World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In his riveting narrative, Hochschild brings it to life as never before while focusing on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes

"In an age in which the lack of independent public intellectuals has often been sorely lamented, the historian Tony Judt played a rare and valuable role, bringing together history and current events, Europe and America, what was and what is with what should be. In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last fifteen years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11; and issues of social inclusion and social justice in an age of increasing inequality. Judt was at once most at home and in a state of what he called internal exile from his native England, from Europe, and from America, and he finally settled in New York--between them all. He was a historian of the twentieth century acutely aware of the dangers of ethnic exceptionalism, and if he was shaped by anything, it was the Jewish past and his own secularism. His essays on Israel ignited a firestorm debate for their forthright criticisms of Israeli government polices relating to the Palestinians and the occupied territories. Those crucial pieces are published here in book form for the first time, including an essay, never previously published, called 'What Is to Be Done?' These pieces are suffused with a deep compassion for the Israeli dilemma, a compassion that instilled in Judt a sense of responsibility to speak out and try to find a better path, away from what he saw as a road to ruin. When the Facts Change also contains Judt's homages to the culture heroes who were some of his greatest inspirations: Amos Elon, Francois Furet, Leszek Kolakowski, and perhaps above all Albert Camus, who never accepted the complacent view that the problem of evil couldn't lie within us as well as outside us. Included here too is a magnificent two-part essay on the social and political importance of railway travel to our modern conception of a good society; as well as the urgent text of 'What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy, ' the final public speech of his life, delivered from a wheelchair after he had been stricken with a terrible illness; and a tender and wise dialogue with his then-teenage son, Daniel, about the different outlooks and burdens of their two generations. To read When the Facts Change is to miss Tony Judt's voice terribly, but to cherish it for what it was, and still is: a wise, human, deeply informed view on our most pressing concerns, delivered in good faith."--

A history of the T4 program, or "euthanasia program", in Nazi Germany - that is, the murder of handicapped persons by the Nazis. This program was preceded by the politicization of science, which incorporated popular prejudices into "scientific" theories and declared some individuals and even "racial" groups, like Jews and Gypsies, to be "valueless"; by the eugenic movement; and by the misuse of scientific hypotheses by politicians. The policy of exclusion of the "racially inferior" stood at the center of the Nazi utopia. The "euthanasia program", implemented in 1939-40, paved the way for the mass extermination of Jews and Gypsies in 1942-44. Many of those involved in the T4 program (e.g. Franz Stangl) were later involved in the operation of the death camps. Special attention is devoted to the murder of handicapped Jews. These, progressively excluded from the public welfare system and from the medical institutions, were concentrated in 1939-40 in special Jewish hospitals and later killed in the course of the "euthanasia program".

THE HISTORY MAKERS is an epic exploration of who writes about the past and how the biases of certain storytellers - whether Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare or Simon Schama -continue to influence our ideas about history (and about who we are) today. There are many stories we can spin about years gone by, but which accounts come to be told, and by whom? A single author can deeply shape our understanding through the prism of his or her own beliefs. Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses (such as the writers of the Bible, major novelists, dramatists, journalists and political propagandists) influence what become the accepted records of human experience. Is there, he asks, even such a thing as "objective" history? And what is it to call someone a historian in the first place?The depth of Cohen's inquiry and the delight he takes in his subjects - even the practitioners of what he calls "Bad History," those thieves of history who twist reality to glorify themselves and conceal their or their country's behaviour - make this an unusually authoritative and supremely entertaining volume. Cohen investigates the published works and private utterances of our greatest historical thinkers to discover the agendas that informed their views of the world, and which in so many ways have informed ours. From the origins of history-writing, when such an idea seemed itself revolutionary, through to television and the digital age, THE HISTORY MAKERS abounds in captivating figures brought to vivid life, from Thucydides and Tacitus to Voltaire and Gibbon, from Winston Churchill to Mary Beard. Rich in character, complex truths and surprising anecdotes, the result is a unique exploration of both the aims and craft of history-making that will lead us to think anew about our past and ourselves.

"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"--

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.

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."

In a study of the impact of the use of the atomic bomb, two historians argue that information and debate about President Harry Truman's decision, in August 1945, to drop the bomb on Japan have been suppressed in order to prevent criticism of America.

A scathing expos of the link between major U.S. corporations and the holocaust makes sobering indictments about such companies as IBM, General Motors, and the Rockefeller Foundation, revealing how some of their mid-twentieth-century agendas directly or indirectly supported Nazi activities.

