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Blog – Posted on Friday, May 21
45 best history books of all time.
If the mere mention of ‘history books’ is enough to conjure up memories of fighting back yawns in your middle school classroom, then chances are you haven’t been looking in the right places. But fear not — this list is here to bring you some of the most well-researched, entertaining, and readable works by the most preeminent historians of today and generations past.
On this list, you not only find some of the best American history books, on topics spanning slavery and empire, Civil War, and Indigenous histories, but also stories ranging from Asia to Africa, and everywhere in between. This list traverses continents, historical eras, the rise and fall of once-great empires, while occasionally stopping off to hone in on specific, localized events that you might never have heard of.
Whether you’re a history buff looking to flex your muscles, or you struggle to distinguish your Nelson from your Nefertiti, there’ll be something suitable for you. So what are you waiting for? Let’s dive into our 45 best history books of all time.
If you’re looking for history books that give the broader picture as well as the finer details, let us introduce you to some of the most seminal texts on global history. These reads cover the moments and events that form the connective tissue between continents, cultures, and eras. Whether you’re looking for more abstract, theoretical writing on what ‘history’ is and does, or just a broader volume that pans out, rather than in, there’ll be something for you.
1. What Is History? by Edward Hallett Carr
Famous for his hefty History of Soviet Russia , E. H. Carr’s foray into historiography (that is, the study of written history) was panned by critics at first. Initially written off as ‘dangerous relativism’, it is now considered a foundational text for historians, one which probes at the very seams of the discipline. By asking what exactly historical knowledge is and what constitutes history as we have come to understand it, Carr provides a compelling and masterful critique of the biases of historians and their moralized narratives of history. This groundbreaking text also interrogates such notions as fact, science, morality, individualism, and society. Carr’s masterpiece is referenced in countless college applications for a reason — it’s a formidable dive into history as a discipline, and laid the foundations for the subject as it exists in the modern world.
2. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
Though first and foremost considered a political theorist, much of Marxist thought can be a means to understand history with attention to economic systems and principles. In this seminal text, Marx argues that all of history has been defined by the struggles between the proletariat working-class and the capital-owning bourgeoisie. According to Marx, economic structures have been defined by class relations, and the various revolutions that have occurred throughout history have been instigated by antagonism between these two forces. As Marx famously opined in his 1852 essay, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”, and he lays out those repetitions with striking clarity here. As an added bonus, since this was originally intended as a pamphlet, the manifesto comes in at under 100 pages, so you have no reason not to prime yourself on one of modern history’s greatest thinkers.
3. Orientalism by Edward W. Said
A titan of Middle Eastern political and historical study, Edward Said coined the titular phrase ‘Orientalism’ to describe the West's often reductive and derisive depiction and portrayal of "The East." This book is an explanation of this concept and the application of this framework to understand the global power dynamics between the East and the West. Orientalism is considered by many a challenging read, but don’t let its formidable reputation put you off — it’ll all be worth it when you find yourself thinking about global history in ways you haven’t before.
4. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
It’s no big secret that the US school curriculum is more than a little biased — governments have a tendency to rewrite history textbooks in their favour, and the US government is no exception, keeping quiet on the grizzly, harrowing details and episodes which made the USA the country it is today. With particular focus on the American Civil War, Native Americans and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Loewen tries to interrogate and override simplistic, recountings of these events that portray White settlers as heroes and everybody else as uncivilized and barbarous. This is essential reading for anybody wanting to challenge their own preconceptions about American history and challenge the elevated status of American ‘heroes’.
5. Democracy: A Life by Paul Cartledge
From its birth in the city-state of Ancient Athens to contemporary times, democracy’s definition, application, and practice have been fiercely discussed and debated. With this book, Cartledge presents a biography of a political system that has been alternately lauded as the only means to govern a liberal society and derided as doomed to ineffectiveness.
Based on a near-legendary course of lectures Cartledge taught at Cambridge University, this book charts the social, cultural, and political dimensions of democracy, displaying a mastery of the scholarship to brilliant effect. For those that want to know more about democracy beyond ‘governance for the masses’.
6. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary
When history is so often focalized through a Western lens, reading from alternative positions is essential to challenge these normative understandings of the past. Ansary’s Destiny Disrupted does exactly this. By centering on an Islamic recounting of historical events, it challenges preconceived ideas about Western dominance, colonialism, and stereotyped depictions of Islamic culture and custom. Ansary discusses the history of the Islamic world from the time of Mohammed, through the various empires that have ruled the Middle Eastern region and beyond, right up to contemporary conflicts and the status of Islam in a modern, globalizing world.
7. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
If you think salt is a substance useful for not much more than topping fries, let journalist Mark Kurlansky prove otherwise. In this book, Kurlansky charts the origins of civilization using a surprising narrative throughline — salt. Many early settlements were established near natural sources of salt because of its many beneficial properties, and this surprisingly precious mineral has continued to play an important role in societies ever since. From its use as a medium of exchange in ancient times to its preservative properties (which allowed ancient civilizations to store essential food throughout the winter), this innocuous substance has been fundamental to the health and wealth of societies across the globe.
8. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
With his collective bibliography having sold over 16 million copies, you’re probably already familiar with Bryson’s work documenting his travels around the world, or his meditations on the brilliant diversity of global culture. Though primarily a travel writer, he’s also turned his hand to history, and A Short History of Nearly Everything specifically focuses on the scientific discoveries of yore that have defined human society. From quantum theory to mass extinction, Bryson recounts these miraculous, unplanned, sometimes ill-fated marvels of human achievement with humor and insight. If there’s a book that’ll have you repeatedly saying “can you believe this?” to random passers-by, this’ll be it!
9. The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine
A nation's ability to conquer the seas has always been a mark of prestige and greatness, especially for empires looking to expand beyond their borders and nations wanting to trade and connect with other peoples. Paine discusses how many societies managed to transform the murky depths of the ocean from natural obstacle to a means of transporting goods, people, and ideas — from the Mesopotamians wanting to trade with their neighbors in ancient Aegea and Egypt, to those in East Asia who fine-tuned their shipbuilding techniques to conquer foreign lands.
10. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
Here’s another book that frequents the reading lists of politics and history majors the world over! Many have theorized on why certain human societies have failed while others have thrived — but perhaps none have done it as astutely as Jared Diamond has in Guns, Germs, and Steel . The three things featured in the book’s title make up the nexus that Diamond presents as being fundamental to the development (or lack thereof) of human society. Though Diamond's thesis has as many detractors as it has supporters, it’s worth reading to see which side of the debate you fall on.
11. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity by Amartya Sen
In this collection of sixteen essays, esteemed economist Amartya Sen explores the Indian subcontinent, with particular focus on the rich history and culture that has made it the country it is today. The title refers to what Sen believes is inherent to the Indian disposition: argument and constructive criticism as a means to further progress. In his essays, Sen presents careful and considered analysis on a range of subjects that other academics have often tiptoe around, from the nature of Hindu traditions to the major economic disparities existing in certain regions today (and what their roots might be). Whether you’re an expert or new to the topic, you’ll be sure to learn something from Sen’s incisive commentary.
Ancient kingdoms are shrouded in mystery — a lot of what we know has been painstakingly pieced together by brilliant archaeologists and historians who have uncovered ancient artifacts, documents, and remains, and dedicated their working lives to understanding their significance to ancient people. Aren’t the rest of us lucky they’ve done the hard work for us?
12. Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend
The pre-colonial Central America ruled by the Aztecs was one characterized by remarkable innovation and progressiveness. Western historians, however, often failed to acknowledge this or pay the region and its ancient empires much academic attention. Moreover, the history of the Mexican people as recounted by the Spanish has often leaned into stereotyped, whitewashed versions of events. Townsend’s Fifth Sun changes this by presenting a history of the Aztecs solely using sources and documents written by the Aztec people themselves in their native Nahuatl language. What results is an empathetic and invigorating interpretation of Aztec history for newbies and long-time enthusiasts alike.
13. When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney
When you think of Ancient Egyptian queens, Cleopatra probably comes to mind — but did you know that the various Egyptian dynasties boasted a whole host of prominent women? Cooney’s When Women Ruled The World shifts the spotlight away from the more frequently discussed Egyptian pharaohs, placing attention on the likes of Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra, all of whom commanded great armies, oversaw the conquering of new lands, and implemented innovative economic systems. In this captivating read, Cooney reveals more about these complex characters and explores why accounts of ancient empires have been so prone to placing powerful women on the margins of historical narratives.
14. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 by Edward Gibbon
If you’re a fan of serious, in-depth scholarship on ancient history, then this first volume of Gibbon's classic treatise on the Roman Empire is a perfect fit for you. Despite being published in 1776, Gibbon’s work on the Roman Empire is still revered by historians today. Along with five other volumes of this monumental work, this text is considered one of the most comprehensive and pre-eminent accounts in the field. Gibbon offers theories on exactly how and why the Roman Empire fell, arguing controversially that it succumbed to barbarian attacks mainly due to the decline of “civic virtue” within Roman culture. If this thesis has piqued your interest, then we naturally suggest you start with Volume I to understand what exactly Gibbon considers “virtue” to be, and how it was lost.
15. The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer
Historians are often wont to focus on a particular historical era or location when producing historical nonfiction — but Susan Wise Bauer had grander ambitions. In this text, Bauer weaves together events that spanned continents and eras, from the East to the Americas. This book, described as an “engrossing tapestry,” primarily aims to connect tales of rulers to the everyday lives of those they ruled in vivid detail. With an eloquently explained model, she reveals how the ancient world shaped, and was shaped by, its peoples.
16. Foundations of Chinese Civilization: The Yellow Emperor to the Han Dynasty by Jing Liu
Believe it or not, history doesn’t always mean slogging through page after page of dense, footnoted text. This comic by Beijing native Jing Liu turns history on its head by presenting it in a fun, digestible manner for anybody that has an interest in Chinese history (but isn’t quite ready to tackle an 800-page book on the subject yet). Spanning nearly 3,000 years of ancient history, this comic covers the Silk Road, the birth of Confucianism and Daoism, China's numerous internal wars, and finally the process of modern unification.
Middle Ages and renaissance
Some of the most fearsome and formidable characters in history had their heyday during the Middle Ages and renaissance periods — though it’s hard to know whether their larger-than-life reputations are owed to actual attributes they had, or from their mythologizing during a time where fewer reliable sources exist. Either way, we think they’re great fun to read about — as are their various exploits and conquests. From Genghis Khan to Cosimo de Medici, we’ve got you covered.
17. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
The Silk Road, an artery of commerce running from Europe through Russia to Asia (and a vital means of connecting the West with the East), has long been of interest to historians of the old world. In this book, Frankopan goes one step further, to claim that there has been more than one silk road throughout history — and that the region stretching from the Mediterranean to China (modern-day Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan) remains the crossroads of civilization and the center of global affairs. Frankopan argues compellingly that this region should be afforded more attention when historians theorize on centers of power and how they have shifted across time. It’s a convincing argument, and one that is expertly executed by Frankopan’s engaging writing and scrupulous research.
18. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
Genghis Khan is perhaps one of the most formidable figures in global history. Many recognize his iconic topknot-and-horseback image despite not knowing all too much about his life or the military successes he oversaw as leader of the Mongolian empire. Weatherford’s book takes a deep dive into this complex character and explores new dimensions of the society and culture he imposed upon the many peoples he conquered. As a civilization, Khan's was more keenly progressive than its European counterparts — having abolished torture, granted religious freedoms, and deposed the feudal systems that subordinated so many to so few. If you’re in the mood for an epic tale that’ll challenge your understanding of the global past, you’ll want to pick this book up.
19. Precolonial Black Africa by Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop, a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician, dedicated his working life to the study of pre-colonial African culture and the origins of human civilization itself. This book, arguably his most influential text, draws out comparisons between European empires and societies with the often overlooked African civilizations. Diop carefully shows that Africa contributed far more to the world’s development than just its exploited labor and natural resources. Precolonial Black Africa thus sets out to reorient our knowledge of a period that is so often derided by non-African thinkers as “uncivilized” and “barbarous” with brilliant attention to detail.
20. The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge
In the 11th century, a vast Christian army was summoned and ordered by the Pope to march across Europe. Their aim was to seize Jerusalem and claim back the city considered the holy seat of Christianity. As it happened, Jerusalem was also a land strongly associated with the Prophets of Islam. The Christian mission thus manifested in the Crusaders’ rampage through the Muslim world, devastating many parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. Asbridge’s innovative recounting of this momentous event is unique in the way it even-handedly unpacks the perspective of both the Christian and Muslim experiences and their memorializing of the Holy Wars. With rich and detailed scholarship, this book reveals how the Crusades shaped the Medieval world and continue to impact the present day.
21. The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall by Christopher Hibbert
Renaissance Florence is perhaps most famous as the cradle of revered art, sculpture, and architecture by the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo — but in the 15th century, it was also home to the Medicis, one of the most powerful banking dynasties in Europe. Starting with enterprising Cosimo de Medici in the 1430s, Hibbert chronicles the impressive rise of a family that dominated a city where mercantile families jostled for political and social influence, often to bloody ends. And — spoiler alert, if you can spoil history — as with every great period, the rise of the Medicis naturally involves a spectacular fall. It’s the kind of stuff soap operas are made of: an unmissable tale of family intrigue and the corrupting influence of money.
In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.
22. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Mainstream history has too often made it seem as though the Americas was all but a vacant wasteland before Columbus and other European conquerors drifted upon its shores in the 15th century. Of course, this couldn’t be further from the truth — from the Aztecs to the Incas to the tribes of Northern America, many complex social and cultural structures existed prior to the arrival of Europeans. Southern American peoples in particular had sophisticated societies and infrastructures (including running water!) that have unfortunately been obliviated from the popular (or at least white Western) consciousness. A classic book that challenges the victor’s story, Charles C. Mann’s 1491 provides exciting new information on civilizations that have more to teach us than we have previously acknowledged.
23. The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones
Is there a more abiding emblem of British history than that of Medieval England’s monarchy and the Wars of the Roses? Though its historical figures and events have often been portrayed in television dramas, plays, and books, little is commonly known about the House of Plantagenets, who ruled from the 12th to the 15th century — an era packed with royal drama, intrigue, and internal division. For a witty, acerbic account of the whole ordeal, visit Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets . He approaches the subject with dazzling storytelling skills and charm that it will feel like you’re reading a novel, not a nonfiction book.
Enlightenment, empire, and revolution
You can’t make sense of the present without understanding the forces that got us here. The mechanized and globalized, mass-producing and mass-consuming world we live in today was forged in the fiery hearth of the Industrial Revolution, on the decks of ships setting out in search of uncharted territory, and in battles that were fought over supposedly ‘undiscovered’ lands. A lot changed for the common man in this period, and a lot has been written about it too — here are some of the best works.
24. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective by Robert C. Allen
The Industrial Revolution is perhaps the most important phenomenon in modern history. It started in 18th-century Britain, where inventions like the mechanical loom and the steam engine were introduced, changing the nature of work and production. But why did this happen in Britain and not elsewhere in the world, and how precisely did it change things? These questions are answered lucidly in Robert C. Allen’s informative book. From the preconditions for growth to the industries and trades that grew out of them, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspectives has it all covered. Though it leans a bit on the academic side, it provides valuable knowledge that will vastly improve your understanding of today’s mass-producing, mass-consuming world.
25. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
For an overview of the history of the US, try this impressive treatise by historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. There’s a reason why this book is so often assigned as mandatory reading for high school and college history courses — it challenges readers to rethink what they’ve been told about America’s past. Rather than focusing on ‘great’ men and their achievements, A People’s History dives unflinchingly into the societal conditions and changes of the last few centuries. Exploring the motives behind events like the Civil War and US international interventions in the 20th century, Zinn shows that while patriotism and morality have often been used to justify America’s social movements and wars, it’s often been economic growth and wealth accumulation that truly drove leaders’ decisions.
26. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
At Wounded Knee Creek in 1890, the Lakota people confronted the encroaching US Army to protect their homeland and community. What followed was a massacre that for decades was viewed as a heroic victory — exemplifying how history is truly shaped by the victors, unless someone else speaks up. In 2010, Dee Brown did just this, exploring the colonialist treatment that Indigenous Americans suffered throughout the late 19th century in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Using council records and personal accounts from people of various Native American tribes, Brown demonstrates just how destructive the US administration was to these communities: in the name of Manifest Destiny and building new infrastructure, white settlers destroyed the culture and heritage of the Indigenous population. It’s something that's sadly still too familiar now, making this an even more pressing read.
27. Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi
While this isn’t strictly a history book, Four Hundred Souls is certainly an eye-opening volume if you’re looking to explore oft-hidden aspects of history. This collection of essays, personal reflections, and short stories is written by ninety different authors, all providing unique insights into the experiences of Black Americans throughout history. Editors Kendi and Blain do a brilliant job of amalgamating a variety of emotions and perspectives: from the pains of slavery and its legacy to the heartfelt poetry of younger generations. If you’re looking for your fix of African American Literature and nonfiction in one go, consider this your go-to.
Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.
Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.
Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.
This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende’s inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.
28. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano
The instabilities of Latin America over the last century have largely stemmed from its turbulent and violent past, its land and people having been exploited by European imperial powers, followed by American interventionism. In Open Veins of Latin America, Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano passionately and compellingly recounts this history while also keeping it accessible to modern readers. Still on the fence? Let the foreword by Latinx literary giant Isabel Allende convince you: “Galeano denounces exploitation with uncompromising ferocity, yet this book is almost poetic in its description of solidarity and human capacity for survival in the midst of the worst kind of despoliation.”
29. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano Illustrated by Olaudah Equiano
Though it was published in the late 18th century, this autobiography is still being reprinted today. It follows the life of Equiano, a slave who was kidnapped from his village in Nigeria and trafficked to Britain. In this foreign land, he was traded like merchandise time and again, struggling against adversity to find his freedom and define his identity. The accuracy of the story has been called into question, which is why reprinted editions have footnotes and additional details to better explain the social context of the situation. Regardless, the narrative style of the book makes it a hypnotizing read, immersing readers in the world of Georgian England and the horrors of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The World Wars
We thought the biggest events of the 20th century deserved their own section. The fact that so many people across the globe lived to experience these two momentous, destructive wars is perhaps why so much has been written about them — and how they reinvented life as we know it. The books below, covering a variety of perspectives, will intrigue, surprise, and hopefully teach you a thing or two.
30. Ten Days That Shook The World by John Reed
If you’re interested in firsthand accounts of people who've lived through historical moments, then this is the book for you. Published in 1919, Ten Days that Shook the World is the thrilling political memoir of someone who witnessed the October Revolution unfold in St Petersburg, Russia. Reed was a socialist and a newspaper correspondent who happened to be in close contact with the likes of Lenin and Trotsky, aka the innermost circle of the Bolsheviks. His account of the revolution thus provides a very unique perspective — one of both an insider and an outsider. While Reed couldn’t be as impartial as he intended as a journalist, this book is still a useful insight into one of the most important moments in modern history.
31. The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
If you’re a fan of history books, then you’ve probably heard of Barbara Tuchman: she was a historian and author who twice won the Pulitzer Prize, once for this very book. In The Guns of August , Tuchman uncovers the beginnings of World War I. She starts by examining the alliances and military plans that each country had in case of warfare, demonstrating how delicate this moment was before the declarations and the first battles on various fronts. The militaristic theme of the book could’ve made the tone dry, yet Tuchman lets the stories unravel in a way that intrigues and enthralls. As the granddaughter of the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Tuchman was in Constantinople as the war began, and as a result, her work takes on the gravity of someone who was in the thick of it.,
32. Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War by Tim Bouverie
In the 1930s, when Hitler was making moves to acquire land from neighboring countries, the rest of the Allies pursued a policy they called appeasement. In the book of the same name (previously known as Appeasing Hitler ), the reasoning behind such a policy — despite the Nazis’ blatant antisemitism and aggressive nationalism — reveals how that led to World War II. Spoiler alert: ironically, this was all done with the assumption that if Hitler got what he wanted, there wouldn’t be another large-scale war that would last another four years. As informative as it is, Appeasement is also a valuable reminder that what happened in the past wasn’t a given — at that moment in time, things could have gone any number of ways. What matters, looking back, is what we can learn from it for the future.
33. Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid
From historical fiction novels like Atonement to the somber box office hit Dunkirk , our mainstream knowledge about the Second World War has predominantly featured the French Western Front. Possibly because American forces were much more involved in this side of the war, we tend to overlook the biggest battles, which took place in Eastern Europe.
In Leningrad , Anna Reid sheds a light on one of these epic battles. Breaking Hitler’s vow of non-aggression, German forces poured into the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1941, expecting a quick victory. Little did they know that Leningrad (modern-day St Petersburg) was not about to go down without a vicious fight. Over the next three years, this massive city was put under a siege that resulted in destruction, famine, and countless deaths, though the Germans were ultimately defeated. What was life like in this prolonged blockade, and was it truly a Soviet victory? You’ll have to read Leningrad to find out.
34. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
As the only country to have been a victim of nuclear attacks, Japan’s postwar experience has arguably been one of the most unique and difficult of all the countries that took part in the world wars. Prior to and during WW2, Japan was a major power that had annexed much of East Asia by 1941. After the war, Japan was a defeated nation, strong-armed into surrendering by the Soviet army and two American atomic bombs.
Embracing Defeat is about a nation coming to terms with its new reality in the following years, during which the US-occupied Japan and was actively involved in its rebuilding. Shock, devastation, and humiliation were just a few of the emotions that society had to live through. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, MIT professor John Dower explores these sentiments and how they translated into social and cultural changes in Japan.
35. Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the 20th Century by Konrad H. Jarausch
Over the course of the 20th century, Germany truly experienced all possible transformations. From a key European imperial power to an economically crippled state, to Nazism and the Holocaust, and then to Cold War partition — there’s certainly been no shortage of tumult in Germany over the past hundred years. Collecting stories from over 60 people who lived through these ups and downs, Konrad Jarausch presents a down-to-earth picture of what it was like to undergo these changes in everyday life. While we often see historical changes as a given in hindsight, for the people who lived through the period, these transformations were sometimes far from foreseeable — yet have been formative to their individual and collective identities.
It’s remarkable to consider what humanity has achieved in the last century alone, from the first manned flight to landing people on the moon. But that’s not all: world wars were fought, empires were toppled, living conditions improved for many across the world and human rights were advanced in ways many would not have been able to fathom even a few decades before. To absorb more of our “modern” history, peruse the books below.
36. Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring by Andrew Lownie
If you’re a fan of thrilling spy novels , then Stalin’s Englishman is the history book for you: it’s the biography of Guy Burgess, an English-born Soviet spy from the 1930s onward. In a way, Burgess was made for the job — he was born into a wealthy family, attended prestigious schools like Eton and Cambridge, worked at the BBC and then for MI6, making him entirely beyond suspicion in the eyes of his own people. Though little is officially recorded about Burgess’s life, Andrew Lownie has compiled plenty of oral evidence related to this charming spy, weaving together an exciting narrative that will keep you turning the pages.
37. The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence by Martin Meredith
Since the end of World War II, Africa has seen several waves of independence movements. And while it was once a vision of hope, the effects of colonialism have frequently made post-independence life in Africa unstable and dangerous. Martin Meredith looks into the nuances of this legacy and how it has played out in the post-independence era. Rather than focusing on individual countries, Meredith widens his scope and presents a thorough overview of the continent, making this book an essential read for anyone new to modern African history.
38. Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm is a well-known Marxist historian, and so it’s no surprise that his account of 20th-century history leans on the critical side. The Age of Extremes is all about failures: of communism, of state socialism, of market capitalism, and even of nationalism.
Dividing the century into three parts — the Age of Catastrophe, the Golden Age, and the Landslide — Hobsbawm tracks Western powers and their struggles with world wars, economic failures, and new world orders that involved them losing colonies and influence. In their place, new systems rose to prominence, though all exhibited fundamental faults that made it difficult for them to last. The Age of Extremes is not a jovial read, but it provides an interesting perspective on modern world history. If you’re up for some harsh social commentary, you should definitely pick this book up.
39. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Vietnam War, as it is commonly called in the US, still looms large in the American imagination. But while the trauma and camaraderie of American soldiers in the tropical jungles of Vietnam have often been often highlighted, shamefully little has been said about the sufferings of the Vietnamese people — both those who remained in Vietnam and those who eventually left as “boat people.”
The gap in mainstream memory of this heavily politicized war is what Viet Thanh Nguyen addresses in his thought-provoking nonfiction book, Nothing Ever Dies . Having lived through the tail end of that conflict himself, Nguyen offers a perspective that’s too often swept under the rug. Through his writing, he reminds readers that history as we know it is often selective and subjective; it’s more than what we choose to remember, it’s also about why we choose to remember the things we do, and how sinister political motives that can factor in.
40. Age Of Ambition : Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
History isn’t all about the distant past, and with such rapid changes over the last several decades, the contemporary history of China grows ever more fascinating by the year. Following economic reforms in the 1980s, China has grown exponentially and become one of the biggest economies in the world. But this opening up also meant that the Communist Party could no longer control the people’s discourses as effectively as before. In Age of Ambition , Evan Osnos draws on his firsthand observations as a journalist in China, talking about the recent transformation of Chinese people’s aspirations and plans to reach beyond the border of their country through their studies, their work, their consumption, and their communications.
41. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
If you think history can’t be gripping, then let Patrick Radden Keefe convince you otherwise: in this modern history book, he uses a murder investigation as a window into the bitter ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland. The book begins in 1972, in the middle of the Troubles — a 30-year conflict between the Catholic Irish, who wanted to leave the UK, and the Protestants who wanted to stay. A 38-year-old woman by the name of Jean McConville, married to a Catholic former soldier of the British Army, has disappeared. The suspects are members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), known to have executed people they believed were spying on them for the British. All deny the accusation, of course — some even going as far as to deny their involvement in the IRA altogether. Looking back at the incident and its suspects four decades later, Keefe highlights the atrocities that were committed by all parties during this period, and how they still resonate through NI today.
42. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
An esteemed researcher of African American literature and history, Hartman has produced a trove of work on the practices and legacies of slavery in the US. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments is but one of the insightful titles she’s produced, discussing the lives of Black women in late 19th-century New York and Philadelphia. Looking at the concept and understanding of sexuality in these communities, Hartman found that despite the criminalization practiced by the state, there was space for women to own their sexuality and gender identity. It was a small space, and it would have slipped into oblivion if no one cared to explore the nuances of the urbanizing life of the 1890s — but this book ensures that they can never be left in the dust.
43. Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga
This book, written to accompany the 4-episode docuseries of the same name, is a must-read for everyone interested in British history. The common understanding of this island nation’s history is usually related to its seaborne conquests and longstanding monarchies. But what of the servants and slaves, the people that actually did the work and fought the battles? What of the people who were moved here through colonial exchanges? Retracing British history with an eye upon the waves of immigration, Olusoga gives a comprehensive overview of the complexity of Black Britishness in the UK, a group whose stories are often obscured. He also shows that these people were and are integral to the nation’s development, and are thus not to be forgotten.
44. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
For those who enjoy storytelling, check out this thrilling novel-style history book on H. H. Holmes, the man considered to be one of the first modern serial killers. Holmes was only ever convicted for one murder but is thought to have had up to 27 victims, many lured to the World’s Fair Hotel that he owned. The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago is thus the immersive setting of The Devil in the White City , and is written from the point of view of the designers who contributed to the fair. It reads like suspense — think The Alienist — but it also informs on the excitement and uncertainty of the early stages of urbanization, coming together as a marvelous blend of mystery novel and true crime .
45. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala by Stephen Schlesinger
In 1954, Guatemalan President Árbenz was overthrown. As with many Cold War-era coups in Asia and Latin America, the US was heavily involved in the plot. Even more absurdly, one of the main forces lobbying for this intervention was the United Fruit Company, which has been benefiting from labor exploitation in Guatemala. The result of this was the installation of an undemocratic and oppressive government, supremely heightened political unrest, and ultimately a prolonged civil war. Bitter Fruit dives into the rationales (or rather irrationalities) behind American involvement, highlighting the powerful paranoia that underlay many decisions throughout the Cold War.
Seeking more fodder for your non-fiction shelf? Why not check out the 60 best non-fiction books of the 21st century !
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By Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
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200 Years of Peace
New perspectives on modern swedish foreign policy, biltekin, n., müller, l., & petersson, m. (eds).
In the wake of Sweden’s anniversary of 200 years of peace in 2014, this volume brings for the first time a targeted approach to the concept of claimed Swedish exceptionality. Taking on the nation’s policies of neutrality, 200 Years of Peace centers discussion around what it means for a nation to endure a uniquely long period of time without any pronounced conflict.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance
Analyzing political street art in latin america, bogerts, l..
Through illuminating case studies of street art in Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Caracas, and Mexico City, The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance explores the visual strategies of persuasion and meaning-making employed by both rulers and resisters to foster self-legitimization, identification, and mobilization.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)
After Auschwitz
The difficult legacies of the gdr, heitzer, e., jander, m., kahane, a., & poutrus, p. g. (eds).
This provocative collection reflects on the heretofore ignored or repressed aspects of German mainstream society—including right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and racism—to call for an ambitious renewal of historical research and political education to place East Germany in its proper historical context.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present
After the 'Socialist Spring'
Collectivisation and economic transformation in the gdr, subjects: history (general) history: 20th century to present.
After Unity
Reconfiguring german identities, jarausch, k. h. (ed).
Against the Grain
Jewish intellectuals in hard times, mendelsohn, e., hoffman, s., & cohen, r. (eds), subjects: jewish studies history: 20th century to present.
The Age of Capitalism and Bureaucracy
Perspectives on the political sociology of max weber, mommsen, w. j..
In this new edition of Wolfgang Mommsen’s illuminating study, Max Weber is presented in terms of the major questions that preoccupied him as one of the towering social scientists of his time, with insights that are persistently relevant as we deal with the structures and dynamics of modern industrial societies.
Subjects: Sociology History: 20th Century to Present
Alien Policy in Belgium, 1840-1940
The creation of guest workers, refugees and illegal aliens, caestecker, f., subjects: history: 18th/19th century history: 20th century to present refugee and migration studies.
Alienating Labour
Workers on the road from socialism to capitalism in east germany and hungary, subjects: history (general) history: 20th century to present sociology.
Ambassadors of Realpolitik
Sweden, the csce and the cold war.
This groundbreaking study looks at the tension between realism and idealism in Swedish diplomacy during the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and 1975 Helsinki Accords. It offers a compelling counternarrative of this period, showing that Sweden strategically ignored human rights violations in Eastern Europe in its pursuit of national interests.
Ambiguous Transitions
Gender, the state, and everyday life in socialist and postsocialist romania, massino, j..
Ambiguous Transitions provides an accessible, intimate exploration of gender and citizenship in socialist Romania. Author Jill M. Massino connects women’s everyday lives to larger political, economic, and social processes, challenging conventional understandings of life in socialist Romania as uniformly oppressive.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality
The Ambivalent Alliance
Konrad adenauer, the cdu/csu, and the west, 1949-1966, granieri, r..
The American Impact on Postwar Germany
Pommerin, r. (ed), subjects: history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general).
Americanization and Anti-americanism
The german encounter with american culture after 1945, stephan, a. (ed).
The Americanization of Europe
Culture, diplomacy, and anti-americanism after 1945, stephan, a (ed).
Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction
Catalan labor and the crisis of the spanish state, 1898-1923, subjects: history: 20th century to present sociology political and economic anthropology.
Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas
A shared political tradition, dobson, a. & marsh, s. (eds).
With a central objective to interrogate the notion of a shared Anglo-American political tradition, Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas opens up new debate on the nature of the ‘first principles’ that were to frame the development of Anglo-American ideas embedded in our everyday institutions and organizations.
Anti-liberal Europe
A neglected story of europeanization, gosewinkel, d. (ed).
The history of modern Europe is often presented with the hindsight of present-day European integration, which was a genuinely liberal project based on political and economic freedom. Many other visions for Europe developed in the 20th century, however, were based on an idea of community rooted in pre-modern religious ideas, cultural or ethnic homogeneity, or even in coercion and violence. Anti-liberal Europe examines these visions, including those of anti-modernist Catholics, conservatives, extreme rightists as well as communists, arguing that antiliberal concepts in 20th century Europe were not the counterpart to, but instead part of the process of European integration.
The Armenian Genocide
Evidence from the german foreign office archives, 1915-1916, gust, w. (ed).
The 1915-1916 annihilation of the Armenians was the archetype of modern genocide, in which a state adopts a specific scheme geared to the destruction of an identifiable group of its own citizens. Official German diplomatic documents are of great importance in understanding the genocide, as only Germany had the right to report day-by-day in secret code about the ongoing genocide. The motives, methods, and after-effects of the Armenian Genocide echoed strongly in subsequent cases of state-sponsored genocide. Studying the factors that went into the Armenian Genocide not only gives us an understanding of historical genocide, but also provides us with crucial information for the anticipation and possible prevention of future genocides.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
The Art of Resistance
Cultural protest against the austrian far right in the early twenty-first century, fiddler, a..
The 1999 Austrian election results produced an uprising against a turn to the political right. The Art of Resistance examines artworks created in responses to the Freedom Party of Austria and analyses the styles and strategies deployed by a large range of artists who clashed against increased normalization of far-right thinking.
At Home in Postwar France
Modern mass housing and the right to comfort, rudolph, n. c..
After World War II, France embarked on a national project of modernization, which included the development of mass housing. At Home in Postwar France reveals how modernizers saw the home as a site for social engineering and nation-building, and identifies the emergence of a “right to comfort” that shaped new expectations for well-being.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies
At the Edge of the Wall
Public and private spheres in divided berlin, hochmuth, h..
The neighboring boroughs of Friedrichschain and Kreuzberg shared a history and identity until their fortunes diverged dramatically following the construction of the Berlin Wall, which placed them within opposing political systems. This revealing account of the two towns during and after the Cold War takes a microhistorical approach to illuminate the broader historical trajectories of East and West Berlin.
Atlantic Automobilism
Emergence and persistence of the car, 1895-1940.
Offering a sweeping transatlantic perspective, this book explains the current obsession with automobiles by delving deep into the motives of early car users. It provides a synthesis of our knowledge about the emergence and persistence of the car, using a broad range of material including novels, poems, films, and songs to unearth the desires that shaped our present “car society.”
Subjects: Mobility Studies History: 20th Century to Present Transport Studies
Austria, Germany, and the Cold War
From the anschluss to the state treaty, 1938-1955, steininger, r..
Basic and Applied Research
The language of science policy in the twentieth century, kaldewey, d. & schauz, d. (eds).
Basic and Applied Research traces the conceptual history of the distinction between basic and applied research to its origins in nineteenth-century Europe, explores its role in different ideological contexts after World War II, and ultimately provides valuable insights into present-day EU research policy.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
Becoming a Subject
Political prisoners during the greek civil war, 1945-1950.
Becoming East German
Socialist structures and sensibilities after hitler, fulbrook, m. & port, a. i. (eds).
“This is an excellent edited collection. It provides a range of methodological approaches and is right up to date: it introduces a number of new academics onto the scene while also providing some old favourites. The volume significantly adds to our understanding of East Germany and its population. It provides a reassessment of antifascism and memory... Port’s introduction and Fulbrook’s chapter on memory are masterful.” · Mark Fenemore , Manchester Metropolitan University
Berlin Divided City, 1945-1989
Broadbent, p. & hake, s. (eds), subjects: urban studies history: 20th century to present.
Bestsellers of the Third Reich
Readers, writers and the politics of literature.
Christian Adam examines how books came into being under the Nazis, how they became bestsellers—sometimes against the will of the rulers—and which books were actually read. He writes the history of the bestsellers in the darkest epoch of the German past, thus opening a new perspective on the mentality of the Germans between 1933 and 1945.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies
Between Bombs and Good Intentions
The international committee of the red cross (icrc) and the italo-ethiopian war, 1935-1936, baudendistel, r..
Between Empire and Continent
British foreign policy before the first world war.
Historians have commonly interpreted Britain’s attempts to break through older alliances of European states before World War I as a reaction to aggressive German foreign policy. This groundbreaking political history demonstrates that British strategy instead arose from the complex interplay of national, continental and imperial considerations.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War I
Between Left and Right
The 2009 bundestag elections and the transformation of the german party system, langenbacher, e. (ed).
Between Marx and Coca-Cola
Youth cultures in changing european societies, 1960-1980, schildt, a. & siegfried, d. (eds), subjects: history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general) media studies sociology.
Between Mass Death and Individual Loss
The place of the dead in twentieth-century germany, confino, a., betts, p. & schumann, d. (eds), subjects: history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general) sociology.
Between Prague Spring and French May
Opposition and revolt in europe, 1960-1980, klimke, m., pekelder, j. & scharloth, j. (eds).
Between the Avant-garde and the Everyday
Subversive politics in europe from 1957 to the present, brown, t. & anton, l. (eds).
Between Tradition and Modernity
Aby warburg and the public purposes of art in hamburg, russell, m. a..
Between Utopia and Disillusionment
A narrative of the political transformation in eastern europe.
Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
German visions of europe, 1926-1950.
Beyond 1989
Re-reading german literature since 1945, bullivant, k. (ed).
Beyond Alterity
German encounters with modern east asia, shen, q. & rosenstock, m. (eds).
This collection of essays examines German-language cultural production pertaining to modern China and Japan, and explicitly challenges orientalist notions by proposing a conception of East and West not as opposites, but as complementary elements of global culture, thereby urging a move beyond national paradigms in cultural studies. Essays focus on the mid-century German-Japanese alliance, Chinese-German Leftist collaborations, global capitalism, travel, identity, and cultural hybridity. The authors include historians and scholars of film and literature, and employ a wide array of approaches from postcolonial, globalization, media, and gender studies. The collection sheds new light on a complex and ambivalentset of international relationships, while also testifying to the potential of Asian German Studies.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
Beyond 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians'
Asymmetrical concepts in european discourse, postoutenko, k. (ed).
Surveying a variety of significant asymmetrical conceptualizations, Beyond 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians' extends our current breadth of understanding of how ascriptive terms such as ‘civilization’ vs. ‘barbarity,’ or ‘order’ vs. ‘chaos’ functioned and continue to function in political, scientific, and fictional discourses.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century History: Medieval/Early Modern
Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion
Jewish experiences of the first world war in central europe, crouthamel, j., geheran, m., grady, t., & köhne, j. b. (eds).
Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion recaptures the multifariousness of Central European Jewish life through the experiences of both soldiers and civilians during World War I. This collection explores rare sources and employs novel interdisciplinary methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, the cultural legacy of the war, and memory politics.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: World War I History: 20th Century to Present
Beyond Posthumanism
The german humanist tradition and the future of the humanities.
Against the background of debates about a revival of humanist values, this volume seeks to recast the question of the viability of the humanities by analyzing their long-disputed premises in German literature and philosophy. It emphasizes the importance of the humanities’ original mission of establishing a universal ethics by contextualizing disciplinary knowledge and making human experiences, bodily sensations, and emotions comprehensible through literary imagination.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Educational Studies
Beyond the Border
Young minorities in the danish-german borderlands, 1955-1971, wung-sung, t. h..
Beyond the Border reconstructs the experiences of minority youths living in the Danish-German borderlands from the 1950s to the 1970s. Drawing on a remarkable variety of archival and oral sources, author Tobias Haimin Wung-Sung provides a rich and fine-grained analysis that encompasses political issues from the NATO alliance and European integration to everyday life and popular culture.
Beyond the Divide
Entangled histories of cold war europe, mikkonen, s. & koivunen, p. (eds).
Cold War history has emphasized the division of Europe into two warring camps with separate ideologies and little in common. This volume presents an alternative perspective by suggesting that there were transnational networks bridging the gap and connecting like-minded people on both sides of the divide.
Bittersweet Europe
Albanian and georgian discourses on europe, 1878-2008, subjects: history: 18th/19th century history: 20th century to present.
Borders in East and West
Transnational and comparative perspectives, berger, s. & hashimoto, n. (eds).
The different ways of understanding borders, through culture, politics, or even religion, is transforming and requires multi-disciplinary approaches the complexity of interactions and tensions that may arise. Borders in East and West focuses on the relationships between Europe and East Asia through comparative case studies to challenge discourses and build new perspectives.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century Colonial History
Brewing Socialism
Coffee, east germans, and twentieth-century globalization, kloiber, a..
Taking an uncommonly focused lens against the deep and active role coffee had in connecting East Germans to a global market, Brewing Socialism uncovers the significance of East German efforts to democratize coffee and how that focus on material cultural informed the everyday life of the Social Unity Party’s conceptualization of a modern social utopia.
Bringing Culture to the Masses
Control, compromise and participation in the gdr, richthofen, e. von.
Building a European Identity
France, the united states, and the oil shock, 1973-74, gfeller, a. e..
The Burden of German History
A transatlantic life, jarausch, k. h..
The Burden of Germany History is Konrad H Jarausch’s much anticipated transatlantic autobiography set against the development and transformation of German studies over the past half-century. Using his life story, Jarausch’s concurrent life in the US and Germany brings us a self-critical historiography of a twentieth-century Germany that was wrestling with the responsibility for war and genocide.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History History: World War II
Bureaucracy, Work and Violence
The reich ministry of labour in nazi germany, 1933–1945, nützenadel, a. (ed).
In Bureaucracy, Work and Violence , the Reich Ministry of Labor is for the first time systematically illuminated as the bureaucratic arm responsible for the implementation of the National Socialist work doctrine. Historians reveal through pioneering research that the classical administrative apparatuses were far more involved in the Nazi regime and its crimes than has long been suspected.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History
Business and Industry in Nazi Germany
Nicosia, f.r. & huener, j. (eds), subjects: history (general) history: 20th century to present genocide history.
Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation
American festive culture from the revolution to the early 20th century, heideking, j., fabre, g. & dreisbach, k. (eds).
Centennial Fever
Transnational hispanic commemorations and spanish nationalism, moreno-luzón, j..
Hispanic commemorations that shaped the major elements of Spanish identity at the beginning of the 20th century, and their persistence to the present day, from the “discovery” of America to the publication of Don Quixote of la Mancha , are truly global and transnational events that have created a cultural community on which Spanish nationalism has become dependent.
The Center-Left's Poisoned Victory
Briquet, j.-l., & mastropaolo, a. (eds).
The Challenge of Globalization for Germany's Social Democracy
A policy agenda for the 21st century, dettke, d. (ed).
The Chameleon State
Global culture and policy shifts in britain and germany, 1914-1933.
Changing Cultural Tastes
Writers and the popular in modern germany, subjects: literary studies history: 20th century to present.
The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State
Histories of a key concept in the nordic countries, edling, n. (ed).
The Nordic concept of “the welfare state” is a well-worn analytical idea that has yet to receive much exploration beyond its postwar emergence. This volume chronicles “the welfare state” from its historical origins to its interpretations, values, and challenges over time in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology
Changing Perceptions of the Public Sphere
Emden, c. j. & midgley, d. (eds), subjects: history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general) political and economic anthropology.
Changing the World, Changing Oneself
Political protest and collective identities in west germany and the u.s. in the 1960s and 1970s, davis, b., mausbach, w., klimke, m. & macdougall, c. (eds).
Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements
The revolutionary power of ordinary men and women, stutje, j. w. (ed).
The Chernobyl Effect
Antinuclear protests and the molding of polish democracy, 1986–1990, szulecki, k., waluszko, j., & borewicz, t..
Empirically rich, The Chernobyl Effect shows how the Chernobyl catastrophe sparked a new kind of protest against the communist authorities of Poland. Drawing on samizdat, archival sources, and open-ended interviews with participants the authors show how a qualitatively new phenomenon was created on the opposition scene and challenge the dominant narrative of the Cold War’s end.
Senior Academic Appointments in Antipodean Anthropology, 1920–1960
Gray, g., munro, d. & winter, c..
Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History: 20th Century to Present Theory and Methodology
Children of the Dictatorship
Student resistance, cultural politics and the 'long 1960s' in greece, kornetis, k..
Cinema in Service of the State
Perspectives on film culture in the gdr and czechoslovakia, 1945-1960, karl, l. & skopal, p. (eds).
Despite being two key sites for filmmaking in the Soviet bloc, the national cinemas of Czechoslovakia and East Germany have received comparatively little attention from scholars. This volume comprehensively explores these film cultures using a “stereoscopic” approach that traces their similarities and divergences to form a multifaceted, richly contextualized portrait.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Cinema of Collaboration
Defa coproductions and international exchange in cold war europe, ivanova, m..
Almost from their very inception, European cinemas frequently undertook collaborative ventures in an attempt to cultivate a transnational “Film-Europe.” And despite the significant obstacles that the East/West divide presented to achieving that ideal, in the postwar era it was DEFA, the state cinema of the newly created East Germany, that emerged as one of the primary sites where these practices persisted.
Citizens into Dishonored Felons
Felony disenfranchisement, honor, and rehabilitation in germany, 1806-1933, de groot, t..
Throughout the long nineteenth century felony disenfranchisement affected the moral fabric of German society and coincided with a history of honor in German legal thought. Citizens into Dishonored Felons uses uncommonly extensive archival materials to address the emotional and symbolic impact of punishment as both an enforcement of societal hierarchies and a platform for reform.
Class and Other Identities
Gender, religion, and ethnicity in the writing of european labour history, voss, l. heerma van & linden, m. van der (eds), subjects: history (general) history: 20th century to present gender studies and sexuality.
Cold War Cultures
Perspectives on eastern and western european societies, vowinckel, a., payk, m. m., & lindenberger, t. (eds).
Colonial Seeds in African Soil
A critical history of forest conservation in sierra leone.
Drawing upon the fields of environmental history and political ecology, Colonial Seeds in African Soil unravels the complex forest conservation history of Sierra Leone during the 20th century. It grounds a broader trans-national history of Empire Forestry with a case study focused on Sierra Leone, examining how colonial ideas shaped forest conservation in West Africa.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
Coming Home to Germany?
The integration of ethnic germans from central and eastern europe in the federal republic since 1945, rock, d. & wolff, s. (eds), subjects: refugee and migration studies history: 20th century to present.
Coming of Age
Constructing and controlling youth in munich, 1942-1973.
In the years following World War II, Munich society became obsessed with the hypothetical threat that youths posed to postwar stability. This fascinating study shows that constructs like the rowdy young male and the sexually deviant girl served as proxies for the anxieties of adult society, while allowing authorities to expand social control.
Common Destiny
A comparative history of the dutch, french, and german social democratic parties, 1945-1969.
Communist Parties Revisited
Sociocultural approaches to party rule in the soviet bloc, 1956-1991, bergien, r. & gieseke, j. (eds).
Drawing from perspectives from within the everyday life of basic organizations and the practices of the party apparatuses, Communist Parties Revisited sheds light on the inner workings the Eastern Bloc, and the effects of state socialist policy on a micro historical level.
Comparative and Transnational History
Central european approaches and new perspectives, haupt, h. & kocka, j. (eds).
Compensation in Practice
The foundation 'remembrance, responsibility and future' and the legacy of forced labour during the third reich, goschler, c. (ed).
The German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” is one of the largest transitional justice initiatives in history. This volume provides an unparalleled look at its creation, operations, and future prospects, bringing together the work of historians who were granted unrestricted access to its records, and offering nuanced, clear-eyed analysis of its successes and missteps.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War II
Comrades in Arms
Military masculinities in east german culture.
Without question, the East German National People’s Army sought to exemplify traditional masculine ideals of stoicism, sacrifice, and physical courage. Yet depictions of the military in East German film and literature were far more nuanced and ambivalent. Comrades in Arms shows how cultural works have portrayed violence, vulnerability, military theatricality, and a range of masculinities.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 20th Century to Present
Comrades of Color
East germany in the cold war world, slobodian, q. (ed).
The political culture of the German Democratic Republic strongly emphasized solidarity with the non-white world, from contributions to relief efforts in Vietnam to public memorials for Ho Chi Minh and Martin Luther King, Jr. Through a series of illuminating historical investigations, this volume traces the contours of East German internationalism.
Concentrationary Art
Jean cayrol, the lazarean and the everyday in post-war film, literature, music and the visual arts, pollock, g. & silverman, m. (eds).
The seminal work of Jean Cayrol has experienced a revival in the French-speaking world since his death in 2005. Concentrationary Art represents the first translation into English of Cayrol’s two essays on concentrationary art, as well as the first book-length study of his theory.
Subjects: Literary Studies Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies
The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere
From the enlightenment to the indignados, jiménez torres, d. & villamediana gonzález, l. (eds).
This volume brings together leading scholars in Spanish and Latin American studies to explore the concept of the Spanish “public sphere” and its relation to society and political power over time. It offers a long-term, panoramic view—spanning from the Enlightenment to current developments in the EU—on one of the most urgent issues for contemporary European societies.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
Conflict, Catastrophe and Continuity
Essays on modern german history, biess, f., roseman, m. & schissler, h. (eds).
Conflicted Memories
Europeanizing contemporary histories, jarausch, k. h. & lindenberger, t. (eds), subjects: history: 20th century to present memory studies.
Conservative Radicalism
A sociology of conservative party youth structures and libertarianism 1970-1992.
The 'Conservative Revolutionaries'
The protestant and catholic churches in germany after radical political change in the 1990s, thériault, b..
Constructing Industrial Pasts
Heritage, historical culture and identity in regions undergoing structural economic transformation, berger, s. (ed).
The contributions in this volume demonstrate that even as forms of industrial heritage provide anchors of identity for local populations, their meanings remain deeply contested, as both radical and conservative varieties of nostalgia intermingle with critical approaches as well as straightforward apologias for a past that was often full of pain, exploitation and struggle.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Heritage Studies
Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe
Judson, p. & rozenblit, m. (eds).
Contested Femininities
Representations of modern women in the german illustrated press, 1920-1960.
Contested Femininities for the first time contributes a long-view study of constructions of the Neue or Moderne Frau (New or Modern Woman) in the illustrated press providing an incredible scope of inquiry spanning the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, post-war occupation, and a divided German.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Media Studies
Contesting Deregulation
Debates, practices and developments in the west since the 1970s, andresen, k. and müller, s. (eds).
Across thirteen case studies, this volume investigates the 1970s/80s “deregulatory moment” from a variety of historical perspectives, including transnational, comparative, pan-European, and national approaches. Collectively, they challenge an interpretive framework that treats individual decades in isolation and ignores broader trends that extend to the end of the Second World War.
Subjects: History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology History: 20th Century to Present
Continental Britons
German-jewish refugees from nazi germany, berghahn, m., subjects: jewish studies refugee and migration studies history: 20th century to present sociology.
Continental Transfers
Cultural and political exchange among spain, italy and argentina, 1914-1945, fuentes codera, m. & dogliani, p. (eds).
The cultural and political connections between Spain, Italy and Argentina developed complex transnational transfers over the course of two World Wars. Bringing together scholars from all three nations, Continental Transfers configures a multidirectional approach to the nations’ reciprocal exchange using new theoretical ground to understand the development links to the construction of national and supranational identities, such as Latinism and Hispanism.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: World War I History: World War II
Coping with the Nazi Past
West german debates on nazism and generational conflict, 1955-1975, gassert, p. & steinweis, a. e. (eds).
Coproducing Europe
An ethnography of film markets, creativity and identity.
By focusing on regional film markets in Thessasloniki, Sarajevo, and Tbilisi, Coproduction Europe uses comparative ethnography to look beyond the economic nature of film coproductions to explore their role in Europeanisation, memories of the Cold War, and preconstructed political agendas.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
The Council on Foreign Relations and American Policy in the Early Cold War
Creating Wilderness
A transnational history of the swiss national park.
