8468 results for "History"

The Jews of Vienna in the age of Franz Joseph

Wistrich, Robert S.
Analyzes the communal organization, political affiliations, and cultural contributions of Vienna's Jews from 1848 to World War I. After 1848, Jewish emancipation became an issue in party politics. Jews identified with the Austrian Liberal Party, with the Emperor and Germanism, in all of which they saw safeguards of Jewish emancipation. Analyzes the antisemitism of Schönerer's Pan-German Party, which found many adherents at the University of Vienna, and of Lueger's Christian Social Party. Describes the cautious reactions of Jewish officials, who supported the Liberal Party even in defeat and in the face of that party's desertion of the Jewish cause; the more nationalist faction led by Rabbi Joseph Samuel Bloch, a member of the Austrian parliament from 1884-95 and a militant fighter against antisemitism; and the Austrian Israelite Union set up in 1886 to encourage pride in Jewish identity and combat antisemitism. Surveys the role of antisemitism in the rise of Zionism. Suggests that the surge of antisemitism in Vienna, rather than the Dreyfus case, was responsible for Herzl's concern with the "Jewish question". Analyzes the Jewish self-hatred of Karl Kraus and Otto Weininger, and the role of Jewish identity and antisemitism in the life and work of Freud, Schnitzler, and other Austrian Jewish writers.
Published for the Littman Library by Oxford University Press 1988 696 pages

The Three Ages of the Italian Renaissance

Robert S. Lopez
Mr. Lopez reinterprets the civilization of the High Renaissance in Italy as a dramatic succession of three ages: Youth, 1454-1494; Maturity, 1494-1527; Decline, 1527-1559. In the first period, political and economic stabilization brings forth a mood of confident expectation which expresses itself in literature, art, and philosophy, all reaching for a goal of "self-centered aesthetic harmony." In the second period, a series of foreign invasions shatters the political and economic well-being of the Indian elite but does not slow down the artistic and literary drive. Whether in hope or in sorrow, in response to shock or in escape from reality, the Renaissance attains its glorious climax. The third period is torn between conflicting tendencies. The political battle is lost but there is a second economic revival; art and literature give out despondent notes but successfully explore new channels; philosophic permissiveness comes to an end but scientific reserach comes into its own. Mr. Lopez's tripartition of an age which is usually described as a single sweep adds depth to the definition of the Italian Renaissance. It is enhanced by his fresh translations of Renaissance poems and by twenty-four illustrations which pick out from the incomparable wealth of Renaissance art a few historically significant works. All the famous names are there, from Lorenzo de'Medici to Ariosto, Machiavelli, and Cardano, from Botticelli to Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Palladio; but one also meets a large number of minor figures and anonymous people in the street. America is discovered; new diseases appear; anti-Semitism reawakens; religious unity is destroyed - these and other events form the backdrop. The sparkling narration is thoroughly grounded in contemporary sources.
University of Virginia Press 2015-06-07 112 pages

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians: Essays and Translations

