The history of Eastern Europe during the Cold War is one punctuated by protest and rebellion. Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe covers these flashpoints from the Stalin-Tito split of 1948 to the dramatic collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.Covering East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland and Romania, the authors provide comprehensive critical analysis of the varying forms of dissent in the East European socialist states. They take a comparative approach and show how the different movements affected one another. Incorporating archival material only accessible since 1989, they discuss issues such as the diverse manifestations of non-conformity among different strata of the population, the complex relationship between Moscow and the national Communist Parties, the loosening of Soviet control after 1985, and everyday resistance to state authority.This book offers a firm grounding in the tumultuous decades of communist rule, which is essential to understanding the contemporary politics of Eastern Europe.

This volume focuses upon the relationships between the past and the present evoked in Tibetan historiography, ritual literature, and Buddhist esoteric writings. It offers diverse perspectives on a critical period in Tibet's history when Tibetans found themselves caught up in the tides of political turmoil and forced into the center of a much larger Central Eurasian struggle for power and territorial control between the Manchu rulers of the Qing empire and the Mongols of the north. The volume highlights the various ways Tibetan historians, biographers, and Buddhist scholars during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries succeeded in the task of reinventing and reinforcing their respective traditions.

This A-Z guide explains the key concepts and institutions linked to the European Union, along with brief biographies of the leading figures related to the foundation and development of the EU. This will allow students to link some of the theoretical concepts with the people who introduced them. The book is useful in discerning between the British and European Parliaments -- students often confuse many of the concepts of the EU with those of the British Government, and the definitions in this Glossary will demonstrate that the bodies have differing roles to play in many aspects of their existence.

Brimming with lively wit and penetrating insight, Holy Terror offers a profound and timely investigation of the idea of terror, drawing upon political, philosophical, literary, and theological sources to trace a genealogy from the ancient world to the present day. Famed critic Terry Eagleton offers here a metaphysics of terror with a serious historical perspective. Writing with remarkable clarity and persuasiveness, Eagleton examines a concept whose cultural impact predates 9/11 by millennia. From its earliest manifestations in rite and ritual, through its rebirth as a political idea with the French Revolution, to the 'War on Terror' of today, terror has been regarded with both horror and fascination. Eagleton examines the duality of the sacred (both life-giving and death-dealing) and relates it, via current and past ideas of freedom, to the idea of terror itself. Stretching from the cult of Dionysus to the thought of Jacques Lacan, the book sheds light into ideas of God, freedom, the sublime, and the unconscious. It also examines the problem of evil, and devotes a concluding chapter to the idea of tragic sacrifice and the scapegoat. Written by one of the world's foremost cultural critics, Holy Terror is a provocative and ambitious examination of one of the most urgent issues of our time.

This revisionary study of Muslims living under Christian rule during the Spanish "reconquest" delves into the subtleties of identity under the thirteenth-century Crown rule of Aragon. Brian Catlos uncovers a social dynamic in which sectarian differences comprise only one of the many factors in the causal complex of political, economic and cultural reactions. Beginning with the final stage of independent Muslim rule in the Ebro valley region, he traces the subtle and often surprising transformation of Islamic society into mudГ©jar society under Christian domination.

This comprehensive analysis of American policy toward the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide focuses on the important role big business played in keeping the United States from more actively opposing the genocide, despite broad public opinion calling for greater action. It surveys the historical evolution of U.S. policy toward the Ottoman Empire since the early nineteenth century and examines the extent to which the missionary community, commercial interests, and international economic and geopolitical competitions shaped U.S. policy during the administrations of McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson.

The foundation of the Sasanian Empire in Persia in AD 224 established a formidable new power on the Roman Empire's eastern frontier, and relations over the next four centuries proved turbulent. This book provides a chronological narrative of their relationship, supported by a substantial collection of translated sources illustrating structural patterns. The political goals of the two sides, their military confrontations and their diplomatic solutions are discussed, as well as the common interests between the two powers. Special attention is given to the situation of Arabia and Armenia, to economic aspects, the protection of the frontiers, the religious life in both empires and the channels of communication between East and West. Considerable attention is also paid to exploring the role played by the Sasanians in the history of the ancient Near East. The book will prove invaluable for students and non-specialists interested in late antiquity and early Byzantium.

This book is the first synthesis of the archaeology of the Urals and Western Siberia. It presents a comprehensive overview of the late prehistoric cultures of these regions, which are of key importance for the understanding of long-term changes in Eurasia. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, the Urals and Western Siberia are characterized by great environmental and cultural diversity which is reflected in the variety and richness of their archaeological sites. Based on the latest achievements of Russian archaeologists, this study demonstrates the temporal and geographical range of its subjects starting with a survey of the chronological sequence from the late fourth millennium BC to the early first millennium CE. Recent discoveries made in different regions of the area contribute to an understanding of several important issues, such as development of Eurasian metallurgy, technological and ritual innovations, the emergence and development of pastoral nomadism and its role in Eurasian interactions, and major sociocultural fluctuations of the Bronze and Iron Ages.

