Poems with historical themes

The peace treaties represented an almost impossible attempt to solve the problems caused by a murderous world war. In The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933, part of the Oxford History of Modern Europe series, Steiner challenges the common assumption that the Treaty of Versailles led to the opening of a second European war. In a radically original way, this book characterizes the 1920s not as a frustrated prelude to a second global conflict but as a fascinating decade in its own right, when politicians and diplomats strove to re-assemble a viable European order. Steiner examines the efforts that failed but also those which gave hope for future promise, many of which are usually underestimated, if not ignored. She shows that an equilibrium was achieved, attained between a partial American withdrawal from Europe and the self-imposed constraints which the Soviet system imposed on exporting revolution. The stabilization painfully achieved in Europe reached it fragile limits after 1925, even prior to the financial crises that engulfed the continent. The hinge years between the great crash of 1929 and Hitler's achievement of power in 1933 devastatingly altered the balance between nationalism and internationalism. This wide-ranging study helps us grasp the decisive stages in this process. In a second volume, The Triumph of the Night , Steiner will examine the immediate lead up to the Second World War and its early years.

Written in 1985, this book cuts through the Cold War stereotypes of the Soviet Union to arrive at fresh interpretations of that country's traumatic history and later political realities. The author probes Soviet history, society, and politics to explain how the U.S.S.R. remained stable from revolution through the mid-1980s.

"The third edition of this classic and indispensable work, first published in 1940 and last revised in 1976, has been updated completely for a new generation of students and scholars. Recognizing that the ways in which history is understood and interpreted have changed drastically over the past six decades, the editors have revised 448 articles, replaced 1,360 articles, and added 841 new entries. Gender, race, and social-history perspectives have been added to many entries for the first time. In another departure from the earlier editions, the editors have added maps and illustrations throughout the text, providing helpful visual cues to readers. No library should be without these new volumes."--"The Best of the Best Reference Sources," American Libraries, May 2003.

Our bodies change over time; posture is ambiguous in a number of cultural and disciplinary realms. Your posture can denote you as healthy or ill, elegant or slovenly, beautiful or ugly. Gilman examines the history and sociology of posture: how society views who we are and what we are able to do by how our bodies appear. --

"Cultural history is increasingly informed by the history of material culture--the ways in which individuals or entire societies create and relate to objects both mundane and extraordinary--rather than on textual evidence alone. Books such as The Hare with Amber Eyes and A History of the World in 100 Objects indicate the growing popularity of this way of understanding the past. In History and Its Objects, Peter N. Miller uncovers the forgotten origins of our fascination with exploring the past through its artifacts by highlighting the role of antiquarianism--a pursuit ignored and derided by modem academic history--in grasping the significance of material culture. From the efforts of Renaissance antiquarians, who reconstructed life in the ancient world from coins, inscriptions, seals, and other detritus, to amateur historians in the nineteenth century working within burgeoning national traditions, Miller connects collecting--whether by individuals or institutions--to the professionalization of the historical profession, one which came to regard its progenitors with skepticism and disdain. The struggle to articulate the value of objects as historical evidence, then, lies at the heart both of academic history-writing and of the popular engagement with things. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that our current preoccupation with objects is far from novel and reflects a human need to reexperience the past as a physical presence." -- Publisher's description

"The definitive study of 'the road to women's ordination' in Judaism." --Jonathan D. Sarna, author of The American Jewish Experience Pamela S. Nadell mines a wealth of untapped sources to bring us the first complete story of the outstanding Jewish women who passionately defended their right to equal religious participation through rabbinical ordination. These personal stories--of w omen like Ray Frank, hailed as "the girl rabbi of the golden West" at the turn of the century, and Sally Priesand, ordained in 1972 as the first woman rabbi--are woven with fascinating history and accounts of the controversies that continue in many Je wish communities today. Women Who Would Be Rabbis is a 1998 National Jewish Book Award finalist.

This is the most comprehensive, readable and up-to-date history of the Jews in the English language and is bursting with new ideas and theories. Cantor focuses on the creation of a unique Jewish identity and consciousness through 3 millennia.

Delve into the formative years of a pivotal political movement with Nahum Sokolow's "History of Zionism, Vol. 2 of 2: 1600-1918." This meticulously researched historical text explores the evolution of Zionism from its early roots to the end of World War I, providing crucial context for understanding the creation of modern Israel. Spanning centuries of Jewish history, this volume examines the key figures, events, and intellectual currents that shaped Zionist thought and action. Sokolow's work illuminates the complex interplay of European and Middle Eastern politics surrounding the movement, offering insights into the dynamics of colonialism and post-colonialism in Palestine. A vital resource for anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of Zionism, its origins, and its enduring impact. This book remains an essential contribution to the study of 19th-century political thought, Jewish history, and the ongoing story of Israel. 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.