Robert Eisenman
By the author of the best-selling Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered and the James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls series, fascinating to beginner and scholar alike, this book provides further delineation of the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Christianity's formative years in Palestine. Included in this volume are Prof. Eisenman's first two ground-breaking works: Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran and James the Just in Habakkuk Pesher. The foundation pieces of his new approach to the Scrolls and "Palestinian Christianity", they triggered the debate over their relationship to Christian Origins generally ultimately leading to the freeing of the Scrolls early in the 1990's - a struggle in which he played a pivotal role. Also included in this volume are unpublished papers and essays, written and presented by him at international conferences in the past. These include "Paul as Herodian", "Rain Imagery at Qumran", and "The Final Proof that James and the Righteous Teacher are the Same" altogether providing a thorough and even more challenging presentation of the link of the Scrolls to early First-Century Christianity in Palestine. This volume also contains new translations of three key Qumran Documents: the Habakkuk Pesher, the Damascus Document, and the Community Rule, all almost only available in the sometimes inaccurate and often inconsistent renderings of Consensus 'Scholars' missing the electric brilliance of the writers of the Scrolls. Now, for the first time, the reader will have a chance to see the difference between these and a translation that grasps the apocalyptic mindset of the authors of the Scrolls. Subjecting the archaeology, paleography, and other external dating tools of Qumran research to rigorous criticism, Prof. Eisenman presents a fascinating and compelling picture of a nationalistic, xenophobic, and militant "Messianism" very different from the way we currently view Christianity - in fact, the literature of "the Messianic Movement in Palestine" itself. Not only does this book challenge preconceptions, it sets forth the detailed arguments necessary to connect "the Righteous Teacher" at Qumran to "the First Christians" and even the family of Jesus itself. In so doing, it connects the ideological adversary of this Teacher, "the Spouter of Lying" - in some cases even denoted "the Joker" - with Paul.
Independently Published 2019-01-30 420 pages

European Jewry and the First Crusade

Chazan, Robert Leon
Analyzes the causes of the anti-Jewish violence of the First Crusade. The spiritual revival and rapid growth of the 10th-11th centuries led both to Church reform and the Crusades, an attempt to direct feudal violence against the enemies of the Church. Under the impact of popular frenzy and loss of control by the papacy, the traditional Church doctrine of both denigration and toleration of the Jews broke down. The crusading bands' ideological motivation is reflected in contemporary Hebrew chronicles and in two Christian accounts. Discusses the Jewish response of martyrdom in preference to conversion. Contends that 1096 was not a turning-point - the destroyed communities were quickly resettled, and in later Crusades anti-Jewish excesses were prevented by the Church. The massacres indicated a change in Christian attitudes, including the view of Jews as enemies of Christendom, ritual murder accusations, and the demand for the Jews' total destruction or conversion. The appendix (pp. 223-297) contains an English translation of the texts of the two chronicles.
Univ. of California Press 1987 380 pages

Transatlantic tensions: the United States, Europe, and problem countries

Richard N. Haass
" Americans and Europeans are divided by more than an ocean when it comes to designing and carrying out policies toward countries that repress human rights, develop weapons of mass destruction, and/or support terrorism and subversion. Accounting for this divide are distinct interests, domestic politics, and above all profound disagreements between Americans and their counterparts in European capitals and Brussels over what tools of foreign policy--sanctions, engagement, military force--to empty to change the behavior of problem countries. The result is that Americans and Europeans often work at cross purposes--and that disagreements over policy toward problem countries threaten both to undermine efforts that promote desired change and transatlantic cooperation in other areas, be it within Europe or in building an open world trading system. This book examines the ""problem"" countries of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Nigeria. The authors explain sources of American and European differences, consequences for policies designed to influence problem states, and prospects for bridging transatlantic policy rifts. A conclusion by Richard N. Haass places these differences in perspective and suggests what Europe and the United States need to do to ameliorate this tension--and what could transpire if they do not. "
Brookings Institution Press 1999 251 pages

