In this fascinating book, noted journalist Thomas de Waal—author of the highly acclaimed Black Garden—makes the case that while the Caucasus is often treated as a sub-plot in the history of Russia, or as a mere gateway to Asia. The five-day war in Georgia, which flared into a major international crisis in 2008, proves that this is still a combustible region, whose inner dynamics and history deserve a much more complex appreciation from the wider world. In The Caucasus, de Waal provides this richer, deeper, and much-needed appreciation, one that reveals that the South Caucasus—Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and their many smaller regions, enclaves, and breakaway entities—is a fascinating and distinct world unto itself. Providing both historical background and an insightful analysis of the period after 1991, de Waal sheds light on how the region has been scarred by the tumultuous scramble for independence and the three major conflicts that broke out with the end of the Soviet Union—Nagorny Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. The book examines the region as a major energy producer and exporter; offers a compelling account of the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the rise of Mikheil Saakashvili, and the August 2008 war; and considers the failure of the South Caucasus, thus far, to become a single viable region. In addition, the book features a dozen or so "boxes" which provide brief snapshots of such fascinating side topics as the Kurds, Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, the promotion of the region as the "Soviet Florida," and the most famous of all Georgians, Stalin. The Caucasus delivers a vibrantly written and timely account of this turbulent region, one that will prove indispensable for all concerned with world politics. It is, as well, a stimulating read for armchair travelers and for anyone curious about far-flung corners of the world.

Offering insight and equal consideration into the societies of the "civilized" and "uncivilized" world, Europe and the People Without History deftly explores the historical trajectory of so-called modern globalization. In this foundational text about the development of the global political economy, Eric R. Wolf challenges the long-held anthropological notion that non-European cultures and peoples were isolated and static entities before the advent of European colonialism and imperialism. Ironically referred to as "the People Without History" by Wolf, these societies before active colonization possessed perpetually changing, reactionary cultures and were indeed just as intertwined into the processes of the pre-Columbian global economic system as their European counterparts. Utilizing Marxian concepts and a vivid consideration for the importance of history, Wolf judiciously traces the effects and conditions in Europe and the rest of the "known" world, beginning in 1400 AD, that allowed capitalism to emerge as the dominant ideology of the modern era.

In one form or another, slavery has existed throughout the world for millennia. It helped to change the world, and the world transformed the institution. In the 1450s, when Europeans from the small corner of the globe least enmeshed in the institution first interacted with peoples of other continents, they created, in the Americas, the most dynamic, productive, and exploitative system of coerced labor in human history. Three centuries later these same intercontinental actions produced a movement that successfully challenged the institution at the peak of its dynamism. Within another century a new surge of European expansion constructed Old World empires under the banner of antislavery. However, twentieth-century Europe itself was inundated by a new system of slavery, larger and more deadly than its earlier system of New World slavery. This book examines these dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence, economics, and civil society in the ebb and flow of slavery and antislavery during the last five centuries.

A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia's great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold , his account of more than a thousand years of history in the great Central European capital, Peter Demetz focuses on the six years that Prague was under German occupation in World War II: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945. Demetz was a boy living in Prague then, and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under Nazi control with his personal memories of that period, expertly interweaving a superb account of the German authorities' diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague's evolving resistance and underground opposition. The result is a complex, continually surprising book filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.

A pioneer in its field that has become a key text of contemporary historiography, this is a book that poses fundamental and disturbing questions about the use and abuse of history. Engaging and challenging, it confronts us with the many 'histories' that exist and have existed around the world, from the Zulu kingdoms to Communist China. The Use and Abuse of History takes as its starting point the way history is taught to children. The different narratives that constitute the histories of countries as diverse as India, Iran, Trinidad and the United States make for fascinating reading in their own right. What makes this book so valuable, though, is what these narratives tell us about the societies which created them - how much is history distorted in order to condition the minds of those who are taught it? This is a book for anyone interested in history, what it is and where it comes from.

The classic account of the social, economic, and political dynamics of the first socialist revolution as told by one of its central leaders. Trotsky describes how, under Lenin’s leadership, the Bolshevik Party led the working class, peasantry, and oppressed nationalities to overturn the monarchist regime of the landlords and capitalists and bring to power a government of the workers and peasants—one that set an example for toilers the world over. Nowhere are those world-shattering events explained with more clarity and insight than in this powerful account. Unabridged edition, 3 vols. in one. “Trotsky’s History is a monumental work”—Studies in East European Thought Chronology, glossary, lists of principal persons, parties, and political groups, index.

