Covering topical issues concerning the nature of the Israeli state, this engaging work presents essays that combine a variety of comparative schemes, both internal to Jewish civilization and extending throughout the world, such as: modern Jewish society, politics and culture; historical consciousness in the 20th century; colonialism, anti-colonialism and postcolonial state-building.With its open-ended, comparative approach, Israel in History provides a useful means of correcting the biases found in so much scholarship on Israel, be it sympathetic or hostile. This book will appeal to scholars and students with research interests in many fields, including Israeli Studies, Middle East Studies, and Jewish Studies.

A fascinating history of the international human rights movement as seen by one of its founders During the past several decades, the international human rights movement has had a crucial hand in the struggle against totalitarian regimes, cruelties in wars, and crimes against humanity. Today, it grapples with the war against terror and subsequent abuses of government power. In The International Human Rights Movement , Aryeh Neier—a leading figure and a founder of the contemporary movement—offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of this global force, from its beginnings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to its essential place in world affairs today. Neier combines analysis with personal experience, and gives a unique insider's perspective on the movement's goals, the disputes about its mission, and its rise to international importance. Discussing the movement's origins, Neier looks at the dissenters who fought for religious freedoms in seventeenth-century England and the abolitionists who opposed slavery before the Civil War era. He pays special attention to the period from the 1970s onward, and he describes the growth of the human rights movement after the Helsinki Accords, the roles played by American presidential administrations, and the astonishing Arab revolutions of 2011. Neier argues that the contemporary human rights movement was, to a large extent, an outgrowth of the Cold War, and he demonstrates how it became the driving influence in international law, institutions, and rights. Throughout, Neier highlights key figures, controversies, and organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and he considers the challenges to come. Illuminating and insightful, The International Human Rights Movement is a remarkable account of a significant world movement, told by a key figure in its evolution.

Munich 1919 is a vivid portrayal of the chaos that followed World War I and the collapse of the Munich Council Republic by one of the most perceptive chroniclers of German history. Victor Klemperer provides a moving and thrilling account of what turned out to be a decisive turning point in the fate of a nation, for the revolution of 1918-9 not only produced the first German democracy, it also heralded the horrors to come. With the directness of an educated and independent young man, Klemperer turned his hand to political journalism, writing astute, clever and linguistically brilliant reports in the beleaguered Munich of 1919. He sketched intimate portraits of the people of the hour, including Erich Mühsam, Max Levien and Kurt Eisner, and took the measure of the events around him with a keen eye. These observations are made ever more poignant by the inclusion of passages from his later memoirs. In the midst of increasing persecution under the Nazis he reflected on the fateful year 1919, the growing threat of antisemitism, and the acquaintances he made in the period, some of whom would later abandon him, while others remained loyal. Klemperer's account once again reveals him to be a fearless and deeply humane recorder of German history. Munich 1919 will be essential reading for all those interested in 20th century history, constituting a unique witness to events of the period.

Sophie Bessis tells the story of the West's relationship with the world it came to dominate - from the conquest of the Americas, through the slave trade and the Scramble for Africa, the White Man's burden, Manifest Destiny and the growth of scientific racism, to decolonisation, the ideology of development and structural adjustment. Western Supremacy is the history of colonial and developmentalist thought. Starting with the Enlightenment idea of universality it traces how this facilitated a notion of the West rooted in a Hellenic inheritance systematically shorn of Egyptian or Arab influences. Though the hierarchy of races has now given way to the hierarchy of development, Bessis argues that developmentalism is the new incarnation of the West's paradoxical aspiration to lead the world into universalism whilst maintaining its own supremacy. An extraordinary tour-de-force which will fascinate everybody who has an interest in globalization, development and the history of ideas.

