October 1974
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2013The 1989 Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe
From Communism to Pluralism
by Kevin McDermott, Matthew Stibbe
This important book reassesses a defining historical, political and ideological moment in contemporary history: the 1989 revolutions in central and eastern Europe. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the authors reconsider such crucial themes as the broader historical significance of the 1989 events, the complex interaction between external and internal factors in the origins and outcomes of the revolutions, the impact of the 'Gorbachev phenomenon', the West and the end of the Cold War, the political and socio-economic determinants of the revolutionary processes in Poland, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, and the competing academic, cultural and ideological perceptions of the year 1989 as communism gave way to post-communist pluralism in the 1990s and beyond. Concluding that the contentious term 'revolution' is indeed apt for the momentous developments in eastern Europe in 1989, this book will be essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates and specialists alike. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2005Power and the people
A social history of central European politics, 1945–56
by Eleonore Breuning, Jill Lewis, Gareth Pritchard
This book covers various aspects of the social history of politics on both sides of the Iron Curtain in the period 1945 to 1956. The contributors come from a range of countries (Austria, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and the United Kingdom) and comprise a mixture of established historians and younger scholars engaged in pioneering research. The individual chapters are organised into four sections dealing with workers, ethnic and linguistic minorities, youth, and women. In order to enhance the comparative character of the volume, the four chapters contained in each section consider the position of these social groups in, respectively, West Germany, East Germany, Austria, and either Czechoslovakia or Hungary. Major themes include the absence of popular revolutions in the aftermath of World War Two, the re-imposition of social control by post-war elites, the attempt to restore pre-war gender relations, and the failure of Communist parties to win popular support. The chosen time-frame saw most of the decisive developments which set the pattern for the remaining Cold War period and is therefore of key importance for any student of this topic. ;
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The ArtsNovember 2013Popular television in authoritarian Europe
by Peter Goddard
This lively and ground-breaking collection brings together work on forms of popular television within the authoritarian regimes of Europe after World War Two. Ten chapters based on new and original research examine approaches to programming and individual programmes in Spain, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the USSR and the GDR at a time when they were governed as dictatorships or one-party states. Drawing on surviving archives, scripts and production records, contemporary publications, YouTube clips and interviews with producers and performers, its chapters recover examples of television programming history unknown beyond national borders and often preserved largely in the memories of the audiences who lived with them. The introduction examines how television can be considered 'popular' in circumstances where audience appeal is often secondary to the need for state control. Published in English, Popular television in authoritarian Europe represents a significant intervention in transnational television studies, making these histories available to scholars for the first time, encouraging comparative enquiry and extending the reach - intellectually and geographically - of European television history. There is a foreword by John Corner and an informative timeline of events in the history of television in the countries covered. ;
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Against All Odds
The Magnificent Trio That Built the Israeli Air Force
by Hugo N. Gerstl
1947 – The UN declares that the British Mandate over Palestine will come to an end. In May 1948 Israel and Arab Palestine will be divided into two independent states. The Arab world reacts immediately: There will be no Jewish state; it will be driven into the sea! Sixty-five million Arabs against six hundred thousand Israeli Jews. Britain has washed its hands of the problem. The United States, under the guise of the Neutrality Act, makes it a felony for any American to supply side with any arms. Americans Al Schwimmer, Hank Greenspun, and Charlie Winters boldly defy the Neutrality Act and risk convictions by purchasing twenty-three former Nazi Messerschmitt Bf-109s in Czechoslovakia, painting out the swastikas on the tails with Jewish stars of David, and smuggling them to Israel; founding a “Panamanian” airline and flying seven large aircraft out of Panama “to do an aerial survey,” but never returning; securing a huge cache of ammunition from a sympathetic junk dealer in Hawaii; smuggling weapons to Mexico on a hijacked yacht, and ultimately shipping them “to Nationalist China” – via Israel. Stripped of most of their rights as US citizens, Schwimmer is recruited to start a small aircraft maintenance plant in Israel, which will become Israel Aircraft Industries, a billion-dollar-a-year operation; Greenspun purchases a defunct newspaper, which he turns into the and is among the first to call witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy to account; Winters returns to importing and exporting fruit and diamonds between Israel and the United States. After the 1967 Six-Day War, when France reneges on its commitment to sell Israel fifty advanced fighter jets, the trio manages to “steal” plans from a friendly engineer in Geneva. Within six months Israel turns out its own homegrown Mach 2 fighter aircraft. And that’s just the beginning. International best-selling author has crafted a tantalizing, rewarding, magnificently readable tour de force based on the true life stories of three of Israel’s most unheralded heroes, cementing and enhancing his reputation as a master storyteller. Published By Pangæa Publishing Group, 2019. 560 pages – 23 cm x 15 cm , 489 Pages.