The history of the Swiss National Park, from its creation in the years before the Great War to the present, is told for the first time in this book. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide. Creating Wilderness consequently situates the park’s fascinating history within a transnational conservation framework.
“ This is environmental history of the first order, ranging widely across geographical scales and historical periods to trace the changing discourses and manifestations of the national park model. ” · Andrew Denning , Western Washington University
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
The Creation of the Modern German Army
General walther reinhardt and the weimar republic, 1914-1930, mulligan, w..
Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany
Wetzell, r. f. (ed).
Crime Stories
Criminalistic fantasy and the culture of crisis in weimar germany, subjects: history: 20th century to present literary studies film and television studies sociology.
Crises in European Integration
Challenges and responses, 1945-2005, kuehnhardt, l. (ed).
Crisis and Renewal in France, 1918-1962
Mouré, k. & alexander, m. s. (eds).
The Crisis of the German Left
The pds, stalinism and the global economy, thompson, p..
Critical Junctions
Anthropology and history beyond the cultural turn, kalb, d. & tak, h. (eds), subjects: theory and methodology history: 20th century to present.
Crossing the Aegean
An appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population exchange between greece and turkey, hirschon, r. (ed).
The CSCE and the End of the Cold War
Diplomacy, societies and human rights, 1972-1990, badalassi, n. & snyder, s. b. (eds).
Since its inception over forty years ago, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe has been met with political and historical controversies. While it’s known today as a significant contributor to the end of the Cold War, The CSCE and the End of the Cold War revisits some of the most fascinating questions in Cold War historiography.
Cultural Encounters
European travel writing in the 1930s, burdett, c. & duncan, d. (eds).
Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin
Bauer, k. & hosek, j. r. (eds).
Transformed by the Wall's opening in 1989 and the concomitant shift in global relations of power, Berlin continues to shape historical and contemporary images of Germanness. This interdisciplinary anthology explores Berlin's unique cultural topographies in literature, film, architecture, urban planning, and city marketing.
Subjects: Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
Culture and Crisis
The case of germany and sweden, witoszek, n. & trägårdh, l. (eds).
Culture in Dark Times
Nazi fascism, inner emigration, and exile, hermand, j..
Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany
Usborne, c., subjects: history: 20th century to present gender studies and sexuality medical anthropology.
Death in East Germany, 1945-1990
Schulz, f. r..
“ Felix Robin Schulz’s insightful and thoroughly researched book makes a significant contribution to the growing scholarship on the history of East Germany. It is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive study of sepulchral culture in the GDR. Schulz is to be strongly commended for his extensive archival research in Berlin and in a number of city archives. He also visited numerous sites personally, which lends him a further layer of authority over his subject matter and allows him to make observations on how quickly certain spatial elements of socialist sepulchral culture are disappearing .” · Heléna Tóth, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich
Death of the Father
An anthropology of the end in political authority, borneman, j. (ed), subjects: anthropology (general) history: 20th century to present memory studies.
The Decisionist Imagination
Sovereignty, social science and democracy in the 20th century, bessner, d. & guilhot, n. (eds).
The Decisionist Imagination explores the relationship between the key concept of “decisionism,” as it emerged from 1920s political theory, and the postwar development of formal decision theory when sovereign decision-making became an object of scientific inquiry in a new cultural, institutional, and international landscape.
The Decolonial Mandela
Peace, justice and the politics of life, ndlovu-gatsheni, s..
This concise, forcefully argued volume lays out a groundbreaking interpretation of the “Mandela phenomenon.” Contrary to a neoliberal social model that privileges adversarial criminal justice and a rationalistic approach to warmaking, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni elevates transformative political justice and a pluriversal vision of society as key features of Nelson Mandela’s legacy.
East German Cinema 1946-1992
Allan, s. & sandford, j. (eds).
Defeating Impunity
Attempts at international justice in europe since 1914, rovetta, o. & lagrou, p. (eds).
Over the course of the long and violent twentieth century, only a minority of the perpetrators of international crimes ever stood trial. In analyzing and documenting the challenge addressing that status of international justice and its realization, this collection uses an international perspective to take the reader through both little known and prominent trials.
Democracy in Europe
Legitimising politics in a non-state polity, abromeit, h..
Democracy in Modern Europe
A conceptual history, kurunmäki, j., nevers, j., & te velde, h. (eds).
As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has reshaped not only the landscape of government, but also fundamental social and political thought on a global level. Democracy in Modern Europe covers the history of democracy in modern Europe.
Demonstrating Reconciliation
State and society in west german foreign policy toward israel, 1952-1965, hindenburg, h. von.
Designing Worlds
National design histories in an age of globalization, fallan, k. & lees-maffei, g. (eds).
In design history, globalization is deeply intertwined with a long-held bias towards Western, industrialized nations. By reassessing the role of regional and national design histories and challenging the claim that nation states are obsolete in identity construction, Designing Worlds reflects on new national narratives from around the world.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
Desires for Reality
Radicalism and revolution in western european film, halligan, b..
This is a fresh and groundbreaking account of the innovations and provocations of the “cinema of 1968,” and its social and aesthetic contexts. Benjamin Halligan offers a genuinely fresh analysis of films reflecting the cultural upheaval of youth in revolt—cinema that did not merely entertain, but was made the barricades.
Destination London
German-speaking emigrés and british cinema, 1925-1950, bergfelder, t. & cargnelli, c. (eds), subjects: film and television studies refugee and migration studies history: 20th century to present.
The Devil's Wheels
Men and motorcycling in the weimar republic.
During the unprecedented modernization of Germany’s Weimar Republic, motorcycle culture instantiated the new link between consumption and identity. Motorcycles became symbols of masculinity and freedom that exposed the problems and allures of mass-consumption and modern values. The Devil’s Wheels analyzes motorcycle culture, and reassesses mechanized life in Weimar Germany.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Transport Studies
Diamonds and War
State, capital, and labor in british-ruled palestine, de vries, d..
The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky
Into germany at the end of world war ii, lerg, c. a. (ed.).
The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky reproduces and critically examines Melvin J. Lasky’s diary, which expounds intense and insightful notes on German realities following the aftermath of World War Two and the ideological conflicts between the East and West.
Subjects: History: World War II History: 20th Century to Present Literary Studies
Dictatorship as Experience
Towards a socio-cultural history of the gdr, jarausch, k. (ed).
Different from the Others
German and dutch discourses of queer femininity and female desire, 1918–1940, sturgess, c..
Presenting for the first time a comparative and socio-cultural history of queer femininities in Germany and the Netherlands for an English-speaking audience, Different from the Others highlights this submerged history and engages queer authors and activists from the Netherlands to challenge and redress conceptualizations of queer femininity in the interwar period.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: World War I History: 20th Century to Present
Different Germans, Many Germanies
New transatlantic perspectives, jarausch, k. h., wenzel, h., & goihl, k. (eds).
For Anglo-American observers in particular, the legacies of two world wars still powerfully define twentieth-century German history. This volume collects insightful studies from leading scholars that suggest new ways for understanding Germany from a transatlantic perspective, arguing above all for a more nuanced, self-reflective, and holistic German Studies.
Disrupted Landscapes
State, peasants and the politics of land in postsocialist romania, dorondel, s..
The fall of the Soviet Union led not only to new regimes of ownership and development but to dramatic changes in the landscape itself. This study focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation’s forests, farmlands, and rivers.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
Divided, But Not Disconnected
German experiences of the cold war, hochscherf, t., laucht, c. & plowman, a. (eds).
Documenting Socialism
East german documentary film, allan, s. & heiduschke, s. (eds).
More than 30 years after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, its cinema continues to attract scholarly attention. Documenting Socialism brings a fresh introduction to the field of documentary cinema and the complexities of diversity under socialism in the GDR.
Don't Need No Thought Control
Western culture in east germany and the fall of the berlin wall.
Don't Need No Thought Control explores the dynamic interplay between popular demands, intensifying economic crises, and cultural policy decisions during the Erich Honecker era in a comprehensive and comparative analysis.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies
A Dramatic Reinvention
German television and moral renewal after national socialism, 1956–1970, anderson, s..
A Dramatic Revinvention sheds new light on how Germans rebuilt their moral and intellectual world after the Nazi catastrophe. The book argues that television emerged as one of the most important mediums for presenting, discussing, and working through the question of how to re-moralize Germany.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies Media Studies
Driving Germany
The landscape of the german autobahn, 1930-1970, subjects: transport studies history: 20th century to present mobility studies environmental studies (general).
Driving Modernity
Technology, experts, politics, and fascist motorways, 1922-1943, moraglio, m..
Driving Modernity recounts the history of the first Italian motorway, which—alongside railways and aviation—Italian authorities hoped would spread an ideology of technological nationalism. It explains how Italy ultimately failed to realize its mammoth infrastructural vision, addressing the political and social conditions that made a coherent plan of development impossible.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Mobility Studies Transport Studies
Dynamics of Emigration
Émigré scholars and the production of historical knowledge in the 20th century, berger, s. & müller, p. (eds).
In the dictatorships of the twentieth century, historians have frequently been exiled from both fascist and communist regimes. This book discusses the experience of exile and asks why some of them were successful in establishing themselves in their new host countries while others failed.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
The Dynamics of German Industry
Germany's path toward the new economy and the american challenge, abelshauser, w..
Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe
Langenbacher, e., niven, b., & wittlinger, r. (eds).
East German Film and the Holocaust
By combining close analyses of five films made between 1947 and 1988 with extensive archival research, this book unravels the complex status of films dealing with Jewish persecution produced in a country that consistently privileged narratives of political persecution above racial victimhood.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
The East German State and the Catholic Church, 1945-1989
Schaefer, b..
Eastern Europe Unmapped
Beyond borders and peripheries, kacandes, i. & komska, y. (eds).
Arguably more than any other world regions, the area known as Eastern Europe has been defined by its location on the map. Rather than expound on borders and neighbors, Eastern Europe Unmapped raises questions about the meaning and relevance of the area’s non-contiguous, frequently global or extraterritorial, entanglements.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
Echoes of Surrealism
Challenging socialist realism in east german literature, 1945–1990, berendse, g.-j..
Echoes of Surrealism surveys areas of surrealist art throughout the entire lifespan of the GDR and explores analyses of the interaction and reciprocal influences of various art forms. Focusing on individual authors, visual artists, film directors and musicians who have taken a surrealist perspective in their work, this study reveals how the surrealist perspective offered an alternative to the rigid government cultural policies by questioning and confronting the status quo.
The Economic Diplomacy of Ostpolitik
Origins of nato's energy dilemma, lippert, w. d..
Edges of Noir
Extreme filmmaking in the 1960s, mirabile, m..
Edges of Noir addresses film studies’ neglect of 1960s experimental noir films that have resisted easy classification against more popularly regarded late noir films and responds to the interpretive dilemmas and anxieties of the time to which the films provided expression.
Embers of Empire
Continuity and rupture in the habsburg successor states after 1918, miller, p. & morelon, c. (eds).
The end of World War I and the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy radically reshaped the political structures and national identity of East-Central Europe. Embers of Empire focuses on this complex and disruptive transition and sheds new light on the efficacity of imperial institutions, as well as the sources for instability in the newly formed nations.
Emerging Themes and Institutional Responses
Caciagli, m. & zuckerman, a.s. (eds).
Empire of Pictures
Global media and the 1960s remaking of american foreign policy.
The 1960s were a period of global media revolution: communication satellites compressed time and space, television spread around the world, and images circulated through print media in expanding ways. This book examines how U.S. policymakers exploited these changes.
Subjects: Media Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Enchanted by Cinema
William thiele between vienna, berlin and hollywood, horak, j.-c. & seyfert, a.-b. (eds).
Enchanted by Cinema explores the films of the European music film pioneer William Thiele, as well as his career as an exile in Hollywood. Examining a wide range of the director’s filmography, the contributors address a variety of political, aesthetic and cross-cultural issues.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies
Encounters with Modernity
The catholic church in west germany, 1945-1975, ziemann, b..
“ This is a fascinating study of the interrelatedness of processes of secularization and the increased adoption of social science methods and theories by the Catholic Church (…). Ziemann has written a case study of an important institution, the Catholic Church, and its attempts to modernize its institution and outlook within a rapidly modernizing society in the postwar Federal Republic. It will be read with great interest by anyone interested in such processes of modernization .” · German History
The 1989 Revolution in East Germany
Kowalczuk, i.-s..
Focusing on major shifts in East Germany leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall, End Game accounts for everyday life from the autumn of 1989 to the first free elections in March of 1990. With an understanding of the events of 1989 as a citizens’ movement as a whole, the volume contextualizes the societal reactions to a nation’s large scale political changes.
The End of the Berlusconi Era?
Amyot, g., & verzichelli, l. (eds).
Enemy Images in American History
Fiebig-von hase, r. & lehmkuhl, u. (eds).
Entangled Entertainers
Jews and popular culture in fin-de-siècle vienna.
Viennese popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century was shaped jointly by Jews and non-Jews alike, though their relationship was not immune to bouts of anti-Semitism. The case studies in this book provide new findings in understanding what it meant to be Jewish among artists, performers and impresarios at the turn of the twentieth century.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
Environing Empire
Nature, infrastructure and the making of german southwest africa.
Between the infamous Benguela Current and the Namib Desert, nature significantly effected the progression of German imperialism and the creation of German Southwest Africa. Environing Empire reveals the environmental infrastructures that defined not only the culture of German colonial entanglements, but the fantasy that drove Lebensraum during the Second Reich.
The Environment and Sustainable Development in the New Central Europe
Bochniarz, z. & cohen g. (eds).
Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany
Hardy survivors in the twentieth century and beyond, markham, w. t..
The Ethics of Seeing
Photography and twentieth-century german history, evans, j., betts p., & hoffmann, s.-l. (eds).
The Ethics of Seeing brings together an international group of scholars to explore the complex relationship between the visual and the historic in German history. These revealing case studies illustrate photography’s multilayered role as a new form of representation, a means to subjective experience, and a fresh mode of narrating the past.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
Ethnic Conflict and Indoctrination
Altruism and identity in evolutionary perspectives, eibl-eibesfeldt, i. & salter, f. (eds).
Europe After Maastricht
American and european perspectives, lützeler, p. m. (ed).
Europe in Exile
European exile communities in britain 1940-45, conway, m. & gotovitch, j. (eds), subjects: history: world war ii history: 20th century to present.
European Business, Dictatorship, and Political Risk, 1920-1945
Kobrak, c. & hansen, p. (eds).
The European Way
European societies in the 19th and 20th centuries, kaelble, h. (ed).
Explorations and Entanglements
Germans in pacific worlds from the early modern period to world war i, berghoff, h., biess, f., & strasser, u. (eds).
Explorations and Entanglements reconstructs the German elements in the overlapping cultural circuits and complex oceanic transits of the “Pacific Worlds.” It concentrates on the pre-1914 period and encompasses scientific, cultural, religious and commercial exchanges. It opens a gate to a fascinating and hitherto much neglected arena of transnational encounters.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Colonial History
The Faltering Transition
Gilbert, m. & pasquino, g. (eds).
Fame Amid the Ruins
Italian film stardom in the age of neorealism.
Italian cinema gave rise to some of the best-known films of the postwar years, and its stars were beloved by both the public and producers. This book explores the many conflicts over stars and stardom that arose during Italian cinema’s postwar rebirth, shedding new light on the close relationship forged between cinema and society.
Fascism without Borders
Transnational connections and cooperation between movements and regimes in europe from 1918 to 1945, bauerkämper, a. & rossolińki-liebe, g. (eds).
Despite its reputation for ultra-nationalism, Fascism understood itself as a transnational political movement. Through a series of fascinating case studies, this expansive collection examines fascism’s transational dimension, from the movements inspired by the early example of Fascist Italy to the international antifascist organizations that emerged in subsequent years.
Fascist Europe
From italian supremacy to subservience to the reich (1932-1943), fioravanzo, m..
Examining the unexplored project for a new European order developed by Italian intellectuals, Fascist Europe reconstructs the theoretical debates that shaped relationships between Fascist Italy, the Nazi Reich, and other Axis nations. In doing so it sheds light on how much the order may have prospectively united or divided the Fascist regime and the Nazi Reich in the post-war order.
Fascist Interactions
Proposals for a new approach to fascism and its era, 1919-1945, roberts, d. d..
Increasingly, scholars of fascism have called for a new agenda with research beyond Italy and Germany, less preoccupation with classification, and sustained attention to the relationships among different fascist formations. Starting from a critical assessment of these imperatives, this volume charts a path that deemphasizes rigid distinctions while still deploying reasonably rigorous criteria of differentiation.
The Fateful Alliance
German conservatives and nazis in 1933: the machtergreifung in a new light.
Fault Lines
Earthquakes and urbanism in modern italy, parrinello, g..
Although earthquakes can have disastrous effects on human lives and environments, they can also significantly influence urban development. This book follows the history of two Italian seismic disasters — the 1908 Messina earthquake and the 1968 earthquake in the Belice Valley, Sicily — exploring plans preceding the destruction and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins.
Federalism Doomed?
European federalism between integration and separation, heinemann-grüder, a. (ed).
Fellow Tribesmen
The image of native americans, national identity, and nazi ideology in germany.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Germans exhibited a widespread cultural passion for tales and representations of Native Americans. Pervasive and adaptable, imagery of Native Americans was appropriated by Nazi propaganda and merged with exceptionalist notions of German tribalism, oxymoronically promoting the Nazis' racial ideology.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
Final Sale in Berlin
The destruction of jewish commercial activity, 1930-1945, kreutzmüller, c..
Reconstructing the fate of more than 8,000 companies, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of Jewish economic activity and its destruction in Nazi Berlin
Football Nation
The playing fields of german culture, history, and society, dawson, r., heinsohn, b., knabe, o., & mcdougall, a. (eds).
Germany’s football culture has a historically rich background full of transnational entanglements, German identity formation, and fan cultures. Football Nation constructs new insights surrounding the multifaceted landscapes of German historical and contemporary football debates as it investigates football’s role in discourses on culture, history, and politics.
Forging Political Identity
Silk and metal workers in lyon, france 1900-1939, subjects: history (general) history: 20th century to present sociology political and economic anthropology.
Four-Color Communism
Comic books and contested power in the german democratic republic.
As with all other forms of popular culture, comics in East Germany were tightly controlled by the state. Comics were employed as extensions of the regime’s educational system, delivering state ideology to develop the socialist personality among youth. The East German children who avidly read these comics, however, found their own meanings and projected their own desires in them.
Fragmented Fatherland
Immigration and cold war conflict in the federal republic of germany, 1945-1980, clarkson, a..
A Fragmented Landscape
Abortion governance and protest logics in europe, de zordo, s., mishtal, j., & anton. j. (eds).
Since 1945, European states’ social policy landscapes have proven remarkably varied, especially when it comes to contentious issues such as abortion, which is governed by a wide range of policy regimes. This volume provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary survey of the struggles over abortion rights in Europe from the immediate postwar era to the present era.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology History: 20th Century to Present
Framing the Fifties
Cinema in a divided germany, davidson, j. & hake, s. (eds).
France After 2012
Goodliffe, g. & brizzi, r. (eds).
In May 2012, French voters rejected the liberalizing policies of Nicolas Sarkozy and elected his opponent, the Socialist François Hollande, president. This book analyzes the context and results of the French 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections and sets out the principal challenges facing the new administration and government in their wake.
France and the Construction of Europe, 1944-2007
The geopolitical imperative.
France and the German Question, 1945–1990
Bozo, f. & wenkel, c. (eds).
This book revisits France’s attitude towards the German question as it existed and evolved during the post-World War Two and the Cold War eras in order to shed light on previously neglected aspect of the history of the Cold War, of Germany, and of Europe in the second half of the twentieth century.
France At War in the Twentieth Century
Propaganda, myth, and metaphor, holman, v. & kelly, d. (eds), subjects: history: 20th century to present history: world war i history: world war ii media studies.
France in the Age of Organization
Factory, home and nation from the 1920s to vichy.
France, Germany, and Nuclear Deterrence
Quarrels and convergences during the cold war and beyond, badalassi, n. & gloriant, f. (eds).
France, Germany, and the Nuclear Deterrence employs a multi-archival approach to the legacy of World War II and the bipolar division of Europe. The volume longitudinally covers the post-war, Cold War and post-Cold War eras and leads into the present day to focus on the history of Franco-German strategic and nuclear relations within an evolving Euro-Atlantic security architecture.
French Foreign Policy since 1945
An introduction.
This compact and engaging history recounts France’s efforts to reconcile its proud history and global ambitions with a realistic appraisal of its capabilities following World War II. It provides insightful analysis of decolonization, the Cold War, and European unification, always attentive to the challenges posed by an increasingly multipolar, interconnected world.
French Intellectuals Against the Left
The antitotalitarian moment of the 1970s, christofferson, m. s..
The French Right Between the Wars
Political and intellectual movements from conservatism to fascism, kalman, s. & kennedy, s. (eds).
Friendly Enemies
Britain and the gdr, 1949-1990, berger, s. & laporte, n..
From Berlusconi to Monti
Bosco, a. & mcdonnell, d. (eds).
From Caligari to California
Eric pommer's life in the international film wars, subjects: film and television studies history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general).
From Craftsmen to Capitalists
German artisans from the third reich to the federal republic, 1939-1953, mckitrick, f. l..
As Hitler consolidated power, German artisans emerged as an important Nazi constituency, drawn by the party’s rejection of both capitalism and Bolshevism. Yet, after 1945, they became one of the pillars of postwar stability. This volume gives the first account of this astonishing transformation, exploring how tradesmen helped to realize German democratization and recovery.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology
From Eastern Bloc to European Union
Comparative processes of transformation since 1990, heydemann, g. & vodička, k. (eds).
This volume assembles detailed, empirically grounded studies of eleven former Soviet states and current EU members. Each chapter analyzes the political, economic, and social transformation processes that have taken place in a given nation, identifying structural similarities and assessing outcomes compared to one another as well as the rest of Europe.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology
From Fidelity to History
Film adaptations as cultural events in the twentieth century, scholz, a.-m., subjects: cultural studies (general) history: 20th century to present film and television studies.
From Recovery to Catastrophe
Municipal stabilization and political crisis, lieberman, b..
From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic
Germany at the twentieth anniversary of unification, anderson, j. & langenbacher, e. (eds).
From Weimar to Hitler
Studies in the dissolution of the weimar republic and the establishment of the third reich, 1932-1934, beck, h. & jones, l. e. (eds).
From Weimar to Hitler examines the crisis of Weimar democracy, the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, and the Nazi consolidation of power, drawing from multiple perspectives to discover whether the transition from Weimar to Hitler was historically predetermined or the product of human miscalculation and intent.
Frontiers of Civil Society
Government and hegemony in serbia.
Frontiers of Civil Society is a historical anthropological analysis of the roles of ‘civil society’ in Serbia’s postsocialist and postauthoritarian transformation, focusing mainly on a set of interventions through which various civil society forces supported neoliberalization and transnational integration as part of a hegemonic project of social transformation after the rule of Slobodan Milošević.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology History: 20th Century to Present
Frustrated Aspirations for Change
Donovan, m. & onofri, p. (eds).
Futurism and Politics
Between anarchist rebellion and fascist reaction, 1909-1944, berghaus, g..
Gender History of German Jews
A short introduction, schüler-springorum, s..
Gender History of German Jews is a concise overview of German-Jewish gender agency and change against the “dawn of modernity” across both men and women who dealt with histories of status change, discrimination, persecution, and deportation.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
Gendering Modern German History
Rewriting historiography, hagemann, k. & quataert, j. h. (eds), subjects: gender studies and sexuality history: 20th century to present.
Gendering Post-1945 German History
Entanglements, hagemann, k., & harsch, d., & brühöfner, f. (eds).
Gendering Post-1945 German History: Entanglements offers new and critical insight into the state of the research on post-war German history from a gender perspective. Using the concept of “entanglement,” this volume investigates the ways in which East and West German gender relations were socially and politically intertwined.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology
General de Gaulle's Cold War
Challenging american hegemony, 1963-68, martin, g. j..
“While there is a lot of information for readers to take in, the subject is inherently complex, spanning different aspects of French foreign policy and the politics of other countries and institutions. In spite of this complexity, Martin displays a good grasp of the material. The book is the product of archival research in England, France, and the United States, as well as engagement with published collections and the relevant secondary literature on the topic. Martin has thus covered most of his bases.” · H-France Review
“ [The book] is extremely well researched, well written, and Martin accomplishes his stated objective: namely, to provide a more balanced account of de Gaulle that goes beyond views of him as either a visionary, or an irresponsible and anti-American nationalist…Martin’s analysis makes a unique contribution in that it examines the linkages between the General's economic, political and security policy in order to understand how the three came together to shape his overall policy toward the US. ” · Erin Mahan , Chief Historian, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Genocide in the Ottoman Empire
Armenians, assyrians, and greeks, 1913-1923, shirinian, g. n. (ed).
From 1913 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire deported or killed staggering numbers of non-Turkish, non-Muslim citizens in an attempt to preserve “Turkey for the Turks,” setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide while largely escaping accountability. This definitive volume is the first to comprehensively examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion.
German Division as Shared Experience
Interdisciplinary perspectives on the postwar everyday, carter, e., palmowski, j., & schreiter, k. (eds).
German Division as Shared Experience shows the extent to which the story of East and West Germany was one of mutual entanglement after 1945. By subsuming political considerations into the historical domain of the social and cultural, each of the innovative studies presented here analyzes moments of connection at the level of lived experience across the East-West divide.
German Literature in a New Century
Trends, traditions, transitions, transformations, gerstenberger, k. & herminghouse, p. (eds).
German Public Policy and Federalism
Current debates on political, legal, and social issues, gunlicks, a. b. (ed).