A penetrating examination of the British Empire's relationship with America from its heyday to its decline Britain and the United States have helped define much of world history in recent centuries and the relationship between the two is crucial to this history. Crisis of Empire focuses on a key period in the relationship, one that molded the character of the British Empire and of the United States and thus the way they would relate to one another in the future. The rise and crises of empires will always fascinate the observer because in their fate we see much of human history. Certainly, the struggle of and for empire in the 18th Century was key to the fate of North America and more generally to that of the West Indies and North Atlantic. British victory followed by the American Revolution help to define and delimit the modern world. At the European level, the players were Britain, France and Spain, all eager for predominance and for trappings such as trade, land and prestige. Within North America, there were the local agents of these powers but also their subjects, who held their own interests and views. In addition, the Native Americans were more than simply the passive victims of European expansion. Essential reading for history buffs and students of political science alike, Black ably weaves an enchanting tapestry from these fascinating and complex strands of history, spanning the earliest days of the British Empire to the American Revolution and its aftermath.

In these trenchant essays, philosopher Berel Lang examines post-Holocaust intepretations -- and misinterpretations -- showing the ways in which rhetoric and ideology have affected historical discourse about the Holocaust and how these accounts can be deconstructed. Why didn't the Jews resist? How could the Germans have done what they did? Why didn't more bystanders join in the rescue? In Lang's view, these questions become mischievous when the circumstances in which victims, perpetrators, and bystanders played their roles are omitted or obscured. To confront such issues adequately requires comparative and contextual evidence. Post-Holocaust addresses such questions as the place of the Holocaust in the Nazi project as a whole, the roles of revenge and forgiveness in post-Holocaust Jewish thinking, Holocaust commemoration as artifice or "business," and the relationship of the Holocaust to traditional antisemitism. Lang's analysis provides an incisive and fruitful basis for confronting these critical subjects.

This major intervention from one of the world's leading historians, challenges the notion of any one 'Enlightenment' and posits instead a plurality of enlightenments, of which the English was one. The first two volumes of Barbarism and Religion were warmly and widely reviewed, and won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History of the American Philosophical Society. In the third volume in the sequence, John Pocock presents a historical introduction to the first fourteen chapters of Gibbon's great work, recounting the end of the classical civilization Gibbon and his readers knew so much better than the worlds that followed.

Civil wars pose some of the most difficult problems in the world today and the United Nations is the organization generally called upon to bring and sustain peace. Lise Morjй Howard studies the sources of success and failure in UN peacekeeping. Her in-depth analysis of some of the most complex UN peacekeeping missions debunks the conventional wisdom that they habitually fail, showing that the UN record actually includes a number of important, though understudied, success stories. Using systematic comparative analysis, Howard argues that UN peacekeeping succeeds when field missions establish significant autonomy from UN headquarters, allowing civilian and military staff to adjust to the post-civil war environment. In contrast, failure frequently results from operational directives originating in UN headquarters, often devised in relation to higher-level political disputes with little relevance to the civil war in question. Howard recommends future reforms be oriented toward devolving decision-making power to the field missions.

This volume documents the development of Cretan sanctuaries and associated cults from the end of the Late Bronze Age into the Archaic Period (c.1200–600 BC).The book supplies up-to-date site catalogues and discusses recurring types of sanctuaries, the history of their use and their religious and social functions, offering new insights into the period as a whole. Ancient Crete is known as an island whose religion displays a strong continuity with ‘Minoan’ traditions. The period of 1200–600 BC in general, however, is considered as one of profound socio-political and cultural change. This study explores the idea of ‘continuity’ by detailing the different processes and mechanisms involved in the maintenance of older cult traditions and provides balance by placing the observed changes in cult customs and the use of sanctuaries in the broader context of societal change.

This book suggests a new approach to the social history of Jewish religious movements in the Second Temple and early Rabbinic periods. It argues that most of these movements and their traditions emerged within the context of complex interaction between traditional families and disciple circles.
The first part of the book examines the development of Jewish religious movements during the Second Temple period. It culminates with the discussion of the Dead Sea Sect, which is analyzed as the first unambiguous example of a movement shifting from a social structure based on families to a social structure based on disciple circles. The second part of the book discusses the history of pharisaic and early rabbinic movements from a similar perspective.
Topics covered in the book will be of interest to scholars of Judaism and Early Christianity.

The untold story of the Kamikaze pilots, a remarkable piece of military history and one of the most dramatic developments of World War II.
* Gripping real-life stories of life & death.
* Contains original material, interviews and new sources including excerpts from a never-before published suicide manual.
* Reports on survivors who have lived to tell the tale of the Second World War.
The use of Kamikaze pilots was one of the most dramatic and chilling developments of the Second World War. But who were the kamikaze pilots and what motivated them to give the ultimate sacrifice? Why was the practice initiated by the Japanese air force? This is the untold story of a remarkable development in military and world history. In this gripping account, Albert Axell explains that Kamikaze pilots were part of the national military policy of Japan during the 2nd World War. He writes that Japanese Vice Admiral Takashiro Ohnishi noted that the most effective way to inflict damage to warships was to crash planes into them. Those attacks took the American fleet completely by surprise - they were bewildered by the suicide missions and completely unable to comprehend the mentality behind them. We learn, however, that the call for kamikaze pilots drew a staggering response, with three times as many volunteers for suicide flights as the number of planes available. Kamikaze: The Untold Story sheds light on the world of the Kamikaze pilots, where they came from, what they were thinking about, how they looked at life and death, what they did in their last hours.
Albert Axell has done historical research in China, Japan, Mongolia and Russia and has written several books about these countries (including 'Russia's Heroes' and 'Stalin's War'). He also observed the Vietnam War as a journalist. During the Cold War years he met John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Brezhnev and has met thirty of Stalin's surviving generals.