporary consequences of the reformers efforts. This is an absorbing and important survey of the problems—political, social, and economic—that made this period so crucial in the history of the U.S.

Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem "We were both small nations whose existence could never be taken for granted," Václav Havel said of the Czechs and the Jews of Israel in 1990, and indeed, the complex and intimate link between the fortunes of these two peoples is unique in European history. This book by one of the world's leading authorities on the history of Czech and Slovak Jewry during the Nazi period is the first to thoroughly document this singular relationship and to trace its impact on the fate of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia during the Holocaust. Livia Rothkirchen provides a detailed and comprehensive history of how Nazi rule in the Czech lands was shaped as much by local culture and circumstances as by military policy. The extraordinary nature of the Czech Jews' experience emerges in chapters on the role of the Jewish minority in Czech life; the crises of the Munich agreement and the German occupation; the reaction of the local population to the persecution of the Jews; the policies of the London-based government in exile; the question of Jewish resistance; and the Theresienstadt ghetto. The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia is based on a wealth of primary documents, many uncovered only after the 1989 November revolution, and includes an epilogue on the post-1945 period.

A number of 'histories of Israel' have been written over the past few decades yet the basic methodological questions are not always addressed: how do we write such a history and how can we know anything about the history of Israel? In Ancient Israel Lester L. Grabbe sets out to summarize what we know through a survey of sources and how we know it by a discussion of methodology and by evaluating the evidence. Grabbe's aim is not to offer a history as such but rather to collect together and analyze the materials necessary for writing such a history. His approach therefore allows the reader the freedom, and equips them with the essential methodological tools, to use the valuable and wide-ranging evidence presented in this volume to draw their own conclusions. The most basic question about the history of ancient Israel, how do we know what we know, leads to the fundamental questions of the study: What are the sources for the history of Israel and how do we evaluate them? How do we make them 'speak' to us through the fog of centuries? Grabbe focuses on original sources, including inscriptions, papyri, and archaeology. He examines the problems involved in historical methodology and deals with the major issues surrounding the use of the biblical text when writing a history of this period. Ancient Israel makes an original contribution to the field but also provides an enlightening overview and critique of current scholarly debate. It can therefore serve as a 'handbook' or reference-point for those wanting a catalog of original sources, scholarship, and secondary studies. Its user-friendly structure and Grabbe's clarity of style make this book eminently accessible not only to students of biblical studies and ancient history but also to the interested lay reader.

"In his comprehensive history of the synagogue from the Hellenistic period through Late Antiquity, Lee Levine traces the origins and development of this dynamic and revolutionary institution. This revised paperback edition reflects the latest information in the field and includes a wealth of recently published material ranging from excavation reports and monographs to articles appearing in edited volumes and scholarly journals". --

Explores the history of the Occupy Wall Street movement, offering first-hand accounts of its early days and examining protesters' goals and demands

Yokohama Burning is the story of the worst natural disaster of the twentieth century: the earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis of September 1923 that destroyed Yokohama and most of Tokyo and killed 140,000 people during two days of horror. With cinematic vividness and from multiple perspectives, acclaimed Newsweek correspondent Joshua Hammer re-creates harrowing scenes of death, escape, and rescue. He also places the tumultuous events in the context of history and demonstrates how they set Japan on a path to even greater tragedy. At two minutes to noon on Saturday, September 1, 1923, life in the two cities was humming along at its usual pace. An international merchant fleet, an early harbinger of globalization, floated in Yokohama harbor and loaded tea and silk on the docks. More than three thousand rickshaws worked the streets of the port. Diplomats, sailors, spies, traders, and other expatriates lunched at the Grand Hotel on Yokohama's Bund and prowled the dockside quarter known as Bloodtown. Eighteen miles north, in Tokyo, the young Prince Regent, Hirohito, was meeting in his palace with his advisers, and the noted American anthropologist Frederick Starr was hard at work in his hotel room on a book about Mount Fuji. Then, in a mighty shake of the earth, the world as they knew it ended. When the temblor struck, poorly constructed buildings fell instantly, crushing to death thousands of people or pinning them in the wreckage. Minutes later, a great wall of water washed over coastal resort towns, inundating people without warning. Chemicals exploded, charcoal braziers overturned, neighborhoods of flimsy wooden houses went up in flames. With water mains broken, fire brigades could only look on helplessly as the inferno spread. Joshua Hammer searched diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts and conducted interviews with nonagenarian survivors to piece together a minute-by-minute account of the catastrophe. But the author offers more than a disaster narrative. He details the emerging study of seismology, the nascent wireless communications network that alerted the world, and the massive, American-led relief effort that seemed to promise a bright new era in U.S.-Japanese relations. Hammer shows that the calamity led in fact to a hardening of racist attitudes in both Japan and the United States, and drove Japan, then a fledgling democracy, into the hands of radical militarists with imperial ambitions. He argues persuasively that the forces that ripped through the archipelago on September 1, 1923, would reverberate, traumatically, for decades to come. Yokohama Burning , a story of national tragedy and individual heroism, combines a dramatic narrative and historical perspective that will linger with the reader for a long time.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Liberal Nationalism For Israel: Towards An Israeli National Identity Joseph Agassi Joseph Agassi Gefen Publishing House Ltd, 1999 History; Middle East; Israel; History / Jewish; History / Middle East / Israel; Identity; Israel; Israel and the diaspora; Jews; Jews/ Israel/ Identity; Political Science / General; Political Science / History & Theory; Religion / Judaism / General; Religion / Judaism / History; Religion / Religion, Politics & State; Religion and state; Religion and state/ Israel; Social Science / Sociology of Religion; Zionism

"Lukacs's book is a lyrical, sometimes dazzling, never merely nostalgic evocation of a glorious period in the city's history. . . . {His} true sympathy lies . . . not with the famous expatriates, but with the writers and intellectuals who lived and died at home: the poets Endre Ady and Mihaly Babits; the novelists Ferenc Herczeg, Sandor Hunyady, Frigyes Karinthy, Dezso Kosztolanyi, Gyula Krudy, Kalman Mikszath, and Zsigmond Moricz; the political essayist DezsoSzabo; the playwright Erno Szep; the literary historian Antal Szerb; and others. . . . {John Lukacs} sets out to explain Hungarian literature to English-speaking readers. Though I have no idea whether or not he will succeed, few interpreters of Hungarian literature have made a more touching and eloquent attempt." -- The New York Review of Books

The Century of Artists' Books is the first full-length study of the development of artists' books as a twentieth century art-form. This work situates artists' books within the context of mainstream developments in the visual arts from Russian Futurism and Surrealism to Fluxus, Conceptual Art, to Postmodernism. Designed to raise critical and theoretical issues as well as provide a historical overview, this book explores more than two hundred individual books in relation to their structure, form, and conceptualization. Topics include the discussion of the poetics of the book, the book as a metaphor, the conceptual space of the book, and books as narrative and non-narrative sequences. Each chapter uses these specific issues to examine the works of well-known book artists and publishers. The book provides a foundation for future work in the history and critical interpretation of artists' books, as well as offering a structure for teaching artists' books to practitioners, collectors, and curators.

Renowned legal historian Jerold S. Auerbach examines the special contributions of rabbis and lawyers to American Jewish acculturation. Based on extensive reading and research in American and Israeli archives, his analysis of how lawyers displaced rabbis as community leaders at the beginning of this century illuminates a decisive moment in American Jewish history. The author of Unequal Justice (1976), the landmark study of the legal profession in history, turns to the more specific issue of the development of the lawyer class in the U.S. and its role in changing the way Jewish Americans assimilated and were perceived by others.

In this first comprehensive history in English of the Jews of Hebron, Jerold S. Auerbach explores one of the oldest and most vilified Jewish communities in the world. Spanning three thousand years, from the biblical narrative of Abraham's purchase of a burial cave for Sarah to the violent present, it offers a controversial analysis of a community located at the crossroads of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle over national boundaries and the internal Israeli struggle over the meaning of Jewish statehood.Hebron Jews sharply challenges conventional Zionist historiography and current media understa

What impact has Russia's chosen path of reform had on the development of law after the collapse of the communist regime? This collection of essays examines how Russia's distinctive traditions of law?and lawlessness?are shaping the current struggle for economic reform in the country. Nine renowned scholars, chosen from specialties in history, politi

Despite the pervasive feeling that much of the culture of Western democracies has increasingly become inauthentic or phoney, contemporary cultural critics and observers have paid little attention to the traditional philosophical criticism of inauthentic culture that began with Socrates, Aristophanes, and Plato and was applied, reworked, and extended by such philosophical cultural critics as St Augustine, Erasmus, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Thorstein Veblen. This new study in the philosophy of culture and the history of ideas illuminates the problem of inauthentic culture and draws on the Western intellectual tradition to show that our contemporary problem is actually an old and enduring one.