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April 2022Fritz, the Gorilla
Biography of a Fascinating Ape
by Jenny von Sperber
When Jenny von Sperber first met Fritz, the gorilla didn’t let her out of his sight. He was already over 50 years old then, but he was still extremely charismatic. One thing matters for the journalist: she wants to find out everything about Fritz’s life. Born in 1963, he was captured in the wild and came from Cameroon to Germany in 1966. At that time, apes were still regarded as a curiosity in zoos. When a ban was declared on the wild gorilla trade, Fritz was already a father of many youngsters. This fascinating gorilla-family saga not only recounts the eventful life of Fritz, but also shows the development in European zoos in handling wild animals. Nowadays, things have certainly improved. But there are still questions, for example, what does it do to us when we marvel at our closest relatives behind glass? And is it even still current to confine apes ... was it ever?
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July 2021An Introduction to Economics
Concepts for Students of Agriculture and the Rural Sector
by Berkeley Hill
Updated and revised, this fifth edition incorporates recent developments in the environment in which agriculture operates. Issues that have gained prominence since the previous edition (2014) include climate change and agriculture's mitigating role, concern with animal welfare, the social contributions that agriculture makes, risks associated with globalization, and rising concern over sustainability. Important for UK and EU readers are the adjustments needed now that the UK is no longer a member of the European Union and the nature of the national policies developed to replace the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. Containing all the major economic principles with agriculture-specific examples, An Introduction to Economics, 5th Edition provides a rounded and up-to-date introduction to the subject. The inclusion of updated chapter-focused exercises, essay questions and suggestions for further reading make this textbook an invaluable learning tool. This book: Is updated to include new developments, such as Brexit, importance of climate change and animal welfare. Includes exercises and essay questions. Suggests further reading to supplement the text. This book is recommended for students of agriculture, economics and related sectors.
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MemoirsMarch 2020The Private Adolf Loos
Portrait of an Eccentric Genius
by Claire Beck Loos; Translated by Constance C. Pontasch and Nicholas Saunders
An intimate literary portrait of the infamously eccentric and influential modern architect, told in lively, snapshot-like vignettes. The Private Adolf Loos reveals the personality and philosophy that helped shape Modern architecture in Vienna and the Czech lands. Includes an introduction, supplemental texts, writings by Loos and photographs. The Loos' trip to the French Riviera and his work in France are a significant part of the story. Recommended to all those interested not only in architecture but also in the dynamic era of twenties and thirties. Not only a recollection of an extraordinary and controversial personality, Claire’s book is also an excellent literary work. She has captured with a brilliant lightness and humor the tedious, but not boring, life beside a somewhat self-centered genius. […] We still feel Loos’ charisma.– “Annoyed on Vacation and Misunderstood on Site: Loos, We Do Not Know Him,” Lidovk.cz What makes the book most valuable is the fine-grained portrait it provides us of Loos’ last years, of his activities and his preoccupations. […] The English translation of her book, made by Constance C. Pontasch [and Nicholas Saunders], is fluent and accurate, conveying well the tone of Claire Loos’ original (which, in turn, to some extent mimics Loos’ own writing style). Paterson’s introduction and afterword, along with some forty previously unpublished family photographs, add to the story and help flesh it out. It is a richly informative.– Christopher Long, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture
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MemoirsMarch 2017Escape Home
Rebuilding Life After the Anschluss, A Family Memoir
by Charles Paterson and Carrie Paterson
The riveting family memoir of a Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice and his resourceful father begins in Nazi-occupied Europe and journeys “home” to American modernism amid the snowy mountains of Colorado. Charles Paterson (1929–2018) was nine years old when the Nazis invaded Vienna in March, 1938. Fleeing Austria for Czechoslovakia just months later, only to witness the invasion of Hitler for a second time in Prague, the author and his sister escaped to Paris to rejoin their refugee father Stefan before being adopted in Australia. Meanwhile, Stefan’s daring three-month-long escape through France by foot and bicycle, told in a detailed letter to his children from Lisbon, is a story unto itself.