The German Right in the Weimar Republic
Studies in the history of german conservatism, nationalism, and antisemitism, jones, l. e. (ed).
“ The individual chapters range in quality from good to excellent....[and offer] a judicious mix of work from prominent academics and younger scholars. The weighing up of continuities and discontinuities between the Right and Nazism is well considered and offers refreshingly new insights into the history of inter-war Germany .” · Conan Fischer , University of St. Andrews
German Rule, African Subjects
State aspirations and the reality of power in colonial namibia, zimmerer, j..
This classic study, now available for the first time in English, explains how German colonial ambitions foundered in present-day Namibia. As it shows, the highly rationalized planning of Wilhelmine authorities could not accommodate the practical, lived realities of both colonizer and colonized.
Subjects: Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1919-1945
Haar, i. & fahlbusch, m. (eds).
The German Student Movement and the Literary Imagination
Transnational memories of protest and dissent, subjects: literary studies history: 20th century to present sociology.
German–Jewish Studies
Next generations, wallach, k. & elyada. a. (eds).
Applying current and evolving interdisciplinary scholarship to bring an original and comprehensive assessment of why German-Jewish studies as a field is vital to further our understanding of antisemitism, racism, and coloniality, German-Jewish Studies: Next Generations grounds the field’s necessity to the future of scholarship in the twenty-first century.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies
Germans Against Nazism
Nonconformity, opposition and resistance in the third reich: essays in honour of peter hoffmann, nicosia, f. r. & stokes, l. d. (eds).
Rather than being accepted by all of German society, the Nazi regime was resisted in both passive and active forms. This volume examines opposition to National Socialism by Germans during the Third Reich in its broadest sense.
The Germans and the Holocaust
Popular responses to the persecution and murder of the jews, schrafstetter, s. & steinweis, a. e. (eds).
For decades, historians have debated how and to what extent the Holocaust penetrated the German national consciousness between 1933 and 1945. This compact volume brings together six historical investigations into the subject from leading scholars, employing newly accessible and previously underexploited evidence.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies Genocide History
Germans No More
Accounts of jewish everyday life, 1933-1938, limberg, m. & rübsaat, h. (eds).
Germany and the Confessional Divide
Religious tensions and political culture, 1871-1989, ruff, m. e. & großbölting, t. (eds).
Germany confessional identities developed against cultural, religious, and political tensions in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Unpacking the conflicted religious history, this collection focuses on defining traumatic events, tracing their origins across division between Catholics and Protestants, hinderance of German unification, and transforming religious identities, allegiances, and practices
Germany and the Middle East
From kaiser wilhelm ii to angela merkel.
For more than a hundred years, persistent conflict in the Middle East has led global superpowers like Germany to become involved. Germany and the Middle East encounters in detail how the nation came to accept its historical responsibility towards newer states in the Middle East, and how major developments of the twentieth century shaped its approach to the region.
Germany and 'The West'
The history of a modern concept, bavaj, r. & steber, m. (eds).
In the nineteenth century “the West” became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of “the West” sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.
Germany On Their Minds
German jewish refugees in the united states and their relationships with germany, 1938–1988, schenderlein, a. c..
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, the United States granted asylum to approximately ninety thousand German Jews fleeing the horrors of the Third Reich. Author Anne C. Schenderlein gives a fascinating account of these entangled histories on both sides of the Atlantic and demonstrates the remarkable extent to which German Jewish refugees helped shape the course of West German democratization.
Subjects: Jewish Studies Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Germany's Difficult Passage to Modernity
Breakdown, breakup, breakthrough, lankowski, c. (ed).
Germany's New Politics
Parties and issues in the 1990s, conradt, d., kleinfeld, g. r., romoser, g. k. & søe, c. (eds).
Global Exchanges
Scholarships and transnational circulations in the modern world, tournès, l. & scott-smith, g. (eds).
Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, yet formal exchange programs did not exist until the 20th century. The essays in Global Exchanges examine the most important scholarship programs, exploring the essential contributions of organized exchange.
Subjects: Mobility Studies History: 20th Century to Present Educational Studies
Globalizing Automobilism
Exuberance and the emergence of layered mobility, 1900–1980.
Why has “car society” proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In this follow-up to his magisterial Atlantic Automobilism , Gijs Mom traces the global spread of the automobile in the postwar era and investigates why adopting more sustainable forms of mobility has proven so difficult.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Mobility Studies
Governing Fear
Baldini, g. & cento bull, a. (eds).
Governing Under Constraint
Carbone, m. & piattoni, s. (eds).
In 2015, Matteo Renzi’s government continued to elicit contrasting reactions while dealing with both internal and external constraints. Although the success of the 2015 Universal Exposition in Milan helped to bolster the image of the country, Italy continued to play a marginal role in key international areas, such as migration, European austerity policies, and the fight against terrorism.
The Great Reform That Never Was
Chiaramonte, a. & wilson, a. (eds).
In Italy, 2016 was meant to be the year of the “great reform,” a constitutional revision that would have concluded the never-ending transition from “First” to “Second” Republic, a long process involving several transformations in the electoral system and party system since the 1990s. It did not turn out this way.
The Great Train Race
Railways and the franco-german rivalry, 1815-1914, mitchell, a., subjects: history: 18th/19th century history: 20th century to present transport studies.
The Greek Exodus from Egypt
Diaspora politics and emigration, 1937-1962, dalachanis, a..
This painstakingly researched book explains how Egypt’s once-robust Greek population dwindled to virtually nothing, beginning with the abolition of foreigners’ privileges in 1937 and culminating in the nationalist revolution of 1952. It reconstructs the delicate sociopolitical circumstances that Greeks had to navigate during this period, tracing the complex causes of demographic decline.
The Greek Military Dictatorship
Revisiting a troubled past, 1967–1974, anastasakis, o. & lagos, k. (eds).
From 1967 to 1974, the military junta ruling Greece attempted a dramatic reshaping of the nation, implementing ideas and policies that, for better or for worse, left an indelible mark on both domestic affairs and international relations. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of disciplines, The Greek Military Dictatorship provides a fresh and nuanced reassessment of this era.
The Guardians of Concepts
Political languages of conservatism in britain and west germany, 1945-1980.
Since 1945, German and British intellectuals and politicians have struggled to define the term “conservative” throughout its complicated history. The Guardians of Concepts rigorously uncovers the changes in the idea of conservatism and its national and transnational political language history.
Guido Goldman
Transatlantic bridge builder, klingst, m..
Guido Goldman was one of the most distinguished protagonists of the reintegration of Germany into the international community after the defeat of Nazism in 1945. This biography looks at his remarkable life from his establishment of the German Marshall Fund to establishing the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.
Gulag Memories
The rediscovery and commemoration of russia's repressive past, bogumił, z..
Gulag Memories explores the impact of the Gulag on collective memory as it applies to the language of commemoration in Russia, focusing on four regions particularly affected by the Gulag: Solovetsky Islands, the Komi Republic, the Perm region, and Kolyma.
Gustav Stresemann
The crossover artist, pohl, k. h..
Gustav Stresemann has become a steadfast icon and key figure in understanding contemporary German and European history. Renowned historian Karl Heinrich Pohl draws on new archival material and extensive research to supplement our previous knowledge of Stresmann’s life and work.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present History (General)
Hairy Hippies and Bloody Butchers
The greenpeace anti-whaling campaign in norway.
This book provides an inside look at Greenpeace’s decades-long campaign against the Norwegian whaling industry. Combining historical narrative with sophisticated systems-theory analysis, it examines the organization’s failure to end Norwegian whaling, providing valuable lessons for other protest movements.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History
Imperialism, nation, race, and genocide, king, r. h. & stone, d. (eds), subjects: genocide history colonial history history: 20th century to present.
Hazardous Chemicals
Agents of risk and change, 1800-2000, homburg, e. & vaupel, e. (eds).
Covering a host of both notorious and little-known substances, the chapters in this collection investigate the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted over the past two hundred years.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe
The social life of asia minor refugees in piraeus, hirschon, r..
Since its first publication in 1989, this classic study has remained in demand. The third edition of Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe includes updated material with a new Preface, Epilogue, and map of the study area.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Helmut Kohl's Quest for Normality
His representation of the german nation and himself.
During his political career, Helmut Kohl used his own life story to promote a normalization of German nationalism and to overcome the stigma of the Nazi period. In the context of the cold war and the memory of the fascist past, he was able to exploit the combination of his religious, generational, regional, and educational (PhD in History) experiences by connecting nationalist ideas to particular biographical narratives.
Helsinki 1975 and the Transformation of Europe
Bange, o. & niedhart, g. (eds).
The Herero Genocide
War, emotion, and extreme violence in colonial namibia, häussler, m..
Drawing on previously inaccessible and overlooked archival sources, The Herero Genocide undertakes a groundbreaking investigation into the war between colonizer and colonized in what was formerly German South West Africa and is today the nation of Namibia. The result is an indispensable account of a genocide that has been neglected for too long.
Heritage under Socialism
Preservation in eastern and central europe, 1945–1991, gantner, e. b., geering, c., & vickers, p. (ed).
Heritage under Socialism enriches the conceptual, methodological and empirical scope of heritage studies. Its transnational approach highlights the socialist world’s diverse interpretations of heritage and its trajectories in post-socialist preservation practices, thus providing new perspectives on the way heritage has been shaped in the recent past.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Heritage Studies Memory Studies
History and Belonging
Representations of the past in contemporary european politics, berger, s. & tekin, c. (eds).
One of the EU’s primary strategies in European unification has been to construct a common representation of European history, yet the question remains: is there an uncontested history of Europe? History and Belonging addresses this question along with many others related to the EU’s post-national identity policies.
The History of Labour Intermediation
Institutions and finding employment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wadauer, s., buchner, t., & mejstrik, a. (eds).
Searching for a job has been an everyday affair in both modern and past societies, and employment a concern for both individuals and institutions. The case studies in this volume investigate job search and placement practices in European countries, Australia, and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
The History of the Stasi
East germany's secret police, 1945-1990, gieseke, j..
The History of Thyssen
Family, industry and culture in the 20th century, schulz, g. & szöllösi-janze, m..
The History of Thyssen provides a summary of a research project funded by the Thyssen Foundations. It is both an explanation of how the project was conceptualized and executed and a detailed case study of a family and business during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century
A History Shared and Divided
East and west germany since the 1970s, bösch, f. (ed).
Divided History uniquely explores how East and West Germany responded to the new challenges and crises of the 1970s, and reunification. Topics range from political, labor, and business issues to migration and environmental issues, showing how the two German states remained inextricably connected in the 1970s and 1980s.
Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft and the Dynamics of Racial Exclusion
Violence against jews in provincial germany, 1919–1939.
Hitler's Slaves
Life stories of forced labourers in nazi-occupied europe, plato, a., leh, a. & thonfeld, c. (eds).
Holocaust Monuments and National Memory
France and germany since 1989, carrier, p., subjects: history: 20th century to present genocide history heritage studies.
Homemade Men in Postwar Austrian Cinema
Nationhood, genre and masculinity, fritsche, m., subjects: film and television studies history: 20th century to present gender studies and sexuality.
Hotbeds of Licentiousness
The british glamour film and the permissive society.
By focusing on a series of colorful filmmakers whose work, while omnipresent during the 1970s, now remains critically ignored, Hotbeds of Licentiousness explores pornography as a lens through which to view radical changes in British society.
A Human Garden
French policy and the transatlantic legacies of eugenic experimentation, rosental, p.-a..
A Human Garden explains the longevity of the Ungemach Gardens, an experimental eugenic city that survived on the outskirts of Strasbourg from the 1920s to the 1980s. He reveals the inheritance of eugenics, examining ways in which eugenics have come to influence social, health, and educational policymaking in the post-war era.
Humanitarianism and Media
1900 to the present, paulmann, j. (ed).
Humanitarianism & Media brings together scholars from a variety of backgrounds to offer an unprecedented exploration of the history behind humanitarian efforts and the media, spanning from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
Humanity's Soldier
France and international security, 1919-2001.
Humboldt Revisited
The impact of the german university on american higher education, brandser, g. c..
Humboldt Revisited offers a fresh perspective on the contemporary discourse surrounding reform of European universities. Drawing from a rich selection of historical sources, this volume challenges the conventional historical narratives on the Humboldt University, providing new insight into the American reception of the German ideas.
Subjects: Educational Studies History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
Ice and Snow in the Cold War
Histories of extreme climatic environments, herzberg, j., kehrt, c., & torma, f. (eds).
This fascinating volume demonstrates that regions such as Alaska, the polar landscapes, and the cold areas of the Soviet periphery were of no small importance during the Cold War. Through histories of these extremely cold environments, this volume makes a novel intervention in Cold War historiography, one whose global and transnational approach undermines the simple opposition of “East” and “West.”
If Cars Could Walk
Postsocialist streets in transformation, duijzings, g. & tuvikene, t. (eds).
Addressing the transformation of street life in postsocialist cities against the backdrop of the explosive rise of car-mobility in the last 25 years, If Cars Could Walk consists of ethnographic case studies documenting changes in these cities as former socialist modes of mobility are replaced by a culture of privately owned cars.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
The Imaginary Revolution
Parisian students and workers in 1968, seidman, m..
Immigration Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany
Negotiating membership and remaking the nation, klusmeyer, d. & papademetriou, d..
In the Name of the Great Work
Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature and its impact in eastern europe, olšáková, d. (ed).
Following Stalin’s lead, the newly communist states of Eastern Europe pursued a total “transformation of nature” in the 1940s and 1950s intended to improve agricultural outputs. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, exploring their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences.
In the Shadow of the Great War
Physical violence in east-central europe, 1917–1923, böhler, j., konrád, o., kučera, r. (eds).
Whether victorious or not, Central European states faced fundamental challenges after the First World War as they struggled to contain ongoing violence and forge peaceful societies. This collection explores the various forms of violence these nations confronted during this period, which effectively transformed the region into a laboratory for state-building.
Subjects: History: World War I History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
Incarceration and Regime Change
European prisons during and after the second world war, de vito, c. g., futselaar, r., & grevers, h. (eds).
During the “long” Second World War, military mobilization, social disorder, and political changes swelled the ranks of the imprisoned and broadened the carceral reach of the state. This volume brings together theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich studies of key transitional moments that transformed European prisons during and after the war.
Indoctrinability, Ideology and Warfare
Evolutionary perspectives, eibl-eibesfeldt, i. & salter, f.k. (eds).
The Indoctrination of the Wehrmacht
Nazi ideology and the war crimes of the german military.
Far from the image of an apolitical, “clean” Wehrmacht that persists in popular memory, German soldiers regularly cooperated with organizations like the SS in the abuse and murder of countless individuals. This in-depth study reveals that military indoctrination was but one piece of the larger effort at the socialization of young men during the Nazi era.
Subjects: History: World War II Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present
Inside Party Headquarters
Organizational culture and practice of rule in the socialist unity party of germany, bergien, r..
As one of the first overviews of a central apparatus of a communist state party, Inside Party Headquarters focuses on the “inner life” of the party and its employees, and examines the changing relations of party and state over the course of four decades.
International Adventures
German popular cinema and european co-productions in the 1960s, bergfelder, t..
International Organizations and Environmental Protection
Conservation and globalization in the twentieth century, kaiser, w. & meyer, j.-h. (eds).
Environmental issues transcend national boundaries, and thus they have been a particular focus for international organizations for over a century. This volume is the first to comprehensively explore the environmental activities of regional bodies, professional communities, the United Nations, NGOs, and other international organizations during the twentieth century.
International Organizations Revisited
Agency and pathology in a multipolar world, dijkzeul, d. & salomons, d. (eds).
Thoroughly revised and based on current management research, this follow-up to Rethinking International Organizations provides a wealth of both empirical and theoretical insights to the management of the United Nations and international NGOs, along with practical recommendations for how these organizations can function more effectively.
Intimate Histories
African americans and germany since 1933, klopprogge, n..
Intimate Histories investigates the role and conceptualizations of intimacy between African American and German relations between 1933 through 1990. Reviewing issues surrounding anti-miscegenation laws, casual sexual encounters, and unique friendships, this book traces how intimacy became an important site of transnational racial history.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
The Inverted Mirror
Mythologizing the enemy in france and germany, 1898-1914, nolan, m. e..
Invested Narratives
German responses to economic crisis, twark, j. (ed).
Narratives of how nations survive, restructure or even fail during economic crisis not only inform future responses to crisis but also strengthen national theoretical, empirical, and analytical financial discourse. Invested Narratives brings together an interdisciplinary set of scholars to address the history of German responses to crisis over the past 200 years.
Investigating Srebrenica
Institutions, facts, responsibilities, delpla, i., bougarel, x., & fournel, j.-f. (eds).
Iron Landscapes
National space and the railways in interwar czechoslovakia, jeschke, f..
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the newly formed country of Czechoslovakia built an ambitious national rail network out of what remained of the obsolete Habsburg system. Drawing on evidence ranging from government documents to newsreels to train timetables, Iron Landscapes gives a nuanced account of how planners and authorities knitted together the young nation-state and articulated a Czechoslovak cosmopolitanism.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Transport Studies
Israel-Palestine
Lands and peoples, bartov, o. (ed).
The conflict between Israel and Palestine has raised a plethora of unanswered questions, generated seemingly unreconcilable narratives, and profoundly transformed the land’s physical and political geography. This volume seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the links between the region that is now known as Israel and Palestine and its peoples—both those that live there as well as those who relate to it as a mental, mythical, or religious landscape.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
Istanbul at the Threshold of Nation State
Allied occupation, national resistance, and political conflict, 1918-1923.
In 1920s and 30s Turkey, the rise of Christian exclusionary movements and policies were backed by nationalist labor and merchant federations. An Imperial Capital at the Threshold of Nation State traces these formations in political dissent and coalition to the faction split of Turkish national movement in the middle of 1922.
Italian Neofascism
The strategy of tension and the politics of nonreconciliation, bull, a. cento.
Italy Between Europeanization and Domestic Politics
Fabbrini, s. & sala, v. della (eds).
Japan and Germany in the Modern World
John F. Kennedy’s Hidden Diary, Europe 1937
The travel journals of jfk and kirk lemoyne billings, kennedy, j. f., lemoyne billings, k., & lubrich, o..
Presenting the 1937 diaries of John F. Kennedy's tour of Europe alongside the "Scrapbook" of his travel companion, Lem Billings, John F. Kennedy’s Hidden Diary, Europe 1937 offers insights into Kennedy's early experiences on a continent under the shadow of Nazism.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera
The reality and myth of a spanish fascist leader, thomàs, j. m..
A leading figure in the Spanish Civil War, José Antonio Primo de Rivera was elevated to martyr status following his death and the victory of the Falangists. In this long-awaited translation, Joan Maria Thomàs cuts through the mythos surrounding Primo de Rivera’s life to give a measured, exhaustively researched study of his personality, beliefs, and political activity.
The Journalism of Milena Jesenská
A critical voice in interwar central europe, hayes, k. (ed), subjects: gender studies and sexuality literary studies jewish studies history: 20th century to present.
Journey Through America
Koeppen, w..
Journeys Into Madness
Mapping mental illness in the austro-hungarian empire, blackshaw, g. & wieber, s. (eds).
Journeys Through Fascism
Italian travel-writing between the wars, burdett, c..
Laborers and Enslaved Workers
Experiences in common in the making of rio de janeiro's working class, 1850-1920, badaró mattos, m..
In the nineteenth century, Rio de Janeiro was not only home to the largest population of enslaved laborers in the Americas, but it was also the site of an incipient working-class consciousness across seemingly distinct social categories. This volume analyzes the diverse labor arrangements and associative life of Rio’s working class, from which emerged the strategies that workers free and unfree pursued against oppression.
Latin America Facing China
South-south relations beyond the washington consensus, fernández jilberto, a. e. & hogenboom, b. (eds).
Launching the Grand Coalition
The 2005 bundestag election and the future of german politics, langenbacher, e. (ed.).
The Law in Nazi Germany
Ideology, opportunism, and the perversion of justice, steinweis, a. e. & rachlin, r. d. (eds).
Law, History, and Justice
Debating german state crimes in the long twentieth century.
Law, History, and Justice investigates the changing nature of international humanitarian law and explores the entanglements between historical experience, historiography, and law and (moral) politics by focusing on the effects of international law violations during the First World War, the National Socialist mass crimes, the Holocaust, as well as the systematic wrongdoings of the GDR.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Learning Democracy
Education reform in west germany, 1945-1965, puaca, b. m., subjects: educational studies history: 20th century to present.
The Legacies of a Hawaiian Generation
From territorial subject to american citizen, schachter, j..
“Schachter has produced a powerful and moving account of Native Hawaiian elders who have now passed physically but continue to live on in spirit in the prose that she has assembled from the writings gifted to her. This work represents the best that anthropology has to offer Indigenous peoples seeking to remain Native in a decidedly anti-Native world—a document that gives voice to the truths they know and which connects generations in a lineage of discourse.” · Ty Tengan , University of Hawaii
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History: 20th Century to Present
The Legacies of Two World Wars
European societies in the twentieth century, kettenacker, l. & riotte, t. (eds).
Legacies of Violence
Rendering the unspeakable past in modern australia, mason, r. (ed).
Whether in the form of warfare, forced migration, or social prejudice, Australia’s sense of nationhood was born from experiences of violence. Legacies of Violence probes this brutal legacy through case studies that range from the colonial frontier to modern domestic spaces, exploring empathy, isolation, and Australians’ imagined place in the world.
The Legacy of Serbia's Great War
Politics and remembrance.
In an expertly researched, original case study on the memory of the traumatic retreat of the Serbian army in 1915, The Legacy of Serbia’s Great War cuts past contemporary canonization of the retreat and links narratives of the past to political choices in the present.
Legal Entanglements
Law, rights and the battle for legitimacy in divided germany, 1945-1989.
Drawing on wide-ranging archival research and recently declassified documents, Legal Entanglements follows the politicians, intellectuals, and other historical actors on both sides of the Berlin Wall who helped their nation to navigate volatile and uncertain legal circumstances.
Let Them Not Return
Sayfo – the genocide against the assyrian, syriac, and chaldean christians in the ottoman empire, gaunt, d., atto, n., & barthoma, s. o. (eds).
While the Armenian genocide is today widely recognized, the broader context of Ottoman violence against minority groups—including the indigenous, largely Christian Assyrians—are less well known. This volume is the first scholarly edited collection focused on the Assyrian genocide, or “sayfo.”
The Limits of Loyalty
Imperial symbolism, popular allegiances, and state patriotism in the late habsburg monarchy, cole, l. & unowsky, d. (eds), subjects: history: 18th/19th century history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general).
A Living Past
Environmental histories of modern latin america, soluri, j., leal, c., & pádua, j. a. (eds).
Though still a relatively young field, the study of Latin American environmental history is no longer in its infancy. Bringing together thirteen leading experts on the region, A Living Past gives a transnational and thematically diverse survey of historical developments since the nineteenth century.
Lobbying Hitler
Industrial associations between democracy and dictatorship.
From 1933-45, Nazi Germany undertook massive industrial integration, submitting an entire economic sector to direct state oversight. This innovative study explores how German professionals navigated this complex landscape through the divergent careers of business managers in two of the era’s most important trade organizations.
The Long Aftermath
Cultural legacies of europe at war, 1936-2016, bragança, m. & tame, p. (eds).
The hostilities in Europe from 1936 to 1945 have exerted enormous influence over the cultural life of Europe. Bringing together over twenty leading scholars across disciplines, this interdisciplinary volume investigates the intertwining dynamics of Europeans’ individual and collective memories and the ways in which they have shaped cultural forms.
Losing Heaven
Religion in germany since 1945, großbölting, t..
The religious landscape of modern Germany is one that would scarcely be recognizable to earlier generations. This groundbreaking survey of German postwar religious life depicts a profoundly changed society that has almost entirely shed its Christian character despite a booming market for syncretistic, individualistic forms of “popular religion.”
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Anthropology of Religion
Love, Loyalty and Deceit
Rosemary firth, a life in the shadow of two eminent men, firth, h. & brown, l..
How much do we really know about our parents’ lives? What secrets lie in plain sight? This is the true story of hidden love within a small circle of some of the most acclaimed anthropologists of the 20th century.
Luso-Tropicalism and Its Discontents
The making and unmaking of racial exceptionalism, anderson, w., roque, r., & ventura santos, r. (eds).
The Portuguese-speaking Global South, especially Brazil, often envisions itself as exceptional in its racial conceptions and politics. Luso-Tropicalism and Its Discontents reassesses Gilberto Freyre’s influential claims that Portuguese colonialism produced what came to be called “racial democracy,” and explores racialization beyond the common trope of “race-mixing.”
Subjects: Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
Making Nordic Historiography
Connections, tensions and methodology, 1850-1970, haapala, p., jalava, m., & larsson, s. (eds).
Is there a “Nordic history”? If so, what are its origins, its scope, and its defining features? In this definitive volume, scholars from all five Nordic nations tackle a notoriously problematic historical concept. Each contribution takes a deliberately transnational approach while grounding itself in careful research, yielding rich, nuanced perspectives on shifting and contested historical terrain.
The Making of the Greek Genocide
Contested memories of the ottoman greek catastrophe, sjöberg, e..
After World War I, over one million Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Turkey, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. This study analyzes the fight for international recognition of the Greek genocide narrative, showing how its memory developed as a cultural trauma with both nationalist and cosmopolitan dimensions.
Managing Ambiguity
How clientelism, citizenship, and power shape personhood in bosnia and herzegovina, brković, č..
Why do people turn to personal connections to get things done? Challenging widespread views of favors as means of survival in transitioning contexts, this volume demonstrates that these contemporary globalized forms of flexible governance are not contradictory to one another, but often mutually constitutive.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Peace and Conflict Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Managing Uncertainty
Giuliani, m. & jones, e. (eds).
The Many Faces of Germany
Mccarthy, j. a., grûnzweig, w. & koebner, t. (eds).
