Despite the growing assimilation of the Jews with Czech language and culture in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, many sectors of the Czech national movement regarded the Jews as a Germanizing element. Ch. 8 (pp. 181-197), "Death and the Nation: Ritual Murder as Political Discourse in the Czech Lands" [an earlier version appeared in "Jewish History" 10 (1996)], describes cases of blood libels in 1892-1902 and reflects on the role played by ritual murder discourse in the rhetoric of Czech nationalism. Concludes that the ritual murder accusation against the Jews, as well as belief in their sexual licentiousness, added psychological dimensions to the rhetoric of economic nationalism - e.g. accusations of economic exploitation and "linguistic treason." Ch. 9 (pp. 198-216), "Masaryk and Czech Jewry: The Ambiguities of Friendship, " disputes the myth of Masaryk as a staunch opponent of antisemitism. Throughout his career Masaryk could not overcome antisemitic prejudices adopted in his childhood; he paradoxically combined support for the Jews of Bohemia with expressions of resentment and distrust.

Five hundred years ago Jews living in Spain were given a Stark choice: be baptized or leave the country. the expulsion of the Sephardim - the term for Spain's Jews - was a turning point in the history of the Iberian Peninsula and one o the greatest upheavals in jeFive hundred years ago Jews living in Spain were given a stark choice: be baptized or leave the country. The expulsion of the Sephardim--the term for Spain's Jews--was a turning point in the history of the Iberian Peninsula and one of the greatest upheavals in Jewish history since the Diaspora.The Middle Ages was a time of uneasy co-operation between Christians and Jews, but in the 14th century a rising tide of religious fanaticism and anti-Semitism gradually engulfed Spain, leading to horrific massacres in 1391. Then, in March 1492, came the edict of the Catholic Monarchs, giving the Jews three months to leave. The converts who stayed faced bitter prejudice--hounded by the Inquisition, their descendants penalized for centuries--as the Spanish Crown tried to impose Catholic uniformity.Those who fled the persecution had to struggle to re-establish their communities elsewhere in Europe, the Ottoman empire and Morocco. Outstanding individuals such as Baruch Spinoza--the most important philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age--and Joseph Nasi--the financier-favorite of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent--exemplify the achievements of the Sephardi exiles. Whether in Amsterdam, Istanbul or London, they seized the opportunities offered by a new world of empires and discovery.Published to mark the quincentenary of the Sephardi exodus, here at last is a complete and objective account of these traumatic events. Professor Elie Kedourie has gathered an international team of experts who piece together all aspects of the moving story: conditions in Spain leading up to 1492; the decree itself, and its consequences for Spanish Jewry; the experiences of the exiles and their contributions towards economic and intellectual life in their new countries. Professor Kedourie himself provides a stimulating and up-to-date assessment of the whole tragic episode--whose historic repercussions continue to this day.wish hostory since the diaspora. published to mark the quincentenary of the sephardi exodus, here is a complete and objective account of these traumatic events

The end of the Cold War is reverberating far beyond its European theatre--in the killing fields of Afghanistan, Indochina, Central America, Southern Africa & the Horn of Africa. For some of these people, peace has come already; for others it is in sight. But beyond peacemaking lie the delicate challenges of peacekeeping & huge tasks of political, social, & economic reconstruction--& construction--in some of the world's poorest areas. The roots of these wars were deeply embedded in indigenous strife & history, but the superpowers--by adding their own ideological & strategic agenda--intensified the bloodshed. The results of the conflicts are appalling: nearly 3 million dead (2.5 million of them civilians); 16 million refugees; battered people, towns, & transport; a generation of unschooled youth & unskilled adults; countrysides planted with explosives; & teeming cities lacking in jobs & essential services. In this, the sixteenth volume in ODC's U.S.-Third World Policy Perspective series, the authors provide valuable timely analysis of the differing problems of polity & economy confronting the governments of these devastated countries. In short, Cyrus R. Vance calls it "a stimulating & provocative book."

No detailed description available for "Families against the City".

First published in 1989, Technology and Development in the Third Industrial Revolution is a significant contribution to history.

A generous selection of poems by Hans Arp, Bertolt Brecht, Gunter Grass, Wilhelm Lehmann, Gottfried Benn, Yvan Goll, Nelly Sachs, Peter Huchel, Gunter Eich, Christine Lavant, Joannes Bobrowski, Paul Celan, Helmut Heissenbuttel, Ernst Jandl, Ingeborg Bachmann, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Gunter Kunert, printed in German, with an Introduction in English.

Drawing heavily on the reminiscences of the Brownsville boys themselves, and skillfully integrating these with material from newspapers, books, and commentary of the time, Sorin creates an original and compelling picture of the communal and individual vitality that allowed an unusual and heartening social achievement.

This inaugural volume explores the artistic repercussions of the major political and economic events of the latter half of the eighteenth century: the Seven Years' War, the French Revolution, and the English industrial revolution. Boime examines the prerevolutionary popularity of the rococo style and the emergence of the cult of antiquity that followed the Seven Years' War. He shows how the continual experiments of Jacques-Louis David and others with neoclassical symbols and themes in the latter part of the century actively contributed to the transformation of French and English politics. Boime's analyses reveal the complex relationship of art with a wide range of contemporary attitudes and conditions—technological innovation, social and political tensions, commercial expansion, and the growth of capitalism. -- Publisher's website.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Pp. 264-338 discuss the Holocaust period, beginning with anti-Jewish laws in Yugoslavia restricting Jewish economic activity, as well as a numerus clausus, in October 1940. Notes that these laws were passed under German pressure, that protests made by the Jewish leadership were to no avail, and that many Jews thereafter converted. With the German occupation and division of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Nazis took over control of Belgrade and instituted further anti-Jewish measures. During fall 1941 all Jewish men were arrested; they were sent to nearby labor camps, and many were killed. In December all of the remaining Jews, mostly women and children, were interned at Sajmište, and during spring 1942 they were killed in a gassing truck. Provides details concerning the Final Solution in Belgrade, which was carried out with the collaboration of local authorities and police. Estimates that 94% of the ca. 11,870 Jews living there in 1941 were killed. Only a few of the Nazi perpetrators were tried and sentenced in Yugoslavia after the war; the others either fled or returned to Germany, where some received light sentences.