A facsimile edition of the celebrated 1954 history of the Senators Shirley Povich's history of the Washington Senators originally appeared in 1954 as part of the popular series of major league team histories published by G. P. Putnam. With their colorful prose and delightful narratives, the Putnam books have been described as the Cadillac of the genre and have become prized collectibles for baseball readers and historians. One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the club was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1901 as the Washington Senators. In 1905 the team changed its name to the Washington Nationals. However, fans and newspapers persisted in using the "Senators" nickname, and over time the use of "Nationals" faded and "Senators" reemerged as the team's official name. In their first nine seasons the Senators finished last four times and didn't climb above sixth place until 1912. The major catalysts in their rise were the ascendance to greatness of Walter Johnson, who emerged in 1910 as the American League's best pitcher, and the hiring of Clark Griffith as manager in 1912. Griffith pioneered in the use of relief pitchers and in signing Caribbean talent. Although the team's new respectability faded, the 1924 hiring of twenty seven-year-old Bucky Harris as player-manager brought instant results, with a surprise World Series Championship in Harris's first season at the helm. The club repeated as AL champions in 1925 and its best season came in 1933, when it captured the AL title with a team record 99-53 mark. The Senators had only four more winning seasons over the next twenty six years. Povich's unique insight as a Washington Post sportswriter led to thoughtful advice and comfort for the long-suffering Senators fans. Legends like Walter Johnson, Gabby Street, Bucky Harris, Roger Peckinpaugh, Sam Rice, Firpo Marberry, Joe Cronin, and Leon "Goose" Goslin fill these pages, and their colorful exploits are woven into the fabric of each season's story. Sure to be treasured by baseball lovers everywhere, The Washington Senators is another enjoyable addition to the Writing Sports Series.

For most of recorded history, women have been sidelined, if not silenced, by men who named the built environment after themselves. Now is the time to look unflinchingly at Scotland's heritage and bring those women who have been ignored to light.Can you imagine a different Scotland, a Scotland where women are commemorated in statues and streets and buildings - even in the hills and valleys? This is a guidebook to that alternative nation, where the cave on Staffa is named after Malvina rather than Fingal, and Arthur's Seat isn't Arthur's, it belongs to St Triduana. You arrive into Dundee at Slessor Station and the Victorian monument on Stirling's Abbey Hill interprets national identity through the women who ran hospitals during the First World War. The West Highland Way ends at Fort Mary. The Old Lady of Hoy is a prominent Orkney landmark. And the plinths in central Glasgow proudly display statues of the suffragettes who fought until they won.In this guide, streets, buildings, statues and monuments are dedicated to real women, telling their often unknown stories.

Since emerging as a discipline in the middle of the eighteenth century, natural history has been at the heart of the life sciences. It gave rise to the major organizing theory of life--evolution--and continues to be a vital science with impressive practical value. Central to advanced work in ecology, agriculture, medicine, and environmental science, natural history also attracts enormous popular interest. In Finding Order in Nature Paul Farber traces the development of the naturalist tradition since the Enlightenment and considers its relationship to other research areas in the life sciences. Written for the general reader and student alike, the volume explores the adventures of early naturalists, the ideas that lay behind classification systems, the development of museums and zoos, and the range of motives that led collectors to collect. Farber also explores the importance of sociocultural contexts, institutional settings, and government funding in the story of this durable discipline. "The quest for insight into the order of nature leads naturalists beyond classification to the creation of general theories that explain the living world. Those naturalists who focus on the order of nature inquire about the ecological relationships among organisms and also among organisms and their surrounding environments. They ask fundamental questions of evolution, about how change actually occurs over short and long periods of time. Many naturalists are drawn, consequently, to deeper philosophical and ethical issues: What is the extent of our ability to understand nature? And, understanding nature, will we be able to preserve it? Naturalists question the meaning of the order they discover and ponder our moral responsibility for it." -- from the Introduction