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Historical fictionThe Hope
by John Wilton
This is a story of how hope of change materialised in Czechoslovakia in 1989 during the 'Velvet Revolution', told through the experiences of two Czech women and an Englishman. It is set in the Czech Republic in 1994, with recollections of the tide of circumstances in 1989 affecting the relationships of the three central characters and the lives of the Czech and Slovak people. It is a tale of parallel journeys; the journey of a country in 1989 and the journey of a man in his life. Both have a journey of hope.
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ABSOLVO TE
by Georgi Bardarov
EUROPEAN LITERATURE PRIZE FOR 2021! https://www.euprizeliterature.eu/authors/georgi-bardarov The novel “Absolvo te” is based on two true stories – one about World War II and the Holocaust, and the other about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The main characters are a Palestinian, a Jewish man and a Nazis officer. Each of them must forgive and look past each other’s sins. They’re all in need of “Absolve te”, which translated from Latin means ‘’forgiveness of all sins’’.
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Autobiography: historical, political & militaryFrank Vlchek
The Story of My Life
by William Chrislock (author)
The Story of My Life, originally published in Czechoslovakia in 1928, is the engaging and informative autobiography of Frank Vlchek, a Czech immigrant who became a successful businessman in Cleveland, Ohio, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.The youngest of fourteen children, Vlchek was born to peasant parents in Budyn, southern Bohemia, in 1871. After attempting a career in blacksmithing in Bohemia, at the age of seventeen he decided to follow his two older sisters to Cleveland, home to America’s second-largest Czech community.Vlchek worked a variety of unsatisfactory jobs during his first years in Cleveland. In 1895 he opened his own smithing operation, which after a long struggle was transformed into a successful corporation that specialized in the manufacture of toolkits for automobiles. His narrative relates tales of labor issues, competitors, mergers and acquisitions, and the successes and travails of his operation. Vlchek was often able to travel home to Czechoslovakia, and during those trips he noted the different cultural and political attitudes that had evolved between Czechs and their Czech American cousins.Vlchek’s memoir provides a rare primary source about Czech immigrants. It also offers insight into a self-made man’s life philosophy, illustrates relations between ethnic groups in Cleveland during the 1880s, and demonstrates the assimilation of a late-nineteenth-century immigrant in America.Readers interested in immigration history as well as the history of Cleveland will enjoy this fascinating autobiography.
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Politics & governmentApril 2020Democracy's Defenders
U.S. Embassy Prague, the Fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and Its Aftermath
by Edited by Norman L. Eisen
A behind-the-scenes look at how the United States aided the Velvet Revolution Democracy’s Defenders offers a behind-the-scenes account of the little-known role played by the U.S. embassy in Prague in the collapse of communism in what was then Czechoslovakia. Featuring fifty-two newly declassified diplomatic cables, the book shows how the staff of the embassy led by U.S. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black worked with dissident groups and negotiated with the communist government during a key period of the Velvet Revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Soviet rule. In the vivid reporting of these cables, Black and other members of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Prague describe student demonstrations and their meetings with anti-government activists. The embassy also worked to forestall a violent crackdown by the communist regime during its final months in power. Edited by Norman L. Eisen, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014, Democracy’s Defenders contributes fresh evidence to the literature on U.S. diplomatic history, the cold war era, and American promotion of democracy overseas. In an introductory essay, Eisen places the diplomatic cables in context and analyzes their main themes. In an afterword, Eisen, Czech historian Dr. Mikuláš Pešta, and Brookings researcher Kelsey Landau explain how the seeds of democracy that the United States helped plant have grown in the decades since the Velvet Revolution. The authors trace a line from U.S. efforts to promote democracy and economic liberalization after the Velvet Revolution to the contemporary situations of what are now the separate nations of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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FictionOctober 2020On Hamburg Station
by Dave Dougherty
On Hamburg Station is a work of historical fiction based on real intelligence operations that took place and were conducted by the Army’s 513th INTC Group from 1956 to 1966. Forget what you’ve seen in the movies, this is the true world of espionage in the early 1960’s. The 513th was headquartered at Camp King, Oberursel, West Germany, with three operating stations featured in this work, Berlin, Bremerhaven, and Hamburg. The Hamburg Station was a sub-station reporting to Bremerhaven, and contained a group of agent handlers targeted against the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. This novel traces the lives of several people who defended America during the height of the Cold War.
