179 results for "History"

1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war

Morris, Benny
"This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. Besides the military account, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Historian Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side--where the archives are still closed--is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials. Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. He examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. He looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world--a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel."-
Yale University Press 2008 524 pages

Israel and Palestine: reappraisals, revisions, refutations

Shlaim, Avi
Avi Shlaim, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Israel–Palestine conflict, reflects with characteristic rigour and readability on a range of key issues and personalities. From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the failure of the Oslo peace process, from the 1948 War to the 2008 invasion of Gaza, Israel and Palestine places current events in their proper historical perspective. It assesses the impact of key political and intellectual figures, including Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon, Edward Said and Benny Morris. It also re-examines the United States’ influential role in the conflict, and explores the many missed opportunities for peace and progress in the region. Clear-eyed and meticulous, Israel and Palestine is an essential tool for understanding the fractured history and future prospects of Israel-Palestine.
Verso 2009-09-07 392 pages

China 1945: Mao's revolution and America's fateful choice

Bernstein, Richard
Examines the first episode in which American power and good intentions came face-to-face with a powerful Asian revolutionary movement, and challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of modern Sino-American relations. As 1945 opened, America was on surprisingly congenial terms with China's Communist rebels--their soldiers treated their American counterparts as heroes, rescuing airmen shot down over enemy territory. Chinese leaders talked of a future in which American money and technology would help lift China out of poverty. Mao Zedong himself held friendly meetings with U.S. emissaries, vowing to them his intention of establishing an American-style democracy in China. By year's end, however, cordiality had been replaced by chilly hostility and distrust. Chinese Communist soldiers were setting ambushes for American marines in north China; Communist newspapers were portraying the United States as an implacable imperialist enemy; civil war in China was erupting. The pattern was set for a quarter century of almost total Sino-American mistrust, with the devastating wars in Korea and Vietnam among the consequences. Richard Bernstein here tells the incredible story of that year's sea change, brilliantly analyzing its many components, from ferocious infighting among U.S. diplomats, military leaders, and opinion makers to the complex relations between Mao and his patron, Stalin.--From publisher description
Alfred A. Knopf 2014 445 pages

Thinking in time: the uses of history for decision-makers

Neustadt, Richard E.
“A convincing case that careful analysis of the history, issues, individuals, and institutions can lead to better decisions—in business as well as in government” ( BusinessWeek ). Two noted professors offer easily remembered rules for using history effectively in day-to-day management of governmental and corporate affairs to avoid costly blunders. “An illuminating guide to the use and abuse of history in affairs of state” (Arthur Schlesinger).
Free Press 1986 329 pages

Howard Zinn on war

Zinn, Howard
Howard Zinn on War is Zinn’s choice of the writing that represents his thinking on a subject that concerned and fascinated him throughout his career. He reflects on the wars against Iraq, the war in Kosovo, the Vietnam War, World War II, and on the meaning of war generally in a world of nations that can't seem to stop destroying each other. These readings appeared first in magazines and newspapers including the Progressive and the Boston Globe, as well as in Zinn's books, Failure to Quit, Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, The Politics of History, and Declarations of Independence. Here we see Zinn’s perspective as a World War II veteran and peace activist who lived through the most devastating wars of the twentieth century and questioned every one of them with his combination of integrity and historical acumen. In his essay, "Just and Unjust War," Zinn challenges us to fight for justice "with struggle, but without war." He writes in "After the War" (2006) that while governments bring us into war, "their power is dependent on the obedience of the citizenry. When that is withdrawn, governments are helpless." In Howard Zinn on War, his message is clear: "The abolition of war has become not only desirable but absolutely necessary if the planet is to be saved. It is an idea whose time has come."
Seven Stories Press 2001 206 pages

Lawless world: making and breaking global rules

Sands, Philippe
International lawyer Philippe Sands has a unique insider's view of the elites who govern our lives. His sensational revelations in Lawless World changed the political agenda overnight, forcing Tony Blair to publish damning mterial that he'd tried to hide. Now, in this updated edition with a shocking new chapter, you can get the full story of how the US and UK governments are riding roughshod over international agreements on human rights, war, torture and the environment - the very laws they put in place. Here sands looks at why global rules matter for all of us. And he powerfully makes the case for preserving them ... before justice becomes history.
Penguin 2006-02-03 404 pages