"Jews experienced antisemitism the moment they landed on what would become the United States. When they first arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654, Peter Stuyvesant tried but failed to deport them. As historian Pamela S. Nadell tells in Antisemitism, an American Tradition, this was only antisemitism's beginning on our shores, as negative European stereotypes about Jews rooted into American soil. Compared with the Old World, with its expulsions, Inquisitions, ghettos, and Holocaust, America's Jews have a different history -- but one where antisemitism, even if it has had fewer dramatic eruptions, is deeply embedded. Jews in America faced restrictions on holding office and getting financial credit. Universities set quotas to limit the number of Jews attending and businesses refused to hire them. Jews endured verbal and physical attacks, and their synagogues and cemeteries, continuing to this day, were vandalized and desecrated. Antisemitism, an American Tradition investigates the depths of this fraught history and its recent manifestations: white nationalists chanting "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a gunman murdering eleven worshipers of Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue building. Nadell also shows Jews responding to prejudice and hate. America's Jews created advocacy organizations. They turned to the courts to safeguard their constitutional rights. They made common cause with allies to confront all types of hate. They even used their fists when needed. At a time when prejudice, discrimination, and hate against Jews is flaring across the country, Antisemitism, an American Tradition argues that we must understand the past. This momentous work reveals how antisemitism -- and resistance to that hatred -- endures, representing not a rupture from America's history, but a centuries-old legacy." -- Book jacket.

From the ninth to the fifteenth centuries Jewish thinkers living in Islamic and Christian lands philosophized about Judaism. Influenced first by Islamic theological speculation and the great philosophers of classical antiquity, and then in the late medieval period by Christian Scholasticism, Jewish philosophers and scientists reflected on the nature of language about God, the scope and limits of human understanding, the eternity or createdness of the world, prophecy and divine providence, the possibility of human freedom, and the relationship between divine and human law. Though many viewed philosophy as a dangerous threat, others incorporated it into their understanding of what it is to be a Jew. This Companion presents all the major Jewish thinkers of the period, the philosophical and non-philosophical contexts of their thought, and the interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers. It is a comprehensive introduction to a vital period of Jewish intellectual history.

Newton Minow’s long engagement with the world of television began nearly fifty years ago when President Kennedy appointed him chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. As its head, Minow would famously dub TV a “vast wasteland,” thus inaugurating a career dedicated to reforming television to better serve the public interest. Since then, he has been chairman of PBS and on the board of CBS and elsewhere, but his most lasting contribution remains his leadership on televised presidential debates. He was assistant counsel to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson when Stevenson first proposed the idea of the debates in 1960; he served as cochair of the presidential debates in 1976 and 1980; and he helped create and is currently vice chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized the debates for the last two decades. Written with longtime collaborator Craig LaMay, this fascinating history offers readers for the first time a genuinely inside look into the origins of the presidential debates and the many battles—both legal and personal—that have determined who has been allowed to debate and under what circumstances. The authors do not dismiss the criticism of the presidential debates in recent years but do come down solidly in favor of them, arguing that they are one of the great accomplishments of modern American electoral politics. As they remind us, the debates were once unique in the democratic world, are now emulated across the globe, and they offer the public the only real chance to see the candidates speak in direct response to one another in a discussion of major social, economic, and foreign policy issues. Looking to the challenges posed by third-party candidates and the emergence of new media such as YouTube, Minow and LaMay ultimately make recommendations for the future, calling for the debates to become less formal, with candidates allowed to question each other and citizens allowed to question candidates directly. They also explore the many ways in which the Internet might serve to broaden the debates’ appeal and informative power. Whether it’s Clinton or Obama vs. McCain, Inside the Presidential Debates will be welcomed in 2008 by anyone interested in where this crucial part of our democracy is headed—and how it got there.

Uncovers the powerful effects of 20th-century Jewish women's social and political activism on contemporary American life Winner of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, Women's Studies Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace explores the social and political activism of American Jewish women from 1890 to the beginnings of World War II. Written in an engaging style, the book demonstrates that no history of the birth control, suffrage, or peace movements in the United States is complete without analyzing the impact of Jewish women's presence. The volume is based on years of extensive primary source research in more than a dozen archives and among hundreds of primary sources, many of which have previously never been seen. Voluminous personal papers and institutional records paint a vivid picture of a world in which both middle-class and working-class American Jewish women were consistently and publicly engaged in all the major issues of their day and worked closely with their non-Jewish counterparts on behalf of activist causes. This extraordinarily well-researched volume makes a unique contribution to the study of modern women's history, modern Jewish history, and the history of American social movements.