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January 2017
Vatican II Behind the Iron Curtain
by Piotr H. Kosicki
The goal of this volume is to begin writing Central and Eastern Europe back into the story of the Second Vatican Council, its origins, and its consequences. This volume assembles - for the first time in any language - a broad overview of the place of four different Communist-run countries - Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia - in the story of the Council. Framing these is an account of how the Cold War impacted the Council and its reception. The book engages with both English-language scholarship and the national historiographies of the countries that it examines, offering a global lens on the present state of research (covering all relevant languages) and seeking to propel that research forward. All of the chapters draw on both non-English secondary literature and original primary sources - some published, some archival. ;
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October 2019Science, (Anti-)Communism and Diplomacy
The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in the Early Cold War
by Alison Kraft and Carola Sachse
From 1957 onwards, the "Pugwash Conferences" brought together elite scientists from across ideological and political divides to work towards disarmament. Through a series of national case studies - Austria, China, Czechoslovakia, East and West Germany, the US and USSR – this volume offers a critical reassessment of the development and work of “Pugwash” nationally, internationally, and as a transnational forum for Track II diplomacy. This major new collection reveals the difficulties that Pugwash scientists encountered as they sought to reach across the blocs, create a channel for East-West dialogue and realize the project’s founding aim of influencing state actors. Uniquely, the book affords a sense of the contingent and contested process by which the network-like organization took shape around the conferences.
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Biography & True StoriesJanuary 2021
INNOCENT WITNESSES
Childhood Memories of WWII
by Marilyn Yalom, foreword by Meg Waite Clayton
In a book that will touch hearts and minds, acclaimed cultural historian Marilyn Yalom presents firsthand accounts of six witnesses to war, each offering lasting memories of how childhood trauma transforms lives. The violence of war leaves indelible marks, and memories last a lifetime for those who experienced this trauma as children. Marilyn Yalom experienced World War II from afar, safely protected in her home in Washington, DC. But over the course of her life, she came to be close friends with many less lucky, who grew up under bombardment across Europe―in France, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, England, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Holland. With Innocent Witnesses, Yalom collects the stories from these accomplished luminaries and brings us voices of a vanishing generation, the last to remember World War II. Memory is notoriously fickle: it forgets most of the past, holds on to bits and pieces, and colors the truth according to unconscious wishes. But in the circle of safety Marilyn Yalom created for her friends, childhood memories return in all their startling vividness. This powerful collage of testimonies offers us a greater understanding of what it is to be human, not just then but also today. With this book, her final and most personal work of cultural history, Yalom considers the lasting impact of such young experiences―and asks whether we will now force a new generation of children to spend their lives reconciling with such memories
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Proud Servant
The Memoirs of a Career Ambassador
by Ellis Briggs (author)
“These memoirs, by a seasoned and highly competent career diplomatist, covering his various involvements with Latin America and his frequent tiffs with his own government, give an authoritative and amusing picture of the trials of foreign service life and work around the period of the Second World War.”—George F. KennanEllis O. Briggs (1899-1976) entered the Foreign Service of the United States in 1925. During the next 37 years he was ambassador to seven countries: the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Peru, Brazil, and Greece. An eighth appointment, to Spain, was cancelled when he retired due to illness. He also served in Cuba, Chile, Liberia, and China. His memoirs are an exhuberant record of a gifted diplomat.Briggs reached the highest rank attainable in the Foreign Service—Career Ambassador—and received the Medal of Freedom from President Eisenhower for his service in wartime Korea. He gained a reputation for successfully handling large diplomatic missions and dealing with difficult situations. But his greatest virtue was his honesty, his passion to report things just as he saw them and make policy recommendations regardless of conventional wisdom in Washington. He employed a high sense of humor, often to devastating effect, on bureaucrats at home as well as adversaries abroad. His strong views about policy sometimes placed him in conflict with others; fellow Dartmouth graduate Nelson Rockefeller had him fired from the Foreign Service because of disagreements (Briggs soon returned to the Service).A down-to-earth New Englander with an abiding love of the outdoors, Briggs was devoted to his wife and family as well as to his country. Proud Servant is full of insights about the practice of diplomacy in this century and provides a fascinating account of the modern Foreign Service.