Towards a new cold war: U.S. foreign policy from Vietnam to Reagan

Chomsky, Noam
With the same uncompromising style that characterized his breakthrough, Vietnam-era writings, Toward a New Cold War extends Chomsky's critique of U.S. foreign policy through the early 1970s to Ronald Reagan's first term. Expanding on themes such as the cozy relationship of intellectuals to the state and American adventurism after World War II, Chomsky goes on to examine the way that U.S. policymakers set about the task of rewriting the horrible history of involvement in Indochina and turned their attention more squarely on the Middle East and Central America. Chomsky also assesses U.S. oil strategy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dissects the first volume of Kissinger's memoirs, issues an urgent call to stem the bloodshed in then-unknown East Timor and, in the title essay, marks the increased posture of confrontation and rearmament under presidents Carter and Reagan that signaled the end of d�tente with the Soviet Union. Featuring a new foreword by internationally acclaimed journalist John Pilger, this is the fifth in a series of Chomsky's classic political works reissued by The New Press. The others are American Power and the New Mandarins , For Reasons of State , Problems of Knowledge and Freedom , and Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship .
New Press 2003 539 pages

The Farhud: roots of the Arab-Nazi alliance in the Holocaust

Black, Edwin
The Nazis needed oil. The Arabs wanted the Jews and British out of Iraq. The Mufti of Jerusalem forged a far-ranging alliance with Hitler resulting in the June 1941 Farhud, a Nazi-style pogrom in Baghdad that set the stage for the devastation and expulsion of the Iraqi Jews and ultimately almost a million Jews across the Arab world. The Farhud was the beginning of what became a broad Nazi-Arab alliance in the Holocaust. --publisher.
Dialog Press 2010 448 pages

Fabricating Israeli history: the "new historians"

Karsh, Efraim
"Israeli historiography has long been subjected to a sustained assault by self-styled 'new historians', vying to expose what they claim to be the distorted 'Zionist narrative' of Israeli history and the Arab-Israeli Conflict." "Fabricating Israeli History takes issue with these 'revisionists'. Through careful examination of the documentation that they have used, as well as of sources that the author believes they have either ignored or failed to trace, this book propounds that the historical facts tell a completely different story from the one they propagate."--BOOK JACKET.
Frank Cass 2000 236 pages

One Palestine Complete

Tom Segev
Great Britain ruled Palestine from 1918 to 1948, replacing 500 years of Turkish control and leading to the State of Israel, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1998. The British brought Palestine into the 20th century. When they arrived the country lay in a Levantine nirvana; by the time they left it had become the arena for one of the century's major international conflicts. Among the personalities who shape this narrative are Winston Churchill, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, King Feisal, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion. One momentous consequence of these 30 years was that at the end of World War I there were 10 Arabs for every Jew. Based on diaries, letters and first-hand accounts, this is a narrative history of Palestine under Crown rule.
Henry Holt 2001-01-01

The impact of the presidency of Donald Trump on American Jewry and Israel: the Jewish role in American life

Windmueller, Steven F.
"The Trump presidency has resulted in a fundamentally disruptive moment in this nation's political culture. Not only were there different policy options and directions, but the cultural artifacts of politics changed because of how this president dramatically challenged the existing norms of political behavior and action. As we have shifted from a period of American liberalism to a time of political populism, deep fissures are dividing Americans in general and Jews in particular. The Impact of the Presidency of Donald Trump on American Jewry and Israel unpacks President Donald Trump's distinctive and unique relationship with the American Jewish community and the State of Israel. Addressing the various dimensions of his personal and political connections with Jews and Israel, this publication is designed to provide an assessment of how the Trump presidency has influenced and altered American Jewish political behavior. Writers from different backgrounds and political orientations bring a broad range of perspectives designed to examine various aspects of this presidency, including Trump's particular impact on Israel-US relations, his special connection with Orthodox Jews, and his complex and uneven relationship with Jewish Republicans. For liberal American Jews, these four years represented a fundamental revolution, overturning and challenging much that a generation of activists had fought to achieve and protect. For Trump's supporters, it afforded them an opportunity to advance their priorities, while joining the forty-fifth president in changing the American political landscape. The "Trump effect" will extend well beyond his four-year tenure, creating an environment that has fomented the politics of hate and exposed a deeply embedded presence of anti-Semitism. How Americans understand this moment in time and the ways society will adapt can be reflected through the prism of the Jewish encounter with Trumpism that this volume seeks to explore"--
Purdue University Press 2021 286 pages