Southern slaveholders proudly pronounced themselves orthodox Christians, who accepted responsibility for the welfare of the people who worked for them. They proclaimed that their slaves enjoyed a better and more secure life than any laboring class in the world. Now, did it not follow that the lives of laborers of all races across the world would be immeasurably improved by their enslavement? In the Old South but in no other slave society a doctrine emerged among leading clergymen, politicians, and intellectuals -- "Slavery in the Abstract," which declared enslavement the best possible condition for all labor regardless of race. They joined the Socialists, whom they studied, in believing that the free-labor system, wracked by worsening class warfare, was collapsing. A vital question: to what extent did the people of the several social classes of the South accept so extreme a doctrine? That question lies at the heart of this book.--Publisher.

"An essential moral, philosophical, and practical reckoning with the laws we put in place to address the problem of sexual abuse and harassment. In this pathbreaking book, Martha C. Nussbaum brings necessary clarity to the societal challenges of sexual abuse and harassment, illuminating the pride and greed that lead men to objectify and dominate others, and the thirst for revenge that can distort the aims of justice. In the context of a clear and bracing legal history of accountability for sexual assault and the legal recognition of sexual harassment, Nussbaum confronts three "citadels of pride"-the judiciary, the arts, and sports. Exposing prideful privilege in the intellectual world, unpunished narcissism in the arts, and toxic masculinity and corruption in American sports, she discusses egregious cases of male entitlement leading to sexual abuse and exploitation. She examines both successful and unsuccessful efforts to address these situations, and proposes solutions; most controversially, that Division I football be disbanded. Laying out a hopeful way forward, Nussbaum offers a path to accountability without malice, and generosity without capitulation"--

Every week on the public radio show On the Media , the award-winning journalist Brooke Gladstone analyzes the media and how it shapes our perceptions of the world. Now, from her front-row perch on the day’s events, Gladstone brings her genius for making insightful, unexpected connections to help us understand what she calls—and what so many of us can acknowledge having—“trouble with reality.” Reality, as she shows us, was never what we thought it was—there is always a bubble, people are always subjective and prey to stereotypes. And that makes reality actually more vulnerable than we ever thought. Enter Donald J. Trump and his team of advisors. For them, as she writes, lying is the point . The more blatant the lie, the easier it is to hijack reality and assert power over the truth. Drawing on writers as diverse as Hannah Arendt, Walter Lippmann, Philip K. Dick, and Jonathan Swift, she dissects this strategy, straight out of the authoritarian playbook, and shows how the Trump team mastered it, down to the five types of tweets that Trump uses to distort our notions of what’s real and what’s not. And she offers hope. There is meaningful action, a time-tested treatment for moral panic. And there is also the inevitable reckoning. History tells us we can count on it. Brief and bracing, The Trouble with Reality shows exactly why so many of us didn’t see it coming, and how we can recover both our belief in reality—and our sanity.

All investigators funded by the National Institutes of Health are now required to receive training about the ethics of clinical research. Based on a course taught by the editors at NIH, Ethical and Regulatory Aspects of Clinical Research is the first book designed to help investigators meet this new requirement. The book begins with the history of human subjects research and guidelines instituted since World War II. It then covers various stages and components of the clinical trial process: designing the trial, recruiting participants, ensuring informed consent, studying special populations, and conducting international research. Concluding chapters address conflicts of interest, scientific misconduct, and challenges to the IRB system. The appendix provides sample informed consent forms. This book will be used in undergraduate courses on research ethics and in schools of medicine and public health by students who are or will be carrying out clinical research. Professionals in need of such training and bioethicists also will be interested.

"A probing look at one of the most incendiary subjects of our time--the relationship between the United States and Israel. There has been more than half a century of raging conflict between Jews and Arabs--a violent, costly struggle that has had catastrophic repercussions in a critical region of the world. In Genesis, John B. Judis argues that, while Israelis and Palestinians must shoulder much of the blame, the United States has been the principal power outside the region since the end of World War II and as such must account for its repeated failed efforts to resolve this enduring strife. The fatal flaw in American policy, Judis shows, can be traced back to the Truman years. What happened between 1945 and 1949 sealed the fate of the Middle East for the remainder of the century. As a result, understanding that period holds the key to explaining almost everything that follows--right down to George W. Bush's unsuccessful and ill-conceived effort to win peace through holding elections among the Palestinians, and Barack Obama's failed attempt to bring both parties to the negotiating table. A provocative narrative history animated by a strong analytical and moral perspective, and peopled by colorful and outsized personalities, Genesis offers a fresh look at these critical postwar years, arguing that if we can understand how this stalemate originated, we will be better positioned to help end it"--

"This book collects some two dozen pieces from bestselling author Adam Hochschild, written over the past 25 years. All have been published before, most in the New York Review of Books but also in the New Yorker, Harper's, Mother Jones, and elsewhere. They are a mixture of essays about books, authors, one film, and the writing of history and on-the-ground journalism based on reporting from India, Africa, and elsewhere"--Provided by publisher.