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Children's & YAMarch 2017Tutti's Promise
A novel based on a family's true story of courage and hope during the Holocaust
by K. Heidi Fishman
Together, Dutch ingenuity, valiant Polish diplomats, friends, and family helped three generations defy all odds. Tutti's Promise is the true account of the Lichtenstern family's unwavering quest to stay alive during the Holocaust while protecting others in harm's way. Written by Tutti’s daughter and filled with historical photos and documents—including one very important Paraguayan passport—this multi-award-winning book draws the reader into the family's plight and reveals the preciouslegacy of a promise kept. As of September 8, 2022, the paperback edition has an additional four-page section in the back matter entitled “The Passport: Now We Know • 2022,” which explains how a network of people—including Jewish leaders and Polish diplomats in Bern, Switzerland—worked together and risked their lives to get unauthorized passports into the hands of Jews in peril throughout Europe. A promise kept is like the twinkling stars in the night sky: a constant reminder of something important that makes you who you are. Those who are moved by Lois Lowry's Number the Stars will also find Tutti's Promise a courageous and memorable story. AWARDS: • Designated a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young Readers by the National Council for the Social Studies & the Children’s Book Council • IBPA Benjamin Franklin AwardsTwo Silver Medals:~ Best New Voice: Children’s/YA~ Young Reader: Fiction (8-12 Years) * Nautilus Book Awards Silver WinnerMiddle Grades Fiction • Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards Gold Medal Winner Preteen Fiction — Historical/Cultural • Joseph Zola Memorial Holocaust Educator Award from the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford for the book proposal that led to Tutti’s Promise & Joseph Zola Memorial Professional Development Award for Tutti’s Promise Lesson Plans
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Biography: historical, political & militaryApril 2022A Machine Gunner's War
From Normandy to Victory with the 1st Infantry Division in World War II
by Ernest Albert "Andy" Andrews Jr with David B. Hurt
A young machine gunner's war with the Big Red One, from D-Day through the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, Remagen to the Wehrmacht's last stand in the mountains of Germany. Ernest “Andy” Andrews began his training as a machine gunner at Fort McClellan in Alabama in July 1943. In early 1944, he arrived in the UK for further training before D-Day. Andy’s company, part of the 1st Infantry Division, departed England on the evening of June 5 on the USS Henrico. Due to a problem with his landing craft, Andy only reached Omaha Beach on the early evening of June 6, but still had a harrowing experience. Fighting in Normandy, Andy was nicked by a bullet and evacuated to England in late July when the wound became infected, before returning to participate in the Normandy breakout. Following the race across France in late August, Andy participated in the rout of several retreating German units near Mons, Belgium, and his outfit approached Aachen in mid-September. For a month, Andy's squad defended a bunker position in the Siegfried Line against repeated German attacks, then after Aachen surrendered, the unit fought its way through the Hurtgen Forest to take Hill 232. Early on the morning of November 19, Andy engaged in his toughest battle of the war as the Germans attempted to retake Hill 232. Andy was wounded in the shoulder. After surgery and a month convalescence he rejoined H Company in time to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. His unit then participated in the fast-moving Roer to the Rhine campaign, then the battle to expand the Remagen bridgehead. Breaking out from the Remagen bridgehead, Andy's squad stumbled on a German tank unit and Andy narrowly escaped getting killed. Following a rapid advance up to the Paderborn area, Andy's unit races to Germany's Harz Mountains, where the Wehrmacht was trying to organize a last stand. Andy's outfit ends the war fighting in Czechoslovakia, where Andy witnesses the German surrender in early May. Following occupation duty, Andy returned to the States in October 1945. The war shaped Andy's postwar life in countless ways, and in 1994, Andy made the first of three return visits to the European battlefields where he had fought. This vivid first-hand account takes the reader along from Normandy to victory with Andy and his machine-gun crew.