"From the time of Pythagoras, we have been tempted to treat numbers as the ultimate or only truth. This book tells the history of that habit of thought. But more, it argues that the logic of counting sacrifices much of what makes us human, and that we have a responsibility to match the objects of our attention to the forms of knowledge that do them justice. Humans have extended the insights and methods of number and mathematics to more and more aspects of the world, even to their gods and their religions.Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is applied to virtually every aspect of human activity.But the rules of mathematics do not strictly apply to many things-from elementary particles to people-in the world.By subjecting such things to the laws of logic and mathematics, we gain some kinds of knowledge, but we also lose others. How do our choices about what parts of the world to subject to the logics of mathematics affect how we live and how we die?This question is rarely asked, but it is urgent, because the sciences built upon those laws now govern so much of our knowledge, from physics to psychology.Number and Knowledge sets out to ask it. In chapters proceeding chronologically from Ancient Greek philosophy and the rise of monotheistic religions to the emergence of modern physics and economics, the book traces how ideals, practices, and habits of thought formed over millennia have turned number into the foundation-stone of human claims to knowledge and certainty.But the book is also a philosophical and poetic exhortation to take responsibility for that history, for the knowledge it has produced, and for the many aspects of the world and of humanity that it ignores or endangers.To understand what can be counted and what can't is to embrace the ethics of purposeful knowing"--

An overview of the history of antisemitism throughout the ages, with emphasis on the modern period. Ch. 3 (pp. 39-70) deals with ancient and medieval anti-Judaism, and the rest of the book describes antisemitism from the Enlightenment to the present day. The 19th century saw the development of racialism and theories of a Jewish conspiracy. The dramatic rise of antisemitism after World War I ended with the Holocaust. Afterwards antisemitism appeared in the guise of anti-Zionism, Holocaust denial, neo-fascism and other forms. Subsequently, antisemitism was adopted by the Left and by the Muslim world. Nowadays the radical Left, radical Right, and radical Muslim antisemitisms are undistinguishable and form all kinds of alliances with one another. It is difficult to differentiate between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. At present, antisemitism, by whatever name, is still much more than a mere historical memory.

In the face of almost universal Holocaust denial among Arabs, presents evidence of Arab involvement in all aspects of the Holocaust (e.g. persecution, confiscation of property, and forced labor). Describes cases of active collaboration (e.g. sadistic torturers and camp guards) and indifference to the fate of the Jews. In the European context, shows how Vichy France implemented the Holocaust in North Africa. Demonstrates how the Holocaust has largely been ignored, forgotten, or denied in the postwar Arab world. Provides information about the Holocaust as it affected Jews in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, including about labor camps whose existence had been lost to history. The second half of the book relates cases of "righteous" Arabs who saved Jews. Among the latter are Khaled Abdelwahhab and Si Ali Sakkat of Tunisia; Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Great Mosque in Paris; the ruler of Tunisia, Moncef Bey, and his prime minister Mohamed Chenik; and Sultan Muhammad V of Morocco. In conclusion, relates how some Arabs are beginning to question Holocaust denial. Pp. 197-198 present a list of sites of 104 French, German, and Italian labor camps in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

"Although early Zionist thinkers, perhaps naively, believed that with sovereignty, anti-Jewish persecution would end, anti-Zionism has become one form of the "new" antisemitism following World War II. Because antisemitism has not been effectively addressed, anti-Jewish rhetoric, activism, and deadly violence have flourished around the world. In Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, and Delegitimizing Israel, editor Robert S. Wistrich and an array of notable academics, journalists, and political scientists analyze multiple aspects of the current surge in anti-Jewish and anti-Israel rhetoric and violence. Contributors including Ben Cohen, R. Amy Elman, Lesley Klaff, Matthias Kuntzel, Nelly Las, Alvin H. Rosenfeld, and Efraim Sicher, among others, examine antisemitism from the perspectives of history, academia, gender, identity, and religion. Offering a variety of viewpoints and insights into disturbing trends worldwide, the contributors provide a basis for further discussion and increased efforts to counter the increasingly vocal and violent hatred of Jews and Israel"--

Listen to a short interview with Risa Goluboff Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane In this groundbreaking book, Risa L. Goluboff offers a provocative new account of the history of American civil rights law. The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education has long dominated that history. Since 1954, generations of judges, lawyers, and ordinary people have viewed civil rights as a project of breaking down formal legal barriers to integration, especially in the context of public education. Goluboff recovers a world before Brown , a world in which civil rights was legally, conceptually, and constitutionally up for grabs. Then, the petitions of black agricultural workers in the American South and industrial workers across the nation called for a civil rights law that would redress economic as well as legal inequalities. Lawyers in the new Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice and in the NAACP took the workers' cases and viewed them as crucial to attacking Jim Crow. By the time NAACP lawyers set out on the path to Brown , however, they had eliminated workers' economic concerns from their litigation agenda. When the lawyers succeeded in Brown , they simultaneously marginalized the host of other harms--economic inequality chief among them--that afflicted the majority of African Americans during the mid-twentieth century. By uncovering the lost challenges workers and their lawyers launched against Jim Crow in the 1940s, Goluboff shows how Brown only partially fulfilled the promise of civil rights.