Marking Evil
Holocaust memory in the global age, goldberg, a. & hazan, h. (eds).
Talking about the Holocaust has provided an international language for ethics, victimization, political claims, and constructions of collective identity. This volume addresses manifestations of Holocaust-engendered global discourse by critically examining their function and inherent dilemmas, and the ways in which Holocaust related matters still instigate public debate and academic deliberation.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History Memory Studies
The Marseille Mosaic
A mediterranean city at the crossroads of cultures, ingram, m. & kleppinger, k. (eds).
Moving across disciplines, The Marseille Mosaic integrates a diverse range of sources and methods to reveal France’s second city in the national imagination as a critical site for postcolonial memory and urban transformation as they crucially interact with debates in contemporary French society.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Sociology Urban Studies
The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany
Maternalism Reconsidered
Motherhood, welfare and social policy in the twentieth century, klein, m. van der, plant, r. j., sanders, nichole, & weintrob l. r. (eds).
The Meanings of a Disaster
Chernobyl and its afterlives in britain and france, kalmbach, k..
Focusing on the cases of Great Britain and France, this innovative study explores the discourses and narratives that arose in the wake of the incident among both state and nonstate actors. It gives a thorough account of the strategies that shaped Western European responses to the disaster as well as nuclear policy up to the present day.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General) Media Studies
Media and Revolt
Strategies and performances from the 1960s to the present, fahlenbrach, k., sivertsen, e. & werenskjold, r. (eds).
Memorializing the GDR
Monuments and memory after 1989, saunders, a..
Since unification, eastern Germany has witnessed a rapidly changing memorial landscape. Memorializing the GDR provides the first in-depth study of this key topic, investigating the individuals and groups involved in the creation or destruction of memorials while addressing the subject’s complex aesthetic, political, and historical dimensions.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies Heritage Studies
Memory and Amnesia
The role of the spanish civil war in the transition to democracy, aguilar, p..
The Merkel Republic
An appraisal.
Bringing together German politics experts from both sides of the Atlantic, this volume addresses the campaign, results, and consequences of the 2013 Bundestag election. Chapters delve into a diverse array of themes, including immigrant-origin and women candidates, the fate of the small parties, and the prospects for the SPD, as well as more general structural trends like the Europeanization and cosmopolitanization of German politics.
Metaphors of Spain
Representations of spanish national identity in the twentieth century, moreno-luzón, j. & núñez seixas, x. m. (eds).
Despite the undeniably political character of the history of Spanish nationalism, a cultural approach can also provide essential insights into the subject. Metaphors of Spain brings together leading historians to examine Spanish nationalism through its diverse and complementary cultural artifacts, from “formal” representations such as the flag to music, bullfighting, and other more diffuse examples.
The Middle-Income Trap in Central and Eastern Europe
Causes, consequences and strategies in post-communist countries, kouli, y. & müller, u. (eds).
Reviewing the story of prosperity in Central and Eastern Europe up to current debates, The Middle-Income Trap in Central and Eastern Europe examines the reality of the diminishing marginal utility of further international investments alongside the pitfalls of higher national innovation.
Migration, Dislocation and Movement on Screen
Trandafoiu, r. (ed).
Examining the way contemporary screen industries capture and reflect migration, movement and displacement, Migration, Dislocation and Movement on Screen offers case studies on screen media representations that engage with important emergences of transnational and cosmopolitan imaginaries.
Migration, Memory, and Diversity
Germany from 1945 to the present, wilhelm, c. (ed).
German attitudes toward migrants have been profoundly shaped by the legacies of the Second World War. This volume explores the history of migration and diversity in Germany from 1945 onward, showing how conceptions of “otherness” developed while memories of Nazism were still fresh, and identifying the continuities and transformations they have exhibited up until today.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies Memory Studies
Militant Around the Clock?
Left-wing youth politics, leisure, and sexuality in post-dictatorship greece, 1974-1981, papadogiannis, n..
During the 1970s left-wing youth militancy in Greece intensified, especially after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974. This book is the first study of the impact of that political activism on the leisure pursuits and sexual behavior of Greek youth.
The Mind of the Nation
Völkerpsychologie in germany, 1851-1955, klautke, e..
“ This is a very careful and meticulous study of the history of a forgotten science, namely Völkerpsychologie , a scholarly attempt to study the psychological structure of nations. We can now understand not just its complex origins reaching back to the German intellectual history of the early 19th century, but also the intellectual intricacies in the works of its main protagonists. ” · Uffa Jensen , Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire
The zonguldak coalfield, 1822-1920, quataert, d., subjects: history (general) history: 18th/19th century history: 20th century to present sociology.
Minority Discourses in Germany since 1990
Gezen, e., layne, p., & skolnik, j. (eds).
Minorities and Minority Discourse in Germany since 1990 opens the question of why ethnic minorities in Germany are often discussed in isolation. Whereas most studies examine Black Germans, Jews in Germany, or Turkish Germans on their own terms vis-à-vis the majority German society, this volume takes on unique and comparative perspectives on an increasingly complex German society.
Mitteleuropa
Between europe and germany, katzenstein, p. (ed).
Mitterrand, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification
Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective
Meng, m. & seipp, a. r. (eds).
Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective celebrates the extraordinary life and scholarly career of Konrad H. Jarausch, whose monumental work as a teacher, mentor, and builder of scholarly institutions, helped to inspire conversations about everything from the rise of Nazism to the history of the two Germanys.
Modern Lusts
Ernest borneman: jazz critic, filmmaker, sexologist, siegfried, d..
Detlef Siegfried’s long-awaited English translation chronicles Ernest Borneman’s journey from his days as a young Jewish Communist in Berlin to his ventures in England and Canada, and ultimately, to his endeavors as the most prominent sexologist spearheading the sexual revolution in West Germany and Austria in the twentieth century.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies Media Studies
Modernizing Bavaria
The politics of franz josef strauss and the csu, 1949-1969, milosch, m..
A More Democratic Community
The place of democracy in the history of european integration, lorenzini, s. & tulli, u. (eds).
By addressing the “place” of democracy in the history of European integration, this book bridges the political history of postwar Europe with the history of European integration. It shows that European integration and the democratic stability of Western Europe were deeply connected, albeit in contradictory and non-linear ways.
Moving Frames
Photographs in german cinema, collenberg-gonzález, c. & sheehan, m. p. (eds).
Through an intermedial approach combining studies on cinema and photography, Moving Frames addresses precise historical moments uniquely in a German context. Across films both in and outside the canon, this volume tackles those specific historical moments experienced in media forms to gauge the cultural, political, and transnational trends in humanity’s desire for agency and how that agency is represented.
Much Ado About Nothing?
Gualmini, e. & pasotti, e. (eds).
Music and International History in the Twentieth Century
Gienow-hecht, j. c. e. (ed).
Bringing together scholars from the fields of musicology and international history, this book investigates the significance of music to foreign relations, and how it affected the interaction of nations since the late 19th century.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Performance Studies
Music and Postwar Transitions in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Fléchet, a., guerpin, m., gumplowicz, p. & kelly, b. l. (eds).
Music and Postwar Transitions takes a groundbreaking and much anticipated dive into the concept of postwar transitions and how these affect and are affected by the world of music. Leading scholars in the field explore new approaches to create a novel understanding of music and postwar periods.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century Media Studies
Myth and Modernity
Barlach's drawings on the nibelungen, paret, p. & thieme, h..
The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-1938
Complicating the picture, wakabayashi, b. t. (ed).
First published in 2007, The Nanking Atrocity remains an essential resource for understanding the massacre. This second edition includes an extensive new introduction reflecting on the historiographical developments of the last decade, making this even more relevant as we approach the 80th anniversary of the Nanking massacre.
Narratives in Motion
Journalism and modernist events in 1920s portugal, trindade, l..
A fascinating study of newspapers in 1920s Portugal, Narratives in Motion explores how the new “modernist reportage” embodied the spirit of its era while mediating some of its most spectacular episodes. In the process, it shows how that journalism epitomized a distinctively modern entanglement of narrative and event.
Narratives in the Making
Writing the east german past in the democratic present, gallinat, a..
This ethnography studies two very different institutions in one eastern German state taking divergent approaches to the past. While government organizations reliably depict the GDR as a dictatorship, one major regional newspaper focuses on the experiences and concerns of its readers—“memory work” that inevitably shapes citizenship and democracy.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Anthropology (General) Memory Studies
Nation Branding in Modern History
Viktorin, c., gienow-hecht, j. c. e., estner, a., & will, m. k. (eds).
Branding in Modern History draws from a variety of international case studies, ranging from Austria and Switzerland to Chile, the US, China, Spain, Suriname, and Poland to investigate the nexus between cultural marketing, self-representation and political power by looking at current nation branding campaigns as well as its historical predecessors.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Political and Economic Anthropology Media Studies
The Nation, Europe, and the World
Textbooks and curricula in transition, schissler, h. & soysal, y.n. (eds).
National Policy, Global Memory
The commemoration of the “righteous” from jerusalem to paris, 1942-2007, gensburger, s..
Starting in the late 1990s, European governments began developing national incarnations of the “Righteous among Nations,” the most prominent of which was the “Righteous of France,” honoring those who protected Jews during the Vichy regime. This book uses this instance of appropriation to illuminate debates over memory and nationhood.
Nationalism and Internationalism Intertwined
A european history of concepts beyond the nation state, ihalainen, p. & holmila, a. (eds).
Understanding the dynamics between nationalisms and internationalisms allows evaluating ongoing processes and intervening in current debates. Nationalism and Internationalism Intertwined , uses a multidisciplinary approach to a long term and macro-level history of international projects since the eighteenth century to assess how spaces of politics have been debated and redefined in different European political cultures.
Nationalism and the Cinema in France
Political mythologies and film events, 1945-1995.
What are the nuances, insider codes, and hidden history of the alignment between cinema and nationalism? Hugo Frey suggests that the concepts of the ‘political myth’ and ‘the film event’ are the essential theoretical reference points for unlocking film history. Nationalism and the Cinema in France offers new arguments regarding those connections in the French case.
Nature of the Miracle Years
Conservation in west germany, 1945-1975.
Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire
Transnational approaches, habermas, r. (ed).
Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire sheds light on the multitude of worldviews, belief systems, and rituals that defined the borders between the secular and the religious in the German imperial era.
New Dangerous Liaisons
Discourses on europe and love in the twentieth century, passerini, l., ellena, l., & geppert, a. (eds).
Nordic War Stories
World war ii as history, fiction, media, and memory, stecher-hansen, m. (ed).
Nordic War Stories explores the commonalities and divergences among the five Nordic countries, examining formal and informal national historiographies alongside representations of the second world war in canonical literary works, memoirs, and films. Together, they comprise a valuable companion that challenges the myth of Scandinavian homogeneity while demonstrating the powerful influence that the war continues to exert on national self-conceptions.
Not Even Past
How the united states ends wars, fitzgerald, d., ryan, d., & thompson, j. m. (eds).
This volume brings together international experts on American history and foreign affairs to assess the cumulative impact of the United States’ efforts to end wars. It offers essential perspectives on both the Cold War and post-9/11 eras and demonstrates just how high the stakes are as the US confronts the possibility of war without end.
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies History: 20th Century to Present History (General)
The Nuclear Crisis
The arms race, cold war anxiety, and the german peace movement of the 1980s, becker-schaum, c., gassert, p., mausbach, w., klimke, m., and zepp, m. (eds).
In 1983, more than one million Germans joined to protest NATO’s deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe. This volume survey of the “Euromissiles” crisis as experienced by its various protagonists in Germany, including NATO’s strategic maneuvering and the contours of the German protest movement.
Oil and Sovereignty
Petro-knowledge and energy policy in the united states and western europe in the 1970s.
Oil and Sovereignty explores the national and international strategies formulated to deal with the first oil crises in 1973-1974, as steadily increasing prices and reduced production raised the specter of an uncertain future for many.
On the Path to Genocide
Armenia and rwanda reexamined, mayersen, d..
“ This is an excellent book. The combination of theory and context works well…The prose is sharp and the author has set up the problem in a logical way that is easy to follow. It also benefits from an interdisciplinary approach. Her grasp of detail is superior to many theorists…It reads very fluently, the author is clearly a gifted prose writer. The thread of argument runs through the book in a compelling way…The conclusion is full of intriguing ties to other case studies and the author summarizes her argument well .” · Cathie Carmichael , University of East Anglia
One Sound, Two Worlds
The blues in a divided germany, 1945-1990.
Through extensive archival research and conversations with renowned publicists, musicians and insiders, author Michael Rauhut examines more than fifty texts to give an in-depth overview of the historical development of blues music in East and West Germany during the postwar period.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General)
An Ordinary Country
Issues in the transition from apartheid to democracy in south africa, alexander, n..
Oscar Lewis in Cuba
La partida final, rigdon, s. m..
The experience of Oscar Lewis’ Project Cuba offers lessons on the difficulties of doing social science research in any highly surveilled, politically controlled environment however sympathetic the principal investigator.
Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology History: 20th Century to Present Theory and Methodology
Osthandel and Ostpolitik
German foreign trade policies in eastern europe from bismarck to adenauer, spaulding, r. m..
Oswald Spengler and the Politics of Decline
Re-evaluating the evolution Oswald Spengler’s political activities and his work, Oswald Spengler and the Politics of Decline explains the outcome of Spengler’s meta-historical considerations on world history and the practical demands of Realpolitik. This volume takes a novel approach to one of the most important thinkers of the Weimar Republic and his contributions to the complex discourse of German national renewal.
Pacific Automobilism
Adventure, status and the carnival of mobility, 1970–2015.
In this expansive volume, historian Gijs Mom explores how contemporary mobility has been impacted by social, political, and economic forces on a global scale, as in light of local mobility cultures, the car as an ‘adventure machine’ seems to lose cultural influence in favor of the car’s status character.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Mobility Studies
The Paradoxical Republic
Austria 1945–2020, rathkolb, o..
Written by one of the nation’s leading historians, this account of postwar Austria explores the tensions that have defined it for over seven decades. This newly revised edition also addresses the major developments since 2005, including a resurgent far right, economic instability, and the potential fracturing of the European Union.
Parallel Lives Revisited
Mediterranean guest workers and their families at work and in the neighbourhood, 1960-1980, bock, j. de.
In 2001, the term ‘parallel lives’ was coined in the UK to describe the relationship between immigrants and white Britons. Yet segregation among postwar immigrants was not new. Parallel Lives Revisited explores the lives of immigrants from six Mediterranean countries in the Belgian city of Ghent, concentrating on their experiences at the workplace and neighbourhood.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
The Path to the Berlin Wall
Critical stages in the history of divided germany.
The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Joseph Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western Allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 1948–49, a second crisis ensued from 1958–61, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a “Free City.” Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans to the West.
Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.
Patterns of Provocation
Police and public disorder, bessel, r. & emsley, c. (eds).
Peace at All Costs
Catholic intellectuals, journalists, and media in postwar polish–german reconciliation, frieberg, a. e..
Peace at All Costs reconsiders postwar Polish-German relations as an interdisciplinary case study of reconciliation and follows an influential network of non-state peace activists, major players in print and audiovisual media, as they attempted to establish dialogue in the 1950s and 1960s.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies Media Studies
Perestroika and the Party
National and transnational perspectives on european communist parties in the era of soviet reform, di palma, f. (ed).
While studies of the impact of Gorbachev-era reforms have overwhelmingly focused on the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations, this ambitious collection assesses their historical trajectories on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It moves beyond domestic politics and narrowly defined foreign relations to examine the reforms’ collective impact.
Peripheries at the Centre
Borderland schooling in interwar europe.
Peripheries at the Centre reveals how Prussia, and later the German Empire, used educational policy to promote national identity along its geographical margins. It shows how policymakers sought to cultivate ideal German students who, it was hoped, would help to usher in a new, peaceful era in European history while reinforcing their status as German citizens.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Educational Studies
The Persistence of Race
Continuity and change in germany from the wilhelmine empire to national socialism, day, l. & haag, o. (eds).
In histories of the Third Reich, race is a ubiquitous topic, but German society produced a much more complex variety of racial representations over the first part of the twentieth century. This volume explores the hateful depictions of the Nazi era alongside Wilhelmine images of indigenous peoples, revealing race as on object of fascination for Germans across several eras.
Peter Lorre: Face Maker
Constructing stardom and performance in hollywood and europe.
Planning for the Planet
Environmental expertise and the international union for conservation of nature and natural resources, 1960–1980, schleper, s..
In the 1960s and 1970s, rapidly growing environmental awareness and concern not only led to widespread calls for new policies, but also created unprecedented demand for ecological expertise by the likes of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. This book explores how conservation experts confronted new challenges tied to rival scientific approaches, Cold War politics, decolonization, and more.
Planning Labour
Time and the foundations of industrial socialism in romania, cucu, a.-s..
Planning Labour explores the early socialist industrialization and the implementation of central economic planning in Romania between 1945 and 1955. Centered on the city of Cluj, an ethnically mixed city in the northwestern part of Romania, this volume examines the deeply contradictory process required for achieving socialist accumulation.
The Plans That Failed
An economic history of the gdr, steiner, a..
Planting Seeds of Knowledge
Agriculture and education in rural societies in the twentieth century, hartmann, h. & tischler, j. (eds).
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, agricultural practices and rural livelihoods were challenged by changes such as commercialization, intensified global trade, and rapid urbanization. Planting Seeds of Knowledge studies the relationship between these agricultural changes and knowledge-making through a transnational lens.
Playing Politics with History
The bundestag inquiries into east germany, beattie, a. h..
The Pleasure of a Surplus Income
Part-time work, gender politics, and social change in west germany, 1955-1969, oertzen, c. von.
Plural Identities - Singular Narratives
The case of northern ireland, nic craith, m..
Poems in Steel
National socialism and the politics of inventing from weimar to bonn, subjects: history (general) history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general).
Poland Daily
Economy, work, consumption and social class in polish cinema, mazierska, e..
Polish cinema has inescapably been shaped by the nation’s succession of different economic and ideological regimes over the last century. This volume is the first to analyze the entirety of the nation’s film history—from independence in 1918 to today—through the lenses of political economy and social class.
The Policing of Politics in the Twentieth Century
Historical perspectives, mazower, m. (ed).
Policy Concertation and Social Partnership in Western Europe
Lessons for the twenty-first century, berger, s. & compston, h. (eds).
Polish Cinema
This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Marek Haltof’s seminal survey takes stock of dramatic shifts in Polish society and to provide an essential account of the nation’s cinema from the nineteenth century to today. It covers such renowned figures as Kieślowski and Wajda along with vastly expanded coverage of documentaries, animation, and television.
The Political Economy of German Unification
Lange, t. & shackleton, j. (eds).
The Political Economy of Germany under Chancellors Kohl and Schröder
Decline of the german model.
Political Graffiti in Critical Times
The aesthetics of street politics, campos, r., pavoni, a., & zaimakis, y. (eds).
With a particular eye to the demographic, ecological, and economic crises of today, this volume provides a wide-ranging exploration of urban space and visual protest during periods of social and political upheaval. Assembling case studies that cover topics such as gentrification in Cyprus and the convulsions of post-independence East Timor, it reveals the ways in which street artists challenge existing social orders and reimagine urban landscapes.
Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933
Fight for the streets and fear of civil war, schumann, d..
Politics and Government in Germany, 1944-1994
Basic documents, schweitzer, c-c., karsten, d., spencer, r., taylor cole, r., kommers, d. p., & nicholls, a. j. (eds).
The Politics of Authenticity
Countercultures and radical movements across the iron curtain, 1968-1989, häberlen, j. c., keck-szajbel, m., & mahoney, k. (eds).
The Politics of Authentic Subjectivity explores how the politics of authenticity manifested itself among Italian leftists, East German lesbian activists, and punks on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This volume shows not only how authenticity came to define a variety of social contexts, but also how it helped to lay the groundwork for the neoliberalism of a subsequent era.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology History: 20th Century to Present
The Politics of Education
Teachers and school reform in weimar germany, lamberti, m..
The Politics of German Defence and Security
Policy leadership and military reform in the post-cold war era.
The Politics of Personal Information
Surveillance, privacy, and power in west germany, frohman, l..
This book gives a definitive account of the politics of personal information in West Germany during the 1970s and 1980s, highlighting the growing role of personal information as a tool for social governance.
Popular Historiographies in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Cultural meanings, social practices, paletschek, s. (ed).
Portraits of Hope
Armenians in the contemporary world, voss, huberta von (ed).
Post-communist Nostalgia
Todorova, m. & gille, z. (eds).
Postwall German Cinema
History, film history and cinephilia.
Postwar Soldiers
Historical controversies and west german democratization, 1945–1955, echternkamp, j..
In Postwar Soldiers , Jörg Echternkamp analyzes three themes in the early history of West Germany: interpretations of the war during its conclusion and the occupation period; military veteran communities’ self-perceptions; and the public rehabilitation of the image of the German soldier.
Power and Society in the GDR, 1961-1979
The 'normalisation of rule', fulbrook, m. (ed).
The Power of Entrepreneurs
Politics and economy in contemporary spain, cabrera, m. & del rey, f..
Power Shift in Germany
The 1998 election and the end of the kohl era, conradt, d. p., kleinfeld g. r. & søe, c. (eds).
Practicing Public Diplomacy
A cold war odyssey, richmond, y..
A Precarious Victory
Schroeder and the german elections of 2002, conradt, d., kleinfeld, g. r. & søe, c. (eds).
Preserving Order Amid Chaos
The survival of schools in uganda, 1971-1986.
The Price of Exclusion
Ethnicity, national identity, and the decline of german liberalism, 1898-1933, kurlander, e..
Probing the Limits of Categorization
The bystander in holocaust history, morina, c. & thijs, k. (eds).
This volume discusses a number of case studies addressing the history of bystanding during and after the Nazi era. Combining historiographical, conceptual and empirical contributions, Probing the Limits of Categorization explores the roles and experiences of individuals caught up in the dynamics of state-sponsored genocidal violence.
Subjects: Genocide History Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Property in East Central Europe
Notions, institutions, and practices of landownership in the twentieth century, siegrist, h. & müller, d. (eds).
The national appropriation of property in the interwar period and the communist era represent an onerous legacy for the postcommunist (re)construction of a liberal-individualist property regime. However, as the scholars in the this collection show, after the demise of communism in Eastern Europe property is again a major factor in shaping individual identity and in providing the political order and culture with a foundational institution.
Protest Beyond Borders
Contentious politics in europe since 1945, kouki, h. & romanos, e. (eds).
Protest Cultures
A companion, fahlenbrach, k., klimke, m., & scharloth, j. (eds).
Protest is a ubiquitous and richly varied cultural domain whose symbolic content is regularly deployed by media and advertisers, among others. Yet within social movement scholarship, culture has been comparatively neglected. This definitive research companion dramatically expands the analytical perspective on subject by covering a remarkable array of protest cultures.
Protest in Hitler's “National Community”
Popular unrest and the nazi response, stoltzfus, n. & maier-katkin, b. (eds).
That Hitler’s Gestapo harshly suppressed any signs of opposition inside the Third Reich is a common misperception. This book presents studies of public dissent that examine circumstances under which “racial” Germans were motivated to protest, as well as the conditions determining the regime’s response.
The Quest for Economic Empire
Berghahn, v. r. (ed).
A Question of Priorities
Democratic reform and economic recovery in postwar germany, boehling, r..
Guarnieri, C. & Newell, J. (eds)
The 'Jewish Question' and Higher Education in Central Europe, 1880-1945
Miller, m. l. & szapor, j. (eds).
Quotas focuses on the ideologies and practices of quota regimes in Central and Eastern Europe from the late nineteenth century throughout the 20th century, covering their origins development, and impact particularly on limiting access to higher education.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century
Race in France
Interdisciplinary perspectives on the politics of difference, chapman, h. & frader, l.l. (eds).
The Radical Right in Switzerland
Continuity and change, 1945-2000, skenderovic, d..
Raising Citizens in the 'Century of the Child'
The united states and german central europe in comparative perspective, schumann, d. (ed).
Rampart Nations
Bulwark myths of east european multiconfessional societies in the age of nationalism, berezhnaya, l. & hein-kircher, h. (eds).
Rampart Nations delves deeper into the bulwark (antemurale) myth and uncovers the stories that have helped to spread it within Eastern Europe. Through perspectives that range from Eastern European art history to theology, with a concentration on the nexus of political, social, and religious history, this volume explores historical narratives that have shaped contemporary Eastern European national identities.
Re-Imagining DEFA
East german cinema in its national and transnational contexts.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, interest in East German cinema has exploded, inspiring innumerable festivals, books, and exhibits. In this stimulating collection, leading international experts assess this vibrant landscape and plot an ambitious course for future research that considers other cinematic traditions, genre works, and DEFA’s post-unification “afterlife.”
Rebellious Families
Household strategies and collective action in the 19th and 20th centuries, kok, j. (ed).
Recasting West German Elites
Higher civil servants, business leaders, and physicians in hesse between nazism and democracy, 1945-1955.
Recognizing the Past in the Present
New studies on medicine before, during, and after the holocaust, hildebrandt, s., offer, m., & grodin, m. a. (eds).
This interdisciplinary collection assembles a chain of documentation on the critical role of medicine in realizing the policies of Hitler’s regime. It traces the historical legacies of National Socialist medicine from their roots in the racial theories of the 1920s, through their manifestation in the Nazi period, and on to legacies and continuities from the postwar years to the present.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Genocide History Jewish Studies
Recollections of France
Memories, identities and heritage in contemporary france, blowen, s., demossier, m. & picard, j. (eds).
Reconciliation Road
Willy brandt, ostpolitik and the quest for european peace, schoenborn, b..
Based on extensive research in Brandt’s personal archives, additional studies in international archives, and interviews with contemporary witnesses, this book traces Brandt’s nearly lifelong efforts towards the full reintegration of a united Germany into the community of European countries.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Peace and Conflict Studies
Reconstructing Education
East german schools after unification, pritchard, r. m. o..