War Journal My Five Years in Iraq

Richard Engel
In the most dramatic and intimate account of battle reporting since Michael Herr's classic Dispatches , NBC News's award-winning Middle East Bureau Chief, Richard Engel, offers an unvarnished and often emotional account of five years in Iraq. Engel is the longest serving broadcaster in Iraq and the only American television reporter to cover the country continuously before, during, and after the 2003 U.S. invasion. Fluent in Arabic, he has had unrivaled access to U.S. military commanders, Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iraqi families, and even President George W. Bush, who called him to the White House for a private briefing. He has witnessed nearly every major milestone in this long war. War Journal describes what it was like to go into the hole where U.S. Special Operations Forces captured Saddam Hussein. Engel was there as the insurgency began and watched the spread of Iranian influence over Shiite religious cities and the Iraqi government. He watched as Iraqis voted in their first election. He was in the courtroom when Saddam was sentenced to death and interviewed General David Petraeus about the surge. In vivid, sometimes painful detail, Engel tracks the successes and setbacks of the war. He describes searching, with U.S troops, for a missing soldier in the dangerous Sunni city of Ramadi; surviving kidnapping attempts, IED attacks, hotel bombings, and ambushes; and even the smell of cakes in a bakery attacked by sectarian gangs and strewn with bodies of the executed. War Journal describes a sectarian war that American leaders were late to understand and struggled to contain. It is an account of the author's experiences, insights, bittersweet reflections, and moments from his private video diary -- itself the subject of a highly acclaimed documentary on MSNBC. War Journal is the story of the transformation of a young journalist who moved to the Middle East with $2,000 and a belief that the region would be " the story" of his generation into a seasoned reporter who has at times believed that he would die covering the war. It is about American soldiers, ordinary Iraqis, and especially a few brave individuals on his team who continually risked their lives to make his own daring reporting possible.
Simon & Schuster 2011-01-15 400 pages

Life on the Lower East Side

Lepkoff, Rebecca
A young Rebecca Lepkoff, camera in hand, navigated the streets of the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930s and 1940s, before the Alfred E. Smith housing project largely demolished and forever changed its character. She captured the lives and times of a vibrant, close-knit, and functional multiethnic community. Through her lens, she documented street scenesa woman stopping in front of a tenement to share some news, a fruit seller peddling her wares, a woman hanging laundry on a clothesline. Stoops, rooftops, fire escapes, and sidewalks in front of candy stores and delis were the preferred social and recreational locales. In the absence of playgrounds, children improvised outdoor play areas and congregated Saturday afternoons in front of the Loew's Canal. Life on the Lower East Side , the first monograph of Lepkoff's works, highlights the lost neighborhood between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges from the Bowery to the East River. With over 170 beautifully reproduced duotone photographs and essays by Peter Dans and Suzanne Wasserman, the book reveals the dynamic community of Italians, Irish, Jews, Greeks, Spaniards, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans. Lepkoff's images uncover a forgotten time and place and reveal how the Lower East Side has both stayed the same and changed forever.
Princeton Architectural Press 2006-09-28 208 pages

Historical dictionary of Zionism

Medoff, Rafael
The Jewish attachment to Zion is many centuries old. Although the modern Zionist movement was organized only a little more than a century ago, the roots of the Zionist idea reach back almost 4,000 years, to the day that the biblical patriarch Abraham left his home in Ur of the Chaldees to settle in the promised land The Historical Dictionary of Zionism is an excellent source of information on Zionism, its founders and leaders, its various strands and organizations, major events in its struggle, and its present status. By showing the movement's strengths and weaknesses, it also acts as a corrective to overly idealistic comments by its supporters and the wilder claims of its opponents. A much more realistic understanding is offered in the Introduction, which presents and explains the movement; the Chronology, which shows its historic progression; the Dictionary, which includes numerous entries on crucial persons, organizations and events; and the Bibliography, which points the way to further reading.
Fitzroy Dearborn 2000 238 pages

Horace: a life

Levi, Peter
Of all the Roman poets, Horatius Flaccus (65 BC to 8 BC) is undoubtedly the greatest. His vast corpus of work (the Epodes, Satires, Odes, Epistles and the Ars Poetica) spanned all aspects of Roman life: politics, the arts, religion, and the authority of the emperor, while his poems about friendship, philosophy, love and sex still have considerable universal appeal. For two thousand years he has been kept alive by scholars who have felt a great affinity with the benign personality that emerges. But not since Fraenkel's life of Horace in 1957 has a substantial biography of the poet been undertaken. This book makes a real attempt to present a complete picture of the life of Horace and the world in which he lived. It considers the details of Horace's romantic liaisons and why he never married, what the status of his father - a freedman - meant to the poet, and his distinctive brand of philosophy.
Routledge 1998 270 pages