As European capitals fell during 1940 and 1941, there swarmed to the Athene Palace, Bucharest’s Grand Hotel, diplomats, generals, Gestapo spies, and demi-mondaines from all over Europe. Arriving at the crowded Athene Palace on the day Paris fell in June 1940, American female journalist Rosa Goldschmidt Waldeck observed for the next seven months all the events that unfolded and the international figures that made Romania Europe’s last sensational hotbed of intrigue and color. Hitler’s beautiful feminine agents held court in the Athene Palace lobby within eyeshot of British diplomats, while around them moved fifth columnists, German economists, and generals, American and English diplomats and newspapermen, all who made the Athene Palace the most glamorous spot on the continent. The dramatic events of this turbulent period are described here chiefly in terms of personalities: Carol and Lupescu, Antonescu and Dr. Clodius, Nazi Gauleiters, British Quislings, Romanian appeasers, and all the types who dominated the scene of World War II Europe... On the surface, this is a fast-moving, dramatic book, as readable as a novel, but it is also a most effective dissection of the Nazi New Order. This penetrating insight into the German administration of Europe reveals the reasons underlying the failure of the Nazi regime. Originally published during the Second World War, this new edition of Athene Palace is enhanced by a thorough introductory study on the author’s life and work by Ernest H. Latham, Jr., former cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Bucharest. Dr. Latham is a well-known specialist in Romanian history and has done extensive research on American and British journalists in Romania during World War II.

A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight -- and keep fighting -- for a lost cause in World War II In The German War , acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of firsthand testimony -- personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence -- to explore how the German people experienced the Second World War. When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the active participation and commitment of the German people, it could not have continued for almost six years. What, then, was the war the Germans thought they were fighting? How did the changing course of the conflict -- the victories of the Blitzkrieg , the first defeats in the east, the bombing of German cities -- alter their views and expectations? And when did Germans first realize they were fighting a genocidal war? Told from the perspective of those who lived through it -- soldiers, schoolteachers, and housewives; Nazis, Christians, and Jews -- this masterful historical narrative sheds fresh and disturbing light on the beliefs and fears of a people who embarked on and fought to the end a brutal war of conquest and genocide.

"The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela" offers a fascinating glimpse into the 12th-century world through the eyes of a medieval traveler. Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish merchant, meticulously documented his extensive travels across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. This invaluable historical text provides a unique perspective on Jewish communities and their social life during the Middle Ages. Part travelogue, part historical record, the itinerary details customs, populations, and significant landmarks encountered along his journey. Readers interested in Jewish history, medieval Europe, or historical travel accounts will find this work to be an enduring source of information and insight into a world long past. Explore the routes and records of Benjamin of Tudela, a key figure in understanding 12th-century geography and culture. 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.

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction Award The benefits of living in a digital, globalised society are enormous; so too are the dangers. The world has become a law enforcer's nightmare and every criminal's dream. We bank online, shop online, date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world?Ê Have we become complacent about our personal security Ñ sharing our thoughts, beliefs and the details of our daily lives with anyone who cares to relieve us of them? In this fascinating and compelling book, Misha Glenny, author of the international bestseller McMafia, explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the twenty-first century: cyber crime, cyber warfare and cyber industrial espionage. Governments and the private sector are losing billions of dollars each year, fighting an ever-morphing, often invisible, and highly intelligent new breed of criminal: the hacker. Glenny has travelled and trawled the world. And by exploring the rise and fall of the criminal website, DarkMarket, he has uncovered the most vivid, alarming and illuminating stories.ÊWhether JiLsi or Matrix, Iceman, Master Splynter or Lord Cyric; whether Detective Sergeant Chris Dawson in Bolton or Agent Keith Mularski in Pittsburgh, Glenny has tracked down and interviewed all the players Ñ the criminals, the geeks, the police, the security experts and the victims Ñ and he places everyone and everything in a rich brew of politics, economics and history. The result is simply unputdownable. DarkMarketis authoritative and completely engrossing. It's a must-read for everyone who uses a computer: the essential crime book for our times.

"Joshua Jay, one of the world's most accomplished magicians, not only opens that door but brings us inside to reveal the artistry and obsessiveness, esoteric history, and long-whispered-about traditions of a subject shrouded in mystery. In 52 short, compulsively readable essays, Jay describes how he does it, whether it's through the making of illusions, the psychology behind them, or the way technology influences the world of magic. He considers the aesthetics of performance, discusses contemporary masters, including David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, and David Blaine, and details how magicians hone their craft. And answers questions like: Can a magic trick be too good? How do you saw a person in half? Is there real magic in the universe? The answers, like so much in magic and life, depend on you."--Amazon.com.