How could a Jew kill a Jew for religious and political reasons? Many people asked this question after an Orthodox Jew assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Itshak Rabin in 1995. But historian Michael Stanislawski couldn't forget it, and he decided to find out everything he could about an obscure and much earlier event that was uncannily similar to Rabin's murder: the 1848 killing--by an Orthodox Jew--of the Reform rabbi of Lemberg (now L'viv, Ukraine). Eventually, Stanislawski concluded that this was the first murder of a Jewish leader by a Jew since antiquity, a prelude to twentieth-century assassinations of Jews by Jews, and a turning point in Jewish history. Based on records unavailable for decades, A Murder in Lemberg is the first book about this fascinating case. On September 6, 1848, Abraham Ber Pilpel entered the kitchen of Rabbi Abraham Kohn and his family and poured arsenic in the soup that was being prepared for their dinner. Within hours, the rabbi and his infant daughter were dead. Was Kohn's murder part of a conservative Jewish backlash to Jewish reform and liberalization in a year of European revolution? Or was he killed simply because he threatened taxes that enriched Lemberg's Orthodox leaders? Vividly recreating the dramatic story of the murder, the trial that followed, and the political and religious fallout of both, Stanislawski tries to answer these questions and others. In the process, he reveals the surprising diversity of Jewish life in mid-nineteenth-century eastern Europe. Far from being uniformly Orthodox, as is often assumed, there was a struggle between Orthodox and Reform Jews that was so intense that it might have led to murder.

A comprehensive, scholarly account of the Yiddish language from its origins to the present is also a cultural history of Ashkenazic Jewry and analyzes the cultural and linguistic interaction between Ashkenazic Jewry and the peoples among whom they lived

Originally published in 1991. This fascinating book of journalism history outlines the author's concepts of the three 'central ideas' in journalism which have evolved through time. The first is the Official Story, that which state authorities wanted people to know; the second, the Corruption Story, emphasised the abuse of authority by those in power and focused on a willingness to oppose the official and tell the specific detail; and the third, the Oppression Story, where journalists present the cause of events as down to external influences and work to change the social environment. The book narrates the history from its European beginnings in the 16th and 17th Centuries up to the early 20th Century, expressing how all interpretive journalism has a philosophic, world-view, component and understanding journalism history entails understanding these insights of the times.

Thucydides' classic work on the history of the Peloponnesian War is the root of Western conceptions of history—including the idea that Western history is the foundation of everyone else's. Here, Marshall Sahlins takes on Thucydides and the conceptions of history he wrought with a groundbreaking new book that shows what a difference an anthropological concept of culture can make to the writing of history.Sahlins begins by confronting Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War with an analogous "Polynesian War," the fight for the domination of the Fiji Islands (1843-55) between a great sea power (like Athens) and a great land power (like Sparta). Sahlins draws parallels between the conflicts with an eye to their respective systems of power and sovereignty as well as to Thucydides' alternation between individual (Pericles, Themistocles) and collective (the Athenians, the Spartans) actors in the making of history. Characteristic of most histories ever written, this alternation between the agency of "Great Men" and collective entities leads Sahlins to a series of incisive analyses ranging in subject matter from Bobby Thomson's "shot heard round the world" for the 1951 Giants to the history-making of Napoleon and certain divine kings to the brouhaha over Elián Gonzalez. Finally, again departing from Thucydides, Sahlins considers the relationship between cultural order and historical contingency through the recounting of a certain royal assassination that changed the course of Fijian history, a story of fratricide and war worthy of Shakespeare.In this most convincing presentation yet of his influential theory of culture, Sahlins experiments with techniques for mixing rich narrative with cultural explication in the hope of doing justice at once to the actions of persons and the customs of people. And he demonstrates the necessity of taking culture into account in the creation of history—with apologies to Thucydides, who too often did not. --

“Part treatise, part miscellany, unfailingly entertaining.” –The New York Times “A small pearl of a book . . . a great tale of the growth of a modern city as seen through the rise and fall of the lowly oyster.” –Rocky Mountain News Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants–the oyster. For centuries New York was famous for this particular shellfish, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city’s life that the abundant bivalves were Gotham’s most celebrated export, a staple food for all classes, and a natural filtration system for the city’s congested waterways. Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight–along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos–this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the seventeenth-century founding of New York to the death of its oyster beds and the rise of America’s environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to Manhattan’s Gilded Age dining chambers. With The Big Oyster , Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious. “Suffused with [Kurlansky’s] pleasure in exploring the city across ground that hasn’t already been covered with other writers’ footprints.” – Los Angeles Times Book Review “Fascinating stuff . . . [Kurlansky] has a keen eye for odd facts and natural detail.” – The Wall Street Journal “Kurlansky packs his breezy book with terrific anecdotes.” – Entertainment Weekly “Magnificent . . . a towering accomplishment.” – Associated Press