Based on years of research conducted mostly in Arabic sources, Meir Litvak and Ester Webman track the evolution of post-World War II perceptions of the Holocaust and their parallel emergence in the wake of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, Arab attitudes toward the Holocaust became entangled with broader anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sentiments. Litvak and Webman track this discourse through the work of leading intellectuals and turn to representations of the Holocaust in the media and culture of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and among the Palestinian people. Their chronological history, which spans sixty years, provides a remarkable perspective on the origins, development, and tenaciousness of anti-Holocaust belief. From Empathy to Denial is the first comprehensive investigation of Holocaust denial in the Arab world, and is based on years of painstaking historical research of mostly Arabic language sources. The authors explore how Holocaust denial emerged after the Second World War, how it paralleled the wider Arab-Israeli conflict after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and how it subsequently became entangled with broader anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sentiment. In particular Litvak and Webman look at the role of leading intellectuals, the media and other cultural forms in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and among the Palestinians and how their representation of the Holocaust has evolved in the last sixty years.

A funny and affecting portrait of Britain's love hate relationship with the railway with a new chapter for this paperback editionBritain gave railways to the world, yet its own network is the dearest (definitely) and the worst (probably) in Western Europe. Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore - yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humour, capacity for suffering and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has travelled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel ('half-John Betjeman, half-Victor Meldrew') finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railwayman, and - after a quest lasting decades - an Individual Pot of Strawberry Jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.

This book is a more personal history than has ever before been written by or about Marianne Faithfull. Anecdotal, conversational, intimate and revealing, this is her no-holds-barred account of her life, her friends, her triumphs and mistakes. A decade after the publication of ‘Faithfull’, one of the most acclaimed rock autobiographies of all time, Marianne Faithfull is back, vowing periodically leave her wicked ways behind and grow up, but finding that somehow strange things keep happening. A wry observer of her slightly off-kilter world, Marianne muses nostalgically about afternoons languishing on Moroccan cushions at George and Pattie's, getting high and listening to new songs. She fondly recalls the outlandish antics of her Beat friends Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; is frequently baffled at her image in the press (opening the paper to read of her own demise: 'Sixties Star in Death Plunge'); terrified by the curse sent by Kenneth Anger; mortified by her history of reckless behaviour; not to mention her near-death experience in Singapore while looking for an opium den. Marianne peoples her anecdotal memoir with legendary characters one can imagine only Marianne assembling around her, both the eccentric and the beautiful, from Henrietta Moraes and Donatella Versace to Sofia Coppola, Juliette Greco, and Yves St. Laurent's dog. Here is Marianne on the dark side of the sixties and the bright side of the nineties, which saw her collaborating with the likes of Blur and Jarvis Cocker; compelling recollections of an unconventional childhood in her father's orgiastic literary commune to a hilariously decadent few days at Lady Caroline Blackwood's deathbed. Here she is her blossoming movie career, on her records as subliminal autobiography. This is as intimate a portrait as we've ever had of Marianne, as she meditates on sex and drugs, confronts her alter-ego, the Fabulous Beast, and faces her own mortality in her battle with breast cancer. Since her last book Marianne has, in her own words, 'made quite a few records, gone on many tours, tried to play it straight, and... Well, the rest is the subject of this book.'

In this first comprehensive history in English of the Jews of Hebron, Jerold S. Auerbach explores one of the oldest and most vilified Jewish communities in the world. Spanning three thousand years, from the biblical narrative of Abraham's purchase of a burial cave for Sarah to the violent present, it offers a controversial analysis of a community located at the crossroads of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle over national boundaries and the internal Israeli struggle over the meaning of Jewish statehood.Hebron Jews sharply challenges conventional Zionist historiography and current media understa

In the Middle Ages, a varied and vibrant Islamic culture flourished in all its aspects, from religious institutions to legal and scientific endeavors. Lassner, Reisman, and Bonner detail how all three montheist traditions are linked to the same sacred history. They trace the most current scholarship on the Arabian background to Islam, the prophet's early religious message and its appeal. They the Qur'an and how it would have been understood by the earliest generations of Muslims. How much does historical memory come into play in current depictions of this early era? Beyond religious institutions, Muslim scholars and scientists were vital to both the transmission of knowledge from the Greek civilization and to the uninterrupted progress of science. The authors explore the role that non-Muslim minorities played within this culture and they detail the splits within the Muslim world that continue to this day.