Jeremi Suri--Nobel Fellow and leading light in the next generation of policy makers--looks to America's history to see both what it has to offer failed states around the world and what it should avoid. Far from being cold imperialists, Americans have earnestly attempted to export their invention of representative government. We have had successes (Reconstruction after the American Civil War, the Philippines, Western Europe) and failures (Vietnam), and we can learn a good deal from both. The framers of the Constitution initiated a policy of cautious nation-building, hoping not to conquer other countries, but to build a world of stable, self-governed societies that would support America's way of life--yet no other country has created more problems for itself and for others by intervening in distant lands and pursuing impractical changes. Suri has mined more than two hundred years of American policy in order to explain the five Ps of nation-building: Partners, Process, Problem-solving, Purpose, and People.--From publisher description.

"An acknowledged classic. Katz has transformed our conception of Jewish history from the 16th to the 18th century. Because of his work, we now understand that the ghetto was no longer sealed off at that time from outside opinions and that the movement towards modernity had begun long before the Jews were actually legally emancipated. Making this work available again in the revised edition is a service to scholarship and to public enlightenment." —Arthur Hertzberg "Since it first appeared in Hebrew in 1958, Tradition and Crisis has had a tremendous impact on generations of students and scholars. Katz's innovative use of sources has introduced scholars to new methodologies and opened new vistas for research. This new, unabridged translation is therefore highly welcome. It will ensure its continued use in the English-speaking world." —Jehuda Reinharz, Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History, Brandeis University "Like a lovingly restored painting, Bernard Cooperman's new, annotated translation of Jacob Katz's classic portrait of early Jewish modernity can now be fully appreciated for the first time. An admirable achievement." —Ivan G. Marcus When it first appeared in Hebrew in 1958 and in English in 1961, Tradition and Crisis , Jacob Katz's groundbreaking study of Jewish society at the end of the Middle Ages, dramatically changed our perceptions of the Jewish community prior to the era of modernity. This new, unabridged translation by Bernard Dov Cooperman makes this classic available to new generations of students and scholars, together with Katz's original source notes, and an afterword and an updating bibliographic appendix by Professor Cooperman. Katz revolutionized the field by tapping into a rich and hitherto unexplored source for reconstructing the sociology of a previous era: the responsa literature of the Rabbinic establishment during the Middle Ages. The self-governing communities of Jews in Europe dealt with issues both civil and religious. The questions and answers addressed to the rabbinic authorities and courts provide an incomparable wealth of insights into life as it was lived in this period and into the social, historical, cultural, and economic issues of the day. How did European Jewry progress from a socially and culturally segregated society to become a component of European society at large? What were Jewish attitudes toward the Gentile world from which Jewry had been secluded for centuries? What were the bridges from the old to the new era? Tradition and Crisis traces the roots of modernity to internal developments within the communities themselves. Katz traces the modern movements of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) in the West and Hasidism in the East, to an internal breakdown in the structure of these communities and the emergence of an alternative leadership in the wake of the Sabbatian challenge. A dynamic work that has radically changed our view of this history, Tradition and Crisis remains the pivotal text for understanding the revolution in the entire conception of Jewish identity in the modern era.

From the author of the bestselling Suite Fran aise . In 1903 Leon M - the son of two Russian revolutionaries - is given the responsibility of 'liquidating' Valerian Alexandrovitch Courilof, the notoriously brutal and cold-blooded Russian Minister of Education, by the Revolutionary Committee. The assassination, he is told, must take place in public and be carried out in the most grandiose manner possible in order to strike the imagination of the people. Posing as his newly appointed personal physician, Leon M takes up residence with Courilof in his summer house in the Iles and awaits instructions. But over the course of his stay he is made privy to the inner world of the man he must kill - his failing health, his troubled domestic situation and, most importantly, the tyrannical grip that the Czar himself holds over all his Ministers, forcing them to obey him or suffer the most deadly punishments. Set during a period of radical upheaval in European history, The Courliof Affair is an unsparing observation of human motives and the abuses of power, an elegy to a lost world and an unflinchingly topical cautionary tale.

Of all the libels that have served as a means of incitement of hate against Jews, and as intellectual justification of anti-Semitism, the myth of the so-called 'Jewish Conspiracy' to gain domination of the whole world, as embodied in the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is probably the most devious and the most dangerous. Previously only analyzed in academic, footnoted studies, the history of the Protocols is presented here by Judge Hadassa Ben-Itto in an eminently readable, fascinating account, telling the stories of the numerous people involved over the hundred years that the forgery has existed. Above all, this is the story of a judge who follows the Protocols into lawyers' chambers and into courtrooms in Switzerland, in South Africa, in Germany, in the United States and in Russia, and presents the reader with a detailed critical analysis of legal proceedings which culminated in fascinating courtroom drama. The truth is revealed again and again, but the lie wouldn't die.