A treasure trove of primary source documents on American Jewish history, culture, and life

"Throughout the twentieth century, 'free enterprise' has been a contested keyword in American politics, and the cornerstone of a conservative philosophy that seeks to limit government involvement into economic matters. Lawrence B. Glickman shows how the idea first gained traction in American discourse and was championed by opponents of the New Deal. Those politicians, believing free enterprise to be a fundamental American value, held it up as an antidote to a liberalism that they maintained would lead toward totalitarian statism. Tracing the use of the concept of free enterprise, Glickman shows how it has both constrained and transformed political dialogue. He presents a fascinating look into the complex history, and marketing, of an idea that forms the linchpin of the contemporary opposition to government regulation, taxation, and programs such as Medicare."--Publisher's web-site

Commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the American Jewish Archives and the tenth anniversary of Gary P. Zola as its Director, New Essays in American Jewish History includes twenty-two new articles representing the best in modern American and Jewish scholarship. More than a celebration, New Essays serves as a scholarly benchmark in the growing field of American Jewish studies.

In the occult classic THE MIRROR OF MAGIC, renowned Surrealist, Kurt Seligmann (1900– 1962), draws from his encyclopaedic practitioner's knowledge and extensive antiquarian collection to offer a comprehensive, illustrated history of magic and the occult from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt to the 18th century. He explores the gods and divinatory arts of the legendary Sumerians and the star-wise Baby[Bokinfo]

The question of difference - between women and men and among women - is at the heart of feminist theory and the history of feminism. Feminists have long debated the meanings of sexual difference: is it an underlying truth of nature or the result of changing social belief? Are women the same as or different from men? Feminism and History argues that sexual difference, indeed that all forms of social differentiation, cannot be understood apart from history. It brings together the best critical articles available to analyze the ways in which differences among women (along the lines of class, ethnicity, race, and sexuality) and between women and men have been produced. The articles range across many countries and time periods (from the Middle Ages to the present) and they include analyses of western and non-western experiences. There are discussions of race in the United States and in colonial contexts. A variety of theoretical approaches to the question of difference is included; but in all cases, difference is the focus of the historian's analysis.

Secret history of Islamist terrorism in America from Sirhan Sirhan to Major Hasan and how the JDO fights it. The JDO was founded in March 1982 in reaction to the demise of the Jewish Defense League (JDL). The JDO was never and never will be a Kahanist organization; instead it is based on principles first set forth by the Honorable Zev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Jabotinsky, poet, statesman and militarist told Jewish audiences prior to the Holocaust to leave Europe. In 2010 JDO was able to get a meeting of the American Renaissance Party that was to be held at the Skyline Motel in Washington, D.C. cancelled despite the insistence of its manager that it take place. In February 2011 JDO quashed another meeting of this racist group with the help of the NAACP and City Council members Patrick Cannon and Councilman Warren Turner. These men had enough self-respect to stop these KKK jackasses from spewing their racial-hatred in Charlotte, North Carolina. Look what happened in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1979 when the Klan mowed down a "Death to the Klan" march staged by Communists. Declassified FBI documents revealed that JDO Chairman Mordechai Levy warned the FBI that the Klan was planning a violent attack but his intelligence was ignored due to his status as a Jewish militant. Just the opposite should have been true. In March 2011 the JDO was able to convince the landlord of the the Nazi-Holocaust revisionist scumy group The Institute of Historical Review not to renew their lease. In May 2011 the JDO held a demonstration in front of Nazi Headquarters on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. These are our latest actions - we've been staging these events and others for years and years. It is from this militant / activist point of view that the JDO research team studied the history of Islamist terrorism on American soil within certain parameters of interest. Rather than using a shotgun approach we zeroed in on terrorist plots in which bombs were actually constructed or shots were fired and excluded numerous conspiracies that the FBI nipped in the bud. Our researchers obtained the documents from every terrorism court case in the United States, conducted interviews, scoured the Internet in all languages, studied declassified government documents, filed FOIA requests then put the puzzle pieces together. We even collected the trash in front of the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations at 115 East 65th Street in Manhattan and discovered cable traffic that indicated the PLO was using Syrian diplomatic pouches to smuggle bomb parts to various locations throughout the world. JDO turned these cables over to Israeli intelligence who cautioned JDO not to reveal its methodology as it was going to be applied to other hostile diplomatic installations. JDO waited for a year before revealing its discovery on local television. Shortly thereafter a car with two Arabic looking men parked outside JDO headquarters at 6 Bleecker Street in Manhattan. A JDO member displayed his semi-auto Uzi and invited the thugs upstairs. It was just another day in the 1980's at JDO Headquarters.