"It was...unnecessary for me to fret about who the murderer was: Everybody was." A haunting, never-before-translated, autobiographical novella by the 2002 Nobel Prize winner. An unnamed narrator recounts a simple anecdote, his sighting of the Union Jack—the British Flag—during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, in the few days preceding the uprising's brutal repression by the Soviet army. In the telling, partly a digressive meditation on "the absurd order of chance," he recalls his youthful self, and the epiphanies of his intellectual and spiritual awakening—an awakening to a kind of radical subjectivity. In his Nobel address Kertesz remembered: "I, on a lovely spring day in 1955, suddenly came to the realization that there exists only one reality, and that is me, my own life, this fragile gift bestowed for an uncertain time, which had been seized, expropriated by alien forces, and circumscribed, marked up, branded—and which I had to take back from 'History', this dreadful Moloch, because it was mine and mine alone..." The Contemporary Art of the Novella series is designed to highlight work by major authors from around the world. In most instances, as with Imre Kertész, it showcases work never before published; in others, books are reprised that should never have gone out of print. It is intended that the series feature many well-known authors and some exciting new discoveries. And as with the original series, The Art of the Novella, each book is a beautifully packaged and inexpensive volume meant to celebrate the form and its practitioners.

Jose Raoul Capablanca is widely regarded as the strongest chess player who ever lived prior to Bobby Fischer. The authoritative work, "The Rating of Chess Players Past and Present" by Arpad Elo, inventor of the modern rating system, ISBN 0923891277, rates Capablanca as 2725, higher than any other player in history prior to Fischer. The great thing about Capablanca's style of play is he tended to play simple, direct moves, moves that even an amateur player can find over the board. Jos Ra l Capablanca y Graupera was the third World Champion, reigning from 1921 until 1927. Renowned for the simplicity of his play, his legendary endgame prowess, accuracy, and the speed of his play, he earned the nickname of the "Human Chess Machine". Jose Raul Capablanca (Havana, November 19, 1888 - New York, March 8, 1942) was a Cuban chess player, world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. Capablanca's ideas are still relevant on the world stage of chess. His images are a powerful aid to the student board secrets. Jose Raoul Capablanca one of the outstanding players of all time became world's chess champion in 1921 when he defeated Lasker by 4 to 0. During his lifetime he held all the world's major records. In twenty five years of tournament play he lost less than twenty-five games, while between 1916 and 1924 he lost not a single one.

"In this new history, French author Georges Bensoussan retells the story of what life was like for Jews in the Arab world since 1850. During the early years of this time, it was widely believed that Jewish life in Arab lands was peaceful. Jews were protected by law and suffered much less violence, persecution, and inequality. Bensoussan takes on this myth and looks back over the history of Jewish-Arab relations in Arab countries. He finds that there is little truth to the myth and forwards a nuanced history of interrelationship that is not only diverse, but deals with local differences in cultural, religious, and political practice. Bensoussan divides the work into sections that cover 1850 to the end of WWI, from 1919 to the eve of WWII and then from WWII to the establishment of Israel and the Arab Wars. A new afterword brings the history of Jewish and Arab relations into the present day. Bensoussan has determined that the history of Jews in Arab countries is a history of slowly disintegrating relationships, increasing tension, violence, and persecution"--

Slave and Citizen is a classic in the field of comparative slave history and race relations. "A significant historiographic milestone in the study of American slave systems. It has been a point of departure for most studies done on slavery and race relations since World War II."--Franklin W. Knight.