Recovered Territory
A german-polish conflict over land and culture, 1919-1989, polak-springer, p..
From 1919 to 1989, the German-Polish borderland, one of Central Europe’s important industrial regions, was at the center of a conflict between Germany and Poland. In their interaction with — and mutual influence on — one another, both nations developed a transnational culture, giving the borderland a “Polish” / “German” face.
Red America
Greek communists in the united states, 1920-1950, karpozilos, k..
Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism were integral components of 19th and 20th century immigrant life. Red America explores the relationship between the immigrant experience in the United States and political radicalism, especially as it relates to the lesser explored Greek American experience in the 20th century.
Regime Changes
Macroeconomic policy and financial regulation in europe from the 1930s to the 1990s, forsyth, d. & notermans, t. (eds).
The Reluctant Revolutionary
Dietrich bonhoeffer's collision with prusso-german history, moses, j. a..
Reluctant Skeptic
Siegfried kracauer and the crises of weimar culture, craver, h. t..
Best remembered for investigations of film and other media, journalist and critic Siegfried Kracauer offered a seismographic reading of the Weimar-era confrontation between religion and secular modernity. This discerning study analyzes and contextualizes Kracauer’s early output, showing how he identified the quasi-theological roots of the era’s cultural ferment.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
Remaking France
Americanization, public diplomacy, and the marshall plan, mckenzie, b..
Remembering a Vanished World
A jewish childhood in interwar poland, hamerow, t., subjects: jewish studies history: 20th century to present memory studies.
Remembering and Forgetting Nazism
Education, national identity, and the victim myth in postwar austria, utgaard, p..
Remembering Karelia
A family's story of displacement during and after the finnish wars, armstrong, k..
Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants
Returning to the jewish past in spain and portugal, kandiyoti, d. & benmayor, r. (eds).
In 2015, both Portugal and Spain passed laws enabling descendants of Sephardi Jews to obtain citizenship, an historic offer of reconciliation. Drawing from scholarly and first-person essays, Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants analyzes the memory and afterlives of those who were wronged, and how reconciliatory rights impact the lives of those affected.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
Repressed, Remitted, Rejected
German reparations debts to poland and greece, roth, k. h. & rübner, h..
Greece and Poland have recently reignited debates on minimally settled reparations demands resulting from suffering under the terror of Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Using an international law perspective, this expansive volume reconstructs the German occupation of Poland and Greece and confronts German aversions to reparations debt.
Resettlers and Survivors
Bukovina and the politics of belonging in west germany and israel, 1945–1989.
Resettlers and Survivors focuses on two groups of Bukovinians—ethnic Germans and German-speaking Jews—who navigated dramatically changed political and social circumstances in 1945. This study gives a nuanced account of how they dealt with the difficult legacies of World War II, while exploring Bukovina’s significance for them as both a geographical location and a “place of memory.”
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies Refugee and Migration Studies Memory Studies
Resisting Persecution
Jews and their petitions during the holocaust, pegelow kaplan, t. & gruner, w. (eds).
This volume offers the first extensive analysis of entreaties from persecuted Jews in the Nazi era, demonstrating their largely unappreciated value as a historical source and as an attempt to reclaim agency in increasingly desperate political circumstances.
The Respectable Career of Fritz K.
The making and remaking of a provincial nazi leader, berghoff, h. & rauh, c..
Entrepreneur and Nazi functionary Fritz Kiehn lived through almost 100 years of German history, from the Bismarck era to the late Bonn Republic. Kiehn's biography provides a key to understanding the political upheavals of the 20th century, especially the workings of the corrupt Nazi system as well as the "coming to terms" with National Socialism in the Federal Republic.
Restitution and Memory
Material restoration in europe, diner, d. & wunberg, g. (eds).
Rethinking Antifascism
History, memory and politics, 1922 to the present, garcía, h., yusta, m., tabet, x., & climaco, c. (eds).
Rethinking Antifascism surveys recent research on the anti-fascist movement between 1922 and 1945. It first challenges the revisionist view of anti-fascism as a tool of Stalinism, then discusses the post-War memories and political uses of anti-fascism. These essays historicize anti-fascism as a transnational movement that shaped contemporary democracies.
Rethinking Holocaust Justice
Essays across disciplines, goda, n. j. w. (ed).
In the past two decades, the subject of post-Holocaust justice has experienced a surge of interest among historians and legal scholars. Rethinking Holocaust Justice offers a multifaceted approach to post-Holocaust justice, bringing together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore the complexity of these issues.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present Jewish Studies
Rethinking International Organizations
Pathology and promise, dijkzeul, d. & beigbeder, y. (ed).
Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema
Hales, b. & weinstein, v. (eds).
The film industry in the Weimar Republic was a major site for German-Jewish experience that provided a sphere for Jewish "outsiders" to shape mainstream culture. The essays in Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema offer new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to the significant involvement of Jewish people in Weimar cinema.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Rethinking Social Movements after '68
Selves and solidarities in west germany and beyond, davis, b., brühöfener, f., & milder, s. (eds).
With a focus on West Germany and Europe, Social Movements after ’68 bridges the 1970s and 1980s as a vital period of European political development and social change. Looking past the known ruptures and changes in the history of European social movements, this volume brings together interconnected social movements including environmental, women’s and gay rights movements.
Rethinking Vienna 1900
Beller, s. (ed).
The Return of Berlusconi
Bellucci, p. & bull, m. (eds).
The Return of Jazz
Joachim-ernst berendt and west german cultural change, wright hurley, a., subjects: cultural studies (general) performance studies history: 20th century to present.
The Return of Politics
Hine, d. & vassallo, s. (eds).
A Reversal of Fortunes?
Women, work, and change in east germany, subjects: gender studies and sexuality history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general).
Reversible America
Cowboys, clowns, and bullfighters, saumade, f. & maudet, j.-b..
Reversible America negotiates the spectacle of Rodeo, cattle ranching, and bullfighting as it has manifested in California through cross border convergences of Iberian bullfighting, Native American hunting methods, and ethics in human and non-human relationships.
Subjects: Performance Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Revisiting Austria
Tourism, space, and national identity, 1945 to the present.
Revisiting Austria draws on a rich selection of films, marketing materials, literature, and first-person accounts to explore the ways in which tourism has shaped both international and domestic perceptions of Austrian identity even as it has failed to confront the nation’s often violent and troubled history.
Subjects: Travel and Tourism History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
Revolution and Counterrevolution
Class struggle in a moscow metal factory.
The Revolution before the Revolution
Late authoritarianism and student protest in portugal, accornero, g..
Portugal’s 1974 “Carnation Revolution” was in many ways the culmination of a much longer history of resistance originating in universities and other sectors of society. Combining careful research with insights from social movement theory, this book traces these convulsions in Portuguese society over the course of the “long 1960s.”
A Revolution of Perception?
Consequences and echoes of 1968, gilcher-holtey, i. (ed).
Exploring the effects the protest movement of 1968 had on the political, social, and symbolic order of the societies they called into question, this volume focuses on the consequences and echoes of 1968 from different perspectives, including history, sociology, and linguistics.
Rhodes Scholars, Oxford, and the Creation of an American Elite
Schaeper, t. & schaeper, k., subjects: educational studies history: 20th century to present cultural studies (general).
The Rhythm of Eternity
The german youth movement and the experience of the past, 1900-1933, adriaansen, r.-j..
The Weimar era in Germany is often characterized as a time of significant change. Such periods of rupture transform the way people envision the past, present, and future. This book traces the conceptions of time and history during the German youth movement of the early 20th century.
The Rich and the Poor in Modern Europe, 1890-2020
A historian’s response to recent debates among economists, kaelble, h..
While it is easy to accept that modern capitalism is the perpetrator of sociality inequality’s growth today, The Rich and the Poor reconsiders the constructs and facts that led to dramatic rises and crashes in the twentieth century European economic history.
The Right to Memory
History, media, law, and ethics, tirosh, n. & reading, a. (eds).
The Right to Memory looks beyond everyday memory and commemoration practices, focusing instead on how memory relates to human rights and socio-legal constructs in order to legitimize and protect groups and individuals.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies Media Studies
The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany
Fischer, c. (ed).
Risk on the Table
Food production, health, and the environment, creager, a. n. h. & gaudilière, j.-p. (eds).
From the proliferation of synthetic additives to the threat posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the chapters in Risk on the Table zero in on key historical cases in North America and Europe that illuminate the history of food safety, highlighting the powerful tension that exists between policymakers’ decisions and cultural notions of “pure” food.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Food & Nutrition
Routes Into the Abyss
Coping with crises in the 1930s, konrad, h. & maderthaner, w. (eds).
Ruptures in the Everyday
Views of modern germany from the ground, bergerson, a. s. & schmieding, l..
Throughout the twentieth century, Germans underwent constant disruptions in their lives, and many struggled to integrate their experiences into coherent narratives. Ruptures in the Everyday brings together twenty-six interdisciplinary researchers in an innovative, collectively authored work of scholarship that investigates Alltag—everyday life—through such fragmentary experiences.
Rural Property and Economy in Post-communist Albania
Lemel. h. w. (ed).
The Russian Cold
Histories of ice, frost, and snow, herzberg, j., renner, a., & schierle, i. (eds).
Cold has long been a fixture of Russian identity both within and beyond the nation, even as the ongoing effects of climate change complicate its meaning and cultural salience. The Russian Cold assembles fascinating new contributions from a variety of scholarly traditions, offering new perspectives on how to understand this mainstay of Russian culture and history.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Environmental Studies (General)
Russian Historiography from 1880 to 1905
Pavel n. miliukov and the moscow school, bohn, t. m..
Russian Historiography from 1880 to 1905 develops and intervenes the historic record of Pavel Miliukov (1859-1943), the late leader of the Constitutional Democrats and foreign minister of the Provisional Government, who drove the Moscow School’s paradigm shift from political and legal history to social and economic history.
Sacrifice and Rebirth
The legacy of the last habsburg war, cornwall, m. & newman, j. p. (eds).
When Austria-Hungary broke up at the end of the First World War, six “successor states” tried to make sense of the last Habsburg war while preparing for life in a new Europe. This book is the first of its kind to analyze how the Great War was interpreted, commemorated, or forgotten across all the ex-Habsburg territories.
A Sad Fiasco
Colonial concentration camps in southern africa, 1900–1908, kreienbaum, j..
Comparative studies on concentration camps have tended to neglect the African colonial experience at the turn of the twentieth century. A Sad Fiasco delves deeper into the daily lives led in the colonial concentration camps in southern Africa and the motives behind the mass extinction of thousands of internees.
Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond
Transnational media during and after socialism, kind-kovács, f. & labov, j. (eds).
Sartre Against Stalinism
Birchall, i. h..
Science on Screen and Paper
Media cultures and knowledge production in cold war europe, ivanova, m. & scholz, j. (eds).
Scientific discovery and discourse were central in the making of Cold War. Spanning various media, Science on Screen and Paper seeks to embrace the medial differences during the Cold War period through intersectional themes and strategies for the representation of science’s central role.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Media Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Screened Encounters
The leipzig documentary film festival, 1955-1990.
Established in 1955, the Leipzig Film Festival’s location in the GDR deeply implicated it in the cultural and political competition between East and West Germany. Screened Encounters offers a comprehensive study of the festival’s history, as well as its influence on international relations during the Cold War.
Screening Art
Modernist aesthetics and the socialist imaginary in east german cinema.
Screening Art represents the first full-length study of films about art and artists produced by the state-owned Eastern German film studio DEFA. It investigates the essential role that these “art films” played in the development of new paradigms of socialist art in post-war Europe.
Screening the East
Heimat , memory and nostalgia in german film since 1989.
The Second Berlusconi Government
Blondel, j. (ed).
The Second Generation
Émigrés from nazi germany as historians with a biobibliographic guide, daum, a. w., lehmann, h., & sheehan, j. j. (eds).
Of the thousands of young people who fled Nazi Germany before World War II, a remarkable number became trained historians. By placing autobiographical testimonies alongside historical and professional analysis, this richly varied collection comprises the first sustained effort to illuminate the role these men and women played in modern historiography.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present
Selling the Economic Miracle
Economic reconstruction and politics in west germany, 1949-1957, spicka, m. e..
The Servants of Empire
Sponsored german women’s colonization in southwest africa, 1896-1945, odonnell, k. m..
In the late 1890s through the 1940s, Germany enacted race-based population policies in Southwest Africa which instrumentalized German women as colonists. The Servants of Empire engages the history of these colonial operatives, mostly comprised of poor, white women, as they became an unsettling force in colonial settlements and contributed to the rise of the German embrace of genocide, National Socialism, and apartheid.
Sex, Thugs & Rock 'n' Roll
Teenage rebels in cold-war east germany, fenemore, m., subjects: history: 20th century to present gender studies and sexuality cultural studies (general).
Sexual Knowledge
Feeling, fact, and social reform in vienna, 1900-1934.
Shadowlands
Memory and history in post-soviet estonia.
The Baltic state of Estonia has been profoundly shaped by the conflicts and shifting political fortunes of the last century. This innovative study traces the interaction of historical memory and national identity in a sweeping analysis that foregrounds the country’s intellectuals, who until recently could not openly grapple with their nation’s complex, difficult past.
Shaping the Transnational Sphere
Experts, networks and issues from the 1840s to the 1930s, rodogno, d., struck, b. & vogel, j. (eds).
In the second half of the nineteenth century a new kind of social and cultural actor came to the fore: the expert. During this period complex processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and nation-building gained pace, particularly in Western Europe and North America. These processes created new forms of specialized expertise that grew in demand and became indispensible in fields like sanitation, incarceration, urban planning, and education.
Shaping Tomorrow's World
A twentieth century history of west german, cold war, and global futures studies, seefried, e..
Shaping Tomorrow’s World is an award-winning volume that documents the history of futures studies using extensive archival material and rich analysis of the debates surrounding the limits of fields growth.
Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary German Politics and Policy
Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary German Politics and Policy presents the recent transformations across the European continent and the paradigm shifts in security and defense policy to investigate and predict the future of the altered state of German and European politics.
Silenced Communities
Legacies of militarization and militarism in a rural guatemalan town, esparza, m..
Silenced Communities offers an ethnographic account of the failed demilitarization of the rural militia in the town of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango following the Guatemalan Civil War. Author Marcia Esparza explores how legacies of grassroots militarization affect indigenous communities exploited by the internal colonialism prevalent in Latin American societies.
Sisters in Arms
Militant feminisms in the federal republic of germany since 1968, karcher, k..
Drawing on a wealth of new source material, Sisters in Arms gives a bracing account of how radical feminism was enacted by key German leftist organizations, such as the infamous Red Army Faction and June 2 Movement. These groups often diverged ideologically and tactically, but all demonstrated the potency of militant feminism within postwar protest movements.
Sites of Modernity—Places of Risk
Risk and security in germany since the 1970s, geyer, m. h. (ed).
Institutions with long traditions of calculating risk such as insurance firms, policing authorities, and prisons are at the center of debates surrounding the fields of security, risk, and emergencies. Starting with the 1970s, Sites of Modernity—Places of Risk innovates against these sprawling and changing debates and shows how attempts to manage and assess risk have shaped modernity.
Smoke and Mirrors
The yenidze cigarette factory, dresden, nielsen, d..
Providing the first comprehensive account of the Yenidze Tobacco factory in Dresden, designed by the architect Martin Hammitzsch for the flamboyant Dresden tobacco personality Hugo Zietz, this unique addition to Dresden’s skyline was a formative addition to the development of the modernist aesthetic
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies
The Social Construction of Diversity
Recasting the master narrative of industrial nations, harzig, c. & juteau, d. (eds), subjects: history: 20th century to present anthropology (general) sociology.
Social Democracy and Monetary Union
Notermans, t. (ed).
A Social History of Europe, 1945-2000
Recovery and transformation after two world wars.
Social History of German Jews
Social History of German Jews traces the social history of modern German Jews from the end of the 18th century up to the aftermath of World War II, and focusses on the ascent of German Jews into the middle and upper-middle classes through both adversity and manifold forms of Jewish self-assertion.
A Social History of Spanish Labour
New perspectives on class, politics, and gender, piqueras, j., & sanz rozalén, v. (eds).
Social Movement Studies in Europe
The state of the art, fillieule, o. & accornero, g. (eds).
This landmark volume is the first to comprehensively examine the field of social movement studies in a specifically European context. Combining comparative studies of significant issues and movements with focused national studies, this is a bold and uncommonly unified survey that will be essential for scholars and students of European social movements.
Socialist Escapes
Breaking away from ideology and everyday routine in eastern europe, 1945-1989, giustino, c. m., plum, c. j., & vari, a. (eds).
The Soul of the Nation
Catholicism and nationalization in modern spain, alonso, g. & hernández burgos, c. (eds).
Religion and politics have historically clashed in modern Spain, particularly following the crisis of 1808 when the Catholica Monarchy put the role of the Church at the heart of political cultural Debates. The Soul of the Nation seeks to unravel this complex and oppositional history between Catholic values and modern political regimes.
Sounds German
Popular music in postwar germany at the crossroads of the national and transnational, fulk, k. a. (ed).
Sounds German surveys the sociopolitical impact of music on German national identity, gender and sexuality, and transnational cultural production and consumption, expanding on the ways in which sounds, technologies, media practices, and exchanges of popular music provide a unique glimpse into the cultural dynamics of postwar Germany.
Sounds of Modern History
Auditory cultures in 19th- and 20th-century europe, morat, d. (ed).
Since the late 19th century, there has been a paradigmatic shift in auditory cultures and practices in European societies. This change was brought about by modern phenomena such as urbanization, industrialization and mechanization, the rise of modern sciences, and of course the emergence of new sound recording and transmission media. This book contributes to our understanding of modern European history through the lens of sound by examining diverse subjects such as performed and recorded music, auditory technologies like the telephone and stethoscope, and the ambient noise of the city.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History
Lässig, s. & rürup, m. (eds).
This wide-ranging volume revisits both literal and metaphorical spaces in modern German history, working from an expansive concept of “the spatial” to examine the ways in which Jewishness has been attributed to them, and what the implications have been in different eras and social contexts.
Spanish Laughter
Humor and its sense in modern spain, calvo maturana, a. (ed).
Exploring various forms of humor in Modern Spain since their entry into the eighteenth-century public sphere, Spanish Laughter takes on the comforting, transgressive, conservative, rebellious, and other dynamic forms of humor as they have changed and contributed to the building of Spain’s cultural framework and historiographical panorama.
The Spirit of the Berlin Republic
Stardom in Postwar France
Gaffney, j. & holmes, d. (eds), subjects: history: 20th century to present film and television studies cultural studies (general).
State and Minorities in Communist East Germany
Dennis, m. & laporte, n..
A State of Peace in Europe
West germany and the csce, 1966-1975, hakkarainen, p..
Still Waiting for the Transformation
Fusaro, c. & kreppel, a. (eds).
Stories between Tears and Laughter
Popular czech cinema and film critics, vojvoda, r..
Stories between Tears and Laughter strikes new ground in the history of Czech cinema focusing on the historically underrepresented post-socialist era following the 1960s to reveal the discourse of cultural value through which popular Czech films were being evaluated.
A Stranger in Paris
Germany's role in republican france, 1870-1940.
Strike Action and Nation Building
Labor unrest in palestine/israel, 1899-1951.
Strike-action has long been a notable phenomenon in Israeli society, despite forces that have weakened its recurrence, such as the Arab-Jewish conflict, the decline of organized labor, and the increase of precarious workers. This book unravels the trajectory of the strikes in the first half of the twentieth century as a rich source for the social-historical analysis of an otherwise nation-oriented and highly politicized history.
The Struggle for a Democratic Austria
Bruno kreisky on peace and social justice, berg, m. p. (ed).
Subjects, Citizens, and Others
Administering ethnic heterogeneity in the british and habsburg empires, 1867-1918, gammerl, b..
Exploring racism, migration, and citizenship, Subjects, Citizens and Others offers a pioneering analysis of how the British and the Austro-Hungarian Empire governed their ethnically diverse populations. Author Benno Gammerl rejects common assumptions about ethnic exclusivity in Eastern and Western Europe, analyzing the legal and political conditions that help to foster ethnic heterogeneity.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
Supervision and Authority in Industry
Western european experiences, 1830-1939, eeckhout, p. van den (ed), subjects: history (general) history: 18th/19th century history: 20th century to present.
Sweden after Nazism
Politics and culture in the wake of the second world war, östling, j..
World War II—and particularly the specter of Nazism—changed Swedish society profoundly. This definitive study follows Swedish culture from its affinity for Germany to a framing of Nazism as a discredited, distinctively German phenomenon rooted in militarism and Romanticism.
Tailoring Truth
Politicizing the past and negotiating memory in east germany, 1945-1990, olsen, j. b..
By looking at state-sponsored memory projects, such as memorials, commemorations, and historical museums, this book reveals that the East German communist regime obsessively monitored and attempted to control public representations of the past to legitimize its rule.
Taking on Technocracy
Nuclear power in germany, 1945 to the present, augustine, d. l..
Taking on Technocracy addresses changing attitudes towards nuclear energy in the age of global warming. The German decision to abandon nuclear power is placed in a historical context, including popularization of science, new social movements, media, policing, gender, and the history of emotions.
Tax Justice and the Political Economy of Global Capitalism, 1945 to the Present
Leaman, j. & waris, a. (eds).
Teaching Modernization
Spanish and latin american educational reform in the cold war, martín garcía, ó. j. & gómez-escalonilla, l. d. (eds).
Amid the Cold War and global student protests, transnational forces significantly shaped the modernization of educational systems in Spain and Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. Each study sheds new light on the transnational circulation of modernization discourses, practices, and ideology within the sphere of education.
Technocrats in Office
Virgilio, a. di & radaelli, c. m. (eds).
Television's Moment
Sitcom audiences and the sixties cultural revolution, hodenberg, c. von.
Television was one of the forces shaping the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when a blockbuster TV series could reach up to a third of a country’s population. This book explores television’s impact on social change by comparing three sitcoms and their audiences.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Film and Television Studies
Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War
Goals, expectations, practices, cattaruzza, m., dyroff, s. & langewiesche, d. (eds).
Territory, State and Nation
The geopolitics of rudolf kjellén, björk, r. & lundén, t. (eds).
Rudolf Kjellén, regularly referred to as “the father of geopolitics”, developed in the first decade of the twentieth century an analytical model for calculating the capabilities of great-power states and promoting their interests in the international arena. Territory, State and Nation explores his century-long international scholarly impact, his analytical model, and his analyses of contemporary history.
Terror From the Sky
The bombing of german cities in world war ii, primoratz, i. (ed).
Thinking Europe
A history of the european idea since 1800.
This title assesses the idea of Europe through its intellectual history. Exploring the concept of integration and the relationship between this and arguments for division and borders it reveals their interplay in the composition of the contemporary European identity.
Thinking Utopia
Steps into other worlds, rüsen, j., fehr, m. & rieger, t. w. (eds).
The Third World in the Global 1960s
Christiansen, s. & scarlett, z. (eds), subjects: history: 20th century to present sociology history (general).
Towards a Collaborative Memory
German memory work in a transnational context.
For the first time, this volume creates a sustained study that positions together transnational memory and relational sociology to consider the memory of the GDR. Towards a Collaborative Memory advances the field of transnational memory studies and develops new theoretical approaches that re-evaluate our understanding of actor-driven European memory.
Subjects: Memory Studies Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present
Transactions, Transgressions, Transformation
American culture in western europe and japan, fehrenbach, h. & poiger, u. (eds).
Transcending the Nostalgic
Landscapes of postindustrial europe beyond representation, jaramillo, g. s. & tomann, j. (eds).
This collection explores the affective and “more-than-representational” dimensions of post-industrial landscapes, analyzing narratives, practices, social formations, and other phenomena. Focusing on case studies from across Europe, it examines both the objective and the subjective aspects of societies that produce fewer things and employ fewer workers.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Heritage Studies
Transformation of the German Political Party System
Institutional crisis or democratic renewal, allen, c. s. (ed).
Transformations and Crises
The left and the nation in denmark and sweden, 1956-1980, jørgensen, t. e..
The Transnational Condition
Protest dynamics in an entangled europe, teune, s. (ed).
Transnational Struggles for Recognition
New perspectives on civil society since the 20th century, gosewinkel, d. & rucht, d. (eds).
“Recognition” is a critical concept for social movements, and while its theoretical and empirical dimensions have usually been studied separately, this collection focuses on both against a transnational backdrop. With special emphasis on the efforts of women’s and Jewish organizations in 20th-century Europe, it demonstrates exemplary historical-analytical approaches to the subject.
Traumatic Pasts in Asia
History, psychiatry, and trauma from the 1930s to the present, micale, m. s. & pols, h. (eds).
Traumatic Pasts in Asia extends Euro-American paradigms of traumatic experience to new sites of world-historical suffering and, in the process, explores how these new terrains of investigation inform and enrich earlier understandings.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies Medical Anthropology
The Trial of a Nazi Doctor
Franz lucas as defendant, opportunist, and deceiver.
The Trial of a Nazi Doctor documents the career, crimes, and prosecution of Franz Bernhard Lucas (1911-1994), an SS camp doctor who tried to deflect his participation in the Nazi’s genocidal projects and juxtaposes them with a wide range of testimonials from witnesses including former camp inmates and Holocaust survivors.
Balancing Church and Politics in a Pomeranian World, 1807-1948
Thadden, r. von.
“ The story [the author] tells is rich and fascinating…[He] traces very effectively the economic evolution of Junker agriculture across the generations…I learned a lot from the book. ” · Jonathan Steinberg , author of Bismarck. A Life
Tropics of Vienna
Colonial utopias of the habsburg empire, bach, u. e..
Though not a conventional colonial power, the Austrian Empire had a metropole-periphery structure that shaped its cultural and intellectual life. This book illuminates colonial utopian writing in the work of Roth, Herzl, and others, revealing a shared longing for alternative social and spatial configurations.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
Reproducing the Nation and the Scandinavian Nationalist Populist Parties
Hellström, a..