Zusammenfassung: "Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions." Primo Levi's words disclose a chilling truth: assigning blame to hideous political leaders, such as Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich, is necessary but not sufficient to explain how the Holocaust could have happened. These leaders, in fact, relied on many thousands of ordinary men and women who made the Nazi machine work on a daily basis -- members of the killing squads, guards accompanying the trains to the extermination camps, civilian employees of the SS, the drivers of gas trucks, and the personnel of death factories such as Auschwitz. Why did these ordinary people collaborate and willingly become mass murderers? In Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers, Guenter Lewy tries to answer one of history's most disturbing questions. Lewy draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources, including letters and diaries of soldiers who served in Russia, the recollections of Jewish survivors, archival documents, and most importantly, the trial records of hundreds of Nazi functionaries. The result is a ghastly, extraordinarily detailed portrait of the Holocaust perpetrators, their mindset, and the motivations for their actions. Combining a rigorous historical analysis with psychological insight, the book explores the dynamics of participation in large-scale atrocities, offering a thought-provoking and timely reflection on individual responsibility for collective crimes. Lewy concludes that the perpetrators acted out of a variety of motives--a sense of duty, obedience to authority, thirst for career, and a blind faith in anti-Semitic ideology, among others. A witness to the 1938 Kristallnacht himself and the son of a concentration camp survivor, Lewy has searched for the reasons of the Holocaust out of far more than theoretical interest: it is a passionate attempt to illuminate a dismal chapter of his life -- and of human history -- that cannot be forgotten. -- Provided by publisher

Germany's changing historical memory of World War II and its aftermath, as reflected in the official and public remembrance of the German war dead, exposes an unresolved tension between a discourse of guilt and a discourse of national suffering and victimization. In Germany, under the auspices of the Allied occupation, remembrance honored the victims of the Nazis and those who had fought against the regime. After the partition of Germany, a new culture emerged, memorializing the civilian dead and fallen German soldiers. Despite the fierce ideological rivalry between East and West Germany, however, certain similarities existed. The political leaderships who shaped these cultures ceased to confront their citizens with the question of guilt and instead depicted the German people as victims. In Guilt, Suffering, and Memory —whose Israeli edition was awarded the Jacob Bahat Prize for best original book—Gilad Margalit discusses the official remembrance ceremonies for the German war dead, the memorials erected to commemorate them, the public discussions of these disparate cultures, and their treatment in postwar German literature and film.

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

Examines the personal values and philosophies of Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum in relation to the pressures and conditions under which they lived in the Nazi era. All had "strong Christian affinities." Under the challenge of terror they were "Christians by choice, Jews by decree." Each responded to her Jewishness in a distinct way: Stein felt close to the Jews; Weil had a hateful attitude toward them and tried to obliterate herself as a Jew; Frank and Hillesum both affirmed their Jewish identities. In the face of Hitler, each, in her own way, resisted.

From the American Revolution to the end of World War II, the United States spent nineteen years at war against other nations. But since1950, the total is twenty-two years and counting. On four occasions, U.S. presidents elected as "peace candidates" have gone on to lead the nation into ferocious armed conflicts. Repeatedly, wars deemed necessary when they began have been seen in retrospect as avoidable‚ Äîandill-advised. Americans profess to be a peace-loving people and one wary of "foreign entanglements." Yet we have been drawn into wars in distant lands from Vietnam to Afghanistan. We cherish our middle-class comforts and our children. Yet we send our troops to Fallujah and Mogadishu. How is it that ordinary Americans with the most to lose are so easily convinced to follow hawkish leaders-of both parties-into war? In Reasons to Kill noted scholar Richard E. Rubenstein explores both the rhetoric that sells war to the public and the underlying cultural and social factors that make it so effective. With unmatched historical perspective and insightful commentary, Rubenstein offers citizens new ways to think for themselves about crucial issues of war and peace.