. . . Mr. Itzkoff places most of the blame for America's alleged intellectual decline on what he sees as an economically and intellectually elite cast of misguided liberals. They have isolated themselves from American society, he says, by their paternalistic treatment of the underclass, by discounting the importance of traditional family values and by failing to raise enough bright children to sustain national competence. The New York Times Book Review Few doubt that the United States has slipped from its longstanding eminence as the world's wealthiest and most productive nation. The problem for the past 30 years has been the diagnosis of both the decline and then the cure. Literally trillions of dollars have been expended in futile programs to stanch the hemorrhaging of our economic wealth, jobs, educational achievement, and cultural elan. Itzkoff argues that we will never stop the fall until we understand our real national dilemma. This is the decline in our national intelligence profile: fewer citizens of high intelligence, educational potential, and economic productivity. These ideas are taboo. Itzkoff, however, insists that these are the facts, and they must be examined. In this book, he lays out the available evidence for our social disintegration and suggests a rational program of policy initiatives that would begin to restore us to what we were as recently as 1955--the great hope of the world.

Ch. 2 (pp. 11-29), "The Status of Jews in Alsace, " discusses the Jews' economic role as intermediaries (e.g. moneylenders, peddlers) and the hostility it aroused, from the eve of the French Revolution until 1870. The Infamous Decree (1808-18), although not strictly enforced, restricted Jewish rights (e.g. commercial activities) in an effort to reorient the Jews to crafts and agriculture. The occupational resentment compounded with the legacy of Christian antisemitism and the peasant resentment of capitalistic inroads in agriculture, which was associated with the Jews, led to violent antisemitic incidents in 1819-20s, in the early 1830s, and especially during the 1848 revolution. Discrimination was expressed by local government authorities, the courts, the press, etc. By the 1850s-60s, antisemitism declined.

The unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 signaled the demise of a political and economic system that was widely perceived as durable, the preeminent rival to that of the United States. Less conspicuous than the momentous political transformations were the altered beliefs, aspirations, and illusions of the individuals who had maintained and led that system. In this original interpretation the eminent sociologist Paul Hollander focuses on the human aspects of the failure of Soviet communism. He examines how members of the Soviet political elite, leaders in communist Czechoslovakia and Hungary, high-ranking officials in agencies of control and coercion, and distinguished defectors and exiles experienced the erosion of ideals that undermined the political system they had once believed in.

The Last Half-Century represents the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship by Morris Janowitz. In this comprehensive and systematic analysis of the major trends in American society during the past fifty years, he probes the weakening of popular party affiliations and the increased inability of elected representatives to rule. Centering his work on the crucial concept of social control, Janowitz orders and assesses a vast amount of empirical research to clarify the failure of basic social institutions to resolve our chronic conflicts. For Janowitz, social control denotes a society's capacity to regulate itself within a moral framework that transcends simple self-interest. He poses urgent questions: Why has social control been so drastically weakened in our advanced industrial society? And what strategies can we use to strengthen it again? The expanation rests in part on the changes in social structure which make it more and more complicated for citizens to calculate their political self-interest. At the same time, complex economic and defense problems also strain an already overburdened legislative system, making effective, responsive political rule increasingly difficult. Janowitz concludes by assessing the response of the social sciences to the pressing problem of social control and asserts that new forms of citizen participation in the government must be found.

The "Scientific Revolution" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries continues to command attention in historical debate. What was its nature? How did it develop? Controversy still rages about the extent to which it was essentially a "revolution of the mind," or how far it must also be explained by wider considerations--social, economic, political and cultural. In this volume, leading scholars of early modern science argue the importance of specifically national contexts for understanding the transformation in natural philosophy between Copernicus and Newton. Distinct political, religious, cultural and linguistic formations shaped scientific interests and concerns differently in Italy, France, Britain, the Germanies, Spain, and so on, and explain different levels of scientific intensity. Questions of institutional development, and of the transmission of scientific ideas, are also addressed. The emphasis on national determinants makes this volume an entirely original contribution to the study of the scientific revolution.

This is the first book to analyse the relationship between the Soviet state and society from the October Revolution of 1917 to the revolution under Stalin of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Professor Lewis Siegelbaum examines the ways in which the promise of a new society made by the 1917 Revolution informed the thinking of those who had experienced the order which preceded it. But how did that old order limit possibilities? How did the new Party leaders, worker activists, artists, and scientists know what to abolish, what to retain, and what to transform? The author explores these questions by tracing the evolution of the ruling Communist Party and its New Economic Policy and the changing fortunes of industrial workers, peasants, and the scientific and cultural intelligentsia. He demonstrates how these different actors sought to appropriate the promise of the 1917 Revolution for their own purposes, highlights the compromises they made, and explains why in the late 1920s these compromises had started to break down.