In order to affect domestic politics, Scandinavian populist parties must cross the threshold to the national parliament while earning the nation’s trust. While the Progress Party in Norway and the Danish People’s Party have, the Sweden Democrats has not. The fissures in public opinion lead to a polarized public debate that raises the question of national identity, of what we are.
Twilight of the Merkel Era
Power and politics in germany after the 2017 bundestag election.
Elections always have consequences, but the 2017 Bundestag election in Germany proved particularly consequential. With political upheaval across the globe—notably in Britain and the USA—it was vital to European and global order that Germany remain stable.
Two Armies and One Fatherland
The end of the nationale volksarmee, schönbohm, j..
Two Lives in Uncertain Times
Facing the challenges of the 20th century as scholars and citizens, iggers, w., & iggers, g..
Understanding Multiculturalism
The habsburg central european experience, feichtinger, j. & cohen, g. b. (eds).
The essays in this collection offer a nuanced analysis of the multifaceted cultural experience of Central Europe under the late Habsburg monarchy and beyond. The authors examine how culturally coded social spaces can be described and understood historically without adopting categories formerly employed to justify the definition and separation of groups into nations, ethnicities, or homogeneous cultures. As we consider the issues of multiculturalism today, this volume offers new approaches to understanding multiculturalism in Central Europe freed of the effects of politically exploited concepts of social spaces.
United and Divided
Germany since 1990, dennis m. & kolinsky, e. (eds).
United Germany
Debating processes and prospects.
Uniting Germany
Documents and debates, jarausch, k. & gransow, v..
Velvet Retro
Postsocialist nostalgia and the politics of heroism in czech popular culture.
This innovative study develops the concept of “retro” to describe the nuanced and ironic depiction of the past as seen in Czech popular culture. It locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies Memory Studies
Vienna Is Different
Jewish writers in austria from the fin-de-siècle to the present, herzog, h. h., subjects: jewish studies history: 20th century to present literary studies.
Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning
An emblematic 20th-century life.
Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist and philosopher who survived the Holocaust and went on to found the third school of Viennese psychotherapy. By critically examining the details of his intellectual life, including some previously unknown biographical details, we can begin to see the fascinating ambiguities and contradictions in Frankl’s thought.
The Virago Story
Assessing the impact of a feminist publishing phenomenon.
The Virago Story provides a comprehensive history of classic feminist publisher Virago, along with an up-to-date analysis of the four waves of feminism, new strands of feminist analysis and praxis, and publishing trends.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945-1990
Bozo, f., rey, m.-p., ludlow, n. p., & rother, b. (eds).
Voices in Times of Change
The role of writers, opposition movements, and the churches in the transformation of east germany, rock, d. (ed).
Voyage Through the Twentieth Century
A historian's recollections and reflections, klemperer, k. von.
The Walls of Santiago
Social revolution and political aesthetics in contemporary chile, gordon-zolov, t. & zolov, e..
The response in Chile to Santiago’s metro’s fare hike in October of 2019 has grown into a strong and multi-faceted resistance movement. Through incisive and topical analysis, the authors offer a beautiful catalog of photographs of the murals, graffiti, and other forms of political art, reflecting on these aesthetic traditions and their relationship to the broader context of global protest movements and the long shadow cast by memories of the Pinochet regime.
War and Genocide, Reconstruction and Change
The global pontificate of pius xii, 1939-1958, unger-alvi, s. & valbousquet, n. (eds).
Following Vatican archives opening up access to materials on the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958), the contributors to this volume were amongst the first to access these long-awaited records. They have analyzed them here to present a nuanced and revitalized approach to religious, modern post-war historiography.
Subjects: Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present Anthropology of Religion
The Wars of Yesterday
The balkan wars and the emergence of modern military conflict, 1912-13, boeckh, k. & rutar, s. (eds).
Together comprising one of the first modern conflicts of the twentieth century, the Balkan Wars (1912–13) served as precursors of the bloody wars to follow. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the wars’ history, with a central focus on the experiences of both combatants and civilians.
Wartime Captivity in the 20th Century
Archives, stories, memories, pathé, a.-m. & théofilakis, f. (eds).
In recent years, wartime captivity has taken on new urgency as a historical topic. This wide-ranging volume brings together an international selection of scholars to trace the contours of this evolving research agenda, offering fascinating new perspectives on historical moments ranging from the Great War to Guantanamo Bay.
Weaponizing the Past
Collective memory and jews, poles, and communists in twenty-first century poland, korycki, k..
Theorizing and explaining the process of collective memory of Poland’s communist past, Weaponizing the Past explores contemporary politicizations of the past, national belonging and the production of anti-Semitism.
Subjects: Memory Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Weimar Publics/Weimar Subjects
Rethinking the political culture of germany in the 1920s, canning, k., barndt, k. & mcguire, k. (eds).
Weimar Radicals
Nazis and communists between authenticity and performance, brown, t. s..
What Remains
Responses to the legacy of christa wolf, fetz, g. a. & herminghouse, p. (eds).
In response to the legacy of Christa Wolf, What Remains addresses arguably the most important German writer in the period of since World War II until her death in 2011. Scholars across the U.S. and Europe address both the importance of her role in contributing to the cultural life of East Germany and the controversies surrounding her life and works in the aftermath of the collapse of East Germany and the process of German unification.
When They Came for Me
The hidden diary of an apartheid prisoner, schlapobersky, j. r..
Whilst a student in South Africa, John Schlapobersky was arrested for opposing apartheid and tortured, detained and deported. In this volume, apartheid and its resistance come to life in personal stories that make this a vital historical document - one of its time and one for our own.
White Eagle, Black Eagle
Ethnic relations in the german-polish borderlands.
Studying the German-Polish ethnic relations, this book analyses the people and region through their respective borderlands, migration, official cooperation and unofficial suspicions across the border.
Whose Memory? Which Future?
Remembering ethnic cleansing and lost cultural diversity in eastern, central and southeastern europe, törnquist-plewa, b. (ed).
Scholars have devoted considerable energy to understanding ethnic cleansing in Europe, yet much less attention has been given to how these incidents persist in collective memory today. This volume brings together case studies exploring how modern inhabitants “remember” instances of ethnic cleansing, and how they understand the heritage of groups that vanished in their wake.
The Witness as Object
Video testimony in memorial museums, jong, s. de.
Today more than ever before, the historical witness is now a “museum object” in the form of video interviews. With a focus on Holocaust museums, this study scrutinizes this new global phenomenon of the “musealisation” of testimony, exploring the processes, prerequisites, and consequences of video testimonies as exhibits.
Subjects: Museum Studies History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Memory Studies
Women and Socialism - Socialism and Women
Europe between the world wars, gruber, h. & graves, p. (eds).
Women Migrants From East to West
Gender, mobility and belonging in contemporary europe, passerini, l., lyon, d., capussotti, e. & laliotou, i. (eds), subjects: refugee and migration studies gender studies and sexuality mobility studies history: 20th century to present.
The Women's Liberation Movement
Impacts and outcomes, schulz, k. (ed).
This collection represents the first systematic reflection on the impact and outcomes of the women’s liberation movement in different areas and topics of Western societies. It systematically investigates movement outcomes in one country in the light of a reflective social movement theory and compares them to developments in other countries.
Working Class Formation in Turkey, 1946-1962
Work, culture, and the politics of the everyday, alp özden, b..
Working Class Formation in Turkey explores the everyday practices of workers in Turkey from the End of War II to until just after the military interventions of 1960. Drawing a wide range of historical sources and moving beyond generalizations, this volume examines the contextual dynamics of the lives of Turkish workers during these critical decades.
Working for the Enemy
Ford, general motors, and forced labor in germany during the second world war, billstein, r., fings, k., kugler, a. & levis, n..
Working in Greece and Turkey
A comparative labour history from empires to nation-states, 1840–1940, papastefanaki, l. & kabadayı, m. e. (eds).
The studies in Working in Greece and Turkey provide an overdue exploration of labour history on both sides of the Aegean, before as well as after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Deploying the approaches of global labour history as a framework, this volume presents transnational, transcontinental, and diachronic comparisons that illuminate the shared history of Greece and Turkey.
The World beyond the West
Perspectives from eastern europe, kałczewiak, m. & kozłowska, m. (eds).
Exploring the evolution of Eastern European discourses in Asia, Africa and Latin America in nineteenth and twentieth century, this volume locates the mechanisms and strategies that diverse Eastern European social actors adopted when discussing the non-European world. The Eastern European perspective is not only an important addition to the study of orientalism and post coloniality, but the transnational links in-between Eastern Europe show the region’s importance to a global history.
A World of Populations
Transnational perspectives on demography in the twentieth century, hartmann, h. & unger, c. r. (eds).
Demographics were transformed into public policies that shaped family planning, population growth, medical practice, and environmental conservation. While covering a variety of regions and time periods, the essays in this book share an interest in the transnational dynamics of emerging demographic discourses and practices. Together, they present a global picture of the history of demographic knowledge.
Writing the Great War
The historiography of world war i from 1918 to the present, cornelissen, c. & weinrich, a. (eds).
The history of the First World War has been continually written and rewritten, producing a rich historiography shaped by the social and cultural circumstances of its creation. Writing the Great War provides a groundbreaking survey of this vast body of work, assembling contributions on a variety of national and regional historiographies from some of the most prominent scholars in the field.
Subjects: History: World War I History: 20th Century to Present
The Year of the Bulldozer
Hanretty, c. & profeti, s. (eds).
Yugoslavia without Yugoslavs
The history of a national idea, jezernik, b..
Following the idea of Yugoslavism since its first public usage in 1849, Yugoslavia without Yugoslavs explains why the concept of Yugoslavia competed with Slavic, Serbian, and Croatian nationalistic ideas and failed just five years after its first nation state was established
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present History: 18th/19th Century History: World War I
The 50 Best Books of the 20th Century
On the eve of the new millennium, the Intercollegiate Review published a list of the 50 worst and 50 best books of the 20th century. Although now approaching fifteen years since publication, this list tells us much about our recent historical inheritance and provides a valuable reminder of the vitality of conservatism and the errors of liberalism.
This list was edited by Mark C. Henrie, Winfield J. C. Myers, and Jeffrey O. Nelson.
The turn of the century is a time to take stock of the path we have followed, the better to discern where we ought to be going. Historical discernment requires coming to judgment about what has been noble, good, and beneficial in our time, but also about what has been base, bad, and harmful. In the life of the mind, what has our century produced that deserves admiration? What has it produced that deserves only contempt?
Earlier this year, the Modern Library published a list styled The Hundred Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century. A list of significant books can make a compelling statement about how we are to understand an age. In judging the quality of a book, one necessarily judges the perception and the profundity which the book displays, as well as the character of the book’s influence.
Yet many were dissatisfied with the several “Best” lists published in the past year, finding them biased, too contemporary, or simply careless. So the Intercollegiate Review ( IR ) set out to assemble its own critically serious roster of the Best— and the Worst—Books of the Century. To assist us in this task, we relied on the advice of a group of exceptional academics from a variety of disciplines.
To make the task more manageable, our lists include only nonfiction books originally published in English , and so certain giants of the century such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn will not be found here, on two counts. We left the definition of “Best” up to our consultants, but we defined “Worst” for them as books which were widely celebrated in their day but which upon reflection can be seen as foolish, wrong-headed, or even pernicious.
There was broad agreement about a majority of titles, but there were also fierce disagreements. Several titles appeared on both “Best” and “Worst” lists. We have tried to be faithful to the contributions of our consultants, but the responsibility for final composition of the list lay with the editors of the IR .
What, then, do these lists reveal about the character of the Twentieth Century?
Our “Worst” list reveals a remarkable number of volumes of sham social science of every kind. The attempt to understand human action as an epiphenomenon of “hidden” and purportedly “deeper” motives such as sex, economics, or the Laws of History is a powerful yet hardly salutary trend in our century. The presumed “breakthrough” insight that professes to reveal the shape of some inevitable future has time and again proven to be profoundly misguided. And with human life reduced in these theories to a matter for technological manipulation, our century also reveals a persistent attraction to a dehumanizing statist administration of society.
Prominent on the “Best” list, on the other hand, are many volumes of extraordinary reflection and creativity in a traditional form, which heartens us with the knowledge that fine writing and clear-mindedness are perennially possible.
1. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Pessimism and nostalgia at the bright dawn of the twentieth century must have seemed bizarre to contemporaries. After a century of war, mass murder, and fanaticism, we know that Adams’s insight was keen indeed.
2. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)
Preferable to Lewis’s other remarkable books simply because of the title, which reveals the true intent of liberalism.
3. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952)
The haunting, lyrical testament to truth and humanity in a century of lies (and worse). Chambers achieves immortality recounting his spiritual journey from the dark side (Soviet Communism) to the—in his eyes—doomed West. One of the great autobiographies of the millennium.
4. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (1932, 1950)
Here, one of the century’s foremost literary innovators insists that innovation is only possible through an intense engagement of tradition. Every line of Eliot’s prose bristles with intelligence and extreme deliberation.
5. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of Histor y (1934–61)
Made the possibility of a divine role in history respectable among serious historians. Though ignored by academic careerists, Toynbee is still read by those whose intellectual horizons extend beyond present fashions.
. . . and the rest of the best
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
A very big brain and not without flaws. Still, her account of the peculiarly modern phenomenon of “totalitarianism” forced many liberals to consider the sins of communism in the same category as those of fascism, and that is no small achievement.
Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America (1945)
Barzun fought a heroic struggle against the Germanization of the American university.
Walter Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (1975)
The most psychologically astute biography of one of the most psychologically astute writers who ever lived. In an age of debunking and trivializing biographies, Bate’s beautifully written book stands out as a happy exception.
Cleanth Brooks & Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry (1938)
Interpreting literature in the style of the New Criticism was the vehicle by which a half century of Americans gained access to the intellectual life. This textbook by two of the brightest lights of the most important literary group in America this century—the Vanderbilt agrarians—has never been out of print.
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)
Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better? No, and Butterfield provides the intellectually mature antidote to that premise of liberal historiography.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)
The master of paradox demonstrates that nothing is more “original” and “new” than Christian tradition.
Winston Churchill, The Second World War (1948–53)
A work comprehensive in scope and intimate in detail by a master of English prose whose talents as an historian have been vastly underrated. Indispensable for understanding the twentieth century.
Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy (1946–53)
The most comprehensive, accurate, and readable history of philosophy, written by a philosopher who believed that the purpose of philosophy is the search for Truth.
Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950)
An essential work of European history that shows how the rise of Christianity altered civilization in the West. Credits the Roman Catholic Church with keeping civilization alive after the fall of Rome and during the barbarian invasions.
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992)
Revisionist history as it was meant to be written: as a correction to centuries of Whig historiography. Demonstrates that the brute force of the state can destroy even the most beloved institutions. What do you know . . . Belloc was right.
Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (1958–74)
The American Iliad .
Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee (1934–35)
The tragic life of a great Southern traditionalist beautifully chronicled by a great Southern traditionalist.
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
They are connected, after all—a great anti-communist book.
Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll (1972)
The finest analysis of slave life and culture, the complexities of the master-slave relation, and the impact of slavery on American history that we are likely ever to have.
Frederick von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)
Thoughtful reflections on the conditions and limitations of liberty in the modern world, written by a deeply cultured Austrian who found his home in the Anglo-Saxon world. The Summa of classical political economy in our century.
Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955)
The first sociologist to take religion in America seriously.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
Jacobs was the first to see that modernist architects and urban planners were creating not simply ugly buildings but entire urban environments unsuited to human communities.
Paul Johnson, Modern Times (1983)
Somehow the most personal, yet the most objective, history of our time.
John Keegan, The Face of Battle (1976)
A tour de force of military history that often explains strategy and tactics in terms of culture.
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (1953)
Did the impossible: showed a self-satisfied liberalism that conservatism in America could be intellectually respectable. A book that named a major political movement.
Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (1936)
The classic historical narrative of the coherent and complex worldview that lies at the foundation of the West.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981)
Won a new hearing for virtue ethics after nearly two centuries of intellectual domination by Kantian morals. We live today in the time “After MacIntyre.”
Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (1948–81)
A masterpiece of monumental historical biography. Malone’s prose, narrative, and analysis are wonderfully eighteenth-century in their balance and restraint.
H. L. Mencken, Prejudices (1919–27)
This century’s greatest exhibition of satire in nonfiction, demonstrating extraordinary aesthetic and literary taste. The author had street smarts too. Ah, the glory that was Mencken.
Thomas Merton, The Seven-Storey Mountain (1948)
A Catholic convert and Trappist monk, Merton’s natural gifts as a writer enabled him to introduce tens of thousands of readers to the spiritual fulfillment of contemplative life—a stunning achievement for an American.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941)
A biting critique of secular thought and a persuasive and inspiring exposition of man’s Christian destiny.
Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (1953)
Anticipated all the concerns of contemporary communitarians and did so with the sophistication of the century’s premier sociological imagination.
Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being (1978)
The beautiful letters of America’s most profound writer this century. The best imaginable bedtime reading.
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1952)
The savagely incisive song of a great writer’s disillusionment with the bloody inhumanity of the Left.
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos (1983)
True therapy for the therapeutic age. Percy shows that the best human life is being at home with our homelessness, not to mention that modern science, properly understood, need not have atheistic and materialist implications.
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986)
This magisterial, balanced account of the world’s most ambitious scientific project serves as a vigorous retort to those who make much of American naiveté—or who would deny the American century.
Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)
A neglected classic. Rieff shows that the real danger to humanity in our time is not socialism but therapy .
George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography (1944)
Like everything else from the pen of George Santayana, Persons and Places is elegant, witty, perspicacious, and profound—a distinguished autobiography relating the tangled transatlantic life of one of the century’s most original minds.
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942)
A great economist presents a dark vision of politics in a book which is accurately reasoned and brilliantly written.
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1953)
Strauss revealed the philosophical nerve of the Modern Project and retrieved the political dimension of classical philosophy.
William Strunk & E. B. White, The Elements of Style (1959)
An extraordinary little book that explains with clarity the use and misuse of the written word. In it the reader will not only learn the difference between such words as “while” and “although,” and “which” and “that,” but also find demonstrated beyond a doubt that language and civilization are inextricably intertwined.
Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950)
Trilling shows that literature is relevant to politics not because it affirms any political doctrine but because it provides a corrective to any political ideology whatsoever.
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (1920)
Using as his primary sources beliefs that earlier had been felt rather than thought , Turner made those most American characteristics—optimism, grit, unflinching determination—central to the study of American history. One of the few truly original works of history this century.
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (1952)
Here, one of this century’s most learned political philosophers powerfully critiques the modern quest for secular salvation.
Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (1901)
A classic of Southern autobiography describing one man’s heroic and successful efforts to overcome the legacy of slavery.
James D. Watson, The Double Helix (1968)
An eminently readable book about the unraveling of DNA, one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century. The book also offers an interesting look at English society after the Second World War.
Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (1962)
A careful reader of American literature works to restore our past.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953)
In a century littered with ill-considered arguments about the linguistic “construction of reality,” this landmark of the later Wittgenstein stands in a wholly different category. At once ingenious, humane, and humble, it puts philosophy on the right track after the sins of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (1979)
The dazzling story of the test pilots and Mercury astronauts is narrated by Wolfe as a compelling affirmation of the American spirit and traditional values.
Malcolm X (with the assistance of Alex Haley), The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
The spiritual journey of a sensitive and intelligent man who had to wrestle with his own demons and contradictions while battling the condescension of paternalist liberals and the enervating effects of the welfare state on his people.
Click here to see the 50 worst books of the twentieth century.
Editors: Mark C. Henrie, Winfield J.C. Myers, Jeffrey O. Nelson. Consultants: Brian Domitrovic, Harvard University; Victor Davis Hanson, California State University, Fresno; E. Christian Kopff, University of Colorado; Peter Augustine Lawler, Berry College; Leonard Liggio, Atlas Educational Foundation; Mark M. Malvasi, Randolph-Macon College; Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Harvard University; Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga; Mark Molesky, Harvard University; George H. Nash, author; George Panichas, Modern Age; John Willson, Hillsdale College.
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The Best Fiction Books » The Best Novels
The best 20th-century american novels, recommended by david hering.
David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form by David Hering
The story of America is not one of a manageable unified nation, says novelist and critic David Hering . It may, however, be the story of America's dream — which is why many of the best American novels have a distinctly dreamlike quality. He picks out five of the best American novels of the 20th century, from 1905 through to 1987.
Interview by Francesca Mancino
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Beloved by Toni Morrison
1 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
2 my ántonia by willa cather, 3 invisible man by ralph ellison, 4 blood meridian by cormac mccarthy, 5 beloved by toni morrison.
You said before our interview that it’s impossible to boil down 20th-century American literature to just five novels. How did you ultimately arrive at your list?
I guess my criterion was, ‘What are five books that would be interesting to talk about?’ There are plenty of 20th-century American novels that I admire a great deal, but that I don’t have much to say about other than ‘This is great, I like it and I think you’d like it.’ Initially, I wasn’t thinking of any particular unity between the books I picked, but when I looked back over them I realized that these novels are all pretty formally inventive. The nearest thing to a straight realism here is The House of Mirth , and even that’s got some strange and dreamy naturalist diversions.
One thing I was really torn on was that I initially wanted to include an American novel from a writer born outside the country, because some of the clearest-eyed books about America come from these writers. Right up until late I had Pnin (1957) on the list, because I don’t think anyone else describes America like Nabokov does. I’ve always perceived the American landscape in Nabokov as having the qualities of a diorama: a façade of buildings, roads and cars that is scrupulously presented, and where the relations between every visible object are very clear and well-defined. Then, threaded through that, you have this seam of psychological chaos that is never fully absorbed into the materials of that landscape. The tension that is produced, which I suppose could also be one definition of the immigrant writer’s experience, is where the work comes from.
I’m also surprised in retrospect that I didn’t pick what’s often referred to as a ‘systems novel,’ by which I mean the work of authors like William Gaddis, Don DeLillo , Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace —writers who deal with vast and complex systems of money, conspiracy, corporate culture and addiction, because these books were very formative for me in my initial education about the American novel. It might simply be that I’ve studied these novels and written about them for years, and recently I’ve become more attached to a less antic or at least a less visible style. These authors are still foundational for me, but they’re not currently at the front of my mind.
Your picks cover four decades of literature, leaving out the 1920s through the 1940s. Was this intentional?
I only realized this afterwards. Yes, I’ve ignored two decades which some would say constitute the absolute apex of the American novel – Fitzgerald , Faulkner , Hemingway , Steinbeck et al – but I can assure you it wasn’t personal! I did nearly pick Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) , in part because of the sheer miraculous economy of what she manages in that book. There’s also nothing from the 1960s and 1970s, which was another big revolution in the American novel form.
I mean, I’ve hardly picked five obscure books here, but at this point, I feel Fitzgerald and Faulkner can take care of themselves. Actually, thinking about it now, I would have liked to put As I Lay Dying (1930) on here, not least because it’s also a genuinely great comic novel. The line where the doctor says of Anse Bundren, “you all could have stuck his head into the saw and cured a whole family” is so pithy. I love it.
Well-said! Now, Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905) is first. What should we know about this novel?
So this is Wharton’s second novel, and was extremely – really remarkably – successful on publication. It’s a novel about the culture of the Gilded Age and, as far as I’m aware, one of the first major novels about New York society at that time. It traces the extraordinary descent – literally and figuratively – of a woman, Lily Bart, in the social scene. One of the things I love about The House of Mirth is the way the entire novel is encoded in the form of the opening scene, in which Lily ascends and descends a flight of stairs, and in doing so accidentally sets in motion the accumulation of rumor and misfortune that will eventually destroy her. The novel is constantly moving through these accretive images of exquisite beauty and wealth, which themselves then also complicate or degrade Lily’s social standing in the moment of their perception.
So, to give you an example, at the heart of the novel is a party where Lily appears in a tableaux vivant ; she’s posed as a Joshua Reynolds painting. And this appearance, which is apparently so amazing that it elicits a gasp from the audience, is the moment at which Lily’s beauty is publicly crystallized, but the fixing of that beauty in a shape – an “outline” as one character calls it – also has the effect of rendering her body completely present, and thus also less reputable. This is the novel in miniature – everyone worships an abstract idea of beauty, one that is secured by wealth, but when the materialities of body and money are put on public display, everyone turns away, because their complicity is suddenly visible to them. In many ways, this story is played out again and again in the 20th-century American novel – no one wants to see the gears grinding underneath, to see what goes into constructing the tableaux . They’re prepared to let people die to maintain it.
That’s an amazing way of encapsulating the 20th-century American novel. Let’s turn to Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918).
I first read My Ántonia in college, and this was a time when I was very into the more avant-garde, formal end of modernism , so I looked at it and just assumed, fairly dismissively, that it was going to be this sort of bucolic country romance. And I read it and was totally captured by it, in a way, I think, that I didn’t have the vocabulary for at that age. I suppose you’d say now that I liked the vibe of it, without fully understanding where the vibe came from. But over the years I’ve re-read it a number of times and I’ve come to recognize it as a radical book, quietly so. It occupies a weird zone, in that it initially seems to behave like a 19th-century romance despite being published in 1918, but the novel itself is as ‘modern’ as anything by Faulkner.
If you synopsize it, a man remembers his youth in the Midwest and his ongoing friendship with a Bohemian immigrant farm girl. It sounds quite realist, but Cather isn’t interested in following the traditional route of an agrarian romance at all. They don’t eventually get together, for one – 99% of books like this would end with them realizing their feelings for each other – and the novel’s approach to family, which is often the point towards which bildungsroman narratives converge, is profoundly ambivalent. Family units are dysfunctional or cobbled together, and characters find other ways of living together.
It was only on subsequent readings I realized just how much My Ántonia was a queer novel, how much the essentialist approach to gender and sexuality is picked apart or described in terms of a social convenience. Then, when you discover that Cather would also present as male and go by ‘William,’ this reading of the novel really opens up.
Cather is also able to conjure these images that are extremely evocative, that lead from color or sound rather than character or plot, and these images – there’s a long description of a plough backlit by the setting sun – are also dramatizations of transitions between moments of understanding, so you have an epiphany communicated without the character necessarily knowing it at the time. It feels radical to me.
Next is Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison , which is on a lot of lists here. One could argue it’s the best American novel in the twentieth century. What do you think?
A round-about way of answering this: I sometimes talk to the students I teach about the fallacy of the term ‘Great American Novel’ because it presumes a quality that is arguably at odds with the actual nation itself. A Great American Novel presupposes the experiences of a manageably unified nation, which is, of course, not the story of America. It’s maybe the dream of America, though, which is why some of my favorite American novels, like Invisible Man , have a distinctly dreamlike quality. I do think that you could perhaps call Invisible Man the most characteristic American novel, in that it so thoroughly acknowledges this struggle and embraces it in its form.
I also don’t think of Invisible Man as existing purely in a textual sphere. I’ve always felt that it lies at the intersection of a number of different arts – painting, music, sculpture – and that it alternately mimics or incorporates their forms as it goes; I would use the word ‘artwork’ rather than novel. At the centre of the novel is this image of the narrator’s racial visibility that deliberately doesn’t cohere into a systematic idea: when he’s invisible he’s visible, and when he’s visible he’s invisible. For the entire novel, he’s in this spectral state, flickering between these different modes of being, always at the whim of other people. The only solution is either to turn the lights out, or to turn all the lights permanently on. It’s an extraordinarily powerful metaphor, and it never gets overworked because Ellison heightens everything almost to the level of myth, so all moments in the narrator’s journey become these tableaux or overdetermined objects of injustice. It’s an incredible novel.
We jump now to 1985 when Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy was published. This one is based off of true historical accounts, right?
Yes, it’s somewhat loosely based on the history of the Glanton Gang, who were a bunch of murderous outlaws in the southern US in the 19th century. McCarthy is using them as the occasion to think about how one chronicles an unspeakable history, or how one can reckon with a nation that comes from chaos, and what that means for the nation itself. With Beloved , which I’ll come to shortly, Toni Morrison is thinking about systematized brutality and its repercussions; in Blood Meridian , there really is no system at all. If there is one, it’s a kind of debased violent impulse, which is why the novel is both perpetually on the verge of an explosion of violence, and also often, frankly, quite monotonous. Because how else can you depict unsystematized chaos in the long form? Blood Meridian has these 18th-century-style subtitles for its chapters which summarize what is about to happen, and to me these summaries indicate the utter inevitability of the world that McCarthy is describing. By the time you read the chapter itself, it’s effectively already happened, it’s predestined. And the novel ultimately moves towards this kind of dance of the devils. It ends in total bacchanal, with Satan at its centre. It gravitates to what it has always desired, which is true chaos.
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I can’t mention this novel without mentioning Judge Holden, who is one of the most monumental antagonists in all American literature — a giant, hairless demon in human form, who is present at all sites of human violence. You can tell that McCarthy, like Melville with the white whale, was aiming for something truly elemental here, and I believe he pulls it off. If ever I think about the last scene of this novel – and I spend quite a lot of time trying not to think about it – I remember the sheer pitch of horror in that final unseen act the Judge commits, which is the only act of violence that McCarthy keeps off the page, as if even in this world it’s too much to bear.
The New York Times Book Review, back in 2006, surveyed hundreds of “writers, critics, editors, and other literary sages, asking them to please identify ‘the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.’” The winner was Beloved (1987), though Blood Meridian was one of the runners-up. What‘s your take?
It’s funny, because I thought for a minute about not having Beloved here, simply because so much has been said and written about it that it almost feels redundant to do so, but ultimately it was impossible for me to leave it out. For me, Beloved is like an object that light bends around – I can’t think about American literature without it. I think, like with Blood Meridian , that Beloved is at least partly about looking that fallacious dream of American unity directly in the face and excavating the utter horror on which it’s built. And whether you do that as McCarthy does, through this sort of pageantry of the grotesque, or as Morrison does, in a very tight portrait of a small number of extremely brutalized and traumatized individuals, you’re still chipping away at that central lie of the building blocks of American unity. Morrison’s novel, to me, is ultimately a voice novel — you feel the voices so viscerally. Where McCarthy’s novel ends with a devil’s dance, Morrison’s ends with a song of worship, specifically with an act of collective harmonizing, which operates, basically, as a kind of exorcism.
Memory is a theme that brings together some of your picks. In the journal Twentieth Century Literature , Lisa Marie Lucenti argues that as readers of My Ántonia , we can “both discover and imagine an almost endless number of ways in which memory inspires and terrifies, comforts and haunts, [and] sustains and shocks.” Do you think this could also be said about Beloved ?
I have spent a lot of time thinking about the final pages of Beloved , because in that epilogue Morrison acknowledges the paradox of what it means to remember something that unspeakable, something that has ruined your body and your mind and the bodies and minds of millions of others. Because how can you go on carrying that? And what Morrison suggests is that you can’t, so you have to give it away. But how to give it away, when giving it away gives the memory, and the story, a power that maybe it shouldn’t have? And so you have that repeated final line, that it is not “a story to pass on,” which of course holds within it the duality of not avoiding but also not retelling. It’s such an extraordinary ending.
Your own novel, Zealandia , was short-listed for the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize and the 2020 Northern Book Prize. Have any of these 20th-century American writers influenced your own work?
This is an interesting question, because my initial response would be ‘Not a great deal.’ I have always felt that in my fiction I’m influenced more by European or Latin American writers – Kafka , Ginzburg , Jaeggy , and Borges – particularly in terms of locating narratives in a rather abstract setting, or in a real-seeming place that contains some small element of abstraction. But on reflection, I do think there’s something of the systematic nature of American literature, a description of the workings of a particular world, that probably does find its way into my writing. It’s funny, because I’ve recently completed a new novel which is set in England and Scotland over the last 25 years and is very particularly about those places, and which is much more realistic than anything else I’ve written, but it’s still about people in thrall to systems that help them to live — whether its art or religion or mysticism. There’s still some abstraction in there – I can’t help that, it seems.
July 10, 2023
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David Hering
David Hering is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and co-director of the Centre for New and International Writing at the University of Liverpool. His fiction, essays and criticism have appeared in publications including The New York Review of Books , Guernica , The Los Angeles Review of Books , The Point, 3:AM , The London Magazine , The Oxonian Review and The Quietus.
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What Was The Village Voice?
“The Freaks Came Out to Write” is an oral history of America’s most important alternative weekly.
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THE FREAKS CAME OUT TO WRITE: The Definitive History of The Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture , by Tricia Romano
Tricia Romano’s oral history of The Village Voice , the most important alternative weekly of the 20th century, is a well-made disco ball of a book — it’s big, discursive, ardent, intellectual and flecked with gossip. “The Freaks Came Out to Write” may be the best history of a journalistic enterprise I’ve ever read, in that its garrulous tone so mirrors the institution’s own.
A lot of the people Romano interviewed, former Voice writers, editors, photographers, designers and cartoonists, will probably wince, at times, at the text. Humiliations are recalled; toes are trod upon; old hostilities have been kept warm, as if on little Sterno cans of pique. Nostalgia remains at arm’s length. Yet the tone is familial and warm. Discontent was part of The Voice’s DNA. For nearly every staffer, working there was the best thing they ever did.
Founded in 1955 by a group of writers and editors that included Norman Mailer, The Voice was intended to be a newspaper for downtown, defined as below 14th Street in Manhattan. Its influence grew to be national. The Voice’s heroic period ran from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, though there were slack stretches in between. The publication still exists in a desiccated and mostly online form, in the same way that Sports Illustrated is existing until someone has the decency to unscrew the final lightbulb.
For many oddballs and lefties and malcontents out in America’s hinterlands (I was among them), finding their first copy of The Voice was more than eye-opening. Here was a dispatch from another, better planet. There was nothing else like it. It drove many to go into journalism, or to move to New York, or both. Others fed their heads as long-distance subscribers. You could count on each issue to have been scuffed up by the vicissitudes of the U.S. Postal Service. Some of the scuffing may have been half-intentional. As one art director puts it, the covers tended to look like “The New York Post on acid and run by communists.”
Like many publications, The Voice was divided into two halves. The front of the book was for hard news, and in back resided social commentary and criticism. Even further back were The Voice’s renowned classified ads. For decades people would line up on the night before publication, in the pre-internet days, to get first crack at the apartment listings. People found their whole lives back there. It was a counterculture bulletin board. Blondie got its drummer by advertising there; so did Springsteen. The sex ads were r-a-u-n-c-h-y.
You can approach this book as urban history. Romano has chopped it into brisk set pieces — how The Voice covered Robert Moses’s plan to run a speedway though downtown, the Stonewall riots, the early years of Rudy Giuliani and Donald J. Trump, the Central Park Five and so on. The Voice played rough. Annual features included “10 Worst Judges” and “10 Worst Landlords,” as reported by the muckraker Jack Newfield. Imagine the impact such lists would have today. Imagine the impact then.
The back of the book slowly swamped the front. The Voice gave America most of the first important rock and then hip-hop criticism. It was the first paper to pay close attention to Off Broadway, and it started the Obie Awards. The literate satire of Jules Feiffer’s cartoons defined a generation’s sensibility and won a Pulitzer Prize. The Voice covered the nascent downtown art and film scenes in a way no one had.
Its critics were mighty, a killer’s row, and they often wrote in the first person, a rare thing at the time. In music, there were, to name but a few, Robert Christgau, Ellen Willis , Nelson George, Lester Bangs, Stanley Crouch , Greg Tate , Greil Marcus and James Wolcott. In art, Peter Schjeldahl , Roberta Smith and Gary Indiana. In movies, Jonas Mekas and Andrew Sarris . The novelist Colson Whitehead worked for the literary section and wrote television reviews. His editor initially worried he was too straight for The Voice because he wore a tie.
Perhaps more important was the paper’s commentary on feminism and gay rights. Vivian Gornick wrote important essays, as did Susan Brownmiller (one of her earliest was called “On Goosing”). Karen Durbin wrote a piece about the sympathy she felt for the Glenn Close character in “Fatal Attraction.” During the AIDS crisis, The Voice printed a condom on its cover. There was a sense of sustained outrage. Nat Hentoff rumbled almost weekly, in his columns, about the First Amendment, before infuriating everyone by coming out against abortion. The Voice’s sports section sent Ishmael Reed to report on the 1978 Muhammad Ali versus Leon Spinks fight, and the resulting piece ran on the cover. Its food writers, including Robert Sietsema, scanned the outer boroughs and were not interested in the top 10 gelato parlors.
The Voice defined itself against the vastly stuffier New York Times. The Times was, Whitehead says, “the Man.” To moments of glory in this book, variations of one taunt are consistently appended: “You wouldn’t read that in The New York Times.” The Voice wobbled consistently on the edges of libel; it welcomed all varieties of life; it got more of what made us human into its pages. Voice writers let their messy lives hang out.
Owners and top editors came and went. The former included Rupert Murdoch, who called the paper “the bane of my existence.” So did writers. Christgau — his potent editing skills are analyzed and praised — liked to say that 50 percent of the paper was good and 50 percent awful, though no one could agree on which 50 percent.
Romano, who worked at The Voice for eight years in its later stages, clearly asked good questions, and she has a snappy sense of conversational rhythm. Like a capable film director, she knows how to enter a scene late and leave it early. You always want a bit more of whatever topic she is allowing people to explore.
Out of context and unattributed, here are a few lines from this gaggle of talking heads: “Meeting deadlines, you know, interfered with taking drugs”; “I’m sure that every major person at The Voice had an F.B.I. file”; “We had at least three writers who wouldn’t use punctuation”; “Is Jack dead? Good”; “Lou Reed knocked up a friend of mine, and we had to help her get rid of the fetus”; “He hit Ron Plotkin, too”; “What do you think we are? A whorehouse on a field trip?” A lot of the punches came from Crouch, who believed that the pen was mightier than the sword but did not always have a pen at hand.
One contributor comments that while in certain newspapers the second mention of Derek Jeter would be “Mr. Jeter,” in The Voice the second mention would be the word “that” followed by cheerful expletives and sexual envy, unprintable here.
The internet in general and Craigslist in particular tanked The Voice. So did the gentrification of downtown. The paper was the victim of its own success. The things it cared about were embraced by the mainstream. It is hard to imagine it existing in the new journalistic world of team-building exercises and social media guidelines.
The tone of “The Freaks Came Out to Write” is a symphonic kind of anarchy. I kept imagining these interviews poured by a director into a word-drunk “Chorus Line”-like musical, without the dancers but with a plank-walking line of disrupters with cigarettes and S.T.D.s and inky fingers and authority issues. You wanted to hang the sign on The Village Voice that Ken Kesey put on the back of his magic bus: “Caution: Weird Load.”
THE FREAKS CAME OUT TO WRITE : The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture | By Tricia Romano | PublicAffairs | 571 pp. | $35
Dwight Garner has been a book critic for The Times since 2008, and before that was an editor at the Book Review for a decade. More about Dwight Garner
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Introduction
Between 1881 and 1914, over ten million people crossed the Atlan- tic from Europe to America, the largest mass migration of people from one continent to another in human history. Over 2.5 million of them were Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. Most of them were from the Russian Empire. While many European nations relaxed their ancient restrictions on Jews, Russia did the opposite. Jews were faced with a difficult decision: survive in menacing circumstances, convert to Christianity, or leave everything behind for a chance at a better life in a distant place.
Many chose to travel to America. During this thirty-three-year period, the industrializing United States had a largely unrestricted immigration policy. American business enterprises wanted cheap labor, and new arriv- als provided it in abundance. The Russian Empire, however, did not eas- ily permit its subjects to leave its confines. For most Jewish immigrants, their escape meant at least one illegal border crossing in order to get to the great seaports of Hamburg, Bremen, Liverpool, Antwerp, and Le Havre, where ships took them to America.
It was a journey fraught with anxiety and peril, but for the steamship lines and the international investment banks backing them, the mass im- migration across the Atlantic was a financial bonanza.
Three titans made this mass exodus of humanity logistically possible. Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-America Line (also known as HAPAG), created a transportation network that allowed Jews to travel seamlessly from Russia to America by train and steamship. Jacob Schiff, managing partner of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co., used his immense wealth to encourage and to help Jews to leave Russia for a fresh start in America. J. P. Morgan, mastermind of the International Mercantile Marine (IMM) trust, tried to take over the lucrative transat- lantic steamship business that Albert Ballin had created, aiming to run it in the same ruthless way he ran his banks and railroads.
In her 1882 ode to the Statue of Liberty, the poet Emma Lazarus called New York Harbor the “golden door” to America. But the immigration gateway slammed shut in 1914, when Europe became a battleground and all movement between nations, with the exception of armies, ground to a halt. Russia’s remaining Jews were trapped in a maelstrom of violence, war, and revolution. The German transatlantic steamship companies col- lapsed, and with them the intricate transportation networks that allowed Jews to escape to America.
By 1923, the American public had become first uneasy and then fright- ened by unrestricted immigration, and Congress passed a series of dis- criminatory laws that barred almost all new arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe. It was a victory for a small group of socially elite racists in Boston and New York who felt that Jews and Italians were polluting the genetic makeup of the United States with supposedly inferior stock. Their racial theories, presumed to be scientific, mirrored the Nazi Party’s racial policies toward Jews that would culminate in Hitler’s Final Solu- tion a few years later.
Those who made it across the North Atlantic faced privation and pov- erty upon their arrival in America. Some did not last a generation, victims of industrial accidents, disease, or despair. Those who survived created new lives for themselves and their children, and breathed new energy into the American economy and culture. Among the Jewish immigrants were Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, songwriter Irving Berlin, art- ist Mark Rothko, journalist Abraham Cahan, and labor organizer Emma Goldman. Children of immigrants included composers Leonard Bern- stein and Aaron Copland, Hollywood mogul Louis B. Mayer, and actress Lauren Bacall. Tens of thousands became doctors, lawyers, bankers, pro- fessors, teachers, and owners of businesses large and small. Most of them achieved success, material and otherwise, that their grandparents in the shtetls of Russia could have never imagined.
These three powerful personalities—Albert Ballin and Jacob Schif, Jews themselves, and J. P. Morgan—were all driven by very different motives, but the convergence of their ambitions helped make the Second Exodus a reality for millions of people. They did not survive to see the world they helped create, but their impact resonates to this day.
This is their story.
Excerpted from THE LAST SHIPS FROM HAMBURG Copyright © 2023 by Steven Ujifusa. Reprinted here with permission of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
This segment aired on February 15, 2024.
More from Here & Now
Victims or migrants? New book explores the early 20th-century trafficking of French women
Associate professor elisa camiscioli shines a light on a hidden piece of migration history.
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When you hear the words “sex trafficking,” what scenario springs to mind?
Maybe it’s the movie Taken, in which a CIA agent’s teenage daughter is kidnapped on a trip to Paris. While the popular film was released in 2008, the idea that sex trafficking largely involves innocent and passive victims forced into prostitution dates back to the 1870s.
The real situation, both in the past and the present, is more complex.
Binghamton University Associate Professor of History Elisa Camiscioli unravels some of that historical complexity in her new book. Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations takes a look at the cultural, social and economic history surrounding early 20th-century sex trafficking. During that period, French women worked in brothels around the world and were among the best-paid in the business.
The long association between Frenchness and the erotic may date back to the Napoleonic period, when France began to regulate prostitution, including a mandated registry of women and regular inspections for venereal disease. This system, informally known as the “French system,” was exported throughout Europe, the French colonies, and Central and South America, although it didn’t take off in the United States, Camiscioli said.
Fast forward a few decades into the early 20th century, when France was an immigrant-receiving nation, second only to the United States. It didn’t send many migrants abroad — although there was purportedly an outflux of French women for work in prostitution. You can blame World War I, which left many women widows, orphans or in otherwise difficult circumstances.
“France proportionately lost the most men during the First World War; nearly an entire generation of marriageable men was decimated,” Camiscioli explained. “This left many women in precarious economic positions.”
Camiscioli hopes that prospective readers go beyond the book’s second chapter, which delves into fantasies of French vice in the United States and Cuba through a detailed League of Nations report. Investigators went undercover into brothels and took copious notes, many of which weren’t released to the public at the time. The rest of the book, however, details the migration history that puts this information into context.
The murky ground between choice and coercion
Many of these women had already sold sex in France before migration and chose to emigrate for economic reasons. A Havana brothel, for example, paid five times more than one in Paris.
“For working-class women in this period, prostitution paid much better than other forms of women’s work, such as dressmaking, domestic service and factory work. Selling sex sometimes paid 20 to 30 times more than hat-making or being a laundress,” Camiscioli said.
Prostitution tends not to be a lifelong occupation, although some sex workers later went on to run brothels themselves. Instead, many women “aged out” and returned to France to marry or pursue other paid work — similar to migrants in other trades.
“People often saw it as a transitory stage in their lives,” Camiscioli said.
The early 20th century saw the rise of something else that sparked migrant trafficking: more restrictive international borders. Migration facilitators then and now are paid substantial sums to help migrants cross these borders. Once in their new country, migrants may also be subject to debt bondage schemes in which their passports are confiscated and they must labor for freedom.
During the early 20th century, French women under the age of 21 weren’t permitted to migrate without the permission of a parent or husband, so there was a lively trade in forged passports. Ship crews were also complicit in hiding the existence of female stowaways.
Like any migrant, these women wrote home and sent money to family. In their letters, they sometimes tell family members not to worry and that they’re happy with their choice to migrate. Other letters — such as the ones written by a 16-year-old in Argentina — allude to terrible experiences, although this writer ultimately achieved a kind of social mobility; she managed a Paris brothel by the time she reached 40.
“The trafficking narrative requires individuals to be innocent victims in order to be worthy of assistance,” Camiscioli said. “But this masks the bigger structural issues of why people are willing to take risky migrations.”
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Showing 1-50 of 4,580 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (Mass Market Paperback) by William L. Shirer (shelved 18 times as 20th-century-history) avg rating 4.20 — 132,400 ratings — published 1960 Want to Read Rate this book 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.com: A History of the Twentieth Century: The Concise Edition of the Acclaimed World History: 9780060505943: Gilbert, Martin: Books Books › Religion & Spirituality › Hinduism and start saving today with Kindle $11.08 Available instantly Audiobook $0.00 with membership Hardcover $122.50 Paperback $11.66 Other Used, New, Collectible from $3.33
The Cambridge History of the Cold War (Volume 1) Book 1 of 3: The Cambridge History of the Cold War 20 Paperback $2716$39.99 FREE delivery Mon, Apr 24 More Buying Choices $24.33 (49 used & new offers) Other formats: Kindle , Hardcover African Leaders of the Twentieth Century: Biko, Selassie, Lumumba, Sankara (Ohio Short Histories of Africa)
1. What Is History? by Edward Hallett Carr Buy on Amazon Add to library Famous for his hefty History of Soviet Russia, E. H. Carr's foray into historiography (that is, the study of written history) was panned by critics at first.
Best Books About Twentieth Century History Non-fiction only, please. Spam will be removed if detected. flag All Votes Add Books To This List ← Previous 1 2 3 4 Next → 332 books · 23 voters · list created January 30th, 2019 by Susanna - Censored by GoodReads (votes) .
Killers of the Flower Moon (Movie Tie-in Edition) Hitchcock's Blondes. Laurence Leamer. Shelley Fraser Mickle. Coming Soon. Jimmy Breslin: Essential Writings (LOA #377) Josiah Bunting III. The Kneeling Man. Leta McCollough Seletzky.
#1 FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944 David M. Jordan 28 Kindle Edition 1 offer from $1.99 #2 A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them Timothy Egan 2,393 Kindle Edition 1 offer from $14.99 #3
23rd 24th 25th Contents Top 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Pages in category "20th-century history books" The following 200 pages are in this category, out of approximately 319 total. This list may not reflect recent changes . (previous page) ( next page) 0-9 20,000 Years of Fashion
LibraryThing is a free, library-quality catalog to track reading progress or your whole library. LibraryThing is completely free. Add books, movies and music from Amazon, the Library of Congress and 4,941 other libraries. Track your reading progress, rate and review. See detailed charts and stats about your library and reading life.
The Russian revolution was the beginning of the modern age, says award-winning author Roland Chambers. He tells us what Solzhenitsyn imagined Lenin was like, and about the children's author who led a double life as a spy in Bolshevik Russia. The Best Books on the American Civil War, recommended by Drew Gilpin Faust "The past is never dead.
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During the 1970s left-wing youth militancy in Greece intensified, especially after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974. This book is the first study of the impact of that political activism on the leisure pursuits and sexual behavior of Greek youth. Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Sociology.
Fans of the mafia will love this novel. It is about a Sicilian American family in the early part of the twentieth century and their confrontation with other mafia families. It also gives readers an idea of life in post World War II America and the importance of family loyalty.
9,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about gay men , violence , and The Beatles . Amy J. Rutenberg shares the 5 best books on books about twenteith-century U.S. History that make you rethink something you thought you already knew.
One hundred eventful years are entertainingly assembled into one manageable package in The 20th Century: An Illustrated History of Our Lives and Times. It is superbly organized; the century is broken into decade by decade chapters, then further divided into year by year sections, each containing six to eight information packed pages per year.
On the eve of the new millennium, the Intercollegiate Review published a list of the 50 worst and 50 best books of the 20th century. Although now approaching fifteen years since publication, this list tells us much about our recent historical inheritance and provides a valuable reminder of the vitality of conservatism and the errors of liberalism.
The story of America is not one of a manageable unified nation, says novelist and critic David Hering. It may, however, be the story of America's dream — which is why many of the best American novels have a distinctly dreamlike quality. He picks out five of the best American novels of the 20th century, from 1905 through to 1987.
Showing 1-50 of 182 The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party: The Enduring Legacy of Henry Wallace's Anti-Fascist, Anti-Racist Politics (Hardcover) by John Nichols (shelved 1 time as 20th-and-21st-century-history) avg rating 4.22 — 114 ratings — published Want to Read Rate this book
Buy 20th century history: 1900 to 2000 books from Waterstones.com today. Find our best selection and offers online, with FREE Click & Collect or UK delivery.
#1 Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia Gary J. Bass 57 Kindle Edition 1 offer from $14.99 #2 In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin Erik Larson 15,265 Kindle Edition 1 offer from $13.99 #3 The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World
Tricia Romano's oral history of The Village Voice, the most important alternative weekly of the 20th century, is a well-made disco ball of a book — it's big, discursive, ardent, intellectual ...
Between 1881 and 1914, over ten million people crossed the Atlan- tic from Europe to America, the largest mass migration of people from one continent to another in human history.
30 books based on 10 votes: The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, The Road from Home: A True Story of Courage, Survival, and Hope by David Kherdian, Cry, ...
Binghamton University Associate Professor of History Elisa Camiscioli unravels some of that historical complexity in her new book. Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations takes a look at the cultural, social and economic history surrounding early 20th-century sex trafficking. During that period, French women worked ...
This talk will provide an overview of the history of Black American engagements with Sufism over the course of the twentieth century. Dr. Miller will discuss early examples of these encounters including Black American Muslims' relationships with representatives of West and North African Sufi orders forged in New York City during the 1930s, as well as prominent Black American Imam's ...
Jason Lutes. (shelved 1 time as 19th-and-20th-century-history) avg rating 4.46 — 3,031 ratings — published 2001. Want to Read. Rate this book. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 (Hardcover) by. David McCullough.
Listopia The ACTUAL 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century I took exception with the Modern Library List as there are: 1) multiple entries for the same author, 2) only works written in English, and 3) glaring omissions. This is a work in progress. flag All Votes Add Books To This List ← Previous 1